Clash of the Champions 9: New York Knockout
Date: November 15, 1989
Location: RPI Field House, Troy, New York
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Gordon Solie

Here we have a two match show: Flair vs. Funk II in an I Quit match and Pillman vs. Luger for the US Title. Luger was awesome in 89 and Funk was his crazy old self (yes he was old back then too). That being said, for a free TV show is there anything else you really need? In short, no. These old Clashes are usually very hit or miss but as almost always it was based on the card. This looks good so let’s get to it.

The opening video is about Flair vs. Funk which is about pride and not the title.

Freebirds vs. Road Warriors

The Birds were world tag team champions here but had already lost the titles at a TV taping before this aired. This is non-title anyway so it doesn’t matter. Hayes vs. Hawk gets us going and Hayes gets too cocky which catches up with him. Yeah I’m stunned too. Off to Garvin and he gets his head taken off by a dropkick. Off to Animal and similar things happen. We’re more or less in a squash so far. Animal misses a charge and the champs double team him a bit. After about 90 seconds of that, Hawk comes in and tosses the referee and it’s a DQ. The fans boo that out of the building.

Rating: D. Wow this was pointless. Somehow everything I said in there too over five minutes. I have no idea what they were going for here, especially with the title change airing later in the week. Doesn’t this make the champs look weak going into their title defense? Either way, the Steiners would get the belts and hold them for a very long time so no one remembers this anyway.

Funk lists off various things that he and Flair disagree on. Gary Hart, Funk’s manager, says do it for Texas.

Time for a vote of who the most popular wrestler in the NWA is. Gee I wonder who it’s going to be. To the shock of no one with anything resembling knowledge about this era, it’s Sting. There’s another award for Wrestler of the Decade. This is actually voted on by the PWI Editors and all that jazz and allegedly Hogan lost a fair vote to Flair. I’ve heard multiple rumors that this was rigged and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true.

Woman, the manager of Doom, shows off her cleavage and says Doom is awesome. She promises a surprise for Rick Steiner later tonight.

Doom vs. Eddie Gilbert/Tommy Rich

Doom is Ron Simmons/Butch Reed in masks. They would take the titles from the Steiners in the summer of 1990. Gilbert tries an O’Connor Roll and can’t even get one. The Tennessee guys work on Ron’s arm and it’s off to Reed now. I think Rich/Gilbert are faces here. After a brief control segment by them, Doom realizes they’re a real team and not a pair of thrown together guys and starts taking over. This is one of those matches that needs to be a lot shorter. What is supposed to be a hot tag to Rich and everything breaks down, allowing a middle rope modified Hart Attack to pin Rich.

Rating: D. This was another bad match. Doom would get a lot better but they needed better opponents at this point. Rich would join the York Foundation in like a year which would be his last grasp at anything of note. This was nothing though and Doom would get a lot better rather soon.

Time for Jim Cornette’s talk show segment with his guests the Steiners. This is important for one thing: Scotty has been using a move and Cornette wants a name for it. Rick talks about watching a movie the other day and he came up with a name for it, and for the first time ever we hear the name Frankensteiner. They talk about their match later and Doom for a bit but this was all about naming the move. They make fun of Woman a bit also.

Midnight Express vs. Dynamic Dudes

The Dudes are Shane Douglas and Johnny Ace Laurinits (Yes the one from Raw) as skateborders that are straight out of the 80s. Both teams have Cornette as their manager so he’s in a neutral corner. Basically he was starting to manage the Dudes but was still under contract with the Express and they signed the match without him, putting Cornette right in the middle.

It’s the Lane/Eaton version and they try to convince Corny to come to their corner but he turns them down again. Douglas vs. Eaton to get us going. Is there a tag team fetish tonight? They fight over the arm to start and it’s off to Lane quickly. Shane works on his arm as well and we’re in a technical match to start us off. In something you’ll almost never see, Cornette calls out Stan Lane on his hair pulling. This is surreal to watch.

Ace comes in and the idea of seeing the current version of him in trunks is very wrong. In a NICE touch and a fine example of the difference between today’s announcing and the old version of it, Solie is going over the upcoming house show schedule but says they’ll get to that in a minute because he doesn’t want to miss this action. We go to a headlock and they go over the rest of the schedule. See now, WAS THAT SO HARD??? It took about 30 more seconds and the wrestling gets played up stronger as well as the announcements getting more focus. Everything wins.

Shane avoids a superplex from Bobby and gets a rollup for two. Off to Ace and he’s just not that good. Lane takes him down and the Express takes over to a big pop. The Rocket Launcher gets knees and everything breaks down. With Shane getting a chain from somewhere, Jim comes in to grab it after it fell on the floor. He turns on the Dudes though, getting the crowd way into it and Eaton steals the pin as the Express is back together.

Rating: C. Not a bad little tag match here and the idea is that it burned off two angles: the Dudes being the new team of Cornette and the Express getting back together for their one final run. Nothing great here and the dudes weren’t all that good but this was ok and the fans were way into it so that’s all that matters.

Super Destroyer vs. Steve Williams

Destroyer is Jack Victory in a mask. Destroyer jumps Williams early and here’s Norman the Lunatic (Bastian Booger) as Santa Claus. Williams takes over quickly and gorilla presses him with multiple reps and then a clothesline to the floor. Back in the Oklahoma Stampede (powerslam) ends this. Total squash.

Norman gives Doc (Williams) a teddy bear afterwards and Norman gets a hug. Cute.

Steiner Brothers vs. Skyscrapers

It’s Sid and Dan Spivey. Rick vs. Spivey to get us going and Rick is like HAVE A GERMAN BOY. Back in Spivey hits a tombstone (keep that in mind) for two as Scott saves. Everything breaks down and Scott comes in with a Frankensteiner to Spivey and a fallaway slam to Sid. The fallaway slam was botched and Sid would be out for months with an injured lung. His replacement on the team was a guy from Memphis. He hung around for a year and then would leave for the WWF where he would wear a trenchcoat and come out to funeral music.

The tall dudes aren’t sure who is legal at the moment so it’s Sid vs. Scott now. Off to Spivey who beats Scott down for a bit until the Steiner Brothers remember that they’re the Steiner Brothers and beat down the tall dudes like they’re nothing. Hot tag brings in Rick, although I’d question how hot a tag can be in a five minute match. Doom runs in and it’s a DQ. During this, two things happen. First of all, Simmons runs in and immediately Scott snaps off a picture perfect Frankensteiner to send him outside. I’ll get to the second thing in a minute.

Rating: C-. This could only be so good as the Steiners were untouchable around this time and would take the tag titles that rightfully belonged to them in about three days. The tag division was awesome at this point and would keep getting better, namely because the Steiners were totally awesome.

The Road Warriors run out to even the odds and the fans ERUPT. A big brawl takes us to a commercial.

Post break the two good teams talk about the Iron Man Tournament, which was a round robin tournament held at Starrcade between three of these four teams. The Skyscrapers were out so the Samoan Swat Team took their place. The tournament wound up sucking and the Road Warriors won. It did however contain one of the two (the other being in 96 on Nitro) meetings between the Road Warriors and the Steiners which could have main evented a PPV. They all cut promos but for some reason the New York Knockout logo is on the screen instead of them.

Oh yeah the other thing that happened: Woman’s bodyguard Nitron debuted and did very little. He later played Sabretooth in the X-Men trilogy.

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Brian Pillman

Lex is a heel here but he’s having such awesome matches and is so scary as an athlete that he’s getting over as a face despite being heel recently. We talk about the singles Iron Man tournament which has Sting, Luger, Flair and Muta. Things start off very fast and Pillman fires off some dropkicks and Lex heads out to cool his head. This is a rematch from Halloween Havoc where Luger had to cheat to keep the belt. Back in and Luger can’t get anything going as Pillman has everything planned out.

A missile dropkick gets two for Brian. Out to the floor and Lex goes into the post as this has been all Pillman. More chops put Luger down and back inside we go. The champ FINALLY gets something going with a belly to back and momentum shifts. Lex is in his zone now and he sends Pillman out to the floor. He starts working on the back with a slam on the floor and a suplex back in for two. See how easy psychology can be?

Powerslam puts Pillman down but after Lex poses too much Pillman grabs a rollup for two. Things speed up a bit and Brian hits a clothesline to put Lex down. Top rope cross body, Pillman’s finisher, takes Lex down but the referee went down as well. Pillman hammers away even more but Lex cracks him in the head with a chair and since all referees are deaf and blind, it’s enough for the pin for Lex to retain and draw a bunch of booing.

Rating: B. Good match here as both guys worked hard out there. Pillman looked great at first and it’s a nice ending as Lex has to cheat to win. That’s the right idea at times and I think it works pretty well here. Lex would lose the tournament in the last match to Sting but would keep the US Title for about 11 more months.

Luger beats him down post match until Sting comes out for the save. Luger wants a showdown and Sting is all like BRING IT ON but Lex is scared of Sting in dress pants (and to be fair it’s a weird look on him) so he bails. Sting chases after him and gets in a single punch but Lex runs more. They wouldn’t have their big showdown for about 15 months with Sting winning the title at SuperBrawl II.

Flair talks about how he’s going to still be champion after tonight and this company is great. Tonight it’s an I Quit match and for two legends like them, that’s humiliating and the end. The loser has to retire and to Funk’s credit, when he loses here he did in fact retire for the rest of the year and didn’t wrestle in WCW until 1994. He wrestled in ECW a lot and in Japan some, but I guess that’s a good result for a Funk retirement.

Terry Funk vs. Ric Flair

I Quit match remember. This is non-title but Flair has said he’ll forfeit the title if he loses. Funk has Gary Hart with him and offers him a chance to walk out before the bell. Funk is sent to the floor and is all mad. I mean more than usual that is. Flair whips him around a bit and we head out to the floor with Ric hammering away. Into the ring again and they hit the mat for a bit.

They almost go onto the announce table and are fighting on the apron now. Flair chops him but falls down as Funk is still standing. We head back to the floor and it’s all Funk. He pounds away back in the ring in the corner and says to Flair to say it but Flair grabs an atomic drop to take over again. Funk slaps Flair so Flair chokes him. They’re back on the floor again and Flair pounds him into the crowd.

Back inside now and Flair demands that Funk say I Quit. Funk gets in a shot and a swinging neckbreaker as he yells about the attack (Funk piledrove him onto a table to start the feud) and his bad neck. Piledriver still doesn’t get a yes. Another one on the floor hits and Flair is practically dead. This is a nice touch as Funk is the crazy brawler and Flair is in WAY over his head. Funk sets up a table (back when that’s a HUGE deal) but Flair fights back with hard chops.

Ric is all fired up and Funk staggers around like there’s something wrong with his inner mind. He gets crotched on the railing and the little Funkers aren’t happy. Funk’s selling is really quite good. Now it’s time for the knee and the fans cheer. Flair was indeed popular back in the day. This is fired up Flair, almost like you would see in the Vader match about four years later.

Funk tries to leave up the aisle and Flair tackles him from behind and is all like “you wanted this and now you’re getting it.” In something you won’t see that often, Flair suplexes Funk over the top and onto the apron. There’s the Figure Four and after fighting as long as he can, Funk actually says he quits and it’s over.

Rating: A-. Not much to complain about here as the transformation from wrestler to fighter/crazy man by Flair was a great sight to see. Once he got going, Funk was trying to survive instead of win which was a very cool thing to see. This match worked and is well worth seeing, if nothing else for the storytelling in it. And to see Funk quit, which you’ll likely never see again.

Flair demands a handshake and gets one but Gary Hart, Funk’s manager, jumps him and Muta/Dragonmaster run in for a double beatdown. Here’s Sting (who never put his shirt back on I guess) for the save. Sting puts Hart in the Scorpion and Flair puts Muta in the Figure Four. Luger comes out and hits everyone with a chair to set up the big beatdown. Well every face that is. Luger breaks the trophies (which were in the middle of nowhere next to each other) to end the show.

Overall Rating: A-. Keep in mind that this was a free TV show. You had to very good matches and the rest of the show certainly isn’t bad. It’s just kind of there. For a free show though and a TV special, this is something that I’m totally fine with. It set up Starrcade (where there were literally no non-tournament matches) well even though the show sucked and it blew of Funk vs. Flair and turned Funk face. Good stuff and one of the best Clashes.

Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling
Date: May 12, 1982
Location: Techwood Studios, Charlotte, North Carolina
Commentators: Bob Caudle, David Crockett

So this is Mid-Atlantic and this is the only show I’m doing of it. This would be the grandfather of WCW in a long story that I don’t want to get into again. Anyway this is pre-Starrcade so it’s a pure territory show. Let’s get to it.

The opening theme is mainly a map of the territory and bad music.

Caudle and Crockett open the show, talking about a tag team title tournament. The finalists are Ole Anderson/Stan Hansen vs. Don Muraco/Wahoo McDaniel which is going to be a best of seven series.

Sandy Scott, a former Stampede heel referee, is now a representative of the NWA. Jack Brisco is here having just beaten Rodney (yes Rodney) Piper for the Mid-Atlantic Title. He says he was here to win titles but Piper comes up with a trashcan. Brisco is garbage and a trashcan Indian. Brisco pulls out a sucker and puts it in Piper’s pocket. A jobber is there and Piper beats him up for fun.

Since the interview area is mere feet from the ring, Horner (the jobber) and Piper get in there along with Ivan Koloff. Brisco comes out to even the odds. Muraco is here and it’s a wild brawl as we go to a break. Scott, the NWA representative says that for the next 30 days there will be NO Disqualifications. Also if they go to a time limit there will be a two minute rest and then a battle to the finish. Muraco calls out Koloff, having more energy than I’ve ever heard from him.

Ron Richie vs. Jim Dalton

No clue who either of these people are but one looks familiar. There’s a very tiny crowd here which is weird to see. It’s weird hearing the crowd this silent but there can’t be more than 100 people there, which is capacity. We’re talking about the opening segment so I have no idea what the point of this match is. Come to think of it I have no idea who is who.

THERE WE GO! Dalton is in blue. That helps a lot and I think he’s the heel. There are a lot of nerve/rest holds in this one. Decent dropkick from Richie to give him a break. They speed things up a bit and a powerslam out of nowhere gets the pin for Richie. That was really, really bad.

Rating: D-. From a technical standpoint it’s ok but at the same time there was just nothing worth paying attention to at all here. The commentators were at the level of Tony Schiavone with talking about stuff not related to the match. I still have no idea why this match happened or who I was supposed to like.

Sgt. Slaughter, the US Champion, says he’s still the champion. He wants Wahoo and Muraco in these matches with No DQ. I think he’s heel here but I’m really not sure.

Killer Khan vs. Vinnie Valentino

Khan was an old school monster that feuded with Hogan and Andre in WWF. Valentino is a jobber. You do the math. Arm bar goes on for awhile, Valentino gets some jobber offense in, Khan massacres him, big knee drop ends it. No rating.

Kelly Kiniski (likely playing a relative of Gene) and Mike Davis (no clue) are here. Kelly has a Canada jacket on so yeah I think I’m right. He mentions his dad and says he’s Canada’s greatest athlete so yep I was right. He’s ready for King Kong Mosca. Davis runs down Piper a bit also, saying Brisco is going to kill him.

King Parsons vs. Tony Russo

Earl Hebner is referee here and looks just like he does now, 29 years later. Parsons would become a much bigger deal in WCCW. Russo is a fat man but he’s short. Think Kevin Sullivan but with a bigger gut and black hair. Full nelson by Parsons gets him nowhere. Hip toss out of the corner sets up a dropkick as this is likely going to be another squash. Parsons throws some off punches and here comes Russo. This is one of the sloppiest matches I’ve ever seen. Parsons gets a monkey flip and some other basic moves before a headbutt ends it.

Rating: F. This was awful as both guys looked terrible and none of their shots were hitting at all. Parsons looked lost out there and Russo didn’t help anything. Terrible match indeed.

King Kong Mosca, a monster, says he loves the No DQ rule.

In the same shot Piper comes up and goes off on Brisco saying he’s got a counter to the Figure Four. This is another classic Piper rant and we get the “you don’t throw rocks at a guy with a machine gun” line, which is far more famous when he said it in WWF.

Ole Anderson comes up after Piper leaves and says he and his partner are winning the tag title series.

King Kong Mosca vs. Kelly Kiniski

Paul Jones comes out early in the match and joins commentary. Kiniski works on the arm of the monster. We spend very little time talking about the match itself as Jones is talking about the new rules as well. Mosca gets a knee to the ribs and controls with a front facelock. Kiniski fights back but misses a dropkick to put himself right back down again.

Mosca yells at Jones after drilling Kiniski. This is more or less about Jones rather than the match at hand. We hit the chinlock now and this is going on a good bit too long now. Kinishi gets a slam out of nowhere for two. This is going on way too long here and it’s boring now. Kiniski goes into the corner but the referee breaks it up. A big forearm of all things ends it for Mosca.

Rating: D-. This was one of the weakest matches I’ve seen in a long time. It ran about seven minutes when it should have been about two. There was nothing special at all about this as Mosca was lumbering all over the place. Cut this in half and make it a squash and it works ok at best.

Jim Dalton and Steve Syberg (I think that’s his name) like the new rules. You think that’s a theme or something tonight?

Private Nelson/Private Kernoodle vs. Johnny Weaver/Jake Roberts

The former here are known as Sgt. Slaughter’s Privates. I can’t make this stuff up people. Kernoodle would be a tag partner of Sarge while Nelson would eventually embrace his Soviet roots and become Boris Zhukov. Roberts you know and Weaver is credited with inventing the sleeper. I think the military dudes are heels here but they’re kind of inept.

Weaver vs. Kernoodle at the moment with Weaver destroying him seemingly with ease. Atomic drop gets two. Nelson comes in and goes after Weaver’s arm. Back to Kernoodle now as the beating is on. The referee rubs Nelson’s head for no apparent reason. Yes the one on top of his neck you sick freaks.

Hey let’s talk about the no DQ and Piper some more! We haven’t done that in 19 seconds so we need to do it now! Back to the arm now and it’s all Privates here. After about four minutes of arm work we get the hot tag off to Jake who cleans house. DDT, called a Brainbuster here, gets two on Nelson. The running knee sends him out to the floor and we’re almost out of time. And yep there’s the bell as we’re out of time. This will continue next week apparently.

Rating: C. Match was ok at best but they had more of a formula and they set it up a bit better. The Privates were ok as a weak heel team and we got a decent match out of it. Roberts as this young was kind of interesting to see even though he wasn’t in there much at all. This was to play up the must be a winner thing that was part of the rule change.

Weaver and Roberts say they’ll be back next week with no time limit to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. This was a pretty weak show by modern standards but overall it wasn’t too bad. They definitely had a theme going here and the Piper vs. Brisco feud is actually kind of interesting. They would trade the title a few more times over the summer before Piper turned face. Anyway this was an ok show but nothing great. Kind of fun from a history standpoint though.

Impact should be up either tonight or tomorrow morning.

Clash of the Champions 23
Date: June 16, 1993
Location: Norfolk Scope, Norfolk, Virginia
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Jesse Ventura

GAH I can’t get away from this time period in WCW can I? This really is an awkward phase for the company as they were really transitioning from the NWA days to their own world. The problem was that no one knew what their own world was. Hogan would show up in about a year though to at least give the company direction.

This is a mere three days after Hogan left WWF in case you were wondering. The main event is Flair and Anderson vs. the Hollywood Blondes for the tag belts so there you are. Let’s get to it.

Flair is back. Orndorff is hurt. Good to know.

Ron Simmons vs. Dick Slater

This was supposed to be Simmons vs. Orndorff but the injury stopped that. Simmons is over as all goodness. I’m skeptical about a guy named Dirty Dick. Who in their right mind decided to book Orndorff as a champion in the mid 90s? Simmons is a former world champion and Slater is Slater so what do you think is going to happen here? Orndorff botches interference and there’s your powerslam for the pin.

Rating: D. Nowhere near enough time to be anything here. It was supposed to be a big title match I guess but at the end of the day, Dick Slater was a joke to say the least and against Simmons it was going to be domination and that’s all it ever could be.

We go to Larry and Eric who talk to….Michael Buffer??? They’re interviewing the ring announcer for crying out loud. Oddly enough he comes off like he knows what he’s talking about instead of like he’s reading generic lines off a script. Most interesting indeed.

Steven Regal vs. Marcus Bagwell

If you’re not familiar with them go with their last names. For the life of me I can’t get over that Bill Dundee is Sir William. Seeing Regal in something resembling shape is amazing. Seeing Bagwell as a guy without an attitude is even more amazing. He’s the rookie wonder at this point so this was a big match for him. He’s in some ridiculous tag team with Scorpio at this point. Oh and there’s an NWA Title match tonight.

They’ll be gone in less than three months. Jesse says rugby is tougher than football. And to think I would have voted for him for President. Regal has barely been here at all so Bagwell might be more known. Oh dear. They announce that on Saturday a woman will be in Cleveland looking for Cactus Jack.

If you ever want to see what might be the dumbest storyline in WCW history, and let that sink in for a minute, look that one up. Scratch that about Regal. This is just his first live TV match. Regal gets a rollup out of nowhere to get the pin….to a big pop? Well that was different.

Rating: C+. Uh, yeah. This was over before it started and I barely remember it happening to be honest. I know that’s weird to say but it was almost over before it even started in my mind. It certainly wasn’t bad, but at the same time there wasn’t much here. Decent stuff though.

Maxx Payne has stolen the Badd Blaster from Johnny. Oh dear. He says he wants respect. And Payne blasts it in his face. Aww poor Johnny looking all screwed up now.

There was supposed to be a match here but now Payne wins by forfeit. Z-Man, one of the most interesting cases ever, comes out to beat up Maxx for what he did. Z-Man is the guy that worked for WWF in the late 80s, actually opening Mania 3 with Rick Martel in the team that would become Strike Force after he left. He more or less was fine one day and quitting the next, allegedly over money. He was ok in WCW but would likely be gone soon after this. He winds up tapping anyway.

NWA World Title: Barry Windham vs. 2 Cold Scorpio

This could be bad but it could be good. Windham was just holding the title for a little while before Flair got it back in about a month. Jesse asks what kind of name Scope is. Jesse brings up that he was in the Navy and Norfolk is a naval town so he’s happy here. No one believes Windham has any chance of losing here as Scorpio was young, talented and over so of course the NWA can’t let him have the belt. That’s Flair’s belt blast it.

Jesse wants to know who Jordan is betting on tonight. That’s a great line. Scorpio kicks out of a leaping, and I use that term loosely, DDT. Hey! Wanna know how Badd is? Call the Hotline and find out! Yes, we’ll not only give out private medical records, we’ll charge you for them! Windham punches the heck out of Scorpio and this is pretty one sided.

Fans are into it though so that works. In a very cool move, Scorpio is on the apron and hits a slingshot, note that it’s not a springboard, 450. Scorpio’s comeback is very good but in the end he gets caught just like you would expect him to. The Leaping DDT ends it.

Rating: B. This was way better than it should have been. When Scorpio wasn’t fat and was actually motivated, he could go with anyone and that’s what he did here. Solid match all around although the ending sucked to a fairly large extent just out of boringness.

Bischoff is with Sting, Dustin Rhodes and Davey Boy Smith who are in a big six man tonight. They talk to the people they don’t like. Simple and not very effective. Sting gets a huge pop.

Vader/Sid/Rick Rude vs. British Bulldog/Sting/Dustin Rhodes

This should be train wreckish. Vader is world champion here in case you were wondering. Sting is as over as is humanly possible. It’s bordering on scary. Sting and Rude start it off and the heat is great. Apparently Rude stole the US Title and won’t give it back. Oh I remember this: there was no champion for like four months and WCW saw nothing wrong with this at all.

Sting is beating up all three guys at once. That’s just amusing. We have Sid vs. Bulldog now, which would have been a showdown in 1992 WWF to say the least. In a cool looking sequence, Dustin just beats the living tar out of Vader and beats him down. Now I haven’t seen this since it aired, but I would bet anything on the heels winning, just based on WCW’s booking. It’s been about 6-7 minutes of domination so the other team will win in the end. I mean the heels have had NOTHING.

Ah there we go: Vader beats up Goldust. Those two followed each other over the years for some reason. They feuded in WWF and were the mystery opponents brought in to fight Austin at a Cyber Sunday. The Vader Bomb hits but it means nothing yet. Dustin is taking a beating here, meaning he’ll be fine soon enough.

Yep, I didn’t even finish that line before his comeback. See how predictable this company is? LET THE INSANITY BEGIN! Race hits Dustin with the briefcase that the US belt is in and Rude gets the pin. Yep I was right again.

Rating: D+. This was your standard main event level tag match. It’s not like anything was settled here and it’s not like it was anything great. Decent enough stuff though I guess. It set up the later matches and showdowns if nothing else, but it was way too predictable.

Tag Titles: Ric Flair/Arn Anderson vs. Hollywood Blondes

I have NO clue what that music the challengers are coming out to. This is Flair’s first match back in WCW. The Blonds really were underrated. Buffer does the big match intro and this is 2/3 falls. Flair gets a solid but not incredibly loud yet LONG pop. The Blonde have over 100 title defenses? Apparently this is for the NWA tag titles also. Oh that’s right they’re unified at this point. Oh wait that’s not right.

It’s just that no one cared about the NWA. That’s right. They’ve had 100 defenses in just over three months? That’s most impressive. This had actually gotten some build with the rather funny Flair for the Old segment setting this up. Good night Flair is over. How could they not just run Flair vs. Sting and made a boat load of money? See Hogan, Hulk. Flair gets a massive pop and it’s Flair vs. Austin. If this was five years later, the money for that match would have financed a small country.

To my complete and utter shock, Anderson works on the arm. This is very solid stuff here with the faces dominating for the majority of the match but not all of it which is a nice perk. Anderson is beaten down with the champions working on the knee. Flair gets the red hot tag even though nothing is going to end here. Flair gets the pin on Pillman off a quick shot. This is formula tag stuff but it’s working well.

Jesse points out how bad it was of the challengers to go 2/3 falls as they would be champions otherwise. Jesse is absolutely right. They’re working on Arn’s knee quite well so they’re thinking this one out I guess. Flair gets another hot tag and goes for the Figure Four on Austin but here’s Windham for the DQ.

And it’s a Dusty Finish as even though they won two straight falls, the titles can’t change hands on a DQ. Paul Roma runs down for the save. Oy vey. Windham says he’ll be ready for Flair. The match wound up sucking as NO ONE bought Windham as a world champion.

Rating: B+. If this has a clean finish it’s an A- minimum. Just a great old school tag match between two great teams. It’s nearly twenty minutes too so it got a lot of time and it paid off. WCW did manage to realize when they had a good match ready to go and could let them just do it and that’s what they did here.

Overall Rating: B. This was a good show I thought. They set up the Beach Blast PPV pretty well although it had a month to go so it wasn’t all ready yet. It’s fun to be able to see the build and the payoff for it though as I’ve reviewed the PPV as well. Either way this was solid stuff with some good matches, although the show does drag a bit at times. Still worth checking out though.

Monday Nitro
Date: September 14, 1998
Location: BI-LO Center, Greenville, South Carolina
Attendance: 12,236
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Mike Tenay, Larry Zbyszko

Ok so this is a one promo show. The main event is Goldberg vs. Sting, but no one remembers that. This is about one moment, which is the return of Ric Flair. Flair had been gone for about six months, having been thrown out by Bischoff in a real life feud. Flair had missed Thunder, so Bischoff threw him out to make himself look like a big deal and to say that Flair was nothing.

To say this went badly is like saying I watch wrestling a little bit. The fans WENT OFF over this, loudly drowning out promos for weeks on end with chants of WE WANT FLAIR. Bischoff refused to accept that Flair simply was a god in WCW fans’ eyes and there was no way around it. He could be out there in a Hawaiian shirt doing a river dance and singing La Cucharacha and they would cheer him. Actually, that happened at one point and they did in fact cheer him.

Tonight, HE’S BACK. Naturally WCW didn’t bother to let anyone know about this and of course lost the ratings war that night, but to be fair Rock and Mankind turned face and Taker went crazy and Austin defended the title, so maybe it wasn’t their fault. Wait it’s WCW, of course it’s their fault. This is a promo that is considered one of Flair and Anderson’s best ever, so that should give you a hint about what’s coming. Let’s get to it.

The Nitro Girls dance us into the show. This is the follow up to War Games and Fall Brawl last night.

Tony and Larry say Flair might be here and we get a LOUD Flair chant. Now they want Goldberg. They’re rather fickle no?

Tenay is at the airport in Greenville and says Flair might be here. A limo pulls away from an airplane that might have Flair in it. The pilot won’t answer either.

We get a clip of Ernest Miller who is now a heel. Has nothing to do with the first match but whatever.

Alex Wright vs. Van Hammer

Wright is still the same guy he used to be and Hammer is now a hippie. Tony and Larry point out that Sting vs. Goldberg is a PPV match like the idiots that they are. Wright is the heel here, which goes against any basic booking sense you can think of but whatever. The Flock was broken up last night apparently so this might be his debut as a hippie.

We head to the floor and here comes Ernest Miller. He kicks Hammer in the back of the head for the DQ. Ok then. And I’m sure the video aired on him in a TOTAL coincidence right? Security gets rid of him.

Rating: N/A. Just a thing to be a backdrop for Miller. Why did this guy keep getting pushed? I never remember anyone caring about him. I think I just answered my own question.

Here’s Bret, who was hurt last night. He’s supposed to be a face but he’s treated as a heel anyway. He’s US Champion and booed badly. Bret never felt right in WCW at all. Hogan lied a lot apparently, which suggests that Bret is rather stupid. He can’t wrestle for awhile and the US Title is going to be vacated. Bret doesn’t know why he has the title at this point either. Could it be that he won it? Ok….so he’s not vacating it.

Roddy Piper of all people comes out to talk to him. Great to see WCW pushing youth like this with a feud that was done over six and a half years ago. Piper sounds like he smoked about 9 packs that morning and he can barely breathe. Naturally Roddy has had it worse than Bret does right now but that goes without saying. Basically he says to man up and invokes Bill Clinton, drawing a ton of boos (Lewinsky era mind you). Bret wants another chance from the people and leaves too.

We get some pictures from Raven vs. Saturn last night, including Kidman turning on Raven to help Saturn. This was supposed to give Saturn a big push, but since he’s not 40 that never happened.

Saturn vs. Kendall Windham

Windham is Barry’s brother and far less talented. He’s a big old country boy in jeans. Now keep in mind that he’s not like the other 84 country boys in jeans. This is the one that’s Barry’s brother. They just kind of ram into each other which gets neither guy anywhere. Naturally the night after the biggest win of his career in WCW so far, Saturn is getting beaten up by a guy most famous for being Barry Windham’s brother.

Top rope splash misses as Saturn looks like an inept jobber here. The announcers point out that this is kind of weird, which is never a good sign. Larry says Saturn is a down to earth man. Wow that’s rather funny. This is freaking idiotic, and I never even liked Saturn. Windham uses a big boot that misses so badly that the fans LOUDLY boo it. They were booing already but this was far more than that.

Saturn makes a brief comeback and the fans respond. Since he’s young though we END THAT IMMEDIATELY and let the big old country boy take over, because that’s what the people want to see right? A guy that is related to one of the awesome guys that was great ten years ago dominating a young and popular and good worker. That’s basic wrestling people! Rollup for Saturn gets two.

T-Bone Suplex is called a fallaway slam as Saturn FINALLY takes over for a bit. He hits a middle rope elbow which is cool as I’ve always like the way he dropped one of those. Well so much for the Saturn offense for now as a spinning neckbreaker takes care of that. Death Valley Driver, Saturn’s finisher, ends this out of nowhere.

Rating: D. WCW did some weird stuff back in the day, such as hiring Jay Leno for PPVs, getting KISS to do concerts on TV, and giving Kendall Windham vs. Saturn ten minutes on Monday Nitro. This got more time than most Raw main events, while other stuff will be lucky to get two minutes. This was a regular occurrence at the time actually and no one is really sure why. Saturn getting dominated for most of the match was freaking stupid but what do you really expect from this company?

The Flock comes down and Raven yells at them from the audience saying their 24 hours is up and the joke is over. Kanyon is the only one left with Raven at this point. Saturn says they don’t have to be with Raven as they all have talent. As much garbage as he says, he does a good job of motivating them. Lodi tries to go back to him but Kidman stops him. The rest of them leave though, which begs the question of why were they coming to the ring in the first place.

Wrath vs. Renegade

Wow I just watched Renegade be told that he was no longer Renegade anymore. He would wrestle like 8 times a year for WCW anymore, so this would be one of those instances. He has no face paint or anything special at all about him so that helps a bit. They wanted Wrath to be a big deal but that never happened due to high levels of suck found in him, which sadly ended his career. Meltdown (Pumphandle Powerslam, or a solid e-fed wrestling show) ends this in like a minute.

Tony asks who can stop Wrath. That would be the epic power of Rick Steiner.

This would be about the time Raw would start, so here’s Hulk! This was during the Warrior period, which actually drew higher ratings than Raw for a few consecutive weeks. Liz in leather chaps and jeans with a black t-shirt: wow. Hogan complains about Warrior and says little things like living forever, which were huge lines 8 and a half years ago. Hogan actually makes the challenger here and the ring fills with smoke.

That was Warrior’s thing, he could disappear in a cloud of smoke. The smoke clears and Disciple is gone. Yep that’s the whole thing. Hogan makes his own acting look good.

Kaz Hayashi is hurt so Kidman gets his Cruiserweight Title shot instead.

Cruiserweight Title: Kidman vs. Juventud Guerrera

This is Kidman’s first match as a face and he’s far cleaner looking now. Both guys are pretty much faces and both guys are incredibly fast. Juvy dominates to start as we talk about Sting vs. Goldberg. Nice powerslam for Kidman gets two. I’m not sure how much power it had but you get the idea. Tony talks about Cruiserweights going into the heavyweight ranks and succeeding. Such nonsense. That could never happen.

Juvy takes over again and we take a break. Tenay is back when we get back THANK GOODNESS so we can have someone that actually knows this stuff. Slingshot legdrop by Kidman as he controls now. This has been a solid match so far as you would expect. Naturally we talk about Flair and the Horsemen instead of the good match so there you are. That sums up WCW pretty well.

Sitout spinebuster gets two for Kidman and the fans freak, thinking it was over. They’re interested in this for sure. Nice wheelbarrow suplex gets two for the American. Kidman covers, gets two, stands up and walks around then covers again. That just looked odd. Release German gets two for Juvy. Very solid match so far.

Juvy Driver is blocked into a reverse suplex for two and the crowd is WAY into this. Kidman goes up for the Shooting Star but gets crotched. When he was in the Flock it was the Seven Year Itch which was an awesome name for it, especially if you like old films. A missile dropkick is caught into another sitout spinebuster and the Shooting Star ends it clean. Juvy, Saturn and the whole crowd applauds.

Rating: B+. Very good match here, especially for just thrown together on TV. Kidman was something special, so of course he didn’t do anything of note for years. When Juvy wasn’t a drugged up mess he could definitely go and this was a great example of that. Solid match indeed and worth seeing considering it’s about 11 minutes long.

Dillon, Anderson and someone that might have been Flair went into a locker room. They’re kind of messing up the whole surprise aspect here.

Jackie Chan gives us a look at some movie called Rush Hour. Oh that’s coming later after Nitro.

Bischoff throws Eddie out of the company and sends him to Japan. Those two legitimately hated each other and you could feel that a lot.

Barbarian vs. Davey Boy Smith

Let’s get this over with. This is another great example of stuff that wouldn’t be on TV if this wasn’t a three hour show but it has to be so we can fill time. No feud here or anything but just two guys having a match. The commentators say nothing about this match other than “Barbarian and Davey Boy Smith get started.” I can’t say I blame them here though as it’s not like anyone cares about this.

Barbarian sets him for a powerslam and falls backwards, which somehow hurts Barbarian. They talk about the match for a bit and actually stick to it. Davey gets dominated but sets for the powerslam like there’s nothing wrong. Hart saves it but a few seconds later Smith hits the WORST SLAM EVER for the win. They call it a powerslam but it looked more like Smith fell over and used Barbarian as a thing to hold onto.

Rating: F. It’s really that bad. Not only did no one want to see it but the match itself was bad. This is going up against Mick Foley on Raw. And people wonder why WCW lost.

Dillon is in the ring in a tuxedo, promising to take care of Bagwell and Steiner for what they pulled. They announce Steiner vs. Steiner for Halloween Havoc, even though it was supposed to happen last night. The lights flicker and we hear an evil laugh. My guess is this was never explained.

The Nitro Girls dance some more.

We see the winner of the Nitro Party Pack. This was a thing they did where they showed people watching Nitro with their friends and the best (however that was determined) got a prize which was never really explained.

Heenan takes over for Larry on commentary.

Jim Neidhart comes out and the ring fills with smoke again. Warrior is here with an unconscious Disciple (Brutus Beefcake). The NWO comes out and Warrior gets to talk. He babbles on for a good while before accepting the challenge from Hogan for Halloween Havoc. Oh dear. Smoke fills up again and they’re gone. You can kind of see the outline of the trapdoor.

Silver King/Norman Smiley vs. Scott Steiner

Bagwell is with Steiner here, having recently faked a crippling neck injury, which really happened but the injuries weren’t permanent. It’s total domination for about two minutes and then the double Steiner Recliner ends it. Did you expect something else? If so, why? Steiner might have hurt his back.

Hey look more dancing to waste time.

Hour three begins and we talk about an attack on Arn Anderson to mess up his chances of winning an arm wrestling match with Bischoff. The important thing about this: I was in the 4th row.

The Giant vs. Meng

Giant was about 4 months from jumping to WWF as the Big Show. Ok, so I know this looks like a squash on paper and it only lasts about three minutes, but SWEET GOODNESS this was a FIGHT. They just beat the heck out of each other the entire time with Giant not being able to hurt Meng at all. Punches, chops, headbutts and whatever else Giant had got nothing at all and Meng just yelled at him.

Meng hits two huge kicks to the side of the head and Giant is rocked. Keep in mind that Meng is a jobber to the stars at this point and hasn’t had a meaningful match in about three years. Imagine Kozlov giving Orton or Cena a great fight. Meng goes for the Tongan Death Grip, his finishing hold, but Giant grabs him by the throat. In a cool idea, Meng’s arm isn’t long enough to get the hold on and Giant can get the chokeslam for the ending. That was AWESOME.

Rating: A. Yes, an A for a 3 minute match. It’s that cool. If this wasn’t at least partially a shoot, they deserve some kind of award for acting. I remember seeing this match when I was a kid and thought it was great back then. It certainly holds up.

Here come Hall and Vincent. This was during the Hall is an alcoholic angle, which was started by Hall getting arrested for drunk driving. He wrecked 5 cars in this one year alone. Naturally WCW say MONEY in this somehow. Hall stumbles into the ring and drops his tag belt, barely able to speak allegedly. I have never liked angles like this and I never will. But hey it’s Scott Hall so we can laugh at his real life problems right? On a semi-unrelated note, did Hall ever win a big match other than World War 3?

Lex Luger vs. Scott Hall

Luger is NWO red and Hall is NWO white. The Wolfpack theme is still awesome. The announcers say Hall is one of the top five in the world. I thought Hall was the one drinking. Hall does the toothpick throw as we stall for a LONG time. Two minutes in and no contact yet. A wristlock doesn’t work as in it doesn’t go on, but that’s our contact so far. Hall stops for a drink and falls into the ring.

Hey there’s a headlock. A bunch of reversals and Hall winds up in the ropes. Luger goes for a tie up and Hall just falls down before laying on his stomach and won’t move anywhere. Vincent is apparently annoyed which you can’t blame him for. Considering this is a year or so before the Jake Roberts incident, this is all the sadder. I know it’s fake here, but again this isn’t something you make fun of.

Luger yells at Hall to get it together and here’s Eric, power walking to the ring. He says he can’t save Hall from everything and tries to get Hall to leave. Here are Nash and Konnan as we’re having an intervention on live TV. Hall has another drink and vomits on Bischoff. We go to a break to end this.

Rating: F. No. Just no.

And now, to the reason we’re here.

James J Dillon comes to the ring in a tux and a HUGE We Want Flair chant. He asks Anderson to come to the ring and we get the Horsemen theme song, which is just awesome. Keep in mind that this is in South Carolina so the fans are loving this very much. Dillon apologizes for saying something earlier, which I guess was reform the Horsemen or something like that.

Arn says this is what a pop smells like, and tells Dillon to take a bow. Dillon told Arn to be a man and stand up. Tonight is a new beginning for the Horsemen. That’s well received. Arn says that he’s always wanted to be a wrestler but can’t do that anymore. LOUD Flair chant and Anderson says you’ll get what you want tonight. He brings in the other Horsemen, starting with Mongo.

He never really fit with the team, but he always seemed like he was trying. His music was SWEET if nothing else. Benoit, the guy credited with restarting the team comes down, actually in a suit which is a weird look for him. We also meet the newest Horseman: Dean Malenko. He was in the group already, but this was his official induction I think. Arn said he wanted to bring out the other three Horsemen, so this would imply Arn, Benoit, Mongo and Malenko are the Horsemen now.

Anderson says Benoit is the finest in the world today. Dean is tiny. Mongo is all man and very tough and Anderson says he’s awesome. Malenko is told that he exemplifies being a Horseman and Arn apologizes for not getting it before. Arn caps us off and the Horsemen are BACK. Wait he forgot something. “I almost forgot the fourth Horseman. RIC FLAIR! GET ON DOWN HERE!”

What follows isn’t exactly a mega pop like HHH got when he came back in 02, but rather one of pure respect. This is like the retirement night where it’s all about how awesome this really is. It’s a moment. That’s the best way to put it. Everyone is on their feet and won’t stop cheering. Flair says this is real rather than something bought and paid for. Flair says this is still real blast it.

Flair then goes on a crazed rant against Bischoff, talking about how Bischoff says the Horsemen aren’t dead no matter what Bischoff says and no matter what Bischoff wants, this is REAL. And here’s Bischoff to take the spotlight off of Flair again and make it all about himself. There goes the jacket and Flair shouts that Bischoff is abusing his power and that he sucks. This is a great rant from Flair and probably the definitive one from the WCW years. They cut to a break once Flair goes off even more.

Ok, so what did all of this lead to? See, this all started in a meeting with most of the WCW talent. Bischoff, with Flair in the room, said that no one on the roster other than Piper, Savage or Hogan had ever drawn any money. Not Sting, not Luger, not Flair, not Hart, just those three. Bischoff I think honestly believed that and in interviews later, once WCW was closed, he said he’d do it again today.

Then came the aforementioned Thunder taping where Flair went to North Carolina to watch his son compete in a wrestling tournament. Bischoff, believing his lies about Flair not being worth anything, suspended him for no showing, even though Flair had told a higher up that he was going to miss the show and was told he could do so. He wasn’t even booked on it and if he was it was a completely replaceable appearance.

Anyway, what Bischoff didn’t get was that while allegedly Hogan and Piper and Savage had drawn all the money, the WCW fans often only stayed because these guys were against Flair. This led to the huge WE WANT FLAIR chants that the company had to ignore on TV since Bischoff told them not to acknowledge them. This becomes a real problem as for about 6 months the fans all wanted Flair but Bischoff insisted they didn’t want Flair since no one paid to see him.

So then this happens as Bischoff FINALLY breaks down and lets him come back. What happens next? Flair had a “heart attack” on Thunder and was taken off TV again for about a month before returning to fight Bischoff at Starrcade, where Bischoff of course beat him. Flair became the crazed power mad dude that he accused Bischoff of being soon thereafter, making Flair the running joke of the company.

When the ratings plummeted, they put the world title back on Flair, naturally bringing them back up. So of course they took it right back off of him and took him off TV, since it wasn’t him that was drawing the people, but rather….well something that wasn’t Flair. The Horsemen became just a bunch of people that got beaten down by the NWO on a regular basis until it was really just Benoit and Malenko holding up four fingers for a few months until they dropped it altogether, ending it for good.

The announcers talk about how awesome that was, and for once they’re right.

Here’s DDP, the new #1 contender. He’d get that shot at Halloween Havoc which was one of the final nails in WCW’s coffin. We’ll get to that one later and I can’t wait for it. DDP sits at the announce table and welcomes back Flair. DDP is going to do commentary for the main event, replacing Heenan I guess.

Ad for Halloween Havoc, focusing on Hogan/Warrior instead of the world title match. Wow they got that put together quickly since the match was only accepted about an hour ago.

WCW World Title: Sting vs. Goldberg

Yep this couldn’t be the main event of Starrcade or anything like that. No gloves for Sting here for no apparent reason. I’ve always kind of wondered why Goldberg, the machine that he was, needed to have a police escort. DDP talks about knowing Goldberg a long time ago which is like BS but whatever. Goldberg is listed as the WCW/NWO World Champion. I can’t believe it’s September of 98 and that’s still going on.

Next Monday is Goldberg’s one year anniversary. He, the world champion, wasn’t on the show at all. Goldberg is listed here as 6’5. According to the NFL he’s 6’2 and a half. I love overhype. Pretty much a cat and mouse game to start as neither can really get a clear cut advantage. Goldberg overpowers him which is a rarity for Sting. His strength is underrated.

This is an interesting match, but why is it on Nitro in the middle of September on the night after a PPV? Test of Strength goes to Goldberg as he has dominated most of this match. Sting busts out a Tombstone of all things and Goldberg does indeed sell it. Two Stinger Splashes and make it three but Goldberg is fine. Spear hits the post and now we’re getting going.

Scorpion is mostly applied but it’s not on very well at all. Tenay: “It’s almost a deathlock at this point instead of the Scorpion.” You know, instead of the Scorpion Deathlock. And here’s Hogan to kick Sting in the head. Goldberg didn’t see it though and the spear and Jackhammer hit for the pin. Hogan jumps Goldberg immediately but here’s Bret. They chase off Hogan and Goldberg helps Sting up to end the show.

Rating: D+. Not much of a match as it’s really just thrown on. This would have been really good if they had more time and a bigger environment and less Hogan but that couldn’t happen since this is Hogan’s show and we’re all just on it. This mind you is a great example of what was wrong with Hogan at the time. The ONLY connection he had to Goldberg was that he said he wanted the title from him, which everyone said.

Sting wound up fighting Bret at Havoc, Hogan had Warrior and DDP had Goldberg. In other words, there was more or less no reason to have Hogan here other than to make sure he was in the last match of the show.  This took away from Goldberg/Sting, which shouldn’t have been on this show anyway, but you get the idea.

Overall Rating: B. This was better than the other three hour one I did recently for sure. This actually was a good show and perhaps even a very good show. The focus here was on Flair, but it should have been. The main event was more or less a waste but what did you really expect? The Cruiserweight match was good, Meng/Giant was good (depending on your taste that is) and the Flair segment is legendary.

The first 40 minutes or so are worthless, but that’s typical WCW. Other than that, this was a well done show but it BEGS to be two hours instead of three. If this was two hours long instead of three, I likely would have watched it over Raw. There was just no point to the extra hour and it started hurting things a lot. Anyway, good show and DEFINITELY check out the Flair moment as it’s epic to put it mildly.

Monday Nitro
Date: September 4, 2000
Location: Reunion Arena, Dallas, Texas
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Mark Madden, Jeremy Borash

So this is another one of those shows I’m doing because it had a special match on it. This is the final “Wargames” match although it’s only that in name only. This is five years to the day after Nitro debuted so they wanted to have one big match for the sake of having one big match. Raw was in Lexington on this night and for the life of me I do not know why I didn’t go. This is back in the day of the two hour Nitros so the pain doesn’t have to be as long this time. It’s a one match show so let’s get to it.

We open to a video about the match which is called Russo’s Revenge, which even though it’s the triple cage from Slamboree and Ready to Rumble and a tag match, the world title is on the line. You know, because that makes sense. It’s called Russo’s Revenge and War Games 2000.

Russo’s Team, Nash, Jarrett and Steiner are here. Yeah Russo is wrestling again. He would win the world title in two weeks.

Tag Titles: Rey Mysterio/Juventud Guerrera vs. Insane Clown Posse

Yes it’s that Jeremy Borash on commentary. He’s bald here which is a weird look for him. Yes it’s that Insane Clown Posse. They decided they were wrestlers so WCW decided to cross promote or something. Naturally, no one cared because that’s what Juggalos do right? The champions are members of the Filthy Animals so Konnan gets to talk for awhile and makes no sense at all.

Naturally the clowns take over to start as Madden points out that they have no advantages here at all. Konnan and Disco Inferno join on commentary, meaning that three of the four commentators worked for Wrestlezone at some point. The Posse is just awful in the ring, botching just about everything and more or less just walking around the ring. Bronco Buster to Shaggy.

They get Rey in trouble and just stand there. This is just stupid. Who in the world thought this was a good idea? And why does Konnan call everyone cranberries? Disco says this is nonstop action which is rather funny. The Animals hit a modified What’s Up on Jay for the pin. At least it was short.

Rating: D-. What did Rey and Juvi do to deserve this? The Posse are people that tried to be wrestlers and stand in the ring knowing how to do all of a move each and apparently that qualifies them as wrestlers. Naturally WCW put them on national TV multiple times because they were famous. And you wonder why this company went out of business.

Lance Storm, one of the only things WCW got right in their dying days, is teaching Major Gunns how to be Canadian. His deadpan stuff here is awesome. This time it’s running a treadmill.

Ernest Miller and Booker T get into a limo.

The cage is lowering as we go to a break.

Nash vs. Booker for the title at Fall Brawl which I’ve reviewed already.

Here’s Russo and the Natural Born Thrillers who were an awesome team but they of course got screwed up. He gets into the cage on his own with the Thrillers outside. Russo makes jokes about the Cowboys to get sports heat. Keep in mind that this guy has come back ten days before Bound For Glory which scares me to death.

He explains the rules of the match tonight. The cage is basically in the Cell with a regular cage on top of that and a one cage half the size of the ring on top with the title hanging in it. You have to go up to the top (there are trapdoors to get to the next levels) and grab the belt, but then you have to bring it back down. I’ll ignore the natural problem of why wouldn’t you just stand at the door and beat up the guy that brings it down then leave yourself out of the sake of avoiding a headache.

Oh and there are two teams of four in a match about winning an individual title. Well of course there are. Russo says the teams are the babyfaces vs. the heels. Oh I give up. Tony points out the stupidity of having teams in this. Russo’s team is the face team and the other is the heel team which isn’t true but whatever. The other team is made of Miller, Goldberg, Booker and Sting.

Russo says that Miller has no power tonight so in order to get in the match later they have to win qualifying matches. If Goldberg wins, Goldberg can beat up Russo. And here comes Nash to make sure this segment keeps going. He’s champion at the moment having beaten Booker a week ago. Nash gets in Russo’s face and says the title isn’t on the line here. He’s not a fighting champion and is only defending once a month.

Vince says that Nash does what Russo says and Nash isn’t happy about this. Nash is his daddy out here and grabs Russo by the throat and we get blackness and lightning and thunder. Sting popped up through the ring apparently and brought a ladder with him somehow. Russo tells Nash to get him but Nash flips him off. And then Sting does nothing at all. Oh wait he talks a bit.

Ok never mind he’s not gone yet. Sting started to leave but Russo climbed the ladder and Sting chased him. Russo’s team comes out to chase Sting and here comes Miller and Booker. They fight with the Thrillers in the ring as this is freaking stupid. Is there a point to this an hour before the match? Somehow Russo gets away but in the ramp Goldberg shows up. All this is happening in the first half hour of the show. Could this be overbooked any more?

Back from a break Steiner and Jarrett freak out on Russo. It should be noted Russo has gotten more face time than anyone else tonight so far.

Jeremy looks WEIRD bald. We see him getting his head shaved for losing some bet. He’s here because Scott Hudson is having his first child. Nothing wrong with that.

Here come the Harris Brothers for no apparent reason. They want some footage played and it’s about Kronik. We see a bar fight where they beat up Kronik and that’s it.

Shane Douglas and Torrie are in Russo’s office and Shane wants Goldberg. They bring in the Thrillers and Torrie is really worried.

Wargames Qualifying Match: Sting vs. Great Muta/Vampiro

Vampiro is Juggalo Championship World Champion (censored version of their real name) at this point and no one cares. Honestly what did WCW get out of this? And it’s a minute long with Muta hitting Vampiro with the mist, setting up a Splash and Death Drop to end it. Sting is in the main event. Vampiro and Muta argue afterwards so we get the Posse again to break it up.

More Canadian training with Storm who is cracking me up.

Stevie Ray is in the back and yells at Russo. “What do you mean I’m wrestling? I don’t want to wrestle! I came here to wrestle somebody!” We don’t hear who he’s wrestling but it’s an argument anyway.

Jarrett is yelling at Nash about Russo. Nash isn’t happy with Vince.

Here’s Ray again. Ray is usually the commentator on Thunder. No one is really sure why he got such a big push all of a sudden but he did anyway. He says that the match is with his brother.

Wargames Qualifying Match: Stevie Ray vs. Booker T

Stevie jumps him to start and it’s on. And we’re in a rest hold less than 30 seconds in. Axe Kick hits and Booker gets a Spinarooni. Stevie catches him with a spinebuster but won’t cover. And then the Book End hits to send Booker to the main event. Another two minute match that they call great, despite Stevie hitting a total of a spinebuster. Stevie yells at him for no apparent reason and then hugs him. Just move on to something else please.

Kronik is looking for the Harris Brothers and yell at the Jung Dragons who are Asian stereotypes. Naturally they get beaten up.

Three Count is in the ring but here’s Kronik again. They hits a cool looking Triple Chokeslam and this is domination. Is this a match? A referee is out there but Adams calls out the Harris Brothers anyway. Should be noted that the Harris Brothers were one of the most hated teams ever because they SUCKED.

Jeff Jarrett comes out instead and says that since they’re already in a handicap match (which no one knows what he’s talking about) let’s make it a Wargames handicap match, so Miller needs to get out here.

Wargames Qualifying Match: Ernest Miller vs. Kronik

Jarrett gets on commentary too here. Miller points out to the monsters that they’re on the same team so let’s go beat up Jarrett. And then he tries to steal a rollup on Clark, resulting in a bad beating. Jarrett chases Miller’s woman with a guitar as Kronik botches a clothesline. Miller is the commissioner apparently. Double Chokeslam ends it so Kronik is in Wargames making it 5-4. Sure why not.

Steiner is ticked at Russo now because Kronik is now in Wargames.

Goldberg vs. Steiner at Fall Brawl which was a good match.

Wargames Qualifying Match: Shane Douglas vs. Goldberg

First up though Torrie runs down the crowd. She’s really young here so this is pretty bad. This show is horrible if you couldn’t tell. Here comes Goldberg. Shane, who wanted Goldberg, begs to get out of it now. Pure power from Goldberg to start of course. We hit the floor and Shane dodges a forearm which hits the post instead. Shane works the arm and Goldberg just shoves him off. The Thrillers come out to beat up Goldberg which of course fails also. Shane tries to hit him with a chain. Spear and Jackhammer end this of course.

Rating: N/A. The longest match so far has been four minutes long and it had the Insane Clown Posse in it. This show needs to end already.

Russo throws a fit in the back.

Russo and Nash have another moment. You know they’re going to be best friends by the end of the night right?

Guns goes swimming in her final test. The Misfits in Action are there too and we get a fight in the pool.

Russo (noticing a theme here?) gives a speech to the Thrillers and makes a gauntlet match with Vito vs. the Thrillers.

Arn Anderson is in the back and is asked if Ric will be here for his son’s wedding next week. This didn’t end well of course. Oh and it’s in Charlotte.

Big Vito vs. Natural Born Thrillers

Vito beat up Russo last week to cause this. The Thrillers say nothing of note and Vito makes gay jokes. Screw the gauntlet part apparently so it’s everyone vs. Vito at once. Guess how this goes. Palumbo and Reno hit a 3D and stomping ensues. This goes on way too long and Sanders gets the pin. End this show already.

The non-Russo team talks about how awesome they are. Goldberg isn’t here.

WCW World Title: Wargames

You know the teams by now I’d assume. People come in at two minute intervals. Jarrett vs. Sting to start us off. Everyone else stays in the back here. They fight on the floor as everyone knows nothing is going to happen until we get to the full or nearly the full amount of people. Sting dominates and Scott Steiner is #3. Sting almost gets up the ladder to the second cage but Steiner makes the save. They beat up Sting and nothing happens for two minutes.

Kronik (both of them) come out as #4. Well of course they do. Steiner gets to the second cage and has bolt cutters up there for some reason. Adams and Clark both follow him up and take him down. That cage floor looks VERY shaky. Sting and Jarrett just kind of stand around and here’s Russo as the next person. He’s #5 but the 6th person in the match. He brings the Harris Twins with him who go after Kronik.

Sting beats up Jarrett in the ring as this is just stupid. There are weapons in the middle cage. Sting splashes Russo because Russo stays there for it like an idiot. Scorpion goes on as Russo is getting killed. Steiner climbed back down to the ring for no apparent reason. Nash is out next so apparently the team thing goes in no order. Nash helps up Steiner so Sting beats them both up for a bit.

Nash takes Sting down and goes to chokeslam Russo but Jarrett and Steiner makes the save by talking him down. Kronik and the Harris Brothers are fighting in the crowd and won’t be seen again. You can be eliminated apparently. Nash chokes Steiner and Jarrett as Booker is the next to last guy. He beats up all the heels other than Nash who takes him out.

No one is in the middle cage at all at this point. Russo is in a hockey helmet. Here’s Goldberg to complete this mess. Nash has Russo set for a Jackknife but drops him instead. Goldberg takes out Jarrett and Steiner but gets caught with a baseball bat shot. Booker sneaks up to the middle cage as Nash just stands in front of the door. Goldberg gets handcuffed to the ropes.

Steiner, Sting and Jarrett head up and fight on the second cage. While the other three fight Booker goes to the very top and gets the belt. But hey that’s not enough to win as he has to get down and leave the cage. The view of Booker that high up is terrifying to me as I’m scared of heights. Booker drops the belt as Madden has a good idea: why not put it on so you have free hands?

Sting has been handcuffed to the middle cage so Booker is on his own. Steiner drops the belt to the ring and Russo gets it. Here’s Miller go kick Russo in the helmet (doesn’t hit the head at all) and get powerbombed by Nash. Nash gets the belt and Goldberg snaps the handcuffs but throws the belt down to beat up Russo.

Scratch that he has the belt now. He tries to leave but Bret freaking Hart slams the door on his head and Steiner hits him with a pipe. Russo grabs the belt and Nash grabs him, but then they hug and Nash leaves to defend the title successfully. Yep the whole night was a massive swerve. Hart was never on Nitro again that I remember.

Rating: F. Oh do I really need to get into this? Somehow it’s an even bigger mess than I described. Kronik and the Harris Brothers just leaving still makes me laugh for some reason. They’re in a world title match and are just like “screw this” and go off to watch Howard the Duck or something. Horrible match and for no apparent reason is on free TV when in theory it could have drawn something on PPV. Whatever though.

Overall Rating: F. Yeah I think this is self explanatory. For comic book fans this is like a massive one shot that never went anywhere and is never mentioned again. It’s totally pointless and served no point other than to have one big match for free for no apparent reason. This was a terrible show with no good wrestling and FAR too much Russo, which was a common problem in this era. Somehow this is a two hour show with 90 minutes of air time factoring out commercials. It felt far longer though.

Clash of the Champions 35
Date: August 21, 1997
Location: Nashville Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Dusty Rhodes

Clash of the Champions more or less was WCW’s Saturday Night’s Main Event. They started it up to go head to head with Wrestlemania 4 and actually put a solid dent in it. The show went on for 9 years but by the end no one cared at all. The show was just worthless as there was already two hours of television a week so in essence we were just getting an extra Nitro two weeks a year, which is why this is the final one.

As for current storylines, this is at the height of the NWO’s power but Sting is looming. I think you know the story there. The main event is Luger and DDP vs. Savage and Hall. See what I mean about how this just isn’t that interesting of a show? Let’s get to it.

The opening video just runs down the card. Other than the stupid tag team main event this sounds pretty decent.

We get a clip of Dillon saying that Sting has until Thursday to make his demands as Sting had ripped up two contracts with match offers in them. Sting came through the crowd and got in the ring and the fans chanted Hogan. Sting pointed to the fans who were chanting it. This angle was freaking sweet. And then Hogan and his ego just had to kill it dead.

US Title: Jeff Jarrett vs. Steve McMichael

Jarrett used to be a Horsemen and stole McMichael’s wife Debra so Mongo wants to get the title to get some revenge or something. This was the epitome of a feud that no one wanted to see but would never die. Mongo is a Horsemen here meaning we get to hear the sweetest theme music of all time. Jarrett was neither interesting nor good at this time whereas Mongo never was either of those things so we’ll give it to…dang who do we give this one to?

Actually let’s just hope this ends fast. We take a break and come back with Jarrett throwing Mongo into the steps (His name was Steve Mongo McMichael in case you were wondering). Debra chokes him and I still couldn’t care less. The WCW midcard just completely sucked and while we were having Owen vs. Austin followed by Rock vs. Austin in WWF at this point for the IC belt, this just doesn’t hold up. Jarrett puts on a sleeper as a great visual representation for this match.

Mongo gets his own and Debra gets up on the apron. For no apparent reason Eddie Guerrero runs out with a belt and goes up top but hits Jarrett by mistake. Mongo covers for the title with ease. Debra tries to get him back and fails at it.

Rating: D+. At least it was short. These two feuded forever and no one cared ever. It just wasn’t interesting at all but they thought they could just slap the Horsemen name on it and get a good reaction from it through the south. There wasn’t much here though so the time was good if nothing else. Mongo held it for less than a month before Hennig turned heel and took it.

Alex Wright comes out and speaks in English and Gene warns him to speak in English which was stupid. It’s as simple of a promo as you could ask for. He has Ultimo Dragon tonight.

Gene is with the guys from a show called Dinner and a Movie. In essence they showed a movie and made food with a play on words of the movie title. It was an ok idea but why are these guys on a wrestling show? There’s your problem with WCW right there: too much corporate interference.

Stevie Richards vs. Raven

Raven “didn’t have a contract” at this point and insisted on wrestling only in No DQ matches. This is a grudge match or something as Richards was tired of Raven pushing him around. Richards had allegedly had a career ending neck injury but miraculously healed and showed up in WCW a few weeks later. They point out Raven’s ankle issue as he has a thing on his shoe to balance out the fact that his right leg is shorter than his left.

The Raven drop toehold hits to the chair as this is just a squash match so far. He throws in a bulldog onto the chair for good measure. Richards comes back with some decent stuff but at the end of the day he remembers he’s Steven Richards and the other guy is Raven and the best DDT other than Jake Roberts (who trained Raven) ends it.

Rating: C+. It was a squash and a quick one at that so we’ll just call it a bit above average for the DDT, which is the coolest move in history. Richards would be gone in like two weeks or so.

We get a cool video about Ultimo Dragon, explaining a bit of his history and his name. WCW hit the ball so far out of the park with this division that it’s insane. The name was called Ultimate Dragon but that was incorrect, as it was supposed to be Ultimo Dragon: Final Dragon, as in the final student of Bruce Lee, who he emulated in the ring. That’s the kind of thing that you just never get in WWE and it’s why the cruiserweights worked so well.

That and they never took them seriously. The shot of the J-Crown (8 titles from around the world which were defended on WCW television and included a WWF light heavyweight title that was active for 20 years but only in Japan, meaning that a WWF Title was defended on WCW television multiple times in 1996 and 1997) titles being piled up is just awesome.

TV Title: Ultimo Dragon vs. Alex Wright

When Dragon won the title a few weeks prior, it was the match where no one talked about the match whatsoever other than the final three count as the whole match was nothing but talking about the NWO. At the end they more or less said hey we have a new champion! Now back to what we were talking about. It was just ridiculous how that was all they talked about.

Wright was a guy that they tried so hard to push but it just never played out like they wanted it to. He was this young hotshot that was somewhat over as a face so of course they turned him heel and no one cared after that. Dragon really was underrated in the ring. In WWE they just threw him into the cruiserweight division and let him die off because that division sucked so hard it was pathetic. These two feuded for the better part of a year and I don’t think anyone ever cared.

There was no focus at all on the title or anything as it was always about the NWO. Dragon gets the Asai moonsault that he invented and does better than anyone else. The commentary is all about them as well which is NICE. We hit a very nice ending sequence as they fight over pins but Wright hits a SWEET German suplex for the pin and the title.

Rating: B-. This was a good match but just boring at times. The problem was that while these two had good matches, it’s Ultimo Dragon vs. Alex Wright. There’s just no heat at all and it’s not a great matchup while being a good match if that makes sense.

Cruiserweight Title: Eddie Guerrero vs. Chris Jericho

Eddie is challenging here and is freshly full heel. Eddie’s cowardly heel stuff of running on his knees always made me chuckle. How much commentary do you really need on a Guerrero vs. Jericho cruiserweight match? The Canadian goes for that running springboard dropkick to the guy on the apron that he uses a lot but slips and botches it badly.

I guess once a year is understandable. In a quick ending, they hit another fast series of pinfalls but Jericho actually keeps Eddie down and gets the pin. Eddie jumps him after the match.

Rating: C-. WAY too short here but we just had to have Mongo and Jarrett earlier instead of on Nitro right? The ending sequence was fun as always and these two just flowed together pretty well. They needed more time though and that’s why the grade is low.

Silver King/Villano 4/Villano 5/Psicosis vs. Super Calo/Juventud Guerrera/Hector Garza/Lismark Jr.

More or less the idea here is go out there and do a bunch of flips like you do every night without ever getting pushed more than a tiny bit against each other. This is Lucha rules, meaning if someone goes to the floor then they don’t have to make a tag for someone else to come in. I used to hate Mike Tenay but he’s worth his weight in gold here.

There’s no real point to saying who is in as they move in and out so fast that it’s hard to keep up with them. We hit the big pile on with everyone hitting their big over the top rope until Psicosis hits the guillotine legdrop off the top onto Super Calo for the pin.

Rating: B-. It was just over the top and ridiculous which is what these guys did best. This was very fun and it worked well as it always did. These guys were well paid to go out there and just get the crowd going and that’s what they always did.

The cooking guys join the NWO. Tonight is their one year anniversary but Hogan isn’t here tonight because he’s in Canada doing a Hollywood movie. That’s WCW for you. We go to a commercial and come back to DDP Diamond Cutting one of the movie guys.

Konnan/Syxx vs. Ric Flair/Curt Hennig

Hennig was kind of an associate Horseman at the time but soon he would join the NWO and injure Flair. If there was ever a guy tailor made to be in the Horsemen, it’s Hennig. Syxx (X-Pac) more or less beats up Flair but we’ll ignore the pop he’s getting for doing it. That doesn’t exist. Flair gets his knee knocked out as Hennig hits the Fisherman’s Suplex on Konnan to get the win. This was a five minute train wreck.

Rating: C-. This was just insane and it felt like it was about two minutes long instead of the five that it actually was. Hennig denies being a Horsemen but also denies not being a Horsemen while only saying one thing. He actually does this which is impressive.

He would go heel soon enough in another dumb move because he was perfect for the Horsemen. He had the look, he could talk, he was over, he had the attitude and he was great in the ring. Naturally he was thrown into the NWO and forgotten about.

WCW Tag Titles: Lex Luger/DDP vs. Randy Savage/Scott Hall

About ten guys come out for the NWO and they have their party for it being their birthday. Apparently Nash is letting Savage defend his half of the tag titles for no apparent reason. Yeah of course we just throw two guys together that have never teamed together before (according to the ring announcer) and give them a tag title shot.

In WWF they would have won the titles. People keep popping the balloons that the NWO dropped so it sounds like people keep shooting guns or something and it’s really annoying. And for no apparent reason everyone other than Nash leaves. It’s exactly what you would expect from a match where the titles simply weren’t going to change hands.

The faces dominate early on but then the heels take over to set up the hot tag. Luger gets Hall in the rack but takes an accidental Diamond Cutter and gets pinned. What else is there to say here?

Rating: C+. It’s ok and that’s about it. What more do you want here? They had an ok match that no one cared about on a show that not a lot of people actually watched. Are you looking for something huge here?

We come back and Bischoff talks forever and then the lights begin to flicker. They go off and we see Sting in the rafters with a vulture. The famous speech in a child’s voice follows and the lights go out again and the bird is on the top rope. The NWO is terrified and Nash pulls the belt back to swing it at him as we go off the air. Think about how stupid this was for the live audience for a minute.

Overall Rating: C-. You could see that this was about the name of the show and nothing more. Yeah there were four title matches but that happened at almost every Nitro. Yes two titles changed hands but who cares? It’s just not an interesting show as Nitro was lighting the world on fire on Mondays on a weekly basis. Ten years earlier this was an awesome idea but here it just didn’t hold up at all. Not bad, but only watch if you like this time in WCW. Otherwise it’s nothing of note at all.

Clash of the Champions 29
Date: November 16, 1994
Location: Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florida
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan

We’re in 1994 here and almost a year before Nitro. Hogan is of course world champion and has recently retired Flair. We’re also in the days of the 3 Faces of Fear which would evolve into the Dungeon of Doom soon which was rather successful if you think about it from an odd angle. Either way this wasn’t a great year for the company so let’s get to it.

The opening video is of course about Hogan vs. the Faces of Fear. He recently unmasked Brutus Beefcake, revealing him to be the Butcher in name change #85 or so. The main event is a six man tag with Mr. T. as guest referee for no apparent reason.

Heenan says that Hogan is done and is booed out of the building.

After running down the card we’re ready to go to….Gene who talks about the Hotline for a bit before Meng and Colonel Parker come out. Apparently he has a tag title shot lined up for Bunkhouse Buck and Arn Anderson which they lost.

Tag Titles: Stars N Stripes vs. Pretty Wonderful

Stars N Stripes are Bagwell and the Patriot, Pretty Wonderful are Paul Roma and Paul Orndorff (holy Yoda line Batman and holy combination of two awesome geek series) and this is mask (Patriot’s) vs. title (Pretty Wonderful’s). The camera is a bit low so you can’t see over all of the fans. These teams traded the titles over the last two months or so. After a lot of stalling it’s Bagwell vs. Orndorff to start.

Roma comes in quickly and ever the genius, wrestles like a face. By that I mean he’s climbing the ropes and flipping off of them, jumping over Bagwell, using cross bodies and dropkicks. How many heels do you know that wrestle like that regularly? Anyway the challengers clear the ring quickly. Heenan thinks Patriot is Al Gore.

Paul vs. Patriot at the moment. Blast it this is one of those teams that I have to specify with. Orndorff vs. Patriot at the moment. How in the world was Roma a Horseman but not Orndorff? Patriot takes him down with an armbar and Orndorff isn’t sure what to do. Off to Roma who shows off again with three backbreakers without putting Patriot down. Thesz Press gets two for the masked dude.

The champions try a double hot shot but the cameraman falls over so we don’t see what happens. I know it’s just an accident but when do you ever see that? Orndorff drops an elbow on Bagwell as they’re legal at the moment. The fans chant USA for four American wrestlers. Off to Roma who has a REALLY high dropkick. Powerslam gets two. Sunset flip by Bagwell gets two on Orndorff.

Roma and Patriot hit the floor as this match is needing to end rather soon. Thankfully it does but even a simple pin doesn’t go right for them. Orndorff suplexes Bagwell and lays there with him, but doesn’t let him go. Roma goes up for a splash off the top ala the Powerplex but Patriot makes the save. Orndorff just stayed in the position and gets pinned, but Tony screws up the count, making it seem like the titles change on a two count and generally confusing the TV audience. Either way, new champions.

Rating: D+. Orndorff got a push at this point for some reason which I’m SURE wasn’t because he was one of Hogan’s buddies but whatever. The tag title situation never really was interesting at all at this point but they were trying….I think. Harlem Heat would rise up soon to half save the division but they tried at least.

TV Title: Johnny B. Badd vs. Honky Tonk Man

I know I know, just go with it. Badd is champion here. Honky, ever the Memphis man, stalls to start us off. He works on the arm of Badd as we talk about Honky’s hair. Now Badd works on his arm for a change of pace. This is a rematch from Halloween Havoc where someone thought them having a draw was a good idea for no apparent reason.

Badd catches a kick and Honky hops around so Badd messes up the hair. Why is this airing? For the life of me I don’t understand. Honky takes over with the falling fist for two so we hit the chinlock. That lasts only a few seconds and it’s time for the Shake Rattle and Roll. That goes nowhere as Badd gets him into the corner for multiple punches. Million dollar kneelift gets two. Down goes the referee and Honky pops Johnny with the guitar, only to get caught and we’re done.

Rating: F+. Honky Tonk Man is one of the worst investments in the history of this company. For the life of me I don’t get the point of having him around as he hadn’t meant anything in about 6 years at this point. Badd wasn’t any good yet but in a few months he would get awesome in a hurry. Terrible match here though.

The 3 Faces of Fear (Brutus Beefcake called Butcher, Earthquake called Shark and Kevin Sullivan who is rarely called) say that they’re Hogan’s worst nightmares. This is the least intimidating group I’ve seen in years. Avalanche has a brother named Tropical Storm Gordon. How do you even respond to that?

Harlem Heat vs. Nasty Boys

These two fought at about 5 PPVs in 1995, which says a lot more when there were only 9 or 10 PPVs that year. This is a street fight. The Nasties are faces here……I think. Ok maybe it’s not an official street fight but one in name only. Booker vs. Knobbs starts us off. The Nasties clear the ring and the fans get in the face of Stevie on the floor. Off to Stevie who gets shoved around by Sags. This is another boring match already.

Knobbs works on Booker’s knee as this is a ridiculously boring match. THANK GOODNESS we take a break as even Bobby wants to take one. Back with….a shot of the video screen. Heenan is gone apparently. Booker gets a big kick to Knobbs and Bobby is back. Stevie pounds away as Tony says this is everything they expected. They had really low expectations then.

Booker, by far the most talented guy in the match, comes in and misses an elbow off the middle rope and Sags comes in to hammer away a bit. Everything breaks down as there’s a phone involved somehow. Booker tries to call someone on it as Stevie is beaten within an inch of his life. Apparently it’s Sister Sherri who has been their boss all along and her distraction allows Booker to get the Harlem Hangover on Sags to end this.

Rating: F+. Other than Sherri looking surprisingly good in leather, this was a total mess. The Nasties were another team that existed because they were buddies with Hogan and that’s about it. Anyway, weak match here as expected although it at least had a major storyline development in it.

Ad for Starrcade on a Tuesday. Well Sunday was Christmas Day so their backs were to the wall on that one.

Dustin Rhodes vs. Vader

This is a pretty big match actually as Vader is #1 contender and Rhodes is about the level of Kofi Kingston at the moment. At the same time though Dustin has one of the worst theme songs of all time. Look up a song with the line “They call him the natural” in it and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Naturally we talk about Dusty Rhodes because we have to do that once a show to meet a quota I guess.

Vader shoves him around with ease to start as anyone would expect him to do. Dustin spears him down and hammers away to a BIG pop. Vader was hated at this point and was easily the best heel since Flair but Hogan beat him at two straight PPVs with ease. Dustin rips the mask off and gets a cross body for two. All of this is high impact and fast paced with the crowd getting louder with every move.

Clothesline takes Vader to the floor and the beating continues. Dustin drills Race (Vader’s manager) because he can. Back in the ring and Vader hammers away even more, drilling him down in the corner. Other than a few shots in the opening this has been ALL Dustin. Dustin gets a pretty freaking nice snap suplex on Vader who bails to the floor to try to get a breather.

And then it all comes crashing down as Vader just rams into Dustin to shift momentum again. Vader hammers him down and pounds away. A missed splash in the corner lets Dustin get a rollup for two and so ends Dustin’s offense at the moment. Dustin manages to avoid another splash and gets a powerslam out of nowhere for two. Another Thesz Press kind of move puts Vader down but the referee is bumped.

Bulldog is countered as Vader throws Dustin over the ropes. No DQ though since the referee was down. Vader Bomb gets two as Dustin gets his foot on the ropes. Another Vader Bomb gets the same result as Race curses more than a fleet of sailors. Dustin is more or less dead here. Vader slams him down and tries a shoulder off the middle rope but Dustin pops up with a powerslam out of nowhere.

They slug it out and Dustin HAMMERS away but he can’t put him down. Ok maybe he can with a top rope clothesline. Dustin puts Vader on the top rope and wants a superplex. Realizing that simply isn’t going to happen he DDTs Vader for two off the middle rope instead.

Bulldog hits but Race gets in for the distraction. A splash to the back sets up a wheelbarrow drop (picture a German suplex but grabbing the legs instead of around the waste and slamming Dustin down face first instead of suplexing him back. Look up a wheelbarrow suplex and instead of doing the suplex slamming him forward) Dustin is dead and it’s finally over.

Rating: B+. WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THIS COME FROM??? This was an awesome match to say the least which got me totally into the concept that Dustin could pull this off when this should have been a squash. Vader could sell far better than he’s given credit for and Dustin took advantage for every bit of it. I was ready to say “and that does it” at least five times and had to keep erasing it. Find this match and check it out as it’s very good and a total surprise. Absolutely brutal fight with Dustin going move for move with Vader for about twelve minutes.

Vader sets to beat up Dustin even more until Duggan comes out for the save. Vader would take the US Title from Duggan at Starrcade

Hogan, Sting and Dave Sullivan (cue Pretender joke) say they’re not afraid of the 3 Faces of Fear. We get more references to the tropical storm, which is ok to make fun of I guess. It only killed 1150 people and caused over a billion dollars of damage in 2011 dollars. Nothing you can’t work into a bunch of references to it in a wrestling show right?

US Title: Jim Duggan vs. Steve Austin

Duggan beat Austin for the title in 35 seconds at Fall Brawl because the writing was clearly on the wall that DUGGAN was the future of the business, not this guy named Austin that had recently started fighting authority and legends and was swearing a bit while wearing black. Yeah some people are still stunned (get it?) to this day that this company ever made a dime. Duggan goes after Austin who stalls a lot. And never mind as here’s Vader to return the favor from earlier and end this with Duggan winning by DQ in less than a minute. Duggan saves himself with the board.

3 Faces of Fear vs. Hulk Hogan/Sting/Dave Sullivan

Mr. T is referee here for no apparent reason at all. He’s in something like a nightcap as my head hurts again. The Faces of Fear come out to what would become Eddie Guerrero’s music which is way too perky for them. All three non-Faces of Fear are in yellow and red because they want to eat this week or something. We even get a reference to Hogan retiring Flair in the intro by Buffer. That’s rather amusing.

Hogan jumps Taskmaster (Sullivan) to start us off. Off to Sting who actually hits that big jumping elbow of his. Everything breaks down as shocking no one, Sullivan can’t do anything. Actually there is one thing he can do: get injured, which he does here. His arm gets messed up and he has to leave, making it a handicap match. Hogan vs. Avalanche at the moment and Hogan can’t slam him for now.

Off to Hogan vs. Beefcake which wound up being the main event of Starrcade for no reason involving intelligence. Avalanche comes back in again and Hogan still can’t slam him. Sullivan comes in and hammers away which gets him nowhere as Hogan fights off the Boston Midget. Earthquake throws on the bearhug as Sting hasn’t been in for a very long time now.

We get the usual Hogan vs. Quake match that we got a few thousand times around 1990. Powerslam sets up the missing elbow and there’s your hot tag to Sting. Sting has to fight three guys off and ultimately gets caught in a splash in the corner as it’s apparent Hogan is going to get the big save at the end. Avalanche drops a big leg on Sting to be funny.

Off to Sullivan vs. Sting now and that sounds so lopsided it’s unreal. Hot tag to Hogan so he can fight Butcher. The Megaphone gets involved in there somehow and Hogan pins the wrong guy (Sullivan) to finally end this. Mr. T goes down and it’s a big fight. T would fight Sullivan at Starrcade. This also set up Sting vs. Avalanche and Randy Savage got involved somehow also.

Rating: D+. Just a main event tag match here but the problem is that at the end of the day, the top heel is Brutus Beefcake on a team of three. How excited am I supposed to get about this match? No one wanted to see it other than Beefcake and Hogan, which would become a running theme with various people being substituted in for Beefcake for like a year.

The 3 Faces of Fear beat down Hogan with a sleeper going on him for like 2 minutes. The announcers play it up like Beefcake shot him in the head with a shotgun or something because NO ONE has ever been in a sleeper for over a minute right? Various faces come out to try and help but it takes security and cops to break it up. Hogan is “in serious condition” to end the show.

Overall Rating: D-. The only thing keeping this from being a failure is the shockingly awesome Rhodes vs. Vader match. Other than that, it’s WCW in 1994 and that simply wasn’t very good. At the end of the day, Hulk Hogan vs. a heel Brutus Beefcake does not work. They wanted this to be something epic but it just wasn’t there. Hogan booked this company into a lot of trouble around this time and 1995 made things even worse. Thankfully I’m mostly done with that era though, as I don’t think I could take much more of it.

Starrcade 1983
Date: November 24, 1983
Location: Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
Attendance: 15,447
Commentators: Bob Caudle, Gordon Solie

So here we are at the real granddaddy of them all. This is before Hogan won the title and changed wrestling forever, as this is before PPV and nearly a year and a half before Wrestlemania and was shown on closed circuit instead. This is Starrcade.

The idea here is the original supershow, with all of the best talent from the NWA coming together for one mega blowout of a show with the headlining match being Ric Flair vs. Harley Race in a steel cage for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, giving us the tag line of A Flare for the Gold. No one had ever dreamed of something like this being possible, but here it is.

This is pretty much all of the territories coming together in one place for one show to show off how amazing the NWA was and it worked at an amazing level. This is certainly in the category of shows that you have to see once in your life as a wrestling fan, so let’s do it.

There’s no traditional intro as it’s just the ring announcer saying this is Starrcade, which does indeed sound cool.

Russian Assassins vs. Rufus R. Jones/Bugsy McGraw

The Assassins are just known as one and two here, although two is more commonly known as Hercules, which is what I’ll be calling him. The others are more or less glorified jobbers. There really is no point to this match other than to have a tag match for the opener. I like their style if nothing else. The Assassins are in masks by the way, and Jones is the Mid-Atlantic champion. The ring and the arena are VERY retro looking.

McGraw is just a fat bald man. There really is no way to tell the heels apart. Gordon Solie is just sweet on the mic and I love it. McGraw is either completely insane or just stupid. Gordon butchers Schiavone’s name. I think Assassin 1 started but I’m not sure. Jones is kind of like Rocky Johnson: an over the top gyrating black man. He’s dancing all over the place and it looks completely stupid. He’s the freight train apparently. We keep hearing about McGraw’s education.

Better than his football background I suppose. The heels remind me of the Killer Bees. I think that’s bad though as they’re far from intimidating. This leg gyrating from Jones is annoying as any and goodness. The Assassin in there is fatter than should be allowed. Jones is just a disturbing looking man.

I think Hercules just came in but I’m not sure. I think McGraw is wrestling in slow motion. It’s odd looking. Jones does this weird thing where he uses both fists at once on a punch. Not bad I guess. And one of the Assassins rolls up McGraw for the pin. Well alright then.

Rating: D+. This was a weird match. It was like it was supposed to be a squash but they weren’t sure who was getting squashed. The Assassins were ok but the outfits were exactly alike and it’s so dark that it’s hard to tell who is who out there. The faces were….just bad.

I have no idea what the thought here was other than give two popular guys a match, which is what I think they did. I can’t find any story or history between these guys anywhere, so I think it was just thrown on to get the Mid-Atlantic champion on the card since this was in his territory, and that’s ok. The match still sucked beyond all belief though.

The announcers hype up the show and I bow to Gordon Solie. The guy is so clear and crisp that it’s amazing. He sounds like a news anchor like Walter Cronkite or something like that and it’s just awesome. Apparently Dusty is here tonight to challenge the winner of the match, because we can’t go one night without Dusty being on camera. You know, it’s the biggest show of all time, so Dusty has to be around at the end right?

We go to the back with Tony, for what is apparently a first. Yes, this is allegedly the debut of the locker room interview. In something that is a sign of the times, we see Flair in the background explaining something to someone whose face we can’t see. As Tony is explaining what would become a staple of wrestling, the man stands up and it’s Roddy Piper. He’s just a young face back then but this would be one of his biggest matches ever so that would change everything for him.

Johnny Weaver/Scott McGhee vs. Kevin Sullivan/Mark Lewin

This has a 45 minute time limit? Really? This more or less is the same thing as the previous match but without a regular tag team in the Assassins. Weaver is a veteran here and more or less a jobber to the stars. He’s most famous for being the first guy to use a move called the Weaver Lock, which is more commonly known as the sleeper. Kevin Sullivan is up from Florida where he was doing a satanic thing with Lewin, who was known as the Purple Haze there.

See what I have to work with here? Lewin does this weird dancing thing that’s just annoying as all goodness. McGhee never did anything of note in his career. Weaver just looks old. Oddly enough McGhee is maybe the best in here. He’s very crisp and good in the ring which is a nice surprise. Caudle is just going over the card and not really talking about the match at all which is usually a telling sign.

Apparently there’s a rule that says your arm has to be through the ropes instead of over it for a tag. That’s most interesting and I’ve never heard of that but that works I guess. Lewin is freaking built. He has a devastating hand on the back of McGhee’s neck. The heels are completely dominating here and it’s not even close. And then after Weaver is in there for awhile, the heels work the arm.

Lewin goes up and drops a knee on the arm…for the pin. Now THAT is something you wouldn’t see ever again I wouldn’t think. Post match the heel manager gives Lewin something and he stabs the faces with it, drawing some good blood from McGhee. King Kong Mosca, a freaking monster, comes in for the save after getting beaten up a bit too.

Rating: D. Again this wasn’t much at all. It just wasn’t that interesting and there was more or less no story at all. The heels winning twice in a row isn’t the best idea I don’t think either, as it kind of takes the life away from the crowd. It was boring as all goodness too with the arm thing coming from beyond left field. I have no clue what they were going for here but it failed. The wrestling is ok I guess, but it just wasn’t working at all.

There are very limited transitions between the matches as one guy is leaving and the other referee comes in for the next match. It’s just different to say the least. It’s not bad or anything but just odd. There’s no music either and it’s very different.

A woman announcer is with a family from South Carolina who are the epitomes of country hicks. They say Flair will win. WWE needs to do more stuff like that today: interacting with fans. It took maybe 10 seconds and the fans got into the show. That’s just fun.

Tony is in the heel locker room with Harley Race, the Briscos and Greg Valentine: the World Champion, the tag champions and the US Champion. Good night that’s a ton of talent in there. Race says that even though he hates being in Greensboro, he’s ready as his friends have been filling him in on Flair’s weaknesses.

That was a big part of the match and show: Race is in Flair’s backyard for this match so he thinks it’s unfair. More or less Flair is about as clear of a winner as Austin was vs. Shawn at Mania 14, but that’s fine sometimes as it’s about the moment instead of the match itself.

Abdullah the Butcher vs. Carlos Colon

Sixty minute time limit here again. This is a match that was banned in Puerto Rico so we’re doing it here in America instead. Colon is more commonly known as Carlito and Primo’s father and about as big of an attention hog as Jerry Lawler in Memphis. Butcher is the epitome of a journeyman who would go around the world wrestling in territories at a time but never staying around long enough to be thought of as boring.

He was the first WWC Champion in Puerto Rico, which was rather surprising actually. I think Solie coins the Wild Man from the Sudan name here. We get the fork about 10 seconds into the match so they’re not waiting at all. To give a little context to this, Carlito was six here and Primo was less than a year old during this match.

I could listen to Gordon talk all day. This is just a brawl for the most part with mainly punches and headbutts. Colon gets a really bad figure four on but Abdullah’s manager hits him to break up the hold and give Butcher the pin. The man was more commonly known as Hugo Savinovich, or the commentator for the Spanish broadcast table.

Rating: D. This was just a brawl, but at less than five minutes we just didn’t have enough to get anything going. It’s fine I guess, but with four minutes and nothing but punches and headbutts, I can’t get into something like that. This would have been a lot better with no rules and maybe 5 to 8 more minutes, but in this form it wasn’t working.

We go to the back with Mosca who has his arm taped. He’s refereeing the tag title match for no apparent reason but that’s apparently already been determined. His voice is just funny as he sounds like a combination of Vito Corleone and Jerry Stiller from King of Queens. He says Flair is completely ready and picks him for the winner. The absolutely HILARIOUS part here though is that he goes on this rant against the heels earlier, saying that’s not needed in wrestling. That’s all fine and good.

He goes on a rant about how he fights for young people everywhere. Odd again but that works I guess as he’s starting a feud I guess with the heels from earlier. What cracks me up is we pan to the ring and McGhee from earlier is sitting there bleeding from the head and looking completely unconscious while Mosca has his arm wrapped up and a towel on him. It looks completely hilarious and like something out of an SNL skit. It’s great stuff indeed.

The woman from earlier is with two more fans who say they both think Flair wins tonight. Again, what’s so hard about doing this?

Wahoo McDaniel/Mark Youngblood vs. Dick Slater/Bob Orton

In a moment that I freaking want to scream because of, we get the introductions and the ring announcer leaves. All of a sudden he’s talking again and after a quick microphone issue, he announces that Dusty Rhodes is here! OH GIVE ME A BREAK YOU FAT TUB OF GOO! Seriously, after three matches with a limited story to no story at all, we get to a match that actually has a backstory that the people would more than likely want to see.

In other words, we’re past the fluff matches and can get to the meat of the show, meaning that the show is likely going to pick up the pace a bit here. That’s a good thing right? I would certainly think so. However, since we’re improving things, we CLEARLY need Dusty here. The guy isn’t even wrestling here tonight but he has to inject himself in the very end of the show so he’s the last thing people remember.

Dusty was a great talker, but he couldn’t wrestle to save his life, so instead he jumps…no that would require moving. He latches on with the teeth that have never met a cupcake they could resist “putting over” (read as devour and suck the life out of) to matches that are going to be far better than his so that his name is associated with them, so that later on people think of a good match like this one and associate it with Rhodes. That’s just pathetic and makes HHH and Shawn’s antics look like Mother freaking Teresa. In case you can’t tell, I FREAKING HATE DUSTY RHODES.

Anyway, back to the match. The story here is simple: Race had put a bounty out on Flair. Whoever could put him out of the sport would get $25,000 cash. Orton and Slater gave Flair a spike piledriver and collected the money. Flair came back with a ball bat and said he was going to kill them and then get back in the title hunt, which tonight is the culmination of. Youngblood and McDaniel are Flair’s friends and told him to worry about Race and they’ll take care of Orton and Slater, leading us here.

See what a story can do for you? Mark is Jay Youngblood’s brother who you will see later on. Amazingly Orton’s arm is perfectly fine. McDaniel is one of the toughest wrestlers and athletes in wrestling history. He had all of four moves, but he had charisma to burn. He gets a hot tag and the crowd is on fire. He chops the heck out of the heels but gets taken down to more or less change places with Youngblood.

Wahoo and Slater fight on the floor with nothing at all going on. This is formula based stuff but it’s fast paced and the crowd is responding to it so I’m happy with that. In the ring we get the superplex from Orton for the pin. These endings have no heat but I think that’s a cultural thing. The crowd is definitely into the show though. Post match the heels try to hurt Wahoo’s arm to great heat.

Rating: C+. Like I said it was a formula based match which is fine. It worked pretty well I thought but it was decent enough stuff. It’s the first match with a story behind it which helps a lot as well. We have a reason to care about it and you want to see the heels get their comeuppance. However, for the fourth straight match the faces loses, which makes me question the booking. To be fair though, there were only two matches that really mattered here and this was just an appetizer, so I think it’s ok.

Tony is with Flair, Steamboat and Jay Youngblood. They all say that they’re ready. Jay mentions that all of them have been in the gym training. That’s something that’s taken for granted: the insane training that these people have to do. Considering the insane travel schedule, it’s very impressive that they manage to get in the gym for obviously hours a day and work themselves into great shape. That really is impressive.

Dusty is at ringside and talks about wanting a title shot at the winner. They mess up the audio though so we have to hear Gordon say he’s talking about history. See, even God doesn’t want to hear from Dusty’s fatness. Oh apparently the Common man can’t stay in the fans and has to go back to his box. Oh come on now.

TV Title vs. Mask: Great Kabuki vs. Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown is Jimmy Valiant in a mask. It’s a Mr. America kind of deal where it’s obviously him but he’s trying to be funny or something. The modern equivalent would be Paul Burchill from a few weeks ago for you people that don’t get my six year old reference. This is an interesting concept as the TV Title has very short, as in about 15 minutes long, time limits, but this goes for sixty.

The idea is that the match can go up to that long, but if the match goes over 15, the title can’t change hands and the mask can’t be lost. I actually like that. It keeps the match from going to the annoying time limit and we’re more or less guaranteed to have a winner. I like that a lot. Kabuki is a somewhat stereotypical Japanese wrestler, although he invented the green mist of death and pain. Valiant looks like Santa Claus.

The mask covers about half of his face so it’s pretty freaking dumb but whatever. Valiant is beating the tar out of the champion, which makes perfect sense. He throws on the absolute weakest and worst sleeper I’ve ever seen. It looks like something you would put on your friend in seventh grade. Now apparently the sleeper was invented in the Orient. Keep your freaking stories straight.

Ok now we hit sleeper number twp and it’s somehow even worse. Valiant is one of those guys that’s all flash and more or less no skill at all. Oh look it’s a claw from Kabuki to just suck the freaking life out of this match even more, because we’re six minutes in so we clearly need rest hold number three. Oh look Valiant is no selling and dancing. There’s claw number two. Seriously, this has been eighty percent rest holds.

What I want to know: WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY RESTING FROM??? I really hate wrestlers that get up after being in a finishing hold for like two minutes on nothing but “adrenaline” or whatever. Oh for the love of pizza it’s the THIRD CLAW OF THE MATCH. Make that four. He keeps breaking it for a short comeback or more offense and then we go back to the claw. Holds like that are one thing, but mix it up a bit I beg of you.

Oh apparently the mask can’t be removed until the match ends. That’s stupid but whatever. They’re back up now so I’m a bit happier I suppose. And then Valiant hits some punches, Kabuki misses a charge in the corner and an elbow drop ends it. Seriously, it was just a regular elbow drop and nothing more.

Dude, is it that hard to get something like, oh I don’t know, ANYTHING BUT A FREAKING ELBOW DROP?? That gets the TV Title, which he would vacate in a few months anyway, more than likely so he wouldn’t have to job.

Rating: F. Seriously, we had a ten minute match and NINE rest holds. There is just no validation for that and both guys are guilty of it. And also, a freaking elbow? I know it’s 1983, but dude, you can’t use a splash or a piledriver?

A radio show host says Flair will win. Solie is just freaking awesome and has a great look. He just looks and feels like an announcer. He and Caudle, who is fine in his own right, run down the rest of the card.

Slater, Race and Orton are in the back and talk about Flair and the bounty. I see why this is the first time I’ve ever heard Slater talk.

Since it’s been fifteen minutes, it must be DUSTY TIME!!! Yes, he’s here AGAIN to talk about what he wants to do after the match is over, because we can’t just have the match itself and the big ending with Flair winning the title in a big emotional moment end the show. That’s blasphemy, BLASPHEMY I TELL YOU!!!

Greg Valentine vs. Roddy Piper

This is the famous collar match, which for a very long time after this was considered the most brutal match in wrestling history. Now this is billed as being for the US Title which Valentine holds, but for no reason that I’ve been able to find other than the gimmick being added, it’s sometime later changed to be non title, so despite the ending with Piper winning which I’m relatively sure isn’t much of a spoiler, he wouldn’t win the title for about another sixteen years.

I never quite got that but it didn’t matter much anyway as Slater would get the belt about three weeks after this and Piper would be working for Vince by the end of the year, or less than five weeks after this. He actually worked for both companies at the same time for awhile, which is unheard of really. This is a rematch from April when Valentine took the belt from Piper because he badly injured Piper’s ear, resulting in Piper being legitimately 75% deaf in it which I don’t think ever healed.

They’re tied around the neck with this huge chain which looks awesome. It’s pinfall to win here so that opens up the doors for a lot of violence. They immediately start by just pulling their heads back and having a tug of war, which really is a good looking visual. They’re starting very slowly here but it’s a slow build which is usually the best thing you can do.

They both get lengths of the chain together and whip each other with it which has to hurt badly. This is a blood feud so it’s working very well as far as atmosphere goes. Valentine gets Piper down by going for the ear and then wraps the chain around Piper’s eyes. That is not only dangerous but it looks awesome. You have to remember there’s nothing to go on here as this is really the first big time gimmick match other than a cage in the mainstream.

You would have things at house shows but it would never be seen otherwise. Piper gets control and wraps the chain around his mouth like a gag which also looks awesome. Piper wraps the chain around the post so Greg is more or less tied to the corner. They’re doing a ton of cool spots and ideas here. That almost always makes a match like this better. Valentine is busted.

Piper is just beating the tar out of him but Valentine gets a shot to the ear and Piper is in trouble. Either Piper’s ear is legitimately hurt or he’s the best acting wrestler of all time. The thing about an injury like that is that it’s very easy to be legitimately hurt with something like that. Oh man he’s bleeding bad from the ear. In case you can’t tell, this match is AWESOME.

For those of you that might have been wondering, when I said suplay in OCW for suplex, that’s something I stole from Solie who used it here. This is a very stiff match with them beating the heck out of each other. Valentine goes up top and Piper pulls him down and just GOES NUTS on him with shot after shot and it’s epic. Valentine comes back with shots to the ear so Piper just starts throwing punches, and I don’t mean wrestling punches.

He’s throwing jab after jab to the nose of Valentine and it looks great. Valentine drops a knee after a choke and Piper keeps kicking out at one which is a great screw you to Valentine. Just as I say that, Solie says that Piper might be winning the psychological battle. We get a suplex and both guys are just out of it. Valentine hits a sleeper which makes sense here given how tired they are and the blood loss, unlike in the previous match where it was put on three minutes into the match.

Valentine goes up to the middle rope but Piper pulls him down and just goes the heck off on him, beating the living crap out of him with it and tying his legs together for the pin. Post match Piper is congratulated as Solie says that wasn’t for the title. Then Valentine just lays a freaking beating on him with the chain and the fans freak out. This was AWESOME.

Rating: A. This was a great match and a great fight. It was completely violent and they beat the living tar out of each other here, which is all you could ask for. Piper got his revenge for the blowoff, but both guys would be gone within just a few months if not weeks to Vince, which is ok. Either way, this was great and is well worth going out of your way to see.

The announcers talk about the match while we scrape Piper off the mat.

Tony is with Flair for the second time tonight as he plays messenger boy for Flair and Race. Flair says he’s ready and thanks Wahoo for helping him, saying that tonight it’s Flair and Race and no help for Race in the cage. That’s simple but effective. Wahoo who is next to him says he thinks Flair will win.

That woman is with Don Kernoodle, who was Sgt. Slaughter’s old partner and he also says Flair wins tonight.

Tag Titles; Jay Youngblood/Ricky Steamboat vs. Brisco Brothers

Yes this is Jerry the Stooge Brisco, Mosca from earlier is referee here, wearing a PWI shirt which is odd to see. The faces are WAY over. Jerry stands on the top rope for some reason for his intro. Steamboat and Youngblood are four time champions so this isn’t exactly a first time thing. The Briscos got the titles from them which isn’t mentioned for no apparent reason. Youngblood and Steamboat look a lot alike as do the champions so this could get confusing.

Good freaking night Steamboat is freaking amazing. Solie shows why he’s awesome by saying Jack will be pondering Steamboat after he tags out. That’s just epic. The champions ha been trying to get out of this match as the heels. It’s so weird to see Jerry as a legit wrestler here. In something that might be scary, Youngblood might be as good if not better than Steamboat.

It’s like Capotelli and Morrison in my eyes, as Youngblood would pass away in about two years after having an injury in the ring and his heart messing up because of it. I think he was like 33 or something like that so he would have been around at least another ten years or so. The Briscos really are solid in the ring. Steamboat kills the credibility of Davey Boy Smith by doing the arm lock lift up on Jerry without much of a problem, so there goes that move.

The Briscos use more suplexes than the Steiners. Spellcheck HATED that sentence. Jerry shows his intelligence by shoving a man called King Kong. The challengers just go off on Jerry, finishing him with a gorilla press from Steamboat to Youngblood into a splash. The heels beat up Steamboat after the match ends. Jerry jumps off the top and Mosca just catches him. That never gets old at all. The crowd popped like a cherry for that.

Rating: B. This was by far the best tag match of the night as they used the Midnight Rock N Roll formula before it actually existed so that’s always cool. This worked very well though and they beat the tar out of each other. When Jack Brisco might be the third of fourth best wrestler in a match, it has to be good.

The celebration goes on forever…and we go to the credits? Yeah, in a weird thing, they actually read the credits to us before the main event, which is just stupid, since there’s now far less energy in the show as we had to take time out to do that for no apparent reason.

Tony is with Flair AGAIN but doesn’t say anything this time. Instead he’s standing next to him and Charlie Brown comes in and is very happy and says this is for Jimmy Valiant. I hate gimmicks like this. Piper shows up and says it’s not over with Valentine. Actually it was. Steamboat and Youngblood show up after Piper leaves and say that they’re happy with being five time champions which I think is a record at the time. They talk about how they know what it takes to be champions. If that’s the case, why did you lose the belts four times now?

The announcers kill more time.

NWA World Title: Harley Race vs. Ric Flair

Gene Kiniski is the referee which hasn’t been mentioned until just now. Flair’s entrance is freaking huge with lights and music which no one else has had all night. Considering Race’s takes all of a minute, the fact that the intros and introductions take eight minutes says a heck of a lot I’d think. Race is a seven time champion here and Flair is a two time champion, so it’s not like this was some big Austin moment for him but rather an epic showdown moment.

The cage more or less looks like it’s just a fence that’s really tall, as in it looks really cheap. It has no roof on it but apparently no one can get in. In case you didn’t get it, Race was scared of Flair and paid people to hurt him but Flair came back and got the shot here. This is Race’s last hurrah as champion or meaning much of anything in the ring as he never got past the midcard in the WWF. Kiniski, in a cage match, warns people about punches, in a cage match.

Allow me to emphasize that this is in a cage match. Like I said, this isn’t really much in doubt but it’s the road of getting there that makes it important and cool. This starts off as a wrestling match that just happens to be in a cage. For some reason the ring seems bigger in this match which makes no sense. Flair works a headlock for a LONG time. Solie points out that in a football game there’s about 14 minutes of actual game played, which is a very interesting stat indeed.

Race takes over and hits a piledriver but Flair’s hair makes it an average move at best. Race stays in control for a long time and keeps arguing with Kiniski. Flair keeps making small comebacks but they don’t last long which is a standard of good matches. Both guys are bleeding as the cage starts coming into play and we get a WOO! He gets the figure four but the ropes get Race out of it.

Kiniski needs to sit down. He’s gotten involved WAY too much here and it’s just annoying and distracting. It’s about the wrestlers, not the referee. Race takes over again as we’re going for the long….Kiniski grabs Race by the FREAKING HAIR and pulls him away. This is reaching Art Donovan levels of annoyingness. They are just bleeding everywhere. Solie of course sounds like he’s ordering dinner.

Race finally just has enough of Kiniski and headbutts him “by mistake”. I think that might have been a shoot. Flair goes up while Kiniski is on all fours (where’s Sheik when you need him to humble someone?) as Flair comes off with a cross body. The idea was Race tripping over Kiniski for the pin, but Kiniski was WAY out of position so Race misses by about a foot which isn’t his fault as he has to pay attention to the 6’2 240lb man jumping off the top rope at him.

The pin is supposed to be Race just barely not able to kick out, so Kiniski, the greatness that he is, counts like he got run over by a train so Race looks completely freaking stupid. Solie says Flair has done what many people believed to be impossible, even though only the fat load himself was the only person to say he would lose. The faces storm the ring to celebrate.

Rating: A. This was a great old school fight that was given time to flesh itself out and it worked really well. Flair winning was a given, but they made it look good once they were in there so that’s all I ask. It’s a cool moment. Screw that. It’s a legendary moment and has been on a ton of highlight reels.

This was the perfect ending and it works every time, other than that moron Kiniski messing things up and trying to steal the spotlight and make himself important when most people there didn’t know who he was more than likely.

Flair puts the belt on with every face worth anything out there. Mosca just throws Flair on his shoulders and walks him around the ring. That’s just awesome. And he’s still in the ring five minutes later. Oh Flair has a mic. Flair thanks the fans and makes this the first of the greatest nights in his life, of which he would have about 10 over the years.

All the faces leave and we go to the announcers to wrap things up as we talk about Dusty of course, linking him with the other two champions because he’s Dusty and he’ll eat them if they don’t do it.

For the FOURTH time tonight, Tony is with Flair again. He thanks everyone again, mainly Steamboat who comes up to thank him. Champagne starts flowing and here’s Dusty who says he wants a title shot and completely killing the moment because he just has to do that. Bear with me for a moment here as I need to say something.

Dusty Rhodes

You are a worthless human being. You’re so fat that it has taken over the pitiful little thing you like to call a mind and has made you believe that since it’s the only thing you see in a mirror in the morning, you’re all that matters. GET THE HECK OVER YOURSELF. You could talk very well. Flair could talk very well and wrestle even better. You were booker here so you insisted on taking away a great moment from a better wrestler in Ric Flair and you should get raped by an ostrich for it.

To be fair though you wouldn’t notice because the gravitational force of your stomach would suck the thing inside of you. It always had to be about you with Bunkhouse Stampede being a PPV that you designed to make yourself look good. Dusty, no one cared but you. You managed to bring Ric Flair down to a level that no one else could because it had to be about you. You talk with that stupid and annoying country accent and add if you will to every line you say.

Well I have a will also. My will is that you get over yourself. I would say around yourself but at 21 years old I don’t have 45 years to spare which is how long it takes to walk around that planet you call a stomach. You are a waste of air and need to stay far away from anyone else with talent because you might think they’re a big cookie and eat them.

You have managed to ruin more moments and matches than anyone I would have thought possible and you are the worst thing to happen to wrestling in a very long time. I hope you enjoy your life as you’ve certainly managed to ruin enough wrestling moments in everyone else’s thanks to your ridiculous ego.

Ok back now I think.

We go back to the announcers who talk about Dusty’s moment because he’ll eat them if they don’t. We talk EVEN MORE about Flair and how awesome he is and how Race is awesome too.

We go back to Race who says he’s done it 7 times and he’ll do it an 8th time and he’ll beat Dusty Rhodes who he of course has to mention and he’ll beat Flair in a match where he doesn’t have a ton of advantages. Race says he’s not going away, but he actually did. He had a three day reign in New Zealand that isn’t acknowledged by the NWA but other than that he was done.

Ok seriously, WE HAVE SEEN ENOUGH FLAIR, but we get a fifth, count it fifth interview with Tony and Flair as he and the tag champions say they’re the best.

The announcers repeat themselves for the 20th time to finally end this. There was almost 20 minutes of interviews to close that show.

Overall Rating: B. Now before Lariat tries to kill me, a few notes. First of all, this is very subjective as I’m grading it like any other show and not for what it is: the very first of its kind. The opening half is rather poor but the last three matches more than make up for it. This is the living definition of a show that you have to see once as a fan so the recommendation is about as much of a given as you could ask for.

Even graded on a regular scale it’s a great show and for the first of its kind, this would be an easy A at worst. They had zero idea what they were doing here but it worked very well and set the standard for a big show until Wrestlemania came a year and a half later. Definitely check this out at some point but watch Piper and Valentine for sure as it’s amazing. Great show.

When I first wrote this I followed it up with the Raw show from the same night which I’ll post Saturday.

Monday Nitro
Date: January 4, 1999
Location: Georgia Dome, Atlanta, Georgia
Attendance: 38,809
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko, Bobby Heenan, Mike Tenay

This is another of those shows that is historical to put it mildly. We’re about two weeks past Starrcade 98 and the end of Goldberg’s streak at the hands of Nash. That being said, tonight we have a rematch for the title. This is arguably the last stand for WCW as Raw is just owning them left and right in the ratings. Can they pull off one more chance? We’ll find out here tonight. Let’s get to it.

We open with a big dramatic montage of the main event of Starrcade where Nash (who had just become booker at the time. I mean what are the odds of that?) beat Goldberg and won the world title. You would think one of them died given the way these are presented.

The Nitro Girls open the show, as always.

Flair is the President or something like that here. Hogan has recently retired apparently, announcing it on the Tonight Show.

There’s a Nitro Party in a luxury box for a winner of some kind of contest. What a great night to be there.

Glacier vs. Hugh Morrus

Yeah this is the opening match. Riveting no? Glacier was some kind of ripoff of Subzero from Mortal Kombat. I never got why this was done but then again why should you pay attention to the reason why you spend tens of thousands of dollars on a gimmick and the production values of a character? Morrus is now bald and has Hart as his manager, as he did before.

Glacier dominates for the most part with his great array of kicks. Hart tries to interfere which fails badly. Just after that a clothesline and the moonsault end it for Morrus. Those were the only two things that he hit all match.

Rating: N/A. This would have been the equivalent of a dark match as it was just to give the fans something to get them going with no particular reason for it. There’s no story or anything and it’s just a quick match so some wrestling can be seen. As we’ve been over, that was a big problem with the three hour shows, one they never quite solved.

To fill in time we show the segment from last week where Flair won control of the company. This was after he lost the big match the night before to Bischoff. This was also after Flair stripped to his underwear and tore up $100 bills in the ring for no apparent reason other than general insanity. We also see clips of a doctor saying that Flair didn’t have a heart attack but was being slowly poisoned. This was, of course, never resolved. They spend like 5 minutes just airing clips to fill time. We also see the Giant in one of his final WCW appearances before he would show up in WWF less than 6 weeks later. Pay no attention to Flair needing about 8 people to beat Bischoff.

Uh, theme song, after 16 minutes of video not counting any commercials that would have aired. That’s reaching ECW levels.

Flair and family with Arn Anderson come out. This takes another 3 minutes or so as he walks through the backstage while people clap. Why do I have a feeling that this is Flair’s dream come true? This is his first night in power as well. Malenko is on crutches for some reason that the announcers don’t know. According to Tenay it’s a sprained ankle.

Flair orders Bischoff to come out if he wants to work here anymore, so here he comes looking all sad and whatnot. He humiliates Bischoff and talks about all of the things that Flair has put him through over the years. Flair puts Bischoff back on commentary, working under Schiavone. He also reinstates Randy Anderson who Bischoff fired for refereeing fairly while he had cancer.

Since he hasn’t talked enough yet, Flair thanks everyone that helped him in the fight with Bischoff and apparently Randy Savage is back now as well. Flair books himself in a handicap match with Windham and Hennig at Souled Out. David volunteers to be his partner. Pay no attention to the fact that he has never had a match, or that you have BENOIT AND MALENKO standing behind you.

Booker T vs. Emory Hale

Hale worked four matches with WCW, one of which was as The Machine, who was a character WCW built up for months. He lost clean to DDP and was never seen again. Take a guess as to how this is going to go. They botch something and Booker spins up. Hale is a big old boy but not in the fat sense. Missile Dropkick ends this in like 40 seconds.

The Nitro Girls dance some more.

Bischoff still won’t talk. The other guys talking to him about how to do all this stuff is kind of funny.

Chavo Guerrero vs. Norman Smiley

Chavo has his stick horse here and is more or less insane. He rides around on it after putting Smiley on the floor. Can’t you see this RIVETING action here that is SO much better than Raw? I want to learn the Big Wiggle. The main thing here is to get Bischoff to talk rather than the match at all. Naturally you have two talented guys in there that can put on a fast paced match with stuff you don’t get in American wrestling, but hey we need to focus on Bischoff right?

Chavo botches the HECK out of something but gets a rollup out of it anyway for two. A sunset flip ends this in like 2 minutes for Chavo. I know I’m not saying a lot but there just isn’t any point to these matches and the focus is on the commentary so I’m a bit weak on material. Smiley breaks the horse afterwards.

Rating: N/A. Watchable stuff but the botch and lack of time really made this hard to get something going on. Not awful though.

Chris Benoit vs. Horace Hogan

I think this is about the start of the second hour and there is NOTHING going on so far from an in ring perspective. Benoit dominates the whole time as we talk about Bischoff even more. See how that was a major problem around this time? He was rapidly becoming the star of the show, which isn’t something that works at all. Randy Anderson is the referee here.

Top rope suplex sets up the headbutt but Benoit might have missed. The ever talented Horace (what kind of a name was that? His real name is Michael and they picked Horace?) takes over for all of a second as Benoit just SNAPS around into the Crossface for the academic submission.

Rating: D+. Total squash here but in the sense of squashes this worked rather well. Benoit dominated to say the least as Horace had nothing at all going for him. Granted that could be said about his career in general so there you are. And then at the PPV Benoit fought I think Mike Enos. Benoit in a nutshell ladies and gentlemen.

Goldberg is arrested. And so it begins. Basically he says he didn’t do it, whatever it is. He freaks out and we can see why he hardly ever talks. He says they’ll have to shoot him to take him in. At this point he has no idea what he’s being accused of but he still is willing to get shot for it. Nash is of course there and is ticked about him being put in the totally unmarked cop car. Hogan laughs about it too, in his big return I guess.

Chris Jericho vs. Perry Saturn

Naturally the conversation is about Goldberg instead of the match. Larry offers his legal counsel, but I lose all interest because RALPHUS is here. Look this guy up as he was purely awesome. Tony informs us that of course they’ll have no issue with jumping away from the match if something changes in the whole Goldberg deal. Oh wait let’s stop to talk about the Flair match at Souled Out.

After two minutes of no conversation about the match, Tony finally starts talking about the match for about 20 seconds. And we’re done with that now as we talk about how we’re in the 7th segment of a 16 segment show so we have plenty of time to find out about Goldberg. Head and arms suplex takes over Jericho. This has been a solid back and forth match.

DVD is blocked and Jericho goes flying in a suplex. Jericho shoves the referee in front of a Saturn cross body and then punches Saturn in the balls. Lionsault covers but it’s a DQ due to the shove of the referee. However since Scott Dickinson (referee) is feuding with Saturn, Jericho wins for breaking no rules.

Rating: B-. Solid match until the stupid ending as if nothing else it could have ended in a pin. This was around the best time of Saturn’s career, so guys like Jericho were going to get very solid matches out of him no matter what. This of course meant nothing as Saturn would fight a referee at the PPV and Jericho would do nothing. Welcome to WCW.

Goldberg goes to the police station, where of course it’s fine to have a camera follow him. He’s been arrested for aggravated stalking after a charge brought up by Elizabeth. This was originally supposed to be rape or sexual assault but Goldberg flat out said no way. Also one very important thing to keep in mind: Tony says this police station is ACROSS THE STREET from the arena where the show is. That’s going to come into play later.

The Nitro Girls dance some more.

We talk to the Nitro Party winner again to waste some more time. Oh look there’s a thumb wrestling contest. Holy crap this stuff is freaking AWESOME BABY!

Now we go to the police station to see Liz get interrogated. While this is supposed to be serious, it’s just hilarious as we have a camera watching a police interrogation of a stalking victim. She talks about him always being at every show he’s at. Isn’t that called him going to work? This comes off as a scene from a police drama.

We cut to I guess a parking lot where Eddie and the other luchadores (the Latino World Order) are doing various Mexican stereotypes. Eddie had been promised a major push but Eric changed his mind and threw coffee on him. This was Eddie being compensated for it in some way. Take a guess as to how far this angle went. Now they’re at a party with women and Eddie is the center of attention. Two of the other guys aren’t happy. This segment goes on WAY too long as it’s like 5 minutes already.

Billy Kidman/Rey Mysterio vs. Juventud Guerrera/Psychosis

Kidman is Cruiserweight Champion here and Heenan is on commentary now. This is a tornado rules match, meaning no tagging. That makes things more fun if nothing else. Kidman and Psychosis start us out with Rey and Juvi on the apron. You know, in a tornado match. Juvi doesn’t want to tag in so Psycho forces him to. Rey, already with a knee brace on hits a nice rana off the top to come in.

He does what would become the 619 but it was just a taunting move back then as it didn’t become a strike until WWE. When Juvi’s head was on straight he was pretty awesome. And now we’re going to go back to making fun of Eric for not talking. Methinks he left about an hour and a half ago, which is a nice touch if that’s the case. The announcers have been fairly convincing otherwise.

Nice rana by Kidman as he comes in. Tony again mentions the tornado rules because it makes more sense now I guess. Sweet pair of dives by the faces to take complete control. Springboard Doomsday Device half kills Psycho as there is zero flow to this match at all. Juvi Driver hits Rey as a counter to an Asai Moonsault and it gets two. Some insanely fast countering leads to face miscommunication, which is something you rarely see, to set up the guillotine legdrop from Psychosis to end it.

Rating: C. The spots were cool but like I said there was just no flow at all here. It was just a collection of spots that had no thought to them at all. WCW matches in this division were normally good about avoiding that, but then again there must have come a point where the guys just knew there was nothing they were going to gain no matter how hard they tried, so why bother anymore? It was ok, but the constant changing of the tag rules hurt it a good deal. Definitely ok though.

Goldberg is being told what Liz said about him, with Goldberg explaining the basic common sense of why he’s always at the same arenas and hotels Liz is at: they work together. Liz also mentioned a gym that Goldberg is always at. The reason he’s there: it belongs to him. Well that’s simple enough.

Nash comes out and says Goldberg got screwed at Starrcade and Nash never beat him. We’ll get to that show soon. He doesn’t believe Liz and says Hogan is behind this. And there we have the problem: Hogan has nothing to do with any of this but he’s thrown into it anyway. Nash wants Hogan tonight. Flair comes out and makes the match, despite Hogan retiring on the Tonight Show on Thanksgiving night.

Same video package from the beginning of the show about Nash vs. Goldberg airs. Tony is instantly convinced that Hogan is behind this. Why he’s convinced of it is never explained but who cares about anything like that?

Liz gives another testimony to the cops but her story doesn’t line up with what she said earlier.

Gene brings out Hogan who gets ZERO reaction. He wants to run for President, as in of the United States. Oh dear. He talks about how Goldberg is a criminal and gets even more heat on him, as Atlanta is Goldberg’s hometown. He’ll do the match with Nash tonight as his retirement match, which is now a title match.

Jericho talked to Dickinson earlier, more or less manipulating him into the DQ earlier. This was a pointless segment but that’s WCW for you.

TV Title: Scott Steiner vs. Konnan

Steiner is champion. He goes on a rant about being out of control and out of his mind, which is fairly true it would seem. Bagwell makes fun of Flair’s heart attack, because there’s nothing wrong with that right? Konnan’s graphic of course says he’s TV Champion despite Tony saying he’s the former champion. Immediately the match looks bad as Konnan shoots him in and then just stands there so Steiner can hit him. That looked awful.

And there it is. “Fans the competition’s show is in the can. Mick Foley, who used to wrestle here as Cactus Jack, is going to win their world title tonight. That’s their world champion.” Oddly enough, this tape is of the rebroadcast and the famous line of “that’s gonna put some butts in the seats” is missing here. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Monday Night Wars have just ended for all intents and purposes. According to just about every source I’ve heard, at this point the audience switched over to Raw in a large quantity.

Why WCW thought this was a good idea is one of the longest running questions in wrestling history, as no one has ever been able to get the point of it. Why would you tell the people that are watching your show what’s going on at the other show? Especially when this is a rematch from last week of all things. This was just a stupid idea all around, as they more or less said “hey, WWF has a major main event too where you’re GUARANTEED a title change.”

I’ve never gotten why WCW was so obsessed with the fact that they were live. I don’t get why it’s so different. I get that people are supposed to think things are spontaneous, but you can film the show to make it appear that things are going rapidly no? Also, something else that WCW never got was that an awful live show pales in comparison to taped awesomeness. This just made no sense at all and no one I’ve ever heard of thought it was a good idea, which is more or less backed up by the ratings.

Finally, this is dumb because WCW had already promised one of two main events: Nash vs. Hogan or Nash vs. Goldberg. Those are hardly nothing matches and would likely have drawn a large audience. If you have people thinking about how awesome they could be, then why offer them an alternative? According to the ratings breakdowns, just after Foley would win the title on Raw, a lot of people shifted back to Nitro, implying people wanted to see the main event they were offering, which we’ll get to soon.

As for the match itself, shockingly enough it’s awful. Steiner dominates while Tony says they haven’t gone to the precinct for awhile. Oh and we’re LIVE. Konnan gets the worst X Factor in history for two, and here’s Bagwell for the DQ. Beatdown follows.

Rating: F+. Just a nothing match that went nowhere and ended as a joke of course. Total waste of time, but then again Konnan wasn’t ever really much at this point anyway. Steiner was pushed WAY too hard but he was old and had been around in the early 90s so he was the perfect person to push right?

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Wrath

Yeah….this is what they wanted you to watch instead of Foley vs. Rock. That makes perfect sense right? Ok so Nash vs. Hogan is going to happen and Nash will fight Goldberg also if he gets here. Eric makes a Goldberg joke, proving he’s still alive. Wrath talks about how awesome he is. This is an open challenge but screw the whole drama thing.

Tony of course talks about how this is live and it couldn’t happen on a taped show. Uh….YES IT COULD. Why is it so hard to believe that a guy could come out and make an open challenge on a taped show? Is there a taped show rulebook somewhere that I’ve never seen? Wrath beats up Bigelow a bit but we hit the floor. Yes Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Adam Bomb is happening on national LIVE blast it TV in 1999.

Bischoff keeps making Goldberg putdowns as this is what he’s getting paid for now. We go to the floor again as Tony crows about how they have a world title match tonight. Well according to him so does WWF but I certainly won’t change the channel to see that right? Totally awful match here as it’s just a big brawl but it’s moving along like molasses as everything takes forever to do, making it incredibly boring.

They’ve been on the floor more than they’ve been in the ring, which is typical here. Who cares if it’s a bad match? It’s LIVE! They brawl onto the floor again, the referee goes down, and it gets thrown out.

Rating: F. Just pure garbage here and no one, I mean NO ONE, cared. Move on to something else please.

Liz is interrogated AGAIN, and yet again she can’t remember her earlier stories. Why is this so hard to remember? The detectives pick apart her story and she keeps checking her watch. They tell her she’ll be charged with a felony for lying, which makes her say it wasn’t Goldberg at all. IT’S A SETUP! I expect a laugh track or a theme song to kick on at this point.

After the perjury about stalking, we have women dance in the ring because that makes perfect sense right?

The announcers say Goldberg will have to get here and get dressed to fight. Hogan said earlier that he’d fight in street clothes if he had to. So I guess Goldberg isn’t skilled enough to do the same?

Brian Adams vs. Diamond Dallas Page

Page was just completely awesome at this point and even I was liking him. After a brief opening Adams hits the floor and Page dives over the ropes to get him. Naturally no one really seems to care other than the fans, but the announcers have been told not to react to it I’d guess so they treat it like a headlock. Vincent interference gives Adams control.

They keep telling us we’re LIVE as it’s just irritating now. Discus Lariat and Page takes over for a bit. This is pure filler until we get to the main event. Tony talks about Goldberg fighting traffic to get here. That street he has to cross must be treacherous. We get a bearhug just to emphasize the level of boring here. Spinning DDT and we’re back to even. And there’s the Diamond Cutter to end this.

Rating: D. Boring match that was just to get DDP on the card. No one cares as this was like the Divas matches you have before the main event to kill some time before we get to the big one. Match sucked.

Goldberg is released from jail, making him yell at cops. He wants an escort to get to the Georgia Dome, which keep in mind, is across the street. Ok at this point, there are about 12 minutes left in the show. Let’s see how long it takes him to cross the street.

WCW World Title: Kevin Nash vs. Hulk Hogan

Hogan has Scott Steiner with him. Keep in mind his last match was back in October. What a coincidence that he’s here. I always wonder what’s going through their heads when things like these are about to happen. Nash comes out with Scott Hall, so the Outsiders are back again I guess. Keep in mind that this is, yet again, NWO vs. NWO. Hogan is in street clothes.

These are NOT taped matches mind you. There’s the bell, Nash mocks Hogan’s shirt rip. There was a commercial in between Goldberg leaving the police station and the introductions, so adding on let’s say three minutes for that, he left the station about nine minutes before the bell rang. They circle each other and the crowd is white hot. “This is what WCW is all about” according to Tony. Nash shoves Hogan, Hogan pokes Nash in the chest, Nash goes down, Hogan wins the title.

The four guys flood the ring and Goldberg arrives, in a car that he was driving. It happens to be the same car he went to the police station in, and it’s not a police car. So did the cops just steal his car or did he steal the unmarked cop car? The fans TOTALLY turn on the ending and are furious but HERE’S GOLDBERG! Down goes Steiner. Down goes Hall. Add Nash to that. Hogan gets some shots in but takes an AWFUL spear.

Goldberg sets for the Jackhammer, but Lex Luger comes out and beats up Goldberg, joining the NEW NWO! Yes, this is the NWO being reformed, two and a half years after it started. Goldberg gets handcuffed to the ropes and taze the heck out of him. He gets the spraypaint treatment as the fans want Sting. He would show up….two and a half months later. Hogan sprays the belt with the red paint and Steiner does the hand sign to end the show.

Ok so obviously the show as a whole means very little so we’ll save the overall rating until the end. Let’s take a look at the various reasons this was a bad idea and more importantly why this was the beginning of the end for WCW as a whole.

1. The World Title looks worthless. Think back to every heel ever. At the end of the day, their existence was about one thing: becoming world champion. DiBiase wanted to buy the title, Hogan used it as a safety blanket, Austin said it was his life, and it was more or less Flair’s logo. Nash more or less has said this belt means nothing to me, so I’ll just hand it to Hulk Hogan instead because he’s my friend.

This has drastic long term consequences. First of all, why would we ever buy Nash as world champion again? If he can just hand the belt away, why should we not think he’ll do it again? Second, it makes Hogan look like a paper champion. This is the more important one which we’ll get to in more detail in the next point. The thing here though is that he never beat Goldberg and Nash beat him under shady conditions. Hogan has the title and doesn’t have to fight Goldberg, which leads us to this.

2. Hogan is champion again. This could rival the first one for most important. It’s the second year in a row this has happened. Hogan, without beating the mega-face (Sting in 97, Goldberg in 98) has taken back the world title while the mega-face is beaten down. Hogan had not been seen in almost three months and is handed the world title just because. There is no need to make Hogan champion other than because he wanted to be. This in no way benefits the company and it simply goes back to the old days of the NWO, leading us to point number three.

3. The NWO is back one more time. Wrestling fans do not have long attention spans. This is a criticism I have of the current THEY storyline in TNA at the moment. You can’t have long running storylines and expect the fans to stick around for the duration of it. This was the case of the NWO. The angle went WAY past its expiration date but WCW kept going with it. It should have died or at least been fatally wounded at Starrcade 97, but Hogan got the title back in three months. Goldberg destroyed Hogan in July and six months later he has the belt again and the group is back.

The fans were simply tired of the NWO, and can you blame them? If you watch WCW from this time, EVERYTHING was about the NWO. People loved it at first, but it overstayed its welcome and the people just gave up. WCW never would listen to the audience though and kept right along with it because it worked once, so it’ll work again. This wasn’t the case obviously, and only due to injuries did this incarnation end.

4. The Foley aspect. As I mentioned, WCW told the fans about the Foley title win. That is my favorite moment in wrestling history and a great moment in general, as one of the hardest working men in wrestling gets the recognition he deserves. It’s a feel good moment and a lot of people seem to like it.

The problem is that as mentioned earlier, people that switched to the title change switched back for the WCW ending. This means that the fingerpoke is the last thing people see in wrestling for that night. By comparison to a great moment like the Foley win, the WCW change looks even worse. If there is no Foley win that night, then the WCW one comes off as a bad moment, but maybe not a disaster. The added bonus of people seeing Foley and feeling good about it makes the Hogan win just seem dirtier, which is a bad thing.

5. The fans are screwed. WCW pulled a bait and switch on their fans. They advertised Goldberg vs. Nash, which would have been a big draw as a mere 8 days before it main evented the biggest show of the year. By telling the fans to expect that then switch it out to Hogan vs. Nash is almost acceptable. It may not be what was advertised, but that’s certainly a major match. I would bet that a lot of fans weren’t thrilled with it, but having a replacement like that probably helped a bit.

And then the incident happened, and the fans that were a bit on edge already probably exploded. It makes you think you can’t trust the company to give what they told you they would give you. If you can’t trust them on a free show, why should you buy a show or a ticket to a show?

In short, this was a disaster and is widely considered the final blow which killed WCW. I think there’s a lot to that theory, but WCW was in big trouble already. There was absolutely no touching Austin at this time and having a guy like Foley around as a solid #2 face while Vince and Rock were the top heels, coupled with a great midcard and there was just no way WCW was going to get back into contention.

The best they could hope for was to hold onto their fan base and find the next big star to build up and hope people bought into them. Rather than going with say Benoit, Saturn (he was a big deal back then. Ok not really but he was popular) Jericho, or any other young guy, they went with Hogan and the NWO again, which naturally brought the ratings back down. They never won another night and they were into comedy for the most part the next year. This may have indeed been the final nail in the coffin.

Overall Rating: D. Main event and angle aside, this show pretty much sucked. Nothing of note happens as everything built up to the main event and then that bombed. There is some watchable stuff, but for the most part it’s completely forgettable. I had to recheck the card to remember what was on it after writing this. I reiterate that three hours is just too long to have a TV show run every week. There is far too much filler like Bigelow vs. Wrath for example. The angle setting up the main event and the main event should be seen for historical purposes, but that is definitely it for this show.

Monday Nitro
Date: March 26, 2001
Location: Boardwalk Beach Resort, Panama City, Florida
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Scott Hudson

So in case you’re not getting the date or the significance, this is the final Nitro. Three days prior to this (or so) Vince bought WCW from Turner and the Monday Night War came to an end. In short, this is it. This is the end of WCW vs. WWF. Vince has won and everyone knows it now. As for the show, it’s being billed as Night of Champions, despite there being two title matches but whatever. This is an historic show and I remember being SHOCKED, so let’s get to it.

We open with Vince McMahon in the Raw interview area, talking about how he’s bought the company and its fate is in his hands. Tonight there will be a simulcast where he’ll explain things. This is bizarre.

Even their intro video sucked at this point.

Scott and Tony talk about how stunned they are about this.

And here’s Ric Flair. Oh this should be good. His hair being spiked is just wrong for some reason. He gives a very emotional speech, talking about how great his time in the company has been, which based on what I’ve read is nonsense, but he belongs out there on the final show and that’s all there is to it. Flair breaks kayfabs and says that Vince’s Dad voted for him to be world champion back in 1981. This is mainly about the holding the company in the palm of your hands thing. Flair makes one final request: if this is the last night, he wants Sting one more time.

WCW World Title/US Title: Scott Steiner vs. Booker T

This is title for title with Booker as US Champion. They slug it out in the middle and Booker hits a bit spinning heel kick to take over. This is outside mind you. We hear about how the US Champion is the #1 contender, which NEVER happened if you think about it, kind of making it a running joke. Midajah and her chest slaps Booker in the face.

Steiner swings a lead pipe at Booker but he hits the post instead in kind of a scary move. Scott moves onto a Bow and Arrow which doesn’t do much. A kind of botched dropkick and Booker starts his comeback. Ghetto Blaster (Axe kick) hits and we get a Spinarooni. Side Kick and it’s ALL Booker here. Book End is blocked for two. They’re FLYING through this. Book End is the counter to a powerbomb and it makes Booker the world champion again. Literally this didn’t break 6 minutes.

Rating: C-. Not terrible I guess considering they had to fly through this but there wasn’t much here. No one can beat Steiner in like 4 months and Booker does it in five minutes? They couldn’t give this a few more minutes? It was kind of a formality I guess but it just could have been done far better. Not awful though.

Vince blasts Panama City and WCW. Great to see that Vince spent millions of dollars on something that sucked.

3 Count vs. Rey Mysterio/Billy Kidman vs. Kaz Hayashi/Yun Yang

Winners get a Cruiserweight Tag Title shot later. Yang is more commonly known as Jimmy Wang Yang and a member of 3 Count is now Shannon Moore. Everybody does a bunch of flips and dives to the floor with no rhyme or reason to them. Yang sends Rey into the buckle and hits a huge corkscrew moonsault called Yang Time. This is under tornado rules apparently. BIG 450 from Evan Karagis but Kidman makes the save. For the finish, imagine Moore being in position for Orton’s DDT but turned face up. Rey hits a springboard legdrop on him there to end it. I didn’t skip anything in the description. It was really that fast.

Rating: C+. Entertaining match but at under four minutes how into it can you get? This was just to give the challengers a disadvantage against Skipper and Romeo later on. The spots were shaky but hey, it’s the last night of the company so who cares? Not bad but nothing we haven’t seen a million times before and better.

Trish brings Vince some champagne but they make out instead.

We recap the GREAT Chavo vs. Helms rivalry.

Cruiserweight Title: Chavo Guerrero vs. Shane Helms

Back in the dying days of WCW, one of the few things they NAILED was Chavo, who was absolutely awesome for about a year before the company closed. Shane has an intro with dancing girls a rap that he performs and lights. Shane was very popular as well mainly due to just doing awesome things in the ring. Nice belly to back by Chavo as the fans actually seem into this.

Tony tries to talk about how WCW has been about the youth. That’s just funny. Actually it isn’t, because having that not be the case is a big reason as to why the company died. High cross body from the top for the champion for two. T-Bone gets two. Ton of reversals into a Northern Lights Suplex for two. Very fast paced match here.

More reversals into the Sugar Smack (Superkick) and then the Vertebreaker is blocked. He can’t get out of the second one and it ends the match. That move is both awesome but also scary at the same time, which makes me understand why they wouldn’t let it be used in the WWF, as it was just too much of a liability.

Rating: B-. Again good match but at like four and a half minutes how into it can you get? Everything is in fast forward speed tonight and it’s kind of taking me out of the show. This is the polished up version of WCW since it’s not being treated like a serious company anymore but rather an All Star show, which helps it a lot I think. Nothing special here, but good enough.

Ad for Slim Jims with Randy Savage, who was out of WCW for about a year at this point if not more. Yeah his last match in WCW was in August of 99.

Remember the Titans is on VHS and DVD. That’s amusing.

Booker says he’s not done yet.

Tag Titles: Lance Storm/Mike Awesome vs. Chuck Palumbo/Sean O’Haire

The more famous guys are challenging. Team Canada won a non-title match last week to get this. See, why is logic like that so complicated? That’s a basic story and it gives perfect justification as to why we are where we are here. After a quick break, Vince is with Trish again and Cole interrupts them. He says a bunch of WCW related people are worried and Vince threatens to fire Cole. PLEASE DO IT VINCE!

Storm of course starts with technical stuff. Tony almost says World Tag Titles but has to shift to WCW Tag Titles. Slingshot splash by Awesome for two. Hot tag to O’Haire and he beats the crap out of Awesome, hitting his weird reverse Samoan Drop. I could watch Lance Storm throw superkicks all day. Palumbo hits his Jungle (super) kick and the Shawnton Bomb ends it.

Rating: C-. I always liked all four of these guys so I was a fan of this feud. The match of course was really short so it’s kind of hard to grade, but at the same time this was ok I guess. It put the champions over and didn’t give us a title change for the sake of a title change, so I can’t really complain about that at all. Decent match but again nothing great at all.

Recap of Bigelow vs. Stasiak. Stasiak has Stacy and is doing something close to what Dolph Ziggler is doing at the moment. If he loses he has to get a tattoo.

Shawn Stasiak vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

They set this up last week so they have to throw it on here. Bigelow brings the tattoo kit with him. These two feuded for a few months and we were never told why they got so much time. I guess someone thought it was a good idea for some reason? Flying….something misses from Stasiak and Bigelow goes up for the headbutt. It hits but there’s Stacy to be hot. She interferes and a neckbreaker from Shawn ends it.

Rating: N/A. At least we got to look at Stacy.

Regal shows off his shirt to Vince. He tells Vince that it might be a bad idea to buy WCW. This was pointless.

We get a highlight reel of champions to play up the Night of Champions thing, which is always fun.

Vince says it’s just about that time.

Cruiserweight Tag Titles: Rey Mysterio/Billy Kidman vs. Elix Skipper/Kid Romeo

This was the final of the tournament to give us the original champions, 8 days prior. The announcers continue to insist how much WCW loves young guys. Romeo never did anything at all but Skipper wound up in TNA. Kidman and Mysterio I think you know of. Hot tags to Rey and Skipper as it’s pretty clear that this is going to be another 3 minute or so match.

Scott points out that the champions were just thrown together. Bronco Buster to Elix (really Elix?) and it turns into a huge mess. Rey with a springboard falling headbutt for two but Skipper makes the save. More near falls follow and Kidman gets out of Skipper’s Play of the Day and hits the Kid Crusher (Killswitch) for the final title reign in the history of the belts.

Rating: B-. Another 4 minute yet still entertaining match. I remember when the titles were announced that more or less no one wanted to see them but when did that stop WCW? This wasn’t anything special at all but it was pretty solid I guess. Skipper and Romeo were just thrown together and told they were the best team. The belts lasted 8 days so it’s not like they meant anything.

Sting cuts a very energetic promo about fighting Flair one more time.

Vince is walking down a hall.

Ric Flair vs. Sting

Something just feels right about saying that. Flair is in a t-shirt here, which is fine with me as if nothing else it makes him look decent. He looks skinny as a rail here. The announcers point out that Sting never jumped but Flair did. Not exactly but hey who cares about history right? They recap Flair vs. Sting which is always fun. Hudson tries to talk about how Flair vs. Sting went against Mania 4. What Hudson isn’t mentioning is how badly WCW got slaughtered as Mania 4 outdrew Mania 3.

Tony talks about how we’ve seen this match thousands of times. I was thinking more like 15 but whatever. There’s the press slam from Sting which never gets old. And there’s the Flair Flop which brings a smile to my face. This is more or less Sting vs. Flair’s Greatest Hits as they’re just doing their basic spots. Dropkick misses and it’s time for the leg. Figure Four goes on and Sting is in trouble!

Could he submit? Will he give up? For the first time ever will Sting tap out to Flair? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, just leave now as I can’t help you. Basic comeback occurs and there’s the Scorpion for the tap out. They hug as they should do to end this.

Rating: C+. Like I said this was just the short version of their match as they had no angle or time here, but this wasn’t supposed to be a major match. It was a feel good moment which is what it was supposed to be. Fine for what it was, which is the best description that I can give it.

I’m going to cut the review here, because at this point the simulcast begins and since I’m going to do the Raw from this night next I’ll just review it in there since it’ll be literally the same stuff.

Overall Rating: C+. Well the idea of the night of champions thing was good but the breakneck pace of the show made it rather annoying as there was just too much going on at once. It’s ok I guess but it’s not much more than that. It says a lot that one of their best shows in years had no context or angles worth anything to speak of. This was an ok show, which obviously should be seen for historical purposes. Decent show for what it was, but more important or history than anything on the card itself.