SirSmUgly

Of course people from the Phillippines are Asian. Their island is literally part of the continent of Asia, after all. As someone from an area of the country with a lot of people from across the Asian diaspora, it's always been odd to me how a lot of American dudes sort of reduce their love of things Asian to Japan and maybe South Korea. Kiana was a cutie tho. Jeannette Lee, on the other hand, was an attractive woman who looked like a stone cold killer whenever I came across ESPN Billiards. She looked straight out of a Bond movie as the bad guy's attractive henchlady who murders people with a pool cue.

I love that in Japan, they were the Miracle Violence Connection, but in Watts's WCW, they were just Doc and Gordy. I like the contrast. EDIT: Though a random Redditor claims that their Japanese name more accurately translated to Murder Torpedo in English. I don't know if that's true, but I want it to be true.

Concrete Island has an excellent concept and is a brief novella, though honestly the concept is probably better for a short story. It's an appropriate story for our times, though. High-Rise is a better novel, I think, so I would start there too (as is the film version).

I get that entirely. For me, a six-five guy with great conditioning and a nice array of moves is, especially in 2000 WCW, a useful upper-midcard gatekeeper. I also think he elevates these trash matches via his work. I think he's both a junk food wrestler and also really good at being fun junk food.

2000 Scott Steiner trying to say "backstabbing, butt-sucking, ass kissing" for like half a minute before he can manage it never gets old and will always brighten your day.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and thirty-seven – 22 November 2000 "The WCW Gang prepares to ride a hot heel run from Scott Steiner into the sunset" As we Thunderrrrrrr into Mayhem, I wonder how long it’s been since WCW had the top belt on a guy and given him a stable, multi-month run…That guy was going to be Bret Hart before Goldberg injured him…I racked my brain, but I simply couldn’t think of who the last guy to hold the big gold for four or more months might be off the top of my head, so I went back to look at the WCW World Heavyweight Championship’s lineage… On that note, here’s a trivia question for this review of our go-home Thunder to Mayhem 2000…Scott Steiner has a four-month unbroken run as world champion from Mayhem 2000 on 11/26/00 to the final episode of Nitro on 3/26/01…Who is the last person before him to have a WCW World Heavyweight Championship title run of four straight months or more, and how many months was that person’s reign?...In honor of Bill’s Mid-Week Reports over at DDT Digest, I’ll place the answer at the end of this review… We go right into the opening credits…No cold opening this week… I do note that the “presented in fullest form” card showed before this episode, and indeed, it’s only an hour and eighteen minutes on the Network…I’ll pop over to the aforementioned DDT Digest and see what I missed toward the end of this show… Mike Sanders holds an ice pack to his head as he walks Jindrak and O’Haire to the ring for a chat with the audience…Tony S. lets us know that DDP is the guy who attacked O’Haire in the hallway on Nitro…Sanders actually empathizes with Kwee Wee, who is missing the show because he, like Sanders, was steamrolled by Goldberg on Monday…Sanders declares Jindrak and O’Haire the winners of their previously scheduled tag match against Meng and Kwee Wee…Meng has a little something to say about that… Sanders joins commentary as Jindrak and O’Haire hit a couple of nice combos on Meng…I’m sorry, but Meng gets too much offense in…How are you supposed to get your young guys over if they struggle to beat Meng two-on-one?...I mean, Meng has value as a gatekeeper, but he should be pretty definitively losing a two-on-one to Jindrak and O’Haire…Meng ducks a terribly-timed whiffed lariat from Jindrak that hits O’Haire and then double TDGs the former champs…The other Thrillers have to come out for the save…Absurd…Bad booking and not a good match…Nash and DDP make a save that Meng barely needs anyway… Sanders painfully backs away from the ringside area and makes me chuckle by yelling: YOU GUYS ARE STARTIN’ TO PISS ME OFF TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF PISS-TIVITY…Sanders and Page steal one another’s bad insults…Page challenges Sanders to a match, but the commish begs off…Stasiak offers himself up as an opponent for DDP…Sanders makes their match a lumberjack match…Page is still trying to get WHATEVER over as a catchphrase…I respect that he's giving it a go until the very end!... Scott Steiner shows up to the arena in a rage…Did I even need to tell you this?... Two Count gets like zero heat while they do a pre-dance spiel…They’re still feeling blessed to be rid of Evan Karagias…Their routine is cut off by the arrival of Jimmy Yang (w/Leia Meow)…Shane Helms hits on ring announcer Pam Paulshock while Yang enters the ring…Jamie Noble and Evan Karagias are a team thrown together by spite…They don’t really understand one another, but they’ll go it as a team anyway…Stevie Ray promotes an interview in which he talks to CEO Ric Flair during the exiles’ entrance… Where is Kaz Hayashi?...Moore, Karagias, and Yang go at it in a Triple Threat Match…Stevie gets Jimmy Yang and Savio Vega mixed up, but Tony S. lets him know that Jimmy’s last name isn’t “Kwang," but "Yang"…Tony S. thinks that Kwang is a character on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)…No, that’s Krang…This match has a lot of aesthetically pleasing moves in it…Shannon Moore is a fun worker in particular…Karagias is pretty good too in this bout…He hits Moore with a Thesz Press and lands a bunch of punches…He doesn’t get quite the same pop as Steve Austin does… Yep, this is a decent bout, especially because Karagias works as the base for Moore and Yang doing flippies, which is Karagias’s best role…Noble and Leia get into it at ringside…This is the best possible throwaway Triple Threat that you could think of…Perfectly pleasant stuff…Yang hits a shitty inverted piledriver for three…Karagias and Moore carried this thing, and Yang was a mostly crappy passenger…Does Jimmy Yang suck?...I think he might suck… Here are the Filthy Animals…OK, so based on what the folks doing commentary are chattering about, CEO Ric Flair made a statement earlier in the show…Hold on, let me look this up…Ah, before Two Count showed up to cut a rug, Flair issued a “no contact” edict for Booker T. and Scott Steiner…That’s all… Konnan and Billy Kidman do some dreadful pre-match mic work…Konnan’s insults all come back to LOL UR GAY, PLZ SUCK THE DICKS OF ME AND MY FRIENDS…Oh no, Rey also does some bad mic work…It’s a bit less dreadful than Kidman and Konnan’s mic work, but it still bums me out…Stevie is appalled by this nonsense…As am I…This crowd is basically like WOW, THESE DUDES SUCK after being fairly hot for them coming to the ring…There’s a reason that Kidman only got a cup of coffee in the Dub and Konnan didn’t even get an invite… A grinning Alex Wright has scraped up enough money to hire exactly one member of KroniK for a match against Rey and Kidman…Clark is so chill about tossing these lil’ guys around that he doesn’t mind working a handicap match…God, I love Stevie…He’s faintly annoyed at Tygress and the Animals on commentary…He’s an avatar for me…HAHAHAHAHA…After Tygress complains when Stevie calls Rey’s Bronco Buster a FACE FULLA STUFF, Stevie retorts: “Stuff is stuff: Man stuff, yak stuff, it’s all stuff”…On the other hand, WWE fucked up by not bringing Stevie in to commentate… Anyway, if you wanted to know, not even Bryan Clark can successfully powerbomb Kidman…The lil’ guys have Clark in trouble, but their dogpile pinfall doesn’t work…Kidman actually manages to slam Clark, which is when Alex Wright just grabs Kidman’s ankle to throw him off…Konnan chases Wright…Adams attacks Konnan…Rey confronts Adams…Wright circles back around and hits Kidman from behind...Kidman stumbles right into a Meltdown for three…That was actually a pretty enjoyable match for what it was, and I thought they pulled off the fuckery-filled finish quite nicely… Scott Steiner interrupts Mike Sanders’s phone conversation to demand a human punching bag for tonight, seeing as he’s not allowed to touch Booker T….OK, so I checked, and the other cut segment is one in which Stevie interviews Scott Steiner from behind plexiglass...Booker managed to attack Steiner from behind with a chair during the interview...It was a set-up!...No wonder Steiner is so pissed...Anyway, Steiner blames Stevie's interview for causing CEO Ric Flair to make his earlier "no contact" decree...An irate Steiner angrily claims that now, he'll have to beat up a stand-in for Booker instead of Booker himself…Speaking of Booker, he’s just arrived at the show… Shawn Stasiak cuts a middling interview with Gene Okerlund in which he teases a plan for defeating DDP and Kevin Nash…I dig Mark Jindrak’s Thundercats graphic t-shirt, though… Booker T.’s in the ring for talk time…Booker intimates that he’s had a title reign for the last four months, but no!...He has had like three title reigns in the last four months…And they’ve all been underwhelming…Booker cuts a mediocre promo in which he says a lot of the boilerplate babyface stuff that he usually does…OK, here, he apologizes for hitting Major Gunns with a Book End, which he feels bad for (Stevie, the rampant misogynist yak hater: I’M PROUD OF IT)…Book also feels bad about knocking out Sting…However, he does plan to keep stomping holes in asses because being nice got him nowhere…He then challenges Goldberg to a title match…Well, he’s technically got a pinfall victory over the guy (Show #250, and that I probably had to remind you of which show it was illustrates how ineffective it was at getting Booker over)… Goldberg’s music hits and DA MAN responds…I vividly remember seeing this segment in first run, actually…The audio is extremely obviously juiced, by the way…Even for Goldberg…Goldberg denies trying to spear Booker on Monday…He tries to put Booker over as a fightin’ champ…Goldberg meanders a bit as he talks about the weight of being champ…Then, he says that he’s coming for the title whether Booker has it or not after November…I was very interested in this match, especially because I had not seen their previous tangles back in July of 2000…Goldberg wishes Booker luck at Mayhem, and they shake hands and hug… It's staggering that at the same time that the WCW bookers had Steiner retiring guys at each PPV, they had fucking SARGE and BUFF and LUGER retire Goldberg…Fucking WCW… Nash reads a paper and tells DDP that Stasiak is “deceptively stupid,” then wonders about the hotness of people in and around the failed ballot count of 2000…Yeah, that’s the Nash-iest little blipment possible… The Cat pinches Gene Okerlund’s cheek while Okerlund asks Buff a question…The question is about Buff’s thoughts on Jeff Jarrett and Shane Douglas…The Cat basically tries to get Okerlund to crack, but he can’t do it tonight… Shane Douglas (w/Torrie Wilson) and Jeff Jarrett tag up to wrestle the aforementioned Buff Bagwell and the Cat (w/the lovely Ms. Jones)…Shane Douglas is upset that Buff said in the previous interview segment that Sting was the only franchise in WCW…Also, he yells a lot…It’s bad…You know that it’s bad…Douglas’s final WCW run probably retroactively ruined his work as ECW’s heel anchor for me…I was never a big fan of the guy – I much prefer Raven as lead heel in ECW – but this WCW run illustrates just why it took the creative talent of Paul Heyman to make Douglas seem like a viable star… Jeff Jarrett gets a mic and does, uh, some terrible mic work…There’s a theme going on tonight…Can you guess what it is?...Jarrett hates on Buff Bagwell, the Cat, and CEO Ric Flair…He does so with bad insults, of course…This tag match is a good exhibit for how you can hide the flaws of a bunch of mediocre workers by having them work a tag match with a little bit of energy…Stevie is insistent that Douglas has the Cat in a Shinonomake and not a Cobra Clutch, just like the Mid-South fan he is…The Cat is both the babyface who gets shine and the FIP…He double dropkicks his way out of trouble and to a hot tag… Buff is a HOUSE AFLAME…He scores a couple of two counts before the match breaks down…The Cat ends up in the ring alone…Torrie tries to get involved, which draws the Cat…Ms. Jones attacks Torrie, which causes ref Mickey Jay to go outside and calm that down…Jarrett hits a Stroke, but there’s no ref…He gets his KABONGin’ guitar and prepares to swing it…The Cat ducks away and Jarrett has to stop himself from KABONGing Torrie, who has squirmed her way into the ring…Buff hits Jarrett with a Blockbuster, but there’s still no ref, so no one but the announcers and the audience see Douglas punch Buff with a loaded fist…Jarrett drapes an arm over Buff’s chest, and the Cat’s save attempt is a couple tenths of a second too late…This was perfectly fine, and in fact, better than it had any right to be considering most of the workers in it… Scott Steiner walks to the ring and is sickened by Booker and Goldberg being all buddy-buddy…He goes on an entertaining rant in which he says that the cage around he and Booker at Mayhem will stop anyone from interrupting his attempts to kill Booker and pry the big gold belt from his hands…Commissioner Sanders has put Vito up as the sacrificial lamb for Steiner…Vito jumps Steiner as Steiner gets in Stevie’s face at commentary…They scrap a bit...A STEVIE RAY chant starts…I’m gonna be honest: I actually am more interested in a Stevie Ray/Scott Steiner feud after the past few months… Scotty quickly gets control of the bout…Stevie asserts for the WCW executive branch that he was merely defending himself and not getting up from his position at the table to fight Scotty while Steiner beats the shit out of Vito…Steiner tosses Vito to ringside and beats the shit out of him while jawing at Stevie in one of the more fun obligabrawls I’ve seen…See?...Scotty versus Stevie has genuine heat attached to it…Stevie is upset that Steiner touched his seven-hundred-and-fifty dollar suit…Tony and Tenay trying to reassure Stevie while Steiner performs an extended squash is fun television…I’m convinced that Steiner’s heel act being centered in the main event will be a huge part of the reason that people remember these last few months of WCW so fondly… Vito actually manages a tiny comeback after taking an ass whipping…Heck, he gets a couple of two counts in…Stevie and Tenay freak out at the desk over the pace of the ref's count…I love that Vito keeps going to the air because he knows that taking risks is the only way he’ll have a chance…Though he lands a couple of top rope moves to earn two counts, the third time is a curse rather than a charm…Steiner figures out his strategy, catches him up top, suplexes him to the mat, yells STEVIE RAY YOU SUCK, AND SO DOES YOUR BROTHER, and then locks on a Steiner Recliner for the submission…Stenier and Stevie square off again as we go to commercials…Aw man, pro wrestling can be a lot of fun sometimes!...I think this match is a perfect Charming Uniquity candidate because of the entertaining nature of the squash itself, and the back-and-forth between Steiner and Stevie, plus Stevie’s “trying to be impartial and ultimately failing” commentary work… Bam Bam Bigelow stalks down the ramp while Tenay narrates a video package that never plays…Oh, WCW production…Craig Leathers is gone, so I’m not sure who exactly should be held responsible for this…I’ll have to look it up…Reno teams with Bigelow in a Hardcore Tornado Tag Match against Mike Awesome and Crowbar…So, is Daffney off television for the rest of this show’s run or what?...OH MY GOD…Awesome tries a suicide dive, and as Bam Bam steps back and throws a trash can at Awesome’s head, Awesome takes the can impact and keeps plummeting until he spikes his forehead into the protective mat below…FUCK… Holy hell, then Crowbar’s stupid ass does an Asai moonsault that no one catches…What the fuck?...So, these four guys cripple one another, both with and without weapons…I wanted more tornado tags, but not like this!...I mean, actually hurting yourself badly while working is not the wave, fellas…I would like Awesome and Crowbar to be tag champs, is what I have decided…Awesome in particular was badly underutilized…He’s an obvious bolt-on upper-midcarder in this company…Stevie thinks Awesome is hurt, and I think Awesome legitimately is, too…He’s clutching his shoulder, which I think he legit jammed…Either that, or he’s doing an elite-level job of selling an injury…I can’t tell how much Awesome is actually hurt to the point that I feel somewhat anxious for the guy…Let’s go to the finish, please… I have endless love for how much Tony and Stevie get over how tough these guys are…Awesome and Crowbar send Bigelow on a header through a propped up table…Reno eats some trash can shots outside the ring while Awesome sets up a table at ringside…Stevie and Tony debate over whether or not Crowbar and Awesome should just pin Bam Bam or instead destroy Reno before Reno’s match on Sunday night…OH WOW…Awesome fucking Awesome Bombs Crowbar from the ring and onto Reno as Reno lays on the table at ringside!...You have to be kidding me…A barely revived Bam Bam manages to tackle a celebrating Awesome through another propped-up table in the ring…In the meantime, Reno manages to twist his broken body and flop on top of an equally-injured Crowbar (Crowbar, in pain: AAAH, AAAH, AHH SHITTTTT) and gets three even though Reno’s the guy who was crushed by Crowbar's body…I mean, here’s how I feel about this: I never want to see this again and think that the damage from this match specifically and matches like this in general is responsible for Awesome’s poor mental health later in his life…But also, I can’t NOT put it on my Good Matches list…It was an exceptional example of a plundah-filled tornado tag, especially for free television…If you like this sort of thing, you should absolutely take some time to watch this… So, it seems that the Stevie/Scotty interview did indeed get cut from the Network…I didn’t see it elsewhere online in a quick search, but that’s okay…It led to some good stuff in the Steiner/Vito match, so it certainly wouldn’t be a negative in the scoring of this show…I say this because the main event Lumberjack Match is next…There’s no time left for any more segments after this… Can I say once again that I am pleased to see WCW shows putting together at least a couple of good matches and segments in a row these past couple of weeks?...It builds momentum and hype for me when they can chain good segments together...There’s a growing consistency here from the new booking committee to the point where I’m almost feeling comfortable expecting that I’ll get two or three segments strung together that will be unambiguously good on the weekly television shows… Tony S. almost calls it WWF Mayhem, calls himself out, and then corrects himself as Stevie tells him he’s having flashbacks like his WWF stint was a tour in ‘Nam or something…Funny, especially since Tony S. legit enjoyed his WWF run…DDP walks out to the ring to meet Shawn Stasiak, and hey, this is the first match he’s had on television since he’s returned…The Misfits and Team Canada immediately start brawling from their Lumberjack position, which leads to all of these Lumberjacks brawling…The Misfits and Team Canada; the Animals and Alex Wright; and Two Count, Jimmy Yang, and the Karagias-Noble Alliance all brawl to the back… Kevin Nash, Mark Jindrak, and Chuck Palumbo both come to ringside as replacement lumberjacks…Page and Stasiak rush through a typical WCW televised main event…It’s acceptable for what it is…Stasiak in shorter matches is his best use anyway…Stasiak’s myriad of boot chokes do nothing to excite the spirit or entertain the mind…Just provide me with a Diamond Cutter, please…Stasiak loads his fist while Page is distracted by Jindrak…Stasiak's loaded punch squarely lands on Page's temple and almost gets three, but Nash pulls the ref out of the ring…Page lands a Diamond Cutter, but Palumbo grabs a chair and cracks Page with it, then drapes Stasiak’s unconscious form onto Page for three…Nash complains about ref Slick Johnson’s inability to spot Thriller interference during the bout…Eventually, he just decides to eat a fine and powerbomb Slick for his failures as an official… I liked this show…It was just okay for most of the run time, but then Scott Steiner showed up and magic happened…If we'd seen Stevie and Steiner's interview, the score probably would have been even higher...And I would be remiss if I didn't note that Mike Awesome, Crowbar, Bam Bam, and Reno damaged their brains and bodies to help Thunder earn this score…WOOO… Answer to trivia question: Goldberg, who in his first and only WCW World Heavyweight Championship title run held the big gold belt for roughly five-and-three-quarters-months, in a reign spanning from July ’98 to December ’98…

I am, too, but the guy is annoying and not-well-liked, so on the other hand, it's not a surprise. The thing is that he could absolutely have pulled off a lot of the puerile comedy nonsense that Vince McMahon likes so much.

Thanks to good guy Zimbra, I have a working Dreamcast again. I mean, as far as Dreamcasts actually work. I've received a "This game does not support the AV Cable being used" error on both NFL Blitz and Tee Off! I assume it has something to do with being connected via HDMI rather than AV cables, but whatever. Some brief-ish observations: Soul Calibur is still insanely gorgeous. How is a launch Dreamcast game this good-looking all those years later? I also forgot how much pure fun this game is. As a sucker for high-medium-low 3D fighter gameplay, this game really does it for me. We also need more 3D fighters with ring outs in them. Give me that new Virtua Fighter ASAP, Sega. I don't know why Capcom isn't releasing Tech Romancer as part of their upcoming Capcom Fighting Collection 2 release. I think it'd be a better choice for inclusion than Plasma Sword - sorry, Hayato - and is probably the best of the 3D arena fighters they produced not named Power Stone. Spawn: In the Demon's Hand and Heavy Metal: Geomatrix are clunky, mediocre Capcom arena fighters compared to Tech Romancer, which has more fluidity in movement and is just more fun. I think this ol' Sega fan even prefers it as a "mechs shoot lasers at one another" experience to Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram. (Plasma Sword is a decent game, but if space in the collection is limited for some reason, then Project Justice is just so much better than Star Gladiator/Plasma Sword, and Project Justice will also be on that CFC2 release.) To me, if CFC2 is meant to celebrate that late '90s/early aughts era of fighter, the additions should be: Capcom vs. SNK 2000 Capcom vs. SNK 2001 Power Stone Power Stone 2 Rival Schools Project Justice Star Gladiator Plasma Sword Street Fighter Alpha 3 Street Fighter III Street Fighter III: Double Impact Street Fighter III: Third Strike And then throw, like, Cannon Spike on there as a non-fighting game bonus. (I don't know WTF Capcom Fighting Evolution is doing on this latest collection in any case. What a waste of a slot.) Speaking of CvS 2, it's probably the perfect crossover fighter. What I dig the most about it outside of the varied roster (Hibiki from Last Blade! Kyosuke from Rival Schools! Multiple Samurai Shodown characters!) is the CAP/SNK mode options. C - Street Fighter II; A - Street Fighter Alpha; P - Street Fighter III ("P" because you can parry when using this form). I need to go refresh my memory on the S, N, and K modes and which games they ape. I think K is Last Blade, but I'm not sure. Anyway, what I loved about this game, which I don't think ever made it to the States for home release on Dreamcast (I have a burned copy of the JPN version), is that if you were playing all the other Capcom and SNK Playmore fighter releases on the Dreamcast, this game was like the culmination of all of them. A bunch of skills or modes that you learned in those games shows up in this one. Honestly, this might be Capcom's magnum opus in general, if not for the fighting genre specifically. I also played a bit of Spider-Man (2000), which is where the new era of Spider-Man games all the way up to Spider-Man 2 (2023) began. It's very old and worn in its design and movement, and quite honestly, it's probably not worth playing all the way through now if you never have, but to put it in context, this came after like a decade of bad LJN Spider-Man games and then the decent, but not amazing Spidey beat-'em-ups like Maximum Carnage and Separation Anxiety. This is an important game that was pretty mindblowing at the time it came out. Neversoft did a ton of amazing work in the late '90s and early aughts. And of course, the Dreamcast is the only proper way to play Crazy Taxi at home. Crazy Taxi is the best. I have quite a bit to test here and there as I have time. I have to see if my other burned CDs are still able to play (FirePro Wrestling D, Guilty Gear X, Border Down, Ikaruga), but I'm heartened by CvS 2 still working. I'll also dig into more of the Sega first-party releases as I go along. Other stuff: I bought the Horizon: Zero Dawn remaster for ten bucks back in October or November or whenever it came out, and I've been coming back to it every once in a while. Yeah, it's one of my ten or twelve favorite games ever. Sony's first-party studios just hit that open-world formula in the way I like it. Other than Rockstar and maybe Nintendo's 3D Mario games, I find most other open-world action-adventure or action platformers or just plain platformers to be way more hit and miss. They also don't reach true greatness for me like the first Horizon game, Tsushima, Mario Odyssey (kinda, since it was really hub worlds that were open, but EAD is obviously iterating toward full openness), Bowser's Fury, Red Dead Redemption, or GTA. I put a bit of time into a new Cuphead file the other day. I am going to try to stick with it and GIT GUD. I got over 80% completion back when I played this years ago and then stopped for a reason that I can't remember. Maybe a tough boss? Maybe got sidetracked by another release? Who knows.

Show #267 – 20 November 2000 "The one with Scott Steiner doing Scott Steiner things on the mic (and some other pretty entertaining stuff happens, too)" It feels like I just started these November 2000 shows and we’re already almost through the month. Shall we NITROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO together?! Yes. Yes, we shall. Recap: WCW production is so bad. The music playing over the recap of what’s been going on drowns out the spoken words on the audio. Then, two-thirds of the way through the package, someone figures out that no one can hear the wrestlers and commentators talking and suddenly juices the audio of the show clips. Oh, WCW. You are and have always been awful at producing wrestling shows. Surprise title change: WCW popped over to Germany before coming back to the states and did a quickie title change that put Germany’s own Alex Wright and his pard Disco Inferno over Jindrak and O’Haire for the tag titles. I’ll have to see if some history-conscious German fancammed it for posterity later. So: WCW World Tag Team Championship title change count: 13 (VACANT > David Flair and Crowbar > The Mamalukes > The Harris Bros. > VACANT > Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas > KroniK > The Perfect Event > KroniK > Vampiro and Great Muta > Rey Misterio Jr. and Juventud Guerrera > VACANT > Jindrak and O’Haire > Boogie Knights)… Now, Tony S. says that Disco was injured during the bout and I have no idea if that’s work or shoot. We’ll find out, I suppose. Pre-taped segment: Lex Luger butters up Mike Sanders, who butters Luger up in turn. Sanders and Luger talk ratings, and Sanders hopes that booking a return bout for the tag titles and getting Luger time in a main event segment will help. I suppose that Disco must be legitimately hurt because they run an angle where someone jumps O’Haire, which I presume will alter the tag title match somehow. Is this the last we’ve seen of Disco on WCW television, possibly? I know people don’t like Disco personally, which is understandable, but he was an incredibly important part of the midcard for his WCW run (I’m not counting that time when he got fired for not jobbing to Jacquelyn as anything but a tiny break from one continuous run). I also maintain that, through careful booking and establishing Disco's changing character motivations, transforming joke dancing comedy heel Disco into fiery fightin’ babyface Disco is one of the four or five best booked things that ever happened on Nitro Era WCW television. Maybe one of the top two or three, honestly. Mike Sanders addresses the camera directly. He has decided that even though Disco and O’Haire are injured, the tag title match will go on with The Perfect Event facing Alex Wright and a substitute partner of Sanders’s choosing. He also places Lex Luger in the main event against Booker T. Now we have our Nitro opening. BRAMP BRAMP. THE JUNG DRAGONS CONTINUE TO EXPLODE as Jamie Noble and Jimmy Yang (w/Leia Meow) go at it. Both men attempt to restore a bit of the feeling of the old cruiserweight division. A chair gets involved because it’s 2000, but still. Also, Leia Meow leaps off the steps and ranas Noble at ringside. I actually think that, in line with Bischoff’s vision of matches between cruiserweights, there aren’t enough switches and counters, but then again, I think there are enough workers at the top and in the middle of the card who also do lots of switches and counters while being bigger, so this division as it existed in early 1996 is already somewhat obsolete at this point in 2000. So, Noble and Yang have a watchable enough match before Two Count and Karagias also get to the ringside area. Noble dives onto Two Count at ringside and then scores a flash pinfall on Yang for three. Two Count attacks Noble, but Karagias makes the save. Noble and Karagias eye one another somewhat warily. Luger walks out of CEO Ric Flair’s office; Flair thanks him for “doing the right thing.” Whatever Luger said, he definitely thinks it benefits his plans based on the look of glee that he shoots into the camera. So, we’re acknowledging the cameraperson again here in WCW? Alex Wright holds a conversation with Disco over the phone about having to defend the tag titles when he spots KroniK and tries to buy their services. Unfortunately, Disco has already spent the bulk of Wright's cash on hand to secure KroniK's services over the past couple of weeks, and poor Alex forgot to stop at the ATM, so all he can offer as payment is a personal check. KroniK hear this and their response is to laugh and to walk away and to continue laughing as they walk away, which is to be expected. Wright continues walking and bumps into the Filthy Animals, who chase him as he runs away. CEO Ric Flair walks to the ring while commentary talks up the kayfabe injuries that Sting took after being beaten down by Scott Steiner back on Thunder in Manchester. This show is in Georgia’s state capital, so Flair gets a huge pop. Flair: SCHIAVONE, YOU WERE MAGNIFICENT IN LONDON, BROTHER, ALLLLLL NIGHT LONG, WOOOOO! Schiavone, facepalming at the desk: “He said he’d never say anything about that.” It doesn’t mater if it’s a work or a shoot: Either way, it was hilarious. I’ll let my imagination run wild. Flair basically says that he’d run through the lovely ladies in the crowd, but he has an image to maintain as a CEO. That makes perfect sense. CEOs never use their power and wealth to have sex with many different women. It’s a well-known immutable fact. Flair moves on to talking about Mike Sanders’s booking of a Booker/Luger world title match; Flair says that he couldn’t change the match even if he wanted to because of the power within the commissioner's office it even though he said a couple of weeks ago that he could change whatever he wanted coming out of Sanders's office. Then, he puts a bit of a question into the finish of the Nitro main event by saying that he’ll ignore Goldberg having to reproduce his streak to get another title shot if Luger wins the big gold tonight, which would make Luger/Goldberg a world title match at Mayhem. In between those declarations, Flair hit on a lady in the crowd who was sitting slightly behind Mark Madden and then made sure that Madden knew that it wasn’t him that Flair wanted to fuck. Yeah, we didn’t need the clarification on that. Jeff Jarrett interrupts to whine about not getting a title shot and also about having to deal with CEO Ric Flair in general. Flair points out that management can’t be physically touched, so Jarrett tries to get at Flair another way – by revealing who put a baby in Stacy Keibler’s belly. That person, he claims, is him. Dopey David Flair immediately walks onto the stage to confront Jarrett over why he gave Stacy “a guitar shot of love,” as Jarrett put it. Jarrett explains himself, but in a way that doesn’t logically fit as well as the earlier reveal that Buff did it. I'm annoyed that we're still talking about this plot development. WCW stumbled back-ass-wards into a logical reveal for who impregnated Stacy, so of course they failed to follow up on it. Jarrett’s just like, Yo, I banged Stacy at 2AM in a Baltimore-area Marriott. But with shitty lines like this: “The little Keibler elf wanted to know if I wanted some of her cookies.” I am staggered that any woman would kayfabe fuck Jeff Jarrett. Anyway, Jarrett tells this long story and at the end is like LOL, I made it up just to draw you out here so I could KABONG you in front of your dumb ol’ daddy, so *swings guitar* KABONGGGGGGGGG and then his proper wrestling theme plays, no dub. Buff Bagwell runs up from behind Jarrett and brawls with him at the top of the ramp, eventually sending him off of the ramp and to the floor. WCW creative is once again trying to heat up a feud for a PPV in under two weeks with Buff/Jarrett. I am hoping that Taylor et al. can start doing some building further out from the PPV more often, starting with Starrcade. It’s been about five weeks since Russo abandoned ship, so I’m expecting some improvement in this area of the show soon. Kevin Nash asks agent Fit Finlay to deliver a message to the Thrillers that he’s got backup. Elix Skipper informs Pam Paulshock that Mike Sanders has picked him as Alex Wright’s tag partner, so Lance Storm will be filling in for Elix in a tag match that includes Hacksaw on one side and Kwee Wee and Meng on the other. Pam thinks Gunns is a BITCH. Alex Wright and Elix Skipper defend the tag titles against The Perfect Event. So, back when I did a Sporcle quiz on all the WCW tag champs, the one person who I missed from the Nitro Era was Skipper. Actually, looking at The Perfect Event, I recall them splitting up for good at some point. Don’t Palumbo and O’Haire end up being the tag champs by the end of Nitro? Wright and Skipper ping pong Stasiak around for a bit; Palumbo tags in and is DDT’d by Wright for two. There’s no heat on this match because everyone is a heel; WCW sure does seem to book heel vs. heel matches quite a lot, don’t they? Ever since the Russo-Ferrara Era in particular. Anyway, we get a double slingshot suplex from TPE in here, so that’s rad. More slingshot suplexes, please. Skip saves Wright from being pinned and then takes on Palumbo outside the ring, but Rey and Kidman run a diversion in which Rey distracts the ref and Kidman scores a Kid Krusher on Wright that Stasiak makes the cover on for three. So… WCW World Tag Team Championship title change count: 14 (VACANT > David Flair and Crowbar > The Mamalukes > The Harris Bros. > VACANT > Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas > KroniK > The Perfect Event > KroniK > Vampiro and Great Muta > Rey Misterio Jr. and Juventud Guerrera > VACANT > Jindrak and O’Haire > Boogie Knights > The Perfect Event)… Of all the quickie title changes this year, this one offends me the least. Giving Wright a title win in Germany and then having a quick switch back to the Thrillers in the United States is fine. Pre-tape: What offends me the most is this fucking cornball Mancow somehow knocking down not only Jimmy Hart, but also Two Count with a trash can attack. FUCK OFF, WCW. Wait, hold on, one more piece of news: We’re getting another Jimmy Hart/Mancow match at Mayhem. FUCK OFF AND FUCK YOU, WCW. Kwee Wee backs out of the same tag match that Skipper backed out of to allow Captain Rection a chance to fight Storm again in his place. Meng promises to straighten the eternally crossed eyes of Duggan, I presume through performing a careful ophthalmological surgery. No, wait, to hear him explain his plan tonight, I think he’s just going to try to punch them straight. My bad. Mark Jindrak asks the commissioner what he’s going to do about Kwee Wee backing out of his tag match and Sanders promises to SET IT OFF, strongly implying that he will SET IT OFF by sending Kwee Wee out there to get steamrolled by Goldberg. Reno splits off from The Perfect Event after they finish a backstage conversation and goes to find his gear; Vito sees his chance and jumps him. T-Money and the Battle Dome Boyz (that’s my name for Crews’s jobber squad) raise a commotion just off camera as Tony S. tries to talk us through what’s next on Nitro. Pam Paulshock interviews a stunned and frustrated Alex Wright. Wright complains that CEO Ric Flair and WCW are failing to treat the Knights and their tag title hopes fairly; then, he challenges the Filthy Animals to a handicap match against both he and Disco at Mayhem. Hmm… OK, so Rick Steiner apparently won and/or stole the Battle Dome belt, which honestly, I don’t recognize. Did they give a replica belt to the winners on the show? I can’t remember. T-Money and the Battle Dome Boyz holler at Ricky while he stands in the ring and basically says that he rolled these chumps in their own arena and took their belt. Then, he challenges them to get it back from him in his own inimitable way. AND YES, TERRY “T-MONEY” CREWS GETS IN THE RING AND SQUARES OFF WITH RICK STEINER. This counts as an in-ring debut! The other Battle Dome Boyz save T-Money from receiving a sound beating and jump the guy. I didn’t realize how long this feud went on, honestly. Anyway, T-Money reclaims the Battle Dome Belt while the fans chant YOU SUCK. God help me, I like this dumb inter-promotional feud. Stasiak is irritated that the Pizza Hut employee he’s talking to over the phone can’t get his order right, which makes me laugh, and then Reno comes in and woodenly asks to SET IT OFF against Vito at Mayhem. Come on. This was so dumb that I couldn’t help but chuckle. At least now when the Thrillers declare that someone is S.O.L., they all mock laugh in a way that indicates that they are fully aware of how ridiculous their catchphrases are. I also unironically enjoyed this little segment. This goof General Rection tries to fire up the Misfits backstage, and I think, wouldn’t the Misfits be a better fit on the WCW side of this Battle Dome feud? I think they would. Who might be Kevin Nash’s backup? I’m remembering Diamond Dallas Page as the answer, and I also note that Page was not attached to the Battle Dome stuff anymore. Neither was Buff, notably, as he’s now feuding with Jarrett. I think the crowd is hopeful that Scott Hall will soon be joining Nash in the ring; Nash, of course, teases this. He calls Sanders out and demands a shot at the tag titles, and yeah, this is going to lead to Nash and DDP as tag champs. I remember this, I’m pretty certain. I think they drop them to Palumbo and O’Haire at some point. We’ll see. Sanders calls Nash a SELF-CENTERED SON OF A BITCH before offering Nash that tag title shot at Mayhem. The commissioner sure seems confident that no one likes Nash enough to tag with him. Nash: “Chief Jay Strongbow told me a long time ago, ‘You can make friends or you can make money.’ I make money.” Sanders lands some boilerplate insults, which Nash thinks that Sanders learned while attending Cheap Heat 101 (CHE 101), after which the typical pro wrestling undergrad moves on to either CHE 102 (luckily, they quickly fired Roddy Piper as the instructor of record in that class) or Shoot Bang Promos 126 (SHB 126), taught by a series of unstable shitheads who usually work themselves into a shoot during division meetings and quit right before they can be awarded tenure. Vince Russo and CM Punk are two notable former SHB 126 professors. OK, so the mock laugh that the Thrillers do after telling someone that they’re shit outta luck is definitely funny as hell to me. It reminds me of the sort of annoying mock laugh me and my dude friends might do. Nash is like, I can outdrink you, and Mike Sanders is so infuriated with that claim that he rushes the ring, followed by the rest of the Thrillers. The heels do a fine job of beating down Nash until DDP makes the save. This was a ridiculous talking segment, but the crowd was hot for it and I enjoyed it well enough for what it was. Even when Page yells HEY, JACKED-UP NATURAL BORN MONKEYS, I’m okay with it. Nash and Page confiscate the tag titles and inform the Thrillers that they’ll be holding onto them until Mayhem and perhaps even longer than that. It’s nice to see that Page and Nash finally ended up on the same team again four-and-a-half years after they first teased it, by the way! Pam Paulshock seems impressed by Lex Luger’s political skill, and Luger mock pretends that he’d NEVER maneuver himself into a position whereby Goldberg might be manipulated into helping Luger win the world title by having the chance to earn a world title shot long before he’s due one. Smarmy Lex is so much fun on the mic. Madden is all like, Gunns moved her alliance to Canada because her many elective surgeries are covered under their health care system, is how I’d put it, and no one laughs, and he acknowledges that no one laughed, and let’s stop talking about how no one laughed, commentary. Get Stevie on this Nitro team, too; Hudson sucks. Then Storm gets on the house mic and is all like, How do you even fail to count votes properly, America? You suck. I’m all like, Yeah, I live in a failed state, don’t remind me. And then Meng comes out here to hit someone with a Tongan Death Grip and make me forget my worries about living in a failed state. And then Rection comes out here and now I’m not worried, just faintly annoyed with this chump taking up television time. The crowd was all like U-S-A! when Storm was talking, but Rection walks out here to dead fucking silence. I think Rection’s push is probably the least earned push that anyone has received in this whole WCW run. Even keeping Hogan on top for way too long makes a certain logical sense from a certain narrow standpoint. Rection getting a huge midcard push that partly hinges upon the idea that he's some sort of long-suffering hyped midcard worker who has been blocked from the upper reaches of the card is entirely nonsensical. This match is acceptable for what it is. We’re watching Nitro, so there’s a cap on how good these matches can be. Most of them don’t get enough time; this one doesn’t, but even Storm isn’t quite good enough to elevate the rest of the talent here into something awesome, so the lack of time is a benefit and not a detriment. The other Misfits rush down the ramp and attack Elix at ringside when Skipper hits Rection with a flagpole; Rection recovers and rolls up Duggan for three. We’ve been blessed: We've had multiple episodes without Shane Douglas on television; alas, he’s back and plotting something with Jeff Jarrett in the back. Mike Sanders is looking mighty grim at the commentators’ desk. Tony S. and Hudson are dying to ask about the tag title match at Mayhem, but Sanders doesn’t want to talk about it. He says that he’ll come up with something to counteract Nash and Page, then sullenly declines further comment on anything regarding the tag titles so that he can at least enjoy watching Kwee Wee get mollywhopped by Goldberg. It’s a pretty rad squash, actually, mostly because of a spot where Kwee Wee, after jumping on Goldberg as Goldberg enters the ring, tries a springboard move. Goldberg folds him in half with a sick spear, then Jackhammers him for three in about twenty seconds. Aw, our formerly downcast commissioner seems heartened again! Goldberg, on the other hand, doesn’t like being used in the way he has been and lets a once again disheartened commissioner know this by yelling it right into his face. CEO Ric Flair agrees! He walks down and books Sanders in a match against Goldberg right now to make things fair. Goldberg goozles Sanders, tosses him into the ring, pumphandle slams him into the Earth’s crust, and then it’s SPEAR, JACKHAMMER, SPLAT. What a fun fucking segment! Sanders did a fine job of being sad, then happy, then scared, then gigafucked. It was so satisfying to see him get what was coming to him. Goldberg and Kwee Wee ran an excellent spear spot. The crowd loved seeing Goldberg kill dudes. Man, I love it when WCW puts on satisfying television. Pam Paulshock next interrogates Booker T. regarding his feelings on this whole world title defense against Lex Luger, specifically about Goldberg possibly interfering. Booker’s ready to fight everybody in this company at this point. He’s also a guy who needs to go to the WWF as soon as possible because his boilerplate babyfacin’ on the mic is sorta bumming me out and he immediately gets a million times better at talking when he goes up north. Well, all good things must come to an end. On that note, here is Shane Douglas (w/Torrie Wilson) to yammer on and on. Torrie talks a lot. She insults the crowd. Douglas and Torrie go through as many tired LOL U ALL SLEEP WIT UR SISTERS jokes as possible. Fucking shut up already, you two. They go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. It bums me right the fuck out. I’d rather just have gotten another twenty straight boilerplate babyfacin’ promos from Booker instead. I completely forgot that Douglas attacked Ms. Jones at the end of October (Show #264). Shane's BITCH COUNT is zero, but he did drop a SKANK while addressing Ms. Jones, so there’s that. Douglas challenges the Cat to a match at Mayhem and then challenges his former tag partner Buff Bagwell to a match right now. So, all this talking that Shane and Torrie did, and now you’re going to make me watch Shane wrestle Buff? Was I enjoying this show too much for your tastes, WCW booking committee? I don’t see what I did to deserve this except be a supporter of your downtrodden company. But there’s one good thing about this match: It’s short. There are still multiple neck cranks in it even though it’s short, though. Buff kicks out of a Pittsburgh Plunge, a move with zero value in it anymore, and then hits a Vader Bomb for two of his own. Torrie leaps onto the apron to draw Buff’s attention; in a spot that one might say is the epitome of “excellent timing,” Buff ducks the charge of a slow-moving Shane Douglas, who chugs toward Torrie as she stands there watching him and preparing to bump to the floor instead of just moving the hell out of the way, I mean, he’s jogging so fucking SLOWLY, man. Jarrett tries to stop Buff from hitting a follow-up Blockbuster, but the Cat attacks Jarrett and Buff completes his finishing move for three. After the match, the Cat demands a fight against Shane Douglas right now, insults the rotund form of Mark Madden, and claims he wants to dance when Douglas begs off. Meanwhile, Ms. Jones stands there looking fine as hell. Eventually, they both dance. It’s fantastic. It’s promo time with Scott Steiner! Let’s see how many sentences he’s able to complete. Steiner pretend cries over Sting’s injuries. I mean, he’s good at fake crying if you recall his pretend retirement from the beginning of the year (Show #220). Steiner also lands a semi-classic line: RIC FLAIR, THE NEW CEO, BUT ALL I SEE WHEN I LOOK AT YOU IS AN OLD SONUVABITCH. Steiner tells Flair that he’ll beat Goldberg again if Goldberg manages to win the world title, threatens Flair’s physical health, and assures Booker T. that he's going to come out of Mayhem victorious against him. In fact, he says an AMAZING LINE that is essentially the sort of batshit moronic line full of mispronunciations that is right in Scotty’s wheelhouse. Hold on, here it is, verbatim: NOW BOOKER T., AT MAYHEM, I’M GONNA LOOK AT YOU, AND I’M GONNA LOOK AT THE WHOLE WORLD, AND I’M GONNA SAY VINI, VIDI, VOOCHI *randomly huffs for breath*. AND I KNOW THAT’S NOT IN YOUR EBONICS HANDBOOK, AND I KNOW NONE OF THESE WHITE TRASH KNOW WHAT IT MEANS, BUT AT FALL BR—AT MAYHEM, I’M GONNA GIVE YOU THE SAME THING I GAVE STING. I’M GONNA GIVE YOU THE WORST DEFEAT OF YOUR CAREER, AND I’M GONNA PUT YOU OUTTA WRESTLING TOO. Ten out of fucking ten, no notes, you ‘roided-up maniac. Fall Brawl was two whole months ago by the way. What a lunatic. I loved it. Now Steiner joins the desk to commentate on Lex Luger/Booker T., our main event world title match for Nitro. Steiner says he dealt with managing his anger by doing some head bangin’ at a show on Limp Bizkit’s Anger Management tour. I mean, this is amazing. Next, Scotty threatens to punch Ted Turner in the face. Madden asks Scotty if he’d punch Al Gore or George W. and Tony S. hastily attempts to talk over Steiner’s response. There’s a nothing-much four-minute Nitro Special going on in – and then outside of – the ring, so let’s instead enjoy Scotty Steiner declaring his fans to be from Wall Street as opposed to the people of Augusta, most of whom he looks down upon for not working in the financial sector. It would be best if we just moved it along to the finish of this perfectly short and perfectly acceptable, if nondescript, bout. Goldberg jogs out; Steiner heads him off at the pass and they club one another. Security pulls them apart, but Goldberg slips away, enters the ring, and launches a spear that Booker dodges. Luger, attempting to club Booker with a chair from behind, eats the spear instead. Book covers for three and then yells at Goldberg for interfering. Steiner breaks away from security and brawls with Booker. My goodness, let’s take the belt off poor old Booker and rebuild him after this mystifyingly booked series of world title runs. This was a fairly entertaining show, even if it did assault my sensibilities by insisting upon a segment that involved Shane Douglas and Torrie Wilson. It’s not a great show – or anywhere near it – but the talking was once again generally entertaining, especially from guys like Luger, Steiner, and even the gabby Mike Sanders. I genuinely enjoy watching Nitro again at this point. Let’s hope it remains that way to the end. 2.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

That Len Bias death, along with a series of books that I read at the library (I think they were part of a series called True Life or True to Life or something like that?) scared the hell out of me when it came to drugs. These books covered all sorts of topics (and are probably the reason that I so desperately want to visit Peru and Macchu Pichu; the book on Peru enthralled me as a four-year-old kid). Some of these books covered drugs and had science-focused explanations of them, from caffeine to heroin. Bias dying + the book on heroin explaining that doing it once was enough to trigger a crippling addiction in some people scared the shit out of me as a very young child. Even now, I won't even take most pain pills if they're prescribed to me. The extremely rare codeine acetaminophen is about as far as I'll go. (As for Gary Webb, though there's been one movie on him, someone still needs to make the definitive Oscar-contending movie about his investigations. It would be the new All the President's Men. The times we're living in are ripe for another Alan Pakula-style Paranoia Trilogy). And yes, Julia Child was an amazing person. Working for OSS to beat the Nazis, then turning herself into a great chef after that. What's so inspirational about her is that she shfited gears in her late thirties and early forties and did a totally separate cool thing after having helped to beat the Nazis. What I find inspirational about her is that she's proof that the possibilities in our lives are endless and that it's never too old to shift gears and try to achieve cool shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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