SirSmUgly

Graham is in that Benoit, Snuka, Borga, Bourne tier of guys who I couldn't muster up any sympathy for at all from this show. Completely unlikeable and shitty human being. He was right about not putting the title on Backlund while he was so hot, though, and I do like Backlund. Also, Backlund was a terrible promo until his heel run in the mid-'90s, IMO, which isn't the craziest thing to think, right?

Jett/Kwee Wee at Greed has me considering a lot of "what if"s for his career if WCW had survived.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and fifty-two – 14 March 2001 "The WCW Gang features some guys who really needed WCW to survive for the sake of their pro wrestling careers" Recap: Back on Nitro, we said a final goodbye to Midajah (again) and a hearty hello and welcome back to Stacy Keibler, among other things… Rad intro time!... Now that Jamie Kellner is about to axe WCW programming on Turner networks, this is (I believe, from checking my dates) our last WCW show before everyone in the company realizes that things have gone from the regular August 1998 – October 2000 level of fucked into some new level of hellishly über gigafucked as far as this company goes… I almost wish that I had been able to somehow see into the future and time the review of the last Nitro with the eerily similar-ish announcement that WWE/TKO is acquiring AAA… Two Count (Shannon Moore and Evan Karagias) open the show attempting to make their way into the finals of the cruiserweight tag title tournament at Greed…Standing in their way are former WCW World Tag Team Champions and odds-on favorites Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman…This is a solid bout…It starts out a bit more slowly than the usual bouts in this division…Karagias can’t get right until he manages to counter a Rey attack with a spinebuster… Moore tags in and tries his best to rush down Rey whenever Misterio tries to counter, but he can’t stop Kidman from making a blind tag on a rope run and combining with Rey to turn the tide of the match…That doesn’t last for long, however, as Karagias pulls the top rope down as Kidman tries to rebound off the ropes and then tosses him into the guardrail… Kidman’s the babyface in peril…Karagias lands a crossbody as part of a crossbody-and-vertical-suplex combo, then goes to chokes and chinlocks…Rey makes the save on a Karagias post-diving bulldog pinfall attempt, but Karagias plays to his strengths and press slams Kidman before Kidman can make a hot tag…Immediately after that, Karagias plays to his weaknesses and springboards right into a counter dropkick from Kidman… Rey makes the hot tag and speeds the match up…It’s like someone pressed a turbo button on a gamepad somewhere…Karagias manages to squelch Rey’s burst of offense…He lands a neckbreaker, then manages a 450, but Kidman breaks up the pinfall at two…Kidman tries to land a Kid Krusher on Karagias, but Moore interrupts and lands a Bottoms Up on Kidman for two (even though, as Tony S. points out, Kidman’s not legal)…Meh, doesn’t matter… The babyfaces dispatch of Karagias and hit Moore with a baseball slide to the nads and a Bronco Buster…They attempt a Nutcracker Suite, but Karagias trips Rey…He goes up to follow with something spectacular, but Rey crotches him and hits a seated senton to the floor, which sparks a pretty dive from Moore onto Rey and a ugly Kidman springboard splash onto everybody…The match makes it back to the ring, where Moore is caught by walking the ropes and held up by Kidman so that Rey can launch himself with a missile dropkick that knocks Moore out for three…Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo hit the ring and face off with the winners, but they lose a short brawl and are dispatched from the ring with great force…The finishing run probably elevated this one to list-worthiness… A security camera oversees a bunch of wrestlers in catering chowing down on lunch or maybe dinner…Specifically, we focus on Disco Inferno incessantly chattering on about how great he feels about his partnership with a silent, simmering Alex Wright…It’s not until Disco eats something off Wright’s plate (while saying “You are by far my best friend I’ve ever had”) that Wright goes over the edge, flips the table, and yells I’M SICK OF YOU…Disco is clueless as to the reasons for Wright’s reaction (and clueless in general, both in kayfabe and as a shoot), as he usually is… Diamond Dallas Page cuts an annoying babyface promo on Scott Steiner…He’s STILL STANDING and plans to be FOUR-TIME WCW World Heavyweight Champion…He asserts that Diamond Cutters come from nowhere and anywhere all at once, and DDP plans to drop Scotty with one out of nowhere (or anywhere) in four days…Page is interrupted by Dustin Rhodes…Page is annoyed until Rhodes says that CEO Flair sent him out to the ring and that he has no beef with Page, nor any interest in fighting him… The TurnerTron lights up with sudden activity as CEO Flair speaks into the BuffCam…The CEO reaffirms that Scott Steiner is getting the night off, but neither of the men in the ring will receive that luxury…He books them against Jeff Jarrett and Rick Steiner for later in the show…CEO Flair then shows his age by asking the men in the ring, “Is this live, or is this Memorex?”…Jarrett and Ricky Steiner jump the men from behind as soon as the question is out of Flair’s mouth…The babyfaces manage to fight them off and send them bailing to the floor, though… Jason Jett receives a jobber entrance for his bout with Alex Wright…Spaceman Spiff is absolutely right that Jett looks like a promising addition to WCW’s soon-to-be-dead cruiserweight division…If only he were right about whether or not his poor ship could outrun an alien fleet without being shot down...Wright is buoyant with confidence as he opens the match with chops…Jett tries to get the pace of the match up to his liking, but Wright kills one attempt with a back kick to the solar plexus and another attempt with a powerslam…Wright follows up with a high-angled back suplex for two… Man, WCW wasted the hell out of Alex Wright…I’ve watched him manage to improve greatly over the past six years even with all the long layoffs and inconsistent booking…There’s at least a strong long-term midcard talent in there who is in the mix at the World Tag and U.S. title level with regularity…He’s having a really good match with Jett right now, who explodes up with moves like his front flip into a lariat before Wright uses his greater experience to counter Jett out of what looks like it might be a longer run of offense… Wright casually covers on a wheel kick and only gets two…He then casually covers on a superplex and again only gets two…Tony S. and Tenay caution Wright against this on commentary…Wright is annoyed that Jett won’t just stay down and hits a flying forearm that knocks Jett off the apron and to the floor…Back in the right, Wright hits a snap suplex and bridges for two…He tries it again, and Jett manages to leverage himself into a small package that only gets two…Wright gets up first, hits a lariat – as is the way of heels who have just been flash pinned for two – and then puts on a hammerlock… He lets it go after not getting a submission, celebrates how rad he is, and then chops Jett before flinging him into the opposite corner…Jett tries to catch himself and hit a springboard splash to counter it, but Wright simply steps aside…It is clear that Wright should win this bout with his experience advantage, but he refuses to take Jett seriously and is always in danger of being caught by some dynamic offense from the rookie…Jett manages to hit a handspring elbow and tries once again to reel off a run of offense…He does land a dropkick, but he’s too in love with springboards off the ropes…Wright catches him and Hot Shots him…Wright tries to lock Jett up from behind, but after a couple of standing switches, Jett maneuvers Wright into vertical suplex position, hoists him up, and then simply drops him for a Crash Landing that gets three…This match was very fun…It’s exactly the type of television match that WCW excels at putting on…I simply don’t feel that since WCW died, I’ve ever seen a show consistently lay out interesting midcard TV matches on U.S. weekly television with the exception of mid-New Tens NXT… We see another slice of CEO Flair’s documentary…He tells Lex Luger that he’s got to get to the bottom of who attacked Midajah…Then, the CEO books Totally Buff in a Four Corners Elimination Match against Palumbo and O’Haire with the plan to get one of the rookies eliminated so that the other one is left at a handicap against the veterans… Hype video: Booker T. looks like he might be a competent main eventer in kayfabe…He’ll be trying to win the U.S. Championship over two years later than he originally should have at Greed…Oh man, am I going to indulge myself and go off about this when I write about his match with Rick Steiner in the next review… It doesn’t matter how funny and pretty Stacy Keibler is, she is absolutely not going to get Shawn Stasiak over…I could replace Stasiak’s name with Test’s name in that sentence…Same thing…Stace should do all of Stasiak’s talking for him…She does not do all Stasiak’s talking for him, unfortunately…Stasiak doesn’t like portly folks, is not a fan of body art, and believes that reconstructive dental work is key to physical health…He’s also not a fan of baldness, but I have bad news for him considering his already-retreating hairline… Anyway, Reno is bald and has tattoos, so he walks out here and starts an impromptu match with Stasiak…Reno tries hard, which I appreciate, and while this match isn’t good, it’s not going to bum anyone out…Stasiak is a black hole of charisma, but it is what it is…Stasiak controls most of the match after an initial Reno flurry of offense…The cocky Stasiak doesn’t pay for his profligacy in the way that Alex Wright did just a match ago…Stasiak lands an Alley Oop into the buckles for two…That was a cool spot…He then slips out of a Roll of the Dice and maneuvers Reno into a Rude Awakening for three…I think the Alley Oop Buckle Bomb should have won it, though…That move ruled…JOHNNY CAGE SHAWN STASIAK WINS…Stacy Keibler dances in celebration and the fellas on the hard cam side wake up for the first time all match…Bam Bam Bigelow stops all that by attacking Stasiak and sending him tumbling to ringside… Will CEO Flair’s gambit work out?...Lex Luger, Buff Bagwell, Sean O’Haire, and Chuck Palumbo wrestle in a Four Corners Elimination Match next…This is fine for what it is…The match is really about who is going to get eliminated first, and so none of the work leading to that first elimination feels urgent to me…I feel, after watching this Nitro run again, that O’Haire got all the “what if” hype because he was a large guy with a senton bomb and because he had the association with Roddy Piper and the Devil’s Advocate gimmicks that both looked interesting, but never went anywhere…But if you watch him in the ring, he does a bunch of moves with unnecessary flourishes and isn’t as good at stringing together interesting sequences as Chuck Palumbo…I’ve come around on Palumbo’s potential quite a bit on this watch…He was hurt by WCW’s closure pretty badly…In WCW, he’s at worst a perennial U.S. Championship guy… Anyway, Buff chop blocks Palumbo from behind the ref’s vantage point when Palumbo is holding Luger up for a slam…Luger falls on top of Palumbo and ref Mickey Jay counts to three…That’s all for naught when Palumbo sticks around and throws hands with Buff Bagwell…O’Haire is one-on-one with Luger and scores a Jungle Kick…Luger scootches over so he can put his boot on the ropes to break the count, but Palumbo shoves it right back off the rope…Luger is eliminated, followed quickly by Buff when O’Haire scores a Seanton Bomb for three…The rookies continue to dominate the vets in this feud…They’re going to ramp that domination up a notch at Greed… Hey, it’s Mike Sanders!...We see him on security cam, chilling out outside of CEO Flair’s room…Hahahaha, Disco walks up and greets him, then says that he and Alex Wright split up…Sanders, matter-of-factly: “Huh, I didn’t know you guys were an item”…He nailed the delivery of that line, which probably explains something about why he decided to do standup after he left pro wrestling…Here’s another guy who had potential to be a strong talker, but was probably too Southern for Vinnie Mac…Dammit, I miss my big Southern-focused promotions on television…Disco tries to get Mike Sanders to tag with him later in the night…He initially refuses Disco, at least until CEO Flair asks him to unclog the office toilet that Road Warrior Animal absolutely destroyed…See, tagging with Disco is actually a better fate than at least a few alternatives!... Hype video: Dusty Rhodes vs. Ric Flair in 2001 continues to be quite a lot of fun…They needed to put Dusty on television more than they have, though...I have to give Jeff Jarrett credit for the Dusty impression, too…He’s very hit-and-miss at this sort of comedy, but when he hits, he often cracks me up… The BuffCam catches CEO Flair asking Road Warrior Animal to suss out the culprit who attacked Midajah so that Scott Steiner will calm down a bit already…The CEO points him toward Dustin Rhodes and DDP…HAHAHAHAHA…So, while giving Animal his marching orders, he blithely asserts that he is certain that no one on their side was behind the attack…Animal leaves, and CEO Flair waits for him to go before loudly whispering: BUFF, Y’KNOW SOMETHING BUFF, IF ANYBODY DID IT, IT’S ANIMAL; I DON’T TRUST HIM, DO YOU?...CEO Flair is one of my favorite characters in the whole Nitro Era… It just struck me now that CEO Flair coming in as co-owner of the WWE after Shane and Stephanie sold out to him makes a ton of sense…Flair probably made some storyline connections while CEO…Those connections likely helped Flair raise the cash and placed him as the face of the purchase a la Bischoff’s role with Fusient Media right now…That’s now my headcanon…Flair saw what Bisch and Fusient tried to do with WCW and then replicated that strategy successfully by purchasing his way into co-ownership of the Dub… Sugar Shane Helms (w/cool Nitro Girls dance routine) wrestles the extremely-in-need-of-a-gimmick-change Kwee Wee…Allan Funk is a solid worker…WCW probably should have tagged Funk and Mike Sanders together again for real instead of having them be an odd couple temporary tag team for this cruiserweight tag tournament…I do think that Sanders and Funk have their uses in the cruiserweight division, too…Mostly as bases for the offense of all the high-flyers… Kwee Wee survives Helms’s shine segment and embarks upon a long heel control segment of the type that Eric Bischoff would dislike because it slows the pace of the match…I do think that the Kwee Wee and Mike Sanders types would have had to learn to pick up the pace on their control segments if Bischoff took creative control of the company…It’s pretty clear that Bischoff’s a huge fan of Dean Malenko’s balance of catching offense for the high-flyers while continually doing something and almost never stopping his movement based on what he’s looking for in his cruiserweights…You know who was also really good at that?...Ultimo Dragon…I will once again note my love for Ultimo Dragon here… Kwee Wee really unloads on Helms, who survives a series of nearfalls and aborted comebacks before he’s able to land a knee-assisted facecrusher and a Sugar Smack…He calls for a Vertebreaker, but Kwee Wee flips out of it and scores a sunset flip for two…Kwee Wee misses a second-rope dive so badly that it looks awful…Helms is already way the hell out of the way before Kwee Wee even dives…A follow-up Vertebreaker from Helms scores the duke…Chavo Jr. once again attacks Helms from behind after the match…Helms is able to fight this attack off…They work a nice sequence in which Helms scores his knee-assisted facebuster and then Sugar Smacks Chavo off the apron…Chavo tumbles halfway down the aisle…I’m really looking forward to their match… You know how I know Disco Inferno is a heel?...He’s wearing a Manchester United jersey in 2001…That’s how I know Disco Inferno is a heel…Konnan and Hugh Morrus are the opponents for Disco and Mike Sanders…I like Disco and Sanders, but the other half of this match have my eyes glazed over…I’ve spent this review talking about how I’m sad that WCW is gone because it harmed the U.S. careers of a few guys who I like…Well, one good thing about WCW going bye-bye is that I was subjected to very little Hugh Morrus or Konnan after that…And Konnan was a net-positive in TNA and Lucha Underground as a talker, or at least that’s what I recall thinking about him…I feel like WCW would have pushed Hugh Morrus until the heat death of the universe if they would have existed for that long… This match is watchable enough…Konnan and Morrus connect on a Hart Attack…That doesn’t put Disco down for the count, but Konnan’s bad Chartbuster, a Morrus No Laughing Matter, and Konnan’s Tequila Sunrise as the capper definitely do…On the replay, I notice Konnan drilling Sanders with a very high-angled back suplex…Nasty work…But yeah, that was perfectly fine…In a nice little touch, Tony S. sends us to ads, but before the camera fades out, Lance Storm and Mike Awesome launch a surprise attack on Konnan and Morrus from behind as they back up the ramp…The camera stuck around without completely fading, so it was a planned little surprise that Tony S. sold well... Buff Bagwell is filming on the BuffCam when he comes across Road Warrior Animal laid out under a wall that has been graffiti’d with the words IT WASN’T HIM…Buff has quite the freak out!...Was it supposed to be Sting, maybe?...Except for the part where he attacks a woman, having Sting take out Magnificent Seven members one at a time seems like a reasonable way to fold him back into the mix… Hype video: DDP! Scott Steiner! It’ll probably be good, but they’ve had underwhelming matches in the past! We’re running out of Thunder main events…Jeff Jarrett and Rick Steiner make it out here for our second-to-last one of them…Dustin Rhodes and Diamond Dallas Page are their opponents as you’ll recall…I am entirely conditioned not to engage with this match until the finish…If a big main-event style match happens in the middle of a Nitro or Thunder, I expect a proper finish…If it happens at the end of the match, I expect nonsense and fuckery…Half of the HOT TAKES thread members would have been enraged at Rick Steiner making a tag while standing on the floor…Then again, there are no tag ropes, so I suppose that **Cole Porter voice** ANYTHING GOES… DDP is your face in peril…He gets a D-D-P chant that they don’t actually have to add in post-production…I can see most of the fans on the hard cam side doing it…Good for you, WCW!...You got a genuine fan reaction on an episode of Thunder!...Twice, even!...The dudes were into Stacy Keibler’s stripper dance…Page fights his way out of the enemy corner and scores a hot tag to Dustin…Dustin is an abode aflame…Rick Steiner clears out referee Nick Patrick with a Steinerline…CEO Flair runs down to count the pinfall on Ricky’s follow-up belly-to-belly, but Page breaks it up…The CEO throws a very un-CEO-like tantrum (I guess unless you’re the CEO of Tesla or something), then tries to punch Page…He fails, but it doesn’t matter…Jeff Jarrett KABONGs Dustin and then lands a Stroke…Patrick revives and counts to three…The Magnificent Seven get in the ring after the bout…O’Haire and Palumbo try to make a save, which brings a whole slew of folks out…Lance Storm and Mike Awesome rush down to the ring followed by Hugh Morrus and Konnan…It’s the babyfaces who manage to stand tall…Also, DDP is STILL STANDING, just in case you were unaware… I’ll have quite a bit to say about the general perception of the quality of Thunder’s run versus my own assessment of that run in the final Thunder review coming up…As far as this review is concerned, all that is left to share is the grade… WOOO…

I think people are still watching and enjoying Mick Foley's stuff. Criticism or lack of enjoyment of his more extreme stunts does not equal erasure or cancellation. Such an equation runs on an entirely fallacious line of reasoning.

It's a bummer that the Mexican government lacks either the wherewithal or the interest to block this sale.

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.