SirSmUgly Posted September 25 Author Share Posted September 25 No Lance Storm yet, but agreed totally on Daffney, who is a favorite of mine for being so different in her presentation than almost everyone else in the company. Crowbar has that same advantage w/r/t presentation, plus he is a fun worker. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted September 25 Share Posted September 25 I thought Yappi Strap match happened pre NWO? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 25 Author Share Posted September 25 9 hours ago, zendragon said: I thought Yappi Strap match happened pre NWO? It still hasn't happened! It's got to be at some point in the next month or two, as Hogan and Flair are setting up a "who's really the best" feud right now that'll probably transition Hogan from TTP to Ric and free up Package for Sting or maybe the Funker as another stopgap feud before a Sting feud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 25 Author Share Posted September 25 Show #227 – 14 February 2000 “The one that sets a new bar for Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff to try and dive under” I’m not saying that I’m going to Nitrooooo under protest, but I sure would like to get to the other side of SuperBrawl as soon as possible. The Network says that part of this show might be lost to technical difficulties. OK, so I check the time bar. Two hours and four minutes?! Is the technical difficulty that they added more footage to this fucking Nitro? FUCK Recap: *rings bell on cart* ICE COLD FEUDS! I GOT YER ICE COLD FEUDS HERE! ICE COLD FEUDS! Mark Madden yammers on about Flair and Hogan before he is cut off by the Nitro title card and then another… Recap: WCW in early 2000 – for all the nights where you just can’t get to sleep *WARNING: WatchingWCWinearly2000maycausevomitingdiarrheableedingfromtheeyesandblackbile.MayalsocauselossofdesiretowatchprowrestlingandpersistentcomplainingaboutBischoffNashRussoFerraraSullivanTaylorBuschSiegelandTurnersuitsingeneral.WCWin2000puttingyoutosleepnotguaranteedandmaycausenightterrors* Jeff Jarrett, the Harris Boys, and the nWo women come to the ring, but if you'll recall, Jarrett doesn’t like women, so he kicks them out of the ring and sends them to the back. At least one Harris Boy is allowed to speak for some stupid-ass reason. Jarrett isn’t much better on the stick. He’s gonna be champ, yada yada yada, he recaps the past couple weeks of dull main event angle nonsense. The crowd starts a weak ASSHOLE chant because we’re in Long Island. Jarrett calls Sid a “local yokel,” but though Sid’s beloved in Long Island, he’s actually from Arkansas. Nash and two nurses show up on the TurnerTron, but before Big Kev can even get one bad insult all the way out, Jarrett has the Harris Boys threaten to hurt Dave Penzer unless the truck cuts the feed. They do, and Jarrett says that without Nash being able to make matches, he’s acting commissioner again. Is this any way to start a wrestling show? That’s rhetorical. Kevin Nash (in a wheelchair, w/ two nurses) hits the ramp as Jarrett does a shocked face that is good enough to make him a main eventer in modern WWE. Jeff Jarrett “Slapnuts Slapass” Count: 3. Jarrett and Nash proceed to have a very bad promo battle. The gist of things is that Nash decrees that Jarrett and Scott Hall are dual number one contenders to the big gol, which now means that the SuperBrawl main event is a Triple Threat Match. Then, he books Jeff Jarrett against Sid Vicious for later in the show to help his buddy Hall out by softening up Hall’s competition. This was a long, bad opening. Jarrett just is not that dude at this point. Other matches for tonight: Ric Flair vs. Hulk Hogan, and let’s stop here for a sec. Tony S. says it’s been “about five years” since we’ve seen this on television, and I’ll just be nice and assume that he means free TV, which I think it’s been three years since their last one-on-one bout on free television (at the Clash on 8/15/96). What else do we have? Let’s see: Terry Funk vs. The Total Package, a few midcarders, ladies in skimpy clothing, and DDP’s book being promoted. Flair and TTP show up to the arena, but their dialog is indistinct over the sound of the Wolfpac theme. To Excess is not interested in helping Norman Smiley fight Three Count tonight; they want to chase rats instead. Their term, not mine. Three Count’s attempt at a dance routine is edited out of the show; we come back from break to the trio reacting in anger to Norman Smiley’s music cutting in on their spot. Lenny does end up joining Smiley at ringside, but there’s no sight of Lodi. This is an inconsequential match in which everyone dives into everyone else in a compressed segment that leads right into Ms. Hancock coming to the ring. Meanwhile, Lenny lands a front Russian on Moore, and we cut between the ring in the action and Ms. Hancock talking about how Lenny and Lodi are doofuses. Norm hits a swinging slam and a Big Wiggle, but we cut back to Ms. Hancock dancing on the table. Are we sure that Vince Russo still isn’t booking this show? The guys in the ring stop wrestling and look toward her. She leaves. Norm locks a quick Norman Conquest on Karagias for the submission victory. Other than the enjoyment of watching Keibler dance on a table, maybe the cheapest of enjoyments that WCW in 2000 can offer me, this was a waste of my time. Meng barks angrily at some dude in the backstage area, I suppose? Tony S. fills us in: Meng thinks that he’s the real deal and not Tank Abbott. Rick Fuller (spelled “Ric Fuller” on the chyron) gets KO’d by Abbott, who is already in the ring. The edit of this Nitro is fucking weird. Abbott is briefly distracted before the bell by Big Al at ringside, but that gives Fuller only a momentary advantage that quickly evaporates. If you ever wondered what Goldberg’s push in ‘97/’98 would look like if Goldberg was void of charisma, here's this fucking Tank Abbott push! Mark Madden is extraordinarily bad on commentary, by the way. Pre-tape: Mike Tenay interviews Tank Abbott. Abbott bores me by talking about his UFC experience and Big Al. Jeff Jarrett bitches at the WCW Executive Committee over the phone, demanding that his match against Sid later tonight be for "the title," in what will be a callback to Jarrett's past fuckery with loose wording, I'm sure. Okerlund interviews Paisley, and also TAFKAPI is there. Huh, TAFKAPI actually speaks. Not only that, he speaks in full sentences. He appears to be sexually aroused by the idea of wrestling Psicosis on Thunder, but in the least sexy way possible. I want Russo back? Yeah, I want Russo back. I mean, then I want him gone, but I want him back. Billy Kidman and Torrie Wilson do ZERO for me. I do not like this pairing on screen. They have no chemistry even though they were dating in real life. They come to the ring. Vampiro doesn’t do much for me either, and this is before a Sting feud that I feel like maybe I saw some of in real time and hated? I don’t know. They’re tagging up against La Parka and TAFKAPI (w/Paisley). This show is a fuckin’ SLOG. Madden gets Iaukea and IKEA confused. I am in hell. Just please get me to SuperBrawl already. This is a nothing match in which stuff happens like Vampiro ignoring TAFKAPI kicking him in the back on a rope run and TAFKAPI looking confused about it. La Parka needs to stop doing quality bumps for this stupid company. Save your body. Paisley and Torrie swing at one another while Madden yells: CATFIGHT, CATFIGHT! TEAR OFF THOSE TOPS! IT’S AFTER NINE, THE KIDS ARE IN BED! Have I mentioned how much I miss Bobby Heenan lately? Vampiro walks out on Kidman soon after; TAFKAPI and Kidman completely mistime a diving DDT from TAFKAPI that scores a win for he and Parka. Madden, that idiot, keeps pointing out directly that this finish is a hook for the Kidman/Vampiro match at SuperBrawl. This was juuuuuuust bad enough to get on the ol’ Dirt Worst list. Nash tells the committee to go ahead and make Jarrett/Sid a title match. Disco and the Mamalukes meet up with their big Italian-American family at a big Italian-American wedding reception held here at the arena in the parking lot. There’s a break. We go back to said wedding after the break as Vito gives his sister an envelope full of cash. Hey, it’s babyface Chris Jericho’s theme! And the person who comes out to it: Monster Ripper. That is discordant. I guess this is WCW’s feeble attempt at a women’s division. Hey, it’s Mona’s theme! Hey, it’s Mona! Push Mona, you fucking morons! Or, you know, release her and let her go be a useful piece of the midcard in the WWF. Oklahoma’s music hits, and you know what, this show is really pushing the post-Starrcade ’99 Nitro for being the worst Nitro in the fucking bunch. Oklahoma squawks in the ring for a bit about the new women’s division. He also introduces Madusa as the special guest referee for this bout. Oklahoma graces commentary, so, you know, that’s how this is going. The match starts out decent, as you’d guess considering the competitors, but Madusa doesn’t even count a Mona pinfall attempt because she’s wandering around in the corner. She’s bad enough at doing this that trying to derive any enjoyment from this match is impossible. Oklahoma wants to help Ripper, who he’s sweet on, so he tries to help her leverage on a Mona sunset flip attempt. Madusa kicks his hands away, but Ripper sits down on Mona and swings a fist at Madusa's head that connects; Oklahoma jumps in and counts the three. FUUUUUUyou know what, I don’t care anymore. This show is just dire, and that’s the way it is. I think this big Italian-American wedding would be a promising little series of comedy segments if anyone in these segments were able to do comedy. Jarrett, the Harrises, and the nWo ladies are excited about Jarrett getting a title shot tonight. Gene Okerlund interviews Ric Flair backstage; he’s in conniptions about Hulk Hogan and Terry Funk, per the usual lately. The Total Package (w/Liz) works a match with Terry Funk. Tony S. says that Flair/Funk at Starrcade is now a Texas Death Match. Madden goes on and on about Hogan and Flair and all sorts of nonsense related to them while TTP’s entrance goes on forever. Terry Funk finally gets sick of waiting for Package to pose and comes down, tears away Package’s track suit for him, and throws a lot of punches. We get an obligabrawl that Funk controls for long enough to grab a table while Package lays prone on the floor. Liz distracts Funk and gives Package a chance to take over. TTP eventually puts Funk through the table before bringing things back in the ring. Boy, does Package bore me to death with his targeted attack on Funk’s lower lumbar. Funk avoids a Torture Rack with a back kick to the balls and scores a DDT for two. The wily Texan lands a neckbreaker and goes up for a moonsault, but Package rolls toward him and Funk kinda snaps his neck on TTP. I mean, Liz also slid the commemorative chair in the ring and Funk kinda landed on it, but the head snap looked way worse. Package attacks Funk with a chair to the head, but Arn Anderson runs down and grabs the chair, then walks away with it to prevent further damage to Funk. Okerlund tells us that the title shot in the main event is actually for Jarrett’s U.S. Championship, not Sid’s World Heavyweight Championship. Nash and the nurses do a shitty comedy spot in the back; Sid cackles at the monitor, which I guess is sequenced improperly because I think he’s laughing at the United States title shot thing. I know he’s not laughing at Nash and these nurses. Daffney crashes the wedding and catches the bouquet; David Flair and Crowbar run in and bust up the reception, then smash wedding cake on one another. BOY IS THIS FEUD HOT NOW, WHOA, WE’RE SCORCHING OVER HERE The New Harlem Heat (w/J. Biggs) comes to the ring. I guess Sullivan and Taylor don’t remember anything about mid-‘90s WWF because NEW versions of tag teams never get over. David Flair and Crowbar (w/Daffney) come to the ring as their opponents even though this is supposed to be a tag title match. Wait, no, the Mamalukes got their belts back somehow after Daffney stole them on Thunder. Wow, those tag belts are like Ernest Miller’s red slipper; they just magically find their way back to their original owners after being stolen. I guess this is a triple threat tag match for the titles. Disco gets on commentary and whines about the very expensive reception that was just destroyed even though the joke is that they set up a cheap tent in the parking lot of this arena – a joke that Tony S. and Madden are both clear to explain to all of us rubes, us imbeciles, us morons in the audience in case we didn't get it. Oh yeah, there’s a match. It’s deeply shitty. Disco and Madden bicker back and forth at one another. Sartre famously wrote that “hell is other people.” While I think that existentialism is a wonderful philosophical framework for living one's life, I’d like to submit that he’s wrong: Hell is actually watching Vito and Big T. wrestle one another in the year 2000. Stevie hits what is the worst Slapjack I’ve EVER seen on Crowbar in which he doesn’t even drop down with the guy. He just lets him go and Crowbar gently flutters to the mat. Dopey Dave hits Stevie with the crowbar a couple of seconds later and Vito grabs the stunned Stevie in a small package for three. Post-match, TNHH attacks the Mamalukes and gives Disco a spike Slapjack that at least looks a little dangerous. Then Big T. gives Vito a Pearl River Plunge that is actually dangerous because the out-of-shape, no-kneed bastard topples over while landing it. Stevie helps him land a safer Pearl River Plunge on Johnny the Bull. They leave, and Crowbar and Flair pick at the Mamalukes’s bones with weapon shots; we cut away to the ladies at the wedding reception wailing and gnashing their teeth as they watch on television. Hello, Dirt Worst, my old friend/I’ll put a match on you again/ Kanyon has lost his agent, but he’s still got the ladies. He sparks up a feud with Dustin Rhodes by insulting Lil’ Dust’s promo cutting performance from Thunder. The Mamalukes jump off the stretchers they were carted away from the ring on as Vito yells for Mean Gene and promises to take care of things “Italian style.” Bam Bam Bigelow heads to the ring to defend the WCW Hardcore Championship against THE WALL, BROTHER. It’d be nice if this match lasted about as long as Bigelow’s match on the previous Thunder against the KISS Demon, but no dice. There are plundah shots. Bigelow whiffs on a dive. TW,B takes a chair shot to the head for absolutely no reason in this nothing match on an all-time bad Nitro that no one in their right mind would watch ever again unless they had pledged to review every episode of this godforsaken wrestling show. TW,B lumbers up the ropes, but Bigelow catches him and dumps him through a table, then lands a Greetings for three. I think it’s very weird that in the midst of this TW,B push as some sort of monster heel, they had him job cleanly to Bigelow in a nothing hardcore match. It doesn’t matter because TW,B sucks, but still. Knobbs hustles to the ring as fast as his broken body will allow and attacks Bigelow after the match. Knobbs leaves, and TW,B gets back to his feet and chokeslams Bigelow for good measure. Gene Okerlund interviews the Mamalukes in the back. This feud with David Flair and Crowbar is already white hot, but they somehow burst this thing into pure flames by proposing an ITALIAN STRETCHA MATCH, ITALIAN STRETCHA MATCH, I’M COMIN’ FOR YA, YA DEAD at SuperBrawl. Someone tell Stone Cold/Hitman to eat its heart out. That feud was but a match lit while standing on a glacier in the Arctic during a cold snap compared to this Mamalukes/David Flair and Crowbar conflagration. Dustin Rhodes is still coming to the ring to the Seven theme, which is a hilarious contrast since it's so epic and mysterious, yet he’s dressed like a divorced guy who goes to exurban country western bars on the weekends and also most weekdays and drinks himself into a stupor as he complains about his bitch of an ex-wife who left him for some guy from the city who is an accountant, a little twerp of an accountant, can you imagine that! Seriously, if you told me that Lil' Dust stepped out of a Charles Portis novel in which he was the extremely unlikeable protagonist, I'd believe you in a second. Oh yeah, Kanyon (w/ladies) is his opponent. After Kanyon gabs on about being the true embodiment of Hollywood, Dustin jumps him and rolls him up for two. Kanyon dumps Lil’ Dust outside and follows. He grabs a chair, but very annoying ref Billy Silverman takes the chair away and then sends Kanyon on a merry chase that ends with Dustin lying in wait and hitting the chasing Kanyon with a lariat. Dustin gets back in the ring, hits a bulldog, and sets Kanyon up for a Shattered Dreams. Dustin gets the crowd a bit loud for it, then hits it, and after that, he and Kanyon have a short exchange before Rhodes hits a chokeslam (?!) for three. Gene Okerlund interviews Hulk Hogan backstage; the Hulkster and Jimmy Hart are back together as a team on television for the first time since 1995. Hogan gets a pop because we’re in New York; it’s very smart to have babyface Hogan make big returns in this area of the continent, as I’ve said before. After a commercial break, Booker cuts an interview with Okerlund in which he refuses to get rid of his shitty new theme because it motivates him to move on to SuperBrawl and lose his middle initial, too. The KISS Demon exits his coffin while Tony S. promotes that KISS Farewell Tour that twiztor mentioned many posts ago when I questioned KISS’s popularity. Booker comes to the ring to the dopey “Leave it to Beaver” knockoff that honestly, I enjoyed more than the KISS song that played during the Demon’s entrance. Booker has zero trouble with the Demon, landing an axe kick; a SPINAROONIE, SPINAROONIE; and a spinebuster in about forty-five seconds for the victory. They’ve rolled Michael Buffer out of mothballs for the extremely unengaging double main event tonight. First up: Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair. I get a kick out of the camera cutting away quickly first from a sign that has Hulk Hogan drawn on it wearing a bandana with the old-school WWF logo, then from a WWF Hulk Hogan wrestling buddy that someone else is waving around. The crowd is very into Hogan, and I am judging them for that. Flair does his heel shtick. You know the drill: Start out trying to match power with the larger babyface and failing, trying to chop the babyface and having him ignore it, begging off, yada yada yada, I do not care. At least the crowd is enjoying this paint-by-numbers heel Flair match. Flair attacks Hogan’s semi-recently surgically repaired knee as the crowd tries to fire Hogan up. The Nature Boy NUMBER TWOOOOO ([tm] the noticeably absent Scott Steiner) locks on a Figure Four, but Hogan fights out of it. Hogan ignores some more chops and makes a comeback. How can anyone enjoy either of these tired acts in this Year of Our Lord 2000? I mean, Flair’s act is at least interesting when it’s against someone new (against Rey or Benoit, for two examples). Hogan’s babyface act is what it is and wouldn’t be interesting until he added the whole “past-his-prime elite athlete” dimension to it in early aughts WWE. Anyway, Flair feigns a back injury when trying to lift Hogan, but Hogan gets backed off by ref Nick Patrick while raining punches on Flair in the corner. This allows Flair to load his fist and land a punch on Hogan; Jimmy Hart comes to the ring to complain about it and eats a Flair punch. Flair drops an elbow on Hogan and goes for the cover, but two, Hulk Up, big boot, ear cup, legdrop, and The Total Package runs in to spoil the cover. Hart hits Package with his cast, but Liz grabs his arm and Package jumps Hart while Flair beats up Hogan in the corner. Funk runs down, but puts the chair he’s carrying in the ring first before slowly rolling into the ring and very obviously getting hit with his own chair by Luger. Hogan fights off Package and Flair. Liz sets up a bat shot on Hogan, but he spots her, and she and the other two heels beg off. Funk fights Flair as Flair tries to leave ringside. Package jogs back out while Hogan celebrates and clobbers Hogan with a baseball bat, then Pillmanizes his arm before security can get back out there even though Package was standing there for like a good half-minute with the bat, just waiting for Hogan to quit cupping his ear and gesturing at the fans, and I saw Dellinger sitting there at ringside! The good news: The crowd was hot for this! The bad news: I think, and I mean this without any facetiousness, I’ve never in my life had such a different reaction to a match than the crowd on television did. It’s happened a couple times most recently with AEW matches where even the crowd’s clear love of what was happening in front of them did absolutely nothing at all to move me. I consider myself easily affected by hot crowds, and oftentimes, a hot crowd has helped me get into a match. It’s very rare that a hot crowd doesn’t at least move me in favor of the match that they’re hot for, but here’s my number one exception. This was all bad and, at least in this household, a boring and trite match and segment full of guys who I really don’t want to watch wrestle except for Funk and maybe Flair in certain matchups. Gene Okerlund interviews Sid backstage; Sid is amused by Jarrett’s machinations backfiring on him, gets his tongue tied, and exclaims WHOA WHOA…EXCUSE ME before collecting himself and moving right along. This guy is charming as hell, man. Sid is the best. This SuperBrawl promo includes footage of three members of the nWo who won’t be wrestling at SuperBrawl. Jeff Jarrett stalks to the ring alone, no Harris Boys in sight. I reiterate that Jarrett’s “Cowboy” knockoff is a far superior piece of music to “Cowboy” itself. I’m not sure I felt that way about any other WCW knockoffs. I do prefer Mr. Perfect’s “Exodus” knockoff to “Exodus” and Ric Flair’s “Also Sprach” knockoff from his 1991-1993 WWF run to the original “Sprach,” as an aside. Sid Vicious soon arrives on the scene. This match has little heat because the crowd burned themselves out on the previous segment, though Sid does get them fired up for punches in the corner. The thing about it is that no one gives a fuck about Jeff Jarrett as a topline heel. I can’t overstate how badly he’s failing in this role. Jarrett thinks he might have things won with a sleeper, but Sid fights up while I contemplate the WHERE’S SILVER KING? sign that some dude has been waving all night. A good six-minute match with Silver King in it would absolutely have made this show better. I digress. Sid lands a chokeslam and then Mickey FUCKING Jay is the worst kayfabe referee ever because he stands in front of Sid so that he can take a ref bump when Sid lifts Jarrett for a powerbomb and Jarrett’s feet hit him. What the fuck?! What the fuck is up with Jay having the worst positioning ever to take ridiculous ref bumps that no ref should EVER take in kayfabe? I’ve stopped giving a fuck. Jarrett tries a belt shot, can’t get a pinfall, taps out to a Sid crossface, and KABONGs Sid after Sid fights off the charging Harris Boys. Slick Johnson slides into the ring and counts a very quick three. I’m going to quote myself from a few reviews ago - Show #219 the night after Starrcade ’99, to be exact: I think we’ve reached a nadir in the watch that demands that I put up a number that’s a little out there. We haven’t reached “square root of infinity” or “NaN” levels of badness yet. But I think we need to establish that a show this bad, this full of terrible talking and angles, this void of redeemable pro wrestling matches, this committed to deeply stupid ideas about building feuds, will have to be surpassed in its badness on a meaningful level to be worse than this. I have full confidence that Russo and Ferrara or Russo and Bischoff can find a way to do that, but I’m setting the bar in hell and letting them travel all nine circles and dig under Satan’s cloven hooves besides to get there on the score. Congratulations Kevin Sullivan, Terry Taylor, and Ed Ferrara! You’ve done the devil’s work! Who knew that the underworld had an underworld of its own? -10,000,000,000 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted September 25 Share Posted September 25 On the subject of banging rats... I feel that the RAW episode that was hosted by The Muppets should have had a series of segments of someone chasing Rizzo around with a comically large mallet 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 25 Author Share Posted September 25 1 hour ago, zendragon said: On the subject of banging rats... I feel that the RAW episode that was hosted by The Muppets should have had a series of segments of someone chasing Rizzo around with a comically large mallet If I wasn't a wrestling fan who knew exactly what this sentence meant, I'd have asked you if you were having an episode and if I needed to call an ambulance for you. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted September 26 Share Posted September 26 19 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Show #227 – 14 February 2000 Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair. The good news: The crowd was hot for this! The bad news: I think, and I mean this without any facetiousness, I’ve never in my life had such a different reaction to a match than the crowd on television did. It’s happened a couple times most recently with AEW matches where even the crowd’s clear love of what was happening in front of them did absolutely nothing at all to move me. I consider myself easily affected by hot crowds, and oftentimes, a hot crowd has helped me get into a match. It’s very rare that a hot crowd doesn’t at least move me in favor of the match that they’re hot for, but here’s my number one exception. i think the largest reason for the disconnect is between the audience and yourself is the engagement. You are actively paying attention to every segment, every angle, every match. The larger "pro wrestling crowd" at the time, and specifically this New York crowd, really isn't. That's why they'll pop for Hulk Hogan and/or Ric Flair- they're established names that have been around forever. Many of the fans in attendance likely became fans during the nWo era, so they don't give a fuck about a Crowbar, or a Kanyon, or even Billy Kidman. They were either not in the company or very minor players at that time, and (as your reviews continue to point out) WCW was abysmal at having talent climb the ladder. BUT EVEN IF WCW WAS BETTER AT IT, this crowd wasn't tuned in to watch it happen. And 2000 WCW doesn't present any of these guys as stars anyway, so it's all a moot point. And if you were there in the crowd LIVE~! this show sucked. But at least you got to see a couple big names (the biggest!) that you remember from a couple years ago. That instantly gives them a higher interest level than all of the other guys (even on a card that features Lex Luger and Terry Funk!) TL;DR: WCW sucks w/r/t talent. and nostalgia is a hell of a drug. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 27 Author Share Posted September 27 On 9/26/2024 at 7:31 AM, twiztor said: i think the largest reason for the disconnect is between the audience and yourself is the engagement. You are actively paying attention to every segment, every angle, every match. The larger "pro wrestling crowd" at the time, and specifically this New York crowd, really isn't. That's why they'll pop for Hulk Hogan and/or Ric Flair- they're established names that have been around forever. Many of the fans in attendance likely became fans during the nWo era, so they don't give a fuck about a Crowbar, or a Kanyon, or even Billy Kidman. They were either not in the company or very minor players at that time, and (as your reviews continue to point out) WCW was abysmal at having talent climb the ladder. BUT EVEN IF WCW WAS BETTER AT IT, this crowd wasn't tuned in to watch it happen. And 2000 WCW doesn't present any of these guys as stars anyway, so it's all a moot point. And if you were there in the crowd LIVE~! this show sucked. But at least you got to see a couple big names (the biggest!) that you remember from a couple years ago. That instantly gives them a higher interest level than all of the other guys (even on a card that features Lex Luger and Terry Funk!) TL;DR: WCW sucks w/r/t talent. and nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I think this is a great point. I actually shouldn't have compared my experience watching this to my experience watching AEW matches, as in the latter, the disconnect has lately been that I watched a match that was much hailed without seeing most or all of the television that built to it. In this case from the previous review, you are 100% correct: I've seen too much of the television around Flair and Hogan to get excited about a match like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 27 Author Share Posted September 27 Thunder Interlude – show number ninety-nine – 16 February 2000 "The WCW Gang is just cooked, man, they're just totally creatively washed, and if they were canceled right now at this moment, I'm not sure anyone would even notice" Boy oh boy, the build to SuperBrawl has been comparable to the build to Road Wild ’98…or Road Wild ’99…or pretty much any PPV since Road Wild ’99…This could be an all-time bad PPV…But first, we just have to crawl our way through one more Thunder… Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. hanging out together is so low rent, so TNA-like…Hey, wait a minute… This show couldn’t afford to lose any more talent that is actually over, so maybe suspending Scott Steiner is a loss that is especially hard to take right now…The scuttlebutt, as I recall, is that they suspended him with pay, too, so hell, just go ahead and toss his ass on TV if you’re not even going to strip his pay… Anyway, after the show-opening recap, we THUNDERRRRRRRRR…right into a new intro!...It’s a very appropriate 1999 intro with the rock music and the quick cuts and rad filters…The guy who was promoting www.dynamitebushapes.com at one show got his sign, which he was waving behind Nash on one episode, into the opening of this Thunder...Free promotion - nice… Boring bitch Terry Taylor walks out here and cuts a – you guessed it – dull promo in which he speaks on behalf of the committee…Sid’s not in the building because he had an altercation with Scott Hall at a hotel – you tell me if it’s worked or a shoot because I don’t fucking know and won’t know until I listen to the Between the Sheets for this week…Taylor and the committee have sent Sid home because of that and because Jarrett keeps attacking him, and they want to keep Sid fresh for his title bout at Slamboree… Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. come down to complain about this decision…Why does Jarrett keep using “local yokel” as an insult for Sid?...inigomontoyadonotthinkitmeans.gif…This low-rent trio beat the shit out of Terry Taylor as payback the committee’s matchmaking machinations on Monday…Taylor gets KABONGED to a tiny pop because that’s just how unlikeable Terry Taylor naturally is…They spray paint him, but the silver paint does not contrast very well with the color of Taylor’s shirt… Tenay and Heenan hype SuperBrawl and promote tonight’s matches while a guy holds up a CZW sign behind their head…Norman Smiley vs. THE WALL, BROTHER…Brian Knobbs vs. Fit Finlay in whatever the hell a Cast Match is…Tank Abbott will knock someone out to prep for this Big Al thing at SuperBrawl…And, after the break, we are told that Kaz Hayashi is wrestling TAFKAPI in the semis of the Cruiserweight Championship tournament, but, um, Psicosis beat Kaz in the first round already…Apparently, Psicosis couldn’t get back into the country after heading to Mexico, which I think has happened to him before...Can WCW ever run a tournament that isn’t completely fucking stupid for some reason?…That’s rhetorical, by the way… Furthermore, Tenay says that Scott Hall has been banned from the building tonight…That might not be a work either because he went to Germany over the previous weekend before this show and finally did enough stupid shit to cost him his job in WCW…This Kaz/TAFKAPI match doesn’t matter because Ms. Hancock is sent out here…We focus on Ms. Hancock bending over and then Paisley wanting to get in her grill because WOMEN, y’know?...TAFKAPI goes out there to grab Paisley and turns around into a dive from Kaz…My least favorite transition of control happens right after that…Look, let’s just get to the finish…Ah, the finish is that bad jumping DDT that TAFKAPI is now doing regularly…TAFKAPI wins it…These are two fun workers, so leave it to WCW to lay out a match involving them that wasn’t good… We see wrestlers walking…We also see the nurses rolling Nash into the arena, where Mike Graham asks him to use his commissioner powers to do something about the total rampage that Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. are on… Norman Smiley faces THE WALL, BROTHER in a zero of a match…Sorry, not even Norman Smiley can get much out of TW,B…TW,B does his Mr. Hughes act…Smiley makes a late comeback, hits a swinging slam, and then wiggles over TW,B’s prone body…Unfortunately for him, he runs right into a goozle and a chokeslam shortly after for three…TW,B is looking for a table under the ring, but he and the techs didn’t connect on where it would be, so it takes him a bit of time to find it…TW,B then chokeslams Norm through the table…THE WALL, BROTHER IS NEVER GETTING OVER LIKE THAT, SO JUST STOP TRYING, WCW…Norm does a stretcher job…This is like the twelfth unconvincing stretcher job that a wrestler has done in the past few weeks of television, I think… Nash yells at a couple of WCW techs because they can’t get him into the ring in his wheelchair…I mean, it is a legitimate accessibility issue… They go back to this stretcher job deal with Norm...He's loaded into an ambulance…It was a chokeslam through a table…Dudes have taken worse on these shows and walked away… What the fuck…Tank Abbott is having a Skins Match, which apparently is a Leather Jacket on a Pole match, with Big Al at SuperBrawl…What the hell?...I want someone to prove to me that Vince Russo was just sitting at home and collecting a check from WCW without putting any booking ideas in…PROVE IT…I WANT EVIDENCE…Anyway, Tank KOs Van Hammer…Hammer actually lands a spinebuster before getting almost immediately KO’d after that… Billy Kidman and Vampiro exchange some unconvincing shit-talking while Torrie whines about them needing to calm down and work together later tonight… Nash wants to meet with Jeff Jarrett, who complains about it… The Total Package was better as a huge dude who was totally cowardly in spite of his size…Package as an arm-destroying sadist is far less enjoyable or convincing…Package crows about destroying Terry Funk and Hulk Hogan on Nitro…The only good thing about this is getting to do some male gazing at Liz in that dress…Package does his faux-humble self-promotion deal and then talks up his newfound, oldfound, and newfound again friendship with Ric Flair…Flair joins Package in the ring and does some boilerplate heeling and pumping up of Package and Liz…Flair crows about destroying Terry Funk and Hulk Hogan on Nitro… OK, here’s some entrance music cutting into Flair’s promo…Terry Funk and Dustin Rhodes hit the aisle…Funk is actually going to get some cheers over Flair because we’re in Philly…However, I am surprised at Funk not being all that over in New York or Pennsylvania…ECW really didn’t have that much reach when it came to making new fans in the area after all…Funk does his whole “horse-toothed, banana-nosed” insult as is standard when he stands against Flair…Anyway, Funk and Rhodes challenge TTP and Flair to a tag match later tonight…Flair and Package take about fifty billion fucking years to accept this challenge, though Package wants Rhodes to speak and say he wants the match himself…Funk never gives up the mic, so is this supposed to tease a Rhodes turn on Funk because Funk didn’t let him speak or what?... The Mamalukes and Disco cut an interview with Okerlund about their upcoming ITALIAN SICILIAN STRETCHA MATCH…Vito actually will face Crowbar in a PHILADELPHIA STREET FIGHT as a precursor tonight…Vito cuts an extremely shitty promo on Crowbar…How bad is Johnny the Bull on the mic that Vito is the guy who has to do all the talking?...Disco is right there…Just let him cut the promos!... Billy Kidman and Vampiro (w/Torrie Wilson) face the Harris Bros. in our next match…Tenay promotes a Mickey Jay/Slick Johnson backstage fight at Nitro that is totally unappealing as a thing to promote in my opinion…Please stop having ref angles, WCW!...This is one of the worst fucking things about WCW…They insist on running ref angles that always, always, ALWAYS suck…Speaking of things that always, always, ALWAYS suck, here are the Harris Bros....Kidman and the Harrises totally mistime a splash where one Harris Bro is supposed to duck, but the other is supposed to be right behind him to take the splash…I blame the latter two, who are total garbage… Kidman and Vampiro don’t work well together in kayfabe…Kidman is reluctant to spend much time or energy in this match considering how Vampiro walked out on him a couple of shows ago…However, Kidman eventually ends up in the ring again, and Vampiro walks out on him…The Harris Bros. hit an H-Bomb on Kidman…In a weird fucking ending, Vampiro comes back to the ring and willingly takes a chair shot from the Harris Bros., who pin him…What thee fuck?!... The Mamalukes run up on Crowbar in the back…It’s very dark in the area where the confrontation starts, so it’s hard to see what the hell is even happening…They eventually move to a more well-lit area in the arena and do a back suplex spot on the top of a car…I mean, that is a dangerous spot for a feud in a deep freeze on a show that no one is watching…Vito and Crowbar do a series of spots on a couple of cars that are kind of neat in isolation…Crowbar whiffs on a pipe stab and crushes a car windshield…This was a discount Regal/Finlay Parking Lot Brawl…I actually felt bad for these two trying this hard for no real heat or payoff…Vito drops an elbow onto a prone Crowbar as Crowbar lays on the top of a car hood for three…That was at least watchable just because these dudes are desperately trying to get over in any way they can… Nash stinks…Oh, he just talked to one of the Messrs. Scott on the phone and then said some dumb unsexy shit to his nurses if you were wondering why I wrote that previous sentence… We see a shitty pull-apart brawl between Mickey Jay and Slick Johnson from backstage at Nitro, and then – get this fucking shit! – Slick Johnson (w/the Harris Bros.) comes to the ring for a match with Mickey Jay…Ahahahaha, what in hell is going on here?!...This whole watchthrough has provided some redemption to Vince Russo…Not because he was any good at his job, but because pretty much everyone else was as bad or worse at his job than he was, and he should get less shit than he receives for destroying WCW creatively and financially…Anyway, fuck this match, fuck this segment, and fuck this show…The Harris Bros. run a distraction to help Slick win it… Next up, a Cast Match which I guess just means that cast shots are legal…How is this different from a typical hardcore match, really?...Jimmy Hart is also in a cast, so they make him the special ref…The match is a wandering brawl with cast shots that, of course, stinks…Knobbs wins with a final cast shot to Finlay's dome…There are only twenty minutes left in this show…It’s gonna feel like twenty hours… Overlong promo: SuperBrawl is presented by Snickers this year…The build to this show has been so legendarily bad that I feel like I shouldn’t purchase a Snickers for three or four years at the very least to retroactively punish them for helping to promote this garbage… Heenan references a very early Nitro (Show #2) to talk about Hogan taking a Torture Rack from Luger…That did, in fact, happen!...Luger dropped the guy before getting a sign that he submitted a la Meng putting the TDG on Goldberg (Show #153)…We cut to Hogan doing a bad pre-taped promo in a style that suggests that it’s 1989 and not 1999…He promises to reach down into his 1996 nWo-era bag of nastiness to beat Package at SuperBrawl…He also promises to break Liz’s bones, which is quite the thing for a babyface to promise!... The Total Package and Ric Flair face Dustin Rhodes and Terry Funk in the main event…Funk and Flair brawl around the broadcast table…Package saves Flair from a piledriver through the table…Everyone wanders, everyone brawls…The match finally gets back the the ring, where the Funker is FIP…Funk makes a comeback and scores a two-count off a weak clothesline…Funk and Package go back and forth for a bit before making dual tags to Rhodes and Flair, respectively…Rhodes wins the initial encounter and takes care of both heels…Rhodes tries to cover Package off a bulldog and the ref counts it even though Package isn’t legal…Flair saves anyway…The match breaks down, and Liz swings the bat at Rhodes’s ankle, connects, and then hands the bat to Package so that Package can tee off on Rhodes's skull…Funk goes after Package, but Flair simply locks a Figure Four on Rhodes and gets a pinfall victory…Funk gets a chair from the broadcast booth and tosses it into the ring, but TTP and Flair have long since vacated the premises…Bad match… Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. are standing in Nash’s office…Jarrett and Nash bicker at one another before Nash bans the Harris Bros. from appearing at SuperBrawl…Jarrett responds to this decree by KABONGing Nash…Yes, a show-ending angle around the Harris Bros. being barred from the arena is just the way to put the cherry on top of the sundae that has been this build…How could this Thunder have ended any differently?... I straight up cannot wait for Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff to come back…Sullivan/Taylor/Ferrara are hands down the absolute worst booking team during this whole run so far…Worse than Russo/Ferrara…Worse than Bischoff/Nash…No wonder Nitro dropped from the low threes right into the mid-high twos once Russo left…The low quality of these shows is staggering…Like, I didn’t fully realize that it got quite this bad…These shows are somehow sub-Hogan/Bischoff in TNA level…And now we have our first slightly idiosyncratic score for a Thunder…OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW MAKE IT STOP, IT HURTS, OH GOD, IT HURTSSSSSSSSSSSSS… 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman Spiff Posted September 27 Share Posted September 27 (edited) Does Jarrett buy his guitars in bulk? Does he have a guitar guy? "Hey, man, I see what you do with my guitars, I'm not making any more for you." I'm not going back through the recaps, and I certainly don't expect you to either, but might have been somewhat fun to see a running counter of just how many of them Jarrett ends up wasting during this run. Edited September 27 by Spaceman Spiff 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted September 27 Share Posted September 27 That sure is a lot of screen time for The Harris Bros. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 it is important for the historical context here to interject this segment from WCW Saturday Night (19 February 2000): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96YOsBoj9yY 22 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Thunder Interlude – show number ninety-nine – 16 February 2000 Norman Smiley faces THE WALL, BROTHER in a zero of a match…Sorry, not even Norman Smiley can get much out of TW,B… The build to this show has been so legendarily bad that I feel like I shouldn’t purchase a Snickers for three or four years at the very least to retroactively punish them for helping to promote this garbage… This whole watchthrough has provided some redemption to Vince Russo…Not because he was any good at his job, but because pretty much everyone else was as bad or worse at his job than he was, and he should get less shit than he receives for destroying WCW creatively and financially i just read or watched something talking about how Norman Smiley had all these matches in '98-'00 WCW. They framed it as a way to say "look, when THIS GUY is having such bad matches, maybe give him opponents who aren't total fucking ass". Norman Smiley is a charismatic guy. He has technical wrestling skills. He can play a goofy guy. GIVE HIM SOMETHING! this popped me. and just think. He hasn't even actually appeared on screen yet! 20 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said: I'm not going back through the recaps, and I certainly don't expect you to either, but might have been somewhat fun to see a running counter of just how many of them Jarrett ends up wasting during this run. i thought of this during my rewatch a few months after he debuted his 'new look" in '97 or '98 WWF. But by that time, it was too late. Wish i would've thought to mention it here, but alas. Again, too late. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 28 Author Share Posted September 28 On 9/27/2024 at 2:34 PM, Spaceman Spiff said: Does Jarrett buy his guitars in bulk? Does he have a guitar guy? "Hey, man, I see what you do with my guitars, I'm not making any more for you." I'm not going back through the recaps, and I certainly don't expect you to either, but might have been somewhat fun to see a running counter of just how many of them Jarrett ends up wasting during this run. 4 hours ago, twiztor said: thought of this during my rewatch a few months after he debuted his 'new look" in '97 or '98 WWF. But by that time, it was too late. Wish i would've thought to mention it here, but alas. Again, too late. I am going back through and editing these more thoroughly in a separate document. I might start a KABONG COUNT if I a) remember to do it and b) feel like it. Quote i just read or watched something talking about how Norman Smiley had all these matches in '98-'00 WCW. They framed it as a way to say "look, when THIS GUY is having such bad matches, maybe give him opponents who aren't total fucking ass". Norman Smiley is a charismatic guy. He has technical wrestling skills. He can play a goofy guy. GIVE HIM SOMETHING! The TV title was made for a guy like Smiley with a little personality who can work interesting six minute matches on every television show. Quote and just think. He hasn't even actually appeared on screen yet! It's hard to fathom that we're eleven months from the company being out of Turner's hands and effectively dead and Russo hasn't showed his face on WCW television yet. This WCW speed run into cancellation has been something else. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 29 Author Share Posted September 29 (edited) SuperBrawl X (2000) notes: Before we get into SuperBrawl, it should be noted that the WCW Television Championship has been reactivated. I knew this from the Between the Sheets episode that covered this week’s worth of television (I have saved the section with all the dirtsheet notes on SuperBrawl for listening until after I finish the show). Much thanks to twiztor for digging up the clip of Hacksaw finding the belt in the trash and then promising to defend it against Robert Gibson of all people on the WCWSN before the PPV. As the rundown for the triple main event of this show plays, I think it’s worth recognizing that we have reached the final WCW PPV that will have a follow-up in the next year, as Souled Out is being swapped out for Sin, Uncensored is being swapped out for Greed, and we sadly won’t make it around to another Spring Stampede before WCW is under the ownership of Vinnie Jr. Gene Okerlund stands around outside Commissioner Kevin Nash’s office. The nWo ladies burst through the door, followed by Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. Jarrett claims that they beat Nash’s ass and then says that as acting commissioner, he is allowing the Harris Bros. into the building for tonight's show. Compelling stuff! Tony S., Mark Madden, and Mike Tenay are our suboptimal commentary team tonight. Madden says that the “career clock is ticking down for both” in reference to Ric Flair and Terry Funk. Oh, you sweet summer child. They run down the full card while showing video clips of the wrestlers that really bring that early 2000 feel by stuttering and buffering like they're running on shitty computers that are using Windows 2000. In what is titled a SPECIAL MAIN EVENT MATCH, we’ll be getting the KISS Demon vs. THE WALL, BROTHER. I think it should actually be illegal to call that match a SPECIAL MAIN EVENT MATCH. If they did this in 2024, Lina Khan would be on the case. Huh, is this the PPV where James Brown actually does show up? They’ve cut most of Ernest Miller’s segments from the last few Nitros and Thunders about having James Brown show up, so I wonder if the actual segment with the Godfather of Soul will be left in this Network version of the show. Recap: Would you believe it that this WCW Cruiserweight Championship tournament hasn’t been very good? I know, I know, I’m surprised that it’s basically sucked, too. Lash LeRoux faces TAFKAPI (w/Paisley) for the vacant WCW Cruiserweight Championship, which is a long way from where it was last year with Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman fighting over it. Kidman defended the gold successfully at the previous SuperBrawl against Chavo Jr., in fact. How in fuck is Chavo Jr. not winning this tournament?! I know that I’ve typed this before, but still! Chavo has an outside case for being the most misused talent in WCW during the Nitro Era. Even if you think Cruiserweight Champ/TV Champ is his ceiling, after he got over, they shoved him down the card, randomly turned him heel even though he was still over as a babyface, then took him off television. Russo showed up and made him an Amway salesman before he was taken off television AGAIN. Fuck you, WCW. YES, I’M FIRED UP ABOUT CHAVO JR.’S TREATMENT BECAUSE HE’S LEGIT AWESOME AND DESERVES FAR BETTER. After a pre-match dust-up between Paisley, Lash, and TAFKAPI, they work a pacey match to start. Lash gets a couple of quick two counts off shoulderblocks, then tries a Bourbon Street Blues that TAFKAPI kills with a standing side kick. Lash is able to turn things around, get TAFKAPI to topple to ringside, and then land a slingshot crossbody. Back in the ring, TAFKAPI catches a kick and dragon screws Lash to the mat. TAFKAPI follows with a legdrop and then a knee to the gut as LeRoux hangs in the Tree of Woe position. Lash fights up from underneath; he tries a sunset flip, but TAFKAPI blocks it by grabbing ref Charles Robinson’s junk to get leverage. Holy hell, this gimmick sucks. Anyway, we get an obligabrawl that TAFKAPI controls; back in the ring, he tries a series of counts that get only two. Lash takes advantage of TAFKAPI’s yapping at the ref to land some punches, and control of the match goes back and forth. Paisley, who has spent all match cheering on her charge from the apron, holds onto TAFKAPI’s arms when LeRoux sits the Artist up top. LeRoux’s Latino Frankensteiner attempt doesn’t pull TAFKAPI over with him; he plummets to the mat, and TAFKAPI follows with a diving DDT that scores what (to me) is a surprising three count. This is TAFKAPI’s first title reign since he was WCW Television Champion back in early 1997. Too bad that it didn’t come in a better match. The bad Prince gimmick has caused Iaukea’s work to regress because he’s out here trying to work dumb character-based spots into his matches. Norman Smiley is getting his ribs taped; he’s in pain after THE WALL, BROTHER put him through a table on Thunder. Brian Knobbs shrieks out a shrill, bad promo on Bam Bam Bigelow while standing in the back with Gene Okerlund. We get a shot of a room with a PRIVATE: KEEP OUT sign on it. Tony S. says that this is one of the most intriguing stories going on in WCW today. The scary thing is that he might be right about that. Bam Bam Bigelow defends the WCW Hardcore Championship against Brian Knobbs next up. Fit Finlay comes out and distracts Bammer right from the beginning of the match, allowing Knobbs to jump Bigelow. This match happened last year in a nondescript hardcore match on PPV that I’m pretty sure wandered over to the internet desk, and we get the same wandering brawl to that same desk here. They could have just rerun the tape from Knobbs/Bigelow at Slamboree ’99, probably. Finlay jumps in again to help Knobbs when Bam Bam slams Knobbs through a table, but Knobbs tells Fit that he wants to win this one on his own. Bammer hits a Greetings in the center of the ring, but Finlay comes back out again and runs a distraction as Bam Bam goes up top with a chair for some reason instead of just pinning Knobbs. Knobbs is able to land a cast shot on a distracted Bigelow for three to win the hardcore title for the second time. I’m pretty sure this was shorter than their Slamboree ’99 match, which makes it marginally better than that match, I suppose. Ric Flair and TTP fire one another up before their big matches tonight. Security watches over the dressing rooms of Scott Hall and Sid Vicious; apparently, everyone is banned from getting into either room before tonight’s main event, if the wooden line delivery of the security dudes is to be believed. Norman Smiley rules and all, but he shouldn’t need to be selling a rib injury to lose a one-on-three handicap match to the men of Three Count. The latter lug their dance mats to the ring and aw, they didn’t even dance. Here comes Norman Smiley. Norm almost immediately back body drops Moore outside and onto Helms and Karagias at ringside. This is actually a novel bout, I have to say. Norm eats a low dropkick and all three members score successive two counts on him before the match settles down and Moore controls Smiley. Helms tags in and lands a gutwrench suplex, then goes up and misses a dope senton bomb/swan dive sort of deal. Norm grabs Helms and hits a giant swing, then topples over after releasing Helms. He powers through the wave of nausea that hits him to set up for a Big Wiggle on Helms. Karagias runs in to stop it, but oops, he gets distracted by Helms and they start a dance routine. Norm busts in on the routine and then ducks a double clothesline from them to hit one of his own. Moore jumps in and runs the ropes, but Smiley wraps him in a Norman Conquest that is broken up by Helms. Three Count strips off Norm’s Jerry Rice jersey to BOOOOOOs from the crowd in the Cow Palace. Now that Norm’s taped ribs are exposed, all the Three Count members target them. Ultimately, Norm just cannot fight off all three of his opponents; Karagias and Helms land top-rope splashes, and Moore locks on a Lion Tamer that forces Smiley to submit. Watching Three Count hit moves successively and at high speed has me legitimately stoked for their feud with the Jung Dragons. I absolutely cannot wait. I need to think about if this match was charming enough for me because it was certainly unique. The announcers make note of Smiley waving the refs off and walking out under his own power in a surprisingly courageous (not Karagias) manner. Who is behind that mysterious door? I can’t promise that I’ll manage to care, but Jeff Jarrett certainly does. He sends the Harris Boys to find out. Hey, the KISS Demon’s hydraulics on his coffin worked! Good for him not being stuck in there for thirty minutes. In a reverse from the how this usually works, his theme is dubbed by the Network's editors on PPV whereas it isn’t on Nitro and Thunder. I assume that this match will go thirty seconds, if that, considering the Demon jobbed in three seconds to Bam Bam Bigelow a couple weeks back. THE WALL, BROTHER’s music hits, but there’s no sign of Dollar Tree 911 anywhere. The Demon walks down the ramp to figure out what’s going on, and TW,B jumps him from behind and brawls with him in the aisle. They make it back to the ring, where TW,B dominates. After a couple of minutes, the Demon actually hits a springboard lariat which is reasonably smooth for a guy of his size. The Demon’s spot of control actually lasts for a decent bit as he lands a back elbow, a dropkick, and a vertical suplex. However, he gets caught on a corner splash attempt, draped across the top rope, and hit with a backbreaker. The Demon catches TW,B going up and presses him to the mat, but the Demon goes up and is himself caught and chokeslammed for three. That actually wasn’t the worst way to spend four minutes, but honestly Torborg looked like a more interesting prospect than TW,B in this match. The Cat tells Gene Okerlund to cup his hand and check his breath, maybe chew some gum or get a Cert, and also that James Brown will be dancing with him in the ring tonight. So, in a cut bit of content from the previous Thunder on the Network edit of the show, the Maestro confronted the Cat over the latter’s choice of musical hero. When Okerlund mentions this, the Cat says that Beethoven stole his music from James Brown by way of Little Richard, laughs in a very hokey way, and then tells Okerlund to shut up. Okerlund is legit amused by Miller’s rants. The Harris Boys bang on the PRIVATE: KEEP OUT door, then go look for a key when no one answers. Tank Abbott paces. Big Al paces. I sigh wearily. Hype video: Tank Abbott punches dudes. I don’t like Tank Abbott, but it’s weird that they’d expect us to care about him feuding with some dude in the audience who we know nothing about. He has not been helped in any way by his booking. Anyway, this Leather Jacket on a Pole Match that I cannot believe didn’t originate from a Russo initiative is up next. This is, you won’t be surprised to find out, a total catastrophe. Al takes his belt off and loops it around his wrist while Abbott yells YOU WANNA FUCKIN’ GO, WELL LET’S GOOOOOOO. Al drops his belt while trying to loop their right hands together. They finally loop their right hands together and punch each other with their left hands while yelling DO IT, C’MON DOOOO ITTTTT, BRING SOME MORE SHIT TO THE TABLE, DO ITTTTT. Al goes to one knee after a left, but then he gets up and hits Tank in the face with a left forearm as the belt falls off again. Al gently moves Tank toward the corner post and, after a few hours…he backs off of yanking him crotch-first into the post. Al yells THAT’S TOO GOOD FOR HIM before climbing with the speed and agility of a geriatric eighty-something up to the lowest rope and then gently stepping onto Tank’s face. Tank fires up and lands a right and a few hammerfists before scoring a judo throw and yelling GET UP, FUCKFACE. So many cusses! So, this match is far too long and incredibly shitty. Tank puts Al in Samoan Drop position, then climbs the ropes and…accidentally drops Al to ringside. Tank goes back up and grabs the jacket as the crowd chants YOU FUCKED UP. He really did; that was supposed to be his big strongman spot. After the bell, Tank pulls out a switchblade, holds it to Al’s throat, and then yells I SHOULD KILL YOU! I SHOULD FUCKIN’ KILL YOU! Tony S. pretends he has scissors and that he’s really going to clip the clean-shaven Al’s beard as we immediately cut to a wide shot of the crowd. I mean, if you’re going to land yourself on the Absolute Dirt Worst list, do it in style, right? Stevie Ray cuts a bummer of a promo with Gene Okerlund while J. Biggs and Big T. stand there. Stevie mugs the camera and makes Okerlund almost bust out laughing. Recap: Stevie walks around a low-income neighborhood in Atlanta while pretending that it’s actually Harlem even though anyone who knows anything about either of these places would immediately see that it was Atlanta. Oh, also this Harlem Heat feud that has been teased on and off since the middle of 1998 is even worse than I imagined that it would be when I was watching those 1998 shows. Booker T. cuts a boilerplate promo with Gene Okerlund, and good for him that he’s trying even though this angle is deeply stupid and he’s going to have to job to a completely washed Big T. Speaking of, here is Big T. (w/J. Biggs and Stevie Ray); why in the heck did WCW see fit to bring this dude in at this point? I was there when Ahmed Johnson won the WWF Intercontinental Championship from Goldust back in 1996, and I was sure this dude was going to be a megastar. Cut to 2000, and we’re putting him over Booker for reasons that are beyond me. Madden makes me laugh for the first time since he’s began his commentary role by claiming that if Malcolm X acted like Booker has been acting, he’d “just be Malcolm and Harlem Heat would own the X.” I think the Nation of Islam would have probably claimed the X before Harlem Heat 2000 did, but fair play, Madden! Anyway, Stevie mean mugs fans in the front row while Big T. waddles around the ring and Booker sells for him for some reason. No one wants to see that shit. Booker should win this in under a minute, and then Big T. should just be called Big, which he is. Especially in the gut area of his singlet. Yeah, I know, it’s mean, but this is an upper-body business, dammit! Anyway, I refuse to report on any of this nonsense in depth; here’s the finish: Booker lands a Houston Side Kick and goes up for a missile dropkick, but Biggs hops on the apron. Booker goes over and knocks him off the apron, then lands a Book End on Big T. He goes up again and Stevie gets on the apron; Booker hits him with a standing side kick and then goes up and lands a missile dropkick on Ahmed. He covers, gets two, and the lights go out. We hear the clock strike one, which usually brings out Midnight, and hey, that makes no sense, the clock should BONG twelve times to bring out Midnight, not just once. But alas, we instead come back to 4x4 standing on the apron; Booker is distracted by this man’s amazing wideness and turns around and into a Pearl River Plunge that scores a three count. Biggs gets in the ring and declares the trio to be now known as Harlem Heat Incorporated. OK, can this feud be over now? That skeevy fuckboi Gene Okerlund twists around to look at Symphony’s ass while she is standing right there facing him. Then, he asks the Maestro about his musical differences with the Cat. The Maestro marble-mouths through a promo in which he basically ban bets the Cat that James Brown won’t show up tonight. The Harris Bros. yell at some poor custodial worker to open the PRIVATE: KEEP OUT door with his ring of keys. None of the custodian's keys work, and he says that the lock must have been changed, so the Harris Bros. beat on him for a few seconds. Recap: Vampiro and Billy Kidman have a somewhat baffling feud in which THE WALL, BROTHER was briefly involved for some reason. Don’t ask me why. I’m tall, and so is my wife. She’s only two-and-a-half or three inches shorter than me. I would absolutely date someone who was taller than me. If my wife were, say, six-three. I’d definitely still be attracted to her. I say this to illustrate that I don’t really think much of a guy being shorter than a lady if I see them walking on the street as a couple. HOWEVER, I do think Billy Kidman comes off as kind of a shrimp when he’s craning his neck upward to kiss his high-heel wearing girlfriend. The visual specifically is noticeable in a pro wrestling ring. And even that wouldn’t matter if Kidman came off as tough or an especially elite athlete, but he doesn’t come off that way. If you show me a five-eight point guard who can jump out of the gym standing next to a five-ten lady that he’s dating, it works. Same with a five-six lightweight boxer next to a five-nine woman. Rey Misterio Jr. could stand next to Torrie wearing those same heels and he’s such an elite athlete that I wouldn’t think anything of it. Anyway, my point is that Kidman doesn’t look like a star and this on-screen pairing with Torrie Wilson has been part of the reason for that. It's been a bad kayfabe pairing for him. Vampiro makes it down here and they proceed to have an okay match. Both of these guys have clear appeal with the crowd, but I can’t get there with either of them myself at this point. Torrie takes a bump off the apron that is extremely telegraphed when Vamp kicks Kidman into her. Kidman goes out to check on her, and Vamp takes advantage of the distraction. He grabs a chair, and Torrie tries to rip it away from him. He threatens her with it, but Kidman dropkicks it into him, then rolls him in the ring for two. I’ve run down Kidman and Vampiro as generally mediocre performers, but let’s not forget Torrie. She has no personality, goofy facial expressions, and she can’t talk. It’s nonsense that she’s all up in these videos, but we can’t get Mona doing more stuff on TV. If you need a hot blonde for your show, she’s the one (though once she let her natural brunette color come through, she only got even hotter, okay, ol’ Smellynetico is calming himself down). The fellas in the ring trade two counts; Vamp hits a powerbomb, holds on, and hits a release powerbomb that gets two and a crowd pop. Vamp sits Kidman up top and looks for a killshot, but Swerve Strickland is nowhere to be seen, so the long and short of it is that Kidman reverses a superplex attempt into an ugly falling reverse DDT for three. Meh. How am I only halfway through this show? Terry Funk stands with Dustin Rhodes and cuts a somnambulant promo to threaten Ric Flair. Sid busts out of his dressing room; security tries to stop him and he yells DON’T TOUCH ME, EVER before sending one of them to find Gene Okerlund and bring the wrinkled little perv announcer to him. Recap: The Mamalukes are still feuding with David Flair and Crowbar, and Crowbar deserves better. So does Daffney, for that matter. Gene Okerlund interviews Disco and the Mamalukes about their upcoming Sicilian Stretcher Match. Disco talks, and it’s fine. Vito talks, and it’s too long. Johnny the Bull talks, and huh, they let him talk. OK, here come David Flair and Crowbar (w/Daffney). Tenay indicates that both members of a tag team must be carried entirely out of the arena on stretchers for the match to end. Disco gets on commentary after the Mamalukes make it to the ring while we get a generic, dull tag team hardcore brawl. It’s boring. Yeah, I’ll tell you either when something cool happens or when the finish happens. OK, something cool: Crowbar slingshot splashes himself over the top rope and onto Johnny the Bull as the Bull lays prone on a stretcher. Leave it to Crowbar to do something cool in this match, of course. Daffney spots the camera getting a close-up of her face, screams, and cackles. She is weirdly adorable. She gets in the ring and hits the Bull with a Frankensteiner to a pop, then sprays Disco with mace when Disco hops in the ring to confront her. This match is basically a showcase for why the booking committee should immediately break Crowbar and Daffney away from the rest of this riffraff and push them a bit. Instead, Crowbar just gets forcibly pushed through a table by a Vito powerbomb. Johnny the Bull leapfrogs to the top rope, takes quite a bit of time to himself, and then lands a guillotine legdrop that’s pretty good. Disco keeps asking for medical attention and updates on the match every time he hears a big move happen. This annoys commentary, and it’s a fairly funny bit. I’m baffled by David Flair’s elimination from this match because two refs wheel him to the back after the ‘lukes tape him onto a stretcher. The bell randomly rings. I’m confused, but I’m also too bored to care about what the heck is even happening. Finally, the Bull lays waste to Crowbar with a pipe as for the second time tonight, a one-on-three numbers game catches up to the one as the three destroy him. Vito hits a splash on Crowbar through a table; they stretcher him out themselves (and strap Daffney into a wheelchair besides) to end this match. I feel like Mickey Jay and whichever other ref wheeled Dopey Dave out should also be co-tag champs. Anyway, this wasn’t good, but you knew it wouldn’t be, right? The Harris Bros. are incompetent, but Jeff Jarrett remains unfazed! Okerlund is led up to Sid’s door so that Sid can threaten Jarrett and Scott Hall. He is determined to hold onto the gold. The Cat comes to the ring to make good on his claims that James Brown will be joining him to cut a rug. I’ve seen people rip on WCW for not promoting Brown’s appearance, but a) the point is that the Cat is believed to be lying from week to week, but we know that when he makes a claim that Brown will finally show up on PPV, there’s a good chance it’ll actually happen considering that it's PPV, and b) it didn’t mean one damn thing to the buyrate anyway. The camera focuses on a cute lady in the crowd grooving to the Cat’s theme. She’s so cute that it focuses on her again a few seconds later. Miller calls the crowd “rednecks.” In San Francisco? Anyway, he crows about proving the crowd wrong before NOT James Brown dances out. But then actual James Brown shows up shortly after that. First, the Maestro and Symphony hit the ring. The Maestro thinks that he’s won their bet, but the Cat threatens to kick the Maestro in his behind. The Maestro rips off NOT James Brown’s wig, but then actual James Brown and a whole posse dance to the ring. What a strange mini-angle to push on the past month of shows. The Maestro passes out in shock that Brown is here. James Brown hugs the Cat before they cut a rug. This is easily the most over thing on the show so far. Huh, maybe they should have promoted it more directly. James Brown even gets his cape from his attendant and helps revive the Cat with it. I unironically enjoyed this. Gene Okerlund interviews Scott Hall, who shoots about how he’s in trouble again and it shouldn’t matter that he doesn’t get along with Terry Taylor “the bookers” because he’s very popular. Recap: It’s not 1989 anymore, so Ric Flair/Terry Funk hasn’t been a very hot feud. I don’t blame Funk – that match with David Flair on Nitro a couple weeks back was effective, and Arn was also quite convincing as part of it. Ric Flair has been a zero trying to force this heel turn that the fans don’t want, though. Gene Okerlund talks to forced heel zero Ric Flair before this Texas Death Match. Well, at least we’ll probably finally get some blood in a match that would call for it [Editor's note: We did not]. Alright, let’s get through this triple main. Terry Funk (w/Dustin Rhodes) hits the ring first; Ric Flair is the second man out here. This Texas Death Match has no rest periods, which should move it along. Well, at least Funk throws some sweet punches. No one in the crowd fucks with Funk, but Flair is begging off and heeling and shit. This match is all wrong, as I knew it would be, and really, as anyone with a working brain cell could have foreseen. Like with the Sicilian Stretcher Match, I’ll tell you when something notable happens and, at the very least, I’ll fill you in on the finish. OK, it’s just been punches, chops, and a spinning toe hold so far. Funk hits a vertical suplex on the mats; Flair yells AW SHIT, and Funk covers Flair for three. Flair uses the guardrail to get up at five, though. The desk did a nice job of talking about how the lack of rest period would shorten the match and that the strategy of purposely eating a pinfall in order to get a bit of a rest wouldn’t work here. I wonder what the kayfabe strategy is in this match. Would you still eat a pinfall on purpose for any reason? I guess you might do it to stop an opponent’s onslaught and get some space so that you can pop up at eight and have room to re-engage. Madden notes the silence of the crowd and suggests that it’s because of awe and not because they are bored or because this is the fifteenth hardcore match of the night. Flair attacks Funk’s knee with a chair and gets a quick submission off a Figure Four; Funk takes a six count to get back up. As Flair goes up top and gets predictably caught and countered, Madden points out that Flair hasn’t hit a top-rope move since he beat Harley Race with one at the first Starrcade, which is a bit too on the nose, bud. The match spills back outside, where Funk lands a piledriver on the mats. He pulls back the mat, then covers, and Flair kicks out, so Funk pulls back the rest of the mat. They exchange strikes before Funk hits a piledriver on the concrete that the desk points out didn’t actually land on the concrete. Fellas, help these guys out, willya?! Funk pins Flair, then goes and sets up a table while Flair pulls himself up at six. Did James Brown and Ernest Miller tire out this crowd? I mean, Flair/Funk was a cold feud because Funk isn’t even remotely over and hasn’t been in this whole WCW run, but the silence of the crowd is staggering. Anyway, Funk grabs a mic, asks Ric if he wants to quit, and then spikes Flair with the mic when the answer is a firm “no.” He declares that he’s going to put Ric through another table and destroy his neck like he did years ago. They get up on the table and then Funk lands a piledriver through it; THAT woke the crowd up. Funk covers for one, two, and he pulls Flair’s arm up because he wants to inflict more damage. The Funker goes out to ringside and grabs another table. He puts it in the ring, sets it up…and then covers Flair? What the fuck? Flair, who had a whole lot of time to lay there and recover, kicks out at two. This series of spots makes no sense. Why would Funk pull off of Flair to ostensibly administer more punishment, but then try to pin him before hitting the table spot that he broke the cover to set up. Boy, that was a nonsensical sequence. Funk goes up for a moonsault onto a prone Flair, but Flair rolls off the table and Funk goes through it. Flair covers for three, and Billy Silverman speeds through a count to ten that ends the match. I mean, I like piledrivers, and we got three of them in this bout. The one through the table was a dope spot. The rest of this match actually sucked pretty hard and the finish made no logical sense. Ultimately, it was a bad match. Gene Okerlund holds a mic while Hulk Hogan cuts a mediocre promo on The Total Package into it. Michael Buffer introduces The Total Package (w/Liz) and Hulk Hogan (w/Jimmy Hart) for this penultimate match of SuperBrawl X. Liz is forcing ol’ Smellynetico to remind himself that he needs to remain settled down. Anyway, this match stinks. Liz tries to cheat. Hogan threatens to clobber her. Jimmy Hart steals her bat. Hogan hits Luger with a big boot that wouldn’t earn a green belt at a YMCA, or something like that. Just when the match looks like it’ll be over, it goes on for even longer because the fellas in this ring are true sadists. Hogan hits a legdrop a few seconds later after a Jimmy Hart weight belt shot to a charging Luger and gets three. This match was dog shit. Hogan attacks Package with the weight belt after the match, but Ric Flair runs down and attacks Hogan. They try to Pillmanize his other arm, but Sting hits the scene to make the save. Recap: Jeff Jarrett just ain’t a viable main eventer in early 2000. Scott Hall isn’t either, but for totally different reasons. Neither James Brown nor Sting were in the mysterious room with the PRIVATE: KEEP OUT sign on the door according to Tony S. The door is now open; who could have possibly walked through it? I am waiting with bated regular, even breath. Jeff Jarrett (w/the Harris Boys) and Scott Hall make it to ringside; the match starts before Sid’s music even hits. Whatever. Sid walks down, gives a few daps, and gets jumped by Hall. The erstwhile nWo members try to team up on Sid, but he fights them and at least one Harris Bro off besides. The heels all take a breath before jumping back in, and like four minutes in if that, there’s a fucking ref bump from Billy Silverman. Fuck off, WCW. Sid hits a double chokeslam, but can’t get three on either opponent when Nick Patrick finally slides in to make the count. Jarrett lands a belt shot on Sid for 2.9. The crowd likes Sid, but they are quite interested in a potential Scott Hall victory. There’s a second ref bump when Jarrett hits Patrick with the Stroke. MAN, this sucks. Fucking WCW and their ref bumps. Hall covers Jarrett after a Harris Bro chair shot gone awry for 2.9. Jarrett hits the third ref, Charles Robinson, with the Stroke. He hits the fourth ref, Mickey Jay, with the Stroke as soon as Jay hits the ring. I mean, if they didn’t always do these fucking multiple ref bumps in their big matches, it would have been maybe more clever and interesting that Jarrett is destroying refs to get to Slick Johnson, his paid ref. Hall lands a Razor’s Edge on Jarrett, but Slick gets in the ring and fakes a shoulder injury when his hand is about to come down for the third tap of the mat. Jarrett KABONGs Hall, but the guy from the PRIVATE: KEEP OUT room turns out to be Roddy Piper in a ref's shirt – hey, continuity, I guess?!. Piper stops Slick from counting three on Jarrett’s pinfall. Jarrett flicks Piper off, and Piper pokes Jarrett in the eyes. Jarrett stumbles backward into a Sid chokeslam. The crowd pops big. Sid points to Hall and signals that he's going to hit him with a big move next. The crowd is makes a sound that basically says WAIT NO, WE LIKED WHEN YOU DID IT TO JARRETT, BUT WE HAVE A ROOTING INTEREST IN SCOTT HALL. Sid hits a powerbomb on Hall anyway and Piper counts three before Jarrett can break up the pinfall attempt. This show was just garden variety trash and not GAB ‘91/BatB’99/Souled Out ’00 levels of trash, which is impressive from a certain perspective considering the build was legendarily awful and the last week of major television before the show was all-time bad even for WCW in this era. Edited September 29 by SirSmUgly 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caley Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 2 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: don’t like Tank Abbott, but it’s weird that they’d expect us to care about him feuding with some dude in the audience who we know nothing about. He has not been helped in any way by his booking. Anyway, this Leather Jacket on a Pole Match that I cannot believe didn’t originate from a Russo initiative is up next. This is, you won’t be surprised to find out, a total catastrophe. Al takes his belt off and loops it around his wrist while Abbott yells YOU WANNA FUCKIN’ GO, WELL LET’S GOOOOOOO. Al drops his belt while trying to loop their right hands together. They finally loop their right hands together and punch each other with their left hands while yelling DO IT, C’MON DOOOO ITTTTT, BRING SOME MORE SHIT TO THE TABLE, DO ITTTTT. Al goes to one knee after a left, but then he gets up and hits Tank in the face with a left forearm as the belt falls off again. Al gently moves Tank toward the corner post and, after a few hours…he backs off of yanking him crotch-first into the post. Al yells THAT’S TOO GOOD FOR HIM before climbing with the speed and agility of a geriatric eighty-something up to the lowest rope and then gently stepping onto Tank’s face. Tank fires up and lands a right and a few hammerfists before scoring a judo throw and yelling GET UP, FUCKFACE. So many cusses! So, this match is far too long and incredibly shitty. Tank puts Al in Samoan Drop position, then climbs the ropes and…accidentally drops Al to ringside. Tank goes back up and grabs the jacket as the crowd chants YOU FUCKED UP. He really did; that was supposed to be his big strongman spot. After the bell, Tank pulls out a switchblade, holds it to Al’s throat, and then yells I SHOULD KILL YOU! I SHOULD FUCKIN’ KILL YOU! Tony S. pretends he has scissors and that he’s really going to clip the clean-shaven Al’s beard as we immediately cut to a wide shot of the crowd. I mean, if you’re going to land yourself on the Absolute Dirt Worst list, do it in style, right? I actually LIKED the Tank Abbott push at the time. I think maybe his "aura"(?!) was bigger at the time; the mythology of him being a big, beer-drinking, street fighter, he had a genuinely scary persona (I know I've told the story many times on here but even in the midst of his 3-Count association, when he showed up to Nitro here people were still genuinely TERRIFIED of him except, of course, my little brother). I actually loved the idea of giving him the World Title (again, at the time) but he had to be presented better and trained better. Like if he came out, threw good punches and was able to basically brutalize guys into unconsciousness, sort of a portly Goldberg push, I think he could have believably been a short-term World champ (Plus you could have someone like, say, Sting beat him by just being more experienced and outlasting Tank's initial flurry). But even as Tank's maybe biggest pro wrestling fan, this whole storyline was TERRIBLE. First off, and it's a minor quibble, but they already had Al Green bouncing around WCW shows, often referred to as "Big" Al Green (Plus 911 also spent some time in WCW as Big Al), so to introduce this new random (shitty) guy known as Big Al, you immediately muddy the waters with "Wait is that the guy from WCWSN?! Wait is that 911?" Secondly, he was terrible. Thirdly, he should have at least beaten up a jobber on Nitro to get over that he was a genuinely a threat to Abbott. Then to have this leather jacket on a pole match was ludicrous. And lastly that whole post-match thing was either A) a poorly-conceived storyline that Tony Schiavone was the only one smart enough to realize that it was going to sink them and tried to kayfabe over the top of or B) Something Tank came up with himself that Tony Schiavone tried to cover for. Either way, someone should have gotten dumped for that one! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted September 29 Author Share Posted September 29 Show #228 – 21 February 2000 “The one in which the most dangerous wrestlers on the roster are *checks notes* Hulk Hogan and the Harris Bros., which should give you a bit of insight into how good this show was” Recap: SuperBrawl X results. That show could have used any of Goldberg, Rey, Scott Steiner, or DDP pretty badly! I know a couple of those guys are injured, but still! Scott Hall got legit injured on that powerbomb at SuperBrawl; that’s it for him in this company, portrait-based cameos aside. What can I say about Hall’s WCW run that hasn’t already been said? I guess there’s only one final thought I have about him: If he wasn’t a raging alcoholic, I think there’s an argument that centering him as the champion could have actually helped WCW survive the competition from the Austin/Rock main event duumvirate over on RAW. He was that over. I mean, I always knew he was over, but these show reviews reveal that he was insanely over almost no matter what. Maybe the ratings for his segments prove me wrong and he was only over in arenas a la Hogan et al., but I think he was actually a TV ratings draw, wasn't he? I’ve come around to believing that even reasonably decent booking formed around a main event core of Goldberg, Hall, Jericho, and Scott Steiner with Page, Hitman, Sting, Benoit, Booker, and Nash floating in and out of the big gold title scene is good enough to keep WCW’s ratings from totally tanking in 1999-2000. I simply don’t buy the argument that WCW was always doomed after the AOL merger; if it kept raking in money hand-over-fist like it did in 1997 and 1998, it would have likely been safe at least in the short-term, and I think a stable core of fresh main eventers and solid booking is enough to keep 1999 and 2000’s revenues (where the company started its cliff dive) nearer to 1998’s revenues. I did wonder, though, as I listened to a couple of pods on WCW’s booking around this time: Were Vinnie Jr. and Paul E. the only two truly good head of creatives available to work for any of the big three in 1999-2000? Who could WCW have possibly hired to right the ship? What I’ve heard about Jimmy Hart’s WCWSN run as booker indicates that maybe he could have done decently enough with the major shows, except for his close friendship with Hogan probably getting in the way of a lot of the things that WCW needed to do with its main event scene. I sort of feel like all roads lead back to Hogan when explaining why WCW went into the tank by late 1998. Jeff Jarrett would not be in that main event core as he just doesn’t have it at that level; he’s here with the Harris Bros. to start the show, vowing to get even for the finish to the SuperBrawl main event. Gene Okerlund starts the show in the ring; he conducts an interview with Mr. All Roads himself, Hulk Hogan. Or he’s supposed to be conducting an interview with Hogan, but The Total Package’s music cuts in. TTP and Liz head to the ring. Luger rocking FUBU jerseys will never not be funny to me. Package blathers on for a while. I’m the best, low body fat, beat you up, shoulda broken your other arm, next time you’re fucked, and he’s cut off by “American Made,” AKA the best you’d be able to pull out of the garbage if you were trying to dumpster dive for “Real American.” Hogan blathers on for a while. Flexy Lexy, y’know something brother, let’s hook it up again tonight, and Package accepts before Hogan blathers on for a while more. Something something Jimmy Hart, something something cage match, something something HE’S GOT THE RED WHITE AND BLUE RUNNIN’ THROUGH HIS VEINS. I mean, “American Made” sucks really badly. Let’s see what else we have on tap for tonight’s show! Ah, we’re getting a Syko Sid Vicious interview. That’s all they’ve planned that they think is worth promoting. Ersatz “Cowboy” plays as Jeff Jarrett (w/Harris Bros. and nWo ladies) hits the ramp to complain about gettin’ SCREWED at SuperBrawl. Jarrett does his low-rent main event heel act; he pulls out a contract for a rematch against Sid that he claims Kevin Nash signed off on. Jarrett promises that the Harris Boys will be all over this show, which explains a little something about why Nitro ratings are in the mid-high twos at this point. Sid arrives; Kidman and Torrie act like an old married couple while looking for the lost KidCam. Madusa checks out the bookings board and finds out that she flew all the way to Sacramento and didn’t even get booked. She rants about this miscarriage of justice and kicks the board before picking it up and smashing it while yelling I *smash* WANT *smash* A *smash* WOMAN’S *smash* DIVISION *smash*. She’s peeved, is what I get from this vignette, and she blames Oklahoma as the cause of her peevishness. Billy Kidman (w/Torrie Wilson) wrestles Lash LeRoux, who I am stunned is not the Cruiserweight Champ right now. Then again, maybe putting the gold on a guy doing a Wish.com Chris Jericho act is about as bad as putting the gold on a guy doing a Wish.com version of Dave Chappelle’s Prince act. Anyway, this match goes for about thirty seconds before the Harris Bros. run in and beat the hell out of both these dudes. I’m sure Kidman’s just loving that push he was promised by Bill Busch in return for not bolting for the WWF along with the Radicalz. On another note, I’d suggest that if another edition of RD Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez’s The Death of WCW ever comes out, they find some space on the cover to squeeze a picture of the Harris Bros. in. Whoever stole the KidCam sneaks a shot of Buff Bagwell trying to hook up with Symphony, who is entirely disinterested in a date with him. Buff thinks it’s bad for his image that Symphony turned him down, so he tells her not to tell anyone that she rejected him. Madden: “I can’t believe that Buff took ‘no’ for an answer…” He’s made a fantastic point, but also, Buff is supposed to be a babyface! Is this KidCam thing going to be a discount replica of GTV? Will we actually find out who stole Kidman’s camcorder? Let me guess: The answer is gonna be a resounding YES to the first question and a resounding NO to the second question. Vampiro saunters to the ring for a match with Fit Finlay. As Finlay makes his way to the ring, Tony S. shills the latest edition of WCW Magazine. It has the Hitman/Nash/Jarrett/Steiner nWo on the cover. Guess how many of those guys are on this show tonight? Anyway, this match goes straight to an obligabrawl, but I’m not invested in any of this because I’m watching with an expectation that the Harris Bros. might show up at any point to spoil this thing. Finlay spikes a chair into Vampiro’s throat, which is a cool spot. Tony S. fires off pronouncements and decrees: There will be an official ruling on Jarrett’s rematch claim in an upcoming segment! The Hogan/Package cage match is a Last Man Standing Cage Match! But also, it’s not LMS because you have to escape the cage to win, which is different from the rules of an LMS match where you have to make a ten count when knocked down! Anyway, Finlay beats holy hell out of Vampiro for this whole bout, pretty much, before figuratively slipping on a banana peel and getting rolled up for the loss. Finlay is a sore loser; he clocks Vamp with his cast after the match and spikes the guy with a Tombstone. Vampiro is getting over with the crowds, so why not have Finlay destroy him? Great booking, and I say this as someone who doesn’t like Vampiro and likes Finlay. The Maestro clobbers Buff in the back; their tussle gets broken up, and Buff challenges Maestro to a match for later tonight. Madusa runs up to La Parka and whispers a favor or request or something in his ear; he replies with a “yes, ma’am.” But in Spanish. They brought the Nitro Girls back, but there are only four of them now. Booker T. cuts a promo about losing his legal name or whatever before going out to face Big Vito (w/Johnny the Bull and Disco Inferno). He’s painting by numbers in these promos, and I don’t blame him. Wait, hold on, Disco gets in the ring and says that he’s the one booked against Booker. It doesn’t matter. The point is that Disco offers Booker a handicap tag title shot instead of the originally booked bout. Are we going to job Booker to the fucking Mamalukes? Fuck off, WCW. I’m formally protesting Booker’s booking until July, which means that it’s time for a new category. Here’s the Latest Twist in Booker T.’s Criminally Bad Booking: Booker at least doesn’t job; Disco has to save his guys from a loss by jumping Book as the latter goes up for a missile dropkick. Oh, and then the Harris Bros. rush to the ring and destroy Booker, Disco, and the tag champs. There’s another goddam hour of this show. FUCK. Terry Funk and Dustin Rhodes pal around in the back with Okerlund; the Funker keeps insulting Dusty and saying that Dustin is ten times the man of his pops. I’m sure that’s leading somewhere eventually. I assume WCW will bring Dusty back in the next month or two…or maybe not considering that Russo is on his way back to scuttle any of the current booking plans. Anyway, they feel confident in their chances against the Harris Bros. later tonight. In his locker room, Sid cackles maniacally and declares that he’s got a few words for Jeff Jarrett. Harlem Heat Incorporated insists on cutting a promo with Gene Okerlund in the back. Stevie and Biggs should be the only two of that foursome who are allowed to talk, and thankfully, they indeed do all of the talking. Big T. is dressed to the nines. 4x4 is now known as Cassius. At least Stevie declares that HHI is moving on from feuding with Booker. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Oklahoma is not a character that is funny, entertaining, or a draw, but here he is to join commentary before our WCW Cruiserweight Championship match between TAFKAPI (w/Paisley) and La Parka. Look, if Madusa’s fuckery somehow gets us a La Parka Cruiserweight Championship reign, no matter how brief, I am into it. No, wait, never mind, it’s just Madusa in La Parka’s mask and suit. Her La Parka imitation is actually really funny; by the time she hits the Thinker pose, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. This is the first time I’ve been entertained all night. Anyway, Oklahoma gets in the ring before The Artist and La Madusa lock up and rips off La Madusa’s mask. The real Parka comes down and crowns Oklahoma with a chair to the head. He drops the chair and dances; TAFKAPI grabs the chair and brains him when he spins around, then, uh, sorta kinda barely lands that jumping DDT of his for the win. The Paisley Park, that’s what it’s called, I think. He needs to go back to the lab on that one. Flair stands next to TTP and Liz and yells a lot. The acoustics are bad, so it’s hard to hear what he’s yelling. The camera just cuts away in the middle of his rant so that we can watch Terry Funk and Dustin Rhodes walk to the ring. Their opponents: The Harris Bros. (w/Jeff Jarrett), who are in the midst of a massive push, apparently? Anyway, Jarrett and the Harrises being all over this show is basically creative suicide, a future-verified TNA-level act being put on television for a major wrestling company. Say what you will about WWF doing everything it could to put an upper-midcard talent like Triple H over, but what they did actually worked. Trips is a complete mirage as an in-ring talent, but the far superior booking made the mirage stick. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarrett is utterly exposed here under WCW's garbage booking. If you switched Jarrett and Trips between the companies, but kept everything else around them the same, we’d be talking about how crazy it is that anyone ever thought Hunter Hearst Helmsley Jean-Paul Levesque could be a viable main eventer and Jeff Jarrett would be a top executive in the WWF. I am dead serious in my belief that this is true. Anyway, Funk gets murked for this whole match. He just can’t seem to make a hot tag. Jarrett does some incredibly annoying catchphrase-filled ranting on commentary this whole damn time. A Harris Bro taps out to the spinning toehold, but there’s no ref. Jarrett tries to KABONG Funk, but the ref catches him, and he backs off. Syko Sid paces down the ramp and toward Jarrett, who continues to back off. Jarrett smacks the timekeeper with his guitar; Sid chases him backstage, which we cut away to see. We cut back, and Funk finally tags Dustin in, but Dustin DDT’s Funk. We go back to watching Sid chase Jarrett, the latter of whom gets into a car and drives off. Back to the ring: Dustin destroys the Funker with a chair. Who could possibly even care one bit about any of this? And why is Terry Funk taking chair shots to the dome for angles that no one could possibly even care one bit about? Buff Bagwell, who hasn’t been seen on TV since the DDP and Kimberly nonsense, cuts a quick promo with Okerlund in which he says that the KidCam took his words and actions out of context, and also, he’s going to beat up the Maestro. Rhodes attacks Funk as they load the Funker into an ambulance; then, he jumps in the ambulance and drives off. Gene Okerlund interviews Sid Vicious in the ring. Sid screams a lot, and good for him having this sort of energy even in the midst of all this nonsense booking! Then, he brings his tone down and cracks me up with this line: “See, Jeff Jarrett, I like you, man. You’re smart, you’re witty, you keep me on my toes.” That shit was hilarious. Where did that even come from? Anyway, he says that and follows up by saying that Jarrett might be all those things, but he ain’t the master and/or ruler of the world. They’re on for a title match at Uncensored, is what seems to be the case. Did we ever get the ruling on Jarrett’s supposed contract that Tony S. said we were going to get a few segments ago? Does it even matter? Kidman and Booker are held back from attacking the Harris Bros. backstage. Ric Flair interviews with Okerlund in the back. Flair lauds Dustin’s beatdown of Terry Funk and criticizes Okerlund’s admiration for Hogan. Okerlund is barely able to hold things together as Flair offers his support for Package in the main event. Flair was pretty funny in this little promo, so I get it. Buff Bagwell and the Maestro play DDP for a night and fight over a lady. Symphony just points her charge toward the ring and heads to the back. A couple minutes in, Symphony does come back to ringside, and Buff scores a Vader Bomb, then slides outside to hit on Symphony again. In what can only be described as a TERRIBLY timed spot, the Maestro exits the ring and runs at Buff. Buff dodges while the Maestro is a good three or four yards away, but the Maestro keeps running…and running…and running until he smashes into Symphony. Man, Rocket Ismail at Notre Dame could have been going top speed and still stopped himself before smashing into Symphony. That spot was almost impossibly awful. So, they just hook it up again in the ring as Symphony quickly recovers, when ONE, TWO, ONE TWO THREE HIT ME plays and Ernest Miller strolls to the top of the ramp. He reminds the Maestro that they had a little bet going at SuperBrawl the night before. I don’t think the Cat actually took that bet on the show, but whatever, let’s pretend he explicitly accepted it. Buff hits a distracted Maestro with a Blockbuster for three. The Cat gets on the mic and says that Maestro needs to stay in the ring to avoid more violence toward his already beaten person before playing a new hip-hop-based theme that is now the Maestro’s new theme per their bet. Maestro should trade with Booker, which would probably make them both, if not happy, at least less peeved about their entrance tunes. Anyway, the Maestro locks a Shinonomake on Billy Silverman in a rage as soon as he hears the generic beats of his new theme. Sid rushes away from the arena in a limo; THE WALL, BROTHER paces around the locker room. The Nitro Girls dance in cages and also DJ Ran is still around?! Recap: Jim Duggan found the TV title in the trash and is now the champ in the latest absurd turn for the once great World Television Championship. He randomly (and successfully) defended it against Robert Gibson on WCWSN. Lord Steven Regal makes the next challenge and declares that he’ll retire from WCW if he doesn’t win the title. He says that “you’ll never see [me] again” if he loses, but he will have a little cameo on the last Nitro in the Cleveland-area part of the simulcast, so that’s not entirely true. THE WALL, BROTHER jumps Bam Bam Bigelow as Bigelow walks to the ring and then proceeds to have a vacuum of a match with Bammer. It’s not bad; it’s not good. It just exists as a perfectly okay thing. It will be forgotten about soon after it ends. They do work hard, though. Bam Bam lands a diving headbutt, but TW,B is just too tough and kicks out at two. Bigelow scores a series of two counts, then goes up again, but gets caught, goozled, and chokeslammed for three. I appreciate that they busted their asses even though this match was entirely unmemorable. They did their best. Hulk Hogan looks like a complete asshole as he smashes a fence with his cast-covered arm while snarling and yelling LUGER over and over again. What a dickhead. Ric Flair yells at Dopey Dave and Arn Anderson for being less than supportive of him and his delusions. They look displeased at his verbal abuse. The cage lowers for this main event between The Total Package (w/Liz) and Hulk Hogan. Hogan cuts a terribly shitty promo with Okerlund in the back. That’s enough, good gravy, please stop letting this dude talk. Jimmy Hart’s just trying to get some popcorn in the back when TTP and Ric Flair come across him and kick his ass. After a break, we see that TTP and Flair have brought Hart out here to ringside and are stomping him out. Hogan rushes down and beats up both the heels. Only five more months of this, yeah? Avenging babyface hero Vince Russo is finally going to end Hulkamania. Package uses the chair while Flair is distracting Hogan, and finally they make their way to the ring while security carts Flair and Hart away from ringside. Sacramento is fired up for these two big stars who aren’t translating into TV ratings or buyrates, but who can point to the crowd response here and say that they have to stay on top because the kids aren’t ready. This match hits all the beats you’d expect, and after Hogan’s legdrop, Ric Flair runs back down and gets in the cage, which is doing a poor job of keeping people out of the ring. Hogan no-sells Flair’s offense and fires back with his own. Liz is out here, too, and after Hogan hits a legdrop on Flair, Liz slides the chair to Package. Eventually, after Hogan rolls these guys one-on-two, Package clobbers Hogan with the chair. Flair adds a few belt shots into the bargain. Doug Dellinger gets into the ring, but Package jumps him and Pillmanizes his arm. This truly sucked and had no artistic merit whatsoever. Look, forget Hogan, forget Package, forget Buff vs. Maestro, forget even Jeff Jarrett failing badly as a main event talent. This show tried to get the Harris Bros. over as a force to be reckoned with except for when they needed help from Dustin Rhodes to fend off a fifty-something Terry Funk. Read that previous sentence again. Sit with it for a few seconds. I don’t even have words for how stupid their portrayal on this show was. That alone sends this show right into a level of scoring that doesn’t exist as a real number (unless it actually does exist in some dimension of reality that humanity doesn’t fully understand yet). And don’t even ask me how the rest of this show figures into giving this thing a numerical score that doesn’t exist, unless maybe this numerical score does exist in a purely quantum state, who the hell knows. √-183,384 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caley Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 9 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: There’s another goddam hour of this show. FUCK. This made me chuckle 9 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Madden: “I can’t believe that Buff took ‘no’ for an answer…” He’s made a fantastic point, but also, Buff is supposed to be a babyface! "Look he's a good guy...except for when it comes to consent!" 9 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Jimmy Hart’s just trying to get some popcorn in the back when TTP and Ric Flair come across him and kick his ass. I know this is because he's Hogan's buddy and figured into the main event after, but I'd much prefer it to be a random weekly event where people beat up Jimmy Hart as he tries to get a snack. 9 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: This show tried to get the Harris Bros. over as a force to be reckoned with except for when they needed help from Dustin Rhodes to fend off a fifty-something Terry Funk. I, again, also have to puzzle over WHY they were trying to get the Harrises over. It wasn't like they won a bidding war for their services. It wasn't like fans felt they were held down in either WWE or ECW. It wasn't like they were some secret workrate maniacs or had especially highly-rated segments. I could actually understand this push if it was Kronik (Even though I pretty much hated Kronik), I could understand this if it was someone they had poached away from the competition (The Dudley Boyz, The Hardyz). Honestly, even if it was just a return of the LOD, I'd understand it. But, all of this to get over a team that's never really been over...is just such...as my 4 year old niece says, a bummer (She got in trouble last month for saying to her grandfather "You're a bummer, man!" from her parents (My dad thought it was hilarious) and we're still not sure where she picked it up because I'm pretty sure the Paw Patrol never call anybody "bummers"). 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 5 hours ago, caley said: as my 4 year old niece says, a bummer (She got in trouble last month for saying to her grandfather "You're a bummer, man!" from her parents (My dad thought it was hilarious). your dad is correct. that IS hilarious!! you're also correct on your larger point. Did they just view the Harris Boys as a fresh shakeup for the company? Because yeah, they're not good, not over, and not likable. what was the point? Why these guys? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 On the subject of HHH vs JJ I'd say HHH has the higher ceiling but also a lower floor. JJ's early TNA run as cosplay Ric Flair traveling world champ is much better than HHH cosplay Harley Race doing the same thing, however I can think of multiple times I've bought HHH as a credible main eventer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted October 1 Author Share Posted October 1 (edited) Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred – 23 February 2000 "The WCW Gang attempts to be whimsical and weird, fails miserably" Unless my count is off, we’ve made it to Thunder number one hundred!...Thunder number two hundred is as entirely out of the question as Nitro number three hundred is… Recap: This Sid/Jarrett feud has no juice, and it’s not Sid’s fault… Kevin Nash (w/two other nurses) pretends to have amnesia when Mike Graham runs up to him as he’s wheeled in…Wow, I’m glad to see Nash didn’t get lost in Cleveland…Seriously, did they secretly hire Dusty Rhodes back for a position in creative, or is this just WCW deciding that nWo rehashes are old hat and the same ol' Flair/Sting feud won’t cut it, so they need to dig deeper for mid-’90s WCW angles to rerun?… Three Count does what must be one of the worst dance routines in history in the center of this very ring, full stop…Fit Finlay’s music cuts in and Finlay comes to the ring to club on Evan Karagias in a match full ‘o plundah…The rest of Three Count jumps in, and Finlay fends them off…The latter even no-sells a chair shot from Helms…Finlay full-on rolls Karagias…They end up in the ring, where Karagias tries to fend Finlay off with a chair…Finlay dodges a tentative chair poke and clatters Karagias with a trash can lid… This has been a pretty entertaining bout, honestly…This is the best hardcore match WCW’s put on television in literal months….Helms jumps Finlay from behind with a dancing circle…He hands a trash can to Karagias, who dives while holding it right into Finlay double boots…Moore hits Finlay with a springboard drop kick, but he and Helms get all mixed up on a trash can attack…Finlay takes them both out, then Tombstones Karagias for three…Oh wow, put Finlay and Three Count in a trash match and something fun happens, who could have guessed it…It’s a lovely rare thing to put an early-aughts WCW match on a positive list… Tonight’s matches: Sid Vicious vs. The Total Package…Ric Flair, Buff Bagwell, and Tank Abbott are also in the building…We cut to the back, where Kevin Nash does a bad comedy act…I probably undersold how bad his comedy is by merely calling it “bad”…He pretends that he thinks he’s a character in the ‘60s Batman TV series… This complete fucking animal Gene Okerlund is in Jarrett’s dressing room, where he remarks to the seated nWo ladies, “You don’t spend too much time on your feet”…This absolute CREEP…Jeff Jarrett cuts a heel promo on Sid…BOOOOOOOOOOOORING…Jarrett promises that the Harris Bros. will again be all over this show and then says SLAPNUTS…Terrible… Whoever stole the KidCam catches Buff striking out with Daffney…I hope this leads to a Buff heel turn as soon as possible… Ric Flair (w/the Hulkster’s weight belt) enters the ring to cut a promo…I assume that this weight belt attack is what’s going to lead to THE STRAPATION, DUDES…YAPPAPI…THE FLESH WILL BUBBLE AND BURN…Flair does some boilerplate heeling about how much Reno sucks…You know the typical crazed old man Flair promo?…That’s what he does…Eventually, he gets around to complaining that TTP has a match against Sid, but he remains unbooked…Vampiro is the guy who randomly answers the call (!!)…Yeah, this is a WCW-ass WCW matchup, and I am genuinely looking forward to seeing how it turns out… There’s an interview backstage led by Okerlund…They’ve brought back the English voiceover for La Parka…Uh, nah, I’m good…Okerlund: “Not back to this crap again”…I guess he’s the vessel for the at-home viewer’s thoughts… Dopey Dave is angry at Daffney for talking to Buff Bagwell…Daffney is obviously not interested, Dave, you dope…Her response: *scoffs* “C’mon, it’s Buff Bagwell”…HAHAHAHA… Kevin Nash does more bad comedy. He’s usually only funny when Scott Hall is around. Hall is the more consistently funny one of the duo…Nash calls Wayne Manor to talk to Alfred Pennyworth...After he hangs up, we see who was on the end of the call…Ralphus (!!!) punches the END button and confusedly asks, “Who the hell was that?!”…I love that between the amnesia angle, the La Parka VO, and the Ralphus cameo, Sullivan/Taylor/Ferrara are at the point where their strategy is built around reminding us of stuff from WCW that we may have liked in the past so that we feel more affection toward their awful booking…Hey, remember Cactus Jack, when he got amnesia and all?...That was good, right?...OK, OK, it wasn’t good, but Ralphus, you liked him!...He sure was funny, and maybe this could be a signal that Chris Jericho is also coming back, if you think about it…Keep watching to find out if he does!... I like when WCW's bookers do the equivalent of huffing nitrous oxide for a whole show and does a bunch of random and baffling shit…If you’re gonna be bad, be interesting, at least… Berlyn is still Berlyn…He’s not back to being Alex Wright yet…He rants in German for a few seconds before his match while I wonder when the Boogie Knights are coming back…Get Disco away from the Mamalukes already…Berlyn switches to English and complains about how much Reno sucks…His opponent is La Parka…I have no idea what’s happening right now…This show is nonsense…Parka wins in a minute or so with a corkscrew splash… Buff Bagwell walks up to Billy Kidman and complains about the KidCam shooting him in unflattering situations…Kidman is irritated that someone stole his camera and tells Buff that if he finds the guy, make sure to come back and tell him who stole it… Tank Abbott cuts a promo with Gene Okerlund when, oh come on, Virgil Vincent Curly Bill Shane Mike Jones (WHO?!?!) busts in and challenges Abbott to a rematch, claiming that Abbott almost ended his career…Did like a ton of guys miss a flight or something?...Is that what happened?...Explain this card to me, please… Buff Bagwell wrestles David Flair (w/Daffney)…Daffney somehow looks adorable in a colored wig…She’s wearing a purple wig, and her shirt says PEOPLE EATER on it…This would be a more appropriate look for St. Paul than Reno, but I like the idea…Dopey Dave freaks out on Daffney before the match…He slams Buff to no effect, then hits double biceps and makes smoochy lips at Daffney while Buff stands there, looking peeved…Buff controls Dave from there, but suddenly, Dave boots Buff in the balls…He does an awful Papa Ric-style strut as the Maestro and Symphony storm to ringside…In a strange spot, Daffney gets on the apron and wields the golden crowbar to keep Maestro at bay…Dave has to run at a slant on a reversed Irish whip to knock into her…She falls into the Maestro’s arms as Buff lands an inverted DDT on Dave for three…Maestro dumps Daffney and jumps in the ring to attack Buff after the match…Buff turns things around and clotheslines Maestro to the floor… I love that this punk-assed cornball Buff complained about having to job to Ernest Miller and got his clock cleaned before spending the months after that feuding with guys like the Maestro and being put into angles where he jobs on demand and can’t score with any of the ladies backstage…It’s fantastic…He got a win over Roddy Piper that got his mother over instead of him and thought he was the next big star in the company…NOPE…On the other hand, it’s an indictment of WCW’s creative leadership that Buff was very over as a babyface and other than the Scott Steiner and DDP feuds, they’ve done nothing to capitalize on that… Tank Abbott is actually knocked down by Mike Jones (WHO?!), but Jones celebrates and turns around into a short right from Tank that ends the match in thirty seconds… OK, the Ralphus gag was good, but they actually have him show up in Nash’s room as Nash cries about Batman not being able to answer the call…Ralphus listens patiently, then asks the nurses, “Guitar shot?”…Nurse #1: “Bingo”…Nash: *sings the lyrics to “Bingo”*…Nash is really crashing out now that his buddy Hall is out of WCW for good, huh?...They might as well have released Nash along with everyone else they’ve gotten rid of for cost-cutting measures… Ric Flair and Vampiro lock it up…Vampiro rolls into a legbar early, but Flair gets the ropes, then staggers up and gets punked by ref Billy Silverman…Vampiro and Flair just barely manage a sequence based around an armbar reversal…When Flair wrestled Rey Misterio Jr. on Nitro (Show #183) they made it work…This is a much more awkward clash in styles…Flair turns around a chopfest with an eye poke, but eats a spinning heel kick on an Irish whip…Vamp goes up, but whiffs on a guillotine legdrop…Flair targets Vamp’s landing leg with stomps and chop blocks…Flair casually lands a few chops and goes for a Figure Four, but Vamp turns it into a sloppy small package for two… TTP and Liz power walk to the ring as Vamp escapes a Flair attack with an enziguri…Vamp lands a spinning front kick, then goes up again, where TTP slams him in the leg with his baseball bat…Liz was distracting Silverman, who turns around to see Flair lock Vamp in a Figure Four for a submission victory…After the bell rings, TTP jumps in and stomps out Vampiro…Flair whips Vamp with Hogan’s weight belt…That match was a cluster, but at least it was interesting, if not any good…When we come back from break, Fit Finlay attacks Vamp backstage while Tenay announces that Vampiro got a reverse decision over Flair…Yeah, that’ll really put him over… We miss some of the audio from Booker and Kidman barely liking each other enough to cut a deal on watching one another’s backs… Dustin Rhodes comes to the ring to a dubbed theme…I listened to his actual theme from this time and don’t know what it’s a mimic of…This Dustin Rhodes heel turn would mean more if Terry Funk were even the least bit over as a babyface…Dustin threatens a couple of crowd members, then cuts a promo in which he tries real hard to be a heel and cusses a bit…His life has been ruined by DA BIZNESS and he lost his wife and apparently only kept a few Goldust suits in the divorce… Speaking of crashing out, Dustin appears to be halfway to his level of work during that whole Black Reign period…It’s partially not his fault because he hasn’t been put in a position to succeed…But yeah, this also isn’t the promo he needed…Dustin’s bringing back the Rhodes/Funk hatred for the culture…That’s the long and short of this promo…Funk responds on the TurnerTron…The Funker cuts a mediocre promo, sadly…Man, Funk in 2000 WCW has been shockingly bad for the most part…Outside of the compelling angle with David Flair, he’s been a net negative on these shows…I think part of it is simply that he’s being overused…Rhodes beats up a few WCW crew members once Funk is done talking… Mickey Jay asks Terry Taylor to lift WCW’s suspension on Slick Johnson so that they can continue their all-out wrestling war in another five-snowflake affair… TAFKAPI (w/Paisley) defends the WCW Cruiserweight Championship once more, this time against Crowbar…Just please crown Crowbar, booking committee…This guy is one of the few consistent bright spots on these shows…TAFKAPI slaps Crowbar…Crowbar responds by slapping himself and hitting a few crisp back bumps…TAFKAPI jumps Crowbar, but Crowbar skins the cat when TAFKAPI launches him over the top rope… Crowbar headscissors TAFKAPI to the floor, then lands a wicked baseball slide and a running splash to the floor…Crowbar grabs his pipe, which allows TAFKAPI to jump him as Charles Robinson tries to take the pipe away…TAFKAPI hits a sloppy dragon whip and then tries a diving DDT that Crowbar reverses into a picture-perfect Northern Lights with a bridge for two…Come on, give this guy the title!...Crowbar goes up, but the Artist gets up and cuts him off…They fight one another, but Crowbar wins a super face crusher… Daffney runs down and flirts with TAFKAPI while Paisley does the same to distract Crowbar…Ah, I suppose that explains the purple wig and the Minnesota Vikings reference...Paisley lures Crowbar in and slaps him, but then gets upset when she spots Daffney making eyes with the Artist…Paisley rips off her wig and beals her…Daffney comes back at her and they have a pull-apart…Meanwhile, Crowbar gets kicked in the head by TAFKAPI and then front bumps himself in a vain attempt to make that jumping DDT look good…Fuck off, WCW…Push Crowbar, you idiots… Gene Okerlund interviews Syko Sid…Sid cuts a biblical promo on TTP…Then he cackles like a nutter…We cut to Kevin Nash, who is watching Sid on a monitor and claims that Sid is the Joker…One of the nurses suggests calling for Superman, but Nash is annoyed because everyone knows that Supes is a fictional character…It’s funny because so is Batman, but Nash thinks he’s real, don’tcha see… THE WALL, BROTHER (w/inexplicable push) faces Disco Inferno (w/the Mamalukes)…Wait, Lenny and Lodi attack the Mamalukes as they make their way to the Gorilla position with Disco…Disco apparently doesn’t notice the giant brawl behind him until he gets on the apron…Disco grabs a mic and tries to cop a few pleas with TW,B…Disco was going to try to get out of his match with TW,B like he did with Booker T., via subbing the Mamalukes in for a handicap title match…Since they’re not here, he tries to leave, but TW,B murks him…Disco avoids a corner charge and clips TW,B’s knee…It works for a bit, but he doesn’t have the power to keep TW,B down for long…Disco manages to duck a strike and hit a swinging neckbreaker, then lands a Disco Elbow…That doesn’t get three, so he goes on the run again and runs himself right into a goozle and a chokeslam that records a three count for TW,B… Gene Okerlund interviews TTP and Liz in the back…Package promises to be the next world champ, and he looks to prove it against Sid tonight… Billy Kidman (w/Torrie Wilson) comes to the ring…Booker T. comes out after him…They’re facing the Harris Bros….I can’t believe that they didn’t give Book new entrance music…Ah well, we can only take care of one midcarder at a time…Let’s relegate Book and Kidman to a mini-feud with the fucking Harrises and focus on getting THE WALL, BROTHER over instead…There’s an obligabrawl, the Harrises get far too much offense, and for reasons beyond me, WCW creative is uninterested in pushing two guys who fairly easily got over with the audience…There’s no real babyface shine segment and Booker’s first entry into the match is as a hot tag… Here’s the Latest Twist in Booker T.’s Criminally Bad Booking: He loses clean to an H-Bomb…GET ABSOLUTELY FUCKED, WCW… Look, I have cod cheeks to broil for dinner, so let’s get this The Total Package (w/Liz) versus Sid match over…This show started out as a mildly weird and amusing one, but the Sullivan/Taylor/Ferrara team couldn’t keep that up for longer than about a half-hour…We cut to the back, where Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. view Sid’s entrance with derision…This is a four-minute special that Ric Flair involves himself with in short order…Sid fights them both off initially, but eventually falls to the numbers game and gets clobbered with a bat… We cut back to Jeff Jarrett and the Harrises enjoying the beatdown…They decide to go out and join the party…On their way, they come across a wall of security…Mickey Jay steps up to tell Jarrett that he’s not getting to the ring tonight and gets KABONG’d…That’s it, that’s the show… I went from “mildly amused” to “annoyed and unentertained” very quickly, didn’t I?...OWWWWWWWW… Edited October 21 by SirSmUgly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted October 1 Share Posted October 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nQ7izoDXM8 Footage of the Nitro Grill 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caley Posted October 1 Share Posted October 1 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Finlay takes them both out, then Tombstones Karagias for three See, this is the biggest problem with Three Count for me. Fun workers, fun gimmick, but they should win all 3 on 1 matches easily. Someone in WCW clearly wasn't happy with hiring them/their gimmick (In Chris Jericho's book he talks about being hired by Eric Bischoff then getting a phonecall from a ticked-off Kevin Sullivan several days later begrudgingly calling him in for a "Try-out", not knowing he was already under contract), because Three Count gets NOTHING in terms of matches. Their gimmick of preening prettyboy boy band members works perfectly in concert with them being cowards who can't win a match one-on-one, I'm cool with that. But once it gets two on one and especially three on one, they should be winning all those matches. The fact that they can't even beat low-to mid carders in 3-1 matches, keeps them from getting any heat. 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: This complete fucking animal Gene Okerlund is in Jarrett’s dressing room, where he remarks to the seated nWo ladies, “You don’t spend too much time on your feet” 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Okerlund: “Not back to this crap again”…I guess he’s the vessel for the at-home viewer’s thoughts… The Okerlund taketh, then he giveth. 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Her response: *scoffs* “C’mon, it’s Buff Bagwell”…HAHAHAHA… Daffney also a vessel for the viewer 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: We miss some of the audio from Booker and Kidman barely liking each other enough to cut a deal on watching one another’s backs… I read "barely liking each other" as "barely licking each other" and was grateful for the lack of audio! 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: His life has been ruined by DA BIZNESS and he lost his wife and apparently only kept a few Goldust suits in the divorce… I was thinking about what one would do with a Goldust suit and was reminded of the interview where they asked Michelle Pfeiffer if she kept her 'Batman Returns' cat suit and wears it to spice things up and she was like "Oh god no, that suit was vacuum-sealed so I could barely breathe in it and we were only allowed to film for a limited time before it became dangerous." Apparently it was so tight that they had to repeatedly tell her to stop screaming her lines because she was in such pain wearing it. There was no need for this anecdote...I just thought it was funny and horrible. Much like Dustin wearing Goldust suits outside of a wrestling setting. 20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: We cut to Kevin Nash, who is watching Sid on a monitor and claims that Sid is the Joker…One of the nurses suggests calling for Superman, but Nash is annoyed because everyone knows that Supes is a fictional character…It’s funny because so is Batman, but Nash thinks he’s real, don’tcha see… Giving me flashbacks to high school creative writing classes: "No it's funny because..." Man, I can't believe how long the write-up for this is...like I kept scrolling up every time I'd quote something and go "I can't believe how stuff is on this 2 hour show!" but not in a good way. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted October 2 Author Share Posted October 2 Show #229 – 28 February 2000 “The one that is a night full of disappointing championship matches” Welcome to Nitro, where we’re still trying to get Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. over as massive threats! The good thing about Nitro is that it opens with quick-cut recaps of the recent proceedings in the big angles. The bad thing about Nitro is that every angle is dogshit, so I’d prefer to watch RAW, the Westminster Dog Show, Monday Night Football, a regular season NBA game, etc., etc. instead. I mean, they think I’m getting fired up for Mickey Jay waging war on Slick Johnson and Kevin Nash pretending to have amnesia. WCW’s going out sad. HAHAHA, okay, Sid Vicious versus Tank Abbott for the big gold is the major match for tonight. Mike Tenay runs up and asks Jeff Jarrett what he thinks about this match, and Jarrett says he’s not concerned about who wins that match, but he’ll still be sure to interject his over-pushed ass into it somehow. We’re in Minneapolis tonight, so I hope Daffney is still wearing what she was wearing on the previous Thunder. I mean, I hope she’s washed it since then, of course. The Mamalukes (w/Disco Inferno) open the show with a defense of their tag titles against To Excess, it looks like. Ms. Hancock woodenly says that “it’s time to teach these boys a lesson” after Lenny and Lodi blow her off backstage. Remember when Lenny was ostentatiously gay? That was two gimmicks and eight months of television ago, but it feels like an eternity. The extremely leggy Ms. Hancock walks out immediately and joins commentary along with Disco. No one cares about this match, so her being a total distraction is fine. Mark Madden does get a rare laugh out of me by escalating his offers of various amenities to Ms. Hancock. He starts by offering her a chair and ends by offering her some French vanilla ice cream and a glass of sherry. That was honestly quite funny. He also yells at Disco every time Disco tries to cut in and get some attention for himself. Eventually, Miss Hancock once again table dances. Lenny and Johnny the Bull offer her dollar bills while Lodi and Vito have a match. Vito lands a Paisan Plunge on a distracted Lodi for three and let me assure you once more: No. One. Cares. Vito is allowed to talk after the match for some reason. He does ask Hancock to celebrate with them by shaking her non-existent ass (sorry, but she keeps trying to shake it, and there’s nothing there, and this is not body shaming, but a mere observation, and she’s a very physically attractive lady regardless!), so the crowd is fine with him daring to cut a promo. The Harris Bros. run in and attack the Mamalukes. One of these zeroes yells about wanting to be tag champs on the house mic. The Harris Bros. versus the Mamalukes for the tag titles makes me long for the days of Harlem Heat vs. the WTRs. Tonight’s matches: The aforementioned Tank Abbott/Syko Sid match for the big gold; Jeff Jarrett vs. Vampiro for the United States Championship. A bunch of guys who I don’t particularly want to watch are here, and also so is Sting. Buff Bagwell has zero shot at Liz, right? She shuts him down hilariously on the KidCam. Apparently, the KidCam caught this incident earlier in the day because Liz sits in a locker room with TTP and Ric Flair and watches the segment. Package and Ric are incredulous that Buff even bothered to shoot his shot. They claim to have plans for Bagwell and leave to execute them. They’re trying to hype this Sid/Tank match by asking midcarders who is going to win. Bam Bam Bigelow picks Sid. Riki Rachtman still exists as a WCW employee, and he’s on the scene with Chae, doing the university rounds before another WCW Spring Break show. They do a little pre-taped promo at THE Ohio State University, where some college dudes do some obstacle course stuff and Three Count gives a check to a charity. Also, some young lady wins a raffle and gets to go to South Padre Island on Turner’s dime. Good for her! Hahaha, here we go with Hulk Hogan cutting wacky-ass promos to set up a strap match with Ric Flair. He’s going to edge toward “so bad, it’s good” with each promo, and this is a nice start. He dramatically talks about Jimmy Hart, almost dead on a stretcher last week, muttering the word YAPPAPI, and Hogan knew what a barely-clinging-to-life Hart was suggesting: THE YAPPAPI STRAP MATCH. Let’s let Hogan tell it to Flair: AS I STRAP THAT FLESH, AS YOUR FLESH BUBBLES AND BURNS OVER YOUR WHOLE BODY, YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT THE YAPPAPI MEAN BY THE INDIAN STRAP MATCH. Hilarious! It's Yavapai, goddammit! They live in Arizona! Hogan mishearing that tribe name once and yelling it five billion times in overdramatic promos over the next few weeks sounds like a hell of a time, man. I’m glad that Hogan is embracing his shitty promo abilities and just going overboard with them in this feud. Madden, somewhat rattled: “Hogan…was a bit overwrought there, don’t you think?” I would agree, buddy! Ric Flair, The Total Package, and Liz come to the ring. Someone found that one picture of roly-poly 280 lb. Ric Flair on the internet and printed it out for their poster. Flair yells a lot like the lunatic that he is. Someone in production points him to the camera parked practically underneath his chin, and he responds I KNOW WHICH CAMERA TO LOOK INTO YOU IDIOT, I’M RIC FLAIR. Look, Hogan, Flair, and Package are absolutely not draws, so it’s wise to silo them off away from the main event and let them work their own silly feuds on the side. Package threatens Sting, then challenges Buff Bagwell to a match. He hates on the weather and women in Minneapolis, which brings Curt Hennig out from mothballs to cut him off. Hennig cuts a very Hennig-in-2000 promo, and he ends up challenging Ric Flair to what may be the final match in their long-running saga. The long and short of it is that Hennig thinks he’s the greatest wrestler ever from Minnesota, not Flair. Hennig tells Flair to show everyone his puppies, which got a chuckle from me, and promises to “streak down Hennepin Avenue butt-ass naked” if he doesn’t beat Flair tonight. Booker T. stands in the back and cuts a promo with Tenay; Book’s upset about Kidman commiserating with “his hoochie” during last week’s match against the elite main event tag team of the Harris Bros. Elsewhere in the building, Kidman and Torrie are a couple, but you wouldn’t know it based on their on-screen chemistry! They try to figure out who lost “it,” “it” being the KidCam, I suppose. Oh, look at this economically prosperous guy Tony S., what with his personal cell phone in the year 2000! He uses it to take a call in which he apparently receives insider information that Sting will be at the show. Mark Madden is skeptical of this info in an exceedingly annoying fashion. Jeff Jarrett complains about Tank Abbott and Vampiro getting title shots instead of him getting a world title shot. He uses the word “slap” in a variety of annoying colloquialisms. He refuses to tell Okerlund where the Harris Boys are. Well, good news: Booker T. has new music. Bad news: It stinks. Ah well. Billy Kidman (w/Torrie Wilson) is his opponent. Booker forces a break after shoving Kidman into the corner; Kidman locks up and lands an arm drag, but Booker powers out of Kidman's follow up move, slams Kidman, and gets two off a back elbow. Kidman tries a move that he’s not agile enough to do and eventually gets over on a sunset flip for two. Kidman follows up with a dropkick, but Booker gets on top of things again with an axe kick, when, oh, hold on. Here’s the Latest Twist in Booker T.’s Criminally Bad Booking: The Harris Bros. run out and destroy Kidman and Booker both. Gene Okerlund talks to Harlem Heat Incorporated, and they cut a bad promo about Booker getting beaten up by the Harris Bros. I thought you lot were leaving Booker behind and focusing on something, anything else? Lash LeRoux also picks Sid Vicious in tonight’s matchup against Tank Abbott that Vince Russo must have suggested via fax, right? Ah, his Turner email is probably still active. I bet that’s how he sent this booking idea in. Pre-tape: Arnold Schwarzenegger is at some bodybuilding deal, and a dude with freakishly-developed arms named Big Jax is there. He’ll be on Thunder. Unfortunately, we’re not going to get a confrontation between Big Jax and Scott Steiner on that show. Gene Okerlund talks to Norman Smiley backstage; Smiley complains about Dustin Rhodes beating down Terry Funk and says that the Funker was his inspiration for being a constantly terrified Hardcore Champion. He challenges Rhodes in a match later tonight. Brian Knobbs comes to the ring with a bin fulla plundah while Tony S. pimps this month's WCW Magazine and its insert on Knobbs. Why in the world would that insert convince me to buy that magazine? Three Count is already in the ring and wants a three-on-one match for the WCW Hardcore Championship, and you have to be kidding me that they’re going to feed these three fellas to Brian FUCKING Knobbs. A graphic tells us that this is the Night of Champions, which explains why we have to suffer through Mamalukes and Brian Knobbs title matches. Anyway, I report on this match under protest. Knobbs murders these guys with plundah, no sells their weapon shots, and powerbombs Karagias through a table. Well, at least they don’t job: Helms gets a kendo stick shot in and Three Count dogpile Knobbs and pin him to become the Hardcore Champion. Yes, I wrote that previous sentence, and yes, it’s accurate. Vampiro sits in darkness and cuts a mediocre promo on Jeff Jarrett that’s hard to discern. LEVELS, Leathers, you moron. Some ham ‘n eggers chant for SID outside the arena. I think they back him to beat Tank Abbott. Gene Okerlund interviews Fit Finlay and Brian Knobbs. Knobbs yells and sweats and spits about his loss and basically demands a rematch. Finlay promises to help Knobbs make Three Count miserable until that rematch. He wants to start with a six-man tag against Three Count on Thunder. Okerlund inquires as to who the third member of their team will be. Knobbs: IT’S TIME TO BRING OUT THE DOG. I don’t know what that means, but I assume it will be very stupid. Norman Smiley, to slightly alter a Killer Mike line, is about to catch a beatdown running like Randy Moss. Smiley wears Moss’s jersey, but he doesn’t have Moss’s elite speed or ability to high point the ball. Rhodes kicks his ass. This is not a good match. Norm actually is fairly aggressive and bounces Dustin around inside and outside of the ring, but after my least favorite transition, Dustin takes over, though he gets reversed on a whip into the corner and hit with a swinging slam. Norm wiggles and then turns around, right into a Dustin lariat. They obligabrawl for a second time, and Dustin wins this one definitively. He dumps Norm back in the ring and soon after lands a diving lariat for three, then clocks Norm with Norman’s football helmet and drives it into his junk after the match. Nick Patrick is the first person to pick Tank Abbott in tonight’s match. I get a kick out of how ineffective all this hype is. Tank’s not over, WCW. Sorry. Jeff Jarrett (w/nWo ladies) defends his United States Championship that I keep forgetting he's holding against Vampiro. Jarrett sends the ladies to the back before the match, and they’re upset about it. I don’t get the whole thing with Jarrett and these ladies, but you know what, it probably doesn’t matter. Vampiro and Jarrett fight over a collar-and-elbow and counter each other with headlock takeovers and headscissors. They’re trying to bring some fire to this match. Jarrett shoots Vamp in and tries to club him, but Vampiro rolls through and kicks Jarrett, then goes up and whiffs on a somersault splash. This last spot triggers an obligabrawl that Jarrett wins. He tosses Vamp back in the ring and launches a crossbody from the top, but Vamp rolls through for two. They run again, and Jarrett kills a Vampiro rana attempt with a powerbomb for two. Jarrett tries a monkey flip, and though Vamp lands on his feet out of it, he can’t get any advantage; Jarrett hits him with a clothesline, celebrates, and then covers for only two. Jarrett shoots Vamp in again. Vamp ducks a back elbow, but Jarrett locks in a sleeper that Vamp quickly works out of. Vamp shoots Jarrett in and slips on his own sleeper. Jarrett finagles his way out and tries a back suplex, but Vampiro topples to the ground while trying to flip out of it and lands a uranage for 2.7. They go back at it, and Vampiro attempts a sunset flip. Jarrett holds on to the ropes, but Nick Patrick kicks his hands away and Vamp gets another two. Vamp turns a Jarrett Figure Four attempt into a small package for two, then fights off the onrushing Harris Bros. Sid runs down and attacks the Harrises in the aisle, which is too bad for Vampiro. Vamp lands a Nail in the Coffin, but Patrick is distracted by the brawl outside the ring and doesn’t see Vampiro's cover. Jarrett clocks Vamp with the belt and covers for two, but the timekeeper thinks that it’s three and rings the bell because of course they do, this is WCW. Vamp fights back, lands a back suplex, and goes up one more time. He misses a guillotine legdrop, and Jarrett grabs him in a Stroke and scores three. That was forgettable. It wasn’t bad, but they’re trying to sell it as Vamp pushing Jarrett to the limit, and really, it just felt very rushed. It was also quite sloppily worked and had too much gaga at the end. Disco and the Mamalukes hand some WCW tech a box and give him twenty bucks to deliver it to the Harris Bros., then take their bags and exit the arena. Pre-tape: Some more fans are asked who will win. One lone kid, maybe caley’s little bro, yells TANK ABBOTT and is drowned out by everyone else chanting for SID SID SID. Pre-tape: Riki Rachtman and Disco do an annoying promo in which Rachtman says that the ladies love Three Count and don’t love Disco while the Nitro Girls sit around and watch. It was an irritating couple of minutes. For the second straight show, Fit Finlay randomly attacks Vampiro backstage after Vampiro’s match. Dopey David Flair sucks, usually, but not when he busts in on a Nitro Girls routine and does some terrible dancing. It’s genuinely hilarious. There are like seven Nitro Girls now instead of just the four from last week. Daffney enters the ring with Dave’s crowbar, very unhappy about Dave trying to hit on the Nitro Girls, but Dave supplicates, and Daffney forgives him. Crowbar gets on commentary and does his Gordon Solie impression. This guy is a gem. He’s one of the very few people on this show whom I look forward to seeing. He sits in on the TAFKAPI (w/Paisley) vs. Dopey Dave (w/Daffney) Cruiserweight Championship match. Early 2000 in WCW is hell, man. I mean, not only is the product complete fucking garbage, but comparatively, WWF in 2000 is excellent, probably the last truly great full year of WWF television in my view. Crowbar eventually leaves the desk to help Dave by knocking TAFKAPI off the ropes and to the mat, but Dave only gets 2.7 on the cover. Daffney and Paisley go at it outside the ring while the match continues on inside the ring. The Artist hits yet another bad jumping DDT for three while Daffney chokes Paisley and cackles. Daffney’s HUNGER FOR UNGER shirt is fantastic. I sure wish they’d center the hardcore or cruiser division around Crowbar and Daffney right now. Medics check on Sid Vicious; he’s been KABONG’d off-screen. Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. make to leave, but before they do, the WCW tech delivers the Mamalukes's package to them: It’s a threat in the form of a dead fish and an ominous message. Jarrett and the Harrises seem unthreatened and feeling the exact opposite of ominous by the looks of them. In a short interview with Gene Okerlund, Sid threatens his opps and sells a concussion in between bouts of threatening his opps. The Cat hits the ring, speaking of guys who I am actually happy to see on these shows. He’s still on the high of having actually produced James Brown for the crowd. He asks for tape of himself dancing with James Brown to play on the screen and exults in his glory. Then, he dances for the live crowd before his dope theme music is cut off by Paul Orndorff’s old WCW theme. The Maestro comes to the ring, Symphony a few steps behind him and carrying a boombox. They have a short match in which the Cat hits a DDT? Huh, I didn't know he knew how to do that. The Cat lands a body slam and a Boogie Elbow, and then Symphony fires up the music on the boombox. It’s Three Count’s theme; this causes the Maestro to freak out and use the boombox as a weapon upside the Cat’s head. He gets a pinfall off of this. Why is the Maestro getting so much TV time? After we see Ric Flair and Curt Hennig WALK, TTP and Liz sit in their dressing room and argue over who was supposed to keep track of the baseball bat that they brought to the show. Billy Kidman picks Tank Abbott as the hyping of a match that about twelve people care about continues on unabated. Ric Flair brings Hulk’s weight belt to the ring for his match with Curt Hennig. Hennig wins a shoulderblock early. There are chops. Flair does his whole heel shtick. The crowd enjoys it well enough. Hennig targets the knee and walks through Flair’s attempts and reversing the flow of the match. Think of every Flair heel spot that he typically does; Hennig ignores all of Flair's offense just like Hulk Hogan would or just like TAFKAPI would or just like I would if I were tossed into the ring with Ric Flair. There’s a ref bump so that we can ignore Hennig landing a PerfectPlex for a visual three count before TTP runs in and breaks it up. Package immediately leaves, and Hennig grabs a chair. He brings it into the ring, where ref Nick Patrick has revived. In an extremely weak finish, Patrick takes the chair away from Hennig, and Flair kicks Hennig low and covers him for three, then whips him with the weight belt a bit. I’d complain about Flair barely surviving a challenge from 2000 Hennig and making it seem quite unlikely that he could ever hang with Hogan, but in truth, we all know that Flair is almost certainly doing the J-O-B anyway. Meng, who I wish were on TV more often, rebels against this whole sorry exercise by not picking a winner and just declaring that he wants to enjoy seeing Sid and Tank “kick the hell out of each other.” Pre-tape: Rachtman shoos Disco and Three Count off the stage, demands that the Nitro Girls dance instead, and then does a stage dive. The Total Package (w/Liz) is wrestling Buff Bagwell next, and I totally forgot that they ran a whole mini-angle tonight with these two. They’ve popped this 20 DAYS UNTIL UNCENSORED graphic up on the screen (complete with ugly new logo for the show) every match, it feels like. Speaking of this match, it’s replete with weak clubbering and a dull obligabrawl. I get a kick out of Buff being massively cooled down since July of 1999 as I watch Package roll him in this bout, but ultimately I feel like Patrick Bateman after he tricks Evelyn into eating a chocolate-covered urinal cake, in that the joy of watching someone who I don't like suffer misfortune is overcome by the fact that I had to spend time, energy, and attention on them to be able to watch their suffering. Anyway, Buff finally fights up from a very loose chinlock and has his first real run of offense all match. He hits a swinging neckbreaker and signals for a Blockbuster, but TTP cuts him off. Buff back elbows his way out of trouble and gets a close count on a Vader Bomb, but Liz puts Package’s foot on the ropes. Buff chases Liz, and Ric Flair runs down with the strap and attacks Buff, then gets his ass kicked. Buff fights both dudes off until Ric chop blocks Buff, who wins the match by DQ. Sting walks to the ring and stops a Pillmanizing of Buff’s arm with his baseball bat that he stole back from Package and Liz’s locker room. Sting is still very over even after all of his bad booking in 1999. And 1998. Oh, and the end of 1997. Tank Abbott rides a motorcycle to the ring for this super-huge mega bout against Sid. Sid’s ribs are taped, so Tank attacks those before locking on a front headlock and yelling HE’S GOIN’ TO SLEEP over and over. Sid’s in the ropes, but Charles Robinson just lets Tank keep that front facelock on for like forty-five seconds. Tank knocks Sid to the floor, then dumps him to the mat when he gets back in the ring. He does one cool thing where he stands on the small of Sid’s back and yanks his hair back, but then he goes into a sloppy camel clutch and the moment is lost. Tank gives up on that hold and backs Sid into the corner, yells in his face a lot, and throws a few body blows. Tank is a guy with legitimate punch power who has won actual UFC fights; why doesn’t he come off as the monster they’re pushing him as? It’s hard to project it in pro wrestling even if you have it, I guess. Tank gets up and talks shit in the corner, but Sid pops up and locks on a bad Crippler Crossface that he loses his grip on before Tank taps out. That was bad. It wasn’t the absolute worst, but it certainly made a run at being the absolute worst. WCW, why are you so bad? Even with all the talent that’s off television right now, they should still be able to string together a few compelling feuds. It’s hard to think of another period in a major wrestling company that has managed to under-utilize this much talent. Ah well, at least this show was regular bad instead of all-time bad. Though please note that -115 Stinger Splashes somehow does not count as all-time bad when it comes to Nitro Era WCW. -115 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted October 2 Share Posted October 2 I guess much like the Godfather Tuck, the chocolate covered urinal cake was in the book but cut from the film? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caley Posted October 2 Share Posted October 2 45 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: Vito lands a Paisan Plunge on a distracted Lodi for three Read this as "Paisan Plunger" and wondered if there was some different Italian variation of the plunger before re-reading it. 52 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: Knobbs: IT’S TIME TO BRING OUT THE DOG. I don’t know what that means, but I assume it will be very stupid. Oh it will be...but it also leads to one of my favourite WCW comedy segments ever...unless I imagined it. 56 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: One lone kid, maybe caley’s little bro, yells TANK ABBOTT Haha that would be amazing...but in the summer my little brother AND my cousin will both get on camera! My cousin just stares into the camera while the commentary yammers on about either a Tank Abbott attack or a Harris Bros. run-in (So you've still got many months of them ahead!) and slowly does the RVD point-to-yourself pose then points at the camera. 59 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: Pre-tape: Rachtman shoos Disco and Three Count off the stage, demands that the Nitro Girls dance instead, and then does a stage dive. I have to ask: Does anyone catch him? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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