SirSmUgly

I've known people who have tried to build a PC and fucked it up with expensive consequences, so the idea that you can practice via a video game before doing it IRL is pretty great. All the cleaning simulators are comforting podcast games for people (like me), who enjoy scraping gunk off of things and making them cleaner, but not to the point that we want to actually get up and do it. (I get satisfaction to the point of endorphin release after I floss and water pick every night.)

Thunder Interlude – show number twenty-eight – 20 August 1998 "The WCW Gang finally gives me a hot cruiserweight opener and then takes the rest of the night off” Let’s Thunder… In what is a hilarious-to-me coincidence that I didn’t expect after my last Nitro review, Psicosis faces Juventud Guerrera in the opener…No, really, I’m not striking their names through…This time it actually opens a WCW wrestling show!...I generally have preferred Thunder to Nitro in 1998…Thunder actually getting a pacey cruiserweight opener is a perfect example of why…After a handshake, Psicosis gets two on a roll-up, but runs himself into drop toehold and a loose crossface…Psicosis works to his feet, but he gets dropkicked and tumbles to the mats outside…Psicosis gets in the ring and leverages strikes to control…He puts Juvi in a full nelson in the corner and then uses that trapped position to bash Juvi’s head into the buckles…That was a neat spot!...Juvi ends up turning things around with a nice-looking crossbody from the top that gets two….He tries to up the pace, but gets caught in a sit-out wheelbarrow facebuster…Psicosis decides to keep running with Juvi and eats double boots on a corner splash attempt, then gets mowed down by a lariat…Juvi hits a Frankensteiner from the top to a standing Psicosis in the ring that gets another two count..The desk won’t shut the fuck up about Warrior and Hogan…It’s too bad because this match is very good and deserves some love…It’s also a title match, so it’d be nice to indicate how important this title is by commentating on the action…Juvi goes up for the 450, but gets caught and crotched…Psicosis hits what I guess is a victory roll bomb from the top that gets two…Psicosis is busting out some neat offense tonight…That two count leads into a commercial break… Back from the break, Psicosis is still in control…OK, now he hits a, uh, what is this move?...I have no idea…It’s a move where he’s got Juvi seated on his shoulders, he grabs Juvi’s arms, and he falls backwards and bridges while Juvi’s shoulders are on the mat…It’s a neat idea, but it seems easy to kick out of since Juvi’s shoulders aren’t being pressed…But I guess the idea is that you KO the guy for three seconds because he’s slammed backwards with no way to cushion the blow to the head…This is a neat move that I think barely falls on the side of “not immersion breaking” even though it takes a lot of help from the taker of the move to set up…Juvi goes up for the guillotine legdrop and lands it, but instead of covering, he gets up and celebrates for a bit…He makes an extremely casual cover after a few seconds and only gets two…Psicosis goes for a release German, but Juvi lands on his feet, runs up and Juvi Drivers Psicosis, and makes an extremely secure cover for three…This is the type of match that makes me ready for some more hot pro wrestling action…Is it the greatest match these two could have?...No…However, it was good, fun, and had some very neat spots… This is the first backstage interview I can remember on Thunder…Gene Okerlund interviews Stevie Ray…Stevie thinks Jericho is a sissy and the Giant is an “overgrown sucka,” his words exactly…Stevie is pretty fun on the mic… Warrior/Hogan on Nitro recap…It was a better segment than you’d expect… Hacksaw Duggan faces Barry Darsow in a 1992 WWF Coliseum Video special that I’d go ahead and watch because I spent my hard-earned allowance on the tape and refused to fast forward…Or a 1984 Mid-South Wrestling match that I actually might want to see…There’s a bunch of mediocre clubbering…Duggan has little problem dispatching of Darsow…He lands Old Glory for the win… Video package hyping up War Games by giving an explanation and history of the match in WCW…They play Sid dropping Pillman on his head like eight times…That shit was wild…These look great until we get to the first one Hogan is a part of…Then it gets spotty…Wait, pinfalls count in this year’s War Games?!...What the fuck?!...No, no, no, NO…I already hate this War Games match… Bret Hart interviews with Mean Gene in the back…Hogan and the Hitman are on team Hollywood for War Games…Bret hypes the mystery of who the third man on their team will be…He says Bill Goldberg’s full name like three hundred times, too… Dean Malenko versus Crush sounds like the opposite of a fun time…First, Gene Okerlund interviews Mongo McMichael about last year’s War Games…Mongo is facing Curt Hennig later, at some point…He calls Rick Rude a “Men’s Wearhouse charge card user,” too…Damn, Mongo, you gonna go after this guy’s hairline next?...Maybe hate on his wife and kids?...Now we get Malenko/Crush…Crush shoves Malenko away from a Malenko takedown attempt…Malenko uses his array of moves and misdirection against Crush’s power…He catches Crush on the move and hits an arm drag…Back to standing, Crush hits a weak lariat and locks on the heart claw…After a minute of that, he hits two legdrops and gets two…I’m just going to skip to the finish because this stinks, as expected…Part of the finish is amazing…Malenko jumps off the top into a bearhug, but he counters that bearhug into a WICKED tornado DDT…That was absolutely a believable finish…Instead of going for the pinfall, Malenko locks on the Texas Cloverleaf, gets hit in the head by Curt Hennig as Vincent distracts the ref, and loses to a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker from Crush…This was almost worth sitting through for that DDT, though… Recap of this ice cold (to me, at least) Steiner Brothers feud…I’m good, no thanks… Recap of this rapidly freezing (to me, at least) Flock internal politics storyline…It’s actually something I didn’t see because it’s on WCWSN, but it’s mostly stuff Raven has said to his Flock before about them being unappreciative of him…Saturn comes down and is like NO GUYS, RAVEN SUCKS, RIGGS YOU IDIOT, HE DESTROYED YOUR EYE, WHY DO YOU FOLLOW HIM?…Saturn tries to deprogram these guys…This is actually a pretty modern segment, this cult deprogramming attempt by the babyface…Plus, Saturn promises that their match at Fall Brawl is their last fight… Following that is a Raven vs. Horace vs. Kanyon vs. Saturn Four Corners match as we wring every last match out of every combination of these dudes that we can…Horace knocks Saturn into Kanyon so that we can continue to have intrigue between those two…Is this elimination or what? Why isn’t anyone breaking up pinfall attempts?...It’s one-on-one with tags…But I think the need to permutate these matchups as much as possible has just killed this whole feud…I’d prefer that Raven and Saturn don’t touch each other until the blowoff at Fall Brawl…Eventually, Horace hits Raven accidentally with the STOP sign, but he’s fine with it, pretty much…We get a standing ten-count before Kanyon covers for 2.9…Raven and Kanyon both try to tag Saturn, but Saturn dodges Raven’s tag and tags Kanyon…This Four Corners match makes more sense as a traditional 2v2 tag than a Four Corners match…The layout is nonsense…It’s too bad because everyone in this match tries hard…But the match isn’t worked in a way that makes sense for the match type…The desk does not help clarify why anyone is doing what they’re doing, of course…They can’t get their own sense of the story straight…Saturn and Kanyon end up brawling outside the ring while Raven drops Horace with an Evenflow inside the ring for three…This did nothing to advance the Raven/Saturn feud and just took up space… Gene Okerlund interviews the Giant in the newly-established backstage position for interviews on Thunder…Giant kinda appreciates that Stevie would steal a belt from his own brother, but he otherwise is not pleased with Stevie's yapping…You’d think Gene would ask Giant why the heck he’s out here caring enough to alter the fortunes of Stevie and the TV title, but it never occurs to this ace veteran interviewer to inquire… Hennig/Mongo is next…Woof…This show started out hot and then fell right off a cliff…Hennig gets pushed around and decides to stall a bit…Mongo uses power and leverage to control, so Hennig goes to the technical wrestling with a drop toehold and hair-pulling assisted bow hold…I sort of zone out on this dull-fest and have to rewind this thing to see Mongo hit a reverse neckbreaker and a couple of weak three-point chop blocks…Rude grabs a chair and swings for the fences…He hits Mongo behind the ref’s back, and Hennig follows up with a PerfectPlex…Malenko runs in and attacks Hennig to draw a DQ…Rude and Hennig double DDT Malenko, then do the same to Mongo… Stevie Ray faces the Giant (w/Scott Hall) in what is a strange main event for Thunder…Giant didn’t even put on tights for this one…He just shows up in jeans and a tank…There are a couple arm wringers and some clubbering before Stevie big boots Giant…Hall immediately runs in and gets dropped, but Giant jumps Stevie from behind and chokeslams him…Why the ref doesn’t call for the bell, I have no idea…OK, it took him about fifteen minutes to figure out that what happened was worth a disqualification…A bunch of B-Teamers come down to surround Stevie and slap him around a bit…That’s it…What a weird ending… I really liked the opener, but the rest of the show was pretty dire, to the point that I didn’t enjoy it at all after the first match ended…At least it was short…But unfortunately, it couldn’t be saved by the cruisers…my score for this is OW…

I wouldn't say "appreciate," at least right now. More like "felt pleasantly surprised that it wasn't a dumpster fire and was moderately amused at some of it." Yes, Eddy threw coffee on himself, but they forgot to add the coffee grounds to the pot beforehand, so it was just water.

Show #154 – 17 August 1998 "The one THAT WAS FATED TO BE BY THE STARS AS THE HEAVENS HAVE FORETOLD BECAUSE EVERYTHING DIES AND NO MAN CAN LIVE FOREVER BUT THE WARRIORS KNOW THAT A TRUE WARRIOR WILL EXIST IN THE HEARTS AND MEMORY OF ALL WARRIORS ACROSS ERAS UNTIL THE DAY THAT TIME ENDS AND A NEW TIME THAT IS IMBUED WITH THE SPIRITS OF THOSE WARRIORS FROM THE PAST SHALL BEGIN *snarl*" Tony S. notes that tonight’s show is the only live wrestling show on this Monday. However, that wouldn’t have stopped me from switching to a taped RAW right from the jump because “Rockhouse” is playing and Bisch is out here pretending to be an airplane while Hogan strums an air guitar. The Giant and the Disciple are out here, too. Hogan does his typical delusional heel drivel. He calls out Goldberg for a title match tonight. Then he notes this: “There’s not one man I haven’t beat.” I see where this is headed. Hey, did Hogan ever beat Goldberg, actually? I’m surprised he didn’t try to politic his way into beating Goldberg in 2004 WWE or whatever. Anyway, what Hogan actually says is that the Giant will face Goldberg for the title tonight and that Giant will hand over the belt when he wins it. I am steadfast in my belief that giving the Goldberg/Hogan title switch away on TV was fine, but failing to follow up by giving Goldberg all these marquee matchups he has on PPV is a dreadful mistake. You give away the hook of a Goldberg title reign for free and then get people to pay for all the never-before-seen Goldberg main event title defenses on subsequent PPVs. Goldberg/Giant should have been on either Road Wild or on Fall Brawl, not on Nitro. Break. Title Card. Fireworks. More yammering about how Nitro is live and not taped. Psicosis/Juvi is our next match. Oops, no, that match doesn't happen. Specifically, no match happens next. We just get Gene Okerlund talking to J.J. Dillon. Dillon teases that Hogan hasn’t beaten everybody (coughWarriorcough), then talks about the War Games match at Fall Brawl for awhile. This War Games is a 3x3x3 matchup. Hulk Hogan (Hollywood), Kevin Nash (Wolfpac), and Diamond Dallas Page (WCW) are the captains. I remember nothing about a triple threat War Games match, but I know who wins already because – accidental spoilers from the past! – Dillon says that the winner will get a shot at the World Champ at Havoc. Nitro Girls routine. Nitro party footage. Thirteen minutes in (not counting commercials), and still no match until… …Psicosis/Juvi, oops, wrong again, I mean Mongo McMichael/Sick Boy finally gets the action going. The most interesting thing about this match is Tony S. and Mike Tenay spoiling the taped RAW and its big title match between Steve Austin and the Undertaker and noting that it’s going very short and ending very unsatisfactorily (Kane shows up; yep, that’s usually an unsatisfactory thing to happen). Then they claim that they’ll actually deliver on a legit World title match tonight. On an old 83 Weeks I was listening to yesterday, I heard Eric Bischoff claim that he didn’t keep an eye on RAW to see what they were programming against him. Here’s where I’d insert the supercut of Jonathan Frakes saying variations of “That’s a lie” if the board was agreeable to me adding YouTube videos. The match itself is a thing that exists. Sick Boy misses a dropkick by a good six inches, but Mongo bumps for it anyway. Mongo wins with a Mongo Spike to end a match that was longer than it needed to be. DDP has an interview with Mean Gene. Who are Page’s War Games partners? Welp, Page teases Warrior as a partner. Page goes on to talk about that whole beatdown he caught before his U.S. Championship match against Bret Hart a few weeks back, and on cue, Bret Hart shows up. Bret Hart significantly outworks Page on the mic, which, uh, I enjoy heel Bret a lot, but that shouldn’t be happening. Page challenges Bret to a title match and Bret’s response is pretty amazing. He lists off all the guys he put out of WCW and then says that the only reason Luger’s not dead in the back is that he's Sting’s friend, which got a chuckle out of me. Bret accepts the match and I’m gonna be honest, I’m rooting for the guy against this cornball Page. One of the most surprising elements of this rewatch has been how strongly I dislike babyface DDP. As much as I love heel Page, I really cannot stand babyface Page. We come back from break and Okerlund is still out here so that he can interview Raven. Fuck me, all this mediocre talking when WCW specializes in good matches. Horace Hogan, AKA the entertaining Hogan (somehow?!), comes out to verbally shit on Raven while Raven stands there and coolly takes it. Horace cuts a reasonable enough promo in which he wants to beat Raven up for a third show in a row or whatever, and Raven agrees to a tag match: Raven and Saturn against Horace and Kanyon. I should note here that Saturn and Raven are having a match at Fall Brawl in which the winner determines the future of the Flock. Saturn and Kanyon eventually agree to participate in this match, and J.J. Dillon slouches toward Bethlehem waddles back out here to make the match. He adds the stips that if either tag partner attacks the other or refuses a tag during the match, they’ll eat a three-month suspension and that the match must end by pinfall or submission. Hey, it’s High Voltage! Robbie Rage! The other one who’s way less interesting! They’re facing the Boogie Knights, and I am intrigued. There’s sadly no Tokyo Magnum tonight, though. Rage and Wright have an opening in which they trade wristlocks before Wright intricately escapes and hits a dropkick. Wright tries to run and gets powerslammed and press slammed instead. Wright regains control and tags Disco, who either hits a piledriver, or dances a lot and allows Rage to hit him with a lariat, you guess which one of those actually happened. Not-Rage enters the ring, but it’s decent and Rage and not-Rage hit a double-team flying bulldog. This is a pretty fun and competitive match, so of course, here’s Meng to kill these guys off with TDGs. I love Meng, but couldn’t we have sent him in on the Mongo/Sick Boy match instead? I wanted to see where this tag match was going. The crowd loves it, though. They egg Meng on as Meng considers TDG’ing Billy Silverman (he lands on a strong "I think I will" and does it), then pop huge when Meng TDG’s one security member. They pop even more hugely when Meng walks through a mace attack from another security member and TDG’s that guy, too. OK, that ruled, but still, maybe do it in the middle of a different match. Eddy Guerrero is totally directionless right now for some reason. He’s one of the most over heels on the roster. Why isn’t he deep into an angle? The Chavo thing just sort of halted. Wait, maybe they’re giving him something to do; he comes out in street clothes and rolls a wheelie luggage. Eddy’s SHOOTIN’ and actually says what I just said about him being totally directionless now. To paraphrase, Eddy says this: I'm totally directionless right now what the fuck, Bisch, maybe I'll go to WWF instead. Sure, eventually that's an option, but we're still a bit early. We’re entering the worked shoot era that would influence guys like CM Punk to cut some of the corniest promos I’ve had the displeasure of seeing on television. I ultimately blame Brian Pillman. Anyway, Eddy’s like I’M BEING HELD BACK, YO. He cuts a subpar promo because frankly, as great a promo guy as he is, this worked shoot stuff fucking SUCKS and is the WORST. He drones on and on, and I don’t blame him for being boring and shitty. I blame Bischoff for trying to book a non-OG nWo angle that’s edgy, that Harley-riding doofus. I guess this is where the whole lWo thing starts, huh? Anyway, this promo borders on monumentally bad, with Eddy losing his train of thought multiple times and quietly blowing off the Chavo Jr. feud by saying that he actually likes the guy and doesn’t want to get him fired for ranting. This stunk. I think I was okay with Jericho/Malenko basically ending with Malenko inadvertently helping Juvi beat Jericho for the Cruiserweight Championship and then Jericho just being cool with that and winning the TV title a day later instead. It’s weak, especially with Jericho not complaining about direct interference from ref Dean Malenko of all people when that’s exactly what he’d do normally, but whatever. They could have just blown that feud off with the Rey Misterio Jr. return match and it would have been a stronger ending. Or, you know, ending it with Malenko-as-Ciclope winning the belt months earlier. Anyway, any of those endings to that feud are at least decent. On the other hand, Eddy/Chavo Jr. petering out like this is pretty bad. Bisch and his booking team not being able to effectively and definitively end an angle is a real problem. Kanyon/Horace versus Raven/Saturn kicks off hour number two. Raven’s shirt says “Dinosaur Jr.” I don’t know what’s going on with that shirt, but I like it. Saturn and Raven struggle to get along far more than Horace and Kanyon do. Saturn still launches both of them in between jawing at Raven, but Horace scores with a big boot to take control. Saturn is a guy in peril for a minute, but he kicks out of a backbreaker at two and then is saved by Raven crotching Kanyon and tagging himself in to boot. Raven and Saturn function as a team for a bit to control Kanyon; Raven then decides that it’s time to bring a trusty chair into the ring. He sets it up and tries to hit a top rope cutter on Kanyon into the chair seat, but Kanyon blocks it and Raven with a facecrusher into the chair instead. Horace gets a hot tag and goes right at Raven. Horace gets two off a floatover powerslam, then two off a top-rope splash. The match breaks down here and all four men go at it. Raven gets crunched into Saturn in the corner and Saturn topples over and headbutts Raven in the jewels. The crowd pops. People love that spot. Kanyon and Horace get 2.9 on a nice neckbreaker/sit-out powerbomb combo. The crowd was into that spot, too. Kanyon hits an elevated facebuster while Horace gets the STOP sign. Kanyon holds Saturn up for a sign shot, yada yada yada, Saturn hits Horace with a DVD for three. Sorry, I’ve been bingeing Seinfeld lately. What happened in that yada was that Horace whiffed and hit Kanyon instead. Post-match, Raven Evenflows Saturn, then Evenflows Kidman when Kidman tries to call the dogs off. Horace attacks Saturn in solidarity with Raven, and Raven Evenflows Horace. The match was decent, but this whole Flock thing is played out, and I’m looking forward to Saturn disintegrating the whole group after winning at Fall Brawl. The Flock had so much potential, and while there were bright spots for this group throughout its eighteen-ish months of existence, it got mired in the same boring internal politics angles that ruined the nWo. The Wolfpac comes to the ring to announce which three of them will be in War Games. Well, let’s see: There’s Kevin Nash, Sting, Lex Luger, and Konnan. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong. It’s just a group promo so they can get some TV time as the WILDLY over stable that they are. People don't generally say this about 1998 WCW (at least I don't think they do), but Bischoff and his booking committee completely whiffed on the Wolfpac’s popularity almost as much as they did Goldberg’s. Scott Norton faces off with ARRRRRRRR, Pirate Scott Putski! Putski can’t even get his ostentatious Jesus piece off before Norton attacks him. I wonder if Putski won that Jesus piece off a Spanish galleon during a firefight in the Caribbean Sea. He might need to sell it to pay his medical bills because Norton powerbombs him for three in about a minute. The very popular Wolfpac gets a four-minute segment. The very corny and unpopular nWo Hollywood gets another segment longer than four minutes in the same show. Here comes Bisch, Hogan, and Disciple again. I do know that at some point soon, Ric Flair comes back and yells YOU SUCK, ABUSE OF POWER at Bisch while everyone in the crowd goes nuts. That is maybe the only acceptable point at which Bischoff should be down here in the ring wasting my time. Hogan natters on and says the same fucking shit he always says. Something had better happen in this segment other than just these morons cutting shitty promos. Hogan keeps teasing that he’s beaten everyone and says, get this – THERE’S NOT A WARRIOR IN THE WORLD I CAN’T BEAT – before the lights go out and Ultimate Warrior’s voice comes over the PA and says something garbled. Then, aw yeah, why not go straight to wrestling hell, here comes the Ultimate Warrior! Hogan sells shock in the cartooniest way possible, fuck that guy and his shitty wrestling acting. And his shitty movie acting, for that matter. Last we saw Warrior, he was about to be replaced by the much, much, MUCH more fun Sycho Sid at IYH: International Incident. Hogan decides to be cute – “I thought you were dead,” he says to Warrior – and no one who remembers the rumors that the original Warrior died and was replaced thinks you’re funny, you big, bald son of a bitch. This does get a pop since we’re in WWF territory (Hartford, CT), and I am here for a train wreck of a feud, why not? Warrior always takes things too fucking far, and I sort of love that about his work. Hogan tries to get Warrior to join the now by fearfully holding out his nWo t-shirt to Warrior, so Warrior does the “d-d-d-dookie” spot from No Holds Barred. See, I stand by Warrior being so bad that he can be sort of fun. He stinks, but if you’re going to pair him with Hogan in 1998, that’s an acceptable short-term use of him. Warrior says some total nonsense, loses the crowd for a second, but basically is like: See, all these fans remember me! It’s because I rule. You’re scared of me because I’m the best and you know it. You conveniently forgot that I whipped your ass at WrestleMania VI, you big, bald son of a bitch. What happened, man? You used to be cool, but now you’re a Harley riding cornball who, might I remind you, has never beaten me. He also gets a reasonable zinger in by saying, “Let’s talk about something that he doesn’t know” as the crowd chants HOGAN SUCKS. It gets a pop and some laughter. This Warrior promo goes on way the fuck too long and he winks at everyone by calling the Disciple Hogan’s barber (TBF, the crowd does chant BRUTUS for a few seconds, and this Hartford crowd is just glad to be watching wrestling and seeing some WWF legends). The lights go out and Warrior goes POOF, Undertaker style, while the desk and Hogan and Bischoff act like wondrous assholes about it. If they just looked down, they’d see the obvious trap door cut out of the mat. Maybe they could point it out to Davey Boy Smith while they're at it. This was about as self-indulgent as anything Roddy Piper’s done, but it was watchable, so that’s a start. Don’t get me wrong, though, I am aware that this will end up being a very, very, very bad feud. But it actually started out reasonably well considering the participants. On WCWSN, Curt Hennig told Dean Malenko that Malenko was not Horsemen material. I guess Hennig would know something about being Horsemen material since Ric Flair basically dumped Jeff Jarrett in the bushes to chase Hennig as a Horsemen member. Anyway, that little exchange led to a wrestling challenge between the two on Nitro. We get a break thirty seconds in as Hennig stalls on the outside. Back from that break, we get a perfectly cromulent TV match. Someone in the crowd holds up a WHAT’S ON RAW? sign. Well, Hennig has a neck vice on Malenko, so let me look it up. Well, if it was a match, probably a D-X/Nation multiman tag. But let’s be honest, it was probably a promo. Malenko makes an acceptable comeback on Hennig. Malenko floats over on a side Russian and gets two. Hennig tries a PerfectPlex not long after that, but Malenko blocks it with knees to the gut and ends up hitting a back suplex and trying for a Texas Cloverleaf. It fails because Hennig gets to the ropes, and Rick Rude jumps on the apron to run a distraction. It works, and Rude puts a knee in Malenko’s back and hits a double-axe from the apron to the floor besides. That little bit of offense is enough to soften Malenko up for an immediate PerfectPlex back in the ring that gets a pinfall. Hopefully, this feeds into the “reuniting the Horsemen” angle in a show or two because otherwise, I just saw Malenko get chumped out by Hennig and prove Hennig’s point. I assume, however, that this match will convince Arn that maybe Malenko needs his own running buddies to counter the nWo. “Rockhouse” plays for the 27th time tonight. Scott Steiner comes out with half his body taped, followed by Buff Bagwell and someone pretending to be a doctor. Scotty dodging Rick is tired as fuck. Scotty needs to get away from Rick so that he can fly free already. Rick eventually shows up to respond and, paraphrasing, basically yells that BUFF IS A GIRL AND SO ARE YOU SCOTTY, WOMEN ARE WEAK AND ONLY A FEMALE WOULD FAKE AN INJURY and please, I implore you WCW, end this stupid fucking feud at Fall Brawl already. Chris Jericho defends his TV Championship against Chavo Jr. and Stevie Ray in a triangle match. The desk tries to explain how and why Stevie Ray could just defend Booker’s belt or how Chris Jericho could hit a guy in the head and take his title shot without drawing the ire of the WCW Championship Committee, and I can confirm that they would have been better off not trying to explain the logic to any of this at all. To start, Jericho pretends to ally with Chavo against Stevie. Chavo runs in and gets shoulderblocked while Jericho stands back and watches; when Chavo complains to Jericho, Jericho yells YOUR TIMING IS OFF. That is some true scumbag shit, and I laughed in spite of myself. Stevie is just tossing these dudes around like he’s the Giant. Other than Jericho’s antics and Chavo finally getting wise to Jericho’s antics and dropkicking him instead of teaming up for another attack on Stevie, this match isn’t particularly good. They try to work this in an interesting way with lots of shifting alliances and competing pinfall attempts, at least. There’s even a double missile dropkick on Stevie that is an alright spot. Stevie runs the ref over on a rope run and takes the opportunity to load his fist and hit Jericho. The Giant comes out again for reasons that I cannot grasp and chokeslams Stevie after Stevie has laid out both his opponents with that loaded fist. This leads into a bad finish where Jericho distracts the ref so he doesn’t see Chavo get to his feet and break the ten-count; Jericho stands up after Chavo falls back over, and the champ retains by double-countout. Yuck. Bret Hart is back out to defend the United States Championship against DDP. These fellas are going to have a good match almost certainly, and they start off hot with Page winning a suplex for two and almost catching the Hitman in an early Diamond Cutter. Hart bails and Page follows and just destroys the guy outside the ring. Bret gets killed when he’s back in the ring, too, but the Hitman kicks out of a pinfall attempt after a vertical suplex and manages to hit Page in the junk and drop him with a Hot Shot. Tony S. continues to remind everyone that RAW is bait-and-switching their main event, which I guess must have worked because Nitro is in week two of a three-week streak of ratings wins. That’s the good news for Nitro. The bad news for Nitro is that after tonight, the show will score only four more ratings wins in direct head-to-head against RAW until Nitro is cancelled. Whoopsie! So, Bret starts to pour on the offense, mixing in his 5MoD along the way. This is a good control segment because Bret escalates it steadily, and with each kickout that Page scores, Bret gets more frustrated and more vicious. Eventually, he whips Page as hard as he can into the corner and Page crashes out of it face-first; then, Bret crushes Page with a piledriver and throws a fit when that only gets two. Page fires up almost out of nowhere with fists and then goes up top and hits a diving clothesline for two. Page chases a pinfall with more offense, getting two off a pancake. I’m waiting for the ref bump that I know is coming, and of course, a reversed Irish whip smashes Page into Nick Patrick in the corner. Bret loads his fist and then combines two great moves. First, he pulls a Rock (vs. Ken Shamrock) and hides the knucks in Page’s tights just in case, and second, he fakes a competitive match by pulling an Ernie Ladd (vs. Magnum T.A.) and pulling a dazed Page on top of him so that he can kick out at two. The combination of these things probably sets up Page to lose on a technicality. Let’s see if that’s what happens. Bret locks on a Sharpshooter, but Page gets to the ropes; Page hits a Diamond Cutter, but can’t capitalize. Page looks for another Diamond Cutter, but Bret declares that Page clocked him with knucks. Patrick checks Page’s tights, in fact finds the knucks, and calls for a DQ. I would normally bitch about this, but as I love both the finish to Rock/Shamrock at the ’98 Rumble and Ladd/T.A. on whatever episode of Mid-South TV that Ladd won the North American title on, I’ll admit that I enjoyed this finish. We’ve made it to the end of another show, almost. Michael Buffer is out here to introduce the Giant (w/Dizzy “The Barber” Zodiac) as he comes to the ring to face Goldberg. These fellas start out by trading meaty soupbones. Giant body slams Goldberg, who is like RAAARGH FUCK YOU and does it right back. This match is already great. Giant is irritated about being slammed and decides to serve Goldberg an extra helping of soupbones. Giant hits the best-looking side Russian on this show, sorry Bret, and then instead of covering, lets Goldberg get back to standing. Goldberg tries to fight through a couple of headbutts, so Giant dumps him outside for the Barber. Goldberg easily fights off Barber, but is jumped by Giant. The ref just lets these dudes double up on Goldberg, but Goldberg slips out of the back of a Giant posting attempt and posts Giant himself. Giant gets in the ring and meets Goldberg on the apron, then suplexes Goldberg back into the ring. That move barely fazes Goldberg, who is up first and then hits a spear. The Disciple/Zodiac/Barber/etc. jumps in to draw a DQ and is immediately speared and Jackhammered. Scott Hall runs in to attack Goldberg, but Kevin Nash runs down for the save. Nash clears out Giant and grabs Hall from behind, but Goldberg lines Hall up for a spear at the same time, and yada yada yada, Nash gets up from eating a spear and gets right in Goldberg’s face as the show ends. I just wanted a clean finish between Goldberg and Giant, but that match was pretty fun, as I knew it would be if it involved these two. There was way too much Disciple interference, though. This show was poorly paced, but there were spots of fun, Goldberg/Giant was good until the end, and I didn’t hate the Warrior promo, so that’s something? Yeah, it’s something. 2.75 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

And not only that, but it was easily the best match on the card!

Why did you do this to yourself, bud? The most memorable thing about this show was Bret/Lawler. The second most memorable thing was the RAW after the show with Lawler crushing mouthwash straight out of the bottle, which got my mom to laugh.

I don't know how I forgot Bisch bringing Warrior in so that Hogan could get his win back eight years later. I did remember WCW showing Goldberg/Page on Nitro because the card ran over and the PPV cut off exactly at ten past the hour or whatever, and I vaguely had a sense that Hogan was involved, but it wasn't until I saw the Warrior fans that I realized that we're getting six-ish weeks of Hogan/Warrior build in 1998. At least Warrior is so bad that he swings back around and can be kinda fun, which is more than I can say for either Hogan or Piper.

Power Wash Simluator feels really good to play, but I didn't need that much game. Once I cleaned a van and then a muddy backyard, I got most of what I wanted out of the game at that point. Re: Designing a house, my wife swears that I should design our home when we finally purchase one based on my house design in Animal Crossing. I thought she was kidding at first, but she seems serious. In that case, I hope she likes rattan furniture.

I actually didn't like Know Your Role, but I know people who swear by that game. It moved too fast for my tastes. The series got great for me once Just Bring It came out. I get your point, though; if they take this base, clean up all the jank and AI issues, and iterate on the gameplay, they've got something going. As far as I can see, it sold 500K copies-ish, which is not bad in a vacuum for a new IP. However, the costs of putting this game together might be a bit much. I assume, since AEW published this and since Tony Khan seems to have money to burn, they'll take another swing at a console wrestling game.

Sorry, I mean Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Be Cool stinks. Terrible adaptation, and I'm not saying that films that are adapted from books need to be direct adaptations every time. They turned Rock's character from a badass dude who just happened to be gay to a camp gay character. I'm not a huge Elmore Leonard guy (at least as a novel writer), but come the hell on with that adaptation. Regarding the Rock's likability, I think he was way more likeable as a pro wrestler than as a movie star. He hit the A-list and immediately got vaguely creepy like Tom Cruise has seemingly been his whole life.

Southland Tales is a fascinating failure. Richard Kelly was a one-hit wonder, but ST is worth seeing at least once. The Rundown is a fun action flick. Moana rules. Rocky's no Big Dave as an actor, but he's typically in solid crowd pleasers...and also Black Adam.

Thunder Interlude – show number twenty-seven – 13 August 1998 "The WCW Gang has a show full of wrestling(!!!), but the catch comes at the very end of this Thunder” It’s time for some Thunder…I wonder where we’re going with this whole Fall Brawl thing…War Games could be interesting considering the three-way feud between WCW and the two nWo factions… Scott Hall comes to the ring…Hall scores a date with an ardent fan for after the show, points to his crotch a lot, and then does a survey…Everyone confirms that they came to see the nWo, which is good for Hall…But they came to see the Wolfpac, which is bad for Hall…Hall promises to beat down his opponent Konnan tonight…Konnan responds to Hall’s chatter with some mic work of its own…He and Hall go to a stalemate in the dueling catchphrase contest…The wrestling contest stinks…I like both these fellas, but this match isn’t any good…Konnan goes into his 5MoD after a few minutes…Hall kicks Konnan in the junk out of desperation and looks to set up for a Razor’s Edge…Konnan avoids it with a small package for two, but Hall kicks out, hits a lariat, and sets up for his finisher again…Hall hits it for three…Wow, a clean finish!... Raven is doused with a beer about halfway down the aisle…Wrestling fans continually overstepped their bounds with WCW-era Raven…Raven grabs a mic and sits down…He’s still irritated at Horace Hogan fucking up while trying to interfere in his Road Wild match…We’re getting a return match in which Raven is doubly angry because Horace Hogan won their Monday match due to Saturn’s interference…Raven destroys Horace and goes to get the STOP sign, but Lodi stops Raven from using it…Horace is able to big boot the STOP sign into Raven’s face as a result…That gets a 2.9…Horace gets 2.9 off a top-rope splash…Horace uses the STOP sign to effect on Raven’s back…Horace gets another 2.9 off another top-rope splash, except Raven is sandwiched between Horace and the sign… Horace goes for a back splash into Raven in the corner…Raven moves and then tosses Horace to the floor, where Raven goes to work…Back in the ring, Raven demands that Lodi attack Horace…Lodi hesitates and gets slapped…Raven demands that everyone else in the Flock attack Horace…They do until Saturn comes down and gets them to back off…Saturn faces off with Raven, and Horace gets up and hits Saturn with a lariat from behind…Saturn eats a beatdown until Kanyon runs down for the save…There’s an interesting story here about the Flock members getting deprogrammed that doesn’t need Kanyon involved at all…But I’m not sure they’re going to tell that story with any effectiveness… Stevie Ray cuts an interview with Tony S….Get Stevie on color already…He challenges the Giant to a match for next week…He’s also working Eddy Guerrero tonight…That’s definitely a WCW-ass WCW matchup right there… Chris Jericho is now the WCW Television Champion, but unfortunately for him, it’s a lot harder to dodge title defenses every week when you’ve got a television title…Jericho defends against Chavo Guerrero Jr…Pepe has a bandage on his snout…Poor guy…Chavo uses his quickness and agility to avoid Jericho’s ability to leverage his size…He goes nuts with strikes on Jericho in the corner while Jericho screeches in fear…Jericho prefers holds and power attacks early…Jericho hops over Chavo on a rope run, but Chavo just stops, turns around, and takes a chunk out of Jericho’s cheeks…Chavo biting dudes on the ass always makes the kids laugh…Chavo gets a huge pop after Jericho bails post butt-biting and Chavo rides Pepe around the ring…Chavo rules… There’s a commercial break at this point…That’s a good place for a break in this match…We get a close-up of Pepe’s injuries before panning over to see Chavo miss a dropkick…Jericho follows up with an Asai moonsault for two…Jericho hits a nice stalling suplex and gets two off that move and a wimpy pin…Jericho starts to grind Chavo down again with holds and chokes…when he runs, that’s when Chavo can get a boot up or dodge a move…Jericho regains control immediately after Chavo sticks a boot up on a corner charge…But he loses it again when Chavo runs the ropes and scores a counter lariat…Chavo hits a dope Superman Punch (!!!) that looks awesome…Chavo follows up with a springboard bulldog for two…That obviously wasn’t going to be the finish, but it feels like it should have been…What a move combo…I am rooting for Chavo to win this thing so much…Jericho destroys Pepe and rolls an infuriated Chavo up for 2.9 when Chavo charges him…Chavo’s got another Pepe hidden under the ring….This Pepe has his head on a baseball bat…Chavo loads up, swings, and connects…Unfortunately, Charles Robinson is standing there watching the whole thing…Aw, I wanted TV champ Chavo…Great match, though… Recap of Lex Luger winning the United States Championship off Bret Hart on Nitro…Bret Hart comes out and is upset that Lex Luger won the United States Championship off him on Nitro…He blames the fans and promises that they will not get joy from his downfall…The Hitman says the word SOAR-RY…That’s one of my favorite regional pronunciations of a word…I’m not SOAR-RY he said that… The Boogie Knights (w/Tokyo Magnum) come out here and wrestle Public FUCKING Enemy again…Bisch and his booking team pioneered the “endless rematch” approach that WWE television would take to new heights in the aughts and New Tens…I am fine with PE, but I don’t need to see them having this same matchup…And maybe I shouldn’t complain because Wright and Rocco have a really nice exchange to begin…Wright backdrops Rocco to the floor, beats him down out there, and gets caught going up top, but hits a front suplex from the seated position…Wright and Rocco keep going with some effective counter-wrestling…Rocco hits an inverted atomic drop before he and Grunge continue to punish Wright’s pelvis…I think I’ve seen enough PE to say that Rocco Rock is the clearly better worker in that team…Another note: Alex Wright is legitimately good at this point in his development…Johnny Grunge tries to sandwich Alex Wright between himself and a table standing in the corner…Wright pulls Tokyo Magnum, who is trying to help him, in the way…Wright quickly uses the diversion to hit Grunge with a neckbreaker for three…Post-match, Meng runs out and destroys everyone with TDGs…Barbarian and Jimmy Hart run out to attack Meng…They are ineffective…Meng TDGs Grunge and Rocco at the same time and uses his free legs to kick the security guys who come to break it up…Meng is pretty great!... Kevin Nash comes out to chat with the Wolfpac faithful in the crowd…He’s got some thoughts about Goldberg spearing him out of his boots a few days ago…Nash is like, Dude bought me a beer after the fact, he’s cool, in fact, he can totally join the Wolfpac if he wants…That’s pretty diplomatic for a professional wrestler’s promo after someone mistakenly attacked him, actually…They shouldn’t put Goldberg in the Wolfpac because it’s not a fit, but if they did do it, the initial pop for it happening would have created enough energy to power a thousand homes for a full year’s time… Oh, I see…Hall got a win over a Wolfpac member who is lower on the pole earlier…Now Nash is getting that win back by doing the same to a Hollywood member who isn’t at the top of the card…Curt Hennig (w/Rick Rude) comes to the ring after Nash is done talking…Hennig tries a go-behind, which just gets him backed into a corner and beaten with elbows and knees…Hennig overelaborates his bump on a beal and it just looks stupid more than it make it seem that Nash really launched him…Hennig decides that he’s had enough of Nash using his knee and boot to attack him and works the leg after Nash whiffs on a running big boot…Hennig’s leg work is somewhat effective as Nash sells it while hitting a Snake Eyes, a running sitout splash, and a big boot…Rick Rude sees the end coming and jumps in the ring, knocks out the ref, and squares up to Nash…This allows Hall to come to the ring and jump Nash from behind…Luger eventually makes the save and disperses the three-on-one beatdown…The Wolfpac barely ever wins…I think the Hitman losing the U.S. Championship to Luger is one of maybe two or three times that the Wolfpac has beaten Hollywood…This match was solid until the non-finish… I expected the main event now, but Stevie Ray heads back to the ring instead…I forgot that he’s wrestling Eddy Guerrero…Well, that means Hart/Luger is going under fifteen minutes for sure and maybe (probably?) under ten minutes…Eddy looks ornery tonight…He tries strikes, but that doesn’t work…He tries running the ropes, but eats a shoulderblock…Eddy goes to the unorthodox moves…He hits an armdrag out of a strange position and goes to the corner punches, but gets tossed when Stevie misses a kick, but grabs him anyway…Scott Hall and the Giant come out to watch Stevie lock on a bearhug…They need to imbibe whatever’s in those red Solo cups they’re carrying to make watching Stevie apply a bearhug seem even remotely entertaining…Stevie does some plodding offense, then hits a press slam that is less plodding than the stuff that came before it…Stevie is just killing Eddy here, which I frankly think sucks, and I like Stevie well enough…Eddy makes a brief comeback while Giant and Hall whisper to one another…These dolts in Fargo start a weak EDDY SUCKS SHIT chant…Run all those idiot fans through a woodchipper…There’s an ugly counter that leads to a big boot and a Slapjack…Stevie gets a three-count…That match stunk…I’ve never seen Eddy Guerrero have less in-ring chemistry with someone than I just saw him have with Stevie… The bell rings on Bret Hart/Lex Luger at just under eleven minutes before the video feed is over…I didn’t think they had a great match on Nitro, but I still think this should get fifteen-plus…At worst, they have another okay match and at best, they improve on their Nitro bout…This match is like the Nitro match in that Luger just takes a lot of offense and yells AUGH while Bret hits him with offense, and at either end of the match are Luger’s bursts of offense…Bret uses a Billy Silverman rope break to hit Luger with a Hot Shot…I like Bret’s offense quite a lot, so this is fine, but I feel that even though 1998 Lex Luger is past his peak as a worker by a few years, they still have something better in them… Bret runs through his 5MoD…Well, not quite, as he misses on the second-rope elbow…But Hart stays in control anyway after that whiff…Luger makes his comeback shortly after, though…He hits two Irish whips, a lariat, a metal forearm, and another lariat that sends the Hitman to the floor…Bret grabs a chair and brings it back in the ring…Luger hits another clothesline…Luger grabs the chair, but the ref pulls it away…Bret takes the chance to shove Luger into the ref, who gets smashed in the corner…Hart quickly attacks Luger and hits him with a DDT on the chair, then revives the ref…Silverman crawls over for the count, but Luger (surprisingly, to me) kicks out at 2.9…Bret is irritated at the ref, but he just goes back to Luger and locks him in the Sharpshooter in the middle of the ring…Luger passes out rather than submit…Man, Luger stays winning title belts off the nWo and then losing them right back a few days later…The second Goldberg gave up the United States Championship, I guess the company decided to book it into oblivion… There are two young idiots fans dressed up as the Ultimate Warrior in the front row…They snort and raise their hands to the heavens as the camera lingers on them before the show ends…OH FUCK, WARRIOR IS COMING IN…Shit, I remember now…There’s that dumb “I can’t see him in the mirror” spot with Hogan and Bischoff even though Bisch is the only one who can't see him in the mirror…The fire paper spot that fails miserably…NOOOOOOOOOOOO… This Thunder was perfectly acceptable…I didn’t need the reminder that Warrior’s on his way, though…Oh no, doesn’t Warrior kidnap Ed Leslie and also maybe fuck him into submission and make Leslie his lackey instead of Hogan’s through the power of fucking a la how Warrior fucks Santa Claus in WARRIOR, the comic book series?...Or something similar to that?...I have a vague memory of Hogan/Warrior in WCW, and all of the angle around it was dumb and creepy in equal measures…Welp, this show gets a WOOOO for being wrestling-centric, even if the wrestling wasn’t always that great or even that good…But the end with the Warrior fans really has me unhyped for Nitro…

OK, I've played enough to have some better-formed thoughts: Like I said, it's very reminiscent of Smackdown. I like it, though I wish they'd taken it even farther and ended up somewhere near WWE All-Stars. There are a lot of systems in this thing - the match rating system from FirePro, the momentum system from the AKI games, etc. I sort of like the systems upon systems. What I don't like is the jank, which really shows itself in multi-man matches. Tag matches are awful between the AI and the consistent janky behavior of the system. In one tag match, I was controlling Sting on the ground and trying to trip an opponent in the ring. The opponent's tag partner, who was standing on the apron but wasn't anywhere near me, ended up teleporting me from the floor to the apron in a grapple position and then hitting a move on the apron that catapulted me back into the ring. That's the most egregious example of dumb tag jank, which combined with very dumb tag partner AI makes tag matches terrible. This is a game that has some value and has some potential, but it needed another year in development before being released. I can live with a lack of options for the first wrestling game in a series - I even got a good thirty or forty hours of fun out of WWF RAW on OG Xbox, for goodness sake - but the lack of options AND the lack of engine polish sucks. I'm glad I waited until the 15 USD digital/30 USD physical price point to buy this.

It's basically a modern version of Smackdown on PSOne. It's no AKI/Syn Sophia rasslin' game, but there are things I like about it. Definitely worth the dough.

Fight Forever was thirty bucks on PS5 at Best Buy. That's my price range, so I bought it. I haven't played a new sim wrestling game in years, so I am looking forward to it. And if it's more on the arcadey side of sims because Yuke's made it, that's fine, too.

Show #153 – 10 August 1998 "The one with five title matches, two title changes, and still, a sense that everything is just running in place” We venture deeper into the WCW era that I remember the least. As Mike Tenay and Larry Zbyszko both act shocked that Tony Schiavone cannot possibly show us the footage from Road Wild's main event (!!!), I wonder exactly when it all falls apart for Bischoff in his first run as Nitro showrunner. What’s the first marker of concrete trouble? Raven walking out of the company? Hell, we haven’t even got Ric Flair back on TV yet, so we probably still have some time before any of that happens. I did perk up when I heard that Goldberg/Meng would be a match later tonight. Barbarian wrestles Hacksaw Duggan in the opener. This show is in South Dakota, which appears to be a land that time forgot, so Duggan is as over here as he was in 1987 everywhere else. This match is what it is, but Barb and Jimmy Hart do their thing and Hacksaw Hacksaws up and this crowd, which I wouldn’t call particularly discerning when it comes to their pro wrestling taste, eats it up. Who am I to complain? An unentertained fan, that’s who. Oh yeah, the finish: Duggan wins with a rollup, Hugh Morrus runs down and jumps Duggan, and Meng pops in for what I guess starts out as a save even if it doesn’t end up that way. Meng TDG’s the fuck out of everybody, and I mean everybody; Doug Dellinger tries to calm the carnage down, so Meng TDG’s him. Duggan tries to stop him and Meng TDG’s him. Meng TDG’s some more security, but one security guy is lucky enough to just eat a side kick instead of a TDG. Wow, will Goldberg be able to avoid or maybe even break Meng’s Tongan Death Grip later tonight?!?! (Yes. Yes he will.) (Editor's note: No? No he won't?!) Lots of Wolfpac recap, mostly about Lex Luger getting jumped last week. Or a guy in a crappy blond wig because Luger had the night off. Whatever. Anyway, Luger walks out to the ring to cut an interview with Gene Okerlund. Luger claims that Bret attacked him even though Scott Hall claimed he was the one behind the attack on Thunder. Bret all but took credit for it on Nitro. Well, you can’t expect honesty from heels, so who knows? Now, Luger and Bret are signed for a U.S. Championship match on Thunder, but Luger’s trying to fast-track that match for tonight. Bret storms out, denies having attacked anyone, and says that it was probably just some vendor. Actually, Bret is pretty funny in this promo, deflecting challenges and pretending that he and Sting vibe with one another more than Sting and Luger do. I wonder if we got some Hart/Narcissist Luger on a Coliseum Video. I’ll have to check for that at some point. Anyway, after a bit of repartee, Bret agrees to give Luger a title shot tonight instead of on Wednesday or Thursday or whatever day Thunder is showing this week because honestly, it moves around on the schedule quite a bit. The Boogie Knights lead out Tokyo Magnum. The latter is facing Eddy Guerrero in a match next. Magnum has less energy than normal, probably because he had what can only be described as a rough night at Road Wild. The crowd offers a little pop for Wright, a heel, yelling YOU STUPID LITTLE JAPANESE at Magnum. South Dakota, come on, folks, come the fuck on. The Boogie Knights tell Magnum he’s on his own tonight against Eddy. Eddy’s having his own inner turmoil lately, so he tries to work it out by chopping the hell out of Magnum, but that just sets a pace where both guys do a lot of running, and while it’s all part of a very brief match, it’s pretty enjoyable. Eddy quickly kills Magnum’s pace with a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, and he kills Magnum off entirely with a brainbuster and a Frog Splash for an easy night’s work. Saturn’s up next. His 1998 has been wonderful. Apparently, he’s wrestling Kanyon tonight to close off that part of the feud (hopefully) since Kanyon didn’t show up for matches the last couple of weeks. They open with strikes, but Saturn catches a wild Kanyon swing and turns it into a belly-to-belly. This match is really strike-heavy early. Kanyon gets control and hits a second-rope leg lariat for two, then a facebuster for another two-count. It’s the facebuster where Kanyon stands with his opponent’s head between his thighs and then just falls forward. Does that facebuster have a standardized name? Anyway, this match is fine, but well below the standard of what you’d expect from these two. They trade sleepers, they trade counters, and eventually Kanyon takes a lot of time going up for a swerve strickland killshot. That’s a mistake, as Saturn catches him. They struggle to get their footing on a top-rope belly-to-belly, but they catch their balance even after slipping and pull it off. See, these guys just feel a bit off tonight, and that’s an example of why. Unfortunately, Raven is still feuding with Saturn even after the months of feuding that has already happened; Lodi runs out, distracts the ref, and allows Raven to make an appearance from the other side of the ring. Raven Evenflows Saturn; Kanyon is almost out, but he's got the wherewithal to roll over onto Saturn for three. I don’t see where this feud can go from the point it’s at. Meng is walking around backstage TDG’ing everyone he can find. This is pretty great, actually! Lodi leads out Sick Boy; Mongo faces said Boy Who Is Sick in a short match. Lodi runs a tiny distraction to start, which allows Sick Boy to control the match early. Sick Boy somehow doesn’t slip on an ugly-looking springboard dropkick, so good for him on that. Mongo does way too much selling for fucking Sick Boy, like way the fuck too much. Mongo finally reverses an Irish whip in what might be the most aesthetically unpleasing way possible, hits a clothesline, hits a tilt-a-whirl slam, and looks like he’s about to win with a couple of chop blocks. He hits his head on the second chop block and Sick Boy goes for his finisher, but Mongo backdrops Sick Boy out of it and hits the Mongo Spike for three. Other than Meng TDG’ing everyone in the arena except Goldberg, this show has been quite boring. That’s better than it being awful, though. “Boring” is an upgrade on Nitro lately. It’s like I curse myself all the fucking time. After the commercial break, Hogan, Bischoff, and Disciple come to the ring. See? See?! I was happy with “boring!” Well, not happy, but you know, content? Accepting of it? Okay with it? Anyway, Hogan’s not getting the belt back until the Fingerpoke of Doom, I know that, so what the fuck are they going to have this guy doing for the next four months? Maybe we get lucky and this bum goes off to shoot a couple of B-movies that you find in the back of the Blockbuster, away from the good stuff. Hogan does challenge Goldberg for the title in this interview, but I assume something veers him away from actually doing that for awhile. I cannot remember what it might be, though, and I'm watching these shows again without reminding myself what happens next to preserve a bit of surprise and intrigue where I can. I mean, it could be that he leaves to shoot a movie, but I bet that I don’t get that lucky. Bischoff says that nWo Hollywood will provide ringside security for the Goldberg/Meng match to make sure that Meng doesn’t TDG everyone at this show. Sure, it’s disingenuous, but it’s also plausible. Meng is a beast. Tony S. gets some breaking news: The Wolfpac is also going to provide ringside security for the Goldberg match. It’ll be a whole-ass donnybrook out there, I bet. Stevie Ray is now billed as the WCW World Television Champion on the chyron. J.J. Dillon really doesn’t give a single solitary fuck about that belt. No wonder Hacksaw ended up digging it out of a trash can. Chavo Jr. gets a return match against Stevie for the gold, but Chavo’s pressed because Pepe is missing. But luckily enough for Chavo Jr., Chris Jericho found Pepe! Oops, no, Jericho had a mic in his hand as he waved Pepe around, so we could hear as he lured Chavo to the back and, after sounds of a struggle, walked back out with a broken stick horse and a look of satisfaction on his face. Jericho I guess is just going to take this TV title shot from Chavo. Sure why not? No one cares about this fucking title. Just make it the 24/7 TV Title. Jericho cuts a dumb boastful promo and Stevie accepts the challenge. Jericho can’t match power with Stevie, so he uses quickness to hit a basement dropkick to Stevie’s knee. Then, he goes back to trying for power, which is a mistake. Stevie is the defacto babyface tonight because everyone hates Jericho that much. Jericho is such a good heel that he turned a) another heel and b) a black man into a babyface in small-town South Dakota for one night. You can’t say this guy isn’t at the height of his powers. This match is actually pretty decent because of the contrast in strategies, with Jericho having to take risks to have a chance and Stevie stuffing risky Jericho moves with power counters and clubbering. Jericho counters a Stevie power move with a dropkick, then backs Stevie into the corner before “accidentally” kicking the ref in the junk. Stevie regains control and sets up for the slapjack, but the Giant runs down for whatever reason and attacks Stevie, then plants Stevie with a chokeslam. Jericho wakes up the ref and locks a cursory Lion Tamer on a passed-out Stevie for the win and the gold. OK, I didn’t expect any of that. Huh. Bischoff is back out here (w/Liz) to show some stills of the Road Wild main event, but of course, all the stills are only of Hogan or Bischoff scoring offense. This little canard where Hogan and Bischoff selectively show stills or video has been old since the end of 1997. I subjected myself to listening to Bischoff on an episode of 83 Weeks to hear what he thought about Bash at the Beach ’98 even though I’m entirely sick of his voice at this point, and you know what? He’s got good taste in pro wrestling matches. I mean, if you can parse all the diplomatic verbiage he talks so he doesn’t insult any of his wrestler friends, and you get down to him talking about what he likes about wrestling, he’s got great instincts for what makes good wrestling. Meltzer on the other hand, geez, Conrad reading Meltzer’s reviews of some of this stuff gets me going more than it gets Bischoff going. You know, maybe Dave Meltzer and his extremely narrow idea of what makes for good pro wrestling is actually the most to blame for the sorry state of pro wrestling aesthetics in 2024. Lizmark Jr., Psicosis, and Rey Misterio Jr. have a triple threat match. I guess WCW’s not trying to get “triple jeopardy” over as a name for this match anymore. It’s been standardized as “triple threat.” The alliteration makes this obviously the better choice. I’m not a huge fan of triple threat matches, so I’m a bit lukewarm on this. There are creative spots, like Psicosis hitting Rey with a missile dropkick and using the momentum to senton splash Lizmark at the same time, but the spots generally feel contrived and artificial. That’s really the problem with triple threat matches. I await a pack of workers figuring out a way to work these with a different philosophy than “one guy lays around outside so two people can have a one-on-one match” or “Third guy stumbles into position for no clear reason so that they can take a contrived double-team move from an opponent.” Rey and Lizmark agree to a makeshift alliance and just beat the piss out of Psicosis; they even try to double-cover the guy before Lizmark realizes that only one person can win. They confront one another and then make up before Psicosis rolls through a Doomsday Device attempt while sitting on Lizmark’s shoulders, and Rey misses his target entirely. That stops all the teamwork, and shortly after, Psicosis accidentally monkey flips Rey up onto Lizmark’s shoulders for a makeshift springboard rana that ends the match. That spot could have looked pretty contrived, but it was pulled off fluidly. Credit to these fellas. Luger/Hart is on earlier than I thought it’d be. Hart gets blown away on a collar-and-elbow and bails to reconsider his strategy. His strategy is to, um, attempt a test of strength. That’s neither an excellent plan, nor is it executed particularly well, but at least he breaks the test of strength and locks Luger’s arm up. Luger breaks away with an elbow and hits a lariat, which sends Bret outside to grab his belt and walk off. Luger breaks the count and brings Bret back to the ring. Charles Robinson, in what I think is maybe an instance of a Chekhov’s Title Belt and definitely an instance of kayfabe poor reffing, grabs the belt and puts it down in the corner of the ring. This match is okay, I guess. There’s a commercial break when Bret gets control and goes to the boot choke. We come back to some punches. There are more punches. Then some kicks. Luger does most of those, but Bret punts Luger in the junk. Charles Robinson is like, I think it was actually a boot to the stomach, not the nuts. Someone get VAR on the case. If I were the ref in the VAR truck, I’d call Robinson over to the monitor on that one. Bret hits some aesthetically pleasing offense for a series of two-counts. Bret also cusses, which like is his favorite thing to audibly do these days. This time, after beating down Luger, he yells GET UP YOU PIECE OF SHIT, which gets a tiny pop from that part of the crowd that hears him. What the hell? Bret targets Luger’s back to set up for the Sharpshooter. He goes up for the second-rope elbow drop and eats a boot to the mush, though. Luger makes his comeback with a pair of atomic drops and a series of clotheslines/metal elbows. That last one, the metal elbow, gets 2.9. Luger tries for the sleeper, but Bret escapes it by running Luger backward and sandwiching Robinson into the corner in the process. Bret takes the opportunity to load his fist, but he whiffs on the haymaker and Luger racks Hart and gets a submission and, by rights, the U.S. Championship. Huh, the belt didn’t come into play in the finish even though it was prominently laying there on the hard camera side. Also, I do vaguely remember this match because I was shocked at Bret Hart submitting. I mean, yes, young me did remember him as a tag team heel, but most of my life, he was a never-say-die babyface, so even heel Bret submitting was notable to me. As I recall, I saw this match after the fact because I heard Bret had submitted and had to see that for myself. Anyway, the Wolfpac comes to the ring to celebrate with Luger. This match was entirely passable. Juventud Guerrera and Billy Kidman reignite their rivalry. These fellas have excellent chemistry with one another. Kidman’s in a clean shirt! That’s something. That's progress. Juvi is the new Cruiserweight Champ and is trying to avoid a third-straight title change tonight. Juvi starts out hot and sends Kidman outside; Kidman dodges a baseball slide and hits a dropkick to take over. Kidman then sinks in a chinlock back in the ring. Grounding Juvi is a perfectly fine thing to do, but be interesting about it, please. Juvi gets back to his feet, and we get a couple of counters leading to a Kidman floatover powerslam for two. We get another sequence that ends with a Juvi rollup for two. Shortly after that, Juvi is able to crotch Kidman on the ropes, hit him with a springboard Frankensteiner, and then crush Kidman with a 450 for the win. Not their best work, but perfectly acceptable television. Bret/Luger for the U.S. Championship is still on for Thursday Thunder, which makes me think we’re getting another title switch. I think we’re descending into late- ‘90s frantic title switch mode here in WCW. At least in WWF, they treated the World Championship somewhat responsibly. On that ep of 83 Weeks I mentioned, Bisch said he didn’t see Raven as a top guy in a company as big as WCW, and I agree with that, but I do think he’s been running in place here for a few months in a way that I think isn’t up to the level of booking he should get. He’s such an effective cult leader gimmick, you know? Bisch doesn’t totally get the character and seemed a bit put off by the hardcore style and the grunge look, which is a shame. I mention this because Raven comes out with the Flock, berates them, DDTs Riggs for being a fuckup, and tries to slap Horace Hogan. Horace stops it, so they have an impromptu match in which Raven dominates. It’s only when Horace hits a desperation STOP sign shot that he gets some control, and Horace hits a suicide dive to follow up. I genuinely think ol’ Horace Hogan is alright as a midcard bruiser who leaves his feet once or twice a match to great effect. Horace uses the STOP sign as a weapon some more, but misses a splash onto Raven after body slamming Raven on the sign. Raven gets a chair from Lodi, opens it up to a seated position, and rings Horace up with a drop toehold into the seat. Kanyon comes into the aisle to confront the rest of the Flock, which - in a callback to the finish of the earlier Kanyon/Saturn match - allows Saturn to run in from the other side of the ring and hit Raven with a DVD, then roll Horace on top for three. We continue to run in place with this feud, but at least the match was a fun little TV event. Curt Hennig and Konnan resume their feud. Does it need to be resumed? No. But they’re going to do it anyway. Konnan is extremely over tonight. This crowd is into everything, but even considering that, they’re especially into Konnan. Konnan and Hennig have another match where Konnan just unloads early. It’s a little sloppy, but come on, it’s a Konnan match. The crowd chants WOLFPAC and maybe the Wolfpac should be booked more dominantly, just maybe? As I mention that, Hennig takes control and is boring while in it. Konnan makes a comeback and hits a sit out facebuster, but misses a lariat and eats one in return. Hennig grabs one of Konnan’s chains, but Konnan obtains it and chokes out Hennig with it for a DQ loss. OK, so we have to have another one of these matchups at some point? Is that what’s happening? Scott Hall and the Giant defend the tag titles against Kevin Nash and Sting, which should be good! Hall does a survey. WCW does about as well as nWo Hollywood in this survey, which is to say that it does pretty poorly! The Wolfpac, on the other hand, gets a massive pop. They should be pushed better. I wish I could pull a Sam Beckett and jump back into Eric Bischoff’s body in 1998 so I could book this company from now up to Starrcade, get a hearty congratulations from Al for saving WCW, and then jump back and watch how good my booking of this period is on Peacock. Or on whatever streaming app WCW has scored a deal with, considering that they still exist. Anyway, the match; Nash works Hall early and looks for a Jackknife, but Hall escapes. I do like the idea that the big payoff is Nash at some point finally powerbombing Hall, who has escaped that fate at a number of turns so far. Hall tries to get cocky with the paintbrushing on an arm wringer and gets decked by Nash. This causes him to tag the Giant, which seems reasonable. Nash easily controls Giant, who tags right back out to Hall after only a few seconds. Nash has no issues with Hall; he frames the elbow in the corner and goes to the boot choke, which is when Giant runs a distraction so that Hall can hit Nash with a low blow. That finally allows the tag champs to get a bit of offensive control in this match. They keep it for a handful of tags, but Nash is able to duck a Giant strike and hit a big boot, which sparks a hot tag. Sting dominates, as one does when they’re the babyface on a hot tag. Sting eventually hits three straight Stinger Splashes on Hall and wraps Hall in the Scorpion Deathlock, so the Giant saves the gold by grabbing the ref and threatening him with a chokeslam if he doesn’t call for a DQ. Scott Dickinson calls for a DQ, but Giant chokeslams him any-fucking-way because that’s good heelin’. This was fine. At least the whole Wolfpac got onto TV this week in multiple segments! Goldberg/Meng is up next. Let me just write the finish here before Buffer starts talking: Meng gets Goldberg in the TDG; Goldberg breaks it. Spear, Jackhammer, SPLAT. Everyone at ringside fights one another; Goldberg murders someone or other, maybe a few someone or others. OK, now back to the present: I’m so happy that Meng got at least one Buffer intro. The match finally starts and Meng throws a Hundred Hand Slap, so that rules. Goldberg responds with a forearm and a side kick. Meng uncharacteristically decides to take a powder. He does this to the wrong side of the ring and has to roll back in, then back out again so he can end up where he was supposed to, near nWo Hollywood. Back in the ring, it’s just two hosses throwing blows at one another. It’s not good by the standards of a pro wrestling match, but it’s entertaining to me. Anyway, Meng side kicks Goldberg outside near Hollywood, who beats on him and tosses him back in. Meng gets the TDG on Goldberg, actually takes him down, and releases it, thinking he’s won. He hasn’t won. Spear, Jackhammer, SPLAT, but the layout was ultimately ineffective because Goldberg should have explicitly broken the TDG, not had Meng break it himself. Post-match, Hogan grabs a chair and hits Goldberg from behind. Nash snatches the chair away and sends Hogan out of the ring, but Goldberg turns around, sees Nash with the chair, and spears him as the show ends. I think the booking in WCW is roundly uninspired, but the show wasn’t full of a bunch of really bad nWo Hollywood sketches, so that’s good. The work was a notch or two below what I’d normally expect from the workers on this show, which is a shame, and boy did I not like how they built up the unbreakable TDG to have Goldberg be the one to break it and then…not have Goldberg break the TDG. But *thinks about the three weeks of shows leading up to Road Wild ‘98* it could have been worse! 2.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes

I would say, "That's not the Vince I knew" as well if I'd worked closely with him over the past few years, but wanted to implicitly deny knowing anything about what he was doing.

I'm not surprised. People want to see something other than safe blockbuster fare and, for three months, Oscar bait. Two of my best movie-going experiences of the past decade were Lawrence of Arabia and Some Like It Hot (the latter of which is even funnier from this point in the future for so many reasons). I would love to get more showings of '70s films. That '70s movie channel on Pluto has put up so many good movies that I hadn't seen, but that I'd pay to see on a big screen.

Were you laughing because Seinfeld went off the air 27 years ago and thus couldn't have run a storyline fifteen years ago, as Meltzer apparently said? Meltz is a total space cadet and I remain surprised that people pay to listen to him talk about wrestling because they value his wrestling opinions. Now, valuing him for being unintentionally funny and generally entertaining, I totally get.

Nintendo says they'd go out of business and take their IP with them and I believe them. Nintendo has zero fucks to give. Nintendo is sitting on so much cash that they could run into repeated failures and still load up again for the next console generation with some new idea for awhile. They won't be going anywhere even if they have two failures in a row (which they've done before as the N64 underperformed against the PSOne and the Gamecube was such an awful device that it got beaten worldwide by OG Xbox).

Floral Pattern Shirt got over big with me after seeing that video. Everyone else is in some sort of workout or sparring gear and she just rolls up in a shirt and regular pants and throws hammer fists at her opponent while the ref considers maybe stepping in at some point. If I had a time machine, I'd book Floral Pattern Shirt and Chyna to be the most dominant women's tag team of all time.

I'm a close second, though.

WWF delivering consistently in big matches is one thing, but as much as we talk about how much talent WCW had in their undercard, by 1998, WWF has a pretty amazing group of undercard talent itself.

SummerSlam ’98 notes: The opening video package a) has too much Vince fucking McMahon in it and b) reminds me of how much I hated the Undertaker/Kane relationship drama by this time. They love each other, they hate each other, they barely tolerate each other, who the fuck cares after about ten months. Have Kane do literally anything else than get mixed up in convoluted plots with the Undertaker, Vince McMahon, and sometimes Steve Austin. Val Venis is much like Tatanka, I think: League average. Won’t elevate a damned thing, won’t drag it down. Sign in the crowd: VALBOWSKI, PLANT YOUR SEED IN THE BIG APPLE. That is the first time I’ve seen a fan sign ask a wrestler to fuck his way through the city and leave a few newly-impregnated women behind. There are an absurd number of pro-Val signs in the crowd. What the fuck was wrong with people? Venis grabs a mic and says, “I came, I saw…and I came again.” This is an understatement, but 1998 WWF is unnecessarily gross sometimes. Luckily, someone who is quite good at pro wrestling comes to the ring to face Val. D’Lo Brown is the European Champion and is doing that gimmick where he’s announced as now residing in a different European city every show. Tonight, he’s announced as now residing in Helsinki, Finland. D’Lo will get something decent out of Val; I enjoy D’Lo as a sneaky heel quite a lot. In fact, D’Lo takes cheap shots and runs away and ducks under the ropes almost immediately. D’Lo also has that chest protector on, and he's using it to avoid injury like pre-prime Roman Reigns. Venis fires off a forearm that hurts him more than it hurts D’Lo. I’m a sucker for this gimmick – I was digging Lex Luger’s metal forearm being a secret weapon on my ’93 WWF watch and generally love it when a heel uses a cast to bonk opponents on the head. These fellas cut a pace and do a lot of rope running and countering until finally, Val scores a spinebuster for two. We cut to Edge standing in the crowd, watching the match. Where’s his source of charisma Christian? In the ring, Val scores a lariat, but whiffs on a follow-up jumping headbutt attempt. We get more counter-counter-counter until D’Lo slips to a side position and hits a back suplex. D’Lo reverses an Irish whip and goes off his feet to get some force; Val takes a nice bump in the corner and flops onto his face. I am somewhat surprised that this match is so fast-paced and fun. Val counters a lariat attempt by ducking it and hitting an overhead suplex, but then he runs the ropes and D’Lo indeed scores that lariat he missed earlier. D’Lo gets two on a legdrop, then two on a wheel kick. Val tries to slam his way out of trouble, but his back gives out, and D’Lo knocks him down and hits a second-rope elbow drop for another two count. Again, Val tries to go for a suplex, but again, his back hurts, so D’Lo slips out and locks on a Texas Cloverleaf (!!!) that he breaks, I guess because Val is crawling toward the ropes and he doesn’t want to bother trying to struggle over it. D’Lo goes back to the second rope and completely whiffs on a senton splash. Val makes his comeback here with knees and elbows. He back bodydrops D’Lo and goes up top, but D’Lo gets up, meets Val’s leap in mid-air, and counters it into a Sky High. He’s hurt, though, and his delay in crawling over to cover only nets him a 2.9. Back to standing, both guys counter-counter-counter until D’Lo ducks a lariat and scores a DDT for another 2.9. D’Lo slaps the mat in frustration as I remain shocked that we’re getting a competitive, enjoyable opener on a late ’98 WWF PPV. D’Lo tries to go up top, gets met by Val, and knocks Val back to the mat. He’s caught in a weird place though and takes time to re-position himself for a dive, which Val catches and turns into a powerslam for two. These fellas are just going to try and throw bombs at one another until someone stays down, I guess. Val tries to go up top, gets blocked once, gets back up top, gets blocked again, and decides to come down, hit a double-underhook suplex and a body slam instead, and then finally go up and hit a Money Shot. Val goes up, swivels his hips, dives…and eats all knees. I can’t believe they had an effective struggle over Val’s finisher. The crowd is apparently impressed with this and gets a D’LO chant going before it gets shut down with a D’LO SUCKS chant. D’Lo drops Val on a running powerbomb attempt – ominous, portentous – and then tries again and lands it. D’Lo follows up with a Lo Down frog splash attempt, but Val moves, and I am really, really, REALLY enjoying this match, and Val rips off D’Lo’s chest protector and powerslams him for two, then puts the protector on himself, which is pretty smart, actually. Val goes up top while Jimmy Korderas tries to get Val to take the protector off, and actually, Korderas grabs Val’s ankle while protesting about the protector and knocks Venis down accidentally. Val keeps control, but when Korderas gets back in his face trying to get the protector back, Val shoves him out of the way, gets DQ’d, and this match deserved a far better finish than it got. Val beating up Korderas post-match for admittedly bad reffing and then hitting the erstwhile ref with a Money Shot is fine, but I am disappointed at this end, personally. Also, just so everyone is aware, I think I’ve identified Val Venis’s career match. I just wrote multiple paragraphs about a Val Venis match! I can’t believe it! Also, I have to take the “league average” label right back off the guy because he absolutely did a fantastic job in this match and it wasn’t just D’Lo lugging him along. D’Lo is fun and good, but not that fun or good. Mankind is upset about some hearse he borrowed getting smashed up in the back. He’s mad at Kane for some reason that I’m not even going to try and parse. Kai-en-Tai head to the ring to face the Oddities in a four-versus-three handicap match. I always forget that John Tenta ended back up in WWF for a minute under a hood and wearing South Park t-shirts. I’ll say this: The idea of Tenta vs. Taka intrigues me, but obviously not Golga vs. Attitude Era WWF Taka. Golga steals Yamaguchi’s shoe to do a “comedy” spot that really needs Chavo Jr. involved to find a way to make it work. Lawler says some objectionable stuff on color, but the nature of what he says is not what you’d first guess, or even second or third guess. The crowd kind of enjoys the, IMO, uninspired comedy spots in this thing, but I think we should just move along to the next match soon or maybe get Val Venis, top worker (?!?) back out here. Even Jim Ross says, “Well, we never advertised this to be a classic.” As I slowly remember the Oddities – Is that Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope out here at ringside? When did Luna join this group? – Golga flops on top of all four Kai-en-Tai members for the win. Jeff Jarrett (w/Southern Justice) cut Howard Finkel’s ring of hair on the Sunday Night Heat before this show, apparently. I think they did him a favor; fellas, just let all the hair go or go get some of it shaved off your ass and implanted on your head, but don’t do the “keep a ring of hair around a bald dome” thing. Anyway, the finish of this match Jarrett’s going to have against X-Pac is spoiled because it’s a hair-vs.-hair match, and only one of these fellas famously sports a crew cut through the rest of this period. Fink’s with X-Pac as his support and is allowed to stick around even though the ref sends Southern Justice to the back. X-Pac grabs a mic before the match, calls Jarrett a “beeyotch,” and then hands it over to Fink so Fink can say “SUCK ITTTTT” in Fink voice. I chuckled at some of that. X-Pac is very good at pro wrestling and Jarrett showed why he's a top talent with that first WCW run, at least in my eyes, so I expect something good, and of course, I get something good from these fellas. Again, we have two guys putting together a pacey match full of counter-wrestling. There’s a FANTASTIC, creative spot where X-Pac whiffs on a wild haymaker at ringside; Jarrett ducks the punch, pulls X-Pac into position for an atomic drop, lifts him, and crotches him sideways on the post. That looked like it hurt so bad the whole crowd felt it – OHHHHHHH – and X-Pac only made it back to the ring at the nine count. I never would have guessed that the WWF undercard guys (outside of the Oddities, of course) would work at a more energetic pace than the WCW undercard guys, nor would I have guessed that X-Pac and Jarrett would have a match full of MOVEZ~ that would put all the cruiserweights who showed up on Road Wild to shame. Well, probably WCW’s commentary desk on that latter show had a salient point about wrestling outside in the heat versus inside a temp-controlled arena. Anyway, Pac drills a gorgeous tornado DDT for 2.9, but gets wrapped up in a sleeper when he runs the ropes again. Pac survives, then survives a super back suplex attempt by elbowing Jarrett away from him. He tries to follow up with a twisting crossbody splash, but Jarrett simply ducks, then crawls over and gets a long two count. Lawler does make me laugh at one point here while both wrestlers in the ring counter one another some more. After insulting Howard Finkel, Lawler is asked by Jim Ross, “What did poor old Howard Finkel ever do to you?” Lawler takes a beat, maybe a beat-and-a-half to consider before responding: “Well, what did Howard Finkel ever do for me?” I mean, that is both honest and SHOOT! relevant to how people often treat one another in our disposable, fast-food, streaming society, and I consider that while X-Pac fights to turn a Figure Four leglock. They struggle over it, get an AWWWW when X-Pac almost turns it and is barely stuffed, and finally end up both on the mat for a standing ten-count when Pac blocks Jarrett as Jarrett tries to re-apply it and hits a desperation back suplex. Pac makes his comeback when everyone gets to standing, hits a Bronco Buster, and moots a Jarrett comeback by rolling through a Jarrett crossbody attempt for two. They run the ropes some more and Jarrett’s Frankensteiner attempt gets stuffed into a sit-out powerbomb that scores two for X-Pac, and then Pac takes a wild corner bump a la Psicosis, and this match fucking RULES, man. I can’t believe how good the undercard has been so far. After Jarrett boots Pac in the junk on another Bronco Buster attempt, Fink gets on the apron to complain. Jarrett knocks Fink off the apron, but the distraction causes him to turn around into an X-Factor. The delayed cover gets 2.9. That’s when Southern Justice shows back up. Knight/Slazenger/Phineas I. distracts the ref while Canterbury/Shanghai/Henry O. grabs Jarrett’s guitar, swings at X-Pac, and completely misses the target. Pac grabs the guitar and hammers Jarrett with it before the ref turns back around. That scores three to a huge pop. The New Age Outlaws run Southern Justice off and we commence the hair removal. Droz and the Headbangers apparently also have beef with Jarrett and come down to hold him down so he can get his head shaved. Man, for a guy whose catchphrase was “Don’t piss me off,” he clearly should have considered not pissing off a few people of his own. Jarrett cracks me up because while he’s getting his hair shaved, he’s just verbally ABUSING Mike Chioda for not seeing the guitar shot and for missing the guitar pieces laying around the ring: CHIODA, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, YOU DIDN’T SEE THE GUITAR SHOT, HOW THE HELL DIDN’T YOU SEE IT, YOU’RE THE REF. Jarrett is fucking killing me. While this was not as good as the Chavo Jr./Eddy hair match from the rival company because few things are, this was legitimately pretty damned awesome in its own right. Method Man is chilling in the crowd decked out in DX apparel and bouncing to X-Pac’s version of the DX theme. The ‘90s, y’all! In a bit of pre-acquisition synergy, we see the OCTAGON as Dok Hendrix, who is still on WWF TV as of 1998 under that name (?!?!), hypes the Lion’s Den match for later tonight between Owen Hart and Ken Shamrock. The Rock cuts an interview with Michael Cole. Apparently, Rocky attacked his opponent for tonight, Triple H, on Heat before this show, targeting the knee in a bit of work that will come back to factor into their match later tonight. The Rock/HHH face-heel alignment is all wrong and should never have HHH as the babyface. In fact, as I recall in 1998, everyone in my group of friends who saw this show was rooting for The Rock. Triple H was naturally and completely unlikeable until he found the Papa HHH persona by hugging Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, Bayley, and Cedric Alexander after big matches, but that was like two whole decades after this show. Anyway, the Rock threatens to slap the yellow off Cole’s teeth if he’s asked another stupid question. The crowd laughs. McMahon and Co. were wise to get this belt off him so they could elevate him to the World Championship scene ASAP. It's Jacqueline! And also Marc Mero, who is good at pro wrestling. They’re a tag team tonight, up against Sable and someone whom Sable hasn’t revealed. Jacqueline left WCW because she didn’t want to job to Woman or Debra or whomever, but she’s apparently happy losing arm wrestling contests to Sable. Maybe the money’s better. Lawler pervs out while Sable introduces her partner, and YOU THINK YOU KNOW HIM, it’s Edge. Well, this match automatically has a cap on how good it can be, and it’s not because Sable’s in it. My distaste for Edge runs deep unless his better half Christian is with him. This mixed tag unfortunately is not wrestled under intergender rules – Ross shouts out famed Lawler nemesis Andy Kaufman in pointing this out – so Jacqueline unfortunately doesn’t get to square off with Edge and we get a lot of Mero/Edge. Like Luna, Jacqueline will legitimately square up with a dude, but run from Sable. A cynic might say that it’s because no woman would expect a babyface guy to actually go full force at them, so they’re just peacocking, but it’s the Attitude Era, so any woman can get it from anybody. I think Jacqueline in this era would legit be willing to fight Edge, so that makes it silly that she’s running from Sable. Speaking of Sable, she kicks Mero in the jewels and sets him up for a Sable Bomb because she’s basically Chyna, apparently, and Jacqueline cuts her off. Unfortunately, Jacqueline isn’t in there with Disco Inferno, having a fun match. Sable catches Jacqueline in a TKO and covers, but Mero grabs her ankle and drags her away. Jacqueline and Mero get their wires crossed on a double-team shortly after, and after Edge is tagged, he hits what I think is a wonderfully gorgeous dive on Mero to the outside. He got a surprising amount of hangtime. Jacqueline jumps on his back, so Edge pulls her down, puts her over his knee and spanks her – the Attitude Era, everyone! – and then goes back in the ring and gets two by hitting Mero with a crossbody. Some other stuff happens, Mero and Jacqueline can’t complete one single double-team move, and Edge crotches Mero on the top rope. I have to give it to Sable here because she tags in, lands a GORGEOUS top-rope Frankensteiner, and scores a deserved SABLE chant. It’s all downhill for Mero from there, as he gets headbutted in the balls by his own partner, hit with a Downward Spiral, and press-splashed by Sable for the loss. This was unobjectionable as a whole, but Edge and Sable nailing a couple of gorgeous moves made this worth watching. I guess I forgot that Edge was a very good athlete because inside of like two years as a WWF wrestler, he’d car crashed himself enough to kill quite a bit of that athleticism. I guess Mankind and Kane are tag champs. Kane isn’t here, though, and Mankind has a freak-out about it because he’s got to defend the gold by himself tonight. He cuts a great promo in which he squeals at Michael Cole for asking him about defending his title by himself – “Maybe I should just go play in traffic,” he despondently asserts – and generally gets really aggy. Vinnie McMahon shows up and tries to calm him by telling him that a) no one wants to see Mankind play in traffic (Mankind’s response: “I don’t think that’s true”) or to see him dive off the top of a cage (Mankind’s response: “I don’t think that’s true, either”). Vinnie finally hits on a calming refrain, which is that Mick spent his childhood and young adulthood loving Madison Square Garden matches, hitchhiking to them against his parents’ wishes as a matter of fact, and if he can win this tag title match by himself, Vinnie will shepherd him right into the MSG Hall of Fame. I looked it up to see if Vinnie was lying to Mankind about there even being an MSG Hall of Fame, but there’s an MSG Walk of Fame that was established in 1992. Anyway, that promise of MSG immortality fires Mankind up, and the poor dumb bastard goes off in search of a few weapons for tonight’s tag match. Boy, they turned Owen Hart heel again way too quickly. Anyway, they’d never do something like this Lion's Den match today now that everything is so cookie cutter and corporate. They set the mini-Octagon up in a theater at MSG apart from the rest of the arena. This is a cool, intimate setting to have this in. It’s visually interesting. Owen (w/Dan Severn) enters first; Ken Shamrock comes out alone. They have an overhead cam shot that also offers a neat perspective. Maybe now that they’re under the TKO banner, they can do some cool worked-shoot stuff and be interesting as a company in some small way for the first time in a decade. I just think I’m a sucker for worked shoot wrestling matches. This is on the way fluffier end of that scale, but there’s just enough semi-legit grapz here amidst the t-shirt assisted beals and stuff to work for me. It’s not UWFi, but I like it. Owen’s bleeding early; Shamrock launches himself off the side of the cage to hit a hip attack. This thing is just really fun, really visually different as I mentioned earlier, and even though they probably could have, and should have, done some more mat grapz to really differentiate this from a typical wrestling match, I approve of the effort here. So anyway, everyone is bleeding in this thing the hard way. Shamrock keeps running to the cage and jumping against it to launch himself for moves. The third time he does it, Owen finally wises up, catches him, and powerslams him, then follows up with an aesthetically pleasing belly-to-belly and a Sharpshooter. Shamrock crawls to the cage and lifts himself up it to break the hold in a neat spot, very creative, and he manages to score a tornado DDT to get himself a breather shortly after. Shamrock is up first, scores with a lot of strikes, and tries to follow up with a slam. Owen leaps over it, shoves Shamrock into the fence, and locks on a rear naked choke that apparently Severn had spent weeks teaching Owen to do. He doesn’t sink it in, though, so Shamrock is still standing, which is a real problem! Shamrock uses the cage to flip himself backwards over Owen, lock on an armbar, and transition it to an ankle lock that gets a tap. I remembered this show as not being that good, but I have no idea why. It’s very, very good so far. I think the main event is a slog and that colored my memory of the show, which would make sense – the same thing happened for me and Bash at the Beach ’98. My memory of a show is easily swayed by the main event unless there’s something in the undercard that I really, really, really love. I don't have an excuse for not fondly remembering multiple of the matches in the undercard of this show, though. Maybe I was in a bad mood the last time I watched this show. Stone Cold respects the Undertaker like some kind of punk bitch, this is the Attitude Era, don’t respect anyone you cornball, but anyway, he’s still going to beat ‘Taker’s ass in the main event. That’s basically what he says to Michael Cole. Am I the only one in the whole world who thinks the Smoking Skull belt is ugly? Probably. Mankind comes to the ring to face another ass-whooping, this time from the New Age Outlaws. I’m not sure why Vinnie wants Mankind to lose the tag titles to the Outlaws so badly, but it’s probably not that important. Most of the storylines that don’t involve Austin and McMahon going at each other directly kinda stunk, let’s be honest. This is a No Holds Barred, Falls Count Anywhere match, so I assume Mankind will get hit in the head with a lot of stuff over the course of this bout. Apparently, Mankind and Kane had a Hell in a Cell match on the RAW before this show for some reason that I refuse to find out and the result of which might be the reason why Kane isn’t showing up for this match. Mankind self-soothes by yanking out some of his hair while Mr. Ass and Road Dogg bring out a dumpster full of plundah. Road Dogg calls it a “diggity diggity dizzumpster.” How did this corny fool ever get over?! I don’t get why Road Dogg starts off on the apron when it’s no holds barred and falls count anywhere. Anyway, the conventional tag part of the match ends pretty quickly so the Outlaws can hit Mankind in the head with baking sheets. I just saw this sort of match on Road Wild, so I’m bored early. We’re in New York, so we get a small FOLEY FOLEY FOLEY chant, but mostly people are OHHHHHing at all the weapon shots. So many weapon shots. There’s a little drama here when Mankind is able to incapacitate one Outlaw and then quickly hit the other with a move and go for a pinfall. It’s reminiscent of trying to keep two opponents at bay in an AKI wrestling game by switching focus between them as effectively as possible while getting your momentum bar up so that you can hit both of them with your finisher and then pin the first one if they’re still prone (since the second one will be laid out for longer by that point). Mankind tries his best, but gets double powerbombed into two opened chairs. That gets 2.9, and I’ll admit that it’s impressive that Mankind kicked out of that one. The Outlaws are so irritated that they spike piledrive Mankind directly onto one of the tag title belts for the three. The Road Dogg does his whole schtick with the TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS OF THE blah blah blah, and then they dump Foley in the dumpster and close it in a somewhat poetic callback to WrestleMania 14. So wait, the lid of the dumpster opens and Kane rises out of it, then hits an unseen Foley with the sledgehammer. I know this is supposed to be a supernatural thing – the Outlaws are freaked out by it and run away – but I just like to assume that both Ass and Dogg both have protanopia colorblindness. Anyway, this was dumb. Triple H gets a live performance of his theme from the Chris Warren Band as he comes out to face the Rock in a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship. HHH (w/Chyna) destroys some instruments after the performance is over. All this work to get this doofus over. The Rock (w/Mark Henry) walks out looking like an actual star. Chyna stands in the ring and stares at him grimly; she also looks like an actual star. Then, there’s HHH. Henry hits on Chyna. Well, that’s the mild way to put it. He pervs on Chyna, yeah, that’s a better way to put it. I love this company having zero idea what to do with Mark Henry for like a full decade before doing the thing they should have done in the first place. So, the match starts, and I’m seeing a theme here where every other match is a fast-paced, creative match and then bookending those matches are other matches that are generally mediocre, but have one or two spots that are pretty good. In this match, we get lots of counters, including early counters of one another’s finishers, before The Rock back bodydrops Haitch to the floor. The Rock goes for the ladder, but HHH catches up to him and stops him. Back in the ring, HHH hits a high knee and goes after the ladder, but just as he gets there, The Rock shoots suddenly into the picture and shoves him into the ladder, knocking them both over. The crowd in the aisle chants ROCKY SUCKS, and an irritated Rock mouths FUCK YOU before grabbing the ladder and taking it back to the ring. Every SummerSlam should be at MSG just for the aura and the chance to have a bunch of mouthy New Yorkers yelling at heels in the aisle. They do a bunch of opening ladder bumps that are fine. These bumps were more impactful in 1998 before ladder matches got completely played out, but I can respect that they’re doing good work here. They do get lucky in a couple spots because the ladder is inanimate and therefore does merely what physics demands it to do, like when HHH dives at the ladder to knock the Rock off of it, but accidentally clips the bottom of it in a way that knocks it back onto himself. After the third Mark McGwire reference of the night, in this case a reference to Trips swinging a ladder at Rocky, Ross grumbles, “Why don’t we ever talk about Sammy Sosa?” I completely agreed in 1998 and still agree today. I will talk about Sosa fondly when it comes to his baseball career. I have little issue with steroid use in baseball considering baseball's history of bullshit and think Barry Bonds, as unpleasant as he may be, is the G.O.A.T. hitter or second to the G.O.A.T. hitter depending on how you see Ted Williams. Imagine: We had all these Senate hearings over steroid use for hitters, but pitchers slathered baseballs with Spider Tack for literal months and damned near ruined the game and all we got was Manfred quietly stepping up the ump checks. Fuck off, MLB. And don’t get me started on every HoF’er pre-integration who ducked a bunch of elite competition just because that competition was brown or black. Take them all out of Cooperstown if we’re being real about fairness in competition. I digress. The Rock has targeted Trips’s knee in the lead-up to the match, so he uses the ladder to try and destroy it, and there is where the creativity of offense comes in that really elevates this match into something good. I dig Rocky setting the ladder up between the barricade and the ring so that he can hit HHH with a kneebreaker on the ladder. After a couple minutes destroying the knee, Rocky gets back in the ring and tries to climb the ladder, but Trips is juuuuuuust able to crawl back inside and knock him down. Let me give HHH some love for this spot: He then knocks the ladder down, closes it, shoves it outside, and then tosses Rocky out of the other side of the ring so that he can give his knee enough time to recover so that he can climb. He undercuts this by grabbing the ladder again to set it up for use as a weapon, but still, good psychology in general there. Trips tries to toss the Rock into the ladder, but Rocky reverses into a catapult. You may know my dislike of the immersion-breaking catapult move, but it was pretty good watching Trips bump off of taking the move, as he slams into the ladder, weeble-wobbles around, and finally falls forward right into the broadcast table. There’s more fighting around the ring and in the aisle, including Rocky escaping a Pedigree attempt by back bodydropping Trips onto the ladder. Yeah, this is some real good stuff from both guys. The Rock gets a second ladder, which is always dangerous. He climbs it in the ring as Chyna helps HHH up. Hunter gets to the apron and Mark Henry stops him, so Chyna comes over and clobbers Henry, which allows HHH to shove Rock off the ladder. There is a cool move where Rocky falls outside the ring and when he gets up, Hunter baseball slides the top of an open ladder fight into his face. That spot was gnarly, and Rocky’s busted open. This match actually rules a whole hell of a lot, I have to say. HHH decides to climb the ladder after that move, and for good reason, but Rocky knocks the ladder over and there’s an element of danger as the ladder and HHH topple wildly to the mat. There are some more counters, and quite honestly this match was considered a new classic at the time, but I don’t think it gets talked about as much as it should today. It should get a whole lot of love, though. Both men climb the ladder, and the Rock tosses Hunter off into the other ladder that's propped in the corner; Trips rebounds and stumbles into the standing ladder, which knocks the Rock over. The crowd applauds because they understand they’re watching something great. Chyna slips Trips a chair, and he uses it to clobber the Rock as the Rock holds a ladder. Still, Rocky comes back by slamming HHH onto a ladder and then dropping a People’s Elbow. The crowd cheers wildly for the People’s Elbow, then chants ROCKY ROCKY ROCKY. Turn him babyface already! The crowd also cheers when Rocky catches HHH, leaping from a wobbly ladder, and plants him with a Rock Bottom. The ROCKY chant starts up again. Rock goes up for the gold, moons the crowd after Hunter grabs his tights, and is pulled of the ladder and into a Pedigree. Mark Henry is still able to toss powder in a downed HHH’s eyes, but Trips is first to his feet and tries to climb the ladder anyway. Rocky slowly climbs up after a blinded Hunter, who just can’t quite locate the belt. Rock gets some punches in and climbs up over HHH, but Chyna runs in and junk-punches Rocky right off the ladder, which gives Trips plenty of time to clear his vision and grab the Intercontinental Championship. That was an absolute classic, and though I’m in the moment, I think it’s better than anything Trips did in 2000. I’d take this just slightly over the Royal Rumble 2000 match against Mankind. Maybe Trips should just have all his big matches in MSG, where he’s clearly at another level. As for Rocky, the ladder match was designed to elevate HHH to the next level, but what it did even better than that was legitimize Rock as not only a great talker, but a guy who could deliver in a big match. We get some immersion-breaking exclusive footage in which Pat Patterson calls for ‘Taker to get in gorilla; we watch Rocky walk through the back, shoo off a doctor, and cut a promo on Trips in which he says he’s still the People’s Champ even though he’s not the Intercontinental Champ anymore. What a run he had with that title, though! In fact, it might be the last iconic run anyone had with that title (though I don’t watch the programming and am willing to be corrected). The Undertaker successfully found the gorilla position because he’s out here first as the challenger to Steve Austin’s WWF World Championship. Austin comes out and starts the match doing some awkward-looking mat wrestling. Apparently, Austin and Taker were tag champs before Mankind and Kane won them or something. Hold on, while this match is slow and boring in the early going, I’m going to go check the tag title lineage. When last I left off at KotR ‘98, the New Age Outlaws were champs. The belts between that show and this one – a period of two months – went New Age Outlaws -> Kane and Mankind -> Steve Austin and Undertaker -> Kane and Mankind -> New Age Outlaws. Boy, the Big Two were totally disinterested in decently booking their tag titles at this point. Oh yeah, this shitty match. Undertaker is methodical in dissecting Austin, and by “methodical,” I mean “he does some slow and unimpressive back attacks.” Austin, in the last two of the Big Five PPVs, has been upstaged by the semi-main that has come directly before his main event match. He also had the drawback of having to try and carry Kane through a First Blood match in June, but Undertaker is a far better worker and I expect something better out of them. Austin goes after ‘Taker’s knee, is able to pull the Undertaker down from a rope walk, and stomps at the knee a bunch while Kane wanders out to ringside. ‘Taker signals Kane to leave ringside because I guess they’re cool with one another at this moment and because 'Taker wants to win the match on his own, so Kane slowly backs away and then leaves. Austin goes back to a bunch of dull knee work. They do a little bit of ringside brawling, which is what Austin is best at, but it doesn’t feel heated like the best Austin brawling normally does. As an aside, I saw someone holding up a GOLDBERG SUCKS t-shirt, and then there’s a STONE COLD SUCKS sign in the crowd. I just think New Yorkers hate everything. Well, except maybe ECW. These fellas are trying to bring some intensity to this thing, and Austin goes so far as to take a back bodydrop in the stands, but things are just not feeling amped up to me. They again try to pick up the drama with a ‘Taker Stunner escape followed by ‘Taker posting Austin’s spine, but neither guy has it in them to do much in the way of consistent, compelling body part work, so it’s a decent spot that feels ultimately meaningless. Taker does some chokes, and some more chokes, and then actually does one cool spot where he hits a legdrop from the top rope onto a Austin who is lying on the Spanish announcing table. This is shades of WrestleMania XIV in which I found his match with Kane to suck except for the one high spot he did. Oh, and Paul Bearer’s incessant chatter from ringside was good, too. Paul Bearer should be at ringside for this match. Shoehorn in a plot reason for it; it’s not like the shit needs to make sense. This is the Attitude Era. There’s some more work in here, including an ugly botched Stunner spot in the corner. Austin gets up from that and runs into a chokeslam; ‘Taker signals for the Tombstone. He tries it, but Austin slips out of the back and tries a Stunner. The Undertaker blocks it and crotches Austin, and this ending sequence is also off and feels like a clash in styles rather than a real struggle. ‘Taker sits up after hitting a side Russian and goes for Old School again. That’s another mistake, as he’s able to rope walk, but gets punched in the balls as he leaps for the strike. Austin follows up with a Stone Cold Stunner for three. That was interminable. There are some guys who the Undertaker just cannot work with in a compelling manner, and Austin is one of them. I’m not sure they ever had a good singles match. Undertaker shows respect after the match and walks down the aisle, where Kane joins him. This show was fascinating in that every other match ruled. The real main event was that Rock/HHH ladder match. Austin keeps getting upstaged on these shows, though. It’s going to happen again at Survivor Series! Honestly, maybe the good thing about Undertaker/Kane at WM XIV is that it gave some room for Austin to shine against Michaels. Though it’s funny, I’m not sure since Hogan beating Sheiky Baby at MSG that they’ve ever crowned one of their flagship stars for the first time in a way that was at all memorable, even when they’ve tried to (if we’re counting, say, Shawn Michaels as good enough to be at that level). I digress again, though. Summerslam '98 was much better than Road Wild ’98 and the under-30 crowd on this show blowing away the under-30 crowd on that show is the reason why.