SirSmUgly Posted June 6, 2024 Author Posted June 6, 2024 Show #178 – 8 February 1999 “The one with Blitzkrieg! Oh, and some other crap” For the second straight show, we get the fucking Hogan the Elder/Zito interview package to start. Man, fuck off. We see Flair go into conniptions and loudly request the presence of Eric Bischoff, which we didn’t see after the last Nitro ended. I just want to get SuperBrawl over with already. I’m going to take a positive stance on this dreadful Hogan/Flair feud. Hogan turning babyface equals the end of the nWo. I’m excited about the end of the nWo. I think there might be one more revival later in 1999 or early 2000, but I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t last long. Now we get video of one half of a convo that Arn Anderson is having with Ric Flair, which is the same video we saw on Thunder. It was intensely compelling, the Godfather Part II of one-sided phone call vignettes on a pro wrestling show. DDP is creeping in the wings overseeing this Nitro Girls routine and making sure Scott Steiner doesn’t crash in, assault Kimberly, and get a babyface pop for it. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall have a present for Disco Inferno; it’s a beaten-down Arn Anderson and a leather belt with which to beat him down some more. So, now we get a sketch in first-person set in some bar, and BOOOOO, it’s this dopey Torrie Wilson making eyes at the guy behind the camera. Ick, Torrie Wilson is the worst. She delivers her lines with the woodenness of a grove of oak trees and promises to get far too much television time over the next two years. She stinks. HOLY SHIT, IT’S BLITZKRIEG RUNNING OUT HERE TO THE OLD HOLLYWOOD BLONDES THEME. Or “Blitzcrieg,” as production spells it. GET YOUR CREW ON THE BALL, LEATHERS. Die korrekte Rechtschreibung von Wörtern ist eine wichtige berufliche Überlegung! Anyway, uh, let’s stop yelling for a bit. Blitzkrieg faces Rey Misterio Jr. (w/Konnan) in the former’s Nitro debut. Konnan needs to hurry up and hit his fucking catchphrases so that we can get this match started. Blitzkrieg and Rey wrestle like they’re being controlled by two overcaffeinated pre-teens playing Smackdown 2: Know Your Role. They unload corkscrew bodypresses and split-legged moonsaults and Blitzkrieg does a senton splash/standing moonsault combo. Holy shit, you are allowed to wrestle a match like a MOVEZ~ exhibition if you have insane athleticism like this. I guess I could just list wild moves that pop the crowd in Buffalo. One move, where Rey hits a springboard guillotine legdrop to Blitzkrieg as the latter is hung over the second rope, looks violent as fuck. Rey unloads lariats and backbreakers that look like they’re killing his opponent. Rey hits a Bronco Buster, but gets caught going up top and celebrating and takes a sick bump. Blitzkrieg tries a top-rope corkscrew moonsault, but he misses, and Rey sits him up top and nails a top-rope rana for three. Wow, WCW might have stumbled onto a good formula for starting their shows. Maybe they should have two cruiserweights wrestle the first match of the night to set the tone for the rest of the show. I wonder why they didn’t follow up on this idea! We get a bunch of video recap for this dumb Rey/Konnan/Wolfpac feud. Let’s just take Rey’s mask off and have him do unmasked Bronco Busters as part of the Filthy Animals already so that I can be in awe at how bad Bischoff and Russo are creatively. Speaking of “Bischoff bad creatively,” we get a shot of Chris Kanyon on TV for the first time in actual weeks. In this case, he visits Raven, who we also haven’t seen on TV in a couple of weeks. Raven’s mom is worried about Raven, and so is Kanyon, but Raven hits the classic WHAT A MARK in a fourth-wall breaking aside to the viewer and basically is like I’M JUST DEPRESSED AND GROSS ALL THE TIME BECAUSE IT IRRITATES MY MA. Then, he and Kanyon drive away in a sports car. This is consistent with Raven’s past characterization, which is pretty cool! Also, it’s basically kept Raven and Kanyon off TV and out of the ring for the past couple of months, which is pretty shitty! Finlay and Booker T. renew their rivalry in the ring in a match that I hope does not depend on Finlay working a cravat that Booker has to sell for a long time. But, no! Finlay’s initial heel control segment is fun. Actually, that’s most of the match, as Booker wins a snapmare, celebrates, and then is jumped while hyping the crowd. He makes a comeback eventually and scores two on a flying forearm that looks great. Tito Santana is the master of the flying forearm, but maybe Booker is an apprentice. Booker looks like he’s going to roll over Finlay from there, but he does that cool “whiff on a side kick and crotch himself on the ropes” spot that I dig as a regular transitional spot. Book does so many side kicks that it’s logical and natural that he’d miss a few like that. Hey, I've ended up quite enjoying this TV match, maybe because of my lower expectations for it. I can’t say that it’s something amazing, but it’s a fun little TV match. Booker whiffing on the side kick leads to a commercial brea—no, first, we see Hogan the Elder telling Hogan the Younger to take over as leader of the B-Teamers so that they can rule both the major leaguers and the minor leaguers in tandem. Horace is hilarious in this because he’s like WHOA with an amazed look on his face, and then he says something about waiting for a long time for Hulk to show that sort of faith in him, but it’s so over-the-top earnest that I can’t help but laugh. Anyway, Hulk tells Horace to keep his machinations a secret. Then, we get a commercial break. Back from break, we go back to the matc—no, first we see Ric Flair making Eric Bischoff clean a few bathrooms. Let me guess, later tonight, Bischoff wheels a mop out and Nash uses it to hit Flair in the head or something. Anyway, we get back to the match and see Booker fighting out of a sleeper, but eating a couple of European uppercuts. This match was headed right for the good part of my list, but I think wedging those two sketches in along with the break probably hurt it too much. It's too bad because the match drifts firmly into "definitely good" territory! Finlay keeps killing these Booker comeback attempts. By the time I see a Finlay chinlock, it’s clear that Booker has been fighting up and fighting up, and Booker fights up again and back elbows out of a super back suplex attempt, then hits a crossbody for two. Finlay tries a short-arm clothesline, but Booker ducks it, hits an axe kick, lands a back suplex, Spinaroonies up, hits a side kick, and lands a missile dropkick for three. Well, I liked what we got! Raven and Kanyon stop at a bank so that Raven can make a withdrawal. Raven gets ten thousand dollars in ones and ten thousand more dollars in big bills. Raven calls Kanyon a buffoon, which is a funny insult; Kanyon questions why Raven would get ten thousand in one dollar bills. Raven hits another aside at the camera. In Kanyon’s defense, I would have also questioned why you’d want that many ones at that time! Of course, I was a semi-innocent teenager, so maybe a legal adult like Kanyon should be able to better guess the uses of a lot of one dollar bills. Jimmy Hart takes a shit and demands that Bischoff put more toilet paper in stall number one, then cackles. The Faces of Fear come into the restroom as Hart leaves and take a couple of shits that, based on Bischoff's reaction, put Jimmy Hart’s shit to shame. Hogan the Elder calls Crush in and tells Crush to take control of the B-Teamers, but not to say anything about Hogan’s request. I think this whole thing just being Hogan the Elder stirring up shit makes the fact that Horace was genuinely touched by Hogan asking him to take the lead both surprisingly sad and also extremely hilarious. President of WCW Ric Flair comes to the ring to speak to Okerlund for yet another week. I think it’s dissonant that Okerlund starts by talking about how he saw Disco ready to go to town on Arn and give him the beating of a lifetime, but Flair isn’t upset or enraged. He’s just like WOOOOOOO MEAN BY GOD GENE and milks a bunch of cheers. Then he does his crazy old man dancing. I don’t think this is the right pitch for the promo, is it? I mean, the Wolfpac were implied to have whipped Arn just like they whipped David. Flair should be incensed, not WOOOOOING and trying to pop the crowd with dancing. Anyway, Flair makes a match for later tonight between the Outsiders and Mongo McMichael (in his final WCW match and appearance) and Flair himself. Then, he cuts a promo on Hogan the Elder and notes that there are only two more weeks until SuperBrawl. Oh, good, I should be through that show by some point next week. Flair threatens to strip naked. I really don’t like Flair’s promo bullshit where he stomps around and elbows the mat. 1999 even somehow ruined Ric Flair’s ability to cut an effective promo (though in fairness, the fans seem to like his antics). The final edict from Flair in this interview is that Hall’s not getting his U.S. title shot against the Hitman because Flair’s abusing his own power now! Flair also demands that Hart come to the ring and decrees that the Hitman will be defending his title tonight, injured or not, against a surprise competitor. The surprise is Rowdy FUCKING Roddy Piper. Holy fuck, I think we got all we needed out of Hitman/Piper back in 1992. There is ZERO need for this. You know what, though, it makes sense! They laid the groundwork for this! I can’t critique it on those merits. What I can critique is that Booker T. is very over and also has an existing beef with the Hitman, and maybe, just maybe, he needs the U.S. title and a win over Bret more than Roddy FUCKING Piper. Also, Will Sasso is in the front row. I have a vague memory of all this stuff now that I've seen Piper and Sasso and am pretty sure that Sasso gets involved. Torrie Wilson stinks, so while she acts in a way that some would consider “sultry,” but that I consider “annoying,” in this short sketch, let me point out to all the “Booker T. was never that good” truthers that even if you feel that way, this sort of thing is exactly why a lot of WCW fans were so vocal about him being underutilized. I just saw the crowd pop big for his taunts and comebacks against Finlay. Even if you’re not a huge fan of the guy, it’s still absurd that a hobbled, old Roddy Piper who doesn’t need the belt is going to get it. I didn’t initially remember Piper/Hart in WCW at all, but it’s obvious that he’s going to win. Because he needs the rub from beating the Hitman, I suppose. There’s a hype video to remind us of how good WCW’s tag title scene used to be even if it is the dirt worst in 1999. Hulk Hogan calls Stevie Ray in and pretends that he wants to promote Stevie to leadership of the B-Team…secretly, of course. I’d make a snarky comment about Hogan being unwilling to promote a black man, but it does seem like Hogan might kayfabe be into letting Virgil run the show over in B-Team land. It’s “Rockhouse,” so that means the B-Team! Can you believe how far the effect of that theme has fallen? It’s like if the glass shattered and then Dolph Ziggler walked out to Stone Cold Steve Austin’s music. Crush and Hogan the Younger are wrestling a match in this tag tournament against Barry Windham and Curt Hennig. They try to heat this thing up with a lot of lukewarm brawling, and Hennig is coming in firing punches , but it doesn’t really do much for me, and we go to a break after… …we see that the luchadors want some aftershave for their sensitive skin, but Bischoff is a bad restroom attendant. Windham’s got Horace in a Figure Four leglock when we get back. Horace is Just a Guy in Peril for this one. Tony S. tells us that both these teams are in the winner’s bracket, which sounds right. I think they’re both 1-0 or maybe one of them is 2-0. I find it more fun to contemplate these teams’ tournament records than to pay attention to this Hennig headlock. Horace breaks it up, the match breaks down again, and eventually Hennig drills Crush with a Perfect Plex for two. Horace breaks it up as Virgil comes to the ring. Crush and Horace hit Hennig with a spike piledriver, but Windham has the ref distracted. Crush is tired of waiting for the ref to come over to count the pinfall and stands Hennig up for a slapjack shot from Virgil, but Stevie Ray runs out, reclaims his slapjack, swings it, and badly misses Hennig and drills Crush. Hennig falls backward onto Crush and gets three, and the B-Teamers argue post-match. DUD. More Torrie. Who in the heck is she talking to behind that camera? Wait, seems like David Flair was paired with her on the show and maybe IRL. If it’s him, then, uh, are we getting a heel turn? Did Hogan and Zito entice David Flair by getting Torrie Wilson to date-and-or-fuck him? Most importantly, if I’m correct, then who the fuck was asking for a David Flair heel turn? Further, if I’m right, was I wrong about the double-turn? I know it happened. Did it happen in 2000 and not 1999, maybe? Or do the Flairs turn together somehow? So, Hogan the Elder calls Virgil in to make him the leader of the B-Team, and Virgil is hilarious when he hears that Hogan wants him to be the leader: “I’m the daddy.” Hogan the Elder responds, “You are the daddy” in a somewhat lascivious tone, kisses Virgil, and then disgustedly wipes his lips after Virgil leaves. I bet Hogan has a different set of teacups, plates, and forks in his cupboard for when Mr. T. visits for lunch. Bam Bam Bigelow (w/copy of USA Today that features Goldberg in front of Congress stumping for animal rights) has an interview in the ring with Gene Okerlund. There’s being pushed down the card and then there’s being rocketed down the card, and Goldberg is experiencing the latter. And it’s not like Goldberg got an insane amount of television time as the champ, either! Bammer’s happy to finally get his shot at Goldberg one-on-one when SuperBrawl comes along. Then, he does some old-fashioned heeling by noting that Goldberg was quoted in the article as saying that he’d get everyone in WCW to adopt an animal this year. The heeling part comes when Bammer says that he’ll be glad to throw a leash on Goldberg’s “old lady,” walk her, and feed her some Alpo. Yeah, those are fighting words! Goldberg comes down and tries to separate Bam Bam’s head from the rest of his body before security runs in to break it up. Most of the Nitro Girls dance. DDP hangs out in the back watching the routine and hanging out with the only Nitro Girl not a part of the routine to try and help ward off that creep Scott Steiner’s unwanted advances. Some lady yells at DDP a lot in a pre-tape. Rita something? Page’ll be on her show. Wayne from The Wonder Years is also there for some reason. I didn’t like this. Former WCW Tag Team Champion Kenny Kaos comes to the ring to face Page in a battle of former champions. Kaos gets a punch in, talks some shit, and gets destroyed almost casually by Page, who lets Kaos back in the ring instead of continuing to kill the guy. Page rolls until Kaos rolls himself, gets to the apron, and then hangs Page on the ropes when Page comes over to attack. Kaos hits his one good move, the springboard lariat, and takes over in a less good control segment because he used up his one good move. Page has one comeback aborted by a gutwrench powerbomb, but makes a second one with a discus clothesline that pretty much sticks. Page nails a diving Diamond Cutter from the second rope for the win. Raven and Kanyon walk through an artifact of past times known as a “mall,” where they hit up a Versace store. Kanyon pronounces it as VER-SAIS, to which Raven replies, “What a maroon.” We proceed to have a Looney Tunes short, as is appropriate for any sketch in which someone cuts that "what a maroon" line as an aside to the viewer. After a break, we get a montage of the hot spots that they hit (including one where lots of dollar bills are useful) before seeing Raven’s mom, none the wiser, tell Raven that WCW wants him to come back to work after they get home. Look, the WHAT A MARK GIF is classic, but this latest series of sketches was awful, just dire. They’ve entirely lost the plot on this Raven stuff, unless the goal was to suck all of Raven’s heel heat down a drain for no good reason. Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) seems to have regained his confidence, and also his senses, after he copped a beatdown from Scott Norton last week. They make Penzer give the Cat a custom introduction and then the Cat does the same thing he always does. I love the Cat, but man, this routine is old. The B-Team is watching in the back and tells Virgil that the Cat called him out in a B-Team version of the A-Teamers sending Scott Norton out there last week. B-Team shit is boring at this point, but Crush is oddly funny sometimes. He mumbles out a, “Where’s my aspirin?” after getting Virgil to go answer the challenge. Virgil walks out to defend his honor, but comes across Disco and tries to claim that the Cat is talking about Disco’s sister. While Disco is dumb, he’s not that dumb, so as it turns out, Virgil has to go out there himself so that he can save face. Virgil’s not really interested, but Sonny Onoo instigates things by shoving Virgil, and we get a match. I think the Cat’s going to cruise, but he tells Virgil PUT YOUR BOOT UP before a corner charge, so he does end up taking a handful of blows in there. Onoo and the Cat get their wires crossed, which doesn’t help matters for Miller, but Virgil is inept, so he ends up punting Virgil into the front row. After that random ringside brawl, Miller pretty much dominates. The Cat is in total control and goes up top, but Onoo gets on the apron to prematurely celebrate, and Virgil yanks Onoo into the ropes. That knocks the Cat off the ropes, and Virgil steals a three count. Scott Steiner harasses Kimberly as she goes to get in her car to leave the show, and Page jumps him. So, get this extremely dumb twist in this segment. Security, which always focuses on grabbing the babyface and letting the heel roam free in any dustup, grabs Page. Steiner gets in the car, and then in a hilarious spot (because of how poorly produced it is), peels off, flips a U-turn, and speeds back toward Page before Kimberly’s stunt double is pushed/dives out of the car. They do a quick switcharoo after the break so they can show Kim’s face, but the problem is that Kimberly’s moans of pain are clearly piped in from somewhere other than her body when the stunt double is laying there and covering half her face. WCW tries to be late ‘90s edgy and just ends up being entirely unserious. I think when it comes to “creepy former WCW tag team wrestler stalking tall brunette lady before abducting and abusing her in unnerving ways,” I liked it better when Satanic Undertaker kidnapped Stephanie McMahon and tried to have a demonic wedding and crucifixion with her. I mean, that was dumb too, but it worked somehow in that company at that time. Larry Z. combs his hair in the mirror of the restroom and lectures Bischoff in such a smarmy fashion that it almost makes Bischoff come off as sympathetic, especially because heel Bischoff has to turn off the water that ostensible babyface Larry Z. just leaves on. Bisch plans to bleach the floor at Larry Z.’s request, but he sniffs the bleach before pouring it in his bucket, which I assume means that someone is getting bleach to the face in the main event. Roddy Piper walks down here to face Bret Hart for the U.S. Championship. Bret tries to beg off, but it doesn’t work. Then, Piper and Bret proceed to have a mediocre match because Piper in 1999 is beyond bad. Furthermore, the desk talks about Bret Hart beating up Will Sasso on MAD TV, which is a thing I vaguely remember, and also, I vaguely remember Sasso getting into a WCW ring at some point. Eventually, Bret just crumples and sells his groin injury, and I don’t get why in kayfabe, Piper doesn’t just pop on a legbar and win this thing. Tony S. agrees with me. Anyway, Bret is faking and jumps Piper. There’s a commercial break. No need, we can just have a finish already. Back from break, this match continues to stink. I’ve never seen Bret have so many shitty matches before. He’s not even bad mechanically; he’s still got excellent timing and makes his work look good. But then again, how can anyone get invested in this nonsense booking? I understand why he’s going through the motions. That Bret/Sting match at Havoc ’98 was especially abject considering the hype I had for that theoretical matchup, and I at the very least hope we get a better Bret/Sting match in 1999. Bret chokes Piper with a cable in a shitty brawl, then attacks Will Sasso and yanks him over the rail. This SUCKS, man, it’s terrible television. Piper hits some of the worst offense I’ve seen in my life, offense that 1999 Virgil would be embarrassed to hit, and Sasso sips some water and only somewhat sells that attack. Then, because it’s WCW and we can’t have a “big” match without one, we get a ref bump. Piper gets a visual three on a small package, but the Hitman loads his fist and pops Piper one. Bret tries to revive the ref, but Sasso pulls on the ref’s leg and then suddenly lets go so that, much like letting go of your end of the tug-of-war rope that the other team is yanking on, the Hitman’s momentum stumbles him backward. In this case, the Hitman keeps stumbling backward and right into a Piper schoolboy for three. Looking at the Absolute Dirt Worst list I’ve made, Hulk Hogan needs to get busy if he wants to fend off Roddy Piper (who is making another appearance on the list after this match) for the title of “Most appearances on SmUgly’s Absolute Dirt Worst list.” Hogan’s got until 2000 to do it, and he's also got YAPAPI; THAT’S THE WALL, BROTHER; etc., so I still think he’s the favorite to be the single worst thing about Nitro-era WCW, but Piper is very effective at being awful in his short bursts of TV time, so we’ll see. Bischoff is a strong contender as well, now that I scan this thing again. The Outsiders (w/Disco Inferno) face Ric Flair and Mongo McMichael in the last match of the night. Hall does his whole shtick before the bell, but I can’t be mad: It is wildly over every week. Nash tosses in his catchphrases. People love to chant along with them. We get a break, then we come back and actually, I can’t get a break because Torrie Wilson is back on my screen. She has the person behind the camera sit down on the bed in the hotel room they’re in while she goes to freshen up in the bathroom. I want her to steal the cameraperson’s kidney. That would be a good twist. Not good enough to make up for having to watch this much Torrie Wilson, but still. Flair and McMichael storm down the aisle and clear the ring after a short brawl. Hall takes over when the match slows down and gets conventional, but they lose control when it degenerates into a brawl again. Hall and Flair really do have excellent chemistry in the ring. Even 1999 Hall and 1999 Flair are compelling in a nothing TV match like this one. This match is okay because Flair and Hall spend about four minutes of it having a good wrestling match. Nash and Mongo then tag in and have a beef-off. Yeah, this is decent. Now that Mongo’s on his way out, let me stop to speak his praises. He’s an awesome "meathead ath-a-lete" type, and now that Kevin Greene is also done with WCW, we’re not really getting that type of guy on WCW television anymore. I was surprised on my watch to see how much stuff with Mongo in it that I liked! He had a fun 1996, especially, but I also think that the Benoit/Mongo tag team had a lot of physical charisma and could have been a pretty great tag team. I’ve said before that if you send that team back to 1993/1994 WCW, you get a team that is fondly remembered as multiple-time tag champs by old wrestling fans. It’s a shame about all the coke! That’s what Bischoff basically says led him to not renewing Mongo’s contract. He points out that Mongo and Hall spent a ton of time together after the matches. Mongo and Hall in 1999? I guess I should say that it’s a shame about all the coke and all the brews. Anyway, Mongo’s FIP for a bit after an initial burst of power, but he gets a hot tag to Flair. Flair dominates Hall and pummels Nash’s junk before Nash can interfere. Flair locks the Figure Four on Hall, and that’s when we get a split screen in which we see Hogan the Elder grab a bucketful of bleach from Bischoff back in the bathroom. I award myself zero points for predicting the obvious. The first time Bisch pulled off a Chekhov’s Gun with a tool that he was using in his crappy job, it was exceedingly clever. Like everything else good that WCW does, though, they ran it into the ground. Hogan walks out and tosses the contents of the bucket right into Mongo’s face, leaving Flair ripe for the picking. Hogan prepares to whip Flair, but Flair escapes Hall and Nash by forearming them in their respective dicks. Disco tries to intervene, but Flair knocks him away. Goldberg runs down to back Flair up. Bam Bam runs down and is easily dispatched by Goldberg. Show over. I think the grind of these shows is that, in 1999, WCW has basically gone back to the same guys it was leaning on at the end of 1996: Hogan, Flair, Nash, Hall, Piper. Look, Nash, Hall, and Flair are all over. There is room for them on the card. Hell, if you very selectively deploy Hogan and Piper, you can get value out of them. But other than Goldberg, who is a bit de-pushed, but still out here mixing it up with main eventers at least, the show failed to elevate any of the new guys who got over in 1997 or 1998. Raven – de-pushed. Booker – treading water at best. Saturn – de-pushed. Jericho – de-pushed and about to leave the company. Giant – left the company. Eddy – injured, ready to leave the company. DDP – in an upper-midcard angle, but treading water from where it looked like he’d be after his Nitro match against Sting or his Havoc match against Goldberg. This show in particular was bad because it only had Raven and DDP on it of those wrestlers who naturally got over listed above. One was in a series of vignettes that finally went over the edge from “fun, but perplexing considering how over Raven was as a heel” to “bad.” The other was in a failed attempt at an Attitude-era type of storyline because Scott Steiner and creative are both dreadful right now. Anyway, Misterio Jr./Blitzkrieg and Finlay/Booker saved this show from dropping into the negatives or even being stuck at zero. 0.25 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. 2
SirSmUgly Posted June 7, 2024 Author Posted June 7, 2024 Thunder Interlude – show number fifty – 11 February 1999 "The WCW Gang has an incredibly dumb tag tournament scheduled in between a virtual replay of Nitro" Welcome to Thunder, where they’re going to make me re-live these Torrie Wilson blipmos (like a blipvert, but instead of blip + advert, it’s blip + promo)…I’ve decided to make blipmo a new vocabulary word in my own writing about pro wrestling…I hope this leaves you gruntled and that my writing remains telligible… The desk hypes SuperBrawl…This card should be aesthetically pleasing, at least…Even Flair/Hogan might have a little potential…They had a very good Clash match with Flair as the babyface in 1996…Then again, that was also almost three years ago… The Faces of Fear and Mike Enos/Bobby Duncum Jr. meet up in an eliminator match for the tag title tournament…Yep, these teams have both lost at least once…I’m pretty sure they’ve also wrestled each other like three or four times in this tournament…It’s total nonsense that it only took one match with a bunch of midcard lumberjacks for the Wolfpac to lose complete interest in destroying the tournament…WCW creative loves to not follow through with a bunch of the ideas they present…That’s why following through on that Hart/Piper stuff from months ago on Nitro is surprising in a good way, even if what was produced by following through stunk on ice… This match is below average, but it’s not the worst…Heenan does his whole “can’t stick to his pick for a winner” deal that I guess he has to do for this tournament since the World War 3 battle royale is dead…Also, anyone with braids (like Meng and Barb both have) has a “Whoopi Goldberg” look according to the Brain…Were there really that few people in pop culture rocking braids at the time?...There’s a sort of dull match, a commercial break, and I can’t say that Enos and Duncum aren’t trying…Duncum’s just not very good… I think we’ve also hit the point where Meng and Barb are just getting older and can’t go like they could in 1996…Barb is one of my favorite wrestlers and a guy who I think is very underrated…I feel like the Fatu/Barbarian Headshrinkers would have been a fun tag team if they hadn’t been ended so soon…Oh, by the way, remember how I talked about WCW remembering stuff from the past randomly?...Well, Barbarian and Jimmy Hart are still mad at Meng…Barb loads the boot and nails Meng from behind at Hart’s bidding…Enos and Duncum get a pinfall off that treachery…I enjoyed Barbarian/Meng at Road Wild ’98 well enough, but I’m not sure we need to return to that feud six months later… Now we’re getting the Raven/Kanyon blipmos from last Monday replayed as well…I’m not a fan of Thunder becoming a vehicle for replaying Nitro only a year into its existence…Poor, poor Thunder…It was a good, if uneven show in 1998…It deserves better… More Nitro replay stuff for various angles…WWF’s creative really has WCW’s creative scrambling to keep up…They run a string of these all in a row…It crosses multiple segments… Lash LeRoux’s sideburns being styled just like his “L/backwards-L” logo on his shirt is fucking amazing…I’m rooting for him to beat Super Calo just for that reason…LeRoux and Calo proceed to work their way right onto the Charming Uniquities list with this match, just like two oddballs of this type might be expected to do…Calo’s nutty ass hits a senton bomb to Lash on the floor…LeRoux gets the third in a series of chops blocked, so he hits an eye poke, dances, and spins his way into a successful lariat…They get the crowd engaged, actually…Y’know, maybe this should just go on the regular list…They worked in a way that got the quieted crowd going even if I wouldn’t call this match amazing…It’s hard to delineate the line between “not better than below-average, but engaging” and “at least average, and engaging”…Calo pulls off a nice double-springboard dropkick and signals that he’s going to finish it…However, LeRoux hops out of a fireman’s carry position and then puts Calo in that position himself before nailing a Whiplash for three…Yeah, that was just a good, entertaining match, not merely a Charming Uniquity… Glacier meets with Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo in the back…In a nice touch, Miller chastises Glacier for touching his very expensive shirt when Glacier pats his shoulder in friendship…Huh, Glacier wants to help Miller improve Miller’s intro, knowing a little something about bombastic intros himself…Glacier, in self-deprecation, makes fun of how long his promos ran before he debuted, but he gets sort of offended when Miller and Onoo laugh in agreement for a touch too long…Then, he says he’ll help Miller have a better intro in fitting with being “the greatest”…He does clarify “cash, no check,” however, in a very businesslike way…This was really funny, surprisingly…Then again, Glacier and Miller have both been funny before, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising to me… It's another tag tournament eliminator…Billy Kidman and Chavo Guerrero Jr. face Dave Taylor and Fit Finlay…This is pretty good, man…I also note that, even though the cheering is obviously juiced, the fans do dig Kidman and Chavo…If you took those guys back to 1984 and positioned them like the Fantastics or Rock ‘n Rolls, I bet they’d make all the money in the world as a regular babyface tag team…Kidman plays FIP, and they have a nice cutoff where Kidman boots away from a Finlay attack and then splatters himself on the mats outside the ring when he tries a crossbody near the ropes, but Finlay ducks…Kidman basically has to survive…Kidman dodges a shoulderblock in the corner and gets Chavo to come in and help him…Chavo hits a Superman Punch, then slams Finlay so that Kidman can hit an SSP…Taylor trips Kidman after the ref shoos Chavo out of the ring…Finlay gets a chair while Taylor is admonished by the ref…Chavo goes up and dropkicks Finlay into Kidman…Finlay’s momentum helps him bash Kidman in the head with the chair…Finlay dispatches of Chavo and hits an already KO’d Kidman with a Tombstone for three…That was another good match, even with the convoluted finish and weak momentum chair shot… Glacier tries to hock his old shoulderpads…Onoo doesn’t want them, but he redirects their purchase to Kaz Hayashi, who is walking by, at an upcharge (unbeknownst to the English speakers in the area, since he addresses Kaz in Japanese) so he can skim the extra cash off the top when he makes the exchange…Poor Kaz, always being treated like a doofus…However, the comedy was again pretty good in this segment…Though why would Kaz trust Onoo enough to even speak with him in kindness at this point in their shared history?... After some more Nitro recap on either side of a break, Disco Inferno dances out to challenge Chris Adams…Disco eats quite a bit of Adams offense after slapping him disrespectfully…He does hit the second-rope elbow after a lot of grooving, though, which should tell you that there are levels to these wrestlers, and Disco is high above Adams...We cut away from this to watch Glacier et al. negotiate in the back for some reason…What the hell?!...See, WCW always fucks things up by taking them too far…And the shame is that Miller buys Glacier's helm, but only if Glacier throws in the blue eye…So Glacier literally pops the contact right out of his eye then and there and also tosses in one free bottle of saline solution to boot…Funny as heck, actually, but why is it plunked in the middle of this match?...Just cut some of this Torrie or Raven stuff we already saw to fit this segment in properly, maybe place the blipmo reruns on SN instead if you want to put it on a pointless show… Back to the match, we see an oddly competitive battle…It’s Chris Adams in 1999, this should have been over a couple minutes ago…The match is fine, though. Adams hits a powerbomb and loads up for a superkick…Disco yanks Charles Robinson into Adams’s path and Adams comes to a stip…Then, Disco hits Adams with a Chartbuster after Adams pulls Robinson to safety…OK, let’s talk about how dumb this finish is…First off, Disco grabbed the ref and yanked him…That should be a DQ win for Adams…Second, why does Disco need referee subterfuge to beat 1999 Chris Adams?...He’s been established as a guy who can win matches against lesser talent…Even if you claim that Disco is distracted because he’s feeling himself, which happens, not all of the match was worked in that way…Disco should have missed that second rope elbow that he danced before dropping, for example, if that was how Disco was supposed to be working it…Yuck…WCW can’t even get basic finishes right to nothing TV matches… Gene Okerlund stirs up trouble by talking to Billy Kidman after he's lost that tag match and claiming that Chavo Jr. let Kidman down…Kidman reasonably says that they’re just not a regular tag team and they’re still learning…Okerlund doesn’t let it go and claims that Chavo is trying to undermine Kidman…I think Gene Okerlund (kayfabe?) just doesn’t like any of the Mexican wrestlers…I guess he’s right about Chavo this time because Chavo hits a heel turn by clotheslining Kidman and claiming that Kidman dropped the ball…First off, Chavo was well over as a midcard babyface coming out of the Eddy feud and then lost, lost, and lost again before turning heel here…Second off, the turn came out of nowhere because unlike what Okerlund was saying, it didn’t look at all in either of these matches like Chavo was even remotely teasing a heel turn…This was shit… Blipmo replays…Nitro replays…I don’t think we needed to see this long a chunk of the Piper/Hart match, but look, I don’t make the production and formatting decisions…If I did, this show would be a lot better…Then we get some “Hulk Hogan playing the B-Teamers against one another” blipmos…Oh my goodness, this is such a bad format for this program…I’m trying to suspend my disbelief, but both Raven’s mom and all the B-Teamers should be pissed at both Raven and Hulk after seeing the Nitro replay or this Thunder…Hell, Raven’s mom should have heard him say SHE’S NOT TOO BRIGHT, IS SHE to the camera as he walked away… Hey, look, a wrestling thing that’s actually part of the current show!...Van Hammer is out to face Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko…So this is a third eliminator match in the tag title tournament, but rather than Wrath, Van Hammer is tagging with Kaz Hayashi all of a sudden…Of course he is…WCW, there’s still time to course correct and have Van Hammer and Juventud Guerrera tear up the tag ranks!...OK, OK, I’ll let that fantasy booking idea go…I just realized that the two losing tag teams tonight have broken up after being eliminated…I fear for poor Kaz’s safety…You know, if Wrath were out here, he could give Hammer a Meltdown after Hammer loses the pinfall…That would have made the cipher complete…This match is not as good as I’d hope considering the participants…The opening is especially dull…Kaz eventually falls to a Crippler Crossface... So, I think we’re getting a sense of what the tournament looks like…Hennig and Windham have won enough that they’re already in the finals, awaiting an opponent to make it out of the losers’ bracket…Horace and Crush, Benoit and Malenko, Finlay and Taylor, and Enos and Duncum Jr. are the four teams left in that part of the bracket…OK, at least I can finally make sense of this stupid-ass tournament’s basic structure… We had a run of two very good TV matches on this thing, an oasis in a sea of dumb heel turns and repeats of stuff that aired on Nitro and wasn’t any good then, either…Can you believe that Lash LeRoux and Super Calo were a key part of why this Thunder ended on the positive side of the ledger?!...WOO…
SirSmUgly Posted June 8, 2024 Author Posted June 8, 2024 (edited) Show #179 – 15 February 1999 “The one that looks at the Fingerpoke of Doom Nitro's level of quality and takes it as a challenge” Tony S. starts talking immediately about Kimberly’s condition (only mildly fucked up, off somewhere healing) and doesn’t give me any time to gather my thoughts. Said thoughts: Flair’s about halfway through his presidency now, and I still have the niggling sense in the back of my memory that he goes insane with power and turns heel by the time it’s over. We cut away from the Nitro Girls dancing to see Arn chase down Disco in the back (Disco: “It was a misunderstanding!”) and prepare to beat him with a tire iron. Since Arn is a babyface, security is incredibly effective at stopping him before he can do that, and they cart him off in cuffs. Unless we’re getting an Arn/Disco match, this seems a waste of television time. Flair left a camera in the back of his own limo to get video of Eric Bischoff loading Flair’s bags. Flair’s aiming to keep an eye on that wily Bischoff this week. OK, what dumb thing is Bischoff going to do this week so that instead of being humiliated, he somehow gets one over on the babyfaces again? After the Nitro intro, we get Steiner/Kimberly recap and Piper/Hart recap. Unsurprisingly, this show is a bummer so far. Roddy Piper will face Scott Hall in a U.S. title match at SuperBrawl. I have absolutely no idea what to think about that matchup. It’s probably going to be bad, but there’s a glimmer of hope that it ends up being something strangely charming. Saturn fills a dress out pretty well for a dude. He just wanted to do this gimmick because he really wanted to use LIFE’S A DRAG as a catchphrase. I know it. Saturn faces former Starrcade participant Jerry Flynn. Tony S.’s sheet says that Mike Enos and Scotty Riggs are still alive in the tag titles tournament. Tenay corrects Tony S. that it’s Bobby Duncum Jr., not Riggs, teaming with Enos. Five minutes later, someone else passes Tony S. a note that I guess he didn’t get in the pre-show production meeting which alerts him that Duncum didn’t make the show and that Riggs is subbing for him tonight. Tony S. and Tenay both look like doofuses. I blame Craig Leathers somehow. The match, yeah, you were maybe wondering about how that went. It was fine. Flynn pulls up Saturn’s dress, who doesn’t appreciate the disrespect; Saturn gets fired up and dominates with some pretty good legwork and a lot of strikes. Flynn makes a comeback that goes on for longer than it should because he’s a jobber and Saturn is a solid midcarder. Flynn’s stuff is inconsistent; some of it looks light as a feather, and some of it looks okay. Maybe they should have had Saturn get fired up after Flynn lifted his dress later in the match because that was where the majority of the energy in the crowd spiked during this contest. Saturn’s spot where he flips his dress over his opponent’s head and then does ten punches in the corner is over, though. Then, fucking Scott Dickinson comes out of the crowd and gets on the apron so that Jericho can try to attack Saturn from the ref's blind side. Jericho fails – he gets suplexed – but Flynn hits a roundhouse kick on a distracted Saturn for three. *sigh* Flair talks to some dudes in suits in the limo. He talks up Tampa like it’s Miami and not Tampa. Flair gets a call about Arn getting hauled off after trying to assault Disco in the back. That’s it. That’s the promo. I long for the reign of Vince Russo. I yearn for it. Not because it’ll be any good, but because it gets us that much closer to post-Hogan, post-Bischoff WCW. There’s a Wolfpac/Rey and Konnan feud hype video. *sigh*, let’s just hurry up and get this unmasking over and done with already. Let’s stop watching footage of the current shitty Nitro and instead watch footage of the shitty Nitro from a week ago. We see the end of the main event, and the end of Mongo’s WCW run, with the bleach bath and Flair and Goldberg and all that. We go back to the limo so that Flair can continue talking to someone on the other side of the phone about this Arn thing. The other guys in suits do some terrible acting and ask about why the road is so bumpy. I guess Bisch is driving Flair out into the middle of nowhere. Let me guess: He drives Flair into the woods, where a bunch of nWo members are meeting around a campfire to have a big babyface beatdown in a place other than the arena. Yep, Bischoff talks to someone on the phone and pretty much gives that plot beat away in his half of the conversation. I’m at the point where I can solidly say that I think Bischoff/Flair is a worse feud than Benoit/Sullivan. At least the latter had that wild Benoit/Woman vs. Sullivan/Jackie tag match. That was a near-masterpiece, man, I loved the hell out of that match. Oh, thank goodness, something that I’m probably going to enjoy. It’s a trios tag: Juventud Guerrera, Psicosis, and Blitzkrieg face Super Calo, Hector Garza, and El Dandy. At this point, “having a good match full of spots for the sake of it” is welcome. Meanwhile, Tony S. promotes a Bret Hart/Will Sasso match for later tonight. Nope, not gonna let that get me down! I’m going to try and enjoy this match! Blitzkrieg and Calo have a subdued opener against one another. That’s cool. I get it, we need to build to the high spots. A pocket in the crowd is impatient and chants BO-RING. Man, let them ramp it up slowly, pocket in the crowd. But in fairness to them, I do think the ramping up is okay at best; it takes a couple of minutes before Psicosis does a sweet-looking counter in which he launches Garza into the air before crotching him. Juvi and Dandy kick the speed up a notch and look fantastic in there with all the counter wrestling they do. Juvi gets everyone fired up with a facebuster counter, gets the crowd hyped, and then immediately blows a bulldog. It was the wrestling equivalent of watching a balloon deflate. Juvi ends up as FIP, but actually, there’s a lot not to love about this match. Questionable timing, Garza pushing Juvi back into his own corner to whip him, stuff like that. Then again, there are things that work; after Juvi was triple-stomped behind the ref’s back, the crowd pops big for Juvi’s team doing the same to Garza a couple of minutes later. This is a long match with a commercial break in it, and actually the only thing that I like about what WCW is doing to try and compete with the WWF at this point: They have multiple longer matches in contrast to the WWF’s typical two-minute specials that punctuate RAWs full of talking and sketches. The match has cooled back down when we come back, and after a Juvi springboard dropkick, he and Dandy square off again. They trade moves and misses; Juvi sells a knee injury after one top-rope miss, and Dandy and his team members target the knee a bit. Gonna be honest, I’m bummed with how little Blitzkrieg we’ve gotten in this thing. We have like seven months of this guy, let’s let him cut loose a bit more. I don’t know, this match hasn’t been bad, but it’s been squarely mediocre outside a couple of nice spots (like this combo powerbomb/guillotine legdrop combo from Psicosis and Juvi that I just saw happen). Okay, the downside to multiple long matches is that many of them, especially on Thunder, but also on Nitro, feel like they’re going on too long. There’s a lot of filler in some of these matches. It also probably doesn’t help that a lot of these matchups lack any heat. Juvi is way off tonight and next fucks up a dive, but finally Blitzkrieg gets in and fires off some incredible offense before landing a corkscrew moonsault on Calo for three. Blitzkrieg did look like a star, but we could have done that as part of a better match that was also not full of dull filler. Torrie Wilson shows up wearing only a towel in a hotel room and demands food from the doofus behind the camera. A very loud helicopter tracks Flair’s limo from above, which is followed by a handful of black Hummers filled with nWo members. This is incredibly stupid. They had to light this deeply dumb segment with a fucking helicopter and a spotlight so that it could be seen on television. Do you know how contrived this all feels? I never asked myself where Austin got a beer truck. I just assumed some friend with a distribution center in the same city as the arena let him borrow one because he wanted to see some fuckery. Anyway, Flair gets beaten to shit in the middle of this field. Vince McMcMahon Jr. probably watched this angle on a monitor backstage and laughed because it’s prime evidence of what we all know: Bischoff isn’t nearly talented or creative enough to play Vinnie Jr.’s game. I guess part of the show is lost to time because we come back in media res as Fit Finlay and Dave Taylor work over FIP Dean Malenko while a notice scrolls that the WWE Network did the best they could, man, this is as much show as they could give us. I thank them for not torturing me with more of this show than is necessary to see. Anyway, the winner of this match moves one match closer to coming out of the losers’ bracket in the tag titles tournament and the loser goes home. But only until next week, when they fly out for another show. And maybe some of them will be at Thunder, which should be live this week. This crowd is not enjoying the match – they chant BO-RING during the part of the FIP segment that we see – but I don’t blame them. I get their restlessness. Most of this show has been sketches set outside of the arena and replays of past sketches, and each match has been overlong. They get fired up for Malenko’s hot tag to Benoit. They get fired up for pacey in-ring action, generally. That and dress-assisted ten-punch spots. Benoit avoids a Finlay Tombstone when Malenko dropkicks him in the back and topples him over onto Finlay. Malenko tags back in for some reason and takes a beating, but in a neat finish, he traps Taylor and tries to turn him over for a Texas Cloverleaf. Taylor resists, so Benoit goes up a drops a headbutt, which stuns Taylor and allows Malenko to turn Taylor the rest of the way and get a submission. Tony S. says that Malenko and Benoit are doing double duty and facing Mike Enos and Scotty Riggs later tonight to see who goes on in the tournament. What? When exactly did Enos and Riggs (or Duncum Jr.) defeat Horace Hogan and Crush, who should still be in this tournament? Did Horace and Crush just give up their spot in the tournament or what? What is wrong with this company?! Tell a consistent story for once! Recap, recap, recap. You know, I did not remember WCW having a DDP/Scott Steiner feud until late 2000/early 2001. Well, that and the whole backstage fight that Page badly lost. No wonder that I didn't remember this one, though. It’s very bad. The desk hangs out with four Nitro Girls. Spice cuts a pretty good promo after Tony S. asks her about how they’re feeling about Kimberly, though! Then, Whisper hams it up by fake crying as she talks about Kimberly calling them that day to inspire them, and that’s some pro wrestling-ass shit right there. You know what, I enjoyed that. They both cut better promos than 75% of the roster. Well, look, we’re getting a Bret Hart versus Will Sasso (w/Debra Wilson) match next. I care about this next segment roughly as much as the Hitman does. At least someone taught Sasso to take a clean back bump, though. I’m somewhat impressed. Not that impressed, but somewhat impressed. Anyway, for some reason, Debra Wilson cuts a heel turn and beats Sasso with a chair, then Bret locks on a Sharpshooter in the ring for a win. I don’t understand anything that happened in this match, and I won’t respond to it. The Wolfpac shows up to the arena in the Hummers. Great. They wander out so that Hogan the Elder can steal Kevin Nash’s catchphrase and then cut a terrible promo. He says that he’ll give Flair one shot at the title tonight, which the crowd cheers for, but they haven’t seen the dreadful sketches we have, so boy will THEY be disappointed! Hogan counts Flair out since Flair’s nowhere near the arena; that complete dolt of a ref Billy Silverman assists in the count. Hogan and Silverman get to eight before being cut off by – oh no – Roddy Piper’s theme. Is this 1996? Or 1997? Or am I burning in the fiery pits of wrestling hell? Piper calls Hogan “baldy,” but unfortunately, that doesn’t convince Hogan and Bischoff to leave the company. Piper’s trying to get over this “reality check” deal and is still the Commissioner of WCW somehow? Someone get me a kayfabe organizational chart for WCW. Anyway, he uses his power to make a World title match between himself and Hogan for right now. Said match is a stink bomb. Piper dominates with terrible-looking offense. Hogan counters with terrible-looking offense. Hogan hits a boot choke and I check how long is left in this show. Thirty-six minutes. Woof. These fellas are gassed as fuck, so they go into the finish, which is Piper locking on a sleeper and then Hall running down to save Hogan by tazing Piper. The rest of the nWo comes to the ring and loiters while Hogan yells into the camera. Man, this was a complete black hole of television. One funny thing happens; Hall puts on Piper’s kilt, then curtsies and blows kisses to the crowd. What a goof. But yeah, not funny enough to be worth enduring that segment. OK, so someone in a cowboy hat drives out to the field and drags Flair’s limp body into his truck, ostensibly to get him some help. It’s too dark to see who it is. It's just...some guy in a cowboy hat. Why is there a camera still out here? Flair requests a trip to the Tampa Fairgrounds, where the show is. We come back from break to some dude announcing that Scott Steiner is suing DDP for the fight from last Monday. Did we need this addition to an already shitty angle? Is there no bottom? How can they make this garbage feud even worse? Luger and Liz cut a weak promo on Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan in a classic nWo-style commercial. It’s yet another video recap, this time surrounding the recent nonsense with the U.S. title. We’ve already had one recap that covered Piper/Hart, and now we’re seeing it again as part of this slightly different recap meant to help quickly build Hall/Piper at SuperBrawl out of nothing in only six days. Mike Enos and Scotty Riggs have always been a tag team in this tournament, and we have always been at war with Eurasia. Why do you question either of these things? Enos and Riggs face Benoit and Malenko after having dispatched of Crush and Horace in a hard-fought battle with that wild finish where Enos hit a jumping piledriver on Horace through a table. You know the match, we all saw it. It definitely happened. Anyway, Spring Stampede ’99 was in my neck of the woods, Tacoma, and Tony S. mentions a Nitro Girl meet-and-greet in Federal Way. That’s not a very nice place to send a Nitro Girl! Seriously, could we not have Horace and Crush beat Enos and Riggs to open tonight’s show (before they hustled away to help beat up Flair) and then lose cleanly to Benoit and Malenko on Thunder? Seriously?! I guess we can’t have the Horsemen get one over on the nWo ever, not even once. Not even on a couple of lukewarm B-Teamers. This match is fine. It exists as a match that neither offends nor inspires. Malenko plays FIP again, but I think probably Benoit is better in that role. Benoit is also better in the hot tag role because Benoit is way better than Malenko, but I think the match is better if Malenko’s the hot tag because he’s much better at that than he is at being in peril. At a break in the match, Tex in the Cowboy Hat or whoever the fuck this guy is hoses down his radiator while an injured Flair struggles out of his passenger-side seat and topples over. They’re at a gas station called the NEON COWBOY. The neon sign is the best thing about this random angle so far. Tex in the Cowboy Hat hoists Flair back into the truck and drives on. Back from break, now Riggs is getting ponderously clubbered in the corner. Enos gets in and hits a powerslam on a diving Malenko. Then, he celebrates and tags Scotty Riggs back in. That right there is why the Beverlys never won the tag titles – bonehead shit, Enos. And indeed, Riggs eventually gets caught in a flash Crippler Crossface and taps. Tony S. says that we’ll see Benoit and Malenko on Thunder, so will they face Horace and Crush then? And if so, why? That makes no sense. Boy, I can only imagine how dumb this bracket looks. I can’t wait to see if it matches what I envisioned after I finish SuperBrawl. Torrie Wilson very unsexily propositions the guy behind the camera, but only after the guy (girl? NB?) behind the camera promises to meet some people that they promised they’d meet or whatever. Yeah, this is a honey pot situation. A very boring honey pot situation. Why in fuck is Hulk Hogan back out here? Oh, so we can do this Hogan/Flair farce again? Great, wonderful, they even paid Buffer for this. Hogan talks some more and sounds like the complete bum that he is. He starts a twenty-count for Flair to get out here, but Tex in the Cowboy Hat pulls up to the arena and Flair stumbles out of the cab, grabs an axehandle from the truck bed, and makes it to the ring before twenty because Hogan stops counting at random intervals for some reason. This is the dumbest shit I’ve seen in a long time. Who the fuck sent Tex out there to find Flair? I don’t assume that the business guys Flair was in the limo with (and who scattered at Hogan's behest when they stopped the limo) would have done it. They’d have called the cops. The Hogan Family (snerk) talks about how Flair smells like cow poo while Hogan the Elder fake laughs in the ring because why not make this show just a little bit worse if you can? I mean, it’s already one of the worst wrestling shows I’ve seen in my life, genuinely, so why not risk it all and be as dreadful as possible? Benoit and Malenko run down to help Flair and get their asses kicked. Flair eats his fifteenth beatdown of the night. The crowd chants listlessly for Goldberg for a minute, but – silly geese! – that would entail a babyface coming down and helping another babyface stand strong to end the night, and this is WCW! Fuck the babyfaces! I deeply loathed this Nitro. It was bad in small ways. It was bad in big ways. Almost nothing was enjoyable. It had no good wrestling matches. It only had three matches end cleanly. Fucking Spice and Whisper had the best promos on this thing! What the fuck! Anyway, even though the Fingerpoke of Doom episode of Nitro was basically the “Here’s why Nitro got cancelled in a single example episode” and should probably have the lowest score of the bunch, this Nitro was so bad, so illogical, so devoid of anything that could be considered a joyous celebration of what is wonderful about pro wrestling, that I think it’s got to be the new low scorer of the bunch. It’s going to take some real effort from Russo to totally blow away the awfulness that is either this or the Fingerpoke of Doom Nitro. -27.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. Edited August 26, 2024 by SirSmUgly 1 1
caley Posted June 9, 2024 Posted June 9, 2024 This was one of the worst Nitros I can remember (Even the nWo takeover episode with 40+ minutes of set construction and lazy promos might be better and I kinda didn't mind the fingerprint Nitro at the time) But I remember even as a devoted wrestling fan who put up with A lot of unbelievable shit (Undertaker buried alive, PapaShango voodoo curses, Val Venis almost getting circumcised), THIS was the show where I thought "I'm having a hard time buying this" That 1. You could beat a guy half to death outside of a wrestling setting and not face any kind of criminal charges 2. It was so poorly conceived and hard to watch with the helicopter lighting and no commentary that it was the most boring, lengthy, near-fatal wrestling beating ever and 3. That Flair, who is already very old at the point, gets assaulted by a massive gang of wrestlers for an interminable amount of time and gets back up and fights on. Somehow, in all of this, I had forgotten the random friendly cowboy! 2
SirSmUgly Posted June 9, 2024 Author Posted June 9, 2024 (edited) 12 hours ago, caley said: ) But I remember even as a devoted wrestling fan who put up with A lot of unbelievable shit (Undertaker buried alive, PapaShango voodoo curses, Val Venis almost getting circumcised), THIS was the show where I thought "I'm having a hard time buying this" This really is what I hope I'm getting at when I write about this. I'm not saying that the WWF didn't do wild stuff that was unbelievable, but somehow, all this unbelievable stuff fit into their shows. WCW has never been like that. WCW is the "legit competition" show. This is why whenever they'd go out and get someone in Robocop armor to show up, people noticed (in a bad way). Meanwhile, I watched a PPV where the Undertaker's soul escaped an urn and floated up to the top of the arena while his disembodied voice said that I WILL NEVER REST IN PEACE, and after two seconds of thinking that was a bit much, I quickly turned to thinking about when the Undertaker would come back and get revenge. I loved the Papa Shango voodoo curses. Not just "dumb kid" me, either. Shango setting dudes on fire with fire paper and making people ooze black blood is cornball shit, but also, in the world of the WWF, I could suspend disbelief because that world had me primed for it. Per Nitro specifically, Bischoff started trying to tell show-long stories across multiple segments at the end of 1998. WWF did that too, and they had the invisible cameraman doing things like, say, tracking visitors to Mr. McMahon's hospital room. But because WWF had established that trope so solidly of the invisible cameraman, and because they applied the trope with consistency, most people just shrugged it off and enjoyed the story. WCW did not do it consistently. Heck, just on this show, they have one not-invisible cameraman talking to Torrie Wilson and then another invisible cameraman tracking Ric Flair getting beaten up in the middle of a random field on the outskirts of Tampa. They're not laying down a consistent narrative about the floating cameraman that they need to do BEFORE they change it up and do something different with it. Back when they started this roving cameraman thing, they explicitly had Mike Tenay and a cameraman follow the Wolfpac around town as reporters riding shotgun. That made sense, and more importantly, it also set a tone for how WCW would handle these things - in a realistic manner, using Tenay or someone else as a roving reporter, no invisible cameraman. Then four months later, we've got the invisible cameraman, except when they're not invisible because they're being honey-potted by Torrie. This is WCW's problem in 1999. They just throw shit at the wall without stopping to think about laying out a consistent approach to their shows first. EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention that not telling the commentators a single damned thing about what the heck was going on with those Flair or Torrie vignettes and having commentary no-sell them like they haven't even seen them is incredibly stupid, but I also have written about that in the upcoming Thunder review, so I don't want to belabor the point. But what the heck is up with Bischoff-era WCW falling in love with the viewer being able to see things that people on the actual show somehow do not? It's not just everyone at home seeing Warrior in the mirror except for Bischoff. It's also everyone at home seeing Torrie seduce someone who is holding a camera, but not commenting on it even once. Edited June 9, 2024 by SirSmUgly 4
zendragon Posted June 9, 2024 Posted June 9, 2024 One of the reason Goldberg wasn't around a ton was because we was filming Universal Solider 1
SirSmUgly Posted June 9, 2024 Author Posted June 9, 2024 Thunder Interlude – show number fifty-one – 18 February 1999 "The WCW Gang tries to improve the SuperBrawl go-home stretch after the worst Nitro yet" I don’t know, everyone…This is the worst stretch of WCW television yet during the Nitro era…It’s got me longing for the build to Road Wild ’98…OK, not really, that build was just about as terrible…However, it certainly has me feeling like my complaints about angles to nowhere in 1997 or early 1998 were really just mild annoyances in comparison… Yep, Crush and Horace are facing Benoit and Malenko…What a baffling bracket…It would be wise for Benoit and Malenko to win the titles at SuperBrawl, but this is WCW, so who knows… Tony S. hypes Goldberg being on the Tonight Show and making a blockbuster challenge…Then, we cut to Stevie Ray trying to sell Booker T. on B-Team membership…Booker prefers to wait for membership in a more elite group, maybe say like M.I.A….Book argues with Stevie and claims that Stevie is just Hulk Hogan’s bag carrier, his gimmick carrier, his Brutus Beefcake, if you will…Disco Inferno cuts in and says that if Stevie’s getting back together with Booker, then that leaves a spot in the B-Team for him…Stevie and Booker both tell Disco to bug off, so, in an example of edgy comedy that actually works, Disco responds with OH WHAT, IS THIS A BROTHER THING?...Now, that is how you use double meaning to tell a joke…Booker immediately chokes out Disco…Huh, that was alright… It’s another one of these Torrie Wilson blipmos…Camera doofus silently hands Torrie a taser that they apparently got from Scott Hall…Torrie, also a doofus, dicks around with the taser… Hey, it’s another rerun of these FUCKING Raven/Kanyon blipmos from TWO MONDAYS AGO…Fuck right off a cliff, WCW… The Wolfpac theme hits…Everyone in the crowd, expecting Hall or Nash, cheers…Disco dances out to the theme…The crowd, feeling ripped off, boos vociferously…Disco rips off Kevin Nash’s catchphrase, but he does it because he’s trying to get booed, not because he’s trying to get cheered like Hogan the Elder is when he rips it off…Disco introduces Scott Hall, wearing a kilt and walking out to Piper’s music…Disco loves his double meanings because he introduces Hall simply as the “Rowdy Scot[t]”…Hall takes the mic and promos…He talks about Disco/Booker, which I forgot is happening at SuperBrawl, and then talks about Piper…Disco also speaks about how much better he thinks he is than Booker…It’s mostly all whatever…I do love how patronizing Hall is about Disco’s dopey trash talk, though…Production is unsure when Hall is supposed to stop talking…These shows have had an increasing amount of timing issues on the production side since the start of the year… Speaking of M.I.A., they PRE-EXPLODE as Chavo Guerrero Jr. faces Lash LeRoux. Now, Chavo just recently turned heel, but he slaps the fans’ hands as he comes out…I guess LeRoux is a heel, too?...By the way, is it not odd that Billy Kidman actually got over and then mostly has disappeared from television in the past three or four weeks?...I’m not a fan of the guy, but that’s strange…Chavo’s getting his shot at the Cruiserweight title against Kidman at SuperBrawl, which is going to be decent at the very least…We leave this match to see Lex Luger and Liz taunt Rey Misterio Jr. from the backseat of their limo in the parking lot…What in the fuck, I wanted to see this match…OK, in a moment that is embarrassing for everyone involved, Liz gets out of the limo and Rey runs up and kicks the door shut on Luger and then yells THUG LIFE…Rey better get on with that stupid-ass shit…What a cornball… Hey, it sure is nice of WCW to show us a fucking wrestling match instead of a stupid segment in which everyone involved sounded dumb…What we get is fine, but this show has destroyed its own format trying to do what the WWF is doing…LeRoux makes a comeback after a long period of Chavo control…He gets caught up top, and Chavo hangs him upside down and punches LeRoux until Charles Robinson DQs him…*sigh*…Chavo tosses Robinson aside, and Kidman runs down and attacks Chavo, who bails…Kidman follows, and in a neat spot, Chavo boots Kidman and then whips him into LeRoux, still hanging there in the Tree of Woe…Then, Chavo uses the ring stairs to hit a Tornado DDT…Chavo rules, as always… Man, these specific Raven and Kanyon blipmos from two weeks ago were generally a failure after the first time they were shown…We’re on show number three where they’re re-running them…Speaking of reruns, here’s the Flair/Bischoff/limo thing…They spent a whole chunk of time showing Flair get monotonously beaten down under a shaky helicopter spotlight in that last Nitro…It went on for what felt like years….I would compare it unfavorably to the Nitro (Show #46) where Hall and Nash beat the shit out of like ten guys in the back with baseball bats before Nash lawn darted Rey into the side of the trailer…That was a long segment with lots of downtime, but it was mind-blowingly good…This Flair beatdown was the opposite of that…It was meant to be shocking, but instead was interminably boring…I also want to note that not telling commentary what the hell was going on was such a poor choice…They were confused about why Flair was stumbling around injured when he showed up at the arena later that night…They have zero credibility when they sound like morons who haven't seen anything that's happened on their own show... Man, there were like eight minutes of recaps and such…Then to top it all off, I get the Wheatley Vodka ad that I hate…OK, drink your Wheatley neatly, just leave me alone…I don’t think there’s any vodka good enough to get me to drink it neat…Brandy, yeah…Vodka, no… Crush and Hogan the Younger cut a crappy pre-match promo on pre-tape…The match against Benoit and Malenko is our main event, probably…I do note that WCW actually gives the tiniest effort at properly doing the double-elimination deal because Benoit and Malenko or Crush and Horace will have to beat Windham and Hennig twice at the PPV to win the gold since Windham and Hennig haven’t lost yet… Chris Jericho is out, but there’s no Ralphus… Jericho grabs a mic and craps on Saturn a bit…Jericho wants to show us what a man should look like if he's wearing a dress…Oh boy, here comes Ralphus…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…Ralphus is dressed like a seventy-year-old church lady…He holds a card that says JERICHO COLLECTION as he models it and as Jericho comments on his ensemble…It’s not too late, Bischoff, promise Jericho a mega-push, maybe he'll stay!...Give him four times what Vinnie’s offering him!...Jericho calls Saturn a “knobby-kneed, cross-eyed freak”…This was absurd in the best of ways…Juventud Guerrera hits the ramp to face Jericho…The camera cuts to Ralphus, who poses…This dude is killing me…We unfortunately take a commercial break like thirty seconds after the match starts… We come back and Jericho tries to force Juvi to kiss Ralphus…Ralphus looks like he’s into it!...Juvi escapes because he’s avoidant attachment and is afraid to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to him…The break didn’t help this match, but the fuckery is great and Juvi and Jericho do a bunch of solid counter-wrestling, so I enjoy it…Jericho blocks a rana attempt and dumps Juvi down into a Walls of Jericho…Juvi reaches for the ropes, but can’t get there and has to tap… It’s so obvious that they should still be investing significant TV time in Jericho…He’s exactly the type of performer (huge personality, can do legitimately funny wrestling comedy, solid enough in ring to have good big-time matches) that would actually help WCW match what the WWF’s strength is, which is wrestlers of exactly that type…I wonder what we’d all think of Jericho if, say, he had fusion surgery at the end of the aughts and didn’t wrestle between like 2009 and 2018…I’m certain his rep would be more in line with what it probably should be if he was forced out and couldn’t stay too long at the table…It would also help current-day Jericho to recognize that he’s not a main event level talent with even the thimbleful of athleticism that he was able to scoop together in his twenties… Was I wrong about Buff Bagwell being a good heel?...I remembered him as a fantastic heel…I still remember digging Totally Buff…Let’s see if that holds up for me…Buff announces that he has his doctor's release to wrestle again…Then, he announces Scott Steiner’s arrival…Steiner asserts that while DDP has many fans in this arena, they are far too low on the socioeconomic scale to suit his tastes…Then, he proposes that if he wins their SuperBrawl match, he gets thirty days with DDP’s wife…I would assume that Kimberly isn’t going to consent, but what the hell, this is pro wrestling in the nineties, just toss her in there as a prize, I guess…Steiner finally demands an opponent for tonight…More suplexes, less catchphrases, Steiner…Steiner beats the shit out of Bobby Blaze… Buff grabs a mic and asks Blaze how he feels while Blaze is in the Steiner Recliner…Blaze’s response is a wordless grunt…Buff, in a perfect Attitude Era quip, says, “Hey, that sounds just like Kimberly”…That actually got an OOOOOOH from the crowd and sparked a D-D-P chant, so fair play, Buff, you crude bastard…Page and Kimberly both have gotten totally rolled during this whole feud…Please just put DDP over at SuperBrawl, WCW… Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan win a tune-up for SuperBrawl over Hector Garza and Silver King…They should have had Misterio and Konnan roll a tag team of, like, Jerry Flynn and Al Green instead just to emphasize that they can compete with tag teams who have large size advantages…From what little I’ve seen, I’m actually interested in a Rey/Luger singles match…Luger has underrated timing and always seems to be in the right place, so he’s a great base for Rey’s offense…Konnan monkeyflips Rey into rana position, and Rey drills Silver King with the rana for the win… Dean Malenko and Chris Benoit cut an equally crappy pre-match promo on pre-tape…Look, you can say whatever you want, but for my money, Dean Malenko is the worst Horseman ever…Chris Benoit’s Keith Lee Memorial Vocabulary Extravaganza: abolished, initiative, notoriety…It’s really too bad that Benoit didn’t cap it off by telling Horace to talk to the hand… Can Jerry Flynn keep his winning streak going?...Before the win over Saturn on Nitro, he scored a victory over Bobby Blaze on WCWSN…Probably not, since he’s facing Booker T….Then again, Disco Inferno joins us at ringside to observe and might gave Flynn a little help…After some explosive Booker offense, Flynn takes over with a leg sweep…Disco gets on the apron to applaud Flynn, but Flynn drills him with a side kick…Booker ducks a kick shortly after and goes to town with his 5MoD…He scores an axe kick and a spinebuster, but Disco pulls down the ropes when he runs them…Booker tumbles to the floor, and Disco drills Booker with a Chartbuster on the floor, then dumps him back in the ring…Flynn covers and gets his third win in three…Well, I didn’t have “Jerry Flynn goes on a winning streak” on my 1999 WCW bingo card, but okay… Gene Okerlund interviews a bruised and bandaged Ric Flair in the ring…He cuts a mediocre promo, honestly…He tries to do the whole I’m a real wrestler unlike you, Hogan deal, which leaves me cold…Dude, you got killed out there in a field, I’m not sure that I wrestled everyone in the ‘80s and you didn’t is the right tone for this thing…He gets fired up at the end, and it gets better, but this matchup has zero juice for me…It should, I think…I actually think Hogan and Flair are excellent opponents for one another…Even in 1999, this should be a decent match… Torrie Wilson sits in a hotel room, craves seafood, and giggles a lot while craving seafood…The silent chump behind the camera hands her some SuperBrawl tickets…Torrie decides that she’s got to go shopping for this prestigious event…Yeah, SuperBrawl is just like the Met Gala, we all know that… Thank goodness we’re done with these Horace and Crush matches…They are a boring tag team…They’ll face Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko in a cage for some reason…Don’t ask me why…There was never any point at which this match was promoted as a cage match…For some reason, Benoit and Malenko have to defeat all the remaining one-loss teams to get a shot at Hennig and Windham…Why Horace and Crush were positioned to only have to win one match to get that opportunity, or why Enos and Riggs were positioned to only have to win two matches to get it, but Benoit/Malenko and Finlay/Taylor had to win three straight to get it, I could never say…It’s a simple bracket, WCW…How do you fuck up a simple bracket like this?.... This is (mostly) one of the more low-impact cage matches that you’ll ever see…Tony S. says Flair ordered the cage and that it’s the right thing to do because the nWo has run down and disrupted the tournament so often…Nah, they gave up on that a few weeks back and instead let the B-Teamers try to win it…It’d be a more relevant thing to say that Virgil and Stevie have gotten involved in Horace/Crush tag matches and need to be kept out of the ring…Benoit plays FIP…There’s a nice spot where he backflips out of a side slam attempt and gets a desperation backslide for two…Then, it’s back to FIP… Eventually, Benoit gets the hot tag and Malenko drills a couple of leg lariats and then attempts a Texas Cloverleaf on Crush…Horace saves…Benoit and Malenko destroy Crush, but Horace has time to recover…Horace destroys Malenko with a lariat, but when he tries to hit Benoit, Benoit grabs his arm and locks on a Crippler Crossface…Crush, the legal man, recovers enough to break that up…Virgil saunters to ringside while holding a chair…Crush and Horace lawn dart Benoit into the side of the cage… Then, we get a fucking ref bump because of course we do…Can’t have a main event on any PPV, Nitro, or Thunder without a ref bump…Guess what?...The cage is opened up…Benoit escapes a lethargic Virgil beatdown outside the ring…Horace and Crush destroy Malenko inside the cage while Benoit climbs it for some reason…I guess Charles Robinson locked the door again?...Whatever...This is all a set up for Benoit to scramble his brain like a panful of eggs with a diving headbutt to Crush off the cage…The whole match might as well have been just that single spot…It’s hard to enjoy now considering what I know about Benoit, but the crowd went bananas as they well should have from just seeing such a spectacular spot…Malenko rolls over, covers, and gets three to send the Horsemen to SuperBrawl… This show was mostly inoffensive outside of all the recapping…It certainly was a better go-home show for SuperBrawl than Nitro…Not that this is saying a whole lot for this episode of Thunder…WOO… 1
caley Posted June 9, 2024 Posted June 9, 2024 30 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: Thunder Interlude – show number fifty-one – 18 February 1999 "The WCW Gang tries to improve the SuperBrawl go-home stretch after the worst Nitro yet" I don’t know, everyone…This is the worst stretch of WCW television yet during the Nitro era…It’s got me longing for the build to Road Wild ’98…OK, not really, that build was just about as terrible…However, it certainly has me feeling like my complaints about angles to nowhere in 1997 or early 1998 were really just mild annoyances in comparison… Yep, Crush and Horace are facing Benoit and Malenko…What a baffling bracket…It would be wise for Benoit and Malenko to win the titles at SuperBrawl, but this is WCW, so who knows… Tony S. hypes Goldberg being on the Tonight Show and making a blockbuster challenge…Then, we cut to Stevie Ray trying to sell Booker T. on B-Team membership…Booker prefers to wait for membership in a more elite group, maybe say like M.I.A….Book argues with Stevie and claims that Stevie is just Hulk Hogan’s bag carrier, his gimmick carrier, his Brutus Beefcake, if you will…Disco Inferno cuts in and says that if Stevie’s getting back together with Booker, then that leaves a spot in the B-Team for him…Stevie and Booker both tell Disco to bug off, so, in an example of edgy comedy that actually works, Disco responds with OH WHAT, IS THIS A BROTHER THING?...Now, that is how you use double meaning to tell a joke…Booker immediately chokes out Disco…Huh, that was alright… It’s another one of these Torrie Wilson blipmos…Camera doofus silently hands Torrie a taser that they apparently got from Scott Hall…Torrie, also a doofus, dicks around with the taser… Hey, it’s another rerun of these FUCKING Raven/Kanyon blipmos from TWO MONDAYS AGO…Fuck right off a cliff, WCW… The Wolfpac theme hits…Everyone in the crowd, expecting Hall or Nash, cheers…Disco dances out to the theme…The crowd, feeling ripped off, boos vociferously…Disco rips off Kevin Nash’s catchphrase, but he does it because he’s trying to get booed, not because he’s trying to get cheered like Hogan the Elder is when he rips it off…Disco introduces Scott Hall, wearing a kilt and walking out to Piper’s music…Disco loves his double meanings because he introduces Hall simply as the “Rowdy Scot[t]”…Hall takes the mic and promos…He talks about Disco/Booker, which I forgot is happening at SuperBrawl, and then talks about Piper…Disco also speaks about how much better he thinks he is than Booker…It’s mostly all whatever…I do love how patronizing Hall is about Disco’s dopey trash talk, though…Production is unsure when Hall is supposed to stop talking…These shows have had an increasing amount of timing issues on the production side since the start of the year… Speaking of M.I.A., they PRE-EXPLODE as Chavo Guerrero Jr. faces Lash LeRoux. Now, Chavo just recently turned heel, but he slaps the fans’ hands as he comes out…I guess LeRoux is a heel, too?...By the way, is it not odd that Billy Kidman actually got over and then mostly has disappeared from television in the past three or four weeks?...I’m not a fan of the guy, but that’s strange…Chavo’s getting his shot at the Cruiserweight title against Kidman at SuperBrawl, which is going to be decent at the very least…We leave this match to see Lex Luger and Liz taunt Rey Misterio Jr. from the backseat of their limo in the parking lot…What in the fuck, I wanted to see this match…OK, in a moment that is embarrassing for everyone involved, Liz gets out of the limo and Rey runs up and kicks the door shut on Luger and then yells THUG LIFE…Rey better get on with that stupid-ass shit…What a cornball… Hey, it sure is nice of WCW to show us a fucking wrestling match instead of a stupid segment in which everyone involved sounded dumb…What we get is fine, but this show has destroyed its own format trying to do what the WWF is doing…LeRoux makes a comeback after a long period of Chavo control…He gets caught up top, and Chavo hangs him upside down and punches LeRoux until Charles Robinson DQs him…*sigh*…Chavo tosses Robinson aside, and Kidman runs down and attacks Chavo, who bails…Kidman follows, and in a neat spot, Chavo boots Kidman and then whips him into LeRoux, still hanging there in the Tree of Woe…Then, Chavo uses the ring stairs to hit a Tornado DDT…Chavo rules, as always… Man, these specific Raven and Kanyon blipmos from two weeks ago were generally a failure after the first time they were shown…We’re on show number three where they’re re-running them…Speaking of reruns, here’s the Flair/Bischoff/limo thing…They spent a whole chunk of time showing Flair get monotonously beaten down under a shaky helicopter spotlight in that last Nitro…It went on for what felt like years….I would compare it unfavorably to the Nitro (Show #46) where Hall and Nash beat the shit out of like ten guys in the back with baseball bats before Nash lawn darted Rey into the side of the trailer…That was a long segment with lots of downtime, but it was mind-blowingly good…This Flair beatdown was the opposite of that…It was meant to be shocking, but instead was interminably boring…I also want to note that not telling commentary what the hell was going on was such a poor choice…They were confused about why Flair was stumbling around injured when he showed up at the arena later that night…They have zero credibility when they sound like morons who haven't seen anything that's happened on their own show... Man, there were like eight minutes of recaps and such…Then to top it all off, I get the Wheatley Vodka ad that I hate…OK, drink your Wheatley neatly, just leave me alone…I don’t think there’s any vodka good enough to get me to drink it neat…Brandy, yeah…Vodka, no… Crush and Hogan the Younger cut a crappy pre-match promo on pre-tape…The match against Benoit and Malenko is our main event, probably…I do note that WCW actually gives the tiniest effort at properly doing the double-elimination deal because Benoit and Malenko or Crush and Horace will have to beat Windham and Hennig twice at the PPV to win the gold since Windham and Hennig haven’t lost yet… Chris Jericho is out, but there’s no Ralphus… Jericho grabs a mic and craps on Saturn a bit…Jericho wants to show us what a man should look like if he's wearing a dress…Oh boy, here comes Ralphus…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…Ralphus is dressed like a seventy-year-old church lady…He holds a card that says JERICHO COLLECTION as he models it and as Jericho comments on his ensemble…It’s not too late, Bischoff, promise Jericho a mega-push, maybe he'll stay!...Give him four times what Vinnie’s offering him!...Jericho calls Saturn a “knobby-kneed, cross-eyed freak”…This was absurd in the best of ways…Juventud Guerrera hits the ramp to face Jericho…The camera cuts to Ralphus, who poses…This dude is killing me…We unfortunately take a commercial break like thirty seconds after the match starts… We come back and Jericho tries to force Juvi to kiss Ralphus…Ralphus looks like he’s into it!...Juvi escapes because he’s avoidant attachment and is afraid to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to him…The break didn’t help this match, but the fuckery is great and Juvi and Jericho do a bunch of solid counter-wrestling, so I enjoy it…Jericho blocks a rana attempt and dumps Juvi down into a Walls of Jericho…Juvi reaches for the ropes, but can’t get there and has to tap… It’s so obvious that they should still be investing significant TV time in Jericho…He’s exactly the type of performer (huge personality, can do legitimately funny wrestling comedy, solid enough in ring to have good big-time matches) that would actually help WCW match what the WWF’s strength is, which is wrestlers of exactly that type…I wonder what we’d all think of Jericho if, say, he had fusion surgery at the end of the aughts and didn’t wrestle between like 2009 and 2018…I’m certain his rep would be more in line with what it probably should be if he was forced out and couldn’t stay too long at the table…It would also help current-day Jericho to recognize that he’s not a main event level talent with even the thimbleful of athleticism that he was able to scoop together in his twenties… Was I wrong about Buff Bagwell being a good heel?...I remembered him as a fantastic heel…I still remember digging Totally Buff…Let’s see if that holds up for me…Buff announces that he has his doctor's release to wrestle again…Then, he announces Scott Steiner’s arrival…Steiner asserts that while DDP has many fans in this arena, they are far too low on the socioeconomic scale to suit his tastes…Then, he proposes that if he wins their SuperBrawl match, he gets thirty days with DDP’s wife…I would assume that Kimberly isn’t going to consent, but what the hell, this is pro wrestling in the nineties, just toss her in there as a prize, I guess…Steiner finally demands an opponent for tonight…More suplexes, less catchphrases, Steiner…Steiner beats the shit out of Bobby Blaze… Buff grabs a mic and asks Blaze how he feels while Blaze is in the Steiner Recliner…Blaze’s response is a wordless grunt…Buff, in a perfect Attitude Era quip, says, “Hey, that sounds just like Kimberly”…That actually got an OOOOOOH from the crowd and sparked a D-D-P chant, so fair play, Buff, you crude bastard…Page and Kimberly both have gotten totally rolled during this whole feud…Please just put DDP over at SuperBrawl, WCW… Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan win a tune-up for SuperBrawl over Hector Garza and Silver King…They should have had Misterio and Konnan roll a tag team of, like, Jerry Flynn and Al Green instead just to emphasize that they can compete with tag teams who have large size advantages…From what little I’ve seen, I’m actually interested in a Rey/Luger singles match…Luger has underrated timing and always seems to be in the right place, so he’s a great base for Rey’s offense…Konnan monkeyflips Rey into rana position, and Rey drills Silver King with the rana for the win… Dean Malenko and Chris Benoit cut an equally crappy pre-match promo on pre-tape…Look, you can say whatever you want, but for my money, Dean Malenko is the worst Horseman ever…Chris Benoit’s Keith Lee Memorial Vocabulary Extravaganza: abolished, initiative, notoriety…It’s really too bad that Benoit didn’t cap it off by telling Horace to talk to the hand… Can Jerry Flynn keep his winning streak going?...Before the win over Saturn on Nitro, he scored a victory over Bobby Blaze on WCWSN…Probably not, since he’s facing Booker T….Then again, Disco Inferno joins us at ringside to observe and might gave Flynn a little help…After some explosive Booker offense, Flynn takes over with a leg sweep…Disco gets on the apron to applaud Flynn, but Flynn drills him with a side kick…Booker ducks a kick shortly after and goes to town with his 5MoD…He scores an axe kick and a spinebuster, but Disco pulls down the ropes when he runs them…Booker tumbles to the floor, and Disco drills Booker with a Chartbuster on the floor, then dumps him back in the ring…Flynn covers and gets his third win in three…Well, I didn’t have “Jerry Flynn goes on a winning streak” on my 1999 WCW bingo card, but okay… Gene Okerlund interviews a bruised and bandaged Ric Flair in the ring…He cuts a mediocre promo, honestly…He tries to do the whole I’m a real wrestler unlike you, Hogan deal, which leaves me cold…Dude, you got killed out there in a field, I’m not sure that I wrestled everyone in the ‘80s and you didn’t is the right tone for this thing…He gets fired up at the end, and it gets better, but this matchup has zero juice for me…It should, I think…I actually think Hogan and Flair are excellent opponents for one another…Even in 1999, this should be a decent match… Torrie Wilson sits in a hotel room, craves seafood, and giggles a lot while craving seafood…The silent chump behind the camera hands her some SuperBrawl tickets…Torrie decides that she’s got to go shopping for this prestigious event…Yeah, SuperBrawl is just like the Met Gala, we all know that… Thank goodness we’re done with these Horace and Crush matches…They are a boring tag team…They’ll face Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko in a cage for some reason…Don’t ask me why…There was never any point at which this match was promoted as a cage match…For some reason, Benoit and Malenko have to defeat all the remaining one-loss teams to get a shot at Hennig and Windham…Why Horace and Crush were positioned to only have to win one match to get that opportunity, or why Enos and Riggs were positioned to only have to win two matches to get it, but Benoit/Malenko and Finlay/Taylor had to win three straight to get it, I could never say…It’s a simple bracket, WCW…How do you fuck up a simple bracket like this?.... This is (mostly) one of the more low-impact cage matches that you’ll ever see…Tony S. says Flair ordered the cage and that it’s the right thing to do because the nWo has run down and disrupted the tournament so often…Nah, they gave up on that a few weeks back and instead let the B-Teamers try to win it…It’d be a more relevant thing to say that Virgil and Stevie have gotten involved in Horace/Crush tag matches and need to be kept out of the ring…Benoit plays FIP…There’s a nice spot where he backflips out of a side slam attempt and gets a desperation backslide for two…Then, it’s back to FIP… Eventually, Benoit gets the hot tag and Malenko drills a couple of leg lariats and then attempts a Texas Cloverleaf on Crush…Horace saves…Benoit and Malenko destroy Crush, but Horace has time to recover…Horace destroys Malenko with a lariat, but when he tries to hit Benoit, Benoit grabs his arm and locks on a Crippler Crossface…Crush, the legal man, recovers enough to break that up…Virgil saunters to ringside while holding a chair…Crush and Horace lawn dart Benoit into the side of the cage… Then, we get a fucking ref bump because of course we do…Can’t have a main event on any PPV, Nitro, or Thunder without a ref bump…Guess what?...The cage is opened up…Benoit escapes a lethargic Virgil beatdown outside the ring…Horace and Crush destroy Malenko inside the cage while Benoit climbs it for some reason…I guess Charles Robinson locked the door again?...Whatever...This is all a set up for Benoit to scramble his brain like a panful of eggs with a diving headbutt to Crush off the cage…The whole match might as well have been just that single spot…It’s hard to enjoy now considering what I know about Benoit, but the crowd went bananas as they well should have from just seeing such a spectacular spot…Malenko rolls over, covers, and gets three to send the Horsemen to SuperBrawl… This show was mostly inoffensive outside of all the recapping…It certainly was a better go-home show for SuperBrawl than Nitro…Not that this is saying a whole lot for this episode of Thundeblocblockquote I'm so sorry for quoting the whole thing, my tablet is not letting me do anything else, not even delete it! I was just gonna comment here about Ralphus, because I was recently quoting Jerichos book, I re-read the part where he recruited Ralphus and the whole thing was just ridiculous -Ralphus was just a ring crew guy who Jericho recruited because of his look, Jericho told him to agressively admonish fans for touching him and Ralphus took that to mean wagging his finger at them like a disapproving grandmother -Ralphus started getting cheered and would miss his cues because he was flirting with women in the audience. One time Jericho came across Ralphus dirty dancing behind the arena with two, um, let's say, large women -Ralphus started talking backstage about what he was going to ask for on his next contract, oblivious to the fact that Jericho had to beg WCW to pay Ralphus a per-appearance fee. I'm curious to see what mileage you get out of the eventual Smiley-Ralphus pairing. I remember it being a rather soulless, joyless imitation of the Jericho-Smiley pairing with Smiley's wrestling reduced to a one-note garbage match wrestler who simply screams and dances but maybe it plays better now! 1
SirSmUgly Posted June 9, 2024 Author Posted June 9, 2024 58 minutes ago, caley said: -Ralphus was just a ring crew guy who Jericho recruited because of his look, Jericho told him to agressively admonish fans for touching him and Ralphus took that to mean wagging his finger at them like a disapproving grandmother No wonder he looked so comfortable wearing the schoolmarm church dress on Thunder. 1
SirSmUgly Posted June 9, 2024 Author Posted June 9, 2024 (edited) SuperBrawl (IX) ’99 notes: Even though the build to most of the matches on this show has been a) bad or b) rushed or c) rushed very badly, the show itself still has potential if you just look at the matchups. The problem is going to be all the swerves and bullshit finishes. Torrie Wilson is like the WORST fucking actor, just a grating and unlikeable personality. The first thing we see is that last blipmo where camera dude gives her the SuperBrawl tickets. I’m going to try and limit my Torrie Wilson complaints from here on out (“try” being the operative word), but I just want to point out that in that whole Torrie/Al Wilson/Dawn Marie angle that was delightfully stupid, Torrie was a net negative with her wooden acting. Somehow, Al Wilson had far more camera presence than her. Dawn Marie is obviously Dawn Marie, i.e., entertaining when she has some fun material, but Torrie is just the worst, man. Spice is a way better talker than her as far as I can tell. Let Spice seduce the camera dude instead. After a slightly goofy opening to the show with the camera circling the heads of multiple WCW wrestlers – I liked it for its goofiness – the show begins. I will note that Dusty Rhodes was shown in that opening, so maybe that portends his involvement in tonight’s main event? We also get a recap of this tag tournament bracket and a preview of the finals match(es?) for this tourney. They even made some new tag titles to hand out once the tournament is over. Disco Inferno and Booker T. open the show. Disco dances for like fifteen minutes before we go to a replay of Booker choking Disco backstage, and then finally, Booker comes out. It’s a pretty hot opener because Disco is quite over as a heel, and Booker is quite over as a babyface. They also work well together, and in a neat spot early on, Booker gets a little too comfortable with his domination of Disco and ends up eating a boot and a swinging neckbreaker. He gets up shaking his head, disgusted with himself as much as with a celebrating Disco. Actually, Booker being irritated that this goof is getting one over on him is sort of the running narrative of this match. Even Bobby Heenan picks up on it over at the desk. Booker uses a lot of strikes and lariats because he’s deeply annoyed by Disco’s antics on the previous Thunder and wants to knock the dude's lights out. He scores a couple of two counts, but Disco is one sneaky good goofball; he counters a duckdown with an elbow or three, then a minute later ducks a side kick and lariats Booker to the floor. As usual, Disco’s issue is that he gets too comfortable himself. He doesn’t press his advantage quickly enough, though he is able to drill a second-rope elbow after dancing. And really, he needs to, because Booker is explosive and liable to turn the tide of the match with a few moves. Booker does this, hitting a roundhouse kick and an axe kick, but Disco manages an inverted atomic drop. Unfortunately for Disco, he goes up and leaps into a spinebuster. But again, Disco stops short on a side kick and lariats Booker, who takes a Rikishi-style spinning bump. Disco looks for a Chartbuster, but Booker shoves him away, lands a back suplex, and Spinaroonies up. Booker hits an axe kick and goes up top for a missile dropkick. Disco gets up and crotches Booker, but again is lax about following up. He eventually goes up to try a superplex, but gets shoved to the mat. Booker switches up his strategy with Disco prone on the mat and drops a Houston Hangover for three. That was a very fun and high quality opener, which is no surprise considering the workers involved. We’re moving right along, all footloose and fancy-free, and Chris Jericho (w/Ralphus and Scott Dickinson) faces Perry Saturn in the next match. Apparently, if Jericho loses, he has to wear a dress, but he’s got a bit of insurance; Scott Dickinson is apparently the assigned ref for this match since his thirty-day suspension is up. Uh, I get that Ric Flair is a bit preoccupied, but maybe he could have a second-in-command to keep stuff like Scott Dickinson being assigned to ref Saturn matches from happening? I can’t even begin to comment on Jericho’s shirt or Ralphus’s dress-and-earrings set except to say that both are magnificent. Meanwhile, Saturn walks out wearing a dress that is classy, but sassy. Trust me on this. Saturn also put some eyeliner on for the occasion. I appreciate the effort. Jericho grabs a mic and insults Saturn’s look before the match. He calls Saturn a “cross-eyed, cross-dressing freak,” which gets far less of a pop than you’d expect from a wrestling crowd in 1999. Progress! This pisses Saturn off, and he beats the hell out of Jericho to start. They spill to ringside immediately and brawl into the crowd. Back in the ring, Saturn just kills this dude with suplexes and headbutts. It rules. Jericho screams for help. Scott Dickinson looks prepared to give him some. Jericho struggles to get anything going; he gets tossed around the ring and sent back outside. Aw, then Saturn harasses poor Ralphus. He tears off Ralphus’s dress, which gives Jericho lots of time to recover and dropkick Saturn in the back. Ralphus doesn’t deserve this sort of treatment! I thought Saturn was supposed to be the babyface. Anyway, even that doesn’t help Jericho all that much; Saturn kicks out of a wimpy pin at one and attacks again. Finally, Jericho gets something going with a crappy-looking missile dropkick. He’s much like Disco, in that he’s far too comfortable taking his time to follow up on his attacks against an explosive athlete who is pissed at him. He badly whiffs on a telegraphed top-rope dive, and Saturn takes control, lands a Frog Splash, and signals for the finish. Jericho manages a roll-up with his feet on the ropes, but Saturn kicks out at two and goes back to beating holy hell out of Jericho. He does the ten-punches-under-the-dress spot, but Jericho grabs Saturn’s legs and topples Saturn into a Walls attempt that Saturn manages to flip into an inside cradle for two. This match is also really good, which is again no surprise when considering the workers involved. Anyway, these fellas counter and counter and counter. Saturn looks like he might get the last counter when he rolls with the momentum of a Jericho top-rope crossbody and turns it into a Rings of Saturn, but Jericho maneuvers around and grabs the ropes with his foot. They go back to countering one another; Jericho lands a Lionsault for 2.9. He tries to follow up but is hoisted into a DVD once. He ducks out of it, but gets caught again and DVD’d. Then, instead of pinning Jericho, Saturn decides that he likes wearing a dress and hates Scott Dickinson, so he DVD’s Dickinson and leaves the ring. Dickinson comes to and calls for a DQ victory for Jericho, but this was the sort of wonky finish that worked for me. Saturn likes the dress kinda like Billy enjoys eating worms at the end of How to Eat Fried Worms, so fuck you, he’s gonna keep it up even though he doesn’t have to anymore. Good for him! I liked the hell out of this match even though the crowd heat was dampened by the finish. At the backstage interview area, some guy says that if Liz loses her hair, she can grow it back, but if Rey loses his mask, that’s forever. NOPE Chavo Guerrero Jr. gets a shot at the Cruiserweight Championship held by Billy Kidman. I’m bummed that Tony S. no-sells Heenan making a good point about the mentality of an athlete in the position of being down a win in a series. Come on, Tony S., do better. This happens during the opening, in which Chavo can’t do anything right and gets rolled by Kidman. Chavo can’t even pull off the Guerrero Family fake handshake trick, as Kidman readily accepts and then pulls Chavo in for a short-arm clothesline. It’s only when Kidman is over exuberant at throwing punches while standing on the apron that Chavo can yank Kidman into the guardrail and take over. Chavo tries to slow things down and use his slight power advantage to control Kidman, but he’s not afraid to go to the air – he scores a GORGEOUS plancha in there. I’ve said it before, but watching younger Chavo for the first time in years reminds me that he had awesome athleticism when he was in his twenties. Chavo should probably stop trying powerbombs, though. He gets backdropped out of one, and has to regain control with a back suplex. Kidman score a counter-dropkick off a drive and tries to get Chavo running again, but Chavo is able to drop toehold Kidman into the buckles and then hit a top-rope rana for two. Kidman is in danger and looking for a quick SSP to end the match. He hits a Sky High and tries for one, but Chavo is up well in time and crotches Kidman, then lands a hanging DDT for two. But dammit, Chavo, he tries another powerbomb and eats a facebuster in response. Kidman quickly goes up and lands the second SSP attempt for three. We are three for three in the good matches department tonight. I liked this match because Chavo was excellent in control, but let me credit Kidman, especially because he wrestled like his health bar was at critical after taking a beating and from then on, he immediately looked for his big move to get him out of the jam. I liked the psychology with which he wrestled the end segment of this match. The first three matches might as well be a showcase for the types of guys who should be stepping up in prominence on the card by the end of this year. WCW has the talent to compete and to make a lot of money competing, which is what makes them so frustrating. Curt Hennig and Barry Windham come to the ring needing only to win one of the next two matches to capture the WCW Tag Team Championships. Tony S. lets us know that if their opponents Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko win the first match, they’ll have only a thirty-second rest period before immediately starting the second match. That theoretically neutralizes a big chunk of the advantage that Windham and Hennig have, but not completely, so actually, I do like the set-up for the finals. I’m glad that Tenay notes that Hennig’s motivation for winning the titles is to bait the Outsiders into a fight. I wondered if anyone was going to bring up Hennig getting ejected from the nWo since that was the original stated motivation Hennig had for getting Barry Windham to team with him in this tournament. They talk about those motivations through this slow feeling-out process to open. Hennig and Benoit bring some heat by chopping and slapping the hell out of each other, though. In general, Benoit goes full-on chop machine in this thing. Malenko does some incredibly sloppy wrestling with Hennig. Hennig and Benoit have chemistry, but Hennig and Malenko have the opposite of chemistry. Alchemy? They have alchemy. Benoit comes in and fires off chops and suplexes on both his opponents. Hennig spends a lot of time in peril, actually, as the Horsemen use quick tags to score a number of pinfall attempts. They also try to keep Windham off the apron by turning attention to him and punching or kicking him. It’s solid stuff! Benoit has a pinfall attempt coming off a top-rope headbutt broken up for a close two count, but the Horsemen go right back to work on Hennig. The Horsemen make a strategic mistake when Malenko dropkicks Hennig to the apron and then Hennig ends up on the floor, though. That gives Hennig time to gather himself, and he gets back in the ring, scores a ball shot, and gets a tag. Now Malenko’s in peril. This is basically a back-and-forth match rather than a “faces spend lots of time in peril” match, and it’s fine. Benoit is the only guy the crowd really gets up for. Probably, this match is longer than it needs to be. In WCW style, they make every PPV match ten minutes or more when, sometimes, eight minutes will do. Kidman/Chavo might have been sub-ten minutes, but I’m not sure this match has the heat to go longer than Kidman/Chavo. The closest we get to an extended FIP segment is Benoit taking some abuse before getting a hot tag to Malenko and the match breaking down shortly thereafter. Malenko locks a Texas Cloverleaf on Windham, but Hennig makes the save. Benoit is able to trap Hennig in the corner and allow Malenko to try it again, though, and Windham taps out. There’s supposed to be a thirty-second rest period, but Benoit and Malenko ignore ref Mickey Jay and punch the shit out of Hennig. So, get this: Mickey Jay tries to back Benoit off Hennig in the corner, and as Malenko goes back over to Windham, Windham has taken off his belt and he uses it to choke Malenko out and get a three count and the tag titles immediately after the next fall starts. This is the epitome of a terrible finish, come the fuck on. This is exactly the sort of thing that holds WCW back - convoluted and/or dumb finishes. So, while WCW shows us a U.S. Championship hype video, I decided to go back and look at the brackets for the tag titles tournament. You know what? After looking, I decided that I’m just glad it is over. Let’s all move on. I don’t know if Luger is shoot injured, which is why they had Rey kick the limo door closed on him, or if this is a work [editor's note: I looked after the show and Luger had a shoot bicep injury], but Luger’s out here with his arm wrapped, and Scott Hall is subbing for him in the tag match against Rey and Konnan and pulling double-duty tonight. I guess Bisch decided that unmasking Juventud Guerrera at SuperBrawl ’98 was so good that he might as well do it again with Rey. Over on commentary, Bobby Heenan is hilarious to me as a xenophobic old man who doesn’t understand why lucha wrestlers wear masks. He’s all like THIS IS AMERICA, SPEAK ENGLISH WRESTLE UNMASKED. Mr. Wrestling I and II wore masks! The Patriot wore a mask! If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for Old Glory! U-S-A! U-S-A! You can see glimmers of what makes Rey Misterio Jr. a viable main event wrestler in WWE in this match. He’s just so good at looking credible against far larger wrestlers while still emphasizing his size disadvantage. He pretty much frustrates Scott Hall until Hall can snag him out of the air and hit a fallaway slam to get some space. Nash tags in and beals Rey practically into space; Rey tries a sunset flip and is pulling so hard to get Nash over that his whole body leaves the mat. Nash grabs him and tosses him again before we settle into Rey as FIP. This is good, but I am disappointed to not get Rey/Luger, and I do hope we get that match at some point in 1999. Hall tries to hit a Razor’s Edge, but Rey wriggles out and gets a hot tag to Konnan, who rolls both Outsiders for awhile until Nash is able to catch Konnan with a forearm after Hall reverses Konnan’s Irish whip right into his path. Hey, this is another good match! Konnan is now FIP, and he endures punishment until he can score a double-clothesline that wipes out both he and Hall. A worried Liz plots with Luger outside the ring. Rey gets a hot tag and hits a series of kicks, culminating in using a downed Nash as a platform off which to leap into a dropkick on Hall. Rey lands a Bronco Buster on Hall, but Luger drags Konan out of the ring and clobbers him with his cast. Meanwhile, Liz draws the attention of the ref, which causes the ref to miss two things. First, he misses Rey knocking Nash out cold with his knee on a successful moonsault. Second, he misses Hall dragging Rey out of a visual three count and hitting a Razor’s Edge, then pulling Nash on top for three. Rey then takes his mask off. He looks like a twelve-year-old boy. This also might be the first time in the Nitro Era that I’ve heard a crowd chanting TAKE IT OFF and it didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. That fucking Nash looks at Rey, cops an expression of horror, and motions at him to put the mask back on. This dumbass. I laughed in spite of myself. Scott Steiner defends his TV title and his recent pattern of behavior against Diamond Dallas Page. I don’t see Buff anywhere around, which makes me think that Buff has tracked down Kimberly and is going to hold her hostage or something so that Page gets distracted and loses. Steiner lifts a plant wearing a very short skirt out from the front row and brings her into the ring so that he can talk about his sexual performance while she stands there agreeing with him. Tony S. is extremely focused on the line of this woman’s skirt, and while I admonish him, I also understand. It is a VERY short skirt. Testosterone is a real insistent bastard of a hormone sometimes. I know her skirt is very short, thank you for letting me know, healthy T-levels, now please leave me alone. Thankfully, she leaves the ring so all the straight dudes watching this can focus on the match instead. Page runs down, punches the shit out of Steiner, and yells THAT’S YOUR HOOK UP, JACKOFF, which is the first time he’s said something insulting that doesn’t sound stupid in months, maybe years. This match has barely started before Buff Bagwell jogs down to ringside to check on a bleeding Steiner. Well, at least he hasn’t accosted Kimberly. That’s a plus for this match and this storyline. Buff and Scotty surround Page and converge on him, but Page tells Charles Robinson to let the match ride and fights both guys off, at least initially. Eventually, Buff distracts Page with a forearm and allows Steiner to take control. This match hasn’t really done it for me. I think turning it into a virtual handicap match was a mistake. Steiner has an okay heel control segment and stuffs a couple of Page comeback attempts. Page does get a couple of flash two counts, but Steiner mostly dominates at low speed. Buff puts a chair in the ring right in front of the ref, then distracts the ref on the other side so Steiner can use it. After that, Buff clips the buckle pads off in one corner while Page headbutts his way out of a Steiner Recliner attempt. It only takes about fifty years for Charles Robinson to finally eject Buff Bagwell, but he finally does when he catches Buff clipping off the final buckle. In the ring, Steiner has a cover on Page, but Robinson is dealing with Buff. Robinson gets back to the ring, where Steiner yells C’MON REF, WHAT THE FUCK?! Sure, Scotty, I typically agree that REFEREES ARE INCOMPETENT AND STUPID here in WCW, but Robinson was at least finally doing his job. And here’s a bonus; once the match goes outside and Steiner tries to use the chair, Robinson pulls it away from him! A WCW ref pulling a chair away from a heel?! Revolutionary! Steiner chases Robinson around the ring, but runs right into a Page lariat. Neat spots to be sure, but this match is not very good. Steiner lands a top-rope Frankensteiner, but it only gets 2.9. Steiner shoves Page into the ropes, but Page hits a leaping DDT and we get a standing ten count. Page rolls over and covers Steiner at the count of seven, but he only gets a count of two on the pinfall. Page is up, tries a Diamond Cutter, but gets shoved into the exposed buckles. Steiner hits Page with three Oklahoma Stampedes into the exposed corner, then overcomes a fighting Page and locks on a Steiner Recliner for the knockout win. What the fuck, man? Steiner is about one-billion-and-oh against Page now. Mediocre match, bad booking. Can a babyface get some goddam revenge on the vile heel around here at least once in awhile?! Then again, as they toss DDP on a gurney, Oakland starts a DDP SUCKS chant, and there was a guy running around with a DIAMOND DALLAS DICKHEAD sign, so maybe they should consider turning DDP heel at this point. Mark Madden and Bam Bam Bigelow jabber at one another backstage. I hope Goldberg wins this one in under a minute. Also, Madden fucking STINKS at his job. The Wolfpac howl hits yet again, and let me tell you, I hate it now. I hate it. They’ve ruined it for me. Disco escorts Scott Hall out for his U.S. title shot. Will you indulge me in once again complaining that the guy to get the big rub from taking the U.S. Championship off Bret Hart was Roddy Piper? Can we please use the secondary belt for its primary purpose, which is to position a hot midcarder for possible ascent to the main event? Please?! Hall is a very good worker and one of those guys who often elevates mediocre opponents, so let’s see what he can do with a broken-down Roddy Piper. Already, they have a cool spot where Piper has to time pulling his shirt off so that Hall won’t punch him when it’s over his head. See, that was a neat little thing. Piper has bad offense, and it is what it is, and I’ll just have to live with that. Hall is at least fun to watch sell damage. But yeah, this is a suboptimal match. Hall is good, but he’s not that good. At least, he isn’t that good in 1999. I won’t bore you with the play-by-play of this glacial match. Just know that Hall does his leveraged abdominal stretch spot in there, Piper eventually makes a comeback, and that the crowd is DEAD SILENT when Piper locks on a sleeper. Like, that’s his finisher! Did no one in the crowd know this? Or did no one care? The crowd only gets excited when Kevin Nash runs out and attacks Piper. Disco distracts the ref while that happens, and then Scott Hall wins the U.S. Championship by covering Piper with his feet on the ropes for leverage. Piper doesn’t want to hand the belt over, and after an exchange of unpleasantries, Hall tries to hit Piper with the belt and misses. Piper stomps him out a bit, but then Hall and Nash surround Piper and almost beat him up before he escapes. At some point, Piper figured out that crotch chops are a thing that the young people do to stay over, so he hits a couple of them in this post-match scrum. This wasn’t bad enough to get on the Absolute Dirt Worst list, but it tried its best to make that list. And we were doing so well three matches into this show, too. ☹ Well, there are almost forty minutes left in this show as Bam Bam Bigelow hits the ring to face Goldberg. I can’t imagine that this match goes much over five minutes, so that means we’ll get 25-ish minutes for the main event. zendragon had great info about Goldberg shooting a movie at this time, but man, his momentum just feels like it’s halted to me. Shooting a movie at this point in his career seems like a drawback, but then again, the last month of television has been so dreadful that maybe getting out of the way and doing something else was ultimately good for him. The opening of this match is cool because Goldberg does stuff like catching Bammer on a crossbody and then slamming the fuck out of him or lifting Bigelow into a fireman’s carry and then dumping him into an armbar. He even hits a standing dropkick which, while glancing, is impressive just because of how big the guy is. Bigelow gets control with an elbow or two to Goldberg’s sack, but Goldberg never feels in much danger. Bigelow has a very dull control segment where he works Goldberg’s knee. After what feels like a ton of laying around and boring selling, Goldberg spears Bammer twice and then hits a Jackhammer for three. Great, let’s cycle Bam Bam down the card now. Well, they had Bam Bam lay there being boring for five extra minutes so that Hogan the Elder and Flair the Elder didn’t have to go over twenty minutes. Good choice, I suppose? At this point, I’m guessing that we’re getting Hogan winning after a David Flair heel turn due to the Torrie Wilson honeypot, which is not inspiring storytelling, in my opinion! Look, now Hogan is doing crotch chops! These thirsty old main eventers of the ‘80s desperate for relevance need to be carted the fuck outta here. Get them off this show. See, the problem with WCW main events at this point are that, unless maybe they are Thunder main events, all the work leading up to the finish means almost nothing because you know the finish is going to throw a wrench into things. They could have just gone straight to the finish in this match, and it would have changed nothing. We get a lot of my-turn-your-turn with chops in the corner and taunting and preening and such. Again, none of it matters, unless you think low-impact brawls that have weak chair shots in them matter. Flair blades because that is Flair’s answer to the question, “How do we heighten the drama in this match?” Every time, it’s the answer. So the guy gigs himself even though it means nothing in the context of the match or the angle or the promotion that he’s in. I’m at a point where, “It’s a striking visual” isn’t enough for me to feel like gigging is worth it. Basically, Hogan beats holy hell out of Flair for most of this. Flair makes a comeback. They trade weight belt shots. Torrie Wilson marches down here with the same concerned, slightly constipated facial expression that Diana Hart usually makes. She gets on the apron and slaps Flair before being ordered off the apron by the ref. Said ref, Charles Robinson, gets cleared out by Hogan a couple of minutes later. Hogan misses a legdrop, but here comes that doofus David Flair in a ski mask. Flair the Elder gets Hogan in the Figure Four, but then David uses the taser on Flair, and Hogan covers for three when Robinson revives. This suuuuuuuuuucked, but it’s just your standard bad WCW main event, nothing more. Can I just say that I did not remember that David Flair was a member of the nWo Wolfpac, which is somehow the lamest thing in professional wrestling in 1999 and also possibly in history? And now Tony S. recognizes Torrie from the blipmos that he didn’t comment on for the three weeks they’ve been showing or whatever, so yeah, peak WCW. Well, WCW delivered exactly what you’d expect. Four of the first six matches were very good, and then the show dove right the hell off a cliff after that. Edited July 18, 2024 by SirSmUgly 2
SirSmUgly Posted June 11, 2024 Author Posted June 11, 2024 Show #180 – 22 February 1999 “The one that manages to pull off an even worse Horsemen parody segment than the last time" SuperBrawl demonstrated that there is still an off-ramp from this road to disaster that WCW is on: Push Hall, Nash, Goldberg, and a bunch of your undercard stars, and minimize Hogan and Flair, maybe turn DDP heel because people are finally getting sick of his babyface act. Sure, it’s not going to happen, and maybe it’s too late to undo most of the complete damage that this next year will do to WCW’s brand and finances, but maybe it’s not. There’s an alternate universe where this happened, and I wonder if WCW survived Kellner's chopping block in that universe. I am too bothered by Tony S. now acting like he’d been seeing Torrie Wilson act poorly in those vignettes with a camera-toting David Flair for the past few weeks. Ric and David are going to further their lukewarm feud by having a sit-down meeting facilitated by Tony S. later tonight. Oh no, it’s Ricki Rachtman at Cal-Berkeley. We truly are in the end times for WCW. We’ll be getting our fill of this guy hosting Nitro parties in the next few weeks. And videos of Nitro Girls doing obstacle courses on campuses with college dudes, I guess. The Nitro Girls who are not on campus cut a rug in the ring. A bunch of dudes are holding up individual panels that spell out WE <HEART> CHAE. Don’t we all, you bunch of dudes with discriminating taste. Don’t we all. Well, it only took about nine minutes for the first match of the night to start, so that’s good. That match is Jerry Flynn vs. Mike Enos, so maybe not the best match for starting out hot, but still. The desk yammers on about Goldberg making a challenge to someone on the Tonight Show, but they very noticeably talk around the person to whom the challenge was made. That’s odd. Hold on. Ooh. Ooh, no. YouTube has the clip, and it’s Goldberg looking like a doofus calling out Stone Cold Steve Austin. How low-rent, WCW. In the ring, Enos and Flynn work a perfectly acceptable televised bout. Flynn continues his winning streak, and he doesn’t even need outside assistance to do it! He just rolls through an Enos bodyslam and into a cross armbreaker for the submission victory. David Flair and Torrie Wilson do some of the worst acting around, for a professional wrestling show or otherwise, as they sit on the couch in the little interview room where David will face off with Papa Flair. Gene Okerlund interviews Booker T. in the locker room area. He’s got a number one contendership match for the U.S. Championship against Bret Hart later tonight. WCW should put Booker over Bret and then Scott Hall with no shenanigans. Rachtman’s still at Cal-Berkeley. Some kid whose favorite wrestler is Rey Misterio Jr. – good taste, buddy – wins a chance to go to Panama City Beach. Is that really a "win?" Virgil tells Scott Norton that Hogan the Elder put ol' Virg in charge of the Black and White. Norton doesn’t even have the bandwidth to give a fuck and just goes along with it. This Steiner/Page feud has gone entirely off the rails, as this current recap shows. Adding in the Steiner lawsuit is entirely unnecessary. Just stuffing a story full of plot beats does not automatically make the story better. Van Hammer and Bam Bam Bigelow are in match number two. Maybe get Bammer some music if he’s going to be coming out here as a regular part of the roster? The crowd taunts Bigelow with GOLDBERG chants. Then Hammer tries to work the arm. Actually, they start out having a decent match with some pace in it. The fans help out a lot. They chant BAM BAM SUCKS, and Hammer directs Bammer’s attention to that chant. Bam Bam takes control shortly after, drops a headbutt, and gets up yelling WHO SUCKS NOW?! at the booing fans. Sacramentans are really into the pro graps tonight. Obviously, Bam Bam slows the pacing down after too long, but I’m the weirdo who enjoys Van Hammer, so when he’s on offense, I enjoy this thing well enough. When Bigelow has decided to stop moving and sit in a chinlock, which is a thing he does a couple times, not so much. In fact, he kills a lot of the crowd heat for this thing by sitting in long chinlocks that he doesn’t really work in an interesting way. I can’t believe they had this dude going toe to toe with Goldberg. Hammer tries a big boot in the corner, but he hangs himself up, yells OHHHHH BUMMER, and then gets Greetings from Asbury Park’d for three. Bammer stinks, keep pushing him down the card. Buff and Scotty work out and hit on ladies at the gym. Then Scotty threatens to beat up some drag queens. This goddam SUCKS. They walk in on Goldberg doing a pictorial and Scotty yells at DA MAN. Scott Steiner is the epitome of a channel changer at this point. He and Buff both have been awful television for the past year now. They’ve got huge go away heat with me. Bret Hart and Booker T. face off next. Larry Z. goes on an on about how much he thinks parents should beat the shit out of their kids or whatever like they did back in the day. Shut the fuck up, Larry Z. Meanwhile, Bret Hart wanders around and stalls. *sigh*. Let’s get some action going. I’m not into stalling and laying around in chinlocks. Booker wins a shoulderblock and an arm drag and Bret responds…by bailing and stalling. Look, this is not making me want to see Booker get his hands on Bret. It’s making me want to turn the channel and see if the Rock is hitting someone with a Rock Bottom or People’s Elbow. Bret finally gets some control and proceeds…to go into a chinlock after like four punches. Well, this match stinks, and it’s Bret’s fault. Randy Savage might be my new/old G.O.A.T., but I’m going to need to see how bad his 1999 is before locking it in. Choke, punch, choke, for Bret. Booker lands a couple of big lariats and an axe kick that only gets two. Booker locks on an arm bar, but at least he did something before hooking on an arm bar. Oh lovely, now Disco Inferno is harassing people in the satellite truck, so let’s break away from this match and not give it even a remote chance to course correct for the viewers at home. Disco is trying to negotiate with some dope in the production truck so that he can pirate WCW’s satellite feed. I feel defeated. Why does WCW make it so hard for me to enjoy their shows? Back to the match: Booker lost control somehow, but I’m just disengaged. Maybe it’s because I mainlined a lot of ’99 WCW this weekend – it was too hot to go outside – but these shows have just ground down my ability to get excited about anything. I knew better than to get excited about Bret/Booker, and I was right. Bret does a bunch of mediocre heel control work while Tony S. yammers on about that Flair family interview he’s going to do later because why pay attention to this number one contendership match for the second-biggest singles title in the company? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Tony S. finally leaves to go get ready for that interview. I don’t have any interest in really talking through the rest of this match. Let me just tell you the finishing run. Booker T. survives a Figure Four and even though he was caught in it for a while, it might not as well have happened, honestly, because he hits a ton of offense with little struggle after that. Bret does stop a missile dropkick attempt and hits Book with a superplex, but when Bret follows up with a Sharpshooter, Booker gets the ropes. Bret tries a sunset flip next, but Booker sits down on it and gets three. Actually, from the Figure Four on, it was enjoyable, and the crowd was into it, but the journey to get to that point was rough for multiple reasons. Disco Inferno faces Kaz Hayashi; Hayashi is wearing Glacier’s shit on his way to the ring. Do you think that when Dusty or Sully or someone tells Kaz that they have a story for him, he gets depressed? Disco grabs the mic to sing the national anthem since this is technically an international competition. It’s very bad, as you might guess, but – and I can’t believe I’m going to say this – this show has already had too much Disco Inferno on it. So, I vaguely remember watching some WCW where Disco was in hock to a bunch of mobster-type Italian-American wrestlers, and at the time I saw it in 1999 or 2000 or whatever, I remember thinking: Too much Disco. That’s how I feel with this Disco-in-the-Wolfpac stuff. WCW has ruined Disco Inferno for me, is what I’m saying. Anyway, Disco and Kaz have a decent match while Tenay and Tony S. do a comedy routine in which Tenay accuses Tony of locking himself in a room to watch the Nitro Girls swimsuit VHS and Tony claiming that it’s only for the purposes of pitching products. Tenay is very dry and makes me laugh, and what the hell, this match has Disco applying a very loose chinlock, so I’m okay with the distraction. WORK YOUR CHINLOCKS PROPERLY, WCW LOCKER ROOM. Kaz eventually misses a senton from the top and eats a swinging neckbreaker and a Chartbuster in short order for the loss. So, Hogan the Elder has told everyone in the B-Team except for Scott Norton, who was in Japan, that they’re the leader of the B-Team. Next, Crush tells Norton that Hogan made him the leader, and Norton just doesn’t CARE, man, he doesn’t give a FUCK, he’s too good for all this. He’s not wrong! Well, this party at Berkeley is off the hook. How do I know this? We’ve got a limbo bar out now. A BAR UNDER WHICH TO LIMBO. WHOA. Speaking of “too much [name a wrestler here],” if this Nitro were run in EWR, it’d be now that we’d get the message about Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell being used far too much and losing overness as a result. Steiner once again brings a lady into the ring; I think that’s the lady from SuperBrawl, but in some sensible pants this time. Steiner boasts about his victory over DDP and promises to bang Kimberly. You know, the usual for the past month or so. This is the somewhat famous (for the time) “screamin’ in pain/screamin’ my name” promo. Then, Steiner challenges Goldberg to a match for later tonight. Oh yeah, this is the also promo that one YouTuber used to frame a series of (in)famous Scott Steiner rants against different wrestlers. I’d recognize that “Goldberg, who’s next? YOU’RE NEXT on my list” line anywhere. After a recap of the tag title tournament and a mention from Tony S. that the tag champs brawled with the finalists after the match was over, and that we’ll see that footage later, we get Chris Jericho and Ralphus. Jericho’s shirt is still magnificent. Ralphus is sporting a modest blue number. Jericho is like SATURN, YOU COULD HAVE WON LAST NIGHT, BUT INSTEAD, YOU CHOSE TO WEAR THAT DRESS WHICH MEANS YOU ARE GAYYYYYYYYY AND BECAUSE IT IS THE ‘90S, I MEAN THAT LAST PART AS AN INSULT TO YOUR CHARACTER, TO BE CLEAR, but everyone just sort of sits there. The crowd seems too sapped of energy to rise to the gay baiting; maybe it’s because they can sense that giant energy drain and charisma black hole Hugh Morrus is on his way to the ring to wrestle Jericho. Hugh Morrus does a press slam and a moonsault, but he’s still boring. That shouldn’t be! Morrus pretty much dominates, but misses a top-rope elbow and gives Jericho an opening. Jericho hits a crossbody to Morrus from the top rope to Morrus at ringside and even gets two off a wimpy pin in there. Morrus tries to mock Jericho’s walk taunt, but gets dropkicked in the knee. There’s a shot of a mostly-toothless Ralphus smiling at the camera at ringside, and that is the smile of a man who knows that he is over. Hilarious. Fucking Ralphus, that guy kills me. Morrus misses a corner splash and gets rolled up; Jericho puts his feet on the ropes, but only gets two. Then, Morrus plants Jericho and preps for a No Laughing Matter. Jericho very obviously scootches himself around into position for a moonsault that doesn’t quite come yet. Ralphus yanks Morrus’s leg as the latter goes up, and Morrus and Jimmy Hart confront Ralphus. So does Saturn, who runs up from behind, rips off Ralphus’s dress, clears out Jimmy Hart, and hits Jericho with a DVD inside the ring while Mickey Jay is preoccupied with the mess outside the ring. Morrus comes back in and then drops a No Laughing Matter for three, then fights with Saturn over Saturn clocking his manager. Video: Hennig and Windham cut an intelligible promo backstage after their tag title tournament victory before Benoit and Malenko, with (regular, non-title) belts in hand, utterly steamroll them and choke them out. Kevin Nash strolls to the ring with Lex Luger, Liz, and Rey Misterio Jr.’s mask to crow over his victory at SuperBrawl. Nash pretends to be bummed that Hall might have been the illegal man in the ring when he crushed Rey with a Razor’s Edge and that rather than giving Rey a rematch, he’ll just hand over the mask. I was listening to the SuperBrawl ’99 version of 83 Weeks which was a waste of time – they spent most of the show talking about modern WWE and AEW, two metaphorical boxes of stuffing that are potato-free and that I have zero interest in. Anyway, I was listening to it, and Bischoff still thinks that Rey needed to lose his mask so that he could emote for the fans. I guess he’s never heard of body language. He also thought the kids would like Rey better without the mask. I swear he said that. He’s a fucking moron. Anyway, Nash is out here in full “don’t give a fuck, booking myself on top” mode. He’s going to lose to Rey at some point, maybe tonight, because he’s mad about Bret Hart not doing jobs or some horseshit, but even if he’s going to give Rey a win (that he gets right back), Rey gets WAY over by kicking the shit out of Nash in a way that is believable. He fires off a run of offense that mega-pops the crowd, but only because we can see his face while he’s hitting it. He even hits Nash with a Bronco Buster before getting caught and slammed on a leapover attempt. Nash hits a beal, thinks he’s safe, and calls for a Jackknife. Rey punches his way out when Nash lifts him, topples Nash backward, hooks a leg, and gets three. See, it worked. The crowd thought that was cool. So did I. Rey looks like a giant killer. Feed Bam Bam to him next. Horace Hogan informs Scott Norton that ol’ Horace is running the B-Team. Norton’s figured out what’s going on by now, I think. Curt Hennig and Barry Windham have negative heat. If the atmosphere had their kind of heat, we’d have global cooling. They cut a promo that no one cares about. Heh, now Hulk the Elder has told Scott Norton that Norton’s the new B-Team leader. Norton pretty much takes that in stride, too. Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) hams it up on the ramp. He’s insistent that they play Glacier’s intro for him since he bought it fair and square. I don’t think it fits you, buddy. Miller squares up to a couple of fans. I do believe the first fan might have said something that maybe you wouldn’t want to say to a dude with the skill to kick you in the noggin with extreme prejudice. Miller and Onoo rough up Penzer to get him to give the Cat superlatives. Miller calls the Glacier theme “redneck music.” Yeah, I definitely often hear Glacier’s theme blaring out of the cabs of lifted trucks with thin blue line flag stickers on them, Miller. However, I do agree that the Cat needs to get his James Brown knockoff theme, though. Miller makes his usual challenge, and this time, it’s directly toward Scott Norton. Unfortunately for the Cat, Norton happens to be meeting with the B-Team when Disco informs him of exactly what the Cat is saying. The Cat jumps Norton and locks on a cobra clutch. It doesn’t work. The Cat doesn’t get entirely mauled, and he gets his shots in, but he leaps right into Norton’s arms, eats a slam, and enjoys a powerbomb for dessert that gets three for the only competent dude on the B-Team. Scott Steiner (w/Television title, Buff Bagwell) head to the ring for the main event match against Goldberg. Buff and Scotty get the mic and claim that Goldberg isn’t in the building. They challenge a few dudes in the crowd before Goldberg’s theme finally hits. Heenan yells random things on commentary instead of just letting us watch this magnificent meathead ath-a-lete stand in some sparks and then freak out and start punching the air. Someone tell that idiot Buffer that the “inverted lift and slam” is called a “Jackhammer.” Steiner opens up with forearms, but Goldberg is bored with that shit and wants Steiner to try harder. Steiner attempts a corner charge and runs right into a boot. Then, there’s a break right as Goldberg lifts Steiner in a military press and then hits four reps before dumping him! HOW DARE YOU GO TO A BREAK AT THIS MOMENT?! So, we come back, and for all I know, Goldberg hip tossed Steiner into the lights, but I missed it, and that’s when Buff distracts Goldberg so that Steiner can toss Goldberg around ringside. Back in the ring, Steiner dominates. The dualities of Goldberg are on display: He does a bunch of cool shit, then can’t hit the ropes right for an Irish whip. Steiner hits a lariat and a belly-to-belly while Buff tries to unclip the buckles again, and then of course, we get a ref bump when Buff clears out the ref who comes over to complain. Meanwhile, Goldberg tosses Steiner into the exposed buckle and then hits a spear, which is the point at which Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell decide to leave…and Rick Steiner announces that he is back by running down and clotheslining both guys. Virgil brings the B-Teamers down and tries to fire them up as Buffer announces that Goldberg is the winner, but Stevie tosses Virgil into the ring by himself, where he gets slaughtered. Please don’t tell me we’re going to fire up the Steiner Brothers feud again. They exploded. The explosion happened already. We saw it. We saw it and saw it. Now, it’s over. Please. We get some video of the Nitro Girls in swimsuits for the Nitro Girls video they’re releasing. As we know, Turner execs have demanded that Bischoff focus Nitro on attracting the under-eighteen demo, which is why Rey needs to not wear a mask and WCW needs to release a swimsuit video. Now, that’s how you market to the kids! We’re back in the production truck with Disco Inferno and that dope whom he paid to hijack the feed. The dope doesn’t want to do it. But he might as well have done it because now I have to watch Tony S. interview David Flair and Torrie Wilson. Ick. But we’re not going to get that interview (yay!) so that we can watch David put his head on Torrie’s boobs (OH GOD NO).Does someone hate me? What did I do to deserve this? So, the feed instead shows an nWo version of the interview with…oh no…Disco pretending to be Gene Okerlund and Kevin Nash reprising his whole Arn Anderson impression. Jesus, this is truly dreadful television. It’s bad, no one cares, I’m not writing about this dogshit anymore. Fucking Nash, they put him on the booking team and he immediately starts wrecking shit. If you want to see just how bad this segment is, go YouTube it, but I'll just assure you that Ric Flair getting beaten half to death in a field underneath a shaky spotlight for nine minutes was basically like the Rock eviscerating Billy Gunn in that one promo compared to this. So yeah, this show had a bunch of mediocre-to-bad stuff, then Rey did some dope offense and Goldberg military pressed Scott Steiner, and then after that, Nash, Hogan, Hall, Disco, David Flair, and Torrie absolutely bombed. This show gets a negative score for many reasons, but especially because the skit at the end is so bad that it defies even my belief, and I’ve sat through a ton of crap! -2 out of 5 Stinger Splashes 2
caley Posted June 11, 2024 Posted June 11, 2024 That sounds terrible but I have no memory of it. I DO remember the Torrie Wilson vignettes. I didn't have internet at home back then so when I'd get to school, I would Google who the hell this random woman who was all over Nitro was. I didn't get ECW so I was like "Is this Francine?" and finally someone posted that it was some random fitness model. It was so bizarre and very WCW to feature someone so prominently on their shows despite no real APPEAL. I mean, don't get me wrong, Torrie was, and still is, a very attractive woman but it's not like she was SO unlike other attractive women or had any sort of cachet among wrestling fans (like even if she was some wrestlers wife or relative, you could go "Oh that's Scott Norton's sister!" ) that you could justify the TV time. And the to devote all this TV time to a random woman all to build an angle for David Freaking Flair?!!? Just mind-numbing stuff. 3
SirSmUgly Posted June 11, 2024 Author Posted June 11, 2024 3 minutes ago, caley said: That sounds terrible but I have no memory of it. I DO remember the Torrie Wilson vignettes. I didn't have internet at home back then so when I'd get to school, I would Google who the hell this random woman who was all over Nitro was. I didn't get ECW so I was like "Is this Francine?" and finally someone posted that it was some random fitness model. It was so bizarre and very WCW to feature someone so prominently on their shows despite no real APPEAL. I mean, don't get me wrong, Torrie was, and still is, a very attractive woman but it's not like she was SO unlike other attractive women or had any sort of cachet among wrestling fans (like even if she was some wrestlers wife or relative, you could go "Oh that's Scott Norton's sister!" ) that you could justify the TV time. And the to devote all this TV time to a random woman all to build an angle for David Freaking Flair?!!? Just mind-numbing stuff. I am a man of base thoughts sometimes, as you can tell from my posts about Kimberly, Chae, et al., but Torrie never did it for me. Not saying she's hideous or whatever. The issue is that her looks are really her only appeal. Take someone for comparison like Sable, and at least I've seen her do some surprisingly athletic stuff in the ring. Torrie offers none of that in-ring stuff, and she has no charisma, so she serves as nothing but eye candy IMO, which a) is a bad way to pick people to act on your television show and b) useless for even the raging teen hormones version of me since I had zero interest in her looks. 1
SirSmUgly Posted June 11, 2024 Author Posted June 11, 2024 (edited) Thunder Interlude – show number fifty-two – 25 February 1999 "The WCW Gang is too tired to give you a whole show; maybe just re-watch some Nitro for part of this Thunder instead or something" I was watching an old sporting event from 1996 on YouTube that someone left the commercials in for and there was a WCW SuperBrawl VI commercial…Flair vs. Savage, Hogan vs. Giant, and Lex Luger/Sting vs. Harlem Heat were the promoted matches…It’s been three years (!) since I started this project, just about, and that’s been enough time to become once again nostalgic for all that late-1995/early-1996 stuff that I watched in 2021… I do plan to complete any PPVs and Clashes that I skipped over back when this was only going to be a Nitro watch once I finally get done with the Nitro run…I’ll just make this thread the COMPLEAT NITRO ERA thread…And I’ll be a little sad when I get through the WCW run to the end…I miss WCW…Not this dreadfully bad period of WCW, of course…But WCW in general… Let’s see if Thunder replaces any feelings of despondence with feelings of apathy, or maybe disgust…Or possibly joy?...That last one, please?... As we get a long overview of the DDP/Steiner feud, I think to myself that Steiner/Page could be good if Page got over on Steiner at all…Like, Steiner terrorizing Kimberly is one thing, but Steiner terrorizing Kimberly, mowing Page down twice in a row, and never actually catching hands from Page between those losses is rough…Also, when is Kim going to punt this guy in the balls already?...She needs to get physical vengeance, too… Hardcore Hak doesn’t have any entrance music…I am the opposite of a Metallica fan, but Hak entering without “Enter Sandman” (or a lite beer in hand) is rough…Hak grabs a mic and says since people seem to transgress the boundaries of proper competition in WCW as a matter of form, he’s basically stealing Raven’s Rules and applying them to all of his matches…Hak faces Damien 666 after this…Damien kayfabe hurts himself delivering a lariat to Hak since Hak’s coiled in barbed wire…Damien unloads with offense…Seriously, Hak gets killed for a long time…Damien lands knees to Hak’s head on a moonsault…Hak just kinda takes over somewhere in there….He hangs Damien on the top rope and then hits a guillotine legdrop…He does the same thing a few seconds later, but with Damien over the guardrail…Damien just sort of gets up rom a chair-assisted basement dropkick attack and grabs the chair to start his own attack…Hak ducks a Damien kendo stick swing and hits a Side Russian for the win…That certainly was a wrestling match… Hector Garza and Psicosis should be at least solid…I was right, it is!...Garza and Psicosis can do fun counter-wrestling in their sleep, probably…Even when Garza can’t balance himself on the guardrail outside for a spot, they just cover it smoothly and Psicosis drills him with a dropkick…Garza wipes out on a splash and eats a missile dropkick for two…The desk yammers on about this Flair family drama nonsense all the way through, which bums me out…Garza just hit Psicosis with an Alley Oop!...Is that not interesting to any of you?...Psicosis lands a top-rope Frankensteiner and then a guillotine legdrop to win it… Ernest Miller is upset that he didn’t get a laser on his entrance…Sonny Onoo promises to figure out the issue…Some tech is like THE LASER IS BROKEN, SORRY DUDE…Miller and Onoo accost Penzer per usual…Some guys in the front row have an understated sign that cracks me up: ERNEST MILLER ISN’T GOOD AT ALL…The juicing of the crowd noise is off and makes it hard to hear what Ernest Miller is actually saying…Miller does his thing…He demands an opponent…It’s another B-Teamer, Stevie Ray…If the B-Teamers are just going to kick the shit out of Miller for the next two months, that is kind of hilarious… Miller begs off because he technically wanted to fight someone from WCW, not the nWo…He gives Stevie Ray five seconds to leave the ring…Stevie Ray does not leave the ring…I don’t know why Miller thinks that calling Stevie “Yogi Bear” is funny or clever, but he does…Stevie beats the hell outta this dude Miller…Onoo jumps in and kicks Stevie when the ref is down…Stevie Slapjacks him, then prepares to finish off Miller…Virgil runs down and bonks Stevie with Stevie’s own slapjack in revenge for Stevie feeding him to Goldberg and Rick Steiner on Nitro…Miller covers, wins, and tries to convince a half-aware Mickey Jay that he used a Feliner to get Stevie on the mat…Jay looks unconvinced, but hey, he can only call what he saw… There have been many recaps, but I stop to mention this Booker/Bret recap from Nitro…This match was such a disappointment… Raven returns to action, but on Thunder…This man deserved a Nitro re-debut…You're telling me that Rick Steiner deserves a Nitro re-debut, but not Raven?...Raven is flanked by Kanyon and Chastity…Raven tells a story about how he’s spent time in treatment lately…Uh, no you didn't...We saw the vignettes…You know this because you broke the fourth wall in the last ones…Raven is mad about Bam Bam Bigelow and Hak acting more hardcore than he is and points out Hak stealing Raven’s Rules…He threatens both men…Kanyon talks…He calls the current year THE ONE TRIPLE NINE…Fantastic…Anyway, the crowd still thinks everyone is better than him…Raven and Kanyon are a tag team tonight, actually, against El Dandy and Villano V…The poor luchadores are just on job duty on Thursdays now, I guess…Can’t give more than one of them at a time a storyline, I guess… The desk talks about these Raven sketches, which in isolation were interesting, but which in total didn’t do anything to enhance Raven as a character…As neat as it was that Raven acknowledged being Scotty Flamingo in an obtuse way, it didn’t do much for him as a wrestler in THE ONE TRIPLE NINE…Raven and Kanyon are a pretty fun tag team…El Dandy gets a hot tag that even production can’t do much to juice the crowd reaction for…Raven flings Dandy into the stairs outside and then helps Kanyon attack Villano V with a chair inside the ring…Raven hits the Villano drop toehold onto a chair and then an Evenflow…The end is weird and I can’t tell if the ref fucked up the count or if Raven pulled Villano V up…Kanyon and Raven put El Dandy through a table after the match… Ooh, a Blitzkrieg match!...He faces Juventud Guerrera in a match that I have actual expectations for…Juvi eats a dropkick early, rolls outside, and reconsiders the initial amount of seriousness with which he took this dude in the goofy getup…Juvi hits a headscissors that sends Blitzkrieg outside after a series of counters…They run the ropes, Juvi gets kicked and hits a clean Hamrick bump, and then Blitzkrieg follows with a flipping plancha that he gets a ton of air on…This is just two dudes hitting dope high spots and bumps…Juvi looks like he’s on tonight, as he’s hit a couple of bumps and big moves cleanly…This is actually just solid for a TV match and not as good as one might hope… After a commercial break, we see Juvi trying to put Blitzkrieg away and not being able to get a three count…A few twos, but nary a three…Juvi hits a standing dropkick to Blitzkrieg sitting on the top rope, which is kinda insane!...Juvi gets two more off a guillotine legdrop, then another two off a release German…Blitzkrieg counters and spins himself into a victory roll for two…Blitzkrieg gets another two count, but then eats knees on a moonsault…Juvi tries a 450, but Blitzkrieg moves…Juvi rolls through and catches a charging Blitzkrieg with a Juvi Driver for three…I did very much like the finishing run…The match felt more like a solid thing with a discernible escalation in the action after the break than it did before the break… Ah, we’ve got a second Konnan rap video…This is the one that Disco is going to parody…Hey, the captioner did an okay job of getting the lyrics right, huh… These bums just replay the whole Rey/Nash confrontation and match from Nitro…Lazy as fuck, fellas…Everyone watching Thunder probably saw Nitro, you fucking bums… The Thunder main event is, uh, Disco Inferno versus Bret Hart?...Sure, this is a WCW-ass WCW matchup…Poor Penzer, getting notes from doltish pro wrestlers all night…Ah, Disco alerts Penzer that he will be singing the Canadian National Anthem before the match…He sings a mock version…He notes that CDN is worth less than USD, though at one point in the ‘90s, it was worth more, no?...Now, though, you get a 25% discount going there for a vacation…Whenever I tip a cab driver in USD in Canada, they treat me like I’m the best dude in the whole world…Feels good, man… Disco stalls a lot to start…I guess he’s going to try to out-Hitman the Hitman…I do like that Bret baits him by pretending to turn his back on him in the corner so that Disco runs in and eats a boot…Punch, rope burn, choke, commercial break…Back from break, Bret’s in the process of planting Disco with a DDT…The Hitman annihilates this dude...He goes into the 5MoD…Disco actually gets a bit of offense in here, but it’s fleeting…Bret goes back to his dissection of Disco and wraps on a Figure Four just for the heck of it…Disco survives…He tries to punch Hart’s locking knee, but no dice…He wriggles his way to the ropes and gets a break after a good minute or so…He goes right back to taking an ass whooping…Backbreaker, elbow drop from the second rope, Sharpshooter, fin… Boy, if they’re going to start replaying chunks of Nitro on every Thunder, that’s ominous…Still, there was just enough solid wrestling to keep this Thunder from feeling like a waste of time…WOOO… Edited June 11, 2024 by SirSmUgly 1
odessasteps Posted June 11, 2024 Posted June 11, 2024 When you have a dozen or more very attractive women on your TV program, you'd need a way to differentiate yourself, even if it's just having a different hair color or skin tone. Stacy had the long legs that made her stand out. 3
SirSmUgly Posted June 13, 2024 Author Posted June 13, 2024 On 6/11/2024 at 3:34 PM, odessasteps said: When you have a dozen or more very attractive women on your TV program, you'd need a way to differentiate yourself, even if it's just having a different hair color or skin tone. Stacy had the long legs that made her stand out. Stacy's also got a fun sort of charisma. I think the women of the Attitude Era get a bum rap for mostly being eye candy, mostly, both in WWF and WCW. I think quite well of most of them as performers. You had your Chynas and Jacquelines who had physical charisma. You had your cool standouts who didn't look or act like the typical pin-up who gave a real alt-flavor to the typical look of the ladies - Chyna again, but also Daffney (a personal favorite of mine) You had women who, even if they weren't great workers, could hit cool spots in the ring - Chyna yet again, but also Sable, and then Daffney actually is a solid worker. Then you had your women who were good actors (for pro wrestling) or just had a personal sort of charisma that jumped off the page (Miss Hancock, Sunny, Terri, Kimberly). Torrie's probably the most over of the ladies who really only offered a sort of "here's some eye candy" deal to the shows. I think you'd put, like, Ryan Shamrock in that bracket, too, or Miss Kitty even though she did get in the ring and work. Even if we're talking the Nitro Girls besides Kimberly, they a) could dance (even if the routines aren't exactly done with the crispness of a Laker Girls troupe) and b) some of them were pretty entertaining in their own right. I mentioned Spice and Whisper clearly understanding how to cut promos for this Kimberly angle, but also Storm/Sharmell is going to turn out to be a really fun personality who has what I would consider a memorable run as Queen Sharmell eventually. It's kind of like how people remember the WWE Divas era in a way that's unfair to some of the ladies, specifically Nikki Bella, who turned out to be a pretty good worker with one of the better forearm shots in the business.
zendragon Posted June 13, 2024 Posted June 13, 2024 Nice timing on this thread semi-syncing up with Vice' Who Killed WCW
odessasteps Posted June 13, 2024 Posted June 13, 2024 Like many people at the time, I was Team Nitro Girl Spice. Also you had the workers that didn’t get their due at the time for a number of reasons, like Luna and later Molly. 1
twiztor Posted June 14, 2024 Posted June 14, 2024 (edited) On 6/8/2024 at 6:17 PM, SirSmUgly said: Show #179 – 15 February 1999 I guess part of the show is lost to time because we come back in media res as Fit Finlay and Dave Taylor work over FIP Dean Malenko while a notice scrolls that the WWE Network did the best they could, man, this is as much show as they could give us. When exactly did Enos and Riggs (or Duncum Jr.) defeat Horace Hogan and Crush, who should still be in this tournament? Did Horace and Crush just give up their spot in the tournament or what? What is wrong with this company?! Tell a consistent story for once! Well, look, we’re getting a Bret Hart versus Will Sasso (w/Debra Wilson) match next. I deeply loathed this Nitro. It was bad in small ways. It was bad in big ways. Almost nothing was enjoyable. It had no good wrestling matches. -21 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. per DDT Digest, you didn't miss anything special. Just the opening of the tag match. But the announcers DID pay off your second point: "Earlier in the show, the announcers acknowledged that the winner of this match will have to face Brian Adams and Horace on Thursday, and win two matches against Henning and Windham at Superbrawl, since whoever wins on Thursday will already have one loss in the tournament, whereas Hennig and Windham don't have any losses." when i did my rewatch, i tried to incorporate as much of the non-WCW TV as possible. This whole MadTV crossover was brutal in trying to track and watch in a coherent manner. definitely was not worth the effort. GOD DAMN! that is a terrible score. i truly hope you don't see a worse one (for your own sanity). On 6/9/2024 at 12:39 PM, SirSmUgly said: Thunder Interlude – show number fifty-one – 18 February 1999 Tony S. hypes Goldberg being on the Tonight Show and making a blockbuster challenge… It’s so obvious that they should still be investing significant TV time in Jericho…He’s exactly the type of performer (huge personality, can do legitimately funny wrestling comedy, solid enough in ring to have good big-time matches) that would actually help WCW match what the WWF’s strength is, which is wrestlers of exactly that typeI wonder what we’d all think of Jericho if, say, he had fusion surgery at the end of the aughts and didn’t wrestle between like 2009 and 2018…I’m certain his rep would be more in line with what it probably should be if he was forced out and couldn’t stay too long at the table…It would also help current-day Jericho to recognize that he’s not a main event level talent with even the thimbleful of athleticism that he was able to scoop together in his twenties… Was I wrong about Buff Bagwell being a good heel?...I remembered him as a fantastic heel… Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan win a tune-up for SuperBrawl over Hector Garza and Silver King…They should have had Misterio and Konnan roll a tag team of, like, Jerry Flynn and Al Green instead just to emphasize that they can compete with tag teams who have large size advantagesFrom what little I’ve seen, I’m actually interested in a Rey/Luger singles match…Luger has underrated timing and always seems to be in the right place, so he’s a great base for Rey’s offense…Konnan monkeyflips Rey into rana position, and Rey drills Silver King with the rana for the win… for my money, Dean Malenko is the worst Horseman ever Benoit and Malenko have to defeat all the remaining one-loss teams to get a shot at Hennig and Windham…Why Horace and Crush were positioned to only have to win one match to get that opportunity, or why Enos and Riggs were positioned to only have to win two matches to get it, but Benoit/Malenko and Finlay/Taylor had to win three straight to get it, I could never say…It’s a simple bracket, WCW…How do you fuck up a simple bracket like this?.... that world-shattering challenge is Steve Austin. i can't remember if it's ever mentioned on WCW tv again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MyhamCyHDI WCW did a shit job of "elevating" (for lack of a better word) guys from the cruiserweight division into the heavyweight ranks. You mentioned it with the Konnan/Rey team, which is accurate, but i think the same could be said of Jericho. He's getting ready to face Saturn, a power wrestler who throws suplexes. So to prepare, he faces Juvi? a smaller guy that he has already beaten bunches of times? Sure, the Juvi match is going to be more enjoyable to watch. Sure, in kayfabe, Jericho is the kind of guy to choose an opponent that he knows he'd beat. But in terms of presentation, it just makes Jericho still feel like a part of the cruiserweight division, and therefore lower-tier than someone like Saturn (the same problem also occurred last fall when he feuded with Raven. I thought they were getting away from this with his TV Title reign, but then they slip right back into it. Buff Bagwell is an anomaly. He's good, because he has a great look, charisma, and can be part of good matches. But he's bad, because he's inconsistent. He can be very one-note and cut boring tedious promos. And he can be part of bad matches. So at his best, he's great. But at his worst, he's terrible. I can't blame everything on bad angles, because he can be good when the booking is shit. OTOH, he can be awful in interesting storylines. I wonder if it's due to personal motivation? Or maybe he's better in shorter doses/appearances/runs? I don't know the answer. fully agree on Malenko being the worst Horseman. he just doesn't fit. like, at all. generally solid if unremarkable matches. negative charisma. i *think* they were trying to set up that the earlier you lose in the tournament, the sooner you enter the losers' bracket, and therefore have a longer (back) climb to the top. But i agree that they were completely unable to explain this. You know what would have helped, and what i would have loved as a mark for tournaments? AN ON SCREEN BRACKET! but then you have to, you know, actually have sensical booking that you follow through with. On 6/9/2024 at 4:30 PM, SirSmUgly said: SuperBrawl (IX) ’99 notes: Torrie Wilson is like the WORST fucking actor, just a grating and unlikeable personality. is a way better talker than her as far as I can tell. Let Spice seduce the camera dude instead. Chris Jericho (w/Ralphus and Scott Dickinson) faces Perry Saturn in the next match. Scott Dickinson is apparently the assigned ref for this match since his thirty-day suspension is up. Uh, I get that Ric Flair is a bit preoccupied, but maybe he could have a second-in-command to keep stuff like Scott Dickinson being assigned to ref Saturn matches from happening? Scott Steiner defends his TV title and his recent pattern of behavior against Diamond Dallas Page. This match hasn’t really done it for me. Neat spots to be sure, but this match is not very good. oooh, a chance to tell my Torrie Wilson story. MANY MANY years ago (early 2000s?) one of the WWF tv shows were coming to my area. the on sale date, Torrie Wilson was showing up the local mall to do an autograph signing. She was scheduled for like 3 hours. We showed up right around starting time. there was a decent line, but nothing too bad. She wasn't there yet, so we decided to do a tour of said mall. Came back about an hour later, she still wasn't there. Line was about the same length. We decided to grab some lunch. Came back about another hour later. She had already left. THIS BITCH WAS AN HOUR AND HALF LATE AND ONLY STAYED ABOUT 20 MINUTES. Fuck Torrie Wilson. a second-in-command, you say? if only WCW had a commissioner that was just re-established on the previous flagship show! Somehow, when Scott Steiner joins WWE in 2003, they managed to bring in early 1999 Steiner instead of late 2000 Steiner. What a fumbled opportunity! damn Smelly, you've been on a streak this week! i will finish catching up later, but right now, that's as much WCW as i can handle. I am a glutton for punishment, so I kept going after all. Edited June 14, 2024 by twiztor 1
twiztor Posted June 14, 2024 Posted June 14, 2024 On 6/10/2024 at 7:49 PM, SirSmUgly said: Show #180 – 22 February 1999 Larry Z. goes on an on about how much he thinks parents should beat the shit out of their kids or whatever like they did back in the day. Shut the fuck up, Larry Z. I knew better than to get excited about Bret/Booker, and I was right. Rick Steiner announces that he is back by running down and clotheslining both guys. Please don’t tell me we’re going to fire up the Steiner Brothers feud again. They exploded. The explosion happened already. We saw it. We saw it and saw it. Now, it’s over. Please. So, the feed instead shows an nWo version of the interview with…oh no…Disco pretending to be Gene Okerlund and Kevin Nash reprising his whole Arn Anderson impression. Jesus, this is truly dreadful television. It’s bad, no one cares. i see that you also saw the Goldberg challenging Austin bit. awful, dumb, and pointless. I have Larry Z as one of the worst commentators of all time. The amount of time he wasted on the shows talking about taxes, or his golf game, or "LarryLand" is what i envision playing over the loudspeakers in Hell. i find it humorous that the tag belts are vacant and held up because Rick Steiner was injured. LITERALLY THE DAY AFTER THEY CROWN NEW CHAMPS, Rick Steiner returns. maybe those two horrible tag tournaments weren't even necessary, then? i happened to catch this nWo parody when it happened. Must have been a Nitro overrun after Raw ended or something. Didn't know what it was, or any of the storylines surrounding it, but found it compelling and interesting. shortly thereafter, I went looking for it through tape trading or whatever. When i rewatched it, i was mortified. That was monumentally stupid. On a higher note, at the same time i tracked down the Hall/Bigelow ladder match that held up WAY better. nothing to add about Thunder, but to pick up on the ladies' charisma: i HATED the Nitro Girls segments at the time. There was already so much non-wrestling, that having some third rate cheerleaders eat up even more time was completely egregious to me. And i was a teenage male! If they could have combined it with some appealing music (i'm specifically thinking about the Fly Girls from 'In Living Color' and how that was my exposure to actual rap music) then maybe? But the music was just generic techno music, and the dances were not really well choreographed or performed at a high level. That's probably why i could never differentiate the women. Other than Kimberly, i couldn't tell a Chae from a Whisper. am i forgetting some hot angle of Miss Kitty? i thought literally all of her appeal was that she offered to get naked. My apologies to her if there was more that i am overlooking. i do want to second the love for Daffney. Absolutely not the best worker, but it worked. She was compelling, both in matches and segments. Although the screaming was a bit much sometimes. 1
SirSmUgly Posted June 15, 2024 Author Posted June 15, 2024 Show #180 – 1 March 1999 “The one with a clean finish in the main event?! In 1999?!?!” We start this show in a way that would have had me switching to RAW in real time. David Flair and Torrie Wilson play a few upset messages that Ric left on David’s answering machine and giggle about them. It’s not good, man. It’s not good. I’m annoyed. I don’t know how I’m going to get through segments with these two in them for the next how-many-ever months. I did not anticipate this pairing being the thing about late-Nitro-era WCW that set me off like this. These two sitting in the limo and playing Ric’s increasingly frustrated messages while they laugh is like a Family Guy gag that goes on for three beats too long. Finally, after four or six hours, it ends. Recap, Nitro Girls, *wolf howl*, and here come Buff Bagwell and Scott Steiner, appropriate since the recap was about them getting their asses kicked by Goldberg and Rick Steiner on the previous Nitro. Scott is entering his final form – lots of insults related to the socioeconomic status of the crowd, lots of discussion of his dealer genetics. They get some cheap heat with all the Tar Heel fans in the crowd by pimping the Blue Devils. It works really well, to be fair. Buff and Scott challenge Rick and Goldberg to a tag match for later in the show. Ricki Rachtman looks like a total asshole. Is it the cowboy hat or the chicks hate me t-shirt? Hmmm, why can’t it be both? Ricki hates the crowd of college students that he’s standing in almost as much as Mean Gene typically does. *wolf howl* again, but man, we just heard it! Why are we getting another talking segment? Nash, Luger, Disco, and Liz come to the ring. They pretend that they’re going to invite Rey Misterio Jr. into the Wolfpac. Nash pretends to call Rey on the phone and get a “not interested” response from him. It’s a wrestling match! From last week. It’s Booker/Bret highlights in a video package. We’re twenty minutes into this show, and I’m wondering how close I am in my watch to the infamous Nitro that didn’t have a wrestling match in the first hour. This was apparently a dry run for that Nitro because it’s not until twenty-one-and-a-half minutes into the show that Psicosis comes to the ring for a match against Billy Kidman. Said match is fine. Psicosis survives a Frankensteiner and gets on top with a headscissors, a pair of lariats, and a baseball slide. They do a contrived spot outside the ring where Psicosis backdrops Kidman while standing with his back against the apron; Kidman springs off the ropes and the momentum bounces him back to ringside and into a DDT. Why would Psicosis backdrop a guy while standing there? Does he have no ring awareness? Kidman hits a big crossbody from the top to the floor, but gets caught going up when he gets back in the ring. Psicosis takes over into the break. We come back to Psicosis trying a powerbomb – the fool! – but Kidman can’t take advantage when he flips out of it; Psicosis hangs him over the ropes and then hits him with a guillotine legdrop. They fight outside the ring and then into the crowd. Kidman barely clears a springboard rana off the guardrail. I think my issue with this match is that no one is selling cumulative damage, really. They’re just working at the same semi-speedy pace all the way through. It’s not a bad match, but it’s not elevating itself above being solid. Kidman gets two off a Sky High; Psicosis gets two of his own off a top-rope Frankensteiner. They trade moves until Psicosis tries another powerbomb – the foolish fool! – and Kidman flips out and into a facebuster, then goes up and drops an SSP for the victory. Arn Anderson lectures David Flair and tries to ignore Torrie Wilson. He should have just tried to ignore them both so that we wouldn't have to see them on camera, but no, he invites a verbal response. Why in the fuck do they insist on putting David on TV? He’s beyond terrible at this. Hulk Hogan tells Virgil that Virgil’s still the B-Team leader and that Virgil has permission to physically assault Stevie Ray if he needs to assert his dominance. He already did that on Thunder. Oh, who am I kidding, no one watches Thunder except for me. Nitro party stuff. These segments are so long. Or they seem that way. Rachtman and the Nitro Girls plan to visit one of the Ivies! It’s just Brown, though. Brown is the only Ivy that seems remotely appropriate as a host for a Nitro party. Bam Bam Bigelow faces Rey Misterio Jr. in another opportunity for Rey to be a giant killer. Rey’s got baggy jeans and Lugz or Timbs on. Tony S. calls him “hip.” Oh, Tony S. Anyway, Bammer signals that he’s going to pull a Spike Dudley on Rey. Man, I can’t believe we are in Rey’s dark age that everyone just pretends didn’t happen. I’m talking aesthetically, of course, as Rey is still one of the best guys to ever do it in the ring. Bam Bam eventually presses Rey and throws him into a bunch of security guys who have come out to try and convince Bammer not to toss Rey into the crowd. Rey fights on, however. And by “fights on,” I mean “sells while Bam Bam hits some stomps and stands around.” Rey makes one comeback that gets aborted, then sits there in what is a terrible looking chinlock for a bit before making another one getting beaten up some more. Bigelow finally tries a flying headbutt, misses, and does spark a Rey comeback. Rey slips while trying to use Bam Bam as a springboard; gotta get that whole footwear thing figured out, Rey. Anyway, Bam Bam takes back over as the fireworks hit for hour number two in the middle of a match. It’s been quite a while since that’s happened, huh? Rey makes one more comeback, leaps himself up and into victory roll position, and manages a victory roll for three. The crowd seems very into Rey killing giants! Rey does rule, even unmasked and in East L.A.-wear, so I’m not surprised. Rey starts cutting a promo with Gene Okerlund in the back when Luger and Disco distract him so that Nash can lariat him from behind and then give him a wedgie. Yeah. Bam Bam, meanwhile, has gone backstage after the loss and found that Raven is there ready to brawl with him. Hak runs in with a kendo stick and starts swinging it at everyone. Now, I’m not the type of person to call Bischoff a liar, but Bischoff is a damned liar about not following what the WWF is doing because this sure seems like the opening gambit to establishing a hardcore division in WCW. Ric Flair rolls up to the show in a limo. This was the point in the era where “[person] rolls up to the show in a limo” was way overused. Kevin Nash, Lex Luger, and Disco Inferno convince Stevie Ray to attack Virgil later tonight. I think Stevie is being played for a fool. I saw twiztor’s post about the Nitro Girls. While he is right – the dancing is pretty below par for your typical dance troupe, to be nice about it – I don’t think the Nitro Girls take up that much of the show. Any complaints that I have about too many Nitro Girls segments goes triple for talking segments that are unnecessary or that go on for fifteen minutes instead of the three or four they need. The one time I was in complete disbelief about Nitro Girls segments were when they showed up four or five times on Halloween Havoc '98 and then, of course, the show feed ran out before the finish of the main event. I mention this because the Nitro Girls dance for a little while before Jerry Flynn comes out and recites the punchline to Ernest Miller's joke. He calls Miller out and asks if Miller is “some kinda Muhammad Ali wannabe.” Uh, yeah. You don't need to actually SAY it. So, this made me laugh: We cut to the back, where Sonny Onoo is excitedly telling Miller that he procured Glacier’s laser show for the entrance when Scott Norton comes into the locker room. Instead of attacking, Norton is the guy who tells Miller that Flynn is calling him out and fires him up. It’s almost like a sketch comedy absurdity where you run a bit, but all the people in the bit have been switched from their normal roles into one another’s roles, so the weirdness from that switch is enough to be funny. Norton convinces the Cat to get out there by yelling, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? DID I BEAT ALL THE HEART OUT OF YOU? FOR GOD’S SAKE *turns and walks away disgustedly*, and man, that was genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve heard a wrestler say on Nitro. So, Miller is fired up enough to come out. He does have Glacier’s entrance, but that entrance is set to – AWWWW – a dub of his excellent WCW theme. What the hell, WWE? I mean, the juxtaposition is still funny, but Miller’s original theme is great. It’s not that similar to a specific James Brown joint, dammit! I’m not going to let this ruin things, but this dub sorta sucks, man. Something about Glacier’s snow machine coming on bums Miller out, though, and his fighting energy suddenly dissipates. You can hear the far superior Miller theme playing underneath this terrible dub. PLAY THE REAL ONE INSTEAD. Miller does the “slide in the ring to try and get the jump on my opponent, but fuck it up badly” spot. This time, he slides in and right up…to the ref, who he got confused with Flynn in the darkened arena. Now, I have no idea why Jerry Flynn is getting a mini-push, but this match against the Cat is interesting in that I have no idea where any of this is going. Miller takes over and works a headlock, trying to get leverage for it on the ropes. The crowd is bored by that, but is more interested in the typical wandering ringside brawl. In truth, the match is probably a handful of minutes longer than it needs to be. Toward the end, both men try kicks at the same time, “hit” each other (Miller wasn’t close), and knock each other out. At that point, Mickey Jay just makes up some new rules! He tells Penzer that since both guys were knocked out, whoever gets up first before the ten count wins the match straight away. That’s not how this works! That’s not how any of this works! Miller grabs Jay and draws his attention so that Onoo can kick Flynn back down. Miller gets up, wins, and leaves Onoo to be chased around the ring by Flynn. Well, that was sort of a wet fart after Scott Norton (?!?!) did some really funny comedy to kick things off. Jimmy Hart leads Hugh Morrus to the ring for a match against Perry Saturn. Well, Hart leads Morrus to the ring, but Morrus meets Saturn in the aisle. Hart helps Morrus get control of the match early on. Saturn makes a comeback and ends up outside, where Hart whiffs a chair shot attempt, but again distracts Saturn so that Morrus can take control again. Morrus gets two on a press slam back in the ring, then works a chinlock. He hits a kneelift, then works another one. This match does not need to be this long. Morrus has nothing going on between the opening bell and his finish. The long and short of it is that Morrus takes entirely too much of this match, works like three separate chinlocks, Finally, after what feels like about a decade, or approximately three David Flair and Torrie Wilson promos long depending on how you look at it, Morrus goes up, jumps into an overhead suplex, and eats a bunch of dress punches. Morrus manages to powerbomb his way out of that last predicament, but gets caught with a top-rope Frankensteiner. That’s when Jericho runs down and tags Saturn with a loaded fist while Hart distracts the ref. Morrus considers punching Jericho out, but decides to go up and land a No Laughing Matter for three instead. Buff and Scott Steiner drive around the country, following Rachtman to college campuses and preying on impressionable young women. At least we didn’t have to hear them talk; Tony S. talked over the footage this week. We get some more Nitro party footage, followed by Hennig and Windham recap stuff. They’re irritating now, but I can only imagine how awful they’re going to be as part of that fucking West Texas Rednecks stable. West Texas Rednecks vs. No Limit Soldiers promises to make me hate professional wrestling, even if only temporarily. I think it’s probably unfair to bump the Hitman down to number two on my personal favorites list. His booking is so bad that it defies belief, number one, and then on top of that his enemy Kevin Nash now has a hand in booking the show. Yuck. At least Bret’s getting a chance to face a guy he wants to face in Chris Benoit tonight. Then again, he always mentions wanting to work Booker, and I don’t think he was at his best last Nitro. And the worst part of it about Bret is that his brother is going to pass in fewer than three months because of Vince McMahon’s criminal negligence, and he's got less than a year before Goldberg kicks him right into retirement. God, this Bret Hart WCW run is genuinely depressing. I think the guy is allowed to be openly and continually miserable about this part of his life. This match is okay. I am one of the few fans who didn’t think there was ever a Benoit/Hitman match worth watching more than once, including the Kansas City match. They do some opening decent mat stuff to start. The Hitman has a tepid control segment after that, punctuated in a couple places by Benoit flashing a pinfall attempt or trying to make a comeback. Benoit manages a desperation back suplex that causes a standing ten count. Does Charles Robinson know that whoever gets up first is now the winner? I guess not, since Benoit is up first and Robinson just lets the match continue like some kinda guy who doesn’t know anything about pro wrestling. Anyway, they have a counter-counter-counter series of spots with Benoit trying a top-rope dive, fending off a Hart superplex attempt, diving feet-first into Bret’s waiting arms, getting tied up for a Sharpshooter, and grabbing Bret’s arm and turning it into a Crippler Crossface from his spot on the ground. Bret gets to the ropes as we hit a commercial break. We come back to Benoit reaching the ropes on a Hitman Figure Four. The Hitman presses his advantage and starts hitting a few of his 5MoD and also a choke. Benoit eventually explodes back with a billion strikes and stomps. He hits a snap suplex, goes up for the flying headbutt, nails it…and sells a head injury. In kayfabe, Benoit should stop doing that move. He always sells a head injury that delays his cover. He’s gotten a lot of 2.5s, 2.7s, and 2.9s off that move and should maybe do something else, logically speaking. Back to the match, both men clear one another out with a clothesline, then trade sleeper spots until Bret back suplexes both himself and Benoit over the ropes and to the floor to escape. We get this whole long match, and of course, we can’t have a clean finish. Bret gets in the ring and preoccupies the ref while Hennig and Windham run down and clobber Benoit. They toss him back in the ring, where Bret locks on a Sharpshooter and keeps it on even after Benoit reaches the ropes. Robinson calls for a DQ after counting to five; Bret clears him out. Malenko runs down for a save, but it’s three on two, so he ends up getting choked out with the belt and beaten down. Great, another Wolfpac segment. I love it, give me more. I’ve decided that the motivation for Kevin Nash to hand the belt to Hulk Hogan without a fight is the biggest character/plot hole in the whole run of Nitro. I've thought about this since I watched the Fingerpoke episode, and I can't get there on the logic. Why would Nash need Hogan if he’s running his own group and is the champ? The implication (imagined implication?) that Hall brokered a deal by which he’d help Nash beat Goldberg if Nash gave the belt to Hogan doesn’t make sense. Even if Nash accepted it initially, I think getting the belt would have caused him to back out of that agreement. I digress. Hogan cuts a terrible promo. I’m more interested in Kevin Nash both antagonizing and pretending to calm down Stevie Ray in the background while Stevie mean mugs Virgil. In fact, I was so focused on Nash stirring shit up in the background that I missed most of what Hogan said. He insulted Ric Flair, basically. Wait, now Virgil and Stevie are fighting. It’s pretty funny that Hogan thought he had everyone spellbound, but no one was paying any attention. Hogan claims that Ric Flair is going to retire later tonight. Gene Okerlund introduces Ric Flair for another interview segment. Flair lists a few guys in the Wolfpac: Hall and Nash (get pops), Luger (gets silence), and Buff (gets a high-pitched squee). Then he lectures his little charisma-deficient chump of a son for a few seconds before naming some Tar Heel Men’s Basketball guys to get a cheap pop. Finally, Flair sets an agenda for his last month running the company. He puts himself and Hogan in a cage match for the WCW World Championship at Uncensored. Now, this can’t be the double-turn match, right? There is one angle from which it would make sense – Flair is getting desperate to win the title before he can’t just give himself title shots anymore after his presidency ends. But the problem is that, like a southern version of Bret Hart, Ric Flair is un-boo-able at this point, at least to the WCW faithful. No one wants a heel Flair run. The other problem is that Hulk Hogan is the least sympathetic wrestler in history, maybe. Who the fuck wants to cheer for him? I mean, other than Torontonians? This can’t be right. The double-turn has to come later in the year, after Flair has started to signal a heel turn for weeks and maybe even a month or two, for it to have even a remote chance of working. We’ve managed to make it to our main event: Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell against Rick Steiner and Goldberg. Rick’s music sounds like that “Welcome to the Jungle” song, but it doesn’t get dubbed over? Fuck y’all, put the Cat’s original theme back in these shows! OK, fine, I’ll let it go. For now. Rick and Buff start things out. It’s cool to see Buff working again. I will say, that when there are tags, the crowd is into Goldberg/Scott Steiner. As much as I’ve hated Scott Steiner and Buff on this watch-through, they got well over together. Not that it takes much of a stretch to see Scott Steiner as a legitimate threat to other main eventers. Anyway, so Goldberg military presses Scott six times, and it RULES. The idea of Goldberg and Scott Steiner tossing each other around in a hoss-fest has me excited, and I hope it happens at some point in the next two years that WCW is still around. Rick Steiner ends up being FIP; Scott Steiner surreptitiously clips the top turnbuckle pad in his corner, tags in, and then whips Rick into the exposed buckle. The match then settles down into a boring heel control segment, mostly because Buff stinks as a heel in control. Finally, Rick puts knees up on a Buff splash attempt and gets a hot tag. Goldberg kills these dudes to a huge pop. Scott disposes of his brother and helps Buff throw blows at Goldberg, but when they try to whip Goldberg into the exposed buckle, he hops a downed Rick Steiner and Rick explodes up with a double clothesline. Goldberg hits Buff with a spear and sets up for a Jackhammer, but Scott stops it. Goldberg takes care of Scott while Rick leaps into the air and hits a clothesline that maybe was supposed to be a bulldog? It doesn’t matter; it gets three. A clean three count in a WCW Nitro main event?! This show wasn’t very good, but the score has gone up a few Stinger Splashes just for this. The downsides to this show are significant: Only six matches in three hours by my count, with most of them going longer than necessary and only half of those ending cleanly; besides that, lots of promos and sketches, and most of them bad. On the plus side: A clean main event finish with the babyfaces standing tall and Scott Norton being funny. Hmmm, what’s going to tip this score? I think, unfortunately, the Cat’s theme dub being so bad and the first twenty minutes of the show being all recaps and skits push this show just into the negative. -0.75 out of 5 Stinger Splashes 1
SirSmUgly Posted June 15, 2024 Author Posted June 15, 2024 8 hours ago, twiztor said: am i forgetting some hot angle of Miss Kitty? i thought literally all of her appeal was that she offered to get naked. My apologies to her if there was more that i am overlooking. That's exactly my point. It's the only reason she was hired. Well, that and Jerry Lawler's nagging Vince to hire her. Odessa mentioned Molly and Luna, both of whom ruled and whom I shouldn't have forgotten. With Daffney, the piercing screaming was a lot, but also, I liked the alt-girl stuff so much that I dealt with the constant shrieking. Quote On a higher note, at the same time i tracked down the Hall/Bigelow ladder match that held up WAY better. I was surprised at how good this was. Is Scott Hall the best ladder match worker ever? His ladder matches all still hold up even after countless ladder matches with guys killing themselves with dives and bumps. x2 Michaels, Goldberg, and Bam Bam would probably be four of my five or six favorite ladder matches of all-time.
SirSmUgly Posted June 16, 2024 Author Posted June 16, 2024 (edited) Thunder Interlude – show number fifty-three – 4 March 1999 "The WCW Gang plants a couple of seeds that are going to struggle to blossom at Uncensored" We’re three shows away from Uncensored…WCW has actually built up like four or five matches for this show even with the quick-ish turnaround from SuperBrawl…I’m not sure that any of them are compelling…But at least there’s a build… They play the whole Arn/David Flair/Torrie confrontation before the title card…Arn is thrown off by how bad the other two are at improv…It was an awkward segment… After the title card, Arn and Ric have a candid conversation about David…Ric is relaxed about his goofy son…He’s more concerned with being the World Champ again…Yeah, it’s been awhile…Three years, actually…Arn is concerned with how David is acting, but Ric is like, Whatever, David’s gonna have to fuck up and learn from it like the rest of us do…Arn doesn’t seem to understand, in Ric's view, that the title is more important because it means money and fame…Arn’s like, Are you masking your feelings about David by focusing on the title instead of him? You must be hurt, right?...Ric’s like, Whatever man, I need to be champ, David’s gonna do whatever he does, fuck ‘im…OK, so this is surprisingly subtle, but it does set up a Ric Flair heel turn…And actually, the logic is elegant in its way…Basically, Ric realizes that his dopey son thinks that dad’s gone so soft that he can just taze the dude and keep living at home for free…Ric’s implying that he’s going to have to re-establish himself by showing David and everyone else what it’s really like…Arn is shocked and puzzled at Flair’s cavalier nature about David to the point that he indicates that he’s unsure that he knows the guy sitting in front of him… After seeing this, I’m feeling certain that we’re getting the double-turn at Uncensored…I get why (IRL) Ric thinks he can pull this off…It’s because (kayfabe) Ric has had a pretty amazing narrative arc from the time he feuded with Savage in WCW to now…He noted in that conversation with Arn that he can’t “be distracted” anymore…Really, he's been distracted even since before he lost the big gold the last time he held it...The feud with Savage pulled him off orbit…He got infected with the Madness and made bad decision after bad decision that led to Hennig destroying the Horsemen…Then, he was further attacked by Bischoff…In kayfabe, Flair must have been wondering when he let little shrimpy guys like Bischoff think they could hang with him…But then, David having the balls to backstab him had to be the final wake-up call…If David doesn’t believe that Pops is the dirtiest player in the game anymore to the point that he tazes the guy to hang out with Torrie Wilson and the nWo, that is the point at which the culmination of three years of increasingly un-Flair-like behavior must have finally caught up to Ric mentally…Flair actually killed it in this promo (and so did Arn)…If you’ve been watching the whole Nitro era, Flair’s progression as a character during that time has been magnificent… Now, Flair’s issue is that in the context of just this feud, his heel turn makes perfect sense…However, in the context of the company he is in, there’s zero chance it’ll work…The crowds probably are going to cheer harder for heel Flair than if he kept being a somewhat ineffectual babyface…The other issue is that Hogan hasn’t done anything on television to even remotely try and make himself sympathetic…And he’s completely unsympathetic in the first place…I cannot wait for Uncensored…The main event is going to fail, but man, will it be a fascinating failure… We get to the desk finally over eleven minutes in, and then they send us to Nitro footage of Ric cutting his in-ring promo after that…But they can get away with it because the Ric/Arn sit-down conversation was excellent… I think Ric Flair as a wrestler is the guy who I’ve struggled with the most in my reassessment of during this watch-through…I have my complaints about him…I think the issue for me is that when he’s doing his greatest hits in the ring or on the mic, I find him to be hard to watch…But when he’s on, like in that convo with Arn or back on Show #36 of Nitro when he had a great match with Eddy Guerrero and then followed up by being excellent on commentary, I see what everyone else does about the guy… Well, fifteen minutes in, and we get Buff/Scott Steiner vs. Goldberg/Rick Steiner recap…Because fuck live wrestling matches, right?...Flair is compelling at this point, so I’ll allow all the video of him and Arn, even if it was a bit much with all the recap…Buff and Scott, not so much… Good news: Seventeen minutes in, we get a match!...Bad news: Hugh Morrus is in the match…Oh no, and he’s wrestling Rick Steiner…This match could be good, but only if Rick tosses Morrus with about fifty suplexes and doesn’t give him too much offense…Well, this wasn’t notably good or anything, but it actually was okay…Morrus stuck with lariats and slams for his offense…Rick tossed him around a bit…Morrus missed two top rope moves…Steiner won with the top-rope bulldog…It was perfectly fine, and thankfully WCW didn’t send them out there for fifteen minutes when five did well enough… Gene Okerlund interviews Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko…Why would you book this?...These guys suck at interviews…Chris Benoit’s Keith Lee Memorial Vocabulary Extravaganza: fortuitous, affinities, “amplified our hunger for gold,” “amplified our hunger for vengeance”…Was Chris Benoit, like, a fairly voracious reader?...It’s like the guy read a bunch of Norman Mailer and thought that maybe he could try and cut promos like Mailer writes…But without the writing skill, of course…Anyway, this is not a good promo, as you might guess…Malenko finally gets around to letting Windham and Hennig know that their match for the titles at Uncensored is a belt match of some sort…Okerlund has to lay out the actual match and stipulations because Malenko is so bad at this that he didn’t mention that eight lumberjacks would be surrounding the ring holding the belts…Please stop sending these guys out to talk… Al Green faces Ernest Miller, Sonny Onoo, and also the biggest heel in this company, Ernest Miller’s dubbed theme…I’m legitimately thinking about muting the video whenever the Cat comes out and playing his actual theme on YouTube instead…You know what, I’m gonna do it…The Cat comes out to his proper theme thanks to the magic of YouTube and cuts a rug to it…Yeah, he officially rules now…This is the midcarder who I remember loving so much…Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo are booked against Jerry Flynn in a handicap match at Uncensored, so Miller wants to get Onoo prepped for the match by having him start this match against Green…OK, so Miller points out a portly lady in the crowd and declares that Onoo can take her…Onoo’s face says, Well, mayyyybe, um, hmmm, no, on second thought, she looks pretty tough, actually…Pretty funny, I’ll admit… Miller decides to start this handicap match himself to give Onoo some confidence…Green kicks the Cat’s ass as Onoo short-arms the tag…The Brain points out that soul fans must be thrilled to have a James Brown knockoff wrestling a guy named Al Green…I chuckled sensibly…This is really a one-on-one match in which Onoo avoids doing anything until Miller has knocked Green out with a kick…Onoo tags in; whiffs a kick, but we can all just pretend it hit; and then gets three with a foot on Green’s chest…I quickly mute to avoid that shitty dub and go back to my YouTube tab…I’M THE GREATEST, ONE, TWO, ONE TWO THREE, HIT ME *horns*… Gene Okerlund’s back on in-ring interview duty, this time to talk to Perry Saturn…Saturn’s got on a skirt and a chain necklace set on a dog collar…Saturn’s clearly trying to embody that, um, alt-Marilyn Manson sort of vibe?...I don’t know what you’d formally call it, but I know it when I see it…Saturn calls himself a “bald bombshell”…That’s how I describe myself, frankly…A lithe, bald bombshell…Saturn notes that Jericho loaded his fist with a chain to knock him out on the previous Nitro and then says that they should use that chain to hook up a couple of dog collars and have a dog collar match…Jericho and Ralphus show up to respond…Well, Jericho does the talking, more accurately…Jericho calls Saturn “Tootsie”…Fair play, Jericho…Saturn name drops Marilyn Manson in his response to Jericho’s response...Jericho agreed to the match…Saturn is not some great mic worker, but he did a fine job here hanging with Jericho…How are Benoit and Malenko this bad, still, but Saturn has improved enough to be passable-to-decent as a mic worker?... They let Prince Iaukea off WCWSN for a match against Bam Bam Bigelow…This is a boilerplate TV match between an upper-midcarder and a jobber…I do like the finish, where Iaukea’s comeback is cut short when Bigelow snags him in midair off a springboard and sticks him with a Greetings from Asbury Park… Curt Hennig and Barry Windham get their first shot at the nWo…They face Horace Hogan and Virgil…Like thirty or forty seconds in, Stevie Ray runs down, punches Virgil, and chases him away from the ring…Right after that, Benoit and Malenko run in and attack Hennig and Windham…They take out their belts and swing ‘em around…Curt Hennig’s going to pull a Big Bubba Rogers and never get his revenge after the nWo cast him out, isn't he?... Hacksaw Duggan checks in post-cancer diagnosis…He hits the ring looking healthy…Good for him!...I like that commentary (almost completely) shuts up for this one…Duggan’s thankful to be back…He does an ostentatious public prayer, but you know what, I’ll allow it this once…He thanks the WCW office for sticking by him while he was sick, gives some love to his doctor, and HOOOOOOOOO…Also, he gives tips for early detection of cancer…That’s nice…Finally, he promises that if he inflicts his wrestling on us again, he’s going to continue to be an insufferable cornball…And I promise to complain incessantly about it…Ah, things are gonna be back to normal, just like I like them… Chavo Guerrero Jr. deserves better than to be dumped onto the middle of a random Thunder card to probably job to Billy Kidman…If he wins the title tonight, though, I’ll change my tune…Kidman hits a series of dropkicks and headscissors to start, then lands a crossbody to Chavo outside the ring and a guillotine legdrop back in he ring…Chavo has to dodge a corner splash and quickly land a springboard bulldog to catch a breath…Tony S. must be confused because he claims that Chavo’s changed for the better since losing Pepe…I mean, except for that Chavo heel turn, Tony S. might be onto something!... Chavo takes over and even locks on a Gory Special!...What a cool move…Kidman counters a headlock with a jawbreaker and starts a comeback that gets stuffed when Chavo flapjacks him…Kidman counters Chavo into a Sky High for two…He tries to follow up with a crossbody, but flies to the outside after Chavo ducks…And now starts the ringside brawl portion of the proceedings…For the third time, Kidman tries to hit a splash or crossbody and wipes out when Chavo moves… Chavo declines to press his advantage and just goes to another headlock…Kidman fights up and retakes control of the match…Kidman gets two on a top-rope crossbody…Chavo tries to fight back, but gets countered into a leveraged bulldog for two…Chavo gets a bit more control, but is dumb enough to try a powerbomb and gets countered into a facebuster for two…Kidman wipes out on a corner splah attempt for the fourth time, and Chavo rolls him up with his feet on the ropes, but Silverman sees it and wipes away the three count…Kidman gets two on a roll-up when Chavo turns to argue with the ref…Chavo tries to regain control by mounting Kidman in the corner, but Kidman counters with a powerbomb and an SSP for the victory…That was a pretty good match, good enough that you’d do well to add it to a giant YouTube playlist of good WCW matches if you were so inclined… I guess the checks to the nWo announcer guy Neal Pruitt stopped clearing because Kevin Nash is doing the voiceover for nWo commercials now…Hulk Hogan talks about the idea of his son Nick hating him…He talks about how he’d be devastated…Hogan continues talking about everyone hating him whether he’s “working or shooting”…He says that sure, everything he's ever said or done in the ring was for the money, but that's not as evil as not caring about your own son...Ah, I see, we’re trying to set up the other part of the double turn…The problem is that Hogan’s big point is that Ric’s an even worse guy than he is for not caring enough about his own son’s betrayal…So why would I want to root for a guy who admits that he sucks and didn’t care about the fans?...Just because the guy he's facing is worse, if we accept his argument that Flair is worse than even Hogan is?...Hogan proposes that if Flair loses, he should have to leave the business that he seemingly loves more than his own dopey son…But if Flair wins, Hogan says that he and Bischoff agree that Ric can not only have the World title, but he can also run WCW indefinitely…This segment did not accomplish what it was supposed to accomplish…Sure, I can see the heel turn for Flair on deck…But Hogan in the red-and-yellow again acting like he never said it was all bullshit…And in WCW, no less…That’s not going to work for any of us, brother…I did get a kick out of Hogan saying that Flair sees himself as perpetually twenty years old and determined to stay on the top until the day he’s dead…Yeah, forget a face turn for Hogan, he and Flair should team up and be WCW's somewhat ancient version of the Two-Man Power Trip… Buff Bagwell is in the main event tonight…He gets on the mic and talks about how bummed he was to have to come to Winston-Salem tonight…He intimates that paralysis might have been a better fate…Bagwell faces Booker T. in a matchup that will get ol’ Buff fired from WWE about two years from now…That match was acceptable, but Buff sitting in restholds during heel control does indeed suck…Buff clowns, but Booker just wants a fight…Buff wins an arm drag and celebrates…They fight over a vertical suplex which Booker wins…Book hits a lariat and Buff bails…Buff has a heel control segment, but it’s short…They trade control for a while…Booker fights up out of a headlock and wins a flying forearm…Book lands an axe kick and a side slam…Booker drills a flapjack and Spinaroonies up, but Buff ducks Booker’s Houston Side Kick attempt…*Sigh* Booker takes out the ref instead…Scott Steiner runs out and waffles Booker with a chair a couple of times, then tosses Booker in the ring…Buff follows up with a Blockbuster for a three count that Booker kicked out of at 2.9 for some reason…Yuck…I guess I got too used to having main events without ref bumps… Still, this was a solid show…Flair and Arn did a great job in the conversation segment…Chavo/Kidman was good and everything else was okay…And I have hype for Uncensored just to see how Hogan and Flair totally misfire on this double-turn idea…WOOO… Edited June 16, 2024 by SirSmUgly 2
SirSmUgly Posted June 16, 2024 Author Posted June 16, 2024 Show #181 – 8 March 1999 “The one with a cage being built, a terrible first hour, and evidence of why wrestlers doing wrestling are what make a wrestling show great” As we get a video of WCW techs welding the cage (with barbed wire on the sides!) for the big Uncensored main event together, I’m interested to see how Ric Flair continues to signal his upcoming heel turn more directly on this show. Speaking of, they play the Thunder discussion that he had with Arn again. It was really good, particularly in the context of not only this angle, but in the context of Ric Flair’s WCW career since about the middle of 1995. I think Ric is being quite the DAD as I watch on this Father’s Day: I love my son to death, but if he wants to step to me, he can get it like anyone else is definitely a DAD thing to say, particularly for dads of a certain generation. I didn’t mention in my Thunder review this amazing line from Ric in that conversation, though I did mention what his heel motivation is: “And my 19-year-old-kid is going to wake up tomorrow, or a week from now, or two weeks from now, and say, ‘I made a mistake because my dad is THE MAN.’” Man, Flair’s heel turn being driven by his oldest son disrespecting him is really good. Someone at Brown has a note that says something about Ricki Rachtman and Headbanger’s Ball. I remember that big bald dude (Matt something?) as the host, but admittedly, I also turned it almost as soon as Headbanger’s Ball came on, so maybe I missed Rachtman being on the show. A.C. Jazz shares more about herself in a promo. She is a lady from Georgia with two toy dogs. Now we see clips of the other half of this Flair/Hogan deal with Hogan cutting a promo as part of an nWo commercial. Hogan just can’t pull his part off because he doesn’t have a route to signaling an effective babyface turn, but I should have noted in my Thunder review that this is still a better promo than he’s cut in literal months and maybe even years because he cuts it without yelling and puffing out his cheeks. The delivery is solid, but the content doesn’t hit for the reasons I’ve mentioned already. I genuinely do think that there’s something in Hogan and Ric coming to see something similar in one another and then triggering the Millionaire’s Club angle earlier than it happens. WCW doesn’t have the creative to get this right, but if Hogan were cutting that exact promo and then the swerve was that Hogan leaves the nWo to join Flair and a few other long-term main eventers, that would be interesting. There’s another nWo commercial – we’re about twenty minutes in! – where Hogan and Nash analyze Flair’s Nitro promo from last week. Again, if they were using this to make Hogan and Flair the head of a heel faction, that would work. You could even turn Nash babyface again since everyone wants to cheer the guy anyway. Just have him realize that he’s once more getting squeezed out by guys who are slightly older than he is. Anyway, this commercial isn’t very effective because Nash and Hogan are trying to be funny, and they fail at it. These two have negative chemistry. Also, again, we’re now twenty-two minutes in, and I’d like a wrestling match, not a promo. At the end, Hulk and Nash talk in coded language about how to handle Torrie and David now that Ric has washed his hands of his dopey son. Why are we getting a Lex Luger hype video? He’s injured. Also, there still hasn’t been any wrestling. I’m surprised, since WCW traditionally starts its shows with a hot cruiserweight match! (Is that joke played out? Sorry, I’m still going to make it until this series of Nitro-era review ends.) What a bummer: Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell are in a sketch where they get pulled over by a couple of crooked Boston cops who then enlist them to give frivolous tickets to random Bostonians. While I get a single chuckle out of Scott and Buff admiring the cops’ hats, mostly this sucked ass. Though I do also get a kick out of the cops being as openly shitty as two of the worst heels in the company, come to think of it. We’re back at Brown with Rachtman, who interviews Billy Kidman. Kidman is wearing a white undershirt and a backwards baseball cap while holding a red cup and a wrestling title belt. Hey, I’m pretty sure that I’ve also worn exactly that outfit while holding those things at a college party before! It’s a Nash/Rey feud hype video next. We are thirty minutes in, folks. What are we even doing here? The WWF has once again baited WCW into doing the exact opposite of what WCW is good at. I look at this show, which I think at this point is probably going to turn out to be the infamous “Nitro’s first hour is all skits and videos” Nitro at this point, and think that Vince McMahon’s finest moment in terms of wiping out the competition is actually this Nitro. Rather than buying all the biggest stars of the territories in the ‘80s, which isn’t hard to do when you run the biggest company in the biggest media markets in the country, in the '90s, Vince has taken a bunch of WCW’s midcarders, allowed them to get way over by talking, and then engineered a ratings hit around RAW having a bunch of good talking and joining them on the screen to also do good talking on his part. Doing that has driven WCW to enough desperation that they’ve totally abandoned their game plan of putting on the types of wrestling-centered shows that are their bread-and-butter. That right there is a masterwork of beating down your competition by forcing them to follow you even when they’re bad at doing what you’re doing. Not bad for a negligent piece of shit who should have been put in prison at multiple points in his career. What the hell, it’s another nWo commercial, this time with Torrie Wilson shooting a Glock (in a sports bra!) while Hogan and Nash talk to her. It sucks. We witness these three have the corniest conversation ever as they plan to have dinner and figure out how to switch it up on that dumbass David and his father Ric. Now we get an nWo commercial with Hogan, Nash, and Torrie having that dinner. What if WCW had started the build for this rematch immediately after SuperBrawl and spread these segments out over three weeks instead? Nash makes bad double entendres and he - no, everyone - embarrasses themselves; Torrie promises to bring another woman in on the plan for some reason. It’s some other woman who I do not recognize. What is happening right now?! Hogan is a total goof. Oh no, now they make a bunch of The Graduate jokes because this lady’s last name is “Robinson.” This fucking STINKS. I hate it. The build for this match needs less Hogan and Nash and more Ric and Arn. Finally, thirty-seven minutes into this streaming video (and, taking commercial breaks into account on original airing, probably about fifty-five minutes into that airing), we get the title sequence for the show and a trip to the arena. I hope they don’t do this little experiment again. As I’ve said too many times before, there aren’t enough talkers in this company to make an hour of talking feel like only twenty minutes. Also, they replayed a quarter of the talking there was in this first hour from other shows. Gene Okerlund starts this show in the ring, and he isn’t looking like he’ll be wrestling Juventud Guerrera in a hot cruiserweight opener. Nope, he instead says that he’s going to interview Goldberg, but FUCKING HELL, we get David Flair and Torrie Wilson out here instead. That dope David calls out his father Ric. David and Torrie sound like a couple of assholes, which I guess they are in storyline. They pledge not to leave the ring until Ric comes out here, which is when Goldberg’s music gets cued up. Aaaaaaaand…we go to break. Back from break, Goldberg walks out, tweaking like 2006 Kurt Angle. OK, maybe not quite that much. Goldberg takes the mic and says he’s got respect for David’s family, so he’s not going to kick the shit out of David right now. Then, he lectures David on respecting Ric. Also, he lectures David on respecting Goldberg because it’s his interview time. David has lost his damn mind, so he puts his hands on Goldberg. Goldberg just gives him a little scare, nothing too bad, just grabs his shirt and lets him know what it’s going to be like. Ric arrives, sees what’s happening on a monitor, and then runs down and pulls Goldberg off David and chops him. An irritated Goldberg just gives Ric a little scare, nothing too bad, just press slams him. Flair goes nuclear on signaling his heel turn, yells about how he’s the most powerful man in WCW, and freaks out when Goldberg says that Flair has lost his mind. Flair responds by yelling like a maniac. So, what ends up happening is that they give us Goldberg/Flair for the first time for free on Nitro, dammit, NO, you should have saved this for a title match on PPV you idiots! They gave up Goldberg’s first matches against Hogan, Sting, the Giant, and Flair for free on television. Wild. Only the first one of those was a sensible idea. Holy shit, a wrestling match! Back from break, Raven and Hak are already in the ring, preparing to have a hardcore match. They hug it out before swinging weapons at one another. Raven hits a vertical suplex on the metal ramp, which is my favorite spot in this thing. He then sets Hak on a table, climbs halfway up the scaffolding on the main set, and then drops an elbow on Hak through the table. Bam Bam Bigelow comes out and destroys both guys. The bell rings even though this is a Raven’s Rules match and there shouldn’t be a DQ. Raven fights back and all three men eventually fight each other around the set. Tony S. tells us that the match is continuing, and the bell was a mistake. Honestly, this whole Nitro is a mistake, but go on, Tony S. They fight into the back and toss each other around. This is probably pretty cool for its time (if you haven’t seen much ECW or even much 1998 WWF), but it’s merely aimless garbage brawling to me. This goes on f-o-r-e-v-e-r. The crowd can’t see any of this, so all you can hear from them is one guy insistently chanting GOOOOOOOLD-BERG every few seconds. Or BOOOO-RING. Or both, who the hell can tell. Then, after this long brawl finally winds down into nothingness, we get clips of these same wrestlers brawling in the back from the last Nitro. I’m pretty sure Kevin Nash is trolling all of us. Who let him book this crap? They play the video of the cage being welded together again. Yeah, I’m being trolled. And Eric Bischoff let Nash book this crap, so I guess Bisch is trolling me by proxy. I continue to have a hard time believing that Russo and Ferrara’s stint booking this company can be appreciably worse than anything Bischoff or Nash booked from the middle of 1998 on. Lizmark Jr. might have a chance against Chris Jericho (w/Ralphus) if he can get an assist from Saturn. Jericho’s wearing a dog collar; he rips up a friendly sign and the person who gave him the sign cheers. He harasses some hating-ass dude in the front row. It rules. Jericho keeps winning matches even though, much like the Giant the Big Show, he’s obviously outta here at the end of his contract. Tony S. gets irritated when Jericho grabs a mic and interrupts his gabfest about Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan to talk about his feud with Saturn, which is funny in a twisted sort of way. Jericho claims that he trained with “the yogis and the mountain men” in Nepal just to prepare for the inevitability of having a dog collar match one day. I wonder if he ran into Mark Gulleen while he was there? Then Jericho quotes an Aretha Franklin song while trying to get Lizmark to agree to wear the other dog collar attached to the chain so that he can get his reps in a dog collar match before Uncensored. So, there’s that! The match is novel because it’s a dog collar match that’s a virtual squash. That has to be a pretty rare type of match, right? A TV match between a midcarder and a jobber that’s also a dog collar match? Jericho also does some unique spots with the chain, like standing Lizmark up and then running around him until he’s tightly bound by the chain before attacking. Then, Lizmark makes his comeback when Jericho dumps Lizmark outside, then gets back in the ring and celebrates while Lizmark recovers enough to grab the chain and yank Jericho backward against the ropes, choking Jericho. That jolts Jericho back into focus, and he soon wins with a Lion Tamer. I think this counts as a Charming Uniquity just for its weirdness, but it was also a strangely easy watch. Buff Bagwell and Scott Steiner make their way to the ring. I’m just hoping they don’t talk that long. Hey, the announcers seem to be aware of Thunder! They note that this is a TV title match for Booker T. against Scott Steiner that stems from Scott causing Booker to lose his match against Buff Bagwell. Steiner does his whole deal before the match on the microphone. They talk more than I would have liked, unfortunately, but finally, Booker T. comes to the ring. Booker and Scotty Steiner heat up what actually turned out to be, in my mind, a solid rivalry. And really, considering their rivalry back when they were tag workers, this is low-key one of the best WCW rivalries over the existence of the company. Booker has the agility advantage and uses it to hit a flying forearm after a leapover, then dodge a Steiner charge and hit a roundhouse kick. Buff helps Steiner bail and catch a breath. Booker stays aggressive when Steiner re-enters the ring, so Steiner has to swing a leg behind him and thus torture Booker’s testes (™ Mick Foley), which is when his heel control segment begins. He clubbers and suplexes and gets a little help from Buff. They have a typical ringside brawl in there, where Steiner uses a television cable to choke Booker out. We get a commercial break, and when we come back, a Booker comeback is being cut off. Steiner lands a big belly-to-belly and throws some punches. Buff finds the camera to shill 1-800-COLLECT, and I hope WCW got paid for that. Steiner gets comfortable, clubbers away, and makes lazy covers; Booker slips in a flash pinfall attempt or two, but Steiner kicks out and throws more punches and stomps, and lands an occasional nice-looking suplex. Thing is, Steiner tries one too many suplexes, and Booker’s able to hop out, hit a swinging neckbreaker, and engineer a comeback. Book lands an axe kick, then a lariat. I think about how these two have very good chemistry together as Booker lands a slapjack, Spinaroonies up, and then lands a Houston Side Kick. Booker goes up, but Buff trips him because of course he does. Steiner comes over and locks on the Steiner Recliner, and Booker fights it, looks like he might break it…and passes out. Nice finish. This was a good match, but I’m not surprised because, as I mentioned, these two work really well together. Steiner and Buff clobber Booker with a chair after the match is over. Run it back! Huh, they’re giving Jerry Flynn mic time; Okerlund interviews him in the back. Or, he would interview Flynn if Sonny Onoo didn’t immediately accost Flynn while waving dollar bills around. Flynn tosses Onoo; the Cat kicks Flynn in the back of the head. Then, they cut off Flynn’s ponytail, grab some of the cash that Onoo spilled, and leave. “Rockhouse” brings out some chump-ass midcarder. Oh no, wait, it’s Scott Norton. He might be a midcarder, but he’s no chump. Can Rey Misterio Jr. make it three-for-three against large dudes with dangerous moves? We already know he can counter a powerbomb effectively! Not as effectively as Billy Kidman, but effectively! This match is like the Nash and Bam Bam matches, basically. Someone – twiztor? zendragon? – said in a post awhile back that Norton really could have been pushed more effectively as a gatekeeper to the main event if he wasn’t already being booked so effectively in New Japan for a significant amount of his schedule, and I agree. But what I wanted more than anything was for Fire & Ice to be a long-term thing because that tag team ruled for its very short existence. Especially with the Steiner Brothers dissolving, Norton and Ice Train throwing dudes around and hitting beefy shoulderblocks would be their lane! Anyway, the match, like I mentioned, is Norton beating up Rey and enjoying it. I think my issue is that Rey basically gets splattered a bunch, and then his opponent slips on a banana peel. That’s so ineffective to me. You have to let Rey get in more initial offense; otherwise, he just looks lucky. Sure, the idea might be that if he keeps winning, he’s not that lucky and it’s repeatable, but that’s not how it ever comes off. Even though this match doesn’t do anything for Rey at all, Norton grabs Rey by his belt, lifts him over his head, and press slams him with one hand. That was an AMAZING spot, goddam! Right after that, Rey kicks Norton in the nuts and gets three off it. Fuck off, WCW. Everyone involved looks worse after that match: Rey for getting in only two moves, a flurry of punches and a ball shot, and Norton for losing to a ball shot when guys get kicked in the nuts all the time and don’t lose because of it. THEY SHOW THE CAGE-BUILDING VIDEO AGAIN. WHAT THE FUCK. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU PROMOTE A PPV MAIN EVENT. A long-haired wrestler comes to the ring drinking out of a water bottle. He tosses the bottle and spits the water out. That’s right, you guessed it, it’s Van Hammer! Bret Hart is going to competitively squash this dude. He walks out wearing a Calgary Hitmen jersey, and we are clearly in the northeast of the United States because he gets a face pop on his way to the ring. Man, what if they re-did Bret Hart’s 1997 deal in WCW, except that Bret is a babyface in the northeastern U.S. and Canada and a heel in the south? I bet Bret could pull it off. Nash, Sullivan, Bischoff, and the booking committee, probably not so much. I mean, Bret tries to jaw with the crowd in the front row, but they’re applauding him and yelling COME ON, BRET. Bret gives Van Hammer a lot of offense and lets him fight his way out of a Figure Four; they have a match that spends a lot of time on the mat, surprisingly. Bret continues to attack Van Hammer’s knee to cut down Hammer’s size and reach advantage. Hammer gets a couple of flash pinfall attempts for two in there, but Bret doggedly destroys the knee. Bret wraps Van Hammer’s knee around the post and works it; he tries again a bit later, but Hammer yanks his leg, pulls Bret into the post, and tries to limp his way into one last comeback. Hammer manages to get Bret up for a vertical suplex and even for a cobra clutch slam, but he can only get two. Hammer tries an enziguri, but Bret ducks the kick and securely wraps Hammer into a Sharpshooter, which nets him a victory and a babyface pop. Bret’s so irritated that Hammer pressed him that much that he grabs a chair and destroys Hammer’s injured knee after the match. On another note: Did Bret Hart just give Van Hammer Hammer’s best match? I guess the Hitman was randomly motivated to go out here and have a really good match with an aimless midcarder like Van Hammer, and what do you know, he did. Oh wonderful, Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash come to the booth to replace Tenay and Heenan. Great. They’ll be here to talk through Ric Flair/Goldberg, which is our main event. THE CAGE CONSTRUCTION VIDEO PLAYS AGAIN. IS KEVIN NASH JUST A BUNCH OF 4-CHANNERS STACKED ON TOP OF ONE ANOTHER AND WEARING A KEVIN NASH SUIT?! Hogan is really dreadful. He just cannot work a mic. I should say “cannot work a mic anymore” because his coke-fueled rants in the ‘80s were perfect for their time, in fairness. Flair tries to match power with Goldberg and, in what won’t come as a surprise, fails miserably at it. This crowd is definitely pro-Goldberg, especially when he hits a military press into a power slam. YEAHHHH, that move ruled. Flair basically might as well be Rey Misterio Jr. to Goldberg’s Scott Norton; only when Flair pokes Goldberg in the eye and then punts him in he balls does he get any space. Flair hits a series of eye rakes, ball shots, and chops to keep a bit of control. Goldberg starts a comeback – Flair hits a ball shot. That last ball shot encourages Flair to hit a chop block and lock on a Figure Four. Flair grabs the ropes for leverage. There’s a neat sort of idea to this match, which is that not being anywhere near able to stop Goldberg, Flair re-awakens the inner cheater within just in time for Uncensored. In fact, I like the unspoken idea that the only reason he came down and saved his son from Goldberg is that he knew he needed to face someone like Goldberg to try and find the old Flair who scrapped to survive within himself. Maybe that’s not what they intended, but that’s how I read it. Goldberg sells a leg injury, but he turns over the Figure Four and starts tossing Flair around again while trying to shake off his leg injury. Flair is doing anything he can to survive, including going up top, which is exactly how not to survive if you’re Flair! However, he does shake off a press slam and dodge a spear; Goldberg sends himself into the post. Flair tries a vertical suplex, but Goldberg pops back up and meets flair with a spear after Flair gets done celebrating. A few B-Teamers enter the ring at this point and Goldberg fights them off, but Hogan, Nash, and a few A-Teamers join them and we get a gang beatdown on Goldberg. Flair hits a few low blows from behind, but gets overwhelmed by the numbers. May that be the last nWo beatdown to close a show that we have for a while (ever?). What a strange show. The first hour was abject, apart from one great segment that was a replay, so it lacked the impact that it had when it was first shown on Thunder. Most of this show was bad, but there were so many little gems: Bret/Van Hammer, Booker/Scott Steiner, Chris Jericho/Lizmark, and even Flair/Goldberg was good as a character development sort of deal. But the dreadful stuff was really, really dreadful. This Nitro has to be in the negatives because of the forty minutes worth of promos that filled the first hour of the show, and stuff like the hardcore brawl in the back went on for way too long, but I genuinely liked quite a bit of what was on it, match-wise. I thought I’d be placing a Fingerpoke-like amount of negative Stinger Splashes on it, but good wrestling from fun wrestlers saved this Nitro from a lowest-of-the-low type of catastrophe. Imagine good wrestling from fun wrestlers being able to do that! -5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
Stefanie Sparkleface Posted June 16, 2024 Posted June 16, 2024 1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said: Someone at Brown has a note that says something about Ricki Rachtman and Headbanger’s Ball. I remember that big bald dude (Matt something?) as the host, but admittedly, I also turned it almost as soon as Headbanger’s Ball came on, so maybe I missed Rachtman being on the show. On another note: Did Bret Hart just give Van Hammer Hammer’s best match? I guess the Hitman was randomly motivated to go out here and have a really good match with an aimless midcarder like Van Hammer, and what do you know, he did. Matt Pinfield! I remember him hosting 120 Minutes but I never watched Headbanger's Ball. Also, Van Hammer's best match was the Falls Count Anywhere match against Cactus Jack. Sorry Bret. If there's no Abdullah the Butcher dressed as a cowboy whacking Hammer with a shovel it can't be best. 2
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now