SirSmUgly

Good thing WWE is being run by a guy with only the utmost respect for Mexicans and Mexican culture.

Show #281 – 12 March 2001 "The one where WCW's lifespan is running short, so the creative team decides to get a little experimental with it" No time for a preamble because… …Jeff Jarrett makes an entrance as we start the final go-home NITROOOOOOO. Dustin Rhodes waits until Jarrett gets in the ring and raises his guitar in a taunt before he slides into the ring behind Jarrett and beats him up. They obligabrawl before Jarrett takes over with my least favorite transition. This was an intended interview segment that has turned into an impromptu brawl, but the illusion is broken because Jarrett kicks his KABONGin’ guitar out of the ring before going back over to Dustin to throw some punches. I feel like if Jarrett were jumped from behind before an interview, he'd go to EL KABONG as soon as he could to get himself out of trouble. Dustin takes over again and sets Jarrett up in the corner for a Shattered Dreams Dustbuster, though this Dustbuster doesn’t have the ability to suck crumbs up from between couch cushions. Y’know, I’m going to go ahead and call it a Dustbuster for the final two weeks of television, but that name is a real comedown from the excellent Shattered Dreams name. Dustin lands his penile punt and then declares that Jarrett will be kissing his pappy’s “pimply white ass” after the result of their match at Greed. As Dustin wanders back up the ramp, we see a limo pull up in the back on security cam (as does Dustin; he notices the camera footage when it pops onto the TurnerTron). The Magnificent Seven get out of the limo, and Buff Bagwell is holding a camcorder. If I had my druthers, I would make an argument that this camera is actually the original KidCam, but I’m just not up to it today. After a break, Buff works the camcorder while CEO Ric Flair cuts a promo about himself and his group of buddies; this recording, according to CEO Flair, is part of the footage for a future documentary. It’s the Blair Witch of documentaries in that Buff is shaky camming the shit out of this thing. Hey, Midajah’s here again! I figured that WCW got rid of her with the rest of the non-Nitro Girls ladies. CEO Flair is shooting this documentary as a testament to his business acumen as the CEO. He hopes that this documentary shows how he put himself in limousines and custom-made suits and how to best other prominent businessmen such as (wait for it): Ted Turner (you’re not besting that guy unless you’re Steve Case or Gerald Levin), Bill Gates (a man who just put out an autobiography in real life for the same reasons as CEO Flair is shooting this documentary in kayfabe, but yes, is extremely hard to best), Or Donald Trump (BWAHAHAHA, ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER/ONE OF THESE THINGS JUST DOESN’T BELONG). CEO Flair crows about his ability to successfully navigate all of the power changes in the company. Well, not all of them. Jim Herd ran ol' Spartacus out of WCW for a couple of years. But most of them! Here’s what the CEO has to say about that: “I want the new owners to see why Ric Flair has survived for twenty years. I want the guys like Hogan, Savage, Piper, all those guys that came through this company and thought they could run by me, run over me, I want ‘em all to know that I’m still here and they’re gone!” This acts as a segue for the CEO to ask Scott Steiner to list out the foes whom he has also outasted, but man, heel CEO Flair has pretty much justified this heel turn with his talking for the past two months. I didn’t remember Flair being so animated or so interesting as a desperate clinging heel. Actually, there is a throughline here because if you look at Flair’s Nitro Era run, you can see how he became greedy and grasping to stay on top even as age and too many bigger, badder foes meant that his ‘80s strategy of using the Horsemen to control the top of the card wasn’t effective anymore. He let Debra spin up discord in the Horsemen and didn’t do anything to quash it. He managed the Jeff Jarrett and Curt Hennig situations completely incorrectly. The Horsemen were overwhelmed by the larger nWo, which brought with them more audacious gang attacks that the ‘80s Horsemen could never have dreamed up. He never could quite beat Hogan without the help of having WCW’s presidency, and he couldn’t even keep that position because eternal foe Sting took it from him. By 2000, he was so out of sorts that he was happy to be subordinate to Lex Luger just to have a running buddy. Those guys he mentioned – Hogan, Savage, and Piper – all destroyed pieces of his identity. Hogan took his place as the dominant world champ centerpiece of a highly effective stable. Savage infected him with Macho Madness during their long feud to the point that Flair was incapable of dealing with the drama within the Horsemen that destroyed the group by Fall Brawl 1997, when Flair made the rare miscalculation of asking a mortal enemy from just four years ago to help him and got a steel cage door to the skull as a response. Piper scuttled Flair’s attempts to reinvent himself as a domineering WCW President in 1999 and got him committed at one point (and also did the thing that Flair himself could not do until he stacked the deck for himself at Uncensored 1999, which is to beat Hulk Hogan in the center of the ring). There is a definite character development thread for Ric Flair in the Nitro Era in which his methods and strategies are simply out of date, but he doesn’t understand that and makes mistake after mistake until one day, he finally looks around and realizes that it isn’t 1987 anymore…and that realization drives him to take power by whatever means he can. This promo is still ongoing, so I should probably tell you what happens next, huh? A winded Jeff Jarrett makes it back to the locker room and crossly asks why the rest of the Magnificent Seven didn’t back him up when Dustin jumped him. The other heels try to calm him down, though CEO Flair and Scott Steiner sneak away; the BuffCam catches them planning to plot on Steiner’s opps. The CEO and Scotty walk out of the camera’s range to go over a plan that Flair has for getting one up on Steiner’s enemies. Tony S. and Scott Hudson promote more documentary snippets throughout the night, another look at Kanyon’s insistence upon executing Russo-iffic plots against his enemies, and finally the chance that the “new owners” of WCW might show up. Production cuts to a couple of reserved seats in the crowd, and the first thing I see other than two guards standing sentinel nearby is the visage of ol’ Stone Cold on some fan’s shirt. That seems portentous! Video recap: Before our first semifinal match in the WCW World Cruiserweight Championship tournament, we see highlights of the quarterfinal results and an updated bracket. Hold on, before that happens, we also get more not-wrestling. Or we would if WCW production didn’t suck. Tony S., more irritated as he goes along: ALRIGHT, HOLD ON NOW, WE’VE JUST RECEIVED WORD THAT SOMETHING’S GONE DOWN IN THE BACKSTAGE AREA. WE’VE GOT ONE OF OUR CAMERAS BACK THERE. LET’S GO SEE WHAT’S HAPPENED RIGHT NOW IF WE CAN. *slightly-too-long pause* LET’S GO BACKSTAGE. *even longer pause* DO WE HAVE THAT CAMERA? *pause, during which you can just see the look on Tony S.’s face in your own mind even though he’s not in the shot* DO WE HAVE THAT CAMERA?! Comically enough, here’s what happened: The camera finally gets back there, where Midajah is laid out again so that she can leave WCW television for good this time, I suppose, and immediately, Scott Steiner shoves the camera and yells GET THAT CAMERA OUTTA HERE, YOU SONUVABITCH! That cameraperson is having a rough night, huh? You finally get to the scene, and ten seconds later, you are roughly removed from it by Scott Steiner. Alright, let’s have ourselves a match. Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo face the Jung Dragons for a spot in the finals at Greed. Kid Romeo comes out to a dub, which is played rather than Romeo's catchy knockoff of Ricky Martin’s World Cup ’98 song. The dub’s not bad, but the Hart/Helms knockoff is really fun and energetic. Both teams brawl to start, and Skipper pays for another Matrix in a neat way; he ducks under a crossbody from one of the Dragons, but the other one turns away from Kid Romeo and lariats him as he rises. Holy shit, a lot has happened in the first minute of this match. The heels bail to avoid a Yang Time attempt on Romeo, but Yang simply turns his body and dives onto the heels at ringside. There is lots of pace in this even by the standards of a typical cruiserweight television bout. The heels finally get some control when Skipper manages a slingshot crossbody on Kaz back in the ring, which allows the legal man in Kid Romeo to take over. The match finally slows down a bit as the heels hit deliberate offense, and I do mean “a bit” because Kaz fires up with kicks before getting put back down. Kaz is behind bars in FIP jail as the heels make quick tags and land double-team moves for a minute or so. Kaz lands a wheel kick and then manages to rana Romeo as Romeo tries to cut off the tag. Yang comes in the ring and is a house aflame, but he can’t fight off two guys for long; as he lands ten punches in the corner, Skipper and Romeo counter with a slightly mistimed powerbomb/neckbreaker combo. Kaz makes his way into the ring and helps Yang out; he lands a Buzzsaw Kick on Skipper. Everybody hits everybody else with drivers until Skipper gets back up and finds himself deposited outside by a Yang crossbody. This leaves Romeo and Kaz in the ring together, where Yang trips Romeo on a rope run and allows Kaz to land another kick to the head. Let’s see if I can keep up with this finish. Yang goes up to try a Yang Time on a downed Romeo in the ring; Kaz goes outside to hold Skipper off, but Skipper grabs him in a bearhug and hits a belly to belly on the mats. Yang’s attempt at a Yang Time whiffs; Skipper, having disposed of Kaz, slides back in the ring and scores a Play of the Day for three. Skipper and Romeo dance after the match. It is hilariously goofy dancing. That was a dope sprint! I’d gladly watch that again were it on a Youtube playlist of Nitro-era WCW matches. Promo: Don’t miss WCW’s final pay-per-view event! Promo: We creep ever closer to Panama City Beach and WCW’s demise. Scott Steiner yells at his compatriots for not protecting Midajah while Buff Bagwell records it all on the BuffCam. Steiner, after going berserk for a bit, figures out that there’s a tape in Buff’s camcorder that he can look at, even though Buff protests that the camera was dying and needed recharging. Lance Storm and Mike Awesome are all that is left of Team Canada, really. Elix Skipper is nominally a member, but he never hangs out with them anymore. Storm is skeptical of the combined intelligence of the crowd, so he gets right to standing at attention for “O Canada,” and of course, he hits a head turn when Vito and the Bull interrupt with some mediocre mic work and a lot of fisticuffs. For the second match in a row, the babyfaces win a match-opening brawl in the ring; however, when the brawl spills outside of the ring, the heels manage to take over after the team obligabrawl. Storm and the Bull have an okay sequence in which the cameraman catches Storm in 4K slapping his thigh when his boot goes up on a corner charge; the Bull mistimes a counter dropkick and tags Vito. Awesome tags in and gets doubled up on, but slowpoke Billy Silverman is busy yelling at fellow slowpoke Johnny the Bull, who doesn’t simply exit the ring. Everyone misses Storm missile dropkicking Vito as Vito attempts a Paisan Plunge on Awesome. Awesome follows with an Awesome Bomb on Vito after some struggling; Vito is complete dead weight for him. Anyway, that gets three, and Awesome and Storm combine on a post-match Awesome Bomb and Canadian Maple Leaf when Johnny the Bull hops in the ring to check on his partner. Hugh Morrus and Konnan eventually chase them off. HO. LEE. SHIT. Stacy fucking Hancock-Keibler walks out here pushing a baby stroller. It has not been nine months, even. Wait, has it? OK, let me check: Major Gunns/Ms. Hancock at New Blood Rising was the pregnancy reveal, which was about seven months ago, but assuming that Hancock knew she was pregnant for at least a month or two at that point, then yeah, the math checks out! If Stacy was pregnant, she Jazzercized herself back into excellent shape, and I don’t care if she is wearing a loose dress. It's obvious. WCW production crew members lift the stroller from the floor and over the top rope. You’re trusting WCW production to not drop that thing? This is clue number one that there’s not a baby in that stroller. No mother would ever let WCW production even come near their child for fear of something terrible happening. Stace says that she’s a changed woman before introducing her “newest baby,” and it’s Shawn fucking Stasiak?! Get the fuck out of my face with this shit. How did Stacy manage to downgrade from David Flair somehow? Stacy rips off her dowdy dress and is in a short black number. Tony S.: “Yeah, that’s Stacy alright.” It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure is. Also, there are just Stasiak 8x10s in the stroller. Is the unspoken implication here that Stacy went ahead and got an abortion because she didn’t want to share custody of a baby with Dopey David Flair, or like what? Anyway, Shawn Stasiak absolutely sucks, and standing next to Stacy Keibler isn’t going to change that. Stasiak runs down all fat guys with tattoos and missing teeth in the crowd, and oh my FRICKIN’ GOSH, Bam Bam Bigelow is offended enough by that to walk out and cut a babyface “I’m alright just the way I am" promo, thus triggering an end-of-WCW feud with Stasiak. What in THEE fuck?! I remembered that Stasiak was the only heel on the final Nitro to win a match, and I remembered that it was against Bigelow, but boy did I not remember how we got to that point! Bigelow challenges Stasiak to a match at Greed. This company finds ways to be creatively absurd to the very end. We see what the BuffCam recorded after CEO Flair and Scott Steiner went off to have their conversation earlier. Jarrett and Ricky Steiner leave, followed by Lex Luger, who walks off to get ready for his match. Road Warrior Animal has already slipped away, I think, joining CEO Flair. Buff starts to interview Midajah, but yep, there’s a LOW BATTERY icon in the top left corner of the video. Buff notices it and apologizes to Midajah for cutting her response off, but says he's got to go retrieve a fresh battery for the BuffCam. He leaves the room to find another battery, but he lays the BuffCam on the couch, leaving it on and pointed at Midajah. Suddenly, as Midajah relaxes and looks away, a hand covers the lens and slowly, quietly moves the camera on the ground and facing the couch leg. We hear Midajah scream…and we cut back to the BuffCam rolling in real time as Scott Steiner complains that he couldn’t tell anything from the footage. Everyone tries to calm Scotty down; CEO Flair steps in and quietly reminds him of their plan, then tells them that Booker T. is on his way to the ring. Steiner leaves to execute said plan, but he makes sure to let everyone else in the Magnificent Seven know that he doesn’t trust them one iota. This is actually a decently-conceptualized way to shoot this mystery without relying on invisible camerapeople. It's not perfectly executed, but there is a good idea here that would work really well with further development. My biggest issue is how we saw the playback of the earlier incident, then jumped right back into the real-time recording of Scott Steiner's response, but I can allow it because this is a new idea for showing backstage incidents that is being hammered out. Hey, it’s Booker T. on cue! He cuts a boilerplate babyface promo in which he loves the fans in Knoxville (“God’s country,” and let me stop rolling my eyes so I can watch the rest of this promo) and also calls out any non-Scott Steiner “suckas in the back” if they want to get it, too. Scotty is the guy who answers, though. Scotty starts to elaborate on the match that he and CEO Flair have cooked up for Booker tonight, but he is quickly interrupted by DDP standing in the crowd and inserting himself into the proceedings. They have some back and forth with one another, and also Booker has some back and forth with Steiner, and finally we get to the point here. Scott is taking the night off, but he informs Page that he’ll be wrestling Rick Steiner, who will TORTURE [PAGE] SO MUCH THAT YOU’LL MAKE IT TO SUNDAY. *whispers* I think he meant “won’t make it to Sunday.” Scotty has Page’s mic cut, informs Page that if he interferes in Booker’s match tonight, he’ll be out of the title match at Greed, and then pulls Booker’s attention so that Book doesn’t see his own opponent for the night, Lex Luger, run through the crowd and attack him. Luger hoists Booker into a Torture Rack, and ref Mickey Jay runs down and calls for the bell. Luger thinks that he’s won and drops Booker, but no, Jay informs him that the bell was to start the match. I see that WCW Creative hasn’t stopped booking Booker to look like a jackass sometimes! Luger is basically never a real threat after that. He does get a heel control segment in there, but Booker never feels very much in danger. Booker makes a couple of aborted comebacks, complete with flash two counts, before making a comeback that sticks. Axe Kick, Houston Side Kick, Book End, three count: It’s over quickly once Booker asserts himself. Rick Steiner runs down with a chair and whiffs on a chair attack to Booker. Booker lands an axe kick on Ricky – and no, his axe kick is NOT a Ghetto Blaster, Tony S., because that is already a name for a very specific type of kick – but Luger grabs the chair, lands a shot, and opens up the space and time for Rick to hit Booker with a DVD. The heels continue the attack until the Cat rushes to the ring and makes the save. I can’t believe that joke heel Cat is now a babyface who can manage to fight off both Lex Luger and Rick Steiner. He’s doing pretty well for himself until Kanyon sprints to the ring and grabs the Cat from behind, then spins him around for a Flatliner. Kanyon scores another Flatliner outside the ring, dropping the Cat on the protective mats. DDP, realizing that the match is over and it’s okay for him to get down to the ring without losing his title shot, finally makes it down there with a chair in hand and sends the heels scurrying. Back from break, Shane Helms and Evan Karagias are already in the ring for a match; Tony S. notes that CEO Flair has booked Helms for tonight and Wednesday Thunder, but Chavo Jr. has been given both nights off. It’s nice that this show remembers that CEO Flair and Chavo Jr. have a cordial working professional relationship. Karagias tries to show Helms up, but he’s ultimately a step behind Helms when it matters most in this match. He does manage to block a facebuster and score a press slam into a spinebuster, but when he goes to the air, he struggles. He manages to avert one Vertebreaker attempt after whiffing on a springboard moonsault, but he again goes up after regaining control and is quickly caught and kinda-sorta hit with a facebuster in which his face entirely misses Helms’s knee. Helms follows with a Sugar Smack for two, but is caught and hit with a back suplex on a rope run. Karagias scores a DDT and actually manages to land a top-rope move – a crappy-looking spinning splash, but it only gets two. It should have only gotten one. That’s as close as Karagias gets to victory, as Helms flips out of a gourdbuster attempt and scores a Nightmare on Helms Street, then follows up with a Vertebreaker for the victory. Chavo Jr. immediately rushes the ring and drops Helms with a brainbuster. Our next and penultimate stop in the Spring Breakout death march: Gainesville, a favored spot of WCW's unfair CEO. I like this security camera conceit that WCW has used a few times in the past couple of months as well. It is a logical idea for showing backstage shenanigans that we otherwise shouldn’t see. A combo of on-the-spot camerapeople and security cameras would cover most situations in which the audience needs to see backstage incidents. M.I. Smooth is up and walking after being tumbled while sitting in his own limo last week; he tells Disco that he’ll be replacing Disco against Kanyon later tonight. Disco is like, Um, no, and Smooth is like, Um, yes. Then he one-punches Disco. I think Smooth won that disagreement. Pre-taped interview: Dusty and Dustin Rhodes promise that CEO Flair will be kissing Big Dust's ass after their match at Greed. Pre-taped interview response: Jeff Jarrett and CEO Flair are sanguine about their chances against the Rhodes Family; Flair disputes who exactly will be kissing whose ass after Greed. It’s time for Chris Kanyon/M.I. Smooth. Smooth sells a damaged leg as he slowly shuffles to the ring. Dammit, I like Ice Train/M.I. Smooth. I think he’s a useful midcard guy. WCW always highlighted these quirky, inconsistent, but sometimes surprisingly fun midcard guys in a way that the WWF didn’t. Smooth doesn’t even manage to ease himself through the ropes before Kanyon attacks him. Kanyon beats him down, but Smooth refuses to let Kanyon simply leave after said beat down. I don’t think this random angle in which Smooth is super-tough would have done anything for him even if WCW kept going past March, but the other point of this angle is that Kanyon is incredibly violent and sadistic. Kanyon shows this by absolutely bending a chair around Smooth’s dome four times. These are nasty chair shots that warp the chair, and they were a bit much for me, to understate my feelings on that spot. Smooth still wants some more, so Kanyon decides to maybe back off for good as Smooth slowly shuffles after him like the most relentless zombie on earth. Promo: These Spring Breakout 2001 inserts make me kinda melancholy, not gonna lie. Rick Steiner and Diamond Dallas Page enter the ring for Nitro’s main event. Before that match happens, Scott Steiner grabs a house mic and declares that DDP isn’t all that smart, and let me share his exact words with you on this particular subject: DIAMOND DALLAS PAGE HAS LIED TO HIMSELF SO MANY TIMES, HE ACTUALLY BELIEVES HIS OWN HYPE. HE ACTUALLY BELIEVES THAT HE’S GONNA OUT-THINK ME. NOW, THAT’S A PRETTY STRONG STATEMENT COMING FROM A GUY WHO HAD TO GET HOOKED ON PHONICS JUST TO GET INTO HIGH SCHOOL AND WAS TOO STUPID TO GET INTO COLLEGE ‘CUZ HIS SAT SCORES WERE SO LOW BECAUSE NONE OF THE QUESTIONS CONSISTED OF WHITE TRASH QUESTIONS SUCH AS “HOW MANY MILES CAN YOU TRAVEL BEFORE YOU ROTATE THE TIRES ON YOUR HOUSE?” Oh, Scotty Steiner. This title reign of yours is coming to an end all too soon. Scott feels that if it weren’t for the world of professional wrestling, he and Page would travel in separate socioeconomic circles that would only overlap if he hired Page to be in his employ for the completion of manual labor. He, and it is almost needless to type this, is quite confident in his chances against DDP at Greed. Promo: Also before that match happens: A plea for more than sixty thousand people to buy Greed on PPV this Sunday! There are just over eight minutes left by the time Page gets into the ring and unloads on Ricky Steiner. Page knocks Rick to the floor, then follows with a slingshot crossbody and dominates an obligabrawl. They transition into Steiner control as soon as Page puts Steiner back in the ring, but it doesn’t qualify as my least favorite transition because at least Page takes his time climbing up top after dumping Ricky back into the ring, which gives Steiner time to stumble backward into the ropes and crotch him. There’s a Rick Steiner control segment next, so rest assured that you can imagine what is happening right now, and I don’t have to waste words on it. Page makes a comeback, which he is great at. I love his fired-up babyface comebacks. He attempts a Diamond Cutter, but Ricky is aware enough to grab the top rope and send Page crashing onto his back. Scott Hudson didn’t catch it on his monitor and is confused about the spot and why Page is the one who is hurt. Tony S. gets this chump away from the commentary desk and sends him backstage to cover some emerging incident going on in the hallways of the arena. Meanwhile, Page survives a diving top-rope bulldog and a Steinerline, then escapes a DVD attempt and lands a counter Diamond Cutter. Page crawls over to cover, but Road Warrior Animal has plenty of time to get there and combine with Page to fuck up a spot where he’s supposed to try and powerbomb Page, but Page is meant to hop out and land a Diamond Cutter. Suffice it to say that most of the rest of the Magnificent Seven comes down here to attack Page and help save this part of the match. We cut to the back, where Scott Hudson is standing over stretchers upon which Booker T. and the Cat are laying; medics are helping them. We cut back to Page being destroyed by the heels at ringside. Security peels them off, but Scott Steiner is still free, and he lands a pipe shot and locks on a Steiner Recliner while yelling STILL STANDIN’, HUH, so that was rad. This Nitro was very weird, and even though it wasn’t very successful at pulling off all the weirdness, I do like that they tried new ways of presenting these feuds and matches, and the strangely chaotic nature of this show meant that the production failures felt less like production failures and more like the show was a bit out of control. Well, except for that swing to the back so that we could see a knocked-out Midajah. That was a pure Craig Leathers Special right there. I do wonder if the mystery of who attacked Midajah will be solved before Nitro is cancelled; I know that the tease of the new ownership is going to be resolved on next week's Nitro when Bischoff phones in and says that it won't be him anymore. Anyway, I was entertained by this show all the way through! 3 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

It's certainly a slow-burn character study. I don't think there's a grabby moment early; there's more of a slow-building dread that you'll have. I would say that there are a couple of reveals and a callback to one of those reveals that would be those moments where the narrative swells a bit. I found it an easier read than Heaven, which was a rough (and realistic) read about teen bullying. Richard Osman is a funny dude. He's quick with a one-liner as the host of House of Games, too. I felt like Thursday Murder Club and the second book in that series (I haven't read the third yet) were so much written in his voice that I heard him narrating it in my head as I read it.

Have you played The Movies? How does it compare to that game?

TOO SOON, DAMMIT I am John Wilkes BOOOOOOing you right now.

Should be Abe Lincoln. That guy was an actual worker.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and fifty-one – 7 March 2001 "The WCW Gang gets expected help from Shane Helms and Elix Skipper and one highly improbable assist from M.I. Smooth" Let’s hope the bookers didn’t BLUNDER when they put together this THUNDER… Recap: You can say “ass” on TNT, but not TBS…That’s what I learned from this Nitro recap… Exclusive footage: DDP is in the process of getting his ass beat by Scott Steiner backstage after Nitro ends, but the Cat has made it back to the arena after saving Ms. Jones from a Kanyon attack and slams Scotty over the back with a chair, then helps Page make a quick escape… RAD INTRO TIME **guitar sounds**… Two Count (Karagias and Moore) face off with, wait, Jason B. and Scotty O.?..What happened to Jamie Ka-noble?...He was Scotty O.’s original partner…Have we seen the last of that solid TV match machine Noble in WCW?...Mike Tenay informs the audience that Noble didn’t make the show for “circumstances beyond his control”… Let’s see if I can possibly Cagematch some info on two guys with only their first names and initials…OK, before the website even loads, I can already see Jason B. is Jason Jett/EZ Money… He’ll be on the Greed PPV, facing Kwee Wee in a match that I doubt gets much build, if any…Scotty O., I know nothing about, but Cagematch tells me that he was trained by Johnny Grunge, which is a cool lil’ factoid!... I appreciate that Tenay puts over the rookies being at a disadvantage because Scotty O. and Jamie Noble had put in a ton of prep time for this match, but now Scotty’s working with a new partner out of the blue…Meanwhile, Tony S. assists by pointing out that Scotty O. was one of the security mooks who got his ass kicked by Kwee Wee a few shows ago…Yeah, I vaguely remember this. I’d go look up the actual show, but it doesn’t matter and no one is going back to reference that review and read about that segment again… This match is very pacey and has lots of double-team moves and slightly-overcomplicated counters…Jett looks like a useful piece of the roster; Scotty is fine, I suppose…I have been doing so much writing about these fellas that I didn’t even get to mention how bad the audio mixing was on the dub of Two Count’s theme or how absurd the crowd sweetening is when all the camera pans are of fans sitting down and looking entirely somnambulant for most of this… Scotty finds himself in FIP jail until Jett flips into the ring, hits a lariat on one Two Count member, then dives onto the other on the floor…This sparks a series of dives. Tenay namedrops former WCW World Cruiserweight Champion Ultimo Dragon when Scotty O. hits an Asai moonsault to the floor for his dive, and man, I miss Ultimo a whole lot…What a fun worker he was as part of that division… Back in the ring, Jett saves his partner after Moore lands a Bottoms Up, then hits Moore with a package piledriver…Karagias makes the save on the cover, then goes up and hits a gorgeous 450 on Jett that Scotty makes the save on…The match has no semblance of order at this point; Karagias backdrops Jett to the floor, then assists Moore on an elevated guillotine legdrop that scores them the win…This match was solid for what it was, but all the bad post-production audio (both on the part of WCW and WWF producers) is making this show hard to listen to… Outro: Scotty Steiner shows up, is mad, tosses shit around… And here comes Scotty Steiner after the break!...Scott’s still annoyed about Page claiming that he’s got the superior intellect…Scotty thinks that Page is just using that “mind games” stuff as a cover for being scared and running away from him…Scotty plans to SOLIDIFY at Greed…It actually makes sense in context (he’s awkwardly saying that he will make it clear that he’s the greatest world champ of all time)…As Scotty yells about WHITE TRASH, I feel disappointed that I probably hallucinated this guy calling Booker T. WHITE TRASH, which I would have sworn happened at some point in this watch… Steiner challenges the Cat to a match, irritated that the Cat saved DDP after Nitro ended…The Cat arrives and, in his imitable and long-winded way, agrees to it!...Scotty says he’s a PHYSICAL PHEMMOMNENOM and will GO DOWN AS WORLD CHAMPION OF ALL TIME in his response…Ah, that classic Scott Steiner enunciation never gets old…The Cat announces that DDP is backing him up, but Page doesn’t walk out with him…Instead, Page walks through the stands while wearing a different Three Stooges shirt than he has worn before on this show…Page points out that Steiner still hasn’t finished him off yet…OK, so Page actually hits a NYUK NYUK NYUK on the mic while, in the background, Hugh Morrus cuts off a Rick Steiner backjumping attempt…What is even happening right now?!...Scotty chases Page and Morrus through the audience while Page goes WOOOOOOP WOOPWOOPWOOP on the mic…In my book, DDP will GO DOWN AS QUESTIONABLE MIC WORKER OF ALL TIME… Norman Smiley apparently gave up on Glacier as his mentor after two weeks…Funny enough, the BLOOD RUNS COLDER promos ran for more weeks than this final angle with Glacier mentoring Smiley…In what should be a criminal offense, Smiley is down here to job to Shawn fucking Stasiak…I do appreciate that the match starts with a classic pro wrestling spot, though…Stasiak offers Smiley one of his stack of signed 8x10 glossy pics…Smiley kicks the pictures out of Stasiak’s hand, and Stasiak ignores the opening bell so that he can scramble to pick up the pictures, leaving him open for a two count on a flash sunset flip…That was good…The rest of this is less good than that…It’s not bad, but Stasiak is who he is…The only thing in this match that actually gets a crowd reaction anywhere near what the crowd sweetening indicates is Norm landing a Big Wiggle…Stasiak wins a semi-competitive squash with a Rude Awakening followed by a crappy chokeslam, then tacks on a post-match signed glossy donation...FRIENDSHIP!…FRIENDSHIP?...AGAIN?!... Bumper: Hugh Morrus vs. Rick Steiner and the Cat vs. Scott Steiner are on tap for tonight… This Thunder feels so sad, man…Something about the audiovisual clash of this bored audience with this extremely canned cheering is bumming me out…Even if TNT had kept WCW programming going forward, I think it was probably time to cancel Thunder…And Worldwide, for that matter…On the other hand, WCWSN making a return would have been a nice secondary show for the midcard-and-below wrestlers to get some television time on…When Jimmy Hart was giving WCWSN its own distinct flavor, having SN-only storylines, bringing back the TV title just for that show, etc., that seemed like a positive step for the company…WCW and Turner should have continued down that road instead of axing the show entirely… In a short segment that is surprisingly funny, Kanyon walks up on M.I. Smooth and twists his arm behind his back as Smooth prepares his limo for use…He accuses Smooth of ratting out his Monday evening plans to the Cat…Smooth is absolutely hilarious in this little sketch…His response to Kanyon’s accusation that he grassed: **in a ridiculous falsetto** WHO, ME?!?! NOOOOOO…I mean, it’s actually worth watching, it’s so funny…Maybe I like it so much because I didn’t expect it to be notably funny…Then, Smooth easily escapes Kanyon’s armlock and casually puts on a wristlock of his own…Kanyon, before Smooth reverses the armlock: GUESS WHAT I DO TO STOOGES…Smooth, after the reversal: “You leave ‘em alone? You beg off? You get to runnin’?”…Kanyon indicatdes that he indeed does all these things to stooges, so Smooth lets him go and says in a cheery voice, “Well, get to runnin’”…As Kanyon scrambles away, Smooth chuckles to himself about that wacky Kanyon…He can’t wait to tell the Cat about this guy and his silly antics, in fact!... We cut to a camera shot of Smooth calling the Cat to chat from inside the limo, which starts shaking because Kanyon has retrieved a forklift and is in the process of flipping the limo with it… Then, he runs off…We saw you on camera, stupid!...We know you did it!...After a break, medics help the injured Smooth out of the limo…Smooth was legit hilarious in this promo to the point that I’m putting this little segment on a good list… Elix Skipper and his thoroughly disappointing dub are out to the ring first; he faces Shane Helms, who has a dope entrance with the Nitro Girls…That is a fantastic entrance with the team dance routine and other gaga…Tenay and Tony S. decide that the cops need to get involved on that Kanyon forklift attack…I’m not sure why this particular heinous attack crosses the bounds…The whole nWo (multiple versions of it, too) should have been in jail for a few incidents in the past in that case… Meanwhile, Helms presses Skipper with early moves while I go to Youtube and listen to the terrible VERTEBREAKER rap theme that probably is better off dubbed over, honestly…Helms has to direct the cameraman to step aside for an Irish whip spot on an obligabrawl…He sends Prime Time over the rail, beats him up, and then tosses him back over the rail before hitting a froggy crossbody off the rail…This obligabrawl is very energetic, and if they all had this much verve, I would be okay with more of them happening… Helms continues to absolutely steamroll Skipper, who sure as heck doesn’t look like a guy who is a threat to win that cruiserweight tag team tournament…Skipper finally manages to escape a neckbreaker-looking move and reverse into a gourdbuster that drapes Helms across the ropes…Helms falls to the floor, where Skipper meets him with a twisting slingshot crossbody…Skipper scores a few chokes, but whiffs badly on a seated splash against the ropes and is right back in trouble…Helms lands a guillotine legdrop for two and looks absolutely dominant…I don’t think they got the pace of Helms’s push right because his dominance feels slightly out of nowhere, but I also feel like it at least hit the baseline of making him look like a legit threat to Chavo Jr… Skip regains control by blocking a vertical suplex and hitting an overhead suplex…He tries to slow the pace, but he’s a bit too casual about following up on his attacks, which Tony S. rightly notes on commentary…Skipper alternates between strikes and high-risk moves…A missile dropkick gets two, but no more…Helms blocks a double-underhook suplex and instead takes Skipper over for two, but he gets up and rushes right into a bridged German suplex for two… Both men are standing and have a punch-up, then a fight over an Irish whip that ends with Skipper winning it, but then badly missing a follow-up corner splash…Looking for the kill, Helms lands a Sugar Smack for two, then goes up and lands a Frog Splash for two more…Skipper tries to Matrix his way under a lariat, but that move never works out for him anymore…Wrestlers have kayfabe learned to just hook his head as he raises to his feet…Helms does so, lands a Nightmare on Helms Street, and then follows up with a Vertebreaker for good measure to earn a three count…Excellent television match!...Kid Romeo attacks Helms after the match, but Billy Kidman and Rey Jr. run him off… Well, I’m glad I had that match to put me in a good mood before Rick Steiner vs. Hugh Morrus…I’ll still be able to enjoy early ‘90s Steiner Brothers matches after this Nitro Era watch through is over, but I never want to watch Hugh Morrus ever again if possible…As a "bonus," they work a long stalling spot to start this thing…MOVE IT ALONG, FELLAS…I mean, we’re down to about two-and-a-half Thunders left to watch at this point, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and try to cherish everything this show throws at me… Morrus tries hard to compensate for his unending mediocrity, as usual…Rick Steiner bores me to death in singles, as usual…Here’s the finish…After Steiner spends a huge chunk of time – and I mean, it feels never-fucking-ending – focusing a bunch of snore-worthy attacks on Morrus’s braced knee, Morrus corrals his efforts and makes a small comeback…Team Canada ends that nonsense by sending Lance Storm out to distract the ref while Mike Awesome knocks Morrus off the top rope during a No Laughing Matter attempt…Steiner follows up with a DVD for three…Storm and Awesome stomp out Morrus until Konnan makes the save…Hey, have Morrus and Konnan worked out their issues from back in 1997 or whatever?... Lex Luger enters the ring to talk about how rad he is for a few minutes…He lists off all the ways in which he has been successful in wrestling, then credits himself and Buff for sending Goldberg packing from WCW for good…He’s so good, in fact, that losing to Sean O’Haire on Nitro really rattled him…No, wait, he’s confused…He says that he lost to Chuck Palumbo on Thunder last week…He did not…Disco Inferno lost to Chuck Palumbo last week on Thunder…He remembers to mention O’Haire, who did beat him on Nitro, and I think there’s a flicker of realization that he got mixed up in his eyes for just a millisecond before he plows on…The point is that Luger would like to wrestle Palumbo tonight…OK, it was two weeks ago on Thunder (show number one hundred and forty-nine) upon which Palumbo beat Luger after Luger slipped on a banana peel…I completely forgot about that match… Anyway, Palumbo runs out here and brawls with Luger…They have a watchable enough back-and-forth match…Palumbo wriggles his way out of the Torture Rack and scores a quick roll-up for two…Honestly, Luger and O’Haire scoring a series of wins over Luger in singles before steamrolling him and Buff at Greed is pretty generous on Luger’s part…After the break, Luger throws a backstage tantrum over the loss… Pre-taped interview: Konnan declares that he and Hugh Morrus will join up again and make Team Canada the target of their ire… Hype video: Greed is looking alright!...WCW shares the lineup for the show so far… Lance Storm being stuck in Hugh Morrus-and-Konnan feud partner hell for the last six or seven months of his, uh, nine month run has been a massive fucking waste of Storm…He’s not some world title contender or anything, but he is an entertaining midcarder who can consistently work fun TV matches and can actually be a pretty funny dude with his over-serious facial and bodily expressions…That head turn every time someone interrupts “O Canada” is always funny to me…Konnan doesn’t bother to interrupt…He just comes in through the crowd and attacks as Storm stands at attention…Tenay tries to sell Konnan potentially becoming a hip-hop star in the U.S….You may laugh, but Daddy Yankee was popular for a second there back in 2007…And, uh, there’s (non-ECW) Pitbull…Konnan can probably rap as well as either of them…Anyway, this match is dull as hell…It’s short enough to not be totally cra—wait a minute, what the hell is this edit?...Konnan locks on a Tequila Sunrise…We cut to the crowd…We cut back to the match, where Konnan and Storm are running the ropes before Storm catches Konnan on a leapfrog, dumps him, and locks on a Canadian Maple Leaf…That was completely unacceptable as an edit…Incredibly bush league, WCW…Hugh Morrus comes in for the save after Mike Awesome launches our twenty-seventh post-match attack from the heels on this show…Morrus and Konnan set a date for a match with Storm and Awesome at Greed during the break… Pre-taped interview: Booker T. tells us what he’s been up to since he lost the big gold belt at Mayhem…Mostly, it’s knee surgery and rehab that he blames on Scott Steiner attacking him even though the human destroyer known as Goldberg did that shit to him in reality…This is a solid promo-slash-interview… OK, let’s close this uneven-but-ultimately-watchable episode of Thunder out with Scott Steiner versus the Cat…Scotty basically steamrolls the dude in a copy of his big brother’s match against Hugh Morrus from earlier…The Cat, like Morrus, makes a tiny comeback after a beatdown, but can only manage a couple of two counts…Rick Steiner jogs down to divert the Cat…It works…Scotty suplexes a distracted Cat and then locks him in the Steiner Recliner while Booker attacks Ricky and brawls with him around ringside…DDP shows up after the match and attacks Scotty…The Steiner Brothers seem to be handling all three guys in the ring just fine themselves, but they get backup from the Magnificent Seven that they don’t really need anyway… Helms/Skipper and, um, M.I. Smooth (?!) manage to barely keep this Thunder on the positive side of the ledger for me…WOO…

The first batch of Nintendo Store invitations to buy the console will go out on May 8th, as an addendum to this. I'm going to mosey on over to GameStop and put in a pre-order on Thursday of next week, then cancel it if the Nintendo Store sends me an invitation.

Oh, you don't have to make this argument to me because I don't have a problem with people calling Jokic top ten or fifteen all-time or whatever. I'm just telling you what the arguments will be about why Jokic's (and Giannis's, for that matter) numbers are a mirage five, ten, twenty years from now. You're going to be dealing with lots of of "more threes and fewer higher percentage midrange and post shots = lower percentage shots = more opportunities for rebounds that wouldn't be there in the '80s and '90s" arguments and "no hand-checking = defense practically goes unplayed anyway" arguments. Also lots of "half the handles in the league at the time were carries" arguments, for that matter. That will maybe go away when we're all seventy or eighty and too mentally addled to go online and talk about how 1992 was peak basketball or whatever, but until then...

Please tell me what you think of it if you read it!

I think European football is the best sport on earth. The amount of nonsense that I've seen in European competitions is unparalleled, and I've only been watching for a decade. And just as I type that, Harry Maguire wins it. Probably.

This is an interesting conversation. A few things I thought (which may or may not be as interesting) as I read through it: Basketball has made so many inroads into Oceania, Europe, and South America especially, but also East Asia and Africa at this point that the NBA's dream of making more revenue than the NFL at some point in the future is probably a reasonable reality. I think the NFL has a host of problems that it'll have to navigate that the NBA doesn't share, but the NFL's attempts to expand worldwide when their league is all about tacky Americana and Americana is deeply unpopular across the globe right now for obvious reasons are going to put a harder cap on what sort of revenue it can generate from non-U.S. viewers. (As a side note, if this means that Canadians reinvest their interest in their domestic football game and maybe make the CFL pre- and post-game stuff less loud and full of shitty country music to contrast itself to the NFL, that would be very cool for me as a CFL watcher.) I think Luka and Jokic have been a boon because they are ethnically white, and frankly, the large amount of white American fans are generally rooting for them because they care about having white stars to root for in the league. They don't have to be Larry Bird or Bob Cousy. It wasn't that long ago with AI as one of the faces of the league and Malice at the Palace and David Stern demanding that his mostly black players dress up like they're in the C-suite at Amazon before each game that a lot of media and fans were using the same coded language about the makeup of the league that they were using back in the 1970s w/r/t player drug use, etc. I don't think that the lack of ethnically American stars dominating the league matters to a large chunk of the NBA fanbase. Jokic's numbers will be downplayed like Oscar Robertson's are; I think people will look back historically on this period of NBA basketball the same way they do the late '60s and '70s and claim that he got his numbers because of general offensive inflation. I'm not standing by that position myself, but I think that's the position a lot of people who don't like the modern game will take. The NBA should at least stop having its oldheads on their own programming shit on the young guys. Shaq and Charles are not helping sell this league, even if they are amusing. They don't have to go full dictatorial like the NFL does. (As another side note, fuck the NFL now and forever for many things, especially the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick, but also fuck the NFL for learning on ESPN to cancel Playmakers. I'm still heated about that.) To tie this back to wrestling, I think the point about Japan being generally monocultural/homogenous, which is why their wrestling companies need to lead with Japanese stars, is excellent. Beyond some of the racial reasons that the NBA can run with Luka and Jokic on top and be okay in America while also appealing to other countries, I do think that American multiculturalism (one of our biggest strengths as a country, if not our biggest) means that the NBA can make enough of its domestic fans happy at least some of the time no matter who is on top of the league. I think that's true of the wrestling companies here as well, for the most part. It's a definite business advantage, at least.

Show #280 – 5 March 2001 "The one with an unfortunate backslide into sub-mediocrity" A famous writer once wrote something in regards to the Ides of March and how one should beware them. I don’t think they were around during the Nitro Era or else I’d posit that they must have been a big WCW fan. We’re once again in media res to start the show; Rick Steiner stands in the center of the ring and defends the honor of his brother Scott by telling Booker T. to step off, dude! He claims that Booker hasn't beaten him straight up, which might possibly be true in the Nitro Era. I do appreciate that Ricky tells the crowd to SHUT UP as they attempt to sing along with his awful catchphrase. Booker walks onto the ramp and claims that he’s going to handle Scott after he gets done handling Rick. Well, he backed that boast up, didn’t he? Booker advances on the ring and basically calls his own U.S. Championship match; he even demands a referee, and Scott James hustles out here on command. Booker starts the match by dominating an obligabrawl before tossing Rick back in the ring, where my least favorite transition happens. Tony S. informs us on commentary that this is instead a non-title match as Steiner bores everyone to death with soulless clubbering and boring headlocks. Ol’ Ricky’s only good as a singles wrestler when he’s allowed to recklessly destroy job boys. After a mediocre-at-best heel control segment in which Booker sneaks a two count after shifting his weight and turning a slam attempt into a lateral press, Book makes a comeback that sticks. Actually, I’ll give Rick's heel control segment the full “mediocre” because he drilled Book with a sick sit-out powerbomb in there. That almost made up for the rest of that part of the match. Book crotches Ricky on the top as Rick goes up for a diving bulldog and makes his comeback. Book sequences his 5MoD a bit differently, then gets a Book End blocked, works a blown spot with Ricky that I think is supposed to be a reverse DDT counter of a Steiner slam attempt, and then gets another Book End blocked before Scott Steiner spoils the match. DDP makes the save as Scotty blows a spot where he’s supposed to tumble over the top rope. Meh. Security guards hold Scotty back, so he verbally challenges Page to a fight. Booker intervenes and promises to beat up the world champ instead before Page is like, HEY STEINER, I AM PLAYING MIND GAMES WITH YOU, STUPID. Scotty doesn’t get it. Page then suggests that the Steiner Brothers reunite to wrestle Booker and Page in the main event. Steiner clubs some security guards in response, which I think is his way of saying “agreed.” Tony S. and Scott Hudson run down the card: CEO Ric Flair has booked Jeff Jarrett to wrestle Dusty Rhodes, which is interesting. Will it be another segment full of mockery, or will it be an actual bout? Also up is at least one more quarterfinal match in the WCW World Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship tournament, which is next. AJ Styles and Air Paris enter the ring first; Elix Skipper doesn’t enter until after the commercial break. Skipper plays up the reveal of his partner. Wait, first he plays up how he built this house and therefore, it is a house that is in his possession. Then he plays up the reveal, and of course, it’s Kid Romeo. Romeo dances like an idiot at the top of the ramp; maybe he’s just excited to be back on a major WCW television show. Romeo has a nice arm drag, I’ll tell you that much. Styles’s arm drag is pretty good, too. I love a good arm drag. How much of a good arm drag is due to the giver and how much is due to the taker? I wonder. Styles knocks Romeo to the floor, tries a baseball slide, and gets caught and pancaked on the announce table. That was a pretty rad spot. Everyone dives onto everyone else after that. This match is basically the perfect example of the one type of cruiserweight match that Eric Bischoff seems to “get.” I have been reminded recently of Bischoff’s lack of understanding about why a lot of pro wrestling things work or don’t work because of this latest 83 Weeks listening stint, which will end after I listen to the show about Greed. I had to stop for a bit when Bischoff decided that he had to run down Lance Storm to defend Ernest Miller (which happened because Dave Meltzer thought that Storm carried the Cat at SuperBrawl, which, yeah, he did, and I say this as someone who digs the Cat a ton). Look at me, doing my Taz impression and digressing instead of talking about these guys in the ring basically doing as many dives as possible. Elix has got to be one of the most awkward, yet ultimately graceful divers I’ve ever seen. Styles, on the other hand, simply looks graceful. This match seesaws back and forth and has a nice mix of heel cheating, obligabrawling, dives, and counters. Paris is struggling to hit his spots, but the other three look very good in here. Chavo Guerrero Jr. comes out to watch the end of the match, which comes when Skipper takes out Styles on a dive, then gets in the ring and scores a dropkick-into-a-brainbuster combo (with Romeo on brainbuster duty) that pins Paris. Fun match! Pre-taped interview: Sean O’Haire swears vengeance against Lex Luger in their match later tonight. After a commercial break, Lex Luger and Sean O’Haire do indeed face off. There is a little graphic ad for TNT series Witchblade, which is apparently coming this summer, well after WCW is dead. It only made it two seasons. Witchblade is a comic book IP that I’ve never heard of, and it seems like a bad fit for WE KNOW DRAMA-era TNT, which really is more like WE KNOW COPAGANDA if you look at most of their originals they developed and shows they syndicated. Oh yeah, the match! O’Haire pretty much kicks Luger’s ass with fists, leg sweeps, lariats, and chokes. Seriously, Luger is completely defenseless for the first two or three minutes before he finally gets a boot up on an O’Haire corner charge. He immediately goes to the metal forearm – good move! – but then poses instead of following up – bad move! – and only gets two on a delayed cover. O’Haire attempts his top rope backflip to leap behind a charging Luger after being shot into the corner, but he sells a jammed knee when he lands. Luger attacks the knee, so Chuck Palumbo runs to the ring and beats up Luger while, uh, the ref starts counting Luger out instead of DQ’ing O’Haire? And this is because Buff Bagwell is going to run down and try to Pillmanize O’Haire, and we need an excuse for ref Billy Silverman not to see it? What the heck?! Silverman, who is kayfabe the dumbest fucking bastard in the company, spends his time yelling at Paumbo so that he misses Buff whiffing on a Blockbuster attempt and hitting Luger instead; O’Haire shakes off his knee injury to go up and lands a Seanton Bomb on Luger for three. That was extremely stupid. What is this, a Nitro from the middle of 2000? Buff manages to accurately land a Blockbuster on O’Haire after the match; Palumbo chases him off. This Nitro has not been very good so far! Wow, a limo! I’ve never seen one of those pull up to an arena before. Inside the limo, there’s a camera; Chris Kanyon has bummed a ride off Shawn Stasiak. Kanyon blabs about a plot to dress up as an orderly and attack Ms. Jones in her hospital room, and Stasiak offers Kanyon a signed 8x10 to take to Jones as a get well present. Of course, M.I. Smooth, driver and information broker, listens quietly in the front seat, then surreptitiously puts up the divider so no one notices that he was spying. Well, except for the viewers at home. For them, that was supposed to be a visual cue that Smooth was spying. Pre-taped interview: I guess Gene Okerlund is finally done with this company, at least on wekly television. He’d usually handle these. As it is, Chavo Guerrero Jr. says that he ain’t afraid of no ghosts Shane Helms. Lance Storm taunts Konnan for getting his ass beat by Mike Awesome on Thunder, but it’s a distraction so that Awesome can blindside Konnan. Hugh Morrus makes the save and then challenges the heels to a match later tonight. Jeff Jarrett, bedecked in his own wrestling tights rather than a fat suit, walks to the ring for this match against Dusty Rhodes that I am still skeptical will even happen. Jarrett yaps about finishing the Rhodes legacy off for good, which would make him a huge babyface if he did it since it would spare us Cody Rhodes’s career. He calls Dusty a FAT ASS, and Booker has also used the word ASS a couple of times tonight (PUNK ASS, specifically), so I guess the cursing moratorium has been loosened. On cue, Ric Flair comes out in a fat suit and with makeup that doesn’t really make him look much like Dusty at all. Jarrett beats up Dusty Flair with eye pokes and some of the worst Mongolian chops this side of the hemisphere. I feel like this killed the crowd, at least looking at the hard cam side. After winning a sham pinfall, Jeff Jarrett once again declares that Dusty will kiss his ass, but an enraged Dustin Rhodes makes himself known and beats up Jarrett for a little while. Ric Flair tries to attack, then bumps off a phantom punch. What is up with this crew tonight? Anyway, the heels double up on Dustin for a bit, but they are cut off by what is now my favorite Jimmy Hart knockoff theme ever, and that’s saying something! Actual Dusty makes the save with fists and bows. CEO Flair says that Dusty is not a WCW employee and therefore will be escorted from the building; Dusty responds with a solid promo in which he calls Jerry Jarrett a lecherous drunk. Hey, I guess that’s why Jeff is hanging out with Ric now; it’s a comforting and familiar relationship for him. He also calls Ric Flair FAT BOY, then laughs because he’s always wanted to call someone that for once. This promo isn’t incredible or anything, but Dusty is so charming as a babyface that I’ll listen to him cut face promos all day. The best part of this promo is when he says that Flair used to be the star of the Four Horsemen, but tells Flair that in the Magnificent Seven, “You’re nothin’ but an extra. You’re just an extra.” See? Dusty’s going half-speed on the mic and still dropped a cold line. CEO Flair responds by booking himself and Jarrett against Dustin and Dusty at Greed; Dusty responds by declaring that when he and his son win, Flair will be kissing his WHITE ASS, which will end up being true in the most literal sense possible. This last six weeks of WCW needed way more Dusty on the programming. Why is Chavo Guerrero Jr. so aggy tonight? He seemed pretty calm when he walked onto the stage to view that cruiserweight tag match earlier. For some reason, he’s wrestling Shane Helms two weeks before their PPV ,atchup, which is a move that WCW absolutely loves in its dying days. Sugar Shane has the Nitro Girls as his backup dancers now, which is the babyface Shane Helms entrance that I remember most vividly. The VERTEBREAKERRRRR song isn’t on the Network version, though, or maybe it is still to come because it existed only for the eight days that Helms was champion while WCW was still owned by the shambling Frankenstein's monster that was once Turner. Helms and Chavo proceed to work a good match, of course. You knew that. Helms takes over and hits a froggy crossbody to Chavo on the floor, so Chavo does the old “slam the guy’s lower lumbar into the apron move to get some space.” Shortly after that, Chavo struggles to keep control, but it’s okay! Kid Romeo and Elix Skipper come down and attack Helms, which allows Chavo a longer spot of control back in the ring. This is a good heel control segment, largely because Chavo looks like he doesn’t have much for Helms tonight, who fights up from his attacks regularly. Romeo and Skipper intervene again, and Charles Robinson walks over and ejects them from ringside. No, wait, sorry, he just gently admonishes them, Ralphus-style. Meanwhile, Helms scores a backslide that only gets two when Robinson finally ambles over and makes the cover. Helms continues his offensive advance and gets two on a Sugar Smack, but he makes a mistake and dives onto the heels at ringside (and takes them both down, too – bad look for your future tag champs). Then, in a nonsense fucking spot, Romeo ties up Robinson while Elix and Chavo attack Helms in the ring, and Robinson LOOKS OVER AT THE ATTACK and then quickly averts his gaze so that he doesn’t have to disqualify Chavo, and you know what I wonder is how this Nitro is so disappointing that it fucked up a Chavo/Helms match? Chavo wins with a brainbuster, and also, fuck off, WCW. Hype for Spring Breakout: HOLY SHIT, the shambling corpse of Riki fucking Rachtman is still in this company and doing pre-tapes for their final Road to Spring Breakout tour! AOL and 1-800-COLLECT are your sponsors for this final year. Well, this is at least better sponsorship than Tinactin. Kanyon, who it was established in the limo segment had hired a cameraman to film what he will do to Ms. Jones, admonishes said cameraman before waking up Ms. Jones and threatening her. This is sort of Russo-ific as a segment. So, the guy in the bed next to Ms. Jones was all wrapped up in gauze, but it turns out that it was the Cat. He and Kanyon brawl, but when the Cat goes to check on Ms. Jones, Kanyon backjumps him. Kanyon tries to attack Ms. Jones with a crutch; the Cat cuts him off. Honestly, Ms. Jones has been screaming for the NUUUUURSE for the last three minutes. Use your call button, woman! Finally, the Cat knocks out Kanyon with a glass jar and then defibrillates his ass. Did someone completely demotivate Taylor and Ferrara by telling them that WCW was being cancelled from Turner networks ten days earlier than they told everyone else or something? Did they make a bunch of monkeys chained to typewriters put together this show? This Nitro hasn’t been the blurst of times for the whole Nitro Era, but it has probably been the blurst Nitro all year. As much as I’ll miss these Nitro shows when I run out of them to watch by (probably) the end of next week, right now, I am Judge Judy slamming my desk table and pointing to my non-existent watch. Hugh Morrus/Mike Awesome sounds like a perfectly bland match-up. Guess what? It is. The point at which we get the obligatory ringside brawl is the point at which I check out. Lance Storm gets involved, but it doesn’t go well for him personally. If he finds joy in the successes of his friends, then he doesn’t even get that as a consolation because Awesome fails to capitalize on the distraction and falls to a No Laughing Matter headbutt. Storm attacks Morrus after the match; Konnan makes the save. The tag team bout between the Steiner Brothers and the team of Booker T. and Diamond Dallas Page gets a solid nine minutes after entrances and jabbering. Before the match, Rick makes fun of Booker for being in high school band back in Houston. Those Southern school bands are legit, stupid. Ricky challenges Booker to a one-on-one match. Scott is super annoyed that DDP thinks he’s the smarter one, let’s say that. He also says Page is TALKIN’ OUT [HIS] ASS. I guess Bisch decided that the word “ass” is okay. Scotty also doesn’t like people who identify as racially white and are under a certain economic attainment, just in case you were wondering about his troubling racial and class beliefs at this moment. Booker and Page walk onto the ramp; Booker accepts Rick’s challenge as long as Ricky’s title is on the line, so we’ve got another match for Greed. The babyfaces then rush the ring and kick the crap out of the heels, and the whole thing is very energetic. Scott Steiner avoids facing up with Booker at all costs, and it strikes me that Book is getting the push that he probably needed seven months ago. He’s been treated like a potential ace who gets the better of the heels more often than not on his return. Steiner only goes at Booker directly after cheating to knock him to ringside while he’s focused on Scott. Book is the primary face in peril (DDP and Rick worked a short FIP segment so that Scott could duck Booker on the hot tag earlier). Book tries one comeback, but that is aborted when he ducks down and is rewarded for telegraphing his next move by being overhead suplexed. Rick can’t keep Booker down, though, and when Booker manages a hot tag to DDP, Page comes in firing. Page drills Rick with a DDT, but Steiner makes the save on the cover and then hits Page with a belly-to-belly. However, he leaves Rick alone in the ring to instead go badly lose an obligabrawl to Booker, which is a mistake. He is only bailed out by the rest of the Magnificent Seven jump Booker as Book beats him around the backstage area, but he doesn’t make it back in time to save his big bro from a Diamond Cutter. Page scoots through the crowd before the Magnificent Seven can make it to the ring, but Steiner proves Page wrong about the lack of brains by going through the crowd on the other side and jumping Page from behind as the show ends. That main event was actually pretty good, but WCW’s commitment to booking bad finishes and a throwback Russo-ific segment killed this show for me. 1.75 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

I love Tony Atlas's crazy ass. No disrespect. What I love about him is that he's honest about the brutal realities of daily life as a black wrestler at that time even if half of his big stories are kinda out there. This show really made me want a Georgia Championship Wrestling roundtable on a new Tales from the Territories season.

Fair point. This probably explains why I am being bombarded with ads from state tourism boards lately.

Oh, I hear Heenan's voice, not Ventura's. I do remember Jesse using it now that you say this, but it's definitely a stock Heenan quote (usually followed by a stock Monsoon quote, i.e., "Will you stop!").

Visiting fans will be fine as long as they're on the right side of that Family Guy "terrorist skin color guidebook" meme.

Heenan checking out partially because Tony S. wouldn't share with him all the info Tony had about finishes, etc., with him is definitely a big part of his Nitro Era decline. The other part is that he failed to update his act for the '90s. It's always hard to tell how much of a commentator's subpar performance is being produced poorly and how much of it is simply not being a strong commentator.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and fifty – 28 February 2001 "The WCW Gang does their part to build feuds for Greed" Let us dispense with February Thunders forever and ever after this one final February show… Recap: Nitro absolutely ruled, in no small part because of the main eventers (with an assist from the always-awesome Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman)… Here’s our AKI-style intro… It looks like we’ve got the full show this week…It runs a full one hour and thirty minutes on the Network… Let’s open with another quarterfinal matchup for the short-lived WCW World Cruiserweight Tag Team Championships…Kwee Wee and Mike Sanders seem like a team that won’t have much chemistry…The Jung Dragons, having much more continuity, should pick them apart…OK, we get some exclusive footage from back on Nitro in which Sanders spit-takes upon finding out that he’s been jammed into a team with Kwee Wee…Now, I do think that WCW just tossing them together even though they ostensibly hate each other exposes how stripped down the roster is…On the other hand, I get a kick out of the idea that the Cat did this one last fuckety-fuck move to annoy Mike Sanders before stepping down from the commissionership…That’ll be my head canon… Anyway, Sanders and Kwee Wee are exactly what Eric Bischoff doesn’t like about cruiserweights…They are bases for the high flyers, but Bischoff is not a fan of cruiserweight matches that are worked like heavyweight matches and tends to argue that the bigger bases who wrestle in the division aren't wrestling like he expects when they go a bit slower and throw more than a couple of punches…I think this is an area where Bischoff doesn’t entirely get pro wrestling…Like, you do need a base to catch all that flippy stuff…Dean Malenko did it, but he also wrestled at a super-high pace while doing it, which I think is what Bisch wants out of his cruiserweight bases…Having listened to his 83 Weeks shows on Sin and now SuperBrawl Revenge (which I’m halfway through), sometimes he has interesting insights about what makes wrestling work, and other times, he has opinions about this that I feel are maybe muddled. I digress…Yang and Kaz manage to endure a bit of damage after their opening offensive onslaught…The match settles into a pattern by which Yang and Kaz are quicker and shiftier, consistently avoiding the power move attempts from Sanders and Kwee Wee…Sanders finally manages to hit an overhead pumphandle slam on Yang to stop him…I have to stop here and note that when I type “Yang and Kaz,” half the time I write “Yang and Yun”…I played way too much Street Fighter III back in the day…Back in the day of this match, actually…Though as a matter of fact, Yun is Yang's legal first name, right?... Yang gets himself out of FIP jail with a dropkick on Kwee Wee for a second, but Sanders cuts him off after a tag…Can you believe that Yang is only 19 here?...He had been signed and released and signed and released and signed again by WWE all by the age of 25…Kwee Wee once again loses control of the match, and this time, Yang scores a tag to Kaz…Kaz goes off before hitting an assisted powerbomb sort of deal for two…Sanders breaks up the pinfall attempt…Kwee Wee lands a facebuster for two, but he is isolated when Kaz dives onto Sanders outside the ring…Kaz hops back into the ring and scores a jumping roundhouse on Kwee Wee, then directs Yang to dive onto Kwee Wee outside the ring…Yang does so successfully, then trips Sanders as the former commissioner runs the ropes…Kaz snaps off a Buzzsaw Kick, then tags Yang back in to land a corkscrew moonsault – Yang Time, I think - for three…Solid match!... M.I. Smooth still works here?!...He pulls up in a limo that has Shawn Stasiak in the back…Stasiak talks to Jindrak over the phone and calls himself *sigh* the Mecca of Manhood…Stasiak plots on someone with Jindrak, then tips Smooth with a signed autograph…You’re not Johnny Cage, Stasiak…Smooth gladhands Stasiak, but he crumples the picture as soon as Stasiak turns his back… Booker T. figures that with only four more Thunder episodes left, he might want to show up for one or two of them before the end…He cuts a babyface promo that mostly focuses on how Scott Steiner kicked the crap out of him at Mayhem…It’s boilerplate babyfacin’ that ends in a world title challenge to Steiner…Book is overmatched on the mic at this point…Scott Steiner would prefer to use his fists and lead pipe to solve this issue, but CEO Ric Flair stops him or at least tries to…Booker continues taunting Scotty, so CEO Flair makes the match, but he makes it non-title…I do believe that we have our Thunder main event!... Chavo Guerrero Jr. rudely cuts in on a conversation between Johnny Swinger and Jason Lee…He wants Swinger and Lee to put Shane Helms out of pro wrestling when Swinger faces Helms later tonight… Aw man, more of Shawn Stasiak talking?...OK, so he’s preparing to do to Johnny the Bull what he did to Vito last week…I have to say that Stasiak looks pretty solid in this extended competitive squash…He’s not great, mind you, but he lands some nice offense in this bout…The Bull hits some desperation offense, including a big DDT to kill a Stasiak slam attempt…They do have a boring and overlong obligabrawl in here, unfortunately…I think what this match shows is that Vito is much better as a worker than Stamboli is…Jindrak punches the Bull from his place at ringside, just as Stasiak planned…Vito storms the halls to come help the Bull, but he bumps into Rick Steiner…Why is Ricky reading his newspaper right in the middle of the hallway?...Doesn’t matter…The point is that Ricky brawls with Vito and no help comes for the Bull, who falls to a Rude Awakening…Stasiak does Johnny Cage’s OG Friendship after the match…Meanwhile, Vito and Rick Steiner yell invective at one another backstage while security holds them apart… Pre-taped promo: Shane Helms declares himself to be that dude in the cruiserweight division and shares that his mentor Jimmy Hart advised him to take advantage of every shot he gets…Well, except for the shot he got at Sin, I suppose… Disco Inferno dances through the halls…Then, he calls for security after Chuck Palumbo shoves him around…Palumbo says that Alex Wright told him that Disco was talking shit about him…Disco, as usual, is baffled and clueless…Alex Wright gets his revenge!... Lance Storm and Mike Awesome talk about beating up Konnan tonight…Awesome is still mad about, oh yeah, the fact that Konnan cut his hair and tagged his bus a few weeks ago…I totally forgot that these events even happened… Shane Helms needs to manage the numbers game against Johnny Swinger (w/Jason “Banky” Lee)…Chavo Jr. is probably lurking nearby as well…Helms runs rings around Swinger, then wins a punch-up…I forgot that Johnny Swinger ever came back to WCW, where he looks much better than in his first little run…Helms is simply too quick for Swinger…He hits a wicked neckbreaker while hopping behind Swinger on a rope run…Lee trips him when he tries to follow up with a dive from the top rope, which allows Swinger to dominate the match…Swinger does an ass-grinding choke move that is pretty absurd…I mean, he grinds his ass while using it to choke Helms against the ropes…It’s weird!...Lee also cheats liberally behind the ref’s back… Helms makes a comeback, of course…He beats up Swinger, dives onto Lee outside the ring, then tries to finish Swinger with a diving crossbody that Swinger rolls through for a 2.5…Swinger can’t capitalize…He whiffs badly on a slingshot legdrop…Lee tries to cut off a Helms follow up Vertebreaker and gets a Nightmare on Helms Street for his troubles…Helms then goes back to Swinger and counters a swinging neckbreaker attempt with a Vertebreaker for three…Chavo Jr. tries to jump Helms after the match, but is rebuffed…Chavo angrily drills Lee with a brainbuster for failing to injure Helms, then slaps a downed Swinger for good measure… Palumbo and O’Haire let Konnan know that CEO Flair has barred them from ringside, so they can’t watch his back when he wrestles Awesome…Konnan is insistent that he shall get the job done in the ring anyway… After a break, Konnan SPEAKS ON DIS and really just hits a few catchphrases...That’s all for SPEAKING ON DIS…Mike Awesome comes to the ring alone…Someone on the hard cam side hoists up a sign that quotes the great Bobby Heenan: WIN IF YOU CAN, LOSE IF YOU MUST, BUT ALWAYS CHEAT…That is one of my favorite Heenanisms…This match is fine, honestly…None of the matches have been particularly notable tonight, but we’re now at a baseline where the talent level + booking + match layout + match length is going to make it hard to put up Dirt Worst level bouts…There are still too many damned obligabrawls, though… Awesome survives an initial flurry of Konnan offense to take over and score an array of two counts…Awesome’s offense is enjoyable enough to keep this match from sucking…It’s overlong, but I have lived through the overshort (we’re making it a word, just as with telligible) matches era of Thunder, and I much prefer this…Awesome whiffs on a top rope splash, and Konnan makes his comeback…At least insofar as a comeback can be one move and a celebration…Awesome big boots Konnan as Konnan finishes celebrating and then lands a running Awesome Bomb for the clean victory… Totally Buff is genuinely funny…They’re complimenting (and complementing) one another in a hallway backstage when Disco walks up, hand out, and heartily greets them with a HEY, TOTALLY BUFF…He shakes hands with Bagwell, and Bagwell gives Disco a phony smile and says, “Heyyyyy! What’s your name?” Disco reminds him, and Buff responds with an “Ohhhh, Disco”…They are annoyed by him, but they do like his idea about them helping him beat up Chuck Palumbo…They send him away in agreement before deciding amongst themselves to get Rick Steiner to handle the workload… Hype video: Booker T. is back and on the hunt for gold…He is absolutely going to find quite a bit of it in the next few weeks… Here comes Disco, wearing a fluffy vest and stealing Kevin Nash’s catchphrases…Disco pretty much says this about Chuck Palumbo: YOU ARE STUPID. YOU ARE STUPID. AND DON’T FORGET: YOU ARE STUPID. Then he proudly claims that he’s GOT IT LIKE THAT. Wow, does being an annoying prick come easily to Disco. It’s almost like he’s not acting! I will say that Palumbo/Disco is an interesting matchup. Palumbo has an excellent dropkick. He’s a pretty aesthetically pleasing wrestler in a lot of ways. Much like the previous Nitro, Disco thinks it’s 1996 again…He gets a tiny advantage and dances…This, of course, catches up with him… I actually feel like Palumbo probably shouldn’t have given Disco even the offense that he did…Palumbo shouldn’t be struggling to beat Disco at this point unless Disco’s got a ton of help outside the ring…Totally Buff surveys the proceedings from ringside once we are deep into the bout…Palumbo scores a Jungle Kick to put Disco down for three and is immediately attacked by Totally Buff, but Sean O’Haire makes the save, or at least they do until Rick Steiner backs up the heels…Vito then re-evens the odds by running in…It’s a veritable melee!... The ring was cleared during the break so that Rick Steiner and Vito can go at it, which they do…This is a pretty dull brawl…Vito mostly gets his ass kicked, but fires up and lands as much offense as he can in as short a space as he can, but he simply can’t get a three count…He delays a bit on making the cover out of a successful Savage Elbow, and only gets two…That’s about it for him, as he eats a Steinerline, a diving top-rope bulldog, and two DVDs before going down in defeat… Hype video: The Cat and Kanyon are in a blood feud, which is one of the most WCW-in-2001 feuds that anyone could conceive of…This is a pretty lengthy hype vid, actually!...It recounts the whole feud so far… Let’s have a pretty big main event for a typical Thunder…Booker T. goes at it once more with Scott Steiner…I don’t feel that Booker/Steiner is a good enough feud to get on my Best Feuds list, but I do feel that it is one of the best long-term rivalries throughout the Nitro Era and has a shout for being the best one…It started in the tag ranks, continued for secondary titles, and is now culminating in a long-term feud over the big gold…That’s actually what WCW needed to do…Push some fresh main eventers…They just did it way too late and after blowing up their creative direction and salting the earth behind them… These fellas throw bows and fists at one another to start, and also Steiner trash talks a lot, so that’s fun. Booker elbows Steiner to the floor, but let’s be honest: We are only seven minutes from the end of this show, so I’m really waiting for all the fuckery to end the show. These fellas club each other quite a bit before then and even hit some actual wrestling moves in there along the way. It’s enjoyable, of course. No one can quite hold control of the match for very long. Booker puts an elbow up on a Steiner corner charge and tries to start his 5MoD sequence, though he only gets a Houston Side Kick in before getting cut off on a missile dropkick attempt. Book blocks Steiner’s super belly-to-belly attempt, knocks him to the mat, and lands that missile dropkick for two…Steiner elbows his way out of a Book End, then blocks a roundhouse kick before attempting a German suplex that Booker blocks with elbows…Steiner shoots Booker in, but that gets reversed and Booker lands an axe kick…Rick Steiner puts an end to all that when he runs in and immediately gets the match thrown out even though Booker had things under control…Booker ducks Rick’s wild Steinerline attempt and knocks him down before landing a Book End on Scotty…Rick recovers and attacks, but DDP shows up and puts both Steiner Brothers down with Diamond Cutters…The babyfaces take off through the crowd before the rest of the Magnificent Seven can make it down to back them up…That was the best match on the show despite the DQ ending… Thunder keeps ambling along, all pleasantly watchable and stuff…I know that the news that Fusient is pulling out of the deal to buy WCW because the television is being cancelled will put a damper on Greed and all, but I’m still kinda looking forward to that show based on the build…WOO…

I also love that it's clear either Germans or Austrians made the game because they use commas where decimal points should be and write the number one in that weird way, almost like an upside-down "V" at an angle. The lack of polish in all facets is endearing, especially because the core game is very good. If the game stunk, that'd be another story.

Here are some books I have recently read: Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night - Kawakami writes some of the most beautiful sentences in literature, and I suppose that I have to give credit to her translators for preserving that beauty in English. This book is essentially a character study of a closed-off, traumatized woman who has isolated herself. She works from home and struggles to connect with her own humanity. Then, some stuff happens. It's fantastic. I thought that Heaven was also amazing, but I think I prefer this book (maybe it's the hope that I have for Fuyuko at the end of this particular story that elevated it for me). I have read one Kawakami book a year over the last couple of years, and I think I'll stick to that schedule. I'm excited to read Breasts and Eggs next year. Jason Schreier, Press Reset and Play Nice - Schreier does a fine job of showing how unstable the video game industry is outside of the C-suite, and his strategy of tracking a series of shuttered studios and canceled games that directly impact the next set of shuttered studios and canceled games is a good one. Play Nice, on the other hand, is a story about many things. How greedy your C-suite execs are, for one. How gender imbalances in the industry are harmful, for another. How games are art and not some sort of factory line widget that you can just crank out on a conveyor belt year after year for another. I loved both of them and would think that anyone into video games and how they are made should read them. Next up: I'm finally going to read All the Pretty Horses, and I got a Lucy Worsley book on sale! I adore her and am excited to read her meticulously-researched biography of Agatha Christie.

I was going to play Blue Prince, but I got sidetracked by Robocop: Rogue City, which is right up my alley. A slightly janky FPS with a skill tree and a hub world that throws in a few Telltale-style "[x] will remember that" moments in the dialogue trees? Yes, please.

I have the faint sense that AEW does this. They've been at Hammerstein, right? How often do they do stadium cards? I do think that the general aesthetic idea behind a show like Shotgun Saturday Night would be neat for a company like AEW to do or maybe even TNA.

Show #279 – 26 February 2001 "The one that looks back at Nitro in early 1996 and successfully strives to replicate it" We’re in media res to start Nitro, where KroniK is laid out in the backstage area, an ambulance has pulled up, and the heels standing around the attack scene are vociferously denying that they did anything even though they’re conveniently chilling out right there next to the bodies. CEO Flair tries to calm them down as they continue their pitched denials and asks them to go meet Scott Steiner as he arrives; he then tells accusatory head of WCW's security forces Doug Dellinger basically to fuck off and leave his guys alone. Then, uh, um, we cut to a camera shot of a door. Who is going to come through it? Oh, wow, it’s Scott Steiner Eric Bischoff just some lighting guy with an OH SHIT look on his face as he realizes that the camera light is on for some reason that he can’t understand because the truck should be cutting to the crowd right now. The truck immediately panics and cuts to the crowd. Fucking Craig Leathers or Annette Yother or whoever the fuck is back there running things now. Hey, look, we cut back to that door again after a few seconds of a crowd pan, and now Scott Steiner is walking through it along with the rest of the Magnificent Seven. God, I’m going to deeply miss this stupid company all over again. Scotty Steiner beats up some security dudes who don’t seem to know where Diamond Dallas Page is located. DDP is in the crowd, taunting Scotty, which the champ sees on a monitor. He destroys said monitor, then marches through Gorilla and out onto the ramp. Steiner gets in the ring and, well, I’ll let him say it in his own inimitable way: PAGE, HEY PAGE. I SEARCHED ALL THE TRAILER PARKS HERE IN NEW ORLEANS, AND I CAN’T FIND YA. NOW I COME TO THE BUILDING, I CAN’T FIND YA. FINDING YOU HERE IN NEW ORLEANS IS TRYING TO FIND A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK, ‘CUZ ALL I SEE IS WHITE TRASH. DDP is still in the crowd, where he tells Scott Steiner that he’s just playing mind games with him, which I think goes against the whole ethos of playing mind games in the first place. Half of the effectiveness of mind games is that your target can’t be sure if mind games are being played on them or not. Then, he stumbles over his words a lot, calls a “funeral” a “dead man’s walk” even though I don’t see the Undertaker anywhere around, and then says that one of the guys that Steiner thinks he’s killed off isn’t entirely dead yet. Page says that this guy is showing up tonight to get back at Scotty Steiner. It’s either Booker T. or Sting, and I’d guess Booker since he’s going to end up feuding with Ricky Steiner into Greed before beating Scott Steiner on top of that in what will be the best booking he’s gotten since his TV title days. Steiner rushes into the crowd to attack Page, who is long gone by the time he gets there. Production miscues aside, I enjoyed this opener. Bumper: Jeff Jarrett will wrestle Dustin Rhodes tonight, with CEO Flair appointing himself as the special guest ref for that bout. Wow, we are only six shows away from Greed including this one. I’m not sure that’s enough time to build to the matches on that card. One thing that I didn’t remember that I am now realizing is that a lot of these feuds were hastily put together and not consistently followed up on. For example, I remembered Chavo Guerrero Jr./Shane Helms as a three-month-long Helms chase where he got closer and closer to winning before finally doing so at Greed. I was thinking it might be a feud that gets on my Best Feuds list. Instead, there was the build to the Sin match, then mostly nothing except for Chavo distracting Helms in a qualifying match for SuperBrawl, and then after that, creative needs to pick things back up between them because there are only three weeks until Greed. Chavo Jr. doubling back to a feud with Hugh Morrus for a month was a mistake; Chavo and Helms should have been feuding more directly and more consistently even if the plan was to pivot to Chavo/Rey for February’s PPV. Anyway, Chavo/Helms has a very low chance of making that Best Feuds list at this point because of the lack of interaction, which means that in my opinion, the last great WCW feud will likely have been Goldberg/Sid Vicious. That would have sounded completely off if 2025 me had told 2021 me this very thing back when I started this project. Tony S. and Scott Hudson ponder which of Scott Steiner’s victims will be returning tonight. Well, it won’t be poor Syko Sid, that’s for sure. Brackets! There are brackets for this WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship Tournament! Get yer fresh brackets here! Quadrant one quarterfinal matchups: Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman vs. Johnny Swinger and Jason Lee; Two Count (Karagias and Moore) vs. Jamie (K)noble and Scotty O. Quadrant two quarterfinal matchups: Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo (though the latter is not revealed yet and just has a “???” in place of his name) vs. Air Paris and AJ Styles; Jung Dragons vs. Kwee Wee and Mike Sanders. I am blanking on Jason Lee (assuming he’s not the guy who played Earl or POTUS’s deadbeat brother on The Residence). The same goes for Scotty O. You can see how these teams don’t make sense in many ways, and it’s another tally in favor of twiztor’s point that this tournament was simply too rushed to make any sense. It’s a great idea, but they needed to actually hire more cruisers and establish them. Why are Kwee Wee and Mike Sanders teaming together when Elix and Sanders would make more sense based on past history of aligning against the babyfaces? How did guys like Johnny Swinger and Jason Lee get into this tournament? Why not simply keep Crowbar to the end of March and have him tag with Kwee Wee in an odd couple tag team since they just broke up their only other odd couple cruiserweight tag team in Noble and Karagias and now have a spot open for that type of gimmick tag team? Let’s start this tournament immediately. Johnny Swinger and a guy who does not look like Azrael from Dogma at all wrestle Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman in the quarterfinals. Jason Lee, Cagematch tells me, had a sixteen-year career working mostly in the Midwest, especially in OVW. This is his one and only WCW match, it seems. Of course, we all know who Johnny Swinger is (heh heh heh). Rey walks out here wearing a half mask, and it looks pretty dope. These fellas pinball around to start. The match settles down when Lee lands a sit-out uranage for two, which is pretty impressive, but his fun doesn’t last long. He is quickly double-chickenwing’d and hit with a springboard missile dropkick. Rey tries to follow with an Asai moonsault, but Lee gets knees up. Lee and Swinger front suplex Rey over the ropes before Swinger scores a nice side Russian that is a bit overelaborated in its set up and then hits an even more overelaborated swinging neckbreaker. They hit each other with crossbody blocks and there’s a hot tag. Rey and Kidman dominate on the hot tag, with an assisted baseball slide to Lee’s nads followed by a Bronco Buster. Swinger tries to attack, but Rey dumps him outside and then hits them with a diving double-clothesline off the apron when Lee and Swinger regather themselves outside the ring. Kidman follows with a shooting star crossbody, which I guess he has to re-establish since Styles showed up and started doing it for a bit. Back in the ring, Kidman tries to hit Swinger with a Kid Krusher; Lee rushes Kidman to break it up, and Kidman releases Swinger and lands a Sky High on the onrushing Lee. Swinger is quickly dispatched of by Rey once again, who helps earn a victory for his team by going up top and scoring a Nutcracker Suite on Lee. Kidman closes the door entirely with a follow-up Kid Krusher on Lee for three. The babyface team is way over and the crowd was into everything they did. This was a fun sprint and a good example of what this division could have been. It’s on a good list. I’m going to make the argument that Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman are the greatest short-term tag team ever. They tagged together regularly for a few months in 1999 and semi-regularly for a few months after Juventud Guerrera was fired in late 2000. I have to place them at number one on my list of short-term tag teams. They have incredible chemistry together. Bumper: The Cat’s got a huge announcement! Rhodes/Jarrett is later in this show! CEO Flair’s up to some fuckery! Tony S. promotes Spring Breakout ’01 while B-roll of people partying in New Orleans plays in the background. Here is the Cat, much more somber than normally now that Ms. Jones has been Kanyon Kutter’d off of WCW television. He is quite displeased with Kanyon for said Kutter on Ms. Jones, which we quickly find out. He swears revenge on the dastardly Page impersonator and declares that to get this revenge, he needs step down as WCW’s Commissioner because he cannot possibly enforce the rules while also breaking every rule he needs to in order to destroy Kanyon’s life. That is some incredibly stupid babyfacin’. OK, you have the power of an office that you can use to destroy a guy’s life, and on top of that, you’re the only guy who is even remotely a check on the maniacal CEO…and you give it up because you’re trying to be noble about getting revenge on the guy who put your close friend and assistant out of wrestling? Look, I also have to say that this is the dumbest possible way to get rid of the commissionership position and that the Cat giving up a position he fought to get back twice after losing it just for this angle doesn’t actually carry the weight that I think creative believes it might. On the other hand, I’ve been asking for this very stupid position to be liquidated, so I’m getting what I want. Maybe I’ll just accept it and move on. No, I’m going to make a little fun of WCW for how they end that on-screen power position first. Then, I’ll move on. Anyway, CEO Flair decides to make his appearance and consolidate a little bit of power. The CEO is like, I was gonna fire you anyway even if you didn't resign, so why the fuck didn’t he do that in the first fuc—no, forget it. I’ll move on! CEO Flair books Cat/Kanyon at Greed, but only after telling the Cat that he can’t beat or join the Magnificent Seven and is now an order-taking peasant rather than an order-making pest. The Cat threatens to kick the CEO in the face, which riles up our nutty CEO. Flair takes off the Rolex, squares up, and then remembers that he can just legislate the Cat into oblivion. That’s smart. I’m surprised that Flair had enough composure to ju—no, wait, he sucker punches the Cat, struts, gets his ass kicked, and Flair flops. Yeah, that seems more like it. WCW’s security mooks save Flair from a further beating and drag him to the floor, where he embarks upon a very entertaining, full-blown, red-faced rant on the mic: HEY, HEY, NOW YOU’RE A DEAD MAN, NOW YOU’VE DONE IT, NOW YOU’VE GOT ME MAD. YOU WANT A MATCH TONIGHT? YOU’VE GOT RICK STEINER TONIGHT, BUDDY. AND THEN IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THROUGH STEINER, YOU’LL GO TO GREED WITH KANYON. STEINER’S GONNA KILL YOU, STEINER’S GONNA KILL YOU, STEINER’LL KILL YOU, *WOOF* *WOOF* *WOOF*. Aw, now it’s Konnan cutting a pre-taped promo in the back. From high highs to low lows with the mic work. Basically, Konnan says that the rest of the wrestlers in the company will unite against the Magnificent Seven and that he shall lead them. Yeah, I don’t think CEO Flair is worried about the Konnan-led troops toppling his regime. Chuck Palumbo and Sean O’Haire continue tonight's run of tag team action, which I heartily approve of. O’Haire does his typical meathead-style promo in which he blames Mike Awesome and Lance Storm for attacking KroniK and then challenges them to a match. Hey, it’s more in media res Nitro, as we went to a commercial break with Storm and Awesome walking through the back, and we come back to Awesome getting worked over by the babyfaces, managing to get a spot of control, and then losing it again. Storm tries a leapfrog, but jumps right into a fallaway slam from Palumbo; Awesome runs a distraction to allow Storm to recover with a superkick. It looks like Palumbo will be FIP, and I’m bummed that we missed some of the shine segment to open. Storm and Awesome keep Palumbo trapped in the corner, but they – and everyone else in the ring – are distracted by Lex Luger’s TurnerTron playing. Everyone looks to the entrance and doesn’t see Kanyon hop out of the crowd, drag O’Haire off the apron, and land a Flatliner on the mats. Palumbo, all alone, manages to dodge a couple of double-team attacks from the Team Canada members, but the numbers game quickly catches up to him. Storm locks him in a Canadian Maple Leaf for a quick submission before O’Haire can recover enough to get back onto the apron. Storm and Awesome back up the ramp, where they are blindsided by Konnan and his army of wrestlers. No, wait, it’s just a solitary Konnan, no army. You know the midcarders in the back were like, Nah, we’re no feeling all that talk of you being our leader; go away, Konnan. There is a break, and then we come back to Sean O’Haire doing his best Scott Steiner “juiced up meathead on the mic promo” impression: KANYON. I WANT A PIECEAYOU PUNK. THUINKUCAN JUMP ME, YOU BIT OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW, BOY. I WANNA SEE ABOUTCHU TONIGHT. We cut back to CEO Flair instructing Kanyon answer the challenge and finish off O’Haire for good, then buttering him up by asking, “Hey, Chris. Who’s better than Kanyon?” Pre-taped interview: DDP promises that he won’t be put out of wrestling by Scott Steiner, mostly on account of Scotty being dumber than a box of rocks and therefore easy to outmaneuver. I mean, that’s not the most unreasonable kayfabe position that Page could take, now is it? Alright, Rick Steiner wrestles the Cat in our next match, and by that, I mean that it starts with an obligabrawl and generally is full of strikes and mauling. I would like another tag match with cruiserweights in it, please. There’s a chinlock spot in there. This goes on for quite a while. The Cat has a couple of aborted comebacks before one sticks for more than a couple moves. This isn’t good, but it’s not an abomination. The Cat uses a foot sweep! That’s kinda cool. He then accidentally bumps the ref with a wayward Feliner. That’s the opposite of kinda cool. Totally Buff take the opportunity to attack the Cat, though Hugh Morrus soon follows. Morrus takes out Totally Buff from behind before swinging for the fences and battering Ricky in the head with a knee brace. Rick stumbles forward into a Feliner; ref Scott James has enough wherewithal to count the pinfall. Scott Steiner immediately runs down and helps his troops beat Morrus and the Cat up. DDP is next out; he knocks Steiner down as Steiner has Morrus in a Recliner, but he’s overmatched until Booker T. makes the ultimate save for the babyfaces. The crowd seemed to enjoy this, and actually, the heat generated by all of this gaga was good enough to justify the whole match leading into it as well as justifying the post-match segment itself. Scott Steiner, after everyone is separated: HEY PAGE, I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WERE GONNA BRING SOMEBODY. BOOKER, YOU’RE NOBODY. Booker responds by challenging Scotty and Totally Buff to a trios tag against himself, Page, and Morrus the Cat before claiming that the recently-freakless Scotty (I guess that WCW purged every last woman, huh?) will now be his freak when it’s all said and done. Scotty demands that CEO Flair, who has joined him on the ramp, make the match; the CEO agrees. OK, so this match seems to start, maybe? The bell clangs wildly while the faces and heels go back to punching one another. After a short brawl, the match does settle down; Buff beats up the Cat. CEO Flair joins commentary while I think that as little as I rate Hugh Morrus, it would have made more sense for him to be in the Cat’s spot, which is what I assumed would happen. If they’re trying to get him over, you’d want to put him in this match to give him something of a rub teaming with two guys who are placed above him in the pecking order. Buff mostly gets his ass kicked in there, first by the Cat and then by Page. He swings a leg into Page’s balls to get free and make a tag to Luger (Flair: “Smart wrestling”). Page quickly puts Luger down with a discus clothesline and tags Booker in, the latter of whom seems over again after the time away from that long run of television in which he looked like a complete dope each week. Booker really wants to go after Scotty, but he dispatches of Luger anyway before tagging back out to the Cat, who is our FIP for the long heel control segment of the bout. I’m not sure any of the commentary work CEO Flair is doing is even that hard for him. He just seems like he’s out there having fun. Steiner hits an elbow, covers, and pulls off for pushups, and Flair is ecstatic: THAT’S ATHLETICISM! THAT’S CONDITIONING! THAT’S THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! In general, Flair is quietly stringing together some of the best character work of his later career in this dying company. If I were putting together a list of things that have made the BBSHSWTL Era a positive memory for the fans who were still watching, that would be on the list alongside the Sin PPV and Scott Steiner’s world title run. This ends up being an extremely good trios tag in which the Cat’s hot tags are well-teased and shut down before he finally manages a tag to Page. Page is too focused on Steiner and is caught from behind by Luger. Buff eventually tags in and works a double-lariat spot with Page that leads to another hot tag. Flair is an absolute lunatic on commentary. By the time he admonishes Hudson for noting that Page almost pinned Buff after that double-lariat spot by growling out that CLOSE ONLY COUNTS IN HAND GRENADES AND HORSESHOES; THIS IS PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING, I’m entirely ready to just put this whole last twenty or so minutes of television on the list. It started out slow with Cat/Rick Steiner, but everything that built upon the seemingly nondescript foundation of that match has been quite fun. Anyway, Booker manages to bail Page out with a hot tag and reels off quite a bit of offense until the point at which Buff ducks a roundhouse kick and lands a double-arm DDT. The match breaks down as Steiner clatters the Cat with a chair outside the page. I think Luger might have done the same to Page on the other side of the ring. It’s only now that Scotty, having a clear advantage with Booker down, agrees to tag in and face him. CEO Flair cackles as Steiner lands chops on Booker in the corner. Book kicks out of a belly-to-belly, tries to make a comeback, but has it aborted when Steiner sticks an arm out and lands a clothesline. Things go to the floor, where Booker controls an obligabrawl. Totally Buff attacks Booker, but Page and the Cat have recovered and attack Buff and Luger. Book tosses Steiner back in the ring, gets about 2.7 off a missile dropkick, and scores a pancake and a Spinaroonie. Luger jumps Booker as he stands up, and everyone else jumps in the ring and attacks one another. Steiner overhead suplexes the Cat and helps Buff beat down Page. Steiner tries to put the Cat in a Steiner Recliner, but Booker hops on the apron and punches him. Stunned, Steiner stumbles backward into a Page Diamond Cutter. Page pops up, feeling celebratory, and turns around into a Buff Blockbuster. Buff gets up from having landed it, swings at an advancing Booker, and gets hooked for a Book End when Booker ducks his punch; Booker drills it. Meanwhile, Steiner is still disoriented and just getting back to his knees; Booker turns to him and lands a free axe kick that finally earns a three count and ends the match. That was an incredibly hot finish. After the bout, some other Magnificent Seven members rush down the ramp to attack the babyfaces, but our conquering heroes escape through the crowd. OK, you are not going to believe this because I scarcely can: That match had so much energy and was so fun that I think I’m putting it on my Favorite Matches list. That was the first time in a long time where all the stars in a match actually felt like stars. Even when one considers the annoying extra post-production noise machine sweetening in the background, the crowd was also super into this. CEO Flair’s commentary enhanced the whole thing. The best way to put it is that this felt like the sort of hot WCW match you’d get back in 1996 or 1997, from match layout to in-ring work to crowd reaction to everything else you might consider. As inconsistent as this part of the Nitro Era has been, there are more than enough segments and shows that make me recall why I enjoyed it so much back when it originally aired. After a break, we come back to see Scott Steiner throwing quite the tantrum. He shoves a ladder into the camera that is filming him on his current rampage, so that’s pretty rad. The babyfaces are congratulating one another in a separate part of the building. Hype video: Dusty Rhodes is back to support his prodigal son Dustin against CEO Ric Flair; the CEO has enlisted the support of a very mean and cutting Jeff Jarrett in response. Pre-taped interview: Dustin Rhodes says that if Jeff Jarrett is going to bring daddies into this, he’ll call out that cheap bastard Jerry be Jarrett’s daddy tonight. I actually did think he was going to shit on Jerry Jarrett before he opted for the weak insult, though. Shannon Moore (w/Evan Karagias) wrestles Shane Helms in a grudge match, and did I miss something? When did Helms and Moore decide not to be friends anymore? Moore wasn’t pleased about Helms being Kidman’s replacement in the SuperBrawl opener, but they never really followed up on that, did they? Helms controls for a while, but he’s tripped and held by Karagias while on a merry chase around the ring to catch Moore; this allows Moore to get a spot of control in the bout. That spot of control doesn’t last long; Helms takes over again, so Karagias drags him outside the ring, and then that poor bastard Evan gets crushed when Shannon tries to plancha onto Helms, who ducks just in time for Karagias to eat that plancha. Back in the ring, Helms sets up for a Vertebreaker, but Karagias manages to climb onto the apron to distract him. Helms releases Moore and deposits Karagias right back off the apron, but Moore recovers and attempts a Bottom’s Up. “Attempts” is the key word here as Helms easily twists out of that and back into Vertebreaker position, then executes the move for three. He barely has time to take a breath after the match because Chavo Guerrero Jr. sprints down the ramp and attacks him. Chavo directs the Two Count members in a three-on-one beatdown of Helms. Promo: WCW’s Road to Oblivion Spring Breakout 2001 is headed to South Carolina next week! I wonder if Hugh Morrus was legit injured and that’s why the Cat was in that trios tag because commentary briefly notes that Morrus was hurt during that segment and had to be helped out. Kayfabe or shoot? I wonder. Meanwhile, Sean O’Haire backjumps Kanyon by entering through the crowd as Kanyon stands in the ring and looks toward the entrance. Ah, that was a nice callback to Kanyon’s distraction gambit earlier in the night. He rolls Kanyon in what sort of feels like a WCW-ass WCW matchup, doesn’t it? O’Haire earns a couple of two counts, but when he goes up for ten punches in the corner, Kanyon forearms him in the sack, then climbs the ropes and hits an elevated side Russian to take over. It is now Kanyon’s turn to score an array of nearfalls, but he celebrates for far too long after a super Showstopper, and O’Haire pops right up and scores two on a reverse DDT. O’Haire shoots Kanyon into the ropes, but he ducks down right into a fish hook neckbreaker for two. Kanyon tries a chinlock that O’Haire immediately works up from; Kanyon quickly lands a swinging neckbreaker for two to stop his momentum, then goes up for a top rope splash. O’Haire hits the Undertaker sit-up, and Kanyon crashes out. Both men get to their feet, but O’Haire hits a kick and then a couple of lariats before simply dropping Kanyon to the mat out of a vertical suplex position. He tries to follow up, gets caught on a leap over, and is hit with a sit-out spinebuster for two; these fellas are landing offense back and forth. The last offense to hit is a Seanton Bomb after O’Haire regains control with an inverted DVD (no inverted VR) and goes up to finish it. That move gets three and is a pretty big win for the guy, all things considered. This was a solid little back-and-forth match. The truck errs and shows Booker pinning Steiner instead of O’Haire beating Kanyon on the replay. WCW, everybody! And I type that with genuine affection in my heart for this dopey company. Let’s find out if CEO Ric Flair has collected himself backstage; he was completely apoplectic after that trios tag result. He walks down the ring looking slightly irritated, but you know, considering his usual mood, he’s at least subdued enough to function again. Alright, Jeff Jarrett is going to wrestle Dustin Rhodes. I am very hopeful and excited for a Dusty Rhodes appearance, which I will note that I now expect because Jarrett uses part of his pre-match mic time to tell Dustin that he's “outmanned and outnumbered.” After one final commercial break, Dustin Rhodes comes out to a terrible dub. Hold on, while Rhodes blows Jarrett away before being distracted by referee CEO Flair’s admonishments, let me see what his actual theme was. OK, apparently it was a knockoff of some Kid Rock song that I don’t know. As a wrestling fan who otherwise would never be caught dead listening to the cultural black hole that is Kid Rock, I know exactly two of his songs: “Cowboy” and “Lonely Road of Faith.” This main event is fine and I am enjoying it, but I feel like the trios tag pretty much sucked a lot of the energy out of me and maybe also a lot of this crowd. It probably should have ended this show instead. Jarrett and Rhodes brawl up the ramp before coming back to the ring. Rhodes lands a superplex and covers; CEO Flair’s count is comically slow. Rhodes pulls up and gets in a shoving match with CEO Flair, who soon enough pulls the top rope down as Jarrett shoots Rhodes in. Jarrett goes outside and hits Rhodes with a chair shot to the dome, then continues this obligabrawl. I just want a Dusty appearance, please. Back in the ring, Jarrett locks on a sleeper that he thinks will make the result academic, but he doesn’t know his babyface fire spots because Dustin manages to fight up to Jarrett’s surprise; a vertical suplex puts both guys down for a standing ten count. Jarrett is up first, but he gets punched after shooting Dustin into the ropes; Dustin hits a series of nice rights before dropping Jarrett with a power slam. He prepares to go up top, sees that Jarrett is not moving in his direction, and chooses to hop down and land a piledriver instead that gets a slooooooooooooooow two count from the ref. After Flair pulls Dustin off a series of punches in the corner, Dustin hands out bulldogs to both of them; he tries to control Flair’s hand to slap the mat while covering Jarrett, but Flair recovers and holds up his hand before it can come down for the third time. Dustin then hooks Flair up in the corner, gives him a Shattered Dreams, and then ducks Jarrett’s KABONG attempt and puts Jarrett up in the corner as well. Dustin grabs the guitar and prepares to swing on Jarrett instead of kicking him in the gonads, but Flair is able to crawl over and junk punch him; Jarrett hops down from his position in the ropes and quickly lands a Stroke for three. He and Flair consider sticking around and celebrating or maybe attacking Dustin after the match before Booker, DDP, and the Cat chase them away to end the show. I think that had I gotten a Dusty appearance that helped Dustin get the win over Jarrett and Flair, I would have gone another quarter-Stinger Splash higher. Still, the heels actually taking multiple losses tonight against a re-energized set of babyfaces, plus that hot trios tag and energetic tag opener in general, are more than enough for me to score this Nitro highly. We are seeing right now what WCW looks like when it is anchored by a hot heel world champ who can talk. I’m not sure WCW has had that this whole Nitro era since early 1996 when Ric Flair was the champ and having a hot feud with Randy Savage; yes, I am arguing that Hollywood Hogan wouldn’t fit that bill (he was very over as a heel in 1996 and part of 1997 despite his inability to talk). Since WCW is the progeny of JCP, a company that relied on hot heel world champs who can talk, this feels only right. Ah, yet another reason that I think I remember this period warmly; it brings me back to my earliest days when I would watch the Four Horsemen run roughshod on TBS with my grandma. Anyway, that was a heck of a show for WCW. I wish they could have just stayed in this holding pattern for, oh, another year. I don’t really have interest in Bischoff’s “hang out in Las Vegas and feature Hogan again” vision for nu-WCW, and obviously Vinnie Mac’s ideas for WCW were complete garbage. As it is, I’m going to enjoy the rest of this late period of the Nitro Era while I still have any of it left to enjoy: 4.25 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

Speaking of Rude, I know that a lot of folks around here have Manny Fernandez and Rick Rude as their favorite/the greatest short-term tag team. Personally, I had Brad Armstrong and Brickhouse Brown as my favorite (if not the greatest by amount of production) over the past couple years. However, I now feel like my hot (lukewarm?) take is that Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman are the greatest short-term tag team. They didn't get to a full year of tagging regularly together, so I think they should count. What an incredible undersized babyface tag team. If you plunked them back in the 1980s, they draw money in every territory they go to. I just wrote this take down elsewhere, but I thought I'd throw it out here. I'm not sure who is beating those two as a great short-term tag team.