twiztor Posted October 23 Posted October 23 2 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: Where is your "'00s TNA" review thread that I can read, dang it?! i found out writing my weekly "INVASION ANGLE" reviews that i am not cut out for that. my brain processes things in generalities and ends up "tuning out" even while i am staring at the screen. so many match reviews ended up being "the story is that Hugh Morrus is slower but more powerful. Can Vampiro's speed outmatch that? Apparently yes, since he won with a Nail in the Coffin". and promo writeups were closer to "Flair yammered on. Nothing we haven't heard before." Not in depth enough to be good analysis, not comprehensive enough to really see a rise/fall. Just perfunctory. (cheap plug so you can see for yourself: https://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6883-invasion/ plus i'm super inconsistent. Monday is my "old wrestling day" where i have carved out time for me to watch. Right now that is usually TNA, but sometimes i get caught up on AEW PPVs, or catch last month's RIZIN event, or say fuck it and just watch Star Wars. Then other weeks i'll watch a month worth of Impacts. All that to say, i very much appreciate what you're doing here. I hope my TNA talk doesn't disrupt this thread, but i see SO many through lines between Russo WCW and Jarrett/Russo TNA that it's insane. That first year+ is basically Russo at his Russo-est, but with zero budget. Truly dire as far as weekly TV (and especially weekly PPV!) goes, but i definitely found enjoyment in it. And by mid 2006, it's pretty solid, if getting to be same-y. I think i'm ready to take a break from it anyway. 1
SirSmUgly Posted October 23 Author Posted October 23 6 minutes ago, twiztor said: i found out writing my weekly "INVASION ANGLE" reviews that i am not cut out for that. my brain processes things in generalities and ends up "tuning out" even while i am staring at the screen. so many match reviews ended up being "the story is that Hugh Morrus is slower but more powerful. Can Vampiro's speed outmatch that? Apparently yes, since he won with a Nail in the Coffin". and promo writeups were closer to "Flair yammered on. Nothing we haven't heard before." Not in depth enough to be good analysis, not comprehensive enough to really see a rise/fall. Just perfunctory. (cheap plug so you can see for yourself: https://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6883-invasion/ plus i'm super inconsistent. Monday is my "old wrestling day" where i have carved out time for me to watch. Right now that is usually TNA, but sometimes i get caught up on AEW PPVs, or catch last month's RIZIN event, or say fuck it and just watch Star Wars. Then other weeks i'll watch a month worth of Impacts. All that to say, i very much appreciate what you're doing here. I hope my TNA talk doesn't disrupt this thread, but i see SO many through lines between Russo WCW and Jarrett/Russo TNA that it's insane. That first year+ is basically Russo at his Russo-est, but with zero budget. Truly dire as far as weekly TV (and especially weekly PPV!) goes, but i definitely found enjoyment in it. And by mid 2006, it's pretty solid, if getting to be same-y. I think i'm ready to take a break from it anyway. Understood, though I am going to enjoy reading through that link anyway. And there's almost no way to disrupt this thread...especially if it's about late-stage WCW. Talking about how Russo keeps dipping into the same small bag of tricks no matter where he ends up is interesting and instructive. 1
SirSmUgly Posted October 25 Author Posted October 25 Show #238 – 1 May 2000 “The one where Courteney Cox and Kurt Russell are unsurprisingly the only people on the show who are effective at delivering their dialogue” Out of nowhere, it’s travel season. Travel for work, travel for fun, and less time to sit here writing about Nitro, which is too bad as this project has shown me that I love writing as a practice for my health – ha, WCW, even your worst television actually makes me feel better in the end just by writing about it! Then again, that just means more time to spend on the side-projects of building an Episode Ratings list and polishing up my Best Of lists while I’m on the go, I suppose. Holy shit, they got Courteney Cox to agree to shoot a blipmo where she's a put-upon spouse trying to tell her skinny nerd husband that he probably should give up that big gold belt on account of he’s going to get slaughtered out there. What a win for WCW to get a popular co-star of Friends to shoot a little blipmo for them! Or at least it would be if people were still watching their shows. After a recap of the stuff that went down on Thunder, it’s the Jets and the Sharks the dorks and the nerds standing in a parking lot and mouthing off to one another: Arquette and the Jersey babyfaces on one side and Russo and a bunch of midcarders (and yes, I’m including Jeff Jarrett under that umbrella) on the other. Then, out of nowhere, Hulk Hogan F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea plows his car into the side of the car that Russo showed up in, hops out, and attacks a few of Russo’s midcarders. Mark Madden, after decrying that Arquette has the big gold, exclaims, WELL, IT’S SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT, WHY NOT PUT IT ON AN ENTERTAINER? Alright, let’s criticize Ruschoff’s booking decisions on television! Keep reminding me that this show is scripted! I love it when you do that! Norman Smiley comes to the ring with his mystery partner for the Terry Funk challenge at Slamboree; they'll get some reps in against Crowbar. The mystery partner is wearing a giant mascot head, and in a funny spot, Crowbar wedges the guy’s giant mascot head in the ropes to keep him stuck there while he fights Norm. That doesn’t work all that well because Smiley catches Crowbar and swinging slams him onto a trash can. Mark Madden insults the mystery partner for having a gut, which I guess is a textbook example of heel hypocrisy, right? Hudson is actually extremely annoying as well: IS IT OPRAH? IS IT THE SHOCKMASTER, FOR PETE’S SAKE?! Yeah, so Hudson has his role that he's good for, and it’s as lead color, where he is perfectly fine. If you ask him to be support color in a three-man booth, he tries to be as clever as possible, which unfortunately involves bad jokes and references to gimmicks from pre-Bischoff WCW. So, here’s the rundown of the rest of this thing: Crowbar gets distracted by harassing the stuck mascot guy and eats a chair to the back, but he turns it around when Norm tries to land a trash can lid shot. Crowbar lands his running splash off the apron, but tries a suicide dive and gets cracked with a chair on the crown of his head. Crowbar regains control, tries to Big Wiggle the bent over and stuck mystery partner, and then gets jumped from behind and Big Wiggled while he's still in Big Wiggle position on the mascot in a stacked Big Wiggle spot. Norm’s mystery partner gets his head out from between the ropes and gets beaten up by Crowbar, but in one of the worst finishes that I’ve ever seen in my life, Norm trips over the mystery partner and into a rollup of Crowbar, facing away from them for some reason, that gets three. Meanwhile, Hudson and Madden named every burly person they could think of as a possibility for who was under the mask. Why are we wasting Crowbar and Norm in garbage like this? This was very bad. David Arquette, having seen that wild brawl in the parking lot, tries to give his belt to DDP out of a sense of self-preservation. Also, a bunch of wrestlers arrive at the arena. Blipmo: David Arquette is feeling good on the set of 3000 Miles to Graceland; Kurt Russell interrupts his conversation with a peeved Courteney Cox to inform Ms. Cox that it’s time for their nude love scene. Arquette points to his belt as Courtney tells Kurt that her hubby is the WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Kurt Russell responds like any sane person would; he bursts out laughing and walks off. Arquette, feeling himself, gets aggy at the disrespect, grabs a nearby steel chair, and snaps the seat into swingin’ mode before storming after Kurt while Courtney screams DAVID, YOU’RE NOT A WRESTLER! That was genuinely funny! I mean, Kurt Russell was involved in the comedy-making, so obviously it was going to be funny, right? Do you remember those dope vignettes to introduce Mr. Perfect where he did all the multi-sports stuff? Yeah, that was dope, right? Man, the WWF has so many classic vignettes! Anyway, Shawn Stasiak does the lamest possible version of one of those vignettes in which he declares that he’ll break the world record for most consecutive free throws. David Arquette, DDP, and Kanyon hit the ring for a little talky-talk time. I did not know that Courteney Cox was from Alabama until literally tonight; they’re in her hometown of Birmingham. Anyway, Arquette says that being the champ, while dope, is not his thing. He suggests that DDP, Kanyon, or possibly Booker T. deserves to be the champ instead – good point on that last one, my dude – and says that he’s jobbing to VACANT so that the title can be decided on between Jarrett and DDP at Slamboree. Jeff Jarrett (w/Ruschoff, Kimberly, and a shackled Elizabeth) hits the ring and says that David Arquette isn’t the commissioner, so he can’t just give up his belt and make that Slamboree main event for it. Wait, who is the commissioner? Nash, still? No, wait, I’m not asking questions about the commissionership until WCW brings it up again first. Bischoff declares that the cage match at Slamboree will be a triple threat that includes Arquette, until everyone is interrupted by The Total Package running in and chasing Russo through the crowd. Oh yeah, Liz is out there; I forgot about her. There is entirely too much going on right now. Bisch ends the segment by booking David Arquette in a warm-up match against Tank Abbott tonight. Or now, maybe! It’s a match against Tank Abbott right now [Editor’s note: No, it’s not]! DDP is like, WTF Bisch, you are such an asshole and Bisch is basically a living, cackling version of that Denis Leary song about being an asshole in response. Tank Abbott tries to interject, and DDP tells him to shut his piehole, so Abbott attacks. The crowd chants for GOLD-BERG. Please, yes, please. But no, we’re not so lucky. Tank Abbott grabs a mic and says that he wants to fight DDP tonight; if Page wins, Arquette doesn’t have to fight him, but if Tank wins, he gets to destroy David Arquette. Somehow Vince Russo outran The Total Package, who looks for him backstage. Shawn Stasiak shoots free throws and mumbles about his abs. Bischoff tells Hugh Morrus that he’s got to wrestle Scott Steiner and Jeff Jarrett in a three-way dance and if any other members of the Misfits in Action interfere, he’ll fire them. For some reason, he calls himself the Knute Rockne of wrestling. What the fuck? You are not Verne Gagne, who might have been able to make that comment about himself to his audience without the audience asking what the fuck he was even talking about. THE WALL, BROTHER goes fifty-fifty with Horace Hogan. That’s more like TW,B’s level of threat. Horace hits a hanging DDT on TW,B that looks pretty sweet, then drills TW,B with a Death Valley Driver (no VR, though). This is a tables match, and whoever takes a dive through the table first loses. Ms. Hancock walks out to survey the action. Billy Kidman runs in and catches a beatdown from Horace, which is wild considering that Kidman is supposed to be getting a push, but it does allow TW,B to get the jump on Horace and land a chokeslam through the table to win the match. TW,B and Kidman land a Doomsday Device (!!) on Horace before F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea’s punk ass chugs to the ring and the heels beg off. Mike Awesome slides into the ring and jumps Bollea from behind, which brings the other two heels back in so that Bollea can beat them all up for awhile before the numbers game finally gets to him. The New Blood put Bollea on a table for an Awesome top-rope splash, but Bollea of course fights everyone off, leaps off the table, and tries to put Awesome through the table with a vertical suplex. In a hilarious spot, Kidman hits Bollea in the back and Awesome manages to reverse momentum and land a struggle sunset flip powerbomb into the table. I mean, normally the sunset flip and the powerbomb are done in one fluid motion, but not when a creaky dinosaur who is desperately trying to keep up with the times like F.U.N.B Terry Bollea is taking the move! We cut immediately away from that… …so we can watch Vampiro cut a shitty promo on Sting in a graveyard. Yuck. Can we sit with things sometimes, Russo, you idiot? I think we’ve found yet another way that Randy Savage is better than Hulk Hogan. Savage’s midlife crisis-slash-reinvention in 1999 was, even when it was bad or absurd, infinitely more entertaining than Hogan’s midlife crisis-slash-reinvention in 2000. There is no way that F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea is going to have a segment even remotely as fun as the chaotic “Randy Savage asks Rey Misterio Jr. to join Team Madness” segment from Thunder (show number sixty-three), or even anything as fun as the weird and wild segments Savage had with randos like Evan Karagias and Brian Adams on Thunder. Vince Russo (w/security mooks) drags a shackled Liz back to the ring because he is a weird guy with weird ideas about how to use the ladies on these shows. Someone his holding up a VINCE RUSSO SLEEPS WITH GOATS! (I HAVE PROOF) sign that is fucking killing me. Hilarious. Anyway, Russo calls out TTP for a fight later tonight. I liked it better when we only saw the back of Russo’s head on these shows. Jeff Jarrett wrestles Scott Steiner (w/Midajah, Kim, and signs he’s ripped away from fans) and Hugh Morrus in a Triple Threat Match. Steiner suggests that if he sees any more signs that insult him, he will target everyone in a certain socioeconomic demographic in this building; Madden suggests that this covers practically everyone here. Morrus yells I’M NOT BACKIN’ DOWN ANYMORE, which I guess is something he did recently? I can’t recall him backing down from anyone, but maybe he did it on WCWSN. Anyway, he slides into the ring and gets stomped out by the New Blood duo. Jarrett and Steiner work together for like two minutes before Jarrett tries to steal a pinfall while Steiner does some post-suplex push-ups. They get it back together for a second, but when Jarrett tries to hit Morrus with a Stroke, Steiner cuts Jarrett off and slings him around. Morrus quickly hits Steiner in the head and then tries a No Laughing Matter on Jarrett, but he hasn’t worn him down enough and Jarrett rolls out of the ring. Steiner locks Morrus in a Steiner Recliner, but Jarrett grabs his guitar, rolls him back into the ring, and KABONGs Steiner in the back of the head. Morrus covers Steiner for three as Jarrett leaves and the rest of the M.I.A. runs into the ring to celebrate. We don’t see much of their celebration because we cut immediately away from that… …to see Sting show up to this graveyard so he can further this dumb feud with Vampiro. There’s a break. Eric Bischoff fires the Misfits in Action when we come back from break. Russo gets changed for his match and pretends that Liz is trying to see his pecker or something. Sting is still in this graveyard so he can have an, um, Graveyard Match with Vampiro? I vaguely know that WWE did one of these with that broken-down cornball Undertaker, right? Like a cinematic match sort of deal? Well, lookie here, Russo did it first. Sting walks around this graveyard until he finally spots Vampiro, who leaps away. Holy shit, Russo saw the Blair Witch Project, because this is a dark, shaky-cam deal in which there's a jump scare (that isn't scary) where Vampiro hops up behind Sting with a shovel, beats him with it, and buries him in an open grave. But before that, some of the funniest dumb shit EVER on Nitro happens! OK, here’s some dialogue from before Vampiro breaks a headstone over Sting’s head: Sting *gasping*: “Who are you?!” Vampiro, in a monotone that doesn’t really make him seem very monstrous: “I’m a monster.” It was so bad that I loved it. That bit of dialogue lifted this dumbass segment onto the Dumb, But Entertaining list. Sting’s hand rises out of the grave as Hudson yells HE’S ALIVE, and oh man, if you’re going to be a terrible wrestling show, please be terrible in this way more often, Nitro. Ric Flair pumps up The Total Package’s ego while The Total Package pumps up his own biceps. Diamond Dallas Page wrestles Tank Abbott. Abbott throws some punches that DDP does too much selling for in my opinion, and Tank Abbott actually knocked a bunch of dudes out. Abbott thinks he’s won, but DDP pulls himself up. We cut to Bisch and Kimberly watching the match backstage, which is unnecessary. Page triggers an obligabrawl as we cut to Arquette and Kanyon (and I guess a cameraman) who are all locked into their locker room from the outside. We cut back to Page hitting Tank with a trash can and tossing Tank into the ref, who misses a masked Jeff Jarrett hitting Dallas with something and, along with a follow-up Tank punch, knocking him out. Actually, everyone missed it as it wasn’t well shot. They do yet another stretcher job, this time for Page, as F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea runs up on Mike Awesome and fights him because powerbombs through tables mean nothing to that guy Bollea's health. Billy Kidman enters the ring alone so that he can squawk for a bit. He cuts a boring promo about how lame the old guys are and how cool he is. He’s just not a guy you want to talk because he’s not very convincing at it. He offers up an open challenge after insulting Nash multiple times. Terry Taylor tattles on Kidman to Nash backstage, who heads out to meet him, and also to kick the shit out of him, just so we’re totally aware that Kidman isn’t on that level. Kidman is only saved by the returns of Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan as the Filthy Animals ride again. Hudson says that Konnan and Rey got their releases, but they didn’t shoot get them, did they? Hell, Rey was on TV a few weeks ago talking about coming back soon. Anyway, Nash beats the shit out of all these dudes, so actually, Kidman didn’t get saved. Nice to have Rey and Konnan show up for the first time in months with no fanfare and get destroyed, by the way. We follow things backstage, where Rey and Konnan run away from Nash and try to get away in a truck that dies even though Nash is supposed to chase them in a car of his own, which is a failed spot so obviously symbolic of the overarching failure of this whole freaking angle that it's poetry. We come back to Nash kicking the hell out of these dudes after the break. He derisively calls Rey “Sisqo” because of Rey’s platinum-blonde dye job, which at least is a relevant reference in 2000, unlike a Knute Rockne reference (unless you’re in South Bend, I guess) Vince Russo is giving himself too much television time and too many promos. He yammers on some more and says that if Package beats him tonight, Package can have the key to Liz’s shackles. Russo suggestively asks Liz to unzip his warmup jacket, and Liz responds that Russo can “kiss [her] Kentucky ass.” Team Package power walks to the ring, but Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas take care of Ric Flair in the aisle, and Russo’s security mooks mace and handcuff Package in the ring. Buff and Shane make it to the ring and beat down the cuffed Package while Russo refuses to shut the fuck up on the house mic. Russo gives Liz the bat and tells her to hit Package, but of course, she hits Russo and runs away while Douglas yells YOU WHORE after her. You know, if you were wondering how this segment was going. OK, so then KroniK run down and beat up all the security mooks, so that’s cool, at least. Give me something, WCW. Put the tag belts on KroniK and let them kill their opponents for the next three or four months. Some cops come down and ineffectually attempt to stop KroniK from hitting a High Times on one of the mooks, but eventually Adams and Clarke get a buffet of mace and handcuffs as well. David Arquette does a Mikey Whipwreck imitation while Kanyon tries to calm him down. Someone gave Nash a crowbar to bash up the lowrider truck in an attempt to save the whole series of segments. Of course, they got nobody over except for Kevin Nash, though, so it didn’t work. Russo yells at all the dudes the cops are pushing into cop cars outside the arena. Vampiro made it back to the arena in time to wrestle and also cut a promo that is just awful. His cadence and tone are all wrong. Sting pulls an Undertaker and sends a crow to, along with his music and TurnerTron, herald his return. Tony S. screams about Sting having “risen from the dead” while the Stinger descends from the rafters and destroys Vampiro with a bat. Absurd, and not in a good way. Stasiak continues hitting free throws and making dumb double entendres to the blonde who is chucking basketballs at him so he can shoot them (“Baby, I always take it to the hole”). Let me make a prediction! Shall Curt Hennig blow up Stasiak’s spot when he gets one free throw away from the record? Vince Russo yells at Liz backstage; Liz slaps him and rightfully points out that she might own his contract, but she’s not a slave because that’s not allowed anymore after the War of Northern Aggression (she’s from Kentucky, so I’m assuming that’s what she calls it, maybe?). Tank Abbott/David Arquette (w/Kanyon) is next. What if we could at least get Goldberg to come back and kick the shit out of Tank Abbott? That would make this night a success. Billy Silverman insists on ejecting Kanyon from of the ringside area while Tank toys with Arquette in the ring. Aw, we just get Page driving the ambulance that took him away back to the arena to save Arquette. Bischoff freaks out and sends Jarrett out to cut off page, which we see instead of seeing DDP land a Diamond Cutter on Abbott. Of course. Page puts Arquette on top of Tank Abbott who covers for three. So, if you’re building Abbott for Goldberg, why would you have DDP take him out with a single Diamond Cutter? That right there takes almost all of the tension out of whether or not they might actually put Tank over Goldberg. Yes, the Diamond Cutter is a death move, but they still should have maybe subbed THE WALL, BROTHER in for Abbott in this spot considering who they were building the latter for. Jeff Jarrett never did get to the ring, and we see that it’s because Scott Steiner jumped Jarrett as Jarrett made his way toward ringside after the break. In a total shocker, Curt Hennig jumps Stasiak one shot before Stasiak can break the record. F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea wrestles Mike Awesome in the main event. This Nitro has gone on forever, and I’m grateful that it’s finally winding down. What we are getting out of Ruschoff is the same bad Russo formatting and inconsistent storyline logic combined with Bischoff heavily protecting every main eventer and making it clear that the Millionaire’s Club is far better and more important than any of the guys they’re feuding with. These two are the opposite of chocolate and peanut butter. Dog shit and smegma? They’re dog shit and smegma. Anyway, Awesome sells too much for Bollea as far as I’m concerned, even though he’s actually allowed to win an obligabrawl in this one. Of course, then he immediately loses a separate obligabrawl two minute later. This thing goes on for years; let me just tell you the finish. Kidman tries to attack Bollea with a chair, but gets cut off by Bollea, who grabs the chair, swings it, and even hits the double birds like a washed-up, goofy-ass Stone Cold. Kidman gets back up, grabs the chair again, and dives onto Bollea at ringside while holding it. Slick Johnson counts the three when they roll Bollea back in the ring. Bollea gets back up, grabs the chair, and hits Awesome and Kidman with it, clearing them out. Then, in a hilarious sequence: A kid in a Sting mask runs into the ring. Everyone freezes because he’s not supposed to be there. Tony S. is confused as hell. The kid and security run away just in time to avoid a blood bath that spills onto Bollea. Some New Blood members run down and stomp on the downed Bollea. This was a historically bad wrestling show, but I’ve seen enough historically bad WCW television that I can’t even get all that perturbed anymore. Only two more months of Bollea and Bisch, three more months of Russo. I can get there. Though it would have been nice to get Booker T. or Three Count to show up and ease my pain. -5,000,000 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. 2
zendragon Posted October 25 Posted October 25 FUNB Terry Bollea also never wrestled Lizmark Jr on a C show... Sounds like Russo rehashed the Taker v Mankind buried alive match with Sting and Vamp right down to the hand coming out of the grave 1
SirSmUgly Posted October 25 Author Posted October 25 7 hours ago, zendragon said: Sounds like Russo rehashed the Taker v Mankind buried alive match with Sting and Vamp right down to the hand coming out of the grave BRO, it's not like I had Terry Gordy standing there in a hood helping Vampiro toss Sting into the grave, BRO. Mostly because he missed his flight, BRO, but BRO, it's not the same, BRO! 1
SirSmUgly Posted October 25 Author Posted October 25 Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and eight – 3 May 2000 "The WCW Gang goes high concept and says one last hello and goodbye to Randy Savage" Wrestling is pretty cool!...Even if it’s WCW in the middle of 2000!... As I watch the Nitro recap that leads this show, it just shows how badly WCW botched its succession plan for a new generation of stars…Can you imagine if this NB/MC angle was a) properly booked and b) led by Giant, Jericho, Eddy Guerrero, and Benoit on the New Blood side?...Or if Raven was in Vampiro’s position against Sting instead?...Now I’m mad we never got a Sting/Raven feud in WCW, actually…That would have ruled, I’m sure of it… This angle also needs Sid on the MC’s side…And Savage to have working knees… The Millionaire’s Club, the Misfits in Action, KroniK, and their non-millionaire allies (Kanyon, Horace) wait tensely for Ruschoff to show up to the building…After cutting to the desk, we cut back to the NB limo pulling up to the parking lot…The garage door rolls up and the group waiting behind the door rush the limo and drag the New Blood out of it, then soundly beat them…Someone even pulled up in a PT Cruiser to join the brawl… After a break, we see a replay of the brawl, followed by Russo yelling at his troops backstage and getting them fired up for revenge…They march to the ring so that Russo can talk, unfortunately…Russo demands that the MC and their allies get on the stage immediately…Thankfully, the babyfaces pick Ric Flair as their designated speaker and not F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea…Russo declares GANG WARZ tonight…He is going to have NB members draw the names of MC members out of his boot for matches tonight…And it’ll be NOO YAWK RULEZ in every match, which means “no refs, no rules,” according to him…Flair calls Russo a “dipshit,” which is a great insult and true in both kayfabe and shoot!...Flair accepts the challenge, then threatens to take Russo’s boot and shove it up his ass…The MC and allies rush the ring and brawl it out with the NB and their security mooks… They’re really trying to get the hatred of this angle over, I’ll give them that!...They don’t have the personnel or the creative talent to pull this off, but I can see outside of the context of WCW in May of 2000 why this angle makes sense…And I can even live with, for example, the Misfits in Action joining the MC as allies because Bischoff got mad at them and fired them…It’s just that you look in the ring at all those guys brawling, and there are almost no talkers in there…It’s post-prime Flair and a bunch of guys who I don’t want to hear trying to get this angle over in the ring every week…I didn’t see Scotty Steiner in this brawl…I might have missed him…But that’s maybe the only guy in WCW right now who I get excited for when he grabs a mic…That is a MASSIVE problem considering all the talking going on to get over this angle… Jeff Jarrett (w/Kimberly) grabs a mic when he gets in the ring and announces that he drew Chris Kanyon’s name out of the boot…Kimberly doesn’t like anyone who is buddies with Dallas…She bigs herself up and points out her looks, education (hey, fellow post-graduate!) and general coolness and wonders why she ever shacked up with Page…I’m certain someone in this thread wondered the same thing…Well, the guy is what, a legit six-four with a gregarious nature and a go-getter entrepreneurial spirit?...I mean, the pairing makes sense to me!...I think it’s true that ladies often like guys who are gregarious…Once, years ago, a young woman described me as “bubbly”…She meant it as a compliment, but I was horrified and asked, YOU MEAN LIKE CHER FROM CLUELESS?!...But yeah, being a bubbly, gregarious dude gets you far in dating and relationships, I think… Oh yeah, this match, which is going on while I opine about why Kimberly would get with Dallas either IRL or in kayfabe…Jarrett and Kanyon meet in the aisle…They brawl there, get back to the ring where Kanyon misses a top-rope splash, and then go back to brawling outside the ring…These brawls are, by nature, not obligabrawls since this is NOO YAWK RULEZ…There are no refs, so Tony S. notes that wrestlers will be making their own counts…Kimberly and Dallas don’t quite get the timing on a spot right when Kim tries to KABONG Kanyon from behind and Dallas is supposed to swipe the guitar away from her…She has to stop mid-swing and load up again so Dallas can slide in, take the guitar from her, and KABONG her to a considerable pop (even considering the sweetened audio)…It’s 2000 and Russo is booking, so of course there’s a pop for a lady getting KABONG’d…Dallas then hits Jarrett with a Diamond Cutter and Kanyon counts his own pin to end the bout… Russo is angry about what just happened; he tells THE WALL, BROTHER that he’s next up and that he doesn’t want to be disappointed by TW,B’s performance… THE WALL, BROTHER comes to the ring after a commercial break…There are tables all around the ring, and we get a quick video recap of TW,B crashing guys through tables in a neat touch to get TW,B’s dangerous nature in this sort of match over…TW,B drew The Total Package as his opponent…There is a cool overhead shot of TTP staring down TW,B in the ring and ignoring his spotlight and posing routine to get over how serious this all is for Package… Before the match starts, Vince Russo brings a shackled Liz out with a couple of security mooks, and TW,B jumps a distracted Package…Ric Flair comes out immediately after Russo sits down at the desk…Flair joins commentary on the other side of the desk…This is actually a pretty interesting way to have a promo battle on commentary in a logical way…And sure, we ignore TW,B and Package in the ring a bit, but who cares about that match anyway?...I think what makes this work for me is that the regular commentary guys are obviously shaken and unsure of how to react to Russo and Flair glaring at each other from across the table like an uncle from rural Nebraska beefing with his college-aged niece over politics at Thanksgiving dinner… TTP makes the mistake of beelining toward Russo after tossing TW,B into the guardrail…So, this sparks the finishing sequence…TW,B jumps Package from behind as Russo stands at an angle and swats Flair with his bat…Russo tries to give the bat to TW,B, who has a table set up nearby, but Package gets out of TW,B's grip and racks him….TW,B drops the bat, and Russo hits Package in the ribs with it…Package topples backward, dumping TW,B through the table that the latter set up and winning the match pretty much by accident…Russo gets in the ring and taunts Flair and Package, who are both out at ringside…Russo challenges Flair to a five-minute fight right now, and Flair is up and ready to go…Naturally, Russo hides behind Liz, but she mule kicks him in the balls, and Flair takes out the mooks and tries to Figure Four Russo…Shane Douglas and Buff Bagwell run down and jump Flair, allowing Russo to escape and reclaim Liz…KroniK runs down and attacks Shane and Buff, still seeking a fair tag title shot from them… So, we go right into Billy Kidman walking out and saying that he drew Ric Flair’s name, so Flair had better get his ass up and get ready to fight…There’s a break for ads, and we come back to Kidman and Flair fighting it out…Kidman hits a missile dropkick and a few punches…He continues to control with a superplex…Kidman scores a whip that sends Flair outside…This is the most dangerous that Kidman has looked all angle…Wow, I’m shocked that it took Ric Flair to make Kidman look like a threat…Shocked, I say…Kidman shrugs off a chop, brings Flair back inside, lands a slingshot guillotine legdrop, and looks into the camera to let F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea know that this is going to be him next… Kidman finally whiffs on a top-rope splash…Flair gets up, starts strutting, and then stomps Kidman in the balls…Chops, punches, and oops, here are Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr. to rush the ring and back up their fellow Filthy Animal…The Wolfpac theme hits and Kevin Nash stomps out here…It’s our first misfire of the night as Konnan and Rey try to run from this guy…You know, Rey got a clean pinfall over the dude before, remember?...Kidman escapes up the ramp, but is punched right as he goes through the curtain by Bollea…Nash and Bollea have made up over Road Wild ’99, I suppose…So, now Mike Awesome’s music plays and he runs down to fight two guys at once, which is pretty brave, but also pretty dumb…Nash hits Awesome with a Jackknife, then gets a mic and laughingly declares a down-and-out Awesome the winner of the match due to outside interference… Well, I guess you have to factor in guys like Nash and Bollea having to keep themselves over, huh?...Can’t be losing that overness by giving too much to their feud partners… That said, and I can’t believe that I feel this way, but this Thunder has been really intriguing so far…It’s got a Deadly Games tournament feel where the wrestling is secondary, but because of how the feuds and confrontations are being built into the show and flowing into one another, it actually works for me as a viewer…You wouldn’t want every show to be like this, but once in a while, this is a neat storyline-heavy way to book a show where all these feuds cross over and overlap one another… Vampiro stands in a boiler room and tells DDP that he’s going to show Dallas what pain is really like… DDP heads to the ring after the break to face that goofy bastard Vampiro…Sting is shrouded in a black cloth at the top of the ramp, which helps hide him as Vampiro comes onto the stage…Vampiro’s entrance is dark, so he walks past Sting, who backjumps him and beats him down, dumps a blood bath on him, and tosses him into the ring for a Page Diamond Cutter that gets a quick three…I mean, I can feel both that Vampiro doesn’t need a significant push and also that this booking is malpractice i you're giving Vampiro a significant push, right?... The New Blood have technically lost every match, so Russo is frustrated, and the Millionaires are elated…The NB had better get used to losing every match considering the guys on the other side of the feud…Maybe they can get one over on Flair or, like, Hugh Morrus every once in a while…Otherwise, that’s how it’s gonna be… Mike Awesome sells a back injury from the Jackknife he just took as he walks to the ring…He gets a mic and before introducing the opponent he drew, yells WELL WELL WELL (OWWW), which made me laugh…Awesome demands that Sting “fly his Batman ass out here” since he’s the guy that Awesome drew from the boot…Awesome jumps Sting as the latter steps through the ropes and score a series of impact moves to try and put him away early…Hey, he sells a hurt lower back after landing an impact splash, and that allows Sting an opening to fight back…Sting hits punches and an inverted atomic drop, then dumps Awesome to ringside…Awesome wanders, holding his back, when he sees Chavo Jr., Van Hammer, and Lash LeRoux sitting in the front row, pointing and laughing at him…He attacks them, but they have power in numbers and beat the crap out of him, then feed him back to Sting in the ring…Sting has no problem hitting Awesome with two Stinger Splashes, and Awesome is tapping out as soon as he’s being turned over for a Scorpion Deathlock…Sting doesn’t see it and keeps it on…Or maybe he “doesn’t see it” and keeps it on for a little extra punishment…I liked this?...Awesome selling the back injury and then that coming into play on the finish was well-worked… HOLY SHIT, so we get back to the New Blood locker room freaking out except for Scotty Steiner, who is calmly pumping his biceps. Russo yells SHUT THE HELL UP at everyone else and then walks over to the NB’s biggest star. “Scott,” he asks, touching Steiner’s shoulder, and Steiner, without stopping his reps or pausing in any way, calmly says “Don’t touch me,” and keeps pumping. Russo immediately stops touching him, backs away to give him space, and begs him to save the night for the NB…Oh man, this description can’t do justice to how cool that response made Steiner look…Steiner says he’ll go out there and stanch the bleeding, but for himself and not for Russo… Scott Steiner (w/Midajah and Kim Shakira – I guess they thought that having two ladies named Kim on these shows is confusing) comes to the ring and grabs a mic…He threatens F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea and YESSSSS, we are getting that matchup next!...He says that he’ll beat Bollea up and then go to his house and fuck Linda until she reaches a new level of bliss…Actually, they theoretically could have built this matchup and got me excited enough to pay for it, but you know, sure, give it away on Thunder… Steiner and Bollea land forearms, punches, and clotheslines on one another…Steiner rolls outside and Bollea follows, then tosses him into the crowd…Hugh Morrus is standing with the fans, and he helps Bollea beat up Steiner before Bollea tosses Steiner back to ringside…Morrus walks down and helps Bollea in the ring…Well, I should mention something else that Russo said as Steiner left the ring that I didn’t think was all that important until now…He yelled THE NEW BLOOD HAS GOT YOUR BACK at the departing Steiner…And yet, I don’t see reinforcements out here…I just see Scotty hitting a dual low blow and double clothesline on Morrus and Bollea and trying to fight back by himself…Scotty goes to the ropes, looks toward the back, and yells C’MON, SEND ‘EM, but no one answers his call…Great, get Booker and Scotty, your actual fucking stars, away from these jobbing-ass midcarders in the New Blood…Steiner escapes the ring again, tells Morrus and Bollea to fuck off because he doesn’t wrestle one-on-two, and walks out on the match…Morrus counts Steiner out since there’s no ref…Man, Hogan/Scott Steiner would be about as good as Hogan/Hart to me, seriously… Bischoff calls some reinforcements on his cell in the NB locker room, then tries to stop Scott Steiner from throttling Vince Russo…Steiner grabs Bisch, too, then yells THAT’S BULLSHIT, I AIN’T TRUSTIN’ NOBODY! SCREW YOU, I’M OUTTA HERE! Bisch, rattled kicks the cameraman out of the room so they can’t record any more reaction to the NB’s failures as a group tonight…Steiner looked like a beast, man…Crown him now, he’s obviously a star… Tony S. is a dope…A limo pulls up with an F.U.N.B. license plate on it…Tony asks if this limo might hold Bischoff’s reinforcements…Tenay rightly points out that this is an illogical conclusion, considering the license plate…Tony S. says, “Well, maybe it could be 'For Uniting the New Blood'”…Heenan scoffs at him and asks, “How many people have you ever had tell you to go unite yourself”…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…I unironically love this Thunder!... Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas are next to the ring…Wow, by sheer chance, they drew KroniK…Maybe there was a separate boot for tag teams, but there was only one tag team slip in that boot…KroniK quickly dump Buff to ringside and kick the hell out of Shane Douglas in the ring…Buff is able to yank the top rope down from his spot at ringside as Clarke runs the ropes, which splits them off…Douglas snaps Adams’s neck in the ring while Clarke clubs Buff down at ringside…Eventually, the pairs switch locations…Clarke controls Buff in the ring as Douglas wanders over, grabs a tag belt, and waffles Adams with it…In the ring, Buff kills a Clarke corner charge with a boot and hits a Blockbuster, but Adams stops Douglas’s count at two…Buff and Douglas dump Clarke and try a belt shot on Adams, but Adams ducks it and hits a double clothesline…Clarke gets back in the ring, helps Adams dump Buff at ringside, and then lands a High Times on Douglas…Adams covers as Clarke counts the three…KroniK snatches the gold and leaves with it…As it should be…That was an entertaining little match… Bisch let the cameras back into their locker room so they could catch him giving a stirring speech, but the rest of the locker room treats him like Roddy Piper trying to get everyone to unionize and remember that Christmas is about more than presents… I could complain that the New Blood is getting destroyed on this episode, but they already have been destroyed from a booking standpoint, so none of this actually matters… Hmm, who is in this limo?...It should be Sid or Savage, one of the two guys that I mentioned earlier as a needed part of this feud…A bus pulls up behind the limo with Bischoff’s reinforcements, maybe… OK, in a HILARIOUS shot, the NB walks to the ring carrying bats, lead pipes, and crowbars…Except for the Cat, who dangerously wields his red slipper…HAHAHAHAHA…Oh man, the Cat is so good at getting in these dumb little funny comedy spots…Bisch says that he’s taking over the planning for the hot-headed, reactive Russo…He’s going to be cool, calm, and proactive…He claims that the MC is being meanie heads who just don’t want equal opportunity…Bisch declares that now, it’s GUERILLA WARFARE, whatever the hell that means… Ric Flair walks out with a mic to once again respond…Bisch says that they’ve got eleven guys and the MC has eleven guys, so why not get down here and fight in the ring, which is not GUERILLA WARFARE…That’s open warfare…Anyway, Flair says yeah, they’ll come down there, but make it a 22-man battle royal where the winner gets a world title shot at Great American Bash…Alright, it’s impromptu battle royal time!...They actually have some refs out to call eliminations this time around, which makes sense now that Bischoff has taken over the planning…Logically, he would have told the refs that they can now get involved… Scott Steiner should win this and beat Jarrett at GAB…It’s obvious…They’re not going to do the obvious thing, though…I assume Steiner is back out here with the New Blood because Bisch plied him with something, but who knows?...Tenay: LOGIC? THE WORD DOESN’T EVEN EXIST IN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING!...Usually not, but tonight’s show hasn’t been egregiously illogical per the usual…Except for maybe the logic hole of Steiner being back out here that I just mentioned…The Mamalukes and the Harris Bros. run out to join the fray, so I guess they were in the bus…Here comes Harlem Heat Incorporated and Norman Smiley as well…We are up to thirty men in the ring, and now Horace Hogan gets dumped… Tank Abbott walks down to join the fray while Ric Flair swings a lead pipe at people outside the ring…Flair is apparently out, I guess, but he’s using that pipe to swing at the ankles of New Blood members and to choke them with it while standing on the apron…Lots of punching, a few eliminations…Steiner tries to attack a referee because he’s a nutter…I’ll tell you when the numbers whittle away to something more watchable… There’s a break…The numbers in the ring are lower, but not really whittled away enough…They are lower, though, because the NB dumped the midcard MC allies that now NB members are fighting one another…Sting and Vampiro fight at ringside after elimination, as do Package and Buff…Scott Steiner is out?!...BOOOOOOOOO…Book Scott Steiner properly, you idiots!...Madusa and Asya, who haven’t been on main WCW television in months, walk out here now…Asya attacks Shane Douglas, in a nice callback to the Revolution being dicks to her for no reason a few months ago…Speaking of callbacks, Mona runs in and attacks Madusa…This is nonsense, but you know what?...I’ll allow it…This is a dumb show, but it's been super-engaging the whole night… Hacksaw’s music hits and Duggan storms out to join the match even though it’s over halfway through…He knocks out a few NB members with his 4x4…This is absurd…Hacksaw fucking eliminates TANK ABBOTT, then eliminates himself because he just wanted to strike back at Vince Russo for the janitor nonsense…You know what?...Sure, that makes sense…Someone gets out of the F.U.N.B. limo as the commentators beg for the cameraperson to pan up…They play the guy walking to the ring on the TurnerTron a la the debut of Dude Love in the WWF… OK, the ring is down to maybe ten people…The crowd pops, and it’s RANDY SAVAGE who is the person that walks to the ring from the limo…Savage gets in the ring and beats down a few NB wrestlers…This is Savage’s last WCW appearance, and he’s still doing his WILD CARD, BITCHES gimmick…This guy is one of the greatest wrestlers and characters of all time, so what can I say about him other than that he is the greatest and that even post-peak Savage is better than no Savage at all…Savage leaves after eliminating a bunch of NB members, and we’re down to four…Bollea, Kidman, Flair, and Douglas, the latter of two are till in here, I guess…So get this…BRET HART comes to the ring with a chair and eliminates Bollea by slamming him with a chair before leaving…Bollea eliminates Kidman from his spot at ringside by by pulling the rope down as Kidman runs against them… Russo walks past Jarrett and DDP brawling on the set and fucks up a bat shot on Flair, who then grabs the bat and eliminates Douglas with it to win the GAB title shot…Uh, I liked this?!...It was nonsense, but in the most fun possible way…Bisch uses a bat to crack Bollea, who goes through a table with Kidman on top of him…Bisch counts the three…Meanwhile, Jarrett and Page are climbing the scaffolding on the set and fighting one another…Is that David Arquette with a guitar out here?...Someone goes through the stage over there…Savage chases off Bischoff at ringside…I think someone maybe stepped on the gimmicked stage spot and fucked up the big spot over there, so we stay on Savage and Bollea starting their on-again cycle for their on-again, off-again friendship…We cut briefly to Jarrett back on the stage raising his hands, which I think is an implication that he tossed Page off the scaffolding even though we didn’t see it because my guess is that Arquette stepped onto the gimmicked spot and fell through it before he could try to hit Jarrett with the guitar, but then accidentally (or “accidentally,” considering the finish of Slamboree’s main event) hit Page, who would take the plummet. I mean, look, again, that was a whole lot going on at the same time, but it all worked for me. What a weird, energetic vibe this Thunder had! Is it strange to call this episode “high concept?”…I really felt that it was an interesting idea for a show to have the big schmozz and then the no-ref, no-rules theme for the rest of the night…I also felt anticipation at seeing who would come out to face each New Blood member (at least when it wasn’t spoiled by pre-match talking)…And I thought this was a busy, but neat way to have every feud going into Slamboree get onto this show in some way, even if the Page/Jarrett/Arquette ending was botched...This show had all the problems that Russo shows tend to have, but I think this is probably the closest thing to Russo’s ideal TV wrestling show being realized in a good way…And again, I wouldn’t want that every week, but by God, he (and Bischoff, TBF) pulled off something entertaining on this episode…WOOOO… 1
zendragon Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Surprised to see some names such as Big T and Tank Abbott still around 1
SirSmUgly Posted October 28 Author Posted October 28 On 10/26/2024 at 1:54 AM, zendragon said: Surprised to see some names such as Big T and Tank Abbott still around Tank still needs to become a Three Count superfan, but Big T. still being around does surprise me. Hurry up and put my man Stevie Ray on color! 1
SirSmUgly Posted October 28 Author Posted October 28 Slamboree 2000 notes: Let’s get to it! Recap: We see some clips of the surprisingly enjoyable go-home Thunder, including clips of Randy Savage cleaning house. I know better than to get excited about Savage showing up here tonight, thankfully. Then we see Ric Flair win a world title shot…at Great American Bash a month from now. OK, I’m not sure why they showed this particular package if a) Savage isn’t here tonight and b) Flair is not wrestling for the world title tonight. From the safety of their locker room, the New Blood talks a lot of shit about the arriving Millionaire’s Club. Recap: Hype for the triple threat Ready to Rumble cage match between DDP, Jeff Jarrett, and our REIGNING AND DEFENDING WCW HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLDDDDDD, David freakin’ Arquette. Chris Candido hits the ring with a loopy Tammy Sytch in tow; she notes that she’s in the Show Me State (we’re in Kansas City) and then promises to disrobe, which, no, please, I’m good, this feels especially weird since you’re all pilled up. Candido tries to block our view like some kind of crusading babyface, then prepares to defend his WCW Cruiserweight Championship against TAFKAPI (w/Paisley). Madden calls this opener HOT CRUISERWEIGHT ACTION (no, it does not fulfill all three of these descriptors) and then notes that it’s New Blood versus New Blood, which is telling. The millionaires can’t let even one awesome cruiserweight into their little club? Anyway, the opening is actually solid and a little pacey. It slows down after TAFKAPI gets two on a bridging German; TAFKAPI is the babyface according to the crowd and the early shine going his way; he backdrops Candido to the floor in a nice little spot. Candio sells it as though he’s punchy, in Terry Funk’s style. This obligabrawl has a dive in it that ends in a stalemate and then wrestlers getting smashed against the raised ramp. Raised ramps are magnificent. The action moves onto the ramp, where we get a back body drop counter out of a Candido piledriver attempt, and then the match goes back in the ring, where TAFKAPI gets two off the back body drop, then just gets over on a rana before suddenly losing control back to Candido with no real transition. This match is pleasant enough, though. People seemed to shit on TAFKAPI at the time and even now, but even though he’s been basura in this TAFKAPI role, I think he’s a fun worker and is putting in a good shift here. Obviously, Candido is Candido and is generally always good. We get a vertical suplex struggle on the apron and then a Candido low blow before TAFKAPI barely, just barely gets Candido rotated on a powerbomb. OK, he’s still sloppy. TAFKAPI tries to make me look like a damned fool with that powerbomb and then his overshooting of a diving sunset flip attempt. OK, fine, TAFKAPI sucks and has always sucked, whatever. TAFKAPI gets his diving DDT attempt blocked, but Candido gets his top-rope rana blocked as well. TAFKAPI hits a super Samoan drop, which draws Sytch over to distract the ref, which draws Paisley over to attack her. Candido dropped a chair on the ramp earlier before he got back body dropped, and Sytch uses it to try and waffle Paisley; her aim is off, and she hits TAFKAPI for 2.8, but production thinks it’s a three count and so does Penzer, as the bell rings even though Mickey Jay waves his arms that the match isn’t over. Oh, WCW. Candido lands a piledriver, then goes up and drops a diving headbutt for three anyway, so really, we could have just called it there. What if we put the belt on Chavo Jr. Lt. Loco instead? After the match, Paisley takes Tammy to the mat and low blows Candido; TAFKAPI grabs Tammy and they rip off her skirt and show her granny panties, I guess? This started out good and gradually got shittier until both I and the crowd cooled off. Hype video: Terry Funk takes nutty bumps and chairs to the head while the WCW crowd refuses to give a shit. Funk is walking through the back when, as he did at Spring Stampede, he asks where Norm is. The producers point to the bathroom, where Norm has set up a decoy and jumps Funk with a fire extinguisher attack and commences to some backstage trash wrestling. You know the deal; I’ll tell you if there’s some amazing spot, but these are all the same thing. You either get a kick out of them or you don’t. I sort of feel like the WCW hardcore trash brawl trope is mostly like Man Hit in Groin With Football. You’ll be tickled every single time or you’ll think, Hey, it’s a funny short film if I’m feeling like seeing something mindlessly funny, but maybe we could see something different today. OK, one great thing is that Norm’s mystery partner stands on a mountain of junk and launches stuff at Funk, who half-blindly tosses a chair backward and nails the mystery dude. That was pretty amazing. Norm goes through a table, but kicks out of a pinfall attempt. The mystery person hangs back and watches from a safe place. Oh, I see, I think the mystery partner is Ralphus, maybe? He’s a short pudgy guy. It’s Ralphus or Luther Biggs. Funk drags the guy through the curtain after leaving Norm lying. Nick Patrick hands a chair to Funk so that he can use it, which, uh, is that the function of the official referee in a hardcore match? To help one of the contestants acquire weaponry? Anyway, it is Ralphus, who took a chair shot to the head before being revealed as the mystery fella. Funk tosses this guy over the top rope and yanks his shirt off and his pants down; the crowd reacts to what I would guess is a very wide, wrinkled, dimpled ass. So does the desk. Madden makes me laugh when he exclaims, “Not since I was beaten up by Tank Abbott have I seen something so disg—wait, what am I saying?” That was cute. Norm hits Funk in the head with a few chair shots, Big Wiggles the guy, and then looks over at Ralphus. Ralphus wants to Big Wiggle Funk as well. Funk hits the guy in the back with the chair. Norm walks over and yells at him to get up and takes a chair shot. Ralphus, please pull your pants up, my dude. Anyway, Norm goes to check on Ralphus after he’s eaten another chair shot and gets rolled up by the Funker for three. I’m going to be honest, this was dumb and mostly shitty, but I don’t care enough about this to feel the hate in my heart for it that would land it on the Absolute Dirt Worst list. Except I have to ask: What the hell is up with Ralphus’s navel?! Okerlund gives away the ghost by asking an arriving David Arquette why he didn’t come to the arena with the Millionaire’s Club considering his wife’s Friends salary. Arquette indicates that DDP doesn’t believe in his ability to be helpful in tonight's match and that he has his own money and doesn't need his wife's, thank you very much. I’m smellin’ a SWERVE, BRO. Hmmm… Shawn Stasiak vs. Curt Hennig is the downside of Russo’s “everyone should be doing something in a storyline” philosophy. Russo with someone to mold his ideas would have been useful in WCW during 1998 and the first half of 1999, when so many talented guys were just wrestling TV matches to nowhere. Here’s a DVDVR-style comment: I don’t like Stasiak’s punches. Stasiak outmaneuvers Hennig, who responds by doing the same to Stasiak. They yap at each other a bit to try and infuse this thing with heat, but no one cares. They fight over a headlock. Look, Stasiak is very dull and nothing he does looks good, almost. We get a shot of the Misfits in Action sitting at ringside before cutting back to Stasiak winning an obligabrawl and then landing a diving clothesline back in the ring for two. Stasiak takes this match back outside so they can fight on the ramp; Hennig sells an injury to his lower lumbar when going for a slam out there. This match is booooooooooring. Stasiak’s got a sleeper on, if you were curious. Hennig tries to fight out and then dodges a diving crossbody when Stasiak drops the sleeper to try one. Hennig hits his comeback, and the finish is as such: Hennig goes to town on Stasiak in the corner, gets pissy at ref Charles Robinson backing him off, and walks into an ugly looking slingshot and then a Perfect Plex for three. This was a very bad match. Russo is fired up about Stasiak’s victory backstage and touches Scotty Steiner in celebration. You’d better let that man pump up and give him his space, dummy. Scott Steiner (w/Midajah and Shakira) defends the U.S Championship against, uh, Hugh Morrus? Wasn’t Morrus fired in the last ten days’ worth of shows? I’m confused. Before Steiner comes down, Morrus grabs a mic and casts off the name “Hugh Morrus” because it’s a dumbassed name that made him look stupid. Instead, he’d like to be known by the more dignified name of HUGH G. RECTION. Uh-huh, I gotcha. Anyway, the sirens hit and Scott Steiner, a guy who is actually over, comes to the ring. Steiner stomps a mudhole in Captain Rection as soon as the match starts, but Rection fires back with chops of his own and a short-arm clothesline to block an arm drag. Steiner bails, talks some shit to a few fans. Shakira and Midajah get on the apron to run a distraction so that Steiner can circle the ring and jump Rection from behind. Still, he can’t get going as Rection hops out of a suplex attempt, hits a leg lariat-ish sort of deal, and follows up with a side slam after a two count. Rection goes up and lands a Savage Elbow before the ladies can do anything, but they are able to crotch him when he goes back up for a No Laughing Matter. Steiner takes advantage of Rection toppling into Tree of Woe position with stomps and a neck crank before walking over and yelling at the Misfits in Action siting in the front row. Steiner gets two on an elbow, intimidates the red-haired ref whose name I don’t know, and then lands an overhead suplex and some push-ups. That last move gets a pop. Rope choke, belly-to-belly, a close two count that sends Steiner chasing the ref out of the ring to crowd laughter. He yells YOU SUCK at the poor guy, then goes back to putting the boots to Rection. As he locks on a bear hug, let me tell you that Tony S. is awful on commentary, claiming that Steiner intentionally pulled off of those pinfalls to attack the ref. They were close two counts where Rection just slid his shoulder from under Steiner and got it off the mat in some pretty nicely timed 2.8s; Steiner chased the ref because he wanted a quicker count, not because he was intentionally letting Morrus out of the pinfall attempt. What the fuck match are you watching, Schiavone? Steiner stops Rection from working out of that bearhug with a belly-to-belly that gets a pop, by the way. Steiner jaws at the fans, poses, makes a rude gesture to the crowd, and OH MAN, JUST MAKE HIM THE FOCAL POINT OF THESE SHOWS ALREADY. Steiner’s taken so much time that he allows Rection the time to recover and put boots up on a corner charge, then hit two corner clotheslines of his own before he tries a third and gets counter-clotheslined. Steiner manages to get Rection over on a double-underhook suplex, but he gets his Tombstone attempt reversed. Rection goes up for another moonsault; Shakira tries to stand in front of Steiner, and Morrus comes off the ropes anyway and kicks Steiner in the head as he wipes out. Steiner gives zero fucks, though, and locks on a Steiner Recliner for the win. I thoroughly enjoyed that bout. After the match, Steiner dumps the ref at ringside and goes back to put Rection in the Recliner. R&B Security runs out to stop the Misfits in Action from making the save, but Booker T. gets a pop as he runs in from nowhere and makes the save with a Houston Side Kick. That was all really fun! Make Steiner and Booker’s feud for the big gold belt! (As an aside, Madden claims that the No Laughing Matter is now called the Raging Climax, and NO THE FUCK IT IS NOT, NOT IN THESE REVIEWS.) Kanyon tells Okerlund that he’s backing DDP because he considers Page a brother, and that’s why he’s not joining the New Blood. Also, he cuts a corny promo about the value of hard work, just as a good babyface should. Chris Kanyon is expecting to show how hard he’s worked by finishing off Mike Awesome, which is next up on the show. Of course, the open is good; Kanyon can’t win with power and stalemates a shoulderblock, but he uses his quickness to take Awesome to the mat with a kick. Kanyon backs the staggered Awesome into the corner and lands some shoulderblocks to his midsection, but he whips Awesome into the other corner and eats a back elbow. Kanyon bails, but doesn’t see Awesome size him up from inside the ring and juuuuuust clear the top rope on a successful suicide dive. The advantage helps Awesome dominate an obligabrawl, but Kanyon bails out of a running powerslam attempt and posts Awesome, then wraps him around the post and attacks his back with a baseball slide that is a pretty neat spot. Kanyon lands a somersault senton off the apron to Awesome as the latter struggles to his feet. However, he’s too lax about getting Awesome back in the ring, and Awesome is able to drape Kanyon’s throat over the ropes and get a bit of in-ring control. He slams Kanyon and then goes up for a nice diving clothesline that gets two after he connects on it. Awesome then dumps Kanyon back onto the floor and we get Awesome hitting Kanyon with a chair in front of the ref; uh, okay, I guess this match is being contested under Raven’s Awesome’s Rules, or I suppose the lax rules are still in effect for this show. Awesome uses the chair in a variety of ways, ultimately sending Kanyon spilling over the guardrail and into the crowd after running him down with the chair. Awesome slams him in the middle of the E-C-W chanting fans, then dumps him back over the rail and chokes him with a cable. Awesome finally puts Kanyon back in the ring and gets two on a slingshot splash. Awesome scores a clothesline, but is too cocky and gets caught in a sunset flip for two before he hits a WCW special and lariats Kanyon back to the mat after kicking out. Awesome goes back outside, and it’s more chair shots from this guy; he then gets in the ring, goes up, and tries to come off the top with the chair, but Kanyon crotches him by shaking the top rope, then gets in the ring and lands a nice hanging neckbreaker for about 2.7, maybe 2.8. Kanyon stays a step ahead of Awesome and manages a swinging neckbreaker for two more. He tries a top rope crossbody, but Awesome rolls through it and gets only two even with a yank of the tights. Kanyon lands a slam out of a fireman’s carry for two more. Who will actually get the ref to count to three? It looks like it should be Awesome, who counters a piledriver, nearly kills poor Kanyon with a high-angled neckbreaker, and then goes outside and yanks the mats up. Kanyon manages to get up and cut Awesome off as Awesome gets back on the apron, but Awesome hits a slingshot shoulderblock. He tries a running Awesome Bomb to splatter Kanyon on the concrete, but Kanyon hops out to avoid it, though he can do nothing to defend himself as he gets corralled release German suplexed. Kanyon rolls out to the apron, where Awesome prepares to powerbomb him off the ramp and onto some exposed concrete on that side, but Kevin Nash comes out here and spoils the match by beating the shit out of Awesome and then a bunch of New Blood members until FINALLY, these guys get him down. Ric Flair and Sting run in for the save before R&B Security make their presence known by getting punched a lot. Well, that match was interesting, but the finish and aftermath stunk like rotten fish. Recap: Vince Russo is feuding with both members of Team Package, unfortunately. I am annoyed at Vince Russo squawking at Liz backstage. GO CHANGE THAT DRESS, he shrilly whines. WAIT ‘TIL YOU SEE THIS, he continues on in reference to some sort of plan he has in store for The Total Package. Speaking of The Total Package, he’s out here to wrestle Buff Bagwell. I was wondering if Buff is still one-half of the tag champs or if KroniK actually won them on the previous Thunder, and Tony S. and Scott Hudson don’t have an answer for me. Great. Anyway, after some posing and the like, Package and Buff lock up. They proceed to have a very dull match. Buff harasses this poor red-headed ref before going back to rope chokes and the like. I get a kick out of Buff being a heel, but still getting 60/40 pops from the crowd – and that might be understated on my part. Yeah, Package comes back and it doesn’t get that much of a pop, though he does get a cheer for the punches in the corner spot. Package takes it outside for an obligabrawl as we hit the halfway mark of this show. We go back into the ring after a zero of an obligabrawl and Buff takes back over and lands a double-arm DDT for two before *sigh* putting on a chinlock. He does some stuff with using the ropes for leverage, but this is deeply uninteresting. He eventually transitions into a supremely shitty Camel Clutch. OK, so we cut back to Russo calling out to Liz to come see DA BEST PAHT, when Liz tips his chair back (Russo, comically: WHOOOAAA) and hits him with the bat, then comes to the ring holding the bat as TTP makes a comeback and signals for a Torture Rack. Buff knocks him down, then grabs Liz, tries to kiss her, and loses the bat while Package grabs him by the shoulder and turns him. Luckily, it flies into Package’s ribs, so he can sell it. Buff gets the bat and hits him in the ribs again, then goes up for a Blockbuster, but he’s dropped the bat in the process. Liz picks it up, swats him in the side, and knocks him into a Package Torture Rack for three. Chuck Palumbo runs in and beats down Package while the crowd looks on in silence at this guy whom they don’t know anything about. Palumbo, who is wearing Package’s logo on his tights and boots, locks TTP in a Torture Rack while Buff holds Liz back. Why would anyone think that debuting WCWSN mainstay (except for a job to Scott Steiner on one of the major WCW TV shows a few weeks back) in this spot would be a good idea? Gene Okerlund interviews Shane Douglas, who is excited to get at Ric Flair seven years after Flair booked him less effectively than he’d have liked. Oh great, now Shane Douglas is out here in the ring to talk some more. He’s sure that he’s going to beat Ric Flair. Of course he is. I’d expect nothing less than that level of confidence from a professional wrestler in both kayfabe and as a shoot. Flair walks down, demands that the ref hold the ropes for him, and then namedrops Harley Race, calls Douglas a dipshit, and says he’s going to “kick [Douglas’s] ECW ass.” Flair is much better at promos full of cusses than Douglas is. Unfortunately, now they have to wrestle. They have a boilerplate match; two or three minutes in, Flair gets caught going up top and slammed to the mat. Douglas follows by locking on a Figure Four. Flair makes it out, they trade chops, and Douglas tries a Figure Four again before Flair pokes him in the eye and lands a low blow. Douglas tumbles to the floor. They obligabrawl, and Flair dominates most of it with strikes before my least favorite transition happens. Flair punched the hell out of Douglas and then posted him, but Douglas lands a vertical suplex slam immediately upon re-entering the ring? Bullshit. Douglas grabs a chain from his boot, wraps it around his fist, and scores a punch. He eschews a pinfall attempt and instead lands rolling triple verticals with the last one being a stalling vertical suplex. Douglas celebrates before covering and only gets two. The mistake of not putting Flair away immediately allows him to fight back with chops and punches. Flair knocks Douglas down and crashes a knee into Douglas’s hammy, then stands him up and kicks him in the balls; he follows that up with a chop block. This match is a stinker, but maybe it’s about over, hopefully. Flair lands a kneebreaker and tries to put on a Figure Four. Buff runs down, and someone in the Sting mask is also down to hit Flair in the back with a baseball bat; Douglas grabs Flair in an inside cradle for three. Buff and Douglas work Flair over – Douglas lands a chain-assisted punch to the gonads – before the guy in the Sting mask makes to leave along with his charges. Flair is back up and wants his five minutes with Russo after the match, demanding that the guy in the Sting mask come back to the ring; though the guy in the Sting mask refuses, The Total Package runs back out here and tosses Sting mask guy into the ring. Of course, here comes Russo, not in the Sting mask as everyone thought, to clobber Package from behind with the bat. Well, who is in the mask? It’s Dopey David Flair, who still has beef with his dad that has not yet been addressed. OK, so then, a bunch of stuff happens: Dave and Russo start the five minute period by attacking Ric. The Wolfpac music hits and Nash walks down for the save. Nash makes to powerbomb Russo, but Daffney sneaks in from behind and taps him in the sack. Russo, Dopey Dave, and Daffney manage to leave Package, Ric, and Nash laying even though Mike Awesome, Vampiro, Billy Kidman, and a whole slew of New Blood guys have had no chance. Maybe Rey Misterio Jr. should be as tough as Vince Russo the next time he squares up to Nash – if he doesn’t try to run away from Nash, that is. Scott Hudson is also fucking terrible on commentary. This time, he is shocked that Dopey Dave was convinced to "turn against" his pops by Russo. THEY NEVER REALLY WORKED OUT THEIR ISSUES, DUDE. Sure, Ric propped Dave up in a moment of shared megalomania, but just a few weeks ago, Ric was telling Arn that he didn’t give a damn about Terry Funk beating the shit out of his kid. Did we all forget that happened? Weirdly, the Ric/Dave feud is actually a somewhat intriguing long-term feud to me. These two need counseling. Hype video: Sting and Vampiro have had an increasingly one-sided feud in favor of the Stinger over the past month or so. Vampiro rushes Sting on the ramp and bumps around wildly for him. It’s pretty impressive bump work. Sting beats Vampiro back toward the ring, punches him so far that he falls into it, and then lands a missile dropkick that looks great. Vamp bails, and Sting gets on the top rope and dives onto him outside the ring. Uh, this is good work! Vampiro doesn’t look even remotely like a threat, but this is really good work. Sting considers dumping Vampiro through the commentary desk – and Tony S. encourages him to do so – but decides to just DDT Vamp on the floor instead. Sting should be working the guys who need to get that extra step up into legit main event level right now. He’s still very good, and the intensity he’s shown tonight has been excellent. Vampiro does get control with a low blow, a chop, and a diving clothesline. He then leaves the ring and grabs a lead pipe. Vamp swings and scores with a shot to the chest, then follows up with a couple of shots to the back. Vampiro grabs Sting and yells invective at him, then headbutts him, drops a knee into his groin, and scores a kick, then another couple of pipe shots. Boy, I am stunned at how good their work has looked. They have had truly awful chemistry for the past few weeks; I’m wondering where this has all come from. Sting escapes the ring and stumbles up the ramp, but Vamp runs up behind him and lands a face crusher before standing Sting back up and hitting a spinning front kick. Vampiro is the guy to knock Sting from the ramp to the ring next as he clotheslines him into the ring and lands another lead pipe shot. Vamp shoots Sting into the corner, follows with a running clothesline, and sits him up top for a top-rope rana that gets turned into a super powerbomb after Sting hits a low blow of his own. Sting grabs the lead pipe and returns the favor, then shoots Vamp into the corner and hits a Stinger Splash. He grabs the pipe and sort of whiffs on a pipe-assisted Stinger Splash, then hooks Vamp for a suplex before Vamp figures out that Sting wants a Scorpion Death Drop. He hits one, then a second, before getting three. Despite the fact that they started to miscommunicate a bit at the very end and that Vampiro got cleanly and decisively beaten so there’s nothing else to do with this feud, this match did rule pretty hard. I’m impressed that these two got it together and figured things out. Anyway, Sting sees Vampiro getting to his knees on the TurnerTron, turns around, and clobbers Vamp with the lead pipe one more time. But Vampiro won’t give up! Or some such bullshit that’s supposed to also get him over even though he keeps getting his ass beat. Mike Tenay interviews DDP and David Arquette backstage; Arquette and Dallas have a plan, which apparently is just Arquette ducking Jarrett and defending the belt from any run-ins. Then, DDP is somehow not the heel for this: “But you, monkey, *slaps Arquette softly* don’t grab the belt.” I feel like this behavior only justifies Kimberly’s heel turn, much less Arquette’s. I have to revise my statements in earlier reviews (and earlier in this review) and at least admit that DDP is sort of being a dismissive dick to a guy who is supposed to be his friend. You can see the foreshadowing here. Now, why Arquette would join a guy who kicked the shit out of him in Jarrett, you tell me. I don't know. Maybe I need some time to get there on the potential logic. Kevin Nash walks around the backstage area all aggy, looking for his opps. Tenay interviews Kidman, Torrie, Bischoff, and Kimberly backstage. Actually, the men are the only ones who talk, and they are assured of victory over Hulk Hogan F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea. Eric Bischoff and Kimberly hit the ring to pose and preen; after that, Billy Kidman (w/Torrie Wilson) walk the ramp, followed shortly after by F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea. Kidman jumps Bollea after a little okey-doke between he and Bischoff. They fuck up a slam, but save it by Kidman hitting an inside cradle for two. I genuinely think that was an in-the-moment audible to cover for a blown spot and not a planned struggle spot. Anyway, Bollea takes over soon enough. You know the drill. Bollea is terrible. He does press slam Kidman onto an open chair, which is a nice spot. Otherwise, slow-ass Bollea is such a bum. You look at Sting, and sure, he’s got seven or eight years less of wear and tear on Bollea, but he’s just a much better athlete and a guy who can bump around effectively and generate a lot of intensity in his work when need be. I am not against the over-40 crowd, but there is such a gap between Sting and DDP on one end and Bollea on the other. And at least someone like limited-ass Randy Savage accepted that he was limited and came up with entertaining gaga to help him. Bollea doesn’t have the sense to admit he needs a lot of help. Kidman gets some control after using Torrie as a decoy, but Bollea takes over again. Bischoff rips away Hogan’s weight belt, which allows Kidman to jump Bollea and then use the weight belt himself. The only good thing about this match is Kidman bumping around like a madman. Bischoff doesn’t make counts when Bollea covers, so Bollea gets a sprinkling of visual three counts in there. So, yeah, let me just tell you the finish: Bollea punches Bischoff in the face when he tries to block Bollea’s legdrop. Bollea punches him and hits it anyway. Bisch gets a chair, but gets cut off by Bollea and hit with the chair, as does Kidman. Bollea gets a couple of tables and puts them in the ring, breaking one in the process as he tries to set it up. Kidman saves Bisch from a table-crash with a chair shot. Kidman counts his own pinfall, but when Bisch counts it, Bollea kicks out at two. GOD, THIS IS SUCH A LONG RUN UP TO THE FINISH. Bollea powerbombs Bisch through a table, then gets another table, but he’s an idiot and barely understands how to slide it in the ring and set it up. Kidman lands a low blow while Bollea tries a chair shot and hits one of his own. He puts Bollea on the table, but dives and crashes through it himself when Bollea moves. Horace runs down and moves an unconscious Bischoff’s hand to count three as Bollea covers. I hated this. Truly some dirt worst shit. Russo drags Liz along looking for a vehicle to escape the premises in and eventually finds one. Nash watches him tear away and sips a brew. Recap: Jeff Jarrett, DDP, and David Arquette do their thing. Actually, maybe keeping Scott Steiner away from dumb main event feuds like this one was a good thing. Jeff Jarrett interviews with Gene Okerlund. You know what you’re getting from Jarrett in these interviews, and it always sucks. Speaking of: Jeff Jarrett “Slapnuts/Slapass” Count: 2. I can’t believe that they brought Michael Buffer in for this main event, of all things. Michael Buffer’s Ring Announcing Quality Control: Does it count that Buffer said “the man with the stroke” so weirdly that the auto-captioner read it as “the man with the fruit?” I’m not sure Buffer wrote down “stroke” on his note cards. He also did say that Arquette was “representing” but skipped ahead to calling him the champ without indicating who or what Arquette was representing; maybe he left that word in from all those title matches he introduced where the champ was representing the New World Order. I think Buffer is just tired, as are we all. It’s WCW, y’know. So, this is a cage with three levels, reminding me of that big cage match at Uncensored ’96, I think, which I did not watch for this review and will go back and review at the end of this whole deal. There’s a bunch of weaponry strewn about as well. Jarrett chases Arquette and avoids Page, but he runs into a Page clothesline and gets beaten up for a while. Page directs Arquette to try a splash from the top, but Arquette misses badly. Page is a dick, man, all he had to do was support his wife when she went out there to wrestle Madusa and treat Arquette with a bit of respect. After some more solid work, Page shoots Jarrett right into Arquette, who is backed against the cage. Ah, I see, Arquette’s going to make an emotional decision in the moment, huh? I mean, the end of this match is still going to debut our newest running feature, but I can sort of get there on why Arquette is going to make the choice that he does at the end of this match. Arquette keeps getting clobbered, and Page keeps Jarrett well under control. DDP grabs a ladder and tries to ascend into the second level of the cage, but Jarrett catches him with a nice back suplex. Jarrett crawls up and tries to climb, but Page gets up and powerbombs him. I wish this gimmick and Arquette weren’t a part of this match because it could be a classic otherwise; these fellas have excellent chemistry. Boy, did this WCW watch just bring me way the hell around on Jarrett’s in-ring work. Jarret is bleeding as he tries to ascend the ladder to cage two, but Page once again knocks him off the ladder. Hudson goes on about all the hardcore weapons on level two, and I think that maybe they should have explained this cage match a lot better for those of us who hadn’t seen Ready to Rumble? Anyway, Page knocks Jarrett all the way to the ramp, then climbs to level two. He immediately snatches some bolt cutters to open the door to the third level of the cage, but before he can leave, Jarrett has climbed up and smashes him into a trash can lid, then grabs a chair and yams him on the top of his dome. OK, so Jarrett leaves the door and tries to climb to the third level, but Page grabs him and Jarrett gives that up and cracks a tray over Page’s head. He tries to follow up with a trash can shot, but gets jabbed in the gut by a Page chair lunge. Then, holy shit, they go crashing through the side of the cage together. I’m not sure that side was supposed to just pop open like that, but this second level of the cage is bending like the top of the cell in Mankind/Undertaker, so who knows whether it was gimmicked like that or not? Anyway, Page followed up by smashing Jarrett through a table, and is this match actually good? It’s pretty good, I have to say. It would be better without all the extra nonsense, probably, but what they’re doing with this gimmicked cage is strong stuff. Even a spot like Jarrett trying to climb to level three, spotting Page walking toward him and wielding a chair, and trying to make himself small before taking the hit and flinging himself onto the cage looks painful and like a real flash reaction.] David Arquette, who has been watching this match from below, suddenly explodes up the ladder and climbs to the second, then the third level. He passes up the guitars and instead goes all the way to the top, where the belt is hanging. Meanwhile, Mike Awesome has burst onto the second level of the cage from somewhere and attacked DDP, who hits a Diamond Cutter and tries to climb the cage as Jarrett climbs it from the other side. Arquette pretends he’s on a scaffold and drops to his belly. OK, in the third little room, above which the belt hangs, there are a bunch of KABONGING guitars. Jarrett grabs one, swings wildly, and misses. Page grabs one, swings wildly, and also misses. He does grab another guitar and pass it to his buddy Arquette on top of the third level. IT’S A SWERVE, BRO: When DDP climbs again at the same time that Jarrett climbs, Arquette turns on Page and KABONGs him; Jarrett, climbing with a guitar in hand, KABONGs a plummeting Page for good measure, then goes up and grabs the belt. Then, out of nowhere, Kanyon comes out to confront Mike Awesome on the second level of the cage, and Awesome grabs him and tosses him onto a gimmicked part of the raised ramp. Awesome climbs the rest of the way and celebrates with Jarrett and Arquette while the crowd chants HOLY SHIT. WCW World Heavyweight Championship title change count: 11 (Hitman > VACANT > Benoit > VACANT > Sid > Nash > Sid > VACANT > Jarrett > DDP > Arquette > Jarrett) You might call me nutty for saying this, but that match was good! The bump at the end was excessive and took away from Jarrett and Arquette celebrating, but it was a definite wild spot. I thought the cage itself was a neat twist on the multi-level cage gimmick, Jarrett and Page did some fantastic work, and even the SWERVE, BRO was somewhat foreshadowed throughout the show. It was a match worth watching. I think I’m most surprised that this show was actually, if not a good show, a mostly watchable one that was generally pretty enjoyable. I ended up placing three matches from it on my Good Matches list. If not for some of the dull or flat-out bad matchups like Funk/Smiley and Ralphus, Hennig/Stasiak, and Bagwell/Package and the Absolute Dirt Worst encounter between Kidman and Hogan Bollea, this show could have been maybe the last good WCW PPV. Well, let’s hope the last good WCW PPV is still to come! 2
SirSmUgly Posted October 28 Author Posted October 28 (edited) Show #239 – 8 May 2000 “The one that goes on forever (forever ever? forever ever?!) and Goldberg doesn't make an appearance, but Rick Steiner does, so it's the bad kind of forever ever” It’s kinda bananas how much more watchable than the Sullivan-helmed January-April Nitros that this run of Russo and Bischoff shows has been. Mind you, they are still mostly bad, but overall, I’ve enjoyed this far more than Sullivan's last run or, for that matter, most of what Russo and Ferrara cooked up back at the end of 1999. [Editor's note: Every time I say something that can even remotely be considered praise about shows Russo is involved in to start a review, he metaphorically kicks me in the balls.] Maybe it’s not the shows that have changed, though. Maybe it’s me who has changed. Is it that I see a light at the end of this two-year-long tunnel? Is it that I’ve seen some of the most vile wrestling television ever to air in the United States and have not only lived to write about it, but have occasionally had fun with writing about it? Is it that we’re two months away from no more Hulk Hogan/F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea? Who can say? But this is probably the most that I’ve actually enjoyed watching these shows since May of 1999 when it seemed like WCW might actually hit another hot streak (and then absolutely did not do that). Recap: Slamboree was okay, man! I’m sort of shocked that it was. Diamond Dallas Page sits somberly at Kanyon’s beside earlier today. Some New Blood members show up, mock the saddened DDP, and then beat the shit out of him for awhile before Kimberly herds them out of the room to go to Nitro. Then she dumps a pan of Kanyon’s piss on him and leaves. Yeah, that’s the Russo touch! The Millionaire’s Club shows up in a bus. I bet it’s one of the ones that has little screens in the seat backs so they can communally watch some porn while they travel down the road. Eric Bischoff leads a bunch of New Blood members to the ring, including a yellow-suited David Arquette. They take a bunch of time to finally assemble in the ring, and then Eric Bischoff rambles about a SWERVE, BRO, and oh no, they sell the swerve as Arquette and Bischoff faking a feud to get the belt off of DDP in an indirect way. This makes no sense. It would have made more sense had Arquette pointed out DDP being a fucking dickhead to him and causing him to decide to stop putting himself in danger to help him. It’s only natural that Bischoff and Russo would choose the convoluted explanation for this SWERVE, BRO and not one that was at least plausible. Bischoff shits on the marks who type words about wrestling on the internet (hey!) for complaining about putting the big gold belt on Arquette when they didn’t understand the SWERVE, BRO that he was setting up by doing it. They let David Arquette talk. It’s not good heeling. Maybe they should have had this guy watch some Andy Kaufman tapes to help him get in the mindset of being a little geeky Hollywood heel. Jarrett talks. Oh, wait, hold on: Jeff Jarrett “Slapnuts/Slapass” Count: Only one, but Kimberly has to shit on DDP before Dallas can get to the ring – he’s pulled up to the arena and popped out of a car – and so does Mike Awesome, who has to rush through jibes about Dallas having to take care of Kanyon for the rest of his life before DDP’s music can hit. DDP storms to the ring and exchanges punches with Mike Awesome, then dispatches of the Cat and grabs David Arquette before landing a Diamond Cutter. This gives Jeff Jarrett a chance to regroup with Awesome and the Cat and stomp out Dallas, but Sting’s music hits, and Sting pops into the ring and beats up the nWo New Blood as they feed for his blows one by one. A bunch of New Blood and Millionaire’s Club guys next rush the ring, and the MCs rule the roost to end the segment. Again. A squealing Bischoff stands with Okerlund in the back and books Mike Awesome vs. DDP and Sting vs. Jeff Jarrett for later tonight – and Jarrett is shocked when Bischoff agrees to put the big gold belt on the line. Norman Smiley and Ralphus just don’t have the magic that Chris Jericho and Ralphus did. Smiley is nervous because Russo has told him that if they don’t beat Terry Funk tonight for the Hardcore Championship, they’ll be sent to the unemployment line. In fact, that match is next, as Terry Funk walks to the ring and we see the video of Funk tanking wild bumps and chair shots again as he makes his way down the ramp. Funk grabs a mic and says that Ruschoff aren’t going to ever find a guy to beat him for his belt. Norman Smiley has a mic as he steps onto the ramp with Ralphus and uses it to point out how unattractive Ralphus’s ass crack is. I mean, yeah, but that belly button is even more disturbing, and of course, Ralphus is wearing a cutoff shirt. Funk hits the erstwhile truck driver and former Jerichoholic in the head with a chair and then attacks Smiley. *sigh*, so let me just cut to the finish because I’m frankly sick of all this trash wrestling nonsense. Wait, before that: Norm tries to escape Funk on a golf cart, but a gimpy Funk chases him down and jumps on the back of it, causing Norm to swerve right into a stack of crates. That was a fairly funny spot, I guess. Anyway, Funk clobbers both guys with a cookie sheet and lays on top of them for three. This stunk except for the dumb cart spot. Scott Hudson sells Kanyon’s injuries at the desk, and I just want the guy to get healthy and run through the background of interviews hitting Diamond Cutters on randoms already. Then Tony S. has the nerve again to say that David Flair turned on Ric Flair. No the fuck he didn’t! They were already beefing! Ric let David get his ass beat out there a couple months back and vocally gave zero fucks about what Terry Funk did to his son! Ric Flair is poorly mic’d and there’s feedback as Ric tells The Total Package and Liz to stay out of it when he goes out there to confront David. After the break, Ric Flair walks out holding a belt. Is he a champion? Did I miss something? Oh, wait, it’s the old NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Anyway, Flair name drops Terry Funk and talks about how Wrestling at the Chase in St. Louis (where Nitro is tonight) was super-cool. More names are dropped: Brisco, Race, Rhodes the Elder, etc. He holds up the NWA World Championship talks about being NWA World Champ, then drops that belt and picks up an off-brand looking big gold replica and talks about being the WCW World Champ for a minute. He says being champ is dope, but right now he’s got some beefs to carve up with his dopey son, who he says he “didn’t know had it in [him].” Uh, did you get hit in the head and forget that SuperBrawl IX happened, buddy? Why is Ruschoff insistent on forgetting, like, everything in the past fifteen or sixteen months that has gone down between Ric and Dopey Dave over this very issue? Anyway, Ric calls Dave out, and Dave answers, holding hands with Daffney. Vince Russo shows up, too, unfortunately. They all walk to the ring to talk for a while. Russo is an unskilled heel, matching his counterpart Bischoff in making me want to change the channel even though there’s not a competing RAW on right now. He takes out a list of wrestlers from the ‘60s and ‘70s and reads them off as he talks about how much he hates them, then hugs his new dipshit son David Flair. This feud has gone right off the rails. It was better when it was Shane Douglas and Ric Flair arguing over who the real franchise is. And I mean, that sucked, so imagine how much worse I think this is. Ric begs Dave to come back to his side as Dave is like Grrrr, I’m so angry, papa! Russo books David vs. Ric at Great American Bash, which I guess is in addition to the match Ric has for the world title. Ric tries to ply David with, uh, a call to Vinnie Mac to get David on a better show than this one? And Dave pretends to take it? Why not talk about how much this show sucks some more? The guy holding the I’D RATHER BE AT RAW sign has good reason to feel that way, I guess! Anyway, Ric advances on Russo, but Dave takes a tchotchke Statue of Liberty from Daffney and cracks Ric over the head with it. I can’t express to you deeply enough how dreadful a piece of television this was, like lower than dirt. The Total Package tries to fire Ric up to strike back against Russo, but Ric is through with all this pro wrestling nonsense, gets in a car, and leaves. Now The Total Package has to turn back around and come out here…or no, actually, it’s Chuck Palumbo, also known as The Main Event. He’s got a bar with him to pump up his biceps. The “have a younger wrestler copy an older wrestler’s gimmick” deal wasn’t working very well with Shawn Stasiak, so I’m not sure why they decided to do it again with Palumbo. Palumbo grabs a mic and is very bad at talking: I AM THE MAINNN EVENT…CHUCK…PALUMBOOOOOO. He challenges The Total Package to a match in the shittiest way possible. Please get Mike Sanders in here to talk for this doofus as soon as possible. Please. Anyway, TTP comes to the ring and beats up Palumbo for a minute; two R&B Security guys come down and try to take Elizabeth back to Russo, but Package comes out and beats them. Unfortunately, Palumbo has recovered and picks up his flex bar, then attacks TTP with it from behind. The security dudes kidnap Liz. Yikes, this show is terrible so far! Back from break, medics load Package into an ambulance because guys taking ambulance rides means zero at this point. Russo kicks everyone but Daffney and Liz out of his office. He’s upset at Liz, um, not wanting to be enslaved, and tells her that she’ll be wrestling Daffney tonight. If Liz wins, she can get out of her contract, but if she loses, Russo will give himself more television time to act weird around her, just as he does with most women they let him be around on TV. Shawn Stasiak is in the ring, where he essentially says that unlike Mark McGwire, his penis is immaculate. This guy SUCKS. Fucking awful. OK, so there’s a military drumroll, and this is not the M.I.A. theme, but I can’t tell if this is going to be the dub going forward, or if they just hadn’t given him his proper theme yet. Captain Rection heads to the ring; Curt Hennig walks out behind him. Ms. Hancock walks onto the stage to watch the match, Madden says SNOOCHIE BOOCHIES because he’s an idiot, and IT’S A SWERVE, BRO: Meanwhile, Curt Hennig calls back to when he surprisingly ditched Marc Mero to support Hunter Hearst Helmsley by in this instance surprisingly assisting Shawn Stasiak; Stasiak uses Hennig’s help to land a Perfect Plex for three. Kevin Nash stomps right out here and attacks Shawn Stasiak because Nash is just going to kill all these young dudes off, I guess. I mean, it’s just Shawn Stasiak, but I’m still annoyed that Nash is walking around destroying these fellas. After Nash lands a Jackknife, he grabs a mic. HEY RUSSO, he hollers, and then intimates that the guy must be on drugs to fuck with him. He challenges Russo to a fight later tonight. No, I’m good. No need for any more Russo appearances tonight. Nash complains about Russo suddenly becoming a dick to him and awaits his presence, but the music of the Filthy Animals plays, and they saunter out instead. Kidman insists on talking even though Konnan is standing right there! Konnan finally gets the mic, hates on the Wolfpac, and cuts a solid promo in which he intimates that he expects to receive vigorous oral sex from Nash after this upcoming beating. The Animals actually do take him down initially, but F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea hobbles his leathery ass to the ring for the save. FUCK, Nash is talking again. He’s basically like we r better than u bitches lol. I miss Scott Hall setting this guy up for his punchlines. Basically, Nash and Bollea challenge the Filthy Animals to a street fight later in the show. Hogan says the word SHIT. WHOAAAAAA THAT’S SO HARDCORE, but seriously, fuck off, you bum. There has been entirely too much Bischoff and Russo on this show. I think there’s probably a precise mathematical formula that indicates the inverse relationship between the time that Russo and Bischoff are given on screen and the quality of the show. Bischoff and Kimberly join commentary for the DDP/Mike Awesome match next; it’s a stretcher match, which makes sense in the context of this feud, but which probably should on PPV instead of the night after Slamboree on a Nitro of extremely low quality. Bischoff drives the already dogshit quality of commentary's performance down so low that it gets lodged into the core of the earth, and Kimberly sure doesn’t help, either. Page and Awesome are good workers, but I’ve nearly checked out of this show at this point. They brawl around the ring, then end up back in the ring, where Awesome takes over. He doesn’t take over for long, though, because Page hits him with a counter uranage. They trade control back and forth, but Page is able to win most of the counters. That leads Kimberly to get up from the desk and demand that Dallas finally sign those divorce papers. Dallas rips up the papers, but turns around right into a chair shot. Just sign ‘em dude, and move on. Awesome runs the chair into Dallas a couple of times and hits a weak DDT onto it as it lays closed on the mat. He then hits another as some EMTs set up the stretcher outside the ring. Awesome rolls Dallas onto the ramp (which is again raised tonight) and plops him on the stretcher. Page, who has bladed, rolls off the stretcher when it is only halfway down the ramp. Bischoff helps Awesome lift a table into the ring, and after Awesome sets it up, he manages to land another chair shot to Dallas’s head after fending off a desperate DDP flurry. Awesome follows with an Awesome Bomb through a table. Bisch grabs the part of the papers with the signature line on it, jams a pen in the unconscious DDP’s hand, and forces him to sign the papers. Hey, they let drugged people get legally married in drive-thru weddings in this era, so this is probably a legal action, too. Page is then stretchered out for good as the fans try to get a weak D-D-P chant going. Vince Russo keeps touching Scott Steiner, dammit! Steiner is trying to sweet talk his freaks, not bail Russo out of jams that he’s gotten himself into with Kevin Nash. Why has it taken this long for Scott Steiner to get some TV time on this show? We’ve seen Russo and Bischoff twenty-leven times, but no Scotty Steiner until just now? Back from break, Russo cuts a deal with Tank Abbott. Jeff Jarrett cuts a bad promo on Sting with Gene Okerlund. Scott Steiner (w/Midajah and Shakira) enters the ring, and he’s got a mic with him, too. He riffs on Hugh G. Rection’s name as a way to talk about his own fucky-fuck prowess. He also gets himself over by talking about his fucky-fuck prowess and gets cheers. Steiner wants to fight Booker T., but Tank Abbott low blows the guy from behind and lands a series of cheap shots that put Steiner on the mat, then walks away. Sting yells a lot about ruining Jarrett, Bischoff, and Russo’s night while talking to Gene Okerlund. He’s enthusiastic, and his promo charms me. He’s ready to put up his baseball bat against Jarrett’s guitar. The Mamalukes’s music ends when they’re only halfway down the aisle so that Harlem Heat Incorporated’s music can play. HHI is joined by Kash and Biggs; the Mamalukes are joined by Disco Inferno and the Harris Bros. The push of the latter getting stuffed into a figurative suitcase and tossed in a metaphorical dumpster because of this reboot is easily one of the three best things to come of Ruschoff’s reign. Anyway, the ‘lukes, HHI, and the Harrises are all going to try and beat KroniK to get those tag belts, which I guess KroniK did not officially win, back for Shane Douglas and Buff Bagwell. Speaking of those last two guys, they walk out onto the ramp as this clusterfuck begins. Oh wonderful, Shane and Buff join commentary while this nonsense mess of a match happens. I don’t get why Shane and Buff wouldn’t simply steal the belts back while these teams all fight. Brian Adams hits Vito with an F5, which I guess eliminates the Mamalukes. Wait, is this an elimination match? Again, are KroniK the champs, or, like, not? Are they actually defending the titles or, like, not defending them? You know what, it doesn’t matter. Clarke pins a Harris Bro with a Death Penalty. Shane and Buff leave the desk and jump in the ring, but Adams and Clarke send them right back out of the ring. HHI lands a double spinebuster, but Cash misses his attack on Adams and Stevie yams Big Tony with a slapjack for whatever reason. Buff finally is smart enough to steal the tag belts while KroniK hits Big Tony with a High Times for three. Scott Steiner books it to the ring, double-clotheslines Buff and Shane, and then overhead suplexes Cash to a pop. He demands that Russo send Tank Abbott out here to get the shit kicked out of him while KroniK reclaim the belts. Steiner promises to stay in the ring until Tank comes to the ring; he even grabs a chair to relax and tells Tank to STOP GUMMING RUSSO IN THE BACK. Boy, have there been some persistent oral sex requests, suggestions, and general comments on this show. By the way, Steiner is very over with this crowd at this point. Tank Abbott walks up to Doug Dellinger in the back and tells him DON’T SCREW THIS UP, but who the hell knows what he’s talking about? And more importantly, who cares? Not this reviewer, even though he probably should in the interests of recording the goings-on on this show. After a break, we see Steiner still in the ring; Goldberg’s music hits, and we see Tank Abbott in the back, doing the Goldberg entrance with an annoyed Dellinger and a phalanx of R&B Security dudes. Tank spits on the ground like a heathen, that disgusting slobbering fuck, and then walks out here, stands in the sparks, and basically is a walking illustration of why there is only one Goldberg. I think to myself that it would be cool to get Scott Steiner/Goldberg on PPV, and not as part of a triple threat where Goldberg refuses to follow the script or any nonsense like that. Anyway, Steiner immediately overhead suplexes Abbott and then gets top control and tries to choke him out. Why would you book Steiner dominating Abbott with forearms while trying to heat Tank up for Goldberg? Rick Steiner walks out here and pulls his brother off of Tank, then IT’S A SWERVE, BRO: Rick turns on Scott and helps Tank beat him up. Okay, sure, whatever. I am bummed about Rick Steiner’s return, by the way. Russo celebrates what just happened in the back, then tells Liz that it’s time for the match, threatens a random dude backstage, and tells someone else off camera that they’re on “standby.” It’s probably another SWERVE, BRO. It’s hard to care. Why is Russo so dead set on making Liz wrestle? She’s a valet who might waffle you with a bat, but that’s about it. Russo is such a strange dude. He creeps me out. Daffney is wearing a shirt that says LIZ WILL DIE. She comes to the ring and screams and runs around in a circle like she’s Rick Steiner. I will say that the crowd pops for Liz slapping Daffney and hitting a couple of hair beals. Madusa was the lady on standby, and she pulls Liz away and threatens her, but Mona, who is still in this company instead of being better used in some other company that most of this crowd wishes they were watching instead, makes the save. Madusa lands a nasty back suplex in there, but Liz comes back in the ring and cracks Madusa with a chair. The crowd popped for anything Liz did in there. R&B Security drags her back to Russo. F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea and Kevin Nash do absolutely nothing to get the Filthy Animals over in this next match. Nor Mike Awesome, who comes out to join them. And for that matter, nor Juventud Guerrera walks the ramp and yells about something at the commentary desk; I can’t hear. The New Blood runs away, drawing Bollea out. Juvi hits Nash with a missile dropkick in the ring that he basically no-sells. We cut to the back, where Horace pops up to try and help ol’ Terry, but they lure Terry in and beat the shit out of him with a sneak attack, then dump him in the hood of a car and drive off. We cut back to Nash powerbombing Juvi. Yeah, I’m ready for Nash to get the fuck off my screen at this point. We cut back outside, where the Filthy Animals are driving away until they are cut off by the Goldberg monster truck. We go immediately to break. Where can you get a tie-dyed nWo shirt like the one this rando is wearing for the Road Report segment? Bollea got out of the trunk somehow and is hobble-jogging around backstage. Jeff Jarrett defends the WCW World Heavyweight Championship against Sting. There’s a crow on the TurnerTron. I don’t know, none of the action matters, really. Get to the convoluted finish. And I say this even though Sting has been excellent lately and Jarrett is very good. Sting has a wonderful little babyface shine segment to start the match, full of energy. He even hits a vertical suplex from his position on the floor, snapping Jarrett back onto the raised ramp (!). He misses a diving top-rope splash and crashes into the ramp, though, and that allows Jarrett to take over. Jarrett immediately grabs a chair and attacks Sting with it, driving him back up the ramp. Jarrett thinks he’s done Sting in, but the Stinger gets up and fires back with a running clothesline that knocks them both back into the ring. Jarrett is up first and looks for a Figure Four, which he locks on. Sting makes it out and wins a punch-up with Jarrett. He scores one Stinger Splash, then a second. He locks on a Scorpion Deathlock, but Vampiro bursts up out of the ring and drags Sting into the hole. Smoke pours out of the hole as the crowd chants BULLSHIT, which obviously this is. Sting gets another bloodbath as Jarrett covers for three. This was stupid. The rest of the New Blood walk out and attack Sting. Nash and Bollea walk out to make the save. The guy who is driving the Goldberg truck runs over the Filthy Animals's car (or Tank Abbott’s car if what commentary is saying ends up being the story going forward, I don’t know) in the parking lot. Goldberg was not on this show, but I’m sort of glad he wasn’t because this would have been a shitty comeback show. Fuck me, this show took forever to end. When I am sad because I don’t have any more Nitros to watch, I’ll think back to this one and cure my sadness. -50,000,000 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. Edited October 29 by SirSmUgly 1
zendragon Posted October 28 Posted October 28 If there's one wrestler who appreciated the value of hard work! 2
SirSmUgly Posted October 30 Author Posted October 30 (edited) Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and nine – 10 May 2000 "The WCW Gang rips off the many faces of Mick Foley and, for one tarnished segment, manages to hit what I think is actually rock bottom for this whole Nitro Era" Recap: Nitro was bad…I don’t expect Ruschoff to follow up an interesting and fairly exciting Thunder and then an inconsistent but ultimately enjoyable PPV with a third watchable outing…That’s beyond them…I’m just pleased that we got two shows in a row that I got considerable enjoyment from… Chris Candido (w/Tammy Sytch) defends the WCW World Cruiserweight Championship to open the show…Candido yaps a bit before the match…He’s like, Tammy’s the best, but be sure that you do no more than gaze at her wares…But I don’t want to gaze at her wares…Tammy takes off her robe so everyone can gaze at her wares anyway…Crowbar (w/Daffney) is the recipient of the title shot…They’ve still got the raised ramp, so I guess it’ll be a feature of the set going forward?...Lots of switching and countering to start…Candido counters his way into hitting a DDT for two… Crowbar hits a DVD in response and then scores a somersault guillotine legdrop, which draws Tammy onto the apron for a successful distraction…Candido back suplexes Crowbar to the floor and then slingshot crossbodies Crowbar before taking a chair from Tammy…Crowbar baseball slides into the chair, knocking it into Candido, and then hits a top rope splash and a running lariat off the apron and onto a seated Candido at ringside… Crowbar doesn’t press his advantage enough and gets caught and vertically suplexed from the ring onto the ramp by Candido…Candido tries another vertical suplex in the ring, but Crowbar blocks it and lands a Falcon Arrow Mindbender for two…Crowbar tries a top rope rana, but he gets countered into a super powerbomb…Candido goes up, but Daffney hops in the ring, crotches him, and drills a top-rope rana Frankenscreamer from the top…Tammy tackles Daffney and they roll around for a bit…Candido moves Daffney away, then counters out of a Crowbar grab and hits a sit-out powerbomb, then lands a diving headbutt for three…Very good opener!... Tonight’s features: Tenay interviews Vampiro…Footage of Russo bringing Dopey Dave to his side…Liz vs. Rhonda Singh…Horace Hogan vs. Konnan…Mike Awesome vs. Sting in an Ambulance Match… Bisch sits with the Cat and Kimberly backstage and suggests to Terry Funk that he give up the hardcore title rather than get his ass kicked by the New Blood…The Funker refuses, so Bischoff tries to pay him off…Funk is insulted and chooses to leave…Bisch sends the Cat to go get Harlem Heat Incorporated to do a job on the Funker… Tank Abbott and Rick Steiner are WALKING, but the real story is that the Goldberg monster truck pulls up in the background, tailing them… Video package that Daffney makes better just by being herself: Russo shows Dopey Dave, Crowbar, and Daffney around NYC…Russo impatiently tells Daffney to go play in traffic so he can pitch Dave…We cut immediately to Daffney prancing out into the middle of a busy street and singing…BWAHAHA…Dave says he’s never seen a naked woman before – uh, did Torrie or Daffney not even bang him once? – and excitedly views a skin flick in Times Square…Daffney is the absolute best… Harlem Heat Incorporated (w/J. Biggs and Cash) stink and are together again for some dumb reason even though Stevie can’t get along with one single tag partner at this point…Stevie grabs a mic and promises to beat the shit out of Terry Funk at the behest of Ruschoff… Stevie Ray Insults the World: GET YOUR OLD, DECREPIT FRUIT BOOTY DOWN HERE, AND WE’RE GONNA STUFF IT IN THIS TRASH CAN…Heh heh…Funk gets beaten down by Stevie, Big Tony, and Cash…Biggs joins commentary and says that HHI has promised to win the hardcore belt for him on his birthday…Stevie won’t let Cash get the pinfall after a Cash Splash (that’s my name for it)…They all argue over who gets the pinfall…Big Tony clocks Stevie with a trash can lid, then punches Cash…Tony and Stevie go at it…Funk hits Cash with a chair to the dome and gets a quick three…The crowd got behind Funk for the first time that I’ve really seen during this run… Tenay interviews Vampiro…What the fuck, Tenay is confused that Vampiro has “show[n] up in character” for this thing…Fuck off, I’ve checked out…This feels a bit like they’re trying to pull a “Jim Ross interviews Mankind” thing, but in an infinitely less compelling way…I mean, Vamp speaks of the popular Sting like Mankind spoke of the popular Shawn Michaels in that interview…This stinks…Vampiro birdnapped “Steve’s” crows and implies that he’s going to go Ozzy Osbourne on the crow…Sting attacks Vamp before he can chomp on the crow’s crown…I mean, this was so shitty, man…And now Sting is making dumb puns…LET’S SHED A LITTLE LIGHT ON YOUR LIFE *smashes Vamp with light fixture*…LET’S HAVE OUR FIRST CAGE MATCH *smashes Vamp with bird cage*…Sting calls the guy “Ian” rather than “Vampiro,” and welcome back to the Absolute Dirt Worst list, Stinger!...And the Worst Feuds list, too…This little segment cemented it… Shawn Stasiak meets Lash LeRoux in the ring…So, did he get re-hired, or like, what?...Tenay is equally confused…LeRoux grabs a mic and declares himself Corporal Cajun…This guy SUCKS…He needs more time on WCWSN before they run him out here in this spot…He’s very young and inexperienced, so I blame WCW for putting him in a spot that he’s not ready for…Curt Hennig joins commentary and pretends that he’s not now helping Stasiak…This doesn’t completely offend me or anything…That’s a win considering the matchup…Stasiak wins an obligabrawl, but the corporal comes back as Tenay yammers on about “gimmick infringement” at the desk…Tenay has been absolutely dreadful tonight, but again, I don’t blame him…He’s been put into a position to fail…There’s another obligabrawl, and Hennig, who apparently helped Corporal Cajun get reinstated, attacks the corporal…Stasiak hits a Perfect Plex for three, and then backs off as the rest of the M.I.A. charges to the ring… Vince Russo is being a creeper again…I feel legitimately bad for Lizzie…He talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and the point is that he tells Liz about her match with Rhonda Singh…He also promises to give Liz a skimpierwrestling outfit… Daffney is still the fucking best video: Daffney freaks out over a small Statue of Liberty model standing outside a souvenir shop that she thinks is the real one…Crowbar is skeptical, as usually, he’s seen Lady Liberty photographed while standing in water…Russo actually gets me to crack a smile by offhandedly lying that this is the real one and they just move it around the city from day to day…Anyway, that souvenir shop is where they got the tiny souvenir Statue of Liberty that Dave broke over his father’s head on Monday…You know Russo was proud of himself for thinking of how to make that weapon of choice make sense…That was one conversation that began and ended with the word LOGIC!... Rhonda Singh is out to wrestle Liz (w/R&B Security)…Liz survives a butt smash from Singh…The Total Package runs in and stands in front of Liz to keep Singh from smashing Liz…Singh runs around TTP, but Liz puts up double boots and knocks Singh back into a Torture Rack…Package hugs Liz, but doesn’t see Russo send Chuck Palumbo running to the ring with a bat…Palumbo hits Liz in the back with the bat, then tees off on Package with it…We go to break, and when we come back, we see Palumbo re-re-re-kidnap Liz… Boy, these major angles are all excruciatingly painful to sit through… Vince Russo, Dopey Dave, and Daffney are going to do some promo work in the ring…Russo is stoked that he managed to get Ric Flair to give up on pro wrestling…Russo yammers on about what a bad dad that Ric was to Dopey Dave…Dopey Dave takes the mic and is like, You weren’t a rad dad, you were a bad dad, the worst ol’ dad I ever had, and that makes me sad, and it makes me mad, me hating on you isn’t just a fad, ‘cuz I’m an angry lad and you’re a total cad…It was basically a bad promo in which he talks about banging a tall blonde while Daffney is standing right there and misquotes “Cat’s Cradle,” so the paraphrase that I wrote was definitely way better… Oh fuuuuuuck, now Russo demands that “Uncle Arn” get out here for a tongue-lashing…Arn’s going to have to save this segment from a trip to the same list as the Sting/Vampiro thing from earlier tonight…Arn is disappointed in Dopey Dave, mostly because he’s aligned with “a groupie with power”…Arn does do a good job of arguing that Russo is doing his typical sneakfuck tactic of preying on a confused young guy, though…OK, yeah, he did enough to make this not entirely worthless…Of course he did…He’s Arn Anderson…He points out that Dave had money, at least, even if his parents suck…I mean yeah, he wasn’t homeless, but too many Boomer parents think that money and consumer products make up for love and affection… Anyway, Dave covers his ears...Russo apparently was watching WCW television back in March when Arn told Ric he had one or two more good fights left in him…He books Arn for one of those fights, later tonight, against Dopey Dave…Arn basically responds by saying that he barely has a neck anymore, but he can definitely fuck Dave up…True… Bischoff, Kimberly, the Cat, and Chuck Palumbo plot backstage… F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea is a cornball bitch, but these black Dodge Chargers he keeps pulling up to the shows in are sweet… Bischoff, the Cat, and Kimberly have cornered Terry Funk backstage again…Bisch wants the hardcore belt…Funk tells Bischoff to fuck off…Bisch books Funk in another match, presumably against Chuck Palumbo… Speaking of Chuck Palumbo, here he is walking the ramp…Terry Funk is back out for another match…Every angle is a misfire on this show…Palumbo opens with chair shots, and you know what, I’ll tell you the finish…After a table spot and a crowd brawl, they wander backstage…Palumbo tries to dump Funk over a railing and onto the concrete below, but The Total Package runs up and beats down Palumbo, then tosses him into a dumpster…Funk pins him there for three…TTP continues his assault after the match, demanding info on the location of Liz…R&B Security run up and mace Package, then cuff him… OK, so Horace is facing Konnan…Or Billy Kidman, as Tony S. says now…OK, maybe they switched it on me, or maybe I just heard wrong, but I’m not going back to find out…Anyway, if Bollea interferes, Horace is fired…If Horace loses, Horace is fired…Not that half of the firings that have already happened have stuck... Before the match, we have a break in which we see Kevin Nash show up to the arena…Norman Smiley and Ralphus are panhandling in the background… OK, so it’s Kidman (w/The Filthy Animals and Eric Bischoff) wrestling Horace Hogan…Bischoff rants about how the Bollea Family is terrible and bad and mean and is forcing Bischoff to put the above-mentioned stips on this match…He sucks at heeling while he does so…Oh, wonderful, now he’s going to be a shitty heel on commentary…Kidman gets rolled by Horace fucking Hogan…Kidman knocks the ref down, but Bisch keeps Charles Robinson from calling for a DQ…Kidman is trying to dodge HORACE HOGAN with intentional DQs…Fucking dumb… This is a disaster of a segment, with Bischoff yelling on the house mic and Horace dominating Kidman…They literally are doing the fucking Dude Love/Steve Austin thing where Bischoff keeps changing the rules!...He pronounces the match to suddenly be Falls Count Anywhere when Horace is down outside the ring…OH FUCK OFF, Tony S., for saying, “Have we ever seen anything like this?”…YES…WE DID…AT OVER THE EDGE ’98…Juvi is with the Filthy Animals as an Eddy Guerrero replacement now…Bisch declares it a handicap match and the Animals beat the shit out of Horace…Kidman then lands a Savage Elbow that HORACE KICKS OUT OF...Horace then hits Kidman with a DVD for three… HOLY FUCK, now Bischoff declares this a Texas Death Match so that Kidman has a chance to get up before a ten count…What thee fuck?...Why would they book Kidman like this?...Or, as a side bar, popular babyface Rey Misterio Jr.?...This is insanity…Just baffling booking…Horace Hogan looking like a megastar against the whole-ass Filthy Animals in the worst possible rip-off of Dude/Austin that could possibly exist in this or any universe…Bischoff next declares this an I Quit Match, which I guess is because he tries to get Horace to quit being friends with Bollea and to join the New Blood…Horace refuses, so they gang pin Horace for three before Bollea runs down there and destroys everyone…Bisch lands a chair shot to Bollea’s back that the latter no-sells… Bollea chases Bischoff, which allows the Filthy Animals to jump in the ring and resume their beatdown of Horace…Of course, here comes Kevin Nash…The Filthy Animals, who freaked out at Bollea’s appearance, are damned near sobbing in fear at Nash’s appearance…They run off as Nash enters the ring…Vince Russo walks onto the ramp to really put a stamp on this sucker…Russo SHOOTS by mentioning Vinnie Vegas and Oz, then claims that it was his writing prowess that put the “cool” in “Big Daddy Cool”…He promises to Make Nash Cool Again…And he does so by entirely missing a bloodbath onto Nash…Nash casually watches the bloodbath spatter about two or three feet to his left…I’m not sure any liquid even splashed on him…The look on Russo’s face is PRICELESS…They finally get some Karo onto Nash while Juvi cackles at the production fuckup… OK, let’s go through this…Kidman gets blown away by Horace Hogan as part of his “big push”…Rey is a heel even though the crowd loves him…It takes Bischoff and four Filthy Animals to beat Horace Hogan…The match is a sad, pathetic ripoff of the classic Dude/Austin match at OtE ’98 that reminds us all that we could be watching a far superior wrestling show instead…The Animals all get destroyed by Bollea and cower in fear from Nash…Russo comes out and makes a bunch of insider references, then threatens a bloodbath that misses wide left… I think we’ve found it, folks!...This, right here, what we just saw together (if you went back and watched it, at least) is the single worst segment in the history of Nitro Era WCW television…Could it get worse than this?...I put nothing past Ruschoff…But the mix of failed booking, failed characterization, failed angles, and failed production is so potent that this is truly, of all the Absolute Dirt Worst things that I’ve ever seen on WCW programming, the Absolute Dirt Worst-est of them all…We’ve made a key discovery, everyone!...For science!... Ruschoff run and hide in their limo, but Bollea and Nash show up and bash the windows with pipes… Anyway, after all that, I have nothing left…Let’s just get through the rest of this bullshit…OK, Arn Anderson can’t take a bump, can he?...Well, he’s wrestling David Flair (w/Daffney), so maybe he’ll just maul the guy with punches…Yep, Arn mauls the guy with punches, then hits a spinebuster on a charging Crowbar because why not let the retired injured wrestler easily handle one of the young guys with lots of promise?...And I love Arn, but come on…Dave cracks Arn in the skull with a model Statue of Liberty, then locks on a Figure Four as Crowbar counts the pinfall… Daffney is cool and the best video: Daffney gets excited over a model Tinky Winky in FAO Schwartz…She is so weirdly adorable… Rick Steiner gets in the ring, says that Goldberg is old news, and introduces Tank Abbott…Tank does the Goldberg entrance again…Ricky then talks again and says he was just trying to keep Scotty from getting his dumb ass fired when he attacked him last week…But also, he says that he’s getting Scotty back for the SuperBrawl VIII incident…Whatever…Tank woodenly calls out Goldberg, but he gets KroniK instead…Everyone but Clarke does some godawful mic work before KroniK gets in the ring and a fight commences…Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas are down almost immediately to attack KroniK…Scott Steiner runs out here, fighting off R&B Security as best he can…He gets away initially and seeks Ricky…KroniK and Scott Steiner lay out security members in the ring while the heels back away...Ricky and Tank escape and cackle at the top of the ramp, but their backs are to the TurnerTron and they miss it showing the Goldberg truck rolling up and destroying another car of theirs…It was far better when they did this "Goldberg destroys the heel's car" gimmick with Sid Vicious… Daffney rules video: Dopey Dave asks Daffney to marry him…Daffney: YESSSSSSSSSS AAAAAAAAAH I LOVE YOU, DAVID…She’s far too good for him…And I don't know why she's willing to ignore the tall blonde that Dopey Dave claimed to have scored earlier in this show... In true WCW style, Mike Awesome faces Sting in an Ambulance Match which is a) the main event and b) that starts with about four minutes to go in the show…Sting and Awesome work entirely too hard for this crappy show…Maybe feud these two instead of feuding Sting with Vampiro…They work their asses off and end up climbing on top of the ambulance, where they have a legitimately dangerous counter-Awesome Bomb spot that they luckily don’t lose their footing on…Sting slips out and lands a Scorpion Death Drop on the top of the ambulance…Sting opens the door and Vampiro pops out, pulls a Muta by spitting red liquid into Sting's eyes, and drags Sting into the ambulance…That ends the match in favor of Awesome, though Sting’s music plays…The ambulance rolls away with Awesome still laid out on top… I mean, wow…What can anyone possibly say about this show?...Other than OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW, WHY WOULD YOU PRODUCE THIS SHOW, IT’S A CRIME AGAINST THE WONDERFUL ART OF PRO WRESTLING… Edited October 30 by SirSmUgly 2
BobbyWhioux Posted October 30 Posted October 30 On 10/11/2024 at 6:36 PM, SirSmUgly said: S PSA: Brian Knobbs tells the kids to save their heads for school and not for bashing each other with trash can lids or other plundah. I find myself opining on how these wrestlers are being used and not on the matches, which is a bad sign. Tonight’s matches aren’t shitty; they are rote and boring, though. This one has another typical obligabrawl that leads to a DQ when Rhodes rips Hennig’s cast off and then punches the ref. Rhodes attacks Hennig’s arm with the chair, but – oh man, too much of this fucking guy – Hulk Hogan power walks in and makes the save. Madden sarcastically speaks for me: “Why doesn’t he run in on every match? Every match, every segment, do a promo, save somebody, pin somebody, HOGAN HOGAN HOGAN HOGAN. This is wonderful; I love this.” Hogan raises Hennig’s arm while Madden gets mock excited that yet another wrestler has Hogan’s “stamp of approval” so graciously bestowed upon them. You know, fair play to WCW. If you're going to do a "Don't end up like me" Public Service Announcement, having Brian Knobbs make it and airing it right before a Brian Knobbs match is one of the best tactical approaches you could take. With all the criticism WCW's decision making gets in this era, we really should shout out the good ones. And I'm probably putting myself out on the flimsiest limb of the wrestling fan tree with this one, but I can never bring myself to hate Mark Madden's color analyst run in 2000 WCW thanks to gems like this. I've said before that JBL was a good heel commentator on WWE TV because he clearly held "Jesse Ventura for the new generation" as his personal north star and kept aiming for it however short he was destined to fall. I feel similarly about Madden in WCW. He's clearly trying to emulate Bobby Heenan at the height of his 80's WWF Hogan bashing power. And yes, obviously he's no Heenan (and you could even still see the real thing on Thunder at this point to prove it). But wanting to be Bobby Heenan is just about the best aspiration a heel color analyst can have. Heenan as evil color analyst is What Got Me Into Wrestling. And as someone who fell out of love with Hulkamania very early in my wrestling watching career, Heenan ceaselessly, brilliantly, ripping him was an important salve. Heenan's hatred of Hogan was cathartic. No candle can replace the sun, but even a candle is better than no light at all. There's one point I remember from this era where someone hits Hogan over the head with a chair, and no sooner does Schiavone describe it with dismay than Madden proclaims "and he's got no hair up there to cushion the blow!" Rarely did 2000 WCW make me laugh intentionally, but that one still cracks me up to this day. Madden could never carry Heenan's headset, but I can forever empathize with someone wanting to try their best to. And at this point I was taking what I could get. Yeah, so I'm the guy who actually kinda likes Madden's commentator run. Sorry. 2
BobbyWhioux Posted October 30 Posted October 30 32 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said: Daffney rules video: Dopey Dave asks Daffney to marry him…Daffney: YESSSSSSSSSS AAAAAAAAAH I LOVE YOU, DAVID…She’s far too good for him…And I don't know why she's willing to ignore the tall blonde that Dopey Dave claimed to have scored earlier in this show... Daffney knew she could beat Torrie Wilson's ass if it came to that. Reading these recaps and she's starting to feel like the MVP for WCW in 2000 2
SirSmUgly Posted October 30 Author Posted October 30 (edited) 9 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said: You know, fair play to WCW. If you're going to do a "Don't end up like me" Public Service Announcement, having Brian Knobbs make it and airing it right before a Brian Knobbs match is one of the best tactical approaches you could take. With all the criticism WCW's decision making gets in this era, we really should shout out the good ones. Something something blind squirrels something something acorns! Quote And I'm probably putting myself out on the flimsiest limb of the wrestling fan tree with this one, but I can never bring myself to hate Mark Madden's color analyst run in 2000 WCW thanks to gems like this. I've said before that JBL was a good heel commentator on WWE TV because he clearly held "Jesse Ventura for the new generation" as his personal north star and kept aiming for it however short he was destined to fall. I feel similarly about Madden in WCW. He's clearly trying to emulate Bobby Heenan at the height of his 80's WWF Hogan bashing power. And yes, obviously he's no Heenan (and you could even still see the real thing on Thunder at this point to prove it). But wanting to be Bobby Heenan is just about the best aspiration a heel color analyst can have. Heenan as evil color analyst is What Got Me Into Wrestling. And as someone who fell out of love with Hulkamania very early in my wrestling watching career, Heenan ceaselessly, brilliantly, ripping him was an important salve. Heenan's hatred of Hogan was cathartic. No candle can replace the sun, but even a candle is better than no light at all. There's one point I remember from this era where someone hits Hogan over the head with a chair, and no sooner does Schiavone describe it with dismay than Madden proclaims "and he's got no hair up there to cushion the blow!" Rarely did 2000 WCW make me laugh intentionally, but that one still cracks me up to this day. Madden could never carry Heenan's headset, but I can forever empathize with someone wanting to try their best to. And at this point I was taking what I could get. I can understand why you feel this way, honestly. And Madden has made me laugh a few times during this watch. But I think I have two big problems with Madden's work: 1. It's very forced; JBL made his Ventura act come off as natural. Madden's attempts at being Heenan mean that for every funny thing he says, there are twenty that suck. 2. He's basically a Cageside Seats or r/SquaredCircle poster (before they even existed) in commentary form. Madden's "dumbest, loudest wrestling fan on a message board" gimmick is definitely a new-age version of Heenan! I also hate it. I think how much you can vibe with the overall gimmick determines how much appreciation that you have for it. That, and how much you appreciate Madden trying to modernize Heenan's gimmick, which as zendragon has pointed out a few times in this thread is a tired, out-of-date Borsch Belt comedian act at this point. Quote Daffney knew she could beat Torrie Wilson's ass if it came to that. Reading these recaps and she's starting to feel like the MVP for WCW in 2000 Torrie is walking around with Kidman now, so who the hell knows what Dopey Dave was talking about. I think he's just confused. But yes. You know, I hadn't seen Daffney in WCW since I watched these 2000 shows when they originally aired, and I remembered absolutely loving her. That is one thing that did not change. I've said it before, but she mashes up Lydia Deetz and Harley Quinn into one gimmick. How she manages to be nutty AND adorable AND so funny at the same time, I do not know, but she has been amazing in her role and is one of the bright spots of 2000 WCW so far. Edited October 30 by SirSmUgly 2
Gorman Posted October 30 Posted October 30 I used to announce Steel City Wrestling with Madden. He would always talk about his friends in WCW on the air, and sure enough, he showed up there! 1
caley Posted October 30 Posted October 30 There is so much STUFF on these shows that I get confused reading these recaps and wonder if I missed something (Rick and Tank are buddies now?!). It made me wonder if I kept them straight back when I was watching and then I remembered when we saw Nitro here and Russo talked about "Your hero Goldberg" and my friend looked at me and went "Wait are we supposed to like him again?!" and, me, who was like my friends' wrestling encyclopedia (There is even a photo in my high school yearbook of me kissing the PWI Almanac!) shrugged my shoulders and said "Uh...I guess?!" As a guy who fashioned himself as some sort of writer for a while, I think that's where these shows hurt the most: they're so badly written. Stories start and stop with no resolution. Character motivations are often nonsensical (especially with Russo's SWERVES). I can tolerate mediocre matches or acting if it's in service of a solid storyline but all three at once!? 3
BobbyWhioux Posted October 31 Posted October 31 13 hours ago, SirSmUgly said: Torrie is walking around with Kidman now, so who the hell knows what Dopey Dave was talking about. I think he's just confused. I'm willing to buy that Dopey Dave was clinging to his false memory of Wilson having been legitimately into him [instead of a Femme Fatale playing him for a patsy on the NWO's behalf] over a year after the fact and trying to live off it because it was the closest he had ever come to following in dad's "Space Mountain" footsteps. Such long-term consistent characterization is not often achieved by WCW's Terminal Illness Era, or any company's Russo-booked era. There's even a tragic poetry in David Flair, bottomed out and after "snapping", accidentally creating his own shadow of dad's Horseman. Instead of Arn Anderson wielding a crowbar, he tags with man using the nom de guerre Crowbar. They wear jeans instead of dad's flashy robes and shoes-that-cost-more-than-your-house or Arn's no nonsense basic trunks. The "eye candy" is the breakout star of the group (and at points their actual enforcer). And of course there's not quite enough of them and there never will be. For the son is not the father. Because of course I deeply empathised with David Flair's doomed quest to chase his father's living ghost, picking up on more pathos that WCW likely meant to lay down, and despite Dopey Dave's limited ability to inspire it in-ring in his own right. Me, ever the contrarian. Give me a flawed midcarder with a weird wrinkle and no true hope of ever main eventing or even deserving it and I will make him into my Bad News Bears forever. 10 hours ago, caley said: There is so much STUFF on these shows that I get confused reading these recaps and wonder if I missed something (Rick and Tank are buddies now?!). It made me wonder if I kept them straight back when I was watching and then I remembered when we saw Nitro here and Russo talked about "Your hero Goldberg" and my friend looked at me and went "Wait are we supposed to like him again?!" and, me, who was like my friends' wrestling encyclopedia (There is even a photo in my high school yearbook of me kissing the PWI Almanac!) shrugged my shoulders and said "Uh...I guess?!" As a guy who fashioned himself as some sort of writer for a while, I think that's where these shows hurt the most: they're so badly written. Stories start and stop with no resolution. Character motivations are often nonsensical (especially with Russo's SWERVES). I can tolerate mediocre matches or acting if it's in service of a solid storyline but all three at once!? I absolutely do not remember that bit from a few pages back where Bam Bam Bigelow started sticking up for David Flair and his castoff crew, which is too bad because it ties in nicely with this David-as-Bizarro-Ric thing I've got going in this post. And I guess it just all got lost in Russo's blizzard of swerves. Or maybe I'd flipped to RAW. 3
SirSmUgly Posted November 1 Author Posted November 1 On 10/30/2024 at 12:51 PM, caley said: There is so much STUFF on these shows that I get confused reading these recaps and wonder if I missed something (Rick and Tank are buddies now?!). It made me wonder if I kept them straight back when I was watching and then I remembered when we saw Nitro here and Russo talked about "Your hero Goldberg" and my friend looked at me and went "Wait are we supposed to like him again?!" and, me, who was like my friends' wrestling encyclopedia (There is even a photo in my high school yearbook of me kissing the PWI Almanac!) shrugged my shoulders and said "Uh...I guess?!" Rick just showed up randomly again and was buddies with Tank. The last time we saw him was about two months ago, and he was palling around with Mike Rotundo/a. Before that, he was off TV for two months after being heel buddies (and then enemies) with Sid. People just drop off TV all the time. Remember how much of a push as a smark-hating bitter second-gen wrestler Dustin Rhodes was getting just six weeks ago on television? Ruschoff showed up, and the guy disappeared. Sullivan et al. chose to build the wrong guys over the winter, but Ruschoff doesn't know how to build any guys at all. Is it worse that THE WALL, BROTHER was getting a sustained push or that zero wrestlers are going to get over under Ruschoff to a level they weren't before other than Scott Steiner and Booker T., both of whom have been knocking at the door for months already anyway? Maybe we can credit Ruschoff with getting Lance Storm over as a midcard heel, too. I'll have to see when I get there. Quote As a guy who fashioned himself as some sort of writer for a while, I think that's where these shows hurt the most: they're so badly written. Stories start and stop with no resolution. Character motivations are often nonsensical (especially with Russo's SWERVES). I can tolerate mediocre matches or acting if it's in service of a solid storyline but all three at once!? I think Russo's "strength," as it were, is in booking complete shows that tell interesting, show-long stories with multiple narratives weaving in and out of one another. The go-home Thunder to Slamboree is a perfect example of that, as is Deadly Games. Those shows are Russo's finest hour as a writer. But as a long-term writer with an eye for setting up important plot beats one, two, four, eight, ten, twenty weeks away? He can't do it. (And he's not very good or consistent at booking compelling individual shows with lots of plot-heavy stuff, either. That's why it stands out all the more during the rare times that he pulls it off.) 19 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said: I'm willing to buy that Dopey Dave was clinging to his false memory of Wilson having been legitimately into him [instead of a Femme Fatale playing him for a patsy on the NWO's behalf] over a year after the fact and trying to live off it because it was the closest he had ever come to following in dad's "Space Mountain" footsteps. Such long-term consistent characterization is not often achieved by WCW's Terminal Illness Era, or any company's Russo-booked era. There's even a tragic poetry in David Flair, bottomed out and after "snapping", accidentally creating his own shadow of dad's Horseman. Instead of Arn Anderson wielding a crowbar, he tags with man using the nom de guerre Crowbar. They wear jeans instead of dad's flashy robes and shoes-that-cost-more-than-your-house or Arn's no nonsense basic trunks. The "eye candy" is the breakout star of the group (and at points their actual enforcer). And of course there's not quite enough of them and there never will be. For the son is not the father. Because of course I deeply empathised with David Flair's doomed quest to chase his father's living ghost, picking up on more pathos that WCW likely meant to lay down, and despite Dopey Dave's limited ability to inspire it in-ring in his own right. Me, ever the contrarian. Give me a flawed midcarder with a weird wrinkle and no true hope of ever main eventing or even deserving it and I will make him into my Bad News Bears forever. OK, you're hitting on something here that I think might be one of my more out-there beliefs about this era of WCW: David Flair, for all his wooden acting and simple in-ring work, was a compelling character because of his on-screen relationship with Ric. So, you have a running theme here in which David turns on Ric and allies with Hogan in early 1999; then, in 2000, he aligns with Vince Russo. In both cases, Dave is presented as desperately wanting Ric to be a traditional father figure and, when he can't get that from him, turning to one of Ric's sworn enemies as a father figure to hurt Ric. This theme, if you look at how David and Ric relate to one another, is shockingly well-presented in a consistent manner across something like three separate booking tenures. Dave turns on Ric; Ric decides that it's because he's not Nature Boy-ing hard enough in the ring that David lost respect for him, totally eliding the reason that Dave did what he did (and baffling Arn Anderson, who has consistently been presented as someone who has moved past being a Horseman or living the high life on the road to instead have more time with his own son). Ric, focused on living the Horsemen lifestyle and showing up his own son, turns heel; his determination to show Dave "what he's missing out on" drives him into extremely poor psychological health. It also causes him to become so megalomaniacal that he reconnects with David to make him the ultimate nepo-baby - but only after getting revenge on Dave by having guys like Meng destroy him first, to break his son down and bring the kid back under his wing. After Ric is deposed by Sting as WCW President and thus cannot protect Dave anymore, Chris Benoit defeats David Flair for the U.S. Championship and he walks in on Torrie, who disappeared on him, showing back up at the side of Kidman and having Kidman kick his ass as a very violent dumping tactic. David goes full post-breakup misogynist, which, uh, let's say I understand it after a series of comically stupid breakups that I went through around his age. I don't condone it, and it never got close to full inceldom because I'm not a completely lost soul. Anyway, he stalks Kimberly, gets his ass beat, and is basically in an unhealthy relationship with himself and his self-worth after being dumped until Daffney falls in love with him and joins him. Meanwhile, Ric shows up back on television and is still desperately trying to live the Horsemen lifestyle. This time, he tries to do it by glomming onto Lex Luger and desperately trying to keep his place on Team Package with Luger and Liz. He falls into a feud with Terry Funk because he's more concerned with impressing Luger than with defending WCW from nWo 2000, and when Funk threatens to destroy David in a match, Ric doesn't bother to save his kid. Funk is disgusted. Arn is so disgusted that he refuses to come anywhere near Team Package even as Ric begs him to come back and help recreate the Horsemen again, but as part of Team Package. David, meanwhile, has once again been left out to dry by his father. He's been destroyed by Terry Funk and THE WALL, BROTHER across a couple months of television. That makes him extremely susceptible to Vince Russo, who hates Ric and wants to run him out of wrestling, plying him with the same promise of being a father figure that Hulk Hogan tempted him with over a year ago. He decides once again to get the attention of his father by joining with his biggest enemy. Ric, who still doesn't get it, tries to get Dave to come back to his side by promising him that he can get him a WWF contract. He doesn't understand that David doesn't want money or opportunity - he only valued the opportunity Ric gave him when Ric was at ringside, helping him score victory after tainted victory, because he felt that it brought them closer. David refuses and bashes a tiny statuette over his bewildered and estranged father's dome. This is actually very good soap operatic storytelling about the difficult relationship between a father who was too busy to connect with his son and a son who desperately wants his father's approval and attention and will do harmful things to get it. And this started under Nash/Bischoff, continued under Russo/Ferrara and Sullivan/Dillon/et al., and is picked up again under Ruschoff. WCW somehow stumbled back-ass-wards into a compelling bit of storytelling here, and they never quite did all that they could with it. But yes, even if they didn't mean to imbue David and Ric's strained relationship with such meaning, they somehow managed it! Quote I absolutely do not remember that bit from a few pages back where Bam Bam Bigelow started sticking up for David Flair and his castoff crew, which is too bad because it ties in nicely with this David-as-Bizarro-Ric thing I've got going in this post. And I guess it just all got lost in Russo's blizzard of swerves. Or maybe I'd flipped to RAW. Bam Bam stepping up to protect David when his own father was like FUCK 'EM fits right in with the story they told, even if Bam Bam's sudden concern for David Flair was weird and off-putting. But it's WCW; they're not going to nail a running storyline like this. I don't blame Russo for anything but dropping it when he and Bischoff rebooted things. There are so many reboots from a booking standpoint because of all the changes in power that it's almost impossible to glom onto any of the characters or storylines. Three or four months later, they suddenly are used differently, portrayed differently, or disappear from television altogether. Russo gets a lot of blame for things that really are structural issues within WCW that he couldn't have fixed even if he were a competent booker, IMO. 2 1
BobbyWhioux Posted November 1 Posted November 1 (edited) plus, you know, it's Bam Bam. Bam Bam actually kinda sucked at being a heel, because he was so obviously cool and bad-ass looking that your typical wrestling crowd was practically begging for an excuse to start cheering him. Made even worse because he was a "Monster Heel" so he didn't really cheat all that much, he was more Force Of Nature. You typically had to stick him in heel factions to keep him getting booed by association. Coming to Dopey Dave's aid is far too noble and chivalrous and Champion Of The Downtrodden to have Bam Bam doing that for any length of time if you had any intention of keeping him a heel. Edited November 1 by BobbyWhioux 2
SirSmUgly Posted November 1 Author Posted November 1 Show #240 – 15 May 2000 “The one with lots of title changes and too much talking and entirely too many things going on for a very long hour and 43 minutes” These Nitros are so long. I thought they were only two hours long? Why am I getting an hour and 43 minutes on this recording, then? There were only seventeen minutes of commercials? Were ad buys that shitty at this point? Feud recap: This show remembers that Sting and Vampiro were friends for like two weeks before they started beefing. Vampiro’s Undertaker/Mankind mashup character is extremely shitty, let me tell you, some of the worst junk that’s been put on this television show across its whole run. There’s a Caged Heat House of Pain Match to open the show between Vampiro and Sting. Why wouldn’t you build to this sort of match on PPV? That’s rhetorical; Russo doesn’t know what the word “build” means in a wrestling context. Even Hudson is wondering what the hell they’re doing booking this thing on free television, but he justifies it by saying that Vamp wants the lil’ Stingers to see him destroy Sting without having to ask their parents for forty bucks. So there are handcuffs on the sides of the cell. Was that match originally called a House of Pain Match? Aw, I can’t remember. I guess it’s one of those matches where you have to cuff the guy to win. Sting climbs the cell, beats a panel in with his bat, then hangs there and lands a headscissors on a very slow to react Vamp. Sting beats up Vamp for awhile; Vamp manages to counter and takes some control. This match is acceptable. The crowd is hot for Sting because we’re in Biloxi, a place that still cares about WCW and therefore is the core – actually only, at this point – audience. Vamp’s control segment is bland, but fine, I guess. He tries a dive and gets counter-powerbombed, which is when Sting fires up and lands a series of clotheslines, an inverted atomic drop, and a cage smash. Sting lands another cage smash, then grinds Vamp’s face across the cage and cuffs Vampiro’s right hand. He then cuffs Vampiro’s left hand. Boy, that was easy for Sting. After the match, Sting hits the trapped Vampiro with a couple of Stinger Splashes and a couple of weak two-footed kicks, then leaves the cell. This feud has been complete ass. What a waste of the Stinger. The arena goes dark as the cage raises with the shackled Vampiro hanging there. The lights cut back on, and Vampiro *sigh* has disappeared, like a goofy and uncharismatic Undertaker. I guess we’re finally getting a consistent run of babyface victories now that the long-term veterans are all babyfaces, so that’s something different, right? Shane Douglas jumps Bryan Clarke as Clarke pulls his bags out of his car. Hudson has to point out Goldberg’s monster truck, parked so far in the back of the shot that I wouldn’t have noticed unless he did so. Captain Rection lines up the Misfits in Action in the back and tries to teach them to have good war faces. Then, he names Van Hammer Major Stash, which is dumb, but Hammer just couldn’t be a private to make this silly little joke work. He does allude to having some weed to share with everyone, which makes it even dumber that he couldn’t just be Private Stash. Anyway, Chavo Jr. is now Lieutenant Loco. They quote some lines from Full Metal Jacket in there. Then, Tylene is introduced as Major Gunns. The other dudes in this group check her out while Rection shouts that M.I.A. is ready for war. KroniK enters the ring so that, um, Adams can talk? And make more stupid pot jokes about Clarke missing the 4:20 out of Atlanta and having to drive to Biloxi instead? No, let’s not. Oh no, Adams is insisting. He keeps talking. Finally, he gets done calling Shane Douglas out. Shane Douglas enters to what sounds like generic chamber music, calls everyone in the crowd PIECES OF SHIT and, oh man, do we have to let him talk? Really? Is this necessary? The long and short of it is that Buff Bagwell got shoot suspended, apparently. Hold on. OK, this is great! So, I watched a shoot in which Buff exclaimed DARRELL WILLIAMS, I’LL NEVER FORGET HIS NAME about the guy he slapped to earn his suspension. The guy’s name was actually Darrell Miller, though. Anyway, Miller apparently bumped Liz with a carpet and was the recipient of a slap by Buff when he was unrepentant. They should have put that on TV. It would have been better than any of the angles that were actually on television. Anyway, you can probably guess who Douglas has picked as his new partner while Buff is out. I guessed almost immediately. So, KroniK ends up in a match with Douglas and THE WALL, BROTHER. Clarke runs Douglas off and comes back to the ring. TW,B does manage a chokeslam on Adams, but Clarke intercepts him, knocks him off the raised ramp, and headlocks him so that TW,B can backdrop him through a table. Adams has had time to recover, but he tries to powerbomb TW,B through a table and gets back body dropped onto it instead; TW,B gets on the apron and hits a splash that takes him through the table. Clarke is back up, and Adams basically no-sells this stuff, too. Funny enough, they no-sell this stuff when it’s about the best that TW,B has ever looked other than when he super-chokeslammed Crowbar through the broadcast table. Speaking of the broadcast table, KroniK puts TW,B through it with a High Times. They roll him back in the ring and cover him for three. Mickey Jay awards them the belts. So I guess they’re officially the tag champs now? You know what, we’ll roll with it. WCW World Tag Team Championship title change count: 6 (VACANT > David Flair and Crowbar > The Mamalukes > The Harris Bros. > VACANT > Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas > KroniK)… TW,B is sick of all the unnecessary and overused stretcher job spots and beats up the medics, chokeslamming one through a table and leaving. Huh, that’s about the most effectively that TW,B has been booked the whole time he’s been in the company. What’s up with all the weed references on these shows now? Did Vince Russo see a wrestler perusing a High Times magazine in the back and come to a conclusion about how kewl pot culture is? Bischoff and Kimberly try to ignore Disco, who is desperately trying to get out of this fucking Mamalukes angle and maybe join a group that he wants to be a part of. An annoyed Bischoff tells Disco to go away and do whatever the hell he wants before turning his attention back to Kimberly and helping her spend her portion of the divorce settlement. The Cat marches Terry Funk into the room, and Funk threatens the Cat not to touch him anymore. Bisch tries to sell Funk on handing the belt over and retiring. Funk is disinterested in doing so, so the Cat hits him with a Feliner from behind and beats him down while Bisch goes back to selling Kimberly on getting a double-wide near a casino. Uh, if she’s only getting enough money for a double-wide, her lawyers really fucked up the settlement. Norman Smiley and Ralphus are poors together, which is hilarious. Haha, they are unemployed and hungry! Smiley has an idea for becoming gainfully employed; we see the Goldberg truck in much clearer view as they walk past it. The Filthy Animals (Konnan, Rey Misterio Jr., and Juventud Guerrera) have quite the flashy entrance now! They have weapons and, as Konnan points out in colorful language, a mission to finish off Terry Funk and take the Hardcore Championship from him. So, are we going to put Terry Funk over these three fellas? Wait, four fellas, as the Cat drags Terry Funk to the ring. The Animals land kendo stick and chair shots; Juvi hits a People’s Elbow because he’s still hurt about something the Rock said about him, like, almost a year ago dude, get over it. Rey goes up and lands a chair-assisted diving double legdrop; Juvi goes up next, but the Misfits in Action rush the ring and beat down the Animals. Scott Hudson points out that, in something that is actually somewhat clever, the Misfits are wearing shirts with F.U.B.A.R. on the front. I thought nothing of it, knowing that “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition” is, much like the word snafu, originally a military acronym to talk about how dumb war is. But Hudson points out that it could also stand for “F-U, Bischoff and Russo,” which I somehow missed. I mean, would you expect Ruschoff to nail a double-meaning like that one so expertly? Disco joins his friends, the Filthy Animals, in the ring. What did he do to get Konnan to agree to put up with him? Booker T. runs down and makes the super-save, then rolls Funk on top of Juvi for three. Oh yeah, Booker T.! That guy. So, wait, Booker becomes champ in about seven weeks. In that time, he has to become G.I. Bro before suddenly not being G.I. Bro anymore so he can win the big gold at the final Bash at the Beach. And as for Disco, did I just hallucinate he and Alex Wright tagging up once again in dying days WCW under the Boogie Knights name, or what? Oh, uh, here’s Major Gunns. She tears off her shirt, shows off her boobs, and then gives the Funker CPR. Funk’s hand goes down once, twice, but stays up on the third application of breath, which is marginally clever wrestling comedy. Ric Flair rushes from his car and into the arena, and yes, that Goldberg truck is still sitting there. Norm and Smiley get a job selling popcorn with an arena vendor. More comedy, oh joy. Ric Flair storms into Bischoff’s office and demands information about where Russo is. Bisch says Russo is nowhere around, and Flair threatens to spark another feud with Bischoff in Russo’s absence. Flair storms off, and Bisch reveals that he knows where Russo is; he asks the Cat to give Russo a heads up. And where is Russo, you may ask? Wait for it. Wait for it. He’s in Bischoff’s motor home, parked somewhere on the arena grounds. Look, foreshadowing is a common narrative trope. I am not knocking Ruschoff for using it in their storytelling. But come on, the multiple shots of the Goldberg truck, Kimberly and Bischoff looking at mobile homes, Bisch suddenly and randomly having his double-wide trucked to the arena – it’s just a bit too on the nose. Though maybe I’ll get SWERVED, BRO, and Goldberg won’t be running over the double-wide trailer and will instead run over something else. Or maybe something else will run over the monster truck. Who the hell knows. [Editor's note: I got SWERVED, BRO, as the truck never came anywhere near a double-wide. Huh.] Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch are the next act to make their way to the ring. Candido grabs a mic and challenges a couple to a tag match for the cruiserweight title. Daffney and Crowbar answer the call. PLEASE PUT THE BELT ON THESE TWO. Sure, the Cruiserweight Championship is back in booking hell, but if it’s going to be there, let’s at least give it to Crowbar and Daffney. Ms. Hancock walks out here again. We look at her and not at Crowbar and Candido having a good television match. Candido lands a superplex and goes up to finish it with a diving headbutt. He lands it, but Daffney makes the save. Candido grabs Daffney and just watches Crowbar try to vertically suplex Sytch; she turns it into a small package for two. So, the ladies hit a series of moves; Daffney gets two after planting Candido with a DDT and Sytch lands a swinging neckbreaker on Crowbar for two. This is a disjointed mess. They needed to work the ladies landing their offense in on the fellas in a way that felt more organic and not like a series of spots to pop the crowd. The match goes outside, where Crowbar uses the railing to land a Vader Bomb on Candido. They toss a chair around until Sytch baseball slides it into Crowbar’s face, then hits him in the head with the chair as he very clearly feeds for her. Madden points it out and tries to justify it by saying that Crowbar likes pain, but man, you didn’t need to point out that obvious feed. So, yeah, Daffney hits Sytch with a Bronco Buster. Ms. Hancock grabs a mic during this finishing run and tells Tony S. that she’s going to do a ramp dance. Crowbar is so into it that he goes out on the ramp. Candido follows, and they struggle on a powerbomb reversal spot that finally ends with Crowbar landing a Falcon Arrow onto the ramp. Meanwhile, Sytch hits a stunner on Daffney in the ring, and Daffney has to no-sell it to get right back up and roll Sytch up for three and the title. You know what? I remember Crowbar and Daffney sharing a title belt, but I thought that it was the Hardcore Championship that they shared. Daffney and Crowbar fight over who should get to wear the belt, but never forget WCW Booking Principle #1: Fuck the Cruiserweight Champ! Ric Flair storms down and beats down Crowbar. Flair uses a mic to scream for Vince Russo’s presence. There’s some sort of damning tape that I forgot exists, I guess? I’m sure Russo mentioned it at some point on Thunder or whatever, but I’ve already forgotten about it. Russo threatens to play the tape in the production truck. We go to break. Flair is still apoplectic in the ring when we come back. We cut to, uh, Sting walking out to his rental car, and it’s on fire, and then we cut back to Flair? What the fuck kind of sequencing is that? Focus on one thing at a time, Russo. OK, so here’s the tape. Russo, Dave, and Daffney pull up to Flair’s house. Dave pretty much says that his dad remarried Beth and she treats him like shit. Russo points at a family portrait and runs down Beth’s kids Reid and Megan. I mean, the worst Megan did was marry Conrad Thompson. I don’t think that’s worth all the vitriol. So, they do a whole thing where they walk through the house. Russo and Daffney jump on the bed in the master bedroom. David’s working the angle that Ric married Beth and then she locked him out of the family. So, where is Charlotte Ashley in all this? Is she full siblings with Dave, then? I don’t keep up with the parentage of the Flair brood. David is upset that Ric makes Reid’s wrestling matches and shit, but never Dopey Dave’s sporting events. Russo claims that Dopey Dave lives in the basement. The crowd is silent except for the group of people who chant weakly for GOLD-BERG. So, as Russo, Dopey Dave and Daffney leave the house, they’re met by Beth and the Flair kids, whom they have an argument with. This didn’t work on any level for the crowd, but I will say that it advanced this long-running storyline and that I thought it was okay, actually. After the video ends, Dopey Dave and Daffney hit the top of the ramp; Dave says that Ric’ll be speaking to him, not to papa Vinnie Ru. Ric lectures David, but David has a breakdown over having to deal with living in the shadow of his father. Ric decides to demand his title shot against Jeff Jarrett tonight instead of waiting for GAB, then calls Dave an asshole. Dad of the year! But seriously, Ric challenges Dopey Dave to a match at the Great American Bash. Dave accepts and says that he will leave boot prints on Ric’s behind. Ric tells him that if he’s so tough, he should do it now, and says that Dave will never have a bigger moment in his life than wrestling Ric fuckin’ Flair. Then, he promises to retire if he loses to Dave, but he’s interrupted in that promise by a Jeff Jarrett KABONGing. Jarrett locks on a Figure Four while Dave punches him in the head. Oh, and: WCW World Cruiserweight Championship title change count: 6 (Madusa > Oklahoma > VACANT > TAFKAPI > VACANT > Candido > Daffney and Crowbar)… Russo yells about Ric and terrorizes Liz, saying that he’ll be giving the latter some “tough love.” That sounds ominous. We’re getting another House of Pain Match, maybe? Vince Russo leads Chuck Palumbo and Liz to the ring. Hey, does Goldberg turn heel while Bischoff is still in the company? That happens in the next two months as well; Bischoff leaves after BatB. How much stuff happens in the next two months? I was sure that half of the angles and turns I’ve mentioned should have happened by now. Oh yeah, so Russo hates Liz, and so does Madusa, I guess, and Liz will face Madusa in the cell. Chuck Palumbo guards the door; R&B Security circles the ring. We go to break as the bell rings and Russo rants. We come back to Russo and Madusa cornering Liz while Russo yells invective at Liz and is generally creepy and way too aggressive. OK, so there was a tech working on the hole in the cage that Sting battered away that we got a shot of earlier, and that tech is Package. He drops into the ring for the save. Madusa attacks, but Package racks her. Russo socks Package in the balls from behind and talks shit, but Package has a cup on. Russo does not, so when Liz kicks him in the sack, he goes down. Liz rubs a cup full of Package’s dick sweat in Russo’s face, but Palumbo and the security members get in the ring, mace Package, and beat him severely. The Wolfpac theme hits and Kevin Nash walks down looking more like BIG DADDY COOL DIEEEEESEL than he has in a minute or two. Russo and Palumbo escape with Liz, but Nash beats up the security mooks. Nash sets up to Jackknife Madusa, but Mike Awesome rushes the ring and jumps him. TTP gets up, wielding bolt cutters, and backs Awesome away, but he and Madusa escape without taking serious damage. Nash grabs a mic and yells at the retreating Awesome; he challenges the guy to an Ambulance Match. Awesome agrees to the bout. Nash quotes Scott Hall, who I think was the most over person in this angle somehow because the crowd got quite excited to finish the last couple words of DON’T SING IT, BRING IT. Gene Okerlund holds court with Scott Steiner, who is unhappy with Russo’s booking. You and me both, brother. Scotty has decided that wrestling a match in the ring tonight is for suckers who follow the rules; he’s opting to stand in the parking lot and wait for Rick and Tank to show up instead. Norm and Ralphus hand out popcorn in the audience. So, Midajah and Shakira jump Rick with 2x4 shots while Scott takes out Tank, but the former don’t put in much damage, so Rick is quick to help Tank out of a jam and stomp Scott out. Wait, I thought Scott was feuding with Booker, though? In the background of this beatdown, the Goldberg truck crushes a few cars in the parking lot, including Tank and Rick’s. How much money did they spend on this nonsense? Before the break, Kevin Nash backs an ambulance into the arena. After the break, Mark Madden cracks me up by making this apology: “Two weeks ago, I implied that Bruno Sammartino was dead. He’s not. I apologize.” It’s funny as it reads, but you have to hear it in his intonation to get the full effect. Well, at least Bruno still watches your shitty wrestling show, fellas! Mike Awesome meets Kevin Nash, and as much as they try to make Awesome look impressive with a short video package of all his recent Awesome Bombs, he still looks teeny-tiny next to Kevin Nash, which kills half of his “big man with elite agility” gimmick. Awesome’s offense is so fun that the match is fine, but this isn’t a good look. It’s another “Kidman looks tiny standing next to Torrie in heels” deal. The brawl spills onto the ramp and slowly makes its way toward the ambulance. They fight over a shove into the stage, but Awesome wins it and immediately finds a table and sets it up. Awesome gets back onto the ramp, and DDP runs up behind him and lands a Diamond Cutter. Nash follows up by nearly badly botching a Jackknife off the stage and through the table; Page has to help guide Awesome through the table by leaping off the stage and protecting him. The match ends there even though Awesome isn’t in the ambulance. This is nonsense. Bischoff complains about Awesome’s failure and laments Page’s return; F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea pulls up to the show. Norm and Ralphus celebrate how much popcorn they’ve sold and do a gross-out spot where Ralphus picks popcorn out of his teeth during a close-up – “No, [the popcorn is] behind the good one,” Norm helpfully points out. Oh, there’s another gross-out spot where Ralphus scratches the depths of his ass crack, then plunges his hand into the popcorn for a refill. The popcorn cart owner fires them for this gross violation of safety and sanitation. Eric Bischoff (w/Kimberly and the Cat) enters the ring. Who do I like listening to less: Bischoff or Russo? It’s close. At least Bischoff shuts the fuck up after a couple of minutes and a challenge to DDP for a fight. Let me stop here and say that I do not like the Cat being used in the role of serious enforcer when he’s an entertaining comedy guy who needs a proper babyface run. Page calls Miller a PUSSY…CAT before getting in the ring and beating up Bisch and the Cat. MAKE THE CAT THE COMMISSIONER ALREADY, AND GET MS. JONES ON THIS SHOW TOO, DAMMIT. Anyway, Page destroys these fellas. Kimberly grabs a steel chair and lands a weak chair shot to Page’s face, which does enough damage that the Cat can land a Feliner. And, hey, guess who’s back! It’s Sycho Sid Vicious (wearing a SID E-NUFF SAID shirt that is pretty amazing). So, Sid stands in Page's corner, but commentary goes on and on about Sid being mad at Bisch for taking away his world title, so it’s obvious that he’s going to turn heel AGAIN for some reason. IT’S A SWERVE, BRO: He does by chokeslamming DDP and shaking hands with Bischoff. Oh yeah, I remember now! Sid was going to job to F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea before this reboot, and Bollea wants to get his win, dammit! Bollea makes the save; Bischoff promises to get the troops and handle Bollea. Bischoff walks with Horace Hogan and Billy Kidman backstage; I guess Bisch has given Horace a chance to get his job back. They walk onto the stage, where Bischoff sends Horace and Kidman to the ring to do a number on Bollea. Horace looks bummed about it. Might I remind you of that time your dipshit uncle creased you with a chair and split you open (Show #162) if you need motivation, Horace? So, while Bischoff joins commentary and causes it to completely throw up on itself, Horace stands in the background and lets Kidman struggle to do much of anything against the Bollea-ster. There are still seventeen minutes in this show! Why is it so long? I don’t really do Bollea matches at this late point in the watch, so let me just tell you the finish. Bisch gets mad at Horace for not helping, and Horace punches him, then helps his unc beat up Kidman and the charging Filthy Animals. This is awful television. Oh, look, here is Torrie Wilson to make it even worse. She winks at Horace, who then hits Bollea in the back with a chair and cover him for three. What the fuck is happening right now? This has got to be the worst feud that I’ve ever fucking suffered through. So, is Torrie having relations with Horace and Kidman both, or wh—you know, never mind, it’s not really my business what sort of relationships consenting adults enter. After the break, Hudson says that the plan went perfectly for the New Blood even though they all got their asses beat. Horace leaves to fuck Torrie, which Kidman is unhappy about even though Bischoff tries to calm him down about the whole deal. David Flair and Vince Russo enter the ring as Kevin Nash watches on a monitor backstage. Russo joins commentary because Bischoff being on commentary was just too much fun! Let’s put Russo at the desk, too! OK, so David is out here to watch, I guess, as Jeff Jarrett (thankfully on a Slapnuts Count of zero tonight) defends his WCW World Heavyweight Championship against Ric Flair. Ric and Jarrett brawl to start. Ric freaks out on everyone as he chops and punches Jarrett in and around the commentary area. When the match makes it back to the ring, though, Jarrett crotches Ric and then whips him into the corner and over the ropes. The match goes back outside, where Jarrett grabs a chair and jabs it into Ric’s ribs. They do a vertical suplex spot on the mats that is pretty gnarly. Jarrett rolls Flair back in the ring and locks on a Figure Four. Jarrett slaps Ric a couple times and gets two 2.5s before Ric makes the ropes. Flair survives a beating, lands a ball shot, and manages a comeback. He goes up top and gets tossed to the mat, but when Jarrett advances, Ric manages to sneak a quick small package to score a there count and win the world title for what the commentators say is the fifteenth time. Jarrett KABONGs ref Charles Robinson in anger, then beats on Flair. Russo steals the big gold belt, trips on his way out of the ring to a peal of laughter from the crowd, then tries to leave, but he’s cut off by Kevin Nash. Nash takes the belt, hits a charging Jarrett with a belt shit, and then Jackknifes Jarrett through a gimmicked section of the match that, miraculously, no one accidentally stepped onto before it was time for the spot. Nash hands Ric the belt while Russo throws a tantrum at the top of the stage. Bischoff makes a call backstage and then tells Shane Douglas that he and Russo will be traveling to secure a contingency plan for dealing with Nash; then, he places Douglas in charge of our next Thunder Interlude. We cut back to two seconds of Ric’s celebration…and scene. WCW World Heavyweight Championship title change count: 12 (Hitman > VACANT > Benoit > VACANT > Sid > Nash > Sid > VACANT > Jarrett > DDP > Arquette > Jarrett > Ric Flair) These shows have so much stuff in them, and almost none of it is any good, and too much of it is very bad. -50,000 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. 2
SirSmUgly Posted November 2 Author Posted November 2 Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and ten – 17 May 2000 "The WCW Gang finally decides to get the Millionaire's Club a few wins at the New Blood's expense, which never happens, am I right?" We’re getting to the point in the Ruschoff Era where these fellas have nothing left for me as showrunners…They managed a couple of interesting shows in there, but nothing about anything they’re doing is creatively sustainable… Recap: Nitro, you won’t believe this, was quite shitty!...There’s no audio for any of this recap, but there are a lot of clips of guys talking, which is an odd design strategy… The New Blood gets off a school bus…Yes, a school bus…Konnan is beefing with Shane Douglas right off the bus, and they fight…The New Blood immediately attacks one another and are quickly picked apart by the Millionaire’s Club and their allies…The New Blood is less a threat to the Millionaire’s Club than WCW was to the original nWo…Anyway, F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea yoinks the keys to the bus and stuffs him in his pocket... After the desk yammers on about these subpar storylines, Bollea leads the MCs out to the ring…How long does the raised entrance ramp era of WCW last?...I don’t remember the raised ramp from this era at all…Bollea insists on talking, unfortunately…He’s stoked that he has the keys to the NB’s bus…He claims that the MCs will be booking the show tonight, not Douglas…Douglas and the dopey New Blood walk onto the stage…Well, if you ever wanted a Douglas/Bollea mic battle, here it is…Also, you have bad taste in which mic battles you choose to anticipate…No offense… Bollea calls Torrie "[Kidman’s] smugly girlfriend”…Not his SmUgly girlfriend, to be clear…So, Bollea challenges Kidman to a match at GAB and says that if he wins, he gets a title shot…Kidman calls Bollea a mark for the belt and agrees…Bollea calls his nephew HOR-ASS…Jeff Jarrett busts in and drops a “Jurassic Slapass”…I’m in hell…Jarrett demands Ric Flair's presence, and Flair comes from behind and whaps Jarrett in the head with the world title…The NBs stomp him out, but the MCs rush down and initiate a donnybrook…Guess who wins this battle…Go on, guess… The NBs whine at Shane Douglas in the back, except for Konnan, who leads the Filthy Animals out of the building as a protest against Bisch, Russo, and their choice for interim booker… Wait, no, they are coming to the ring to some Eurodance music…This has got to be a dub, right?...The Eurodance music makes no sense…I think the Animals have traded Kidman for Juventud and Disco…Konnan is the leader of this gang, and they call out anyone for a fight: The NBs, the MCs, or M.I.A….The latter answer the call…Is Russo trying to redo the Gang Warz storyline from 1997 WWF?…After Cpl. Cajun hits his catchphrase for the excited Lafayette crowd (which sings along!), Disco gets destroyed by his former buddy Cajun and the rest of the M.I.A….Well, except for Major Gunns, who simply beats Disco in the head with her boobs…Look, it’s Russo’s WCW…You know what you’re gonna get… I’m going to try to cut down on the insane amount of words these reviews have because of how much nonsense Russo stacks these shows with…With that goal in mind, this match is cromulent…There’s a short FIP segment until Capt. Rection is able to topple forward and powerbomb a stranded Rey who's in rana position despite Rey's barrage of punches…Shawn Stasiak comes onto the ramp while the match breaks down, and he pulls the rope down as Lt. Loco runs the ropes…Stasiak and the Filthy Animals destroy the M.I.A. until Booker T. comes down for the save…Gunns does her salacious CPR spot… The MCs get a kick out of the Filthy Animals getting beaten down…The Total Package leaves to take care of some personal business… After the commercial break, Booker T. interviews with Gene Okerlund…He says that he likes the cut of M.I.A.’s jib, and he says that he’s going to sail right along with them into gimmick oblivion…Also, he calls himself Booker T., and so does commentary…So, uh, that gimmick is over… Too much F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea…We’re only twenty minutes in, and here he is once more, this time to beat up Horace…No, wait, he’s going to talk again…Seven more weeks, dammit…Seven more weeks…Horace tries to get Torrie to walk out there with him, which Kidman does not like…Horace punches Kidman in the face and walks off with Torrie…Look, is Russo doing a Vinnie Mac thing where he doesn’t think Kidman is good enough for Torrie and is going to book him as such?...Bollea beats the shit out of Horace…Horace gets just enough offense to celebrate by walking over and smooching Torrie…Kidman runs out and attacks Horace…Bollea gets back up, hits Horace with a chair, tosses Kidman through a table, and pins Horace…Gotta keep this leathery old fool over, after all… Did anyone ever tell Ruschoff that you need to make the heels, you know, a threat in order to create some fucking tension?...Oh, by the way, Bollea grabs Torrie, threatens to hit her, then kisses her…Torrie practically creams her jeans right there in the ring…Well, you know exactly what list this is landing on…SEVEN MORE WEEKS, YOU STUPID BASTARD… The Total Package is in his car…He asks a parking lot attendant where the nearest gym is, then drives off in search of it… When we come back, we see Chuck Palumbo working out at the gym…The Total Package replaces Palumbo’s spotter and then beats him with a rubber flexor…He destroys Palumbo, which is important because Palumbo’s really been destroying TTP in this feud…No one would have believed that TTP could win this feud without this little segment… Norman Smiley and Ralphus sell knockoff F.U.N.B. shirts out of the back of a car in the parking lot… Terry Funk defends the WCW Hardcore Championship…Tony S. calls it the “Cruiserweight belt”…No, but that belt is also in creative jail, so I understand you getting mixed up…Funk challenges the Cat to a Hardcore Championship bout…A kid in the crowd dances crazily to the Cat’s theme while his dad has a chuckle…The Cat comes onto the ramp to refuse the match on account of how pretty he is, but Funk just clobbers him and hits a DDT for two…Hey, another wrestling move!...Funk lands a reverse neckbreaker for another two…The Cat nails a low blow and hits a Feliner, then stomps Funk off the stage… Ah, here come the junk shots…Trash can blow…Nice Funk lefts…And the interesting part of the match is over as they now throw each other into things and hit each other with plundah…I do enjoy the Cat sending a steady stream of invective toward the Funker while he’s in control…Also, he wields a rake like a bo staff…Oh wow, the Cat did some fun stuff in this shitty match style…I’m shocked…They fight back toward Norm and Ralphus’s car and destroy their gimmick table…Funk also destroys their car…What a dickhead…They didn’t deserve that… The Cat tosses Funk off the hood, and then Smiley cuts him off with a “Would you like to buy a shirt, brotha?”…The Cat manhandles Norm, who hits him with a chair and topples him into the trunk…Funk covers for three…Why didn’t he swat Funk for destroying his car?...No, never mind, something something start and end the conversation, something something LOGIC… After a break, an undercover cop arrests Norm and Ralphus for bootlegging…God, this SUCKS…This is Russo’s recreation of the Chavo Jr., Amway Salesman “comedy” skits…And just like that gimmick, this gimmick doesn’t land and wastes a good wrestler with charisma… Mike Awesome (w/stretcher) enters the ring and yanks Penzer’s mic away…Awesome: AS EVERYBODY KNOWS, I CRIPPLED KANYON AND THREW HIS BUTT OFF THE TOP OF THAT CAGE…My dude, you can say the word ass…Even that corny bitch F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea says the word ass…Awesome announces that he’ll meet DDP in an Ambulance Match at GAB…He then offers an open challenge to anyone in the back… The People’s Champion The Rock DDP Scott Steiner (w/Midajah and Shakira) answers the call…Steiner has his own mic…He pretty much shits on this goof Awesome, who is not a good mic worker and cannot defend himself verbally…Steiner declares that he’s a free agent, then says that he’s going to stick Awesome in that ambulance tonight…He wants Awesome to tell Russo who did it to him, too… Steiner gets in the ring and kicks the hell out of Awesome, as he should…Awesome bails from the ring after being belly-to-belly suplexed and grabs a chair…He tosses it in the ring, but Steiner catches it and tosses it right back at him…Awesome re-enters the ring and goes back to getting destroyed by Steiner…So, uh, not sure he’s going to have much for DDP either…Awesome finally lands a low blow and gets some offense in…Awesome hits a diving clothesline, but gets backdropped out of a powerbomb attempt…A BIG POPPA PUMP chant started up in there… Steiner locks on a Steiner Recliner when Goldberg’s music hits…The crowd chants for Goldberg, but these folks must not watch regular WCW television…The chant immediately dies when Tank Abbott exits the dressing room…Steiner is distracted by watching all this on the TurnerTron…He meets Tank on the stage, but Rick Steiner is part of the security team and tries to help Tank…Steiner fights both of them off, and Awesome besides, for a bit, but Tank slips a right in… Before they can toss Scott Steiner off the stage, the Goldberg truck rolls onto the stage…Scott has disposed of Awesome and tosses both Rick and Tank onto the top of the truck, which backs away…Meanwhile, Awesome gets in the ambulance and drives away from Steiner, giving up the bout…Scott Steiner should be champ, but uh, not sure that’s how you build a heel for a big match at a PPV…Does Mike Awesome ever win his specialty match?... Shane Douglas bickers with his idiot fellow NBs…Why are the Filthy Animals back in this dressing room again?...I thought they broke away from the NBs earlier… Mike Tenay does an interview with a back-braced Kanyon in a hospital room…The audio is borked for the first few seconds of the interview…Kanyon sells his injuries, both physical and emotional, from the stage dive…Huh, they did that thing at Kemper…Hell of a choice to do that spot in that arena!...He and Dallas are still besties if you were wondering… Shane Douglas bickers with his idiot fellow NBs…Wait, didn’t I write that sentence already?...KroniK hits up Douglas on his cell phone to interrupt the bickering…They want to fight him, but he refuses, hangs up on them, and tries to get the NBs to seal off the building to keep them out…They refuse… Shouldn’t they wait until after the PPV named NEW BLOOD RISING to break up the New Blood, or, like, am I the one who doesn’t understand the simple rules for booking a pro wrestling stable?... During the break, KroniK broke into Shane Douglas’s locker room and kicked the utter crap out of the dude… KroniK continue their complete annihilation of Douglas onto the ramp and into the ring…Douglas uses knucks to try and survive, but it doesn’t help him all that much…We get a Meltdown and an F-5…KroniK clothesline Douglas onto the ramp, and Douglas grabs the tag belts and makes to leave, but he’s cut off by THE WALL, BROTHER…TW,B gets revenge for Douglas ditching him on the previous Nitro by chokeslamming him through a table and then tossing him back into the ring for KroniK…Douglas tries to cut a deal with them and get them to attack TW,B, but they decline his request with a High Times for three… Ric Flair enters the ring holding the big gold belt…Flair cuts a promo in which he also forgets that this is a taped show…He puts Jarrett over as a great champion…On the other hand, he thinks that Russo is a scourge on the Italian-American people…He says that Russo's papa wanted him to be like the hard-working Bruno Sammartino, but Vinnie Ru wanted to be slick like Ric…Unfortunately, Ric says that Vinnie Ru had no muscles or girlfriend, so it was an impossible dream…Ric essentially thinks that Vinnie Ru is working out some frustrations with his own life by attacking Ric and the rest of the MCs…Flair: “You can never beat Hulk Hogan!”…Well, about that, Ric…Oh yeah, and he does a caricature of someone speaking Italian-accented English…Look, it’s post-prime Ric Flair…You know what you’re gonna get… Continuing his promo, Ric says this is what has led Russo to turning David against him…Again…I mean, this ignores the problems that you have had with Dave for pretty much almost since he came into WCW…Jarrett interrupts, calls Ric a deadbeat dad, and then jumps him…Dopey Dave, Crowbar, and Daffney join in the fun…Arn Anderson races down – well, “races down” for him – and makes a save with a log…Arn gets on the house mic and says that Russo and Dopey Dave done pissed him off and got him back into the wrestling game for one of his few remaining fights…Ric Flair is fired up about it…He finally got Arn to join him!...Not as part of Team Package, though…Anderson lectures Dopey Dave on sticking with the losing team that is the sorry-ass New Bloods…Then, he challenges the whole gang of ‘em to a match against he and Ric, Horsemen style… In a dark room somewhere backstage, Vampiro cuts a shitty promo on Sting while burning a Sting mask… In a darkened ring, Sting responds to Vampiro on the house mic…Sting is sick of this feud that he’s won by now, but is still somehow mired in…Vampiro forgets that this show doesn’t air until Wednesday…Vampiro comes out and is like, You have no killing edge, Sting…Vamp thinks Sting kinda likes the guy because he just won’t kill him off and calls him STEVE…Fuck off…So, in yet another Russo retread from his WWF run, Vamp challenges Sting to an Inferno Match…Tony S. has never heard tell of one of these type of matches…No sirree…Sting declines, but Vamp says that it’s going down no matter what…Then, the ring ropes light up with a few weak flames… Vampiro has been destroyed by Sting week after week, sometimes twice in the same show…I have zero interest in another match between the two…This feud has been dire, and part of that is that there’s no tension here…Sting is never in danger…This is, of course, the wider problem with the NBs/MCs feud…Same deal…There’s absolutely no tension in any of these shows… About the only guy whom Shane Douglas has connected with tonight is Jeff Jarrett…He fires Jarrett up for the main event, which pits Jarrett, David Flair, Crowbar, and Daffney against Ric Flair and Arn Anderson…Ric makes it to the ring just in time to see that Crowbar, Dopey Dave, and Daffney have already destroyed Arn backstage on the TurnerTron…Ric goes off to help, but Jarrett cuts him off…They brawl into the ring, but Ric, Crowbar, and Daffney join him and help Jarrett beat him down…Dave puts a Figure Four on his pops, but the Wolfpac theme hits and Kevin Nash comes to the ring for the save…Flair small packages Daffney for the win (FUCK THE CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE, RIGHT, FELLAS?!) and then locks her in a Figure Four…Nash no-sells a Jarrett chair shot…Enough with Kevin Nash being a killing machine…Nash interjecting himself in these Flair segments seems a little hinky, no?...Are we leading up to some type of SWERVE, BRO?...After the match, Flair collapses in tears and exhaustion on account of how he’s constantly fighting his dopey son… Jarrett and Douglas try to take off in the bus, but if you’ll recall, F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea has the keys…Nash walks out to the bus…He is soon joined by other MC’ers…They FLIP THE TRUUUUUCK TIP THE BUUUUUUS as the show ends…The Goldberg truck comes out of nowhere and ostensibly rams the bus just as the feed cuts… Pluses: No Bischoff, no Russo…Big Fat Minus: The New Blood doesn’t look like threats at all…Super Mega Pluses: We made sure to get F.U.N.B. Terry Bollea and The Total Package the victories they needed to really make a name for themselves and manage to get them over…Oh, who am I kidding…OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW… 2
caley Posted November 2 Posted November 2 1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said: Arn Anderson races down – well, “races down” for him – and makes a save with a log… Hahaha, I've been rolling my eyes or scratching my head for these last two reviews but this is the one that really got me. What a terrible choice of weapon! No wonder Arn in AEW seemed to be packing heat, he was tired of swinging around a log! 1
zendragon Posted November 2 Posted November 2 Rick Steiner is another name that I'm surprised has made it this long. Does he hang on until the end? 1
SirSmUgly Posted November 2 Author Posted November 2 (edited) On 10/30/2024 at 11:01 AM, Gorman said: I used to announce Steel City Wrestling with Madden. He would always talk about his friends in WCW on the air, and sure enough, he showed up there! What was Madden's character motivation in SCW? Was he developing his new-age Heenan role here? What was the interplay like between you two? 9 hours ago, caley said: Hahaha, I've been rolling my eyes or scratching my head for these last two reviews but this is the one that really got me. What a terrible choice of weapon! No wonder Arn in AEW seemed to be packing heat, he was tired of swinging around a log! I looked three times. I am pretty certain it was a log cut for firewood. I would have doubted myself except that the New Blood showed up in a school bus, so maybe WCW got a little cheap with the props that night in general. 7 hours ago, zendragon said: Rick Steiner is another name that I'm surprised has made it this long. Does he hang on until the end? Yep! He is the penultimate holder of the United States Championship and narrowly avoided a shoot gang beat down by some of the younger wrestlers he took liberties on in the ring as part of the final Nitro. Edited November 2 by SirSmUgly 1
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