NXT
Date: January 11, 2012
Location: Laredo Energy Arena, Laredo, Texas
Commentators: William Regal, Matt Striker

It’s episode 99, and somehow that’s not just of this season. This is only episode 45 of this one. You would think they would be good and redeemed by this point but I guess not. Titus should be back this week and next week it’s off to the Meadows for the wedding between Maxine and Curtis. Let’s get to it.

There’s a new intro, which looks like any other WWE TV show intro. Well at least they’re admitting it now.

Striker says next week is the 100th episode from Vegas. He brings back another former member of NXT: Alicia Fox. Oh because she used to be a Pro. Apparently it’s impressive that she’s on Raw and Smackdown now, which is what got her a position as a Pro in the first place. The hooded fur thing looks stupid but that’s “fashion” I guess. Maxine was her rookie and Alicia says she tried to sell her on Ebay but it didn’t work.

Cue Maxine who says this is her ring and show now. Alicia is a waste of space and they get into an argument. Striker tries to calm them down and Maxine says shove it Striker. Alicia tries to be nice and asks how…or I mean who, are you doing? Brawl starts and we get a referee for a match.

Alicia Fox vs. Maxine

Regal asks an interesting question: how did Striker get all this power? Alicia tries to do the splits but Maxine drops a knee onto her to take over. There’s no fascinating fact about Maxine this week because all she would talk about was the wedding. As for the match, it’s your usual Divas match. Maxine beats on her for awhile but as she tries an O’Connor Roll, Alicia rolls through it for the pin at 2:10. Nothing else to say here.

Trent Barreta vs. Tyler Reks

Reks pounds him away to start. They’re playing up Barreta as a prankster or something like that. Trent takes it to the floor and hits a big dive. Reks has a bad ankle now. And never mind as he kicks Trent’s head off and was playing possum. A Downward Spiral into the middle buckle gets two and it’s off to the chinlock. They’re using the camera angle that was used in Season One, which is practically eye level with the top rope.

Trent gets two feet up in the corner as the announcers talk about star quality, which Reks says, so says Regal. Trent misses something off the top and Reks puts him in a torture rack. When you’re channeling Lex Luger, there might be something wrong with you. Either way, Barreta rolls through it and gets a backslide, yes a backslide I say, for the pin at 4:20.

Rating: C. I’m a sucker for Trent Barreta as he’s just good at what he does. If you give him a gimmick and some kind of a different look which actually sets him apart, you’ve got something interesting. Still though, fun little match and it worked fine. Reks is in desperate need of a change as well but for NXT he’s ok.

Reks yells at the announcers as Hawkins pounds Trent down. Yoshi comes in for the save.

Gabriel and Bateman are in the back and Gabriel mentions the e-mail that broke up Maxine and Bateman. Derrick has no idea what’s going on and says he never sent it, even pulling out his phone. Now they’re stealing ideas from Raw? Gabriel suggests that Bateman’s e-mail was hacked. He freaks, shouts CURTIS and walks off.

Usos vs. Tyson Kidd/JTG

Great. It’s JTG. No Tamina here. Kidd vs. let’s say Jey to start. The twins double team him and a double back elbow gets two. Off to JTG as the Samoan hits a European Uppercut to the American. The crowd is dead for this. When a Siva Tao can’t fire them up, the show is pretty bad. Kidd is in and there’s some cheating with Jey getting beaten down. Off to the chinlock which Jey breaks pretty quickly. Double tag off to JTG and Jimmy and the corner hip smash gets two. Kidd hits a suicide dive to take Jey out but Jimmy hits a superkick for the pin at 4:16.

Rating: C-. Nothing of note here but anytime someone as annoying as JTG gets kicked in the face it’s a good match. Other than that there was nothing to see here. The Usos have nothing to do because they’re way better than any team on this show but they can’t get a push at all on a main show.

Raw ReBound.

Aksana and Maxine are in the back and Maxine freaks out. Aksana offers any help she can give with the wedding. Bateman comes up and they get in a mini argument. She says she and Curtis are going to the top.

Rumble 94 is the moment this week.

Alex Riley vs. Johnny Curtis

I love Riley’s music. Curtis however couldn’t be more generic if his life depended on it. Striker makes marriage jokes and the fans seem to be into Riley. Riley sends him to the floor where he gets a kiss from Maxine. And scratch that as Curtis takes him down and hooks a chinlock. Regal won’t be bringing a gift to the wedding. Riley gets in a boot but Maxine distracts him, allowing something like a falcon’s arrow brainbuster ends Riley at 2:04.

Bateman comes out and says next week, this ends. OH PLEASE LET HIM BE TELLING THE TRUTH!!!

Here’s Darren Young and we get a recap of their feud. After he says he’s better than Titus he calls the big bald one out. Titus goes off on Young and partially on the idea of the show, saying Striker has given up on the challenges and he doesn’t care about the points. There’s no Watson, no JTG and no Tamina here, so let’s deal with this right now, one on one. Young says he’s beaten him more times than he can count and he’s won all the matches.

Actually from what I can find they’ve had 7 one-on-one matches and Titus leads 5-2. Young yells at Titus and Titus says watch it. Darren insults Titus’ kids a few times and it’s on. Striker breaks it apart and says next week, those two in a No DQ match. That would be better if it hadn’t already happened back in May with Titus winning but whatever. The brawl end the show.

Overall Rating: D. Just awful. The matches were ok, but these stories with the rookies have got to stop. Darren Young is the least interesting person I have seen on a WWE roster this side of Johnny Curtis. Who does the other main story involve? JOHNNY CURTIS OF COURSE. These same stories have been going on for four months now and they’re not interesting, at all. Striker says they both end next week and why should I believe him? Anyway, bad show this week as I’m totally burned out on these stories.

Results
Alicia Fox b. Maxine – Rollup
Trent Barreta b. Tyler Reks – Backslide
Usuo b. JTG/Tyson Kidd – Superkick to JTG
Johnny Curtis b. Alex Riley – Sitout brainbuster

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Part 1: http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2012/01/10/what-killed-wcw-wcw-clue-part-1/

Now we get to the first of the big guns and something that I’ve considered a possible suspect in the past: the departure of the Radicalz. You have to remember that WCW had started their big run in 1996 on the idea of taking talent from the WWF. Now this had already happened in the form of Big Show a year prior and Chris Jericho about 4 months before, but this was a large group of people going at the same time. Now let’s take a look at what this meant both individually and then collectively.

We’ll start with the biggest of the four in Chris Benoit. Whether it was for the sake of trying to get him to stay or not, he had been given the WCW World Title just before he left. In other words, whomever was the next champion had no claim to the title. Why should I buy him as the best when the guy that was champion never lost it at all? The same thing happened to Lex Luger back in 1991, which I assure you we’ll get to later on.

Second is Eddie Guerrero. Now he was never nearly as big as Benoit was back in WCW but he was certainly worth something. He gave solid Cruiserweight Title matches and had arguably the best match in WCW’s history with Rey Mysterio at Halloween Havoc 1997. Eddie was the best of all of the Hispanic wrestlers there and it gave them a door into Latin America, along with guys like Juvy and Mysterio.

Saturn was a rising star in WCW, having won some tag titles in 99 and having a few runs as TV Champion as well. His popularity was growing, so WCW made him wear a dress and hook back up with Raven. Saturn kept getting cheered so he and Benoit were shoved down in favor of guys like the Jersey Triad and the reformed Harlem Heat. Oh and the Steiners. We don’t want to forget them.

Malenko is probably the weakest of the whole team, but he was certainly good for some solid mat work as well as being one of the members of the Horsemen (there’s a long thing that could be written on how badly that group was screwed up past about 1995 but that’s another story). Anyway, he wasn’t great but he was another loss.

So we combine all these guys into one unit that bailed on WCW in January of 2000 and showed up on Raw before February hit. Now what does this mean? First and foremost, those are four guys worth of at least watchable matches that you have to replace. At the end of the day, it’s a wrestling program. You have guys like Benoit and Malenko and Guerrero and Saturn out there having long matches on these shows and taking up a lot of the PPV time. Let’s say there are three matches between the four of them at 12 minutes apiece. Counting promos and entrances, you’re losing almost an hour or 1/3 of a PPV. That’s a lot of time to fill.

When guys like them leave, you have to fill their spots. For fun, let’s take a look at the three PPVs before they left and the three after and compare the matches in the spots on the cards with the Radicalz and the ones without them. The three beforehand were Mayhem 1999, Starrcade 1999 and Souled Out 1999. The three after they left were SuperBrawl 2000, Uncensored 2000 and Spring Stampede 2000.

At Mayhem, the matches involving the Radicalz were an eleven minute elimination tag third on the card and the main event for the world title which ran 18 minutes. Starrcade: fourth on the card was an 8 man tag lasting 5 minutes and the next to last was a ladder match for the US Title running 10 minutes. Souled Out was a two and a half minute opener, a ten minute hardcore match on sixth and a fifteen minute main event for the world title. On average, their matches ran about 24 minutes per show.

By comparison to the three shows after they were gone in the same spots on the cards: at SuperBrawl the third match had 3 Count and Norman Smiley lasting four minutes and the main event had Sid Vicious, Scott Hall and Jeff Jarrett running about 8 minutes. Uncensored saw Brian Knobbs vs. 3 Count for the Hardcore Title taking up 7 minutes and the next to last match was Sid vs. Jarrett running seven and a half. Spring Stampede was another handicap with Flair/Luger vs. the Mamalukes/Harris Brothers running 6 minutes, Sting vs. Booker for six and a half and Jarrett vs. Page for 15 minutes. The averages for these matches: 18 minutes per show.

That may not mean much, but it means the matches were shorter on average and instead of guys like Benoit and Saturn, you’re getting 3 Count and Brian Knobbs. Instead of Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko, you’re getting Sid and Jeff Jarrett. Some of those may sound interesting, but which matches do you think are going to be train wrecks and which do you think are going to be good technical matches with good intensity?

In other words, the Radicalz leaving left a big hole in the card and instead of replacing them with younger wrestlers, the answer was more old guys, which was a major criticism of WCW at the time. The problem with the Radicalz leaving was that the company lost a lot of their young talent that was able to put on long matches and eat up PPV time. After they left, you get things like handicap matches and boy bands. Combining that with the further damage to the world title and it’s pretty easy to add the Radicalz leaving to the list of suspects as to what killed WCW.

In reverse chronological order:
1. David Arquette Wins World Title – May 7, 2000
2. The Radicalz Jump Ship – January 17, 2000

Just before then in the fall of 1999, Smackdown debuted as a regular show for the WWF. Due to this, Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, the writers for WWF, left and went over to WCW. Since WCW was the only other game in town, both guys headed down south (because WCW is a southern company don’t you know) and decided that it wasn’t Foley and Taker and Rock and Austin and the young guys that had made WWF the dominant force in the last 18 months. It was all about the WRITERS, not the wrestlers.

Russo’s first major show as head writer was at Halloween Havoc 1999 and things almost immediately went downhill. To begin with, on the first show we had a “shoot” where Hogan laid down for Sting to pin him. No reasoning was ever given for this, but hey, it’s a shoot so it’s good right? Also we had Goldberg vs. Sting in the last match of the night because the match that you could have seen as the main event of Starrcade a mile away should be thrown onto the end of the PPV unannounced and it should last 3 minutes right?

You had ludicrous gimmicks (That 70s Guy, Screaming Norman, Oklahoma etc), more swearing, more semi-clothed women, a lot more people talking about how things were behind the scenes, and a lot more title changes. Here are a few more numbers for you stats people. We’ll take a look at how many times the WCW World Title changed hands in the years from 97-99 and then the year 2000.

In 1997, the world title changed hands 3 times, in 98 it changed hands 6 times, in 99 13 times, and then in Russo’s first year: 24 times, or once about every 2 weeks. The world title changed hands or was vacated seven times in January alone. In 2000, the title was vacated or stripped six times. Like we talked about before, why should I buy whomever the next champion is if they didn’t win the title? Also during this stretch, Arquette and Vince Russo himself were world champions. While TV ratings went up, the limited integrity that WCW had left as well as the general idea of what wrestling still was were thrown away for the sake of shock value and soap opera style television.

You’ll often hear that the difference between WWF and WCW under Russo was that there was a filter in the form of Vince McMahon. The differences is that at the end of the day, the big matches of the WWF Pay Per Views were usually awesome. You were getting Austin vs. Foley and HHH vs. Rock and Rock vs. Austin and Undertaker vs. Foley and Foley vs. Rock and there was some great wrestling going on. Yes it was all over the top and there were a lot of wild brawls, but what mattered was who got the 1-2-3.

In short, the WWF World Title was treated as something special. Instead of these matches happening on Raw, they happened on PPV. Remember those 24 world title changes in a year? Of those 24, 7 took place on PPV. The world title changed hands or was vacated on Nitro or Thunder SEVENTEEN TIMES IN A YEAR. By comparison, over in the WWF in the year 2000, the title changed hands 5 times, once on TV. Since Monday Night Raw debuted, the WWE Championship has changed hands 19 times IN TOTAL on something other than PPV, one of which was at a house show and one of which was it being vacated due to injury and being announced on WWE.com.

In short, Russo’s regime made the WCW World Title look a lot more worthless than it ever had before. With stuff ranging from the title being vacated to everything happening for free on TV instead of PPV, to constantly vacating the title, to David Arquette as champion, to Vince Russo as champion, why in the world would I want to see a WCW World Title match? The problem was that no one did want to.

The world title was probably the biggest thing he killed, but you also have to factor in things like the idiotic angles (pinata on a poll, That 70s Guy/The Fat Chick Thriller, Duggan turns Canadian, the Graveyard match (exactly what it sounds like), to Scott Steiner’s main event push, to Jeff Jarrett’s main event push and more stuff I’ve probably blocked out of my memory. He took a wrestling company and turned it into whatever WCW was from late 99 to the year 2000, so we’ll have to add him to the list. The minute he was hired, things were put on a very slippery slope and they never recovered.

In reverse chronological order:
1. David Arquette Wins World Title – May 7, 2000
2. The Radicalz Jump Ship – January 17, 2000
3. Vince Russo Hired – October 5, 1999

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Royal Rumble 1994
Date: January 22, 1994
Location: Providence Civic Center, Providence, Rhode Island
Attendance: 14,500
Commentators: Vince McMahon, Ted DiBiase

A year later, and while the roster hasn’t changed a ton, it’s matured a lot. Yoko has dominated the title scene since winning the title from Hogan in June after the mess that was Mania 9. He’s taking on Taker tonight in their first of the two casket matches that they had. Yes, it’s that match. We also have Razor in another title match and not in the Rumble as he’s now a face and fighting IRS for the IC Title.

The Rumble is more or less Yokozuna and his cronies against Luger with Hart on the side. Yoko had been feuding with Luger but Luger can’t have another title shot. Since the Rumble winner gets a title shot, Luger and Cornette who also worked for Yoko made a deal: Luger can fight in the Rumble but Cornette gets to bring in some guys that will represent Yoko.

That would have been nice to have been told to us on the PPV, but why waste time with that when we can remind you that WE ARE LIVE! Also, we have the next chapter in the brother war, which will be nothing but awesome so let’s get to it.

The crowd is hot if nothing else. Vince on commentary just works better for some reason, despite me loving Monsoon and Heenan. DiBiase I think was a surprise on the mic here as he just kind of pops up after Vince does the main intro. You have to give him this: he’s absolutely insane about his product. I defy you to find someone more dedicated to his company. There’s a reason why he’s the most successful promoter of all time.

DiBiase gets insane heat and it’s a shame he broke his neck and was pushed down the card so far over the years. He says he was in every Rumble to date, which just isn’t true, so at least he’s got the theory behind being a commentator down already: lie about stuff and hope no one remembers.

Note: this is important for one major reason: Brooklyn Brawler actually WON A MATCH in the dark match, beating Jim Powers. He is officially the joke of the company.

Tatanka vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

This was supposed to be Ludvig Borga but Borga hurt his ankle and never came back. Tatanka starts out fast and this could be a solid match, on this LIVE SHOW! He gets a nice jumping DDT on Bigelow as I can’t believe it but Tatanka is actually impressing me. Luna is with Bigelow here in one of the strangest concepts in wrestling history that worked beautifully. For the first time ever, guys in the earlier matches are going to be in the Rumble as well which is something long overdue at this point.

Both announcers have a small orgasm over a running splash. God bless overhyping. Why does Vince always suggest stuff? I don’t get that at all. This isn’t bad at all, but the bear hug isn’t helping it. Vince says that only in the WWF will you ever see a man of Bigelow’s size use a moonsault. That is of course until he went to both WCW and ECW and did it there too. It misses though, and Tatanka hits a basic cross body off the top for the win. Wow that came from out of less than nowhere.

Rating: B. This was actually good for what it was: an 8 minute opener. Tatanka won clean and the fans were into him so it got a good reaction. That’s what an opener is supposed to do: get the crowd built up a little bit. This wasn’t anything great but I’ve certainly seen worse matches. I liked this one a lot though, so there we are.

We hit the recap button on Bret and Owen’s issues and their teaming up. This stems from the Survivor Series match where Owen was the only member of his team eliminated, which for some reason ticked him the heck off. I guess it was because Bret was in a way the cause of him getting eliminated, but at the same time you could argue that it was only Owen’s fault.

Bret said that he would love to help Owen forge a path and legacy in the company, and his way of doing this was helping Owen get his first championship: the tag team titles. How that helps Owen get out of Bret’s shadow was never explained but whatever.

We see clips of the Quebecers losing the belts and then getting them back a week later. That was really pointless as it kind of makes them look weak but we can overlook that. We go to Bret and Owen with Todd as Owen is behind Bret in some great symbolism.

Tag Titles: Bret/Owen Hart vs. Quebecers

Quebecers are managed by one Johnny Polo, who in less than a year would be in ECW as a character called Raven. So I’ve watched about 15 minutes of this so far and I have no complaints. It really is a great tag match. I’m not going to go into the discussion of this match as it’s really good and there’s nothing I can poke fun at other than DiBiase and Vince trying to sound cool which fails epically. Anyway, after about 13 minutes, we get to the point.

The point of the first 13 minutes: Bret and Owen are awesome. Eventually, Bret has the ropes pulled apart and hits the floor, injuring his knee. Following an overblown sequence in which his knee is hit by a chair, the post, the guard rail and a golf club, his knee is a bit hurt. We hit the ring again and Bret is just getting destroyed. His knee is gone and he can barely stand up. He does however dodge the Quebecers finisher and looks for Owen.

However, there’s no tag. Why isn’t there a tag? There isn’t one because Bret goes for the Sharpshooter but his knee gives out and the referee calls for the bell due to injury. Owen is TICKED and I can’t blame him. As Bret limps to his feet, Owen kicks him in the bad knee, sending him to the mat in agony and turning Owen heel, setting up the EPIC feud for the rest of the year.

On his way to the back Owen says that Bret was selfish and all he had to do was tag Owen and they would be champions. Bret is still holding Owen down and Owen has had enough of it. Despite Bret being in agony, Vince sends Ray Rougeau to the ring to find out about him. Well isn’t that nice. As Bret is being stretchered out we go to the back with Todd and Owen.

Owen, with Bret watching him on the stretcher, goes into a great angry rant about Bret’s ego and never having a title because of Bret. This is a great promo by Owen here as he just lets out a ton of anger and yells at Bret, although we do get the famous botched line as he says it felt so good when he kicked Bret’s leg out of his leg, instead of out from under him. Anyway, this was awesome. DiBiase applauds him.

Rating: A+. It’s a great match and a better angle that set up one of the best matches and feuds of all time. What kind of a grade do you expect me to give it? Go find this segment as it’s just excellent all around.

IC Title: Razor Ramon vs. IRS

Fink is very excited to announce this match. IRS is really solid on the mic to say the least. JR and Gorilla do commentary here as the other guys do Radio WWF I guess. Razor is insanely over. My goodness the quality of commentary just shot up. The battle royal that Razor kind of won the IC Title in has jumped from 20 people to 30 people in just a few months. Razor is rocking the baby blue tonight.

IRS apparently stole the necklaces and jewelry from Razor and has it in his briefcase, which Gorilla calls a briefer for no apparent reason. The crowd is on fire for this. That’s making up for it being just above average as a match. IRS takes over here and we’re in a formula based match here and there’s not a thing wrong with that. We hear talk of issues with Michaels and Razor. Oh yes. Also, Razor cost IRS a loss to a man named PJ Walker. He’s more commonly known to you as Justin Credible.

We’ve got a ref bump and Razor prevents the briefcase shot and knocks IRS out with it. Razor sets for the edge but here’s Shawn with his IC belt to nail Razor with. Why can’t we watch the ladder match now? IRS…gets the three count? Wait what? Ah there’s the other referee to explain things here. They did the same thing with a Borga match on a tape I think. We’ll ignore the referee’s decision being final too. The Edge ends this about 8 seconds later.

Rating: C+. This was about Shawn and Razor, but that’s fine. IRS is a fine choice for a midcard heel to keep Razor busy until he gets the major feud going. The match itself was probably about the level of something you would see on Raw or a house show, which doesn’t mean that it’s bad. This was adequate, that’s the best thing I’ve got for it.

Paul Bearer says nothing out of the ordinary.

WWF Title: Undertaker vs. Yokozuna

This is a casket match. For your backstory here, it’s pretty simple: Taker is the only top face that hasn’t fought Yoko yet, so this is his shot. Oh and of course Yoko is scared. Yoko comes out first with Cornette, who looks like his twerpy best from the 80s and Fuji. In something that I wish I was making up, Vince cuts off DiBiase to say we are LIVE! I know I make fun of that a lot, but come on now Vinny.

Anyway, this is considered an epic battle, but Taker is just beating the heck out of him. They’re trying to make Taker look like a god here and they’re doing a pretty epic job. However, despite being slammed into the steps and being fine, salt to the eyes apparently is his kryptonite as all of a sudden the same move has him messed up. Back in the ring, Yoko’s offense that has killed the likes of mere Hogans has no effect here.

Taker beats down Yoko with relative ease and after maybe 6 minutes has him in the casket ready to close the lid when we get to the real part of the match: the run-ins. Crush is first, fighting Taker back but naturally getting beaten down. Kabuki of WCCW fame and Tenryu run in next but are also stopped by Taker. Bigelow comes out as Crush and the others are back up. It’s 4-1 now and Fuji has stolen the urn.

Yoko is back up now too, but Paul Bearer actually takes out Cornette and Fuji to get it back! Here he comes again! Taker is fighting them off again, but a shot from the salt bucket apparently does nothing at all. Adam Bomb is here now. Here’s Jeff Jarrett to make it 7-1. The Headshrinkers make that number 9 but Bearer holds up the urn and TAKER COMES BACK AGAIN!

Ok, now wait a minute. I can get him coming back 4-1, considering Tenryu and Kabuki were just henchmen and he’s shown that he can beat the tar out of Yoko on his own. Crush is tough but Taker is better, so that’s actually plausible. But come on: NINE guys?

Oh if that’s not enough, Diesel is here too and finally they get him in the casket. Just remember the match is still going on here. Something occurs to me. These guys are coming down presumably because they hate Taker or they’ve been bought off I’m assuming.

A question rises from this: WHERE ARE THE OTHER FACES??? I mean DANG. Savage hates Crush, Luger hates half the guys in there, Tatanka had a match with Bigelow earlier tonight, it’s the mid 90s so I’m sure Razor has beaten half these guys for the IC Title already. The Steiners can’t stand the Headshrinkers, and yet not a single one of them come down. I don’t think that was ever addressed but it makes no sense.

If nothing else, Taker could have been turned heel when he got back over that, but I guess it wouldn’t fit witht he character. Blast it has a big logic hole in it though. Anyway, Taker AGAIN fights back, this time from in the casket but Yoko steals the urn and hits him with it, which apparently is more powerful than 9 guys beating on him but whatever. The top comes off the urn, and green smoke comes pouring out of it.

Taker stops getting up, and after a ton of finishers and big moves, FINALLY they close the casket. Bigelow jumping on top of it as soon as it’s shut made me chuckle for some reason. However, we’re not done yet. The heels, all 12 of them, start wheeling the casket back, and the gong is heard. Smoke similar to the kind from the urn starts coming out of the casket as the lights go out.

On the screen, we see a shot of Taker lying on his back (despite being thrown in on his stomach/side) and his eyes pop open. He gives a ridiculously over the top speech, which amazingly can be heard throughout the arena, more or less saying that he’ll be back. Oh also, we’re led to believe this is inside the casket, despite seeing the bottom of the lid of the casket is plain wood. We hear electrical sounds and the screen looks like it’s being electrocuted, until the image of Taker actually explodes.

I don’t mean that in a figurative sense. I mean it looks like the Death Star blowing up, but all that’s left is a negative picture of Taker, as in his body and clothes are all white and his skin is black if you know what kind of picture I’m talking about. Oh we’re not done yet. That image is then changed so that it looks like he’s rising up out of the screen, and then to top it off, a man (allegedly Marty Jannetty) is on top of the screen and raised up on visible strings into the rafters.

There’s just one problem: On PPV, YOU CAN’T SEE ANY OF THIS! I’ve seen this show about 10 times and until I read about it, I had zero idea what was going on that Vince and DiBiase were freaking out about. This time I knew what to look for and I could see it, but dang I had no idea that’s what was going on for years.

Vince and Ted scream about how supernatural that was. After the heels run off, Bearer has the now smokeless urn and is pointing up while pushing the casket away. That was just…uh yeah.

Rating: F. This is an F for one reason: they have just completely screwed up Undertaker’s character. This match, and more importantly the smoke from the urn being the source of Taker’s power reminded me of the Midi-Chlorians from Phantom Menace. You don’t explain the Force. You just know what it is and what it’s capable of, but you never question it.

That’s why Taker worked so well. We just knew he had powers and abilities, but by trying to explain them or show what they were was just a waste of time. This was insane and just didn’t work at all. Taker would be out for about 7 months until LESLIE FREAKING NIELSEN was brought in to “solve” the case in a horrible comedy bit at Summerslam. Yeah, Vince really didn’t have a clue how Taker’s character worked. This was horrible. Oh and the “match” sucked too.

Savage says he’ll win the Rumble and get Crush.

Jarrett says he’ll win too.

Tatanka says there’s no friends and he’ll win.

Diesel says he’s going to Mania. Well I’d hope so. I’d hate for Vince to keep his own employees from going.

Doink is excited.

Shawn says he’ll be the new champion at Mania.

Luger says this is his big chance.

Vince and DiBiase says anything can happen and keep talking about Taker.

Royal Rumble

After Howard goes over the rules, we’re ready to go. Oh and it’s 90 seconds this year instead of 2 minutes. Number one is Scott Steiner and he gets Samu of the Headshrinkers. What a coincidence AGAIN! They punch the tar out of each other and again, the idiocy of power vs. power is shown. Also considering this is Samu this isn’t going to go well at all. The clock is sponsored now. I give up.

Rick is #3, so shockingly a team has gotten almost consecutive numbers. How do people not catch this time after time? As the Casio clock, so at least it’s a watch company, gets us to zero, Kwang is 4th. He’s more commonly known as Savio Vega in case you’ve never heard of him. As he comes out, Samu misses a cross body and gets his head caught between the top and middle ropes to be eliminated soon after.

Kwang hits the Muta mist to Rick to get it to one on one. DiBiase points out how easy it would be to just have the Steiners beat on everyone as they came at them which is true, but what does he know? Vince says Rick is smarting from the mist still. I think he said that so that it can be said that Rick is smart for the only time in his career. Scott is rocking the Triforce on his singlet so if nothing else he looks cool.

Owen Hart is fifth to some HUGE boos. He takes out the visually impaired Rick without much trouble and the double team on Scott begins until Bart Gunn is in at 6th. This is going too fast. Apparently something has happened in the back. Well it’s good to know that everyone isn’t just sitting around doing nothing. Diesel comes in at 7 to apparently clear out some of these guys.

At this time he’s just a body guard with zero character to him at all. In about 40 seconds he drops all four guys and we have Backlund in at 8 and it’s one on one. Well at least we have something close to a story going here with the dominant giant. He hits the ring and starts crawling on his stomach. It looks dumb at first but DiBiase does his job and points out that Bob is going after Diesel’s legs.

People on Raw and Smackdown: PAY ATTENTION! That is what an analyst is supposed to do. He explained something that might have been a bit confusing otherwise and he’s got the resume and experience to be believable. See what I mean? It looked a bit odd, so the analyst said what’s going on. That wasn’t complicated at all, but some clarification is always a good thing. They can do more than make stupid jokes you know.

Bob actually gets Diesel close to out but just can’t do it which is fine. A few seconds later Diesel is on his own again, which for some reason surprises DiBiase. And Ted, you haven’t been in every Rumble. You’ve been at them all, just not in them all. Get your facts straight.

Billy Gunn is next, and apparently you can find out the order of the wrestlers by calling the WWF Hotline. WOW. Ok, where to begin with why that’s stupid. #1, it ruins the mystique of knowing who is in the match. 2, that’s the first time we’ve heard about that all night long so nice job of advertising. 3, who in the world thought that was a good idea? Never mind, it’s a Vince McMahon show and there’s money to be made. All is explained.

Anyway, mullet man is victim #6 of Big D, lasting maybe 15 seconds. What’s up with the way he punches? It’s like he hits people with the wrist. We see a clip from earlier to Tenryu and Kabuki jumping Luger in the back. Yeah you can tell it’s been a dominant performance if we have time for a segment during the match. The power of Shane Stevens stops them though.

Virgil is #10 as an alternate for Kamala and despite DiBiase laughing  hysterically over it, Diesel drops him in about a minute. Wow we’re already a third done with this. We have a story here though so I’m very proud. This is a new approach to the match that really is working. Also we don’t have to worry about the ring filling up with jobbers. Ah here we go: Randy Savage is number 11 and he hammers the big man.

See this is a smart way of doing the Rumble: they had all those guys like the Gunns and Virgil and Kwang that weren’t going to mean anything and got them in and out so the bigger names can be around later on. That’s very smart and it gives you a bonus of making Diesel look amazing. I’ve always been a bit surprised that DiBiase and Savage’s feud from 88 was really never mentioned on WWF TV after it ended.

There was never any mention of them having any issues or of DiBiase main eventing a Wrestlemania or anything like that. It’s like it was forgotten, and it’s not like DiBiase is on bad terms with the company or something like that as far as I know. He’s made a ton of appearances over the years yet you never hear about it. Anyway, Jarrett is 12th as I have visions of WCW dancing in my head.

I kind of liked the Jarrett story of using wrestling as a springboard to country music. That’s very original if nothing else. Savage takes him out with relative ease so we’re back to him and Diesel again. It’s Crush to a huge reaction from the audience. He and Savage were in the middle of a mega feud at this point which was just purely awesome. For the life of me I don’t get why Crush never got a huge push.

Him against Hart would have been very interesting at least to me. Doink comes in because I guess there wasn’t enough stupid comedy to meet the quota. Savage is gone and we’re at two monsters against a clown. He actually is smart though as he just watches the big men fight. He actually sprays water from a flower and steps on their toes. Thankfully they wake up and beat the tar out of him as Bigelow comes in at fifteen.

This is going really fast but there’s a bit of a flow to it here and it’s not as bad as I expected it to be. Bigelow puts Doink out with the same thing he did to I think Spike Dudley in ECW, which had just started to be booked by Heyman two months prior to this show.

Since he’s an idiot, Crush hits Diesel when they have Bigelow an inch away from being out. Mabel is 16th as the smallest person out there is Crush as 6’9 and about 310lbs. Diesel goes right for him as I’m digging this planning of the Rumble. There’s been distinct segments here and that’s a major plus. And here’s Bob Holly to screw that up. He’s subbing for 1-2-3 Kid. WOW that’s not a good way either way.

WE ARE LIVE! WE GET IT ALREADY VINCE! What’s the freaking point in showing wide shots of the crowd and saying how live we are? I didn’t buy this PPV to be shown the audience. I bought it for the matches, so quit showing big wide shots of the stupid crowd and emphasizing that you’re live. It means jack and no one cares but you. WOW how many things could that be said about that he’s come up with?

Shawn is in at 18. All of the big guys get on Diesel and Shawn gives the final shove to put him out. That gets no reaction at all. He gets some applause on his way out though, and you can hear the wheels turning in Vince’s mind. Mo, the most worthless wrestler of all time is in next. Greg Valentine (seriously???) is in at 20 to a decent pop (seriously???). 21 is Tatanka to a short but loud pop.

To recap, we’ve got Crush, Bigelow, Mabel, Holly, Shawn, Mo, Valentine and Tatanka in there at the moment. Kabuki is in next as someone else that no one knows. A bunch of people jump Mabel and he’s out, which surprises Vince for no apparent reason. Luger sprints out with apparently no damage at all to him from the earlier attack and naturally goes straight after Kabuki, and there he goes.

In a STUNING, yes STUNNING I say, turn of events, Tenryu is next at 24. The buzzer rings for 25 but no one comes out, which was apparently Bret Hart. To recap, we have Crush, Bigelow, Holly, Michaels, Mo, Valentine, Tatanka, Luger and Tenryu. Luger and Michaels could have been an interesting feud. Martel, more commonly known as he who will not go away, is 26th and it amazes me that we’re this close to being done.

At 27, in the words of Vince, IT’S BRET HART!!! He’s limping like heck so of course everyone goes for his knee. He’s barely in there when Fatu is out at 28. We’ve got WAY too many people in there at the moment with something like 11 or so. A ton of people get together to eliminate Crush as Marty Jannetty comes in and goes right for Shawn. Now, since we have 10 guys in the ring, what’ the best thing to do? Why, go to the back to hear from Crush!!!

Yep, they actually cut from the ring to Ray Rougeau in the back with Crush for an interview. Savage jumps him and they brawl. This would have been stupid if it went on for 20 seconds, but it lasts over a minute! Also you can see Adam Bomb clearly standing there getting ready to come out so it also gives away #30. We get back to the ring and apparently nothing has happened, but geez how freaking stupid was that? They hate each other, we get it already.

Ok, so with Bomb, who Vince says will win the Rumble, gives us a final group of Bomb, Bigelow, Holly, Shawn, Mo, Valentine, Tatanka, Luger, Tenryu, Martel, Fatu and Jannetty. Oh and they figure out that the guy that didn’t show was Bastian Booger.

Bret and Shawn eliminate Holly. They work very well together. I hope those two do more in the future. With such great teamwork they could really do some great things. Ok bad jokes are mostly over as we have 11 people left. Dang that’s just too many at the end. Bret Hart beats on Mo which has to be the highlight of Mo’s career. Bret is limping everywhere, so he wins salesman of the year already. Valentine is out.

They’re just kind of mulling around at this point. Martel is out by Tatanka. Bomb is out as we’ve rapidly picked up the pace. Mo is out and gets no recognition by name. I love that. Bam Bam just throws Tatanka out like a jobber. Are these guys all double parked or something? Bigelow does a Flair Flip and goes out by Luger. Jannetty goes out and we’re down to five with Luger, Hart, Tenryu, Michaels and Fatu. Hart and Luger get rid of Tenryu to take us down to four.

Bret and Shawn go at it, as I’m completely unstunned. Shawn and Fatu go out on stereo backdrops and we’ve got Luger vs. Bret. They go right at it and dump each other out at the same time. Both men are announced as the winner individually and since Hart gets a bigger pop I guess he wins.

They’re named co-winners, even though later on we would see video where Luger clearly hit the ground first. Tunney comes out and makes the official co-winner decision. This led to a coin toss where the winner would get the first title shot at Mania and the other guy had to fight someone “of an equal level”, which led to Bret vs. Owen. Had Bret won the toss, Luger would have fought Crush.

No matter what, the person that didn’t get the shot would get the title shot later in the night against whoever had the belt after the first title match. I like that system a lot better than the triple threat which wasn’t around in the WWF yet. Granted that could be because we’ve seen so many triple threats that they’ve lost their luster. Anyway, that ends our show.

Rating: B. This was a good Rumble. I was quite surprised that the intervals worked as well as they did here, since the shorter ones usually don’t work that well. This had a lot of segments in it and you could tell that it was well planned. 92’s was better simply because of star power, but this is easily the 2nd best so far.

I really liked this match and it did a lot of good things, including advancing stories and making you interested in seeing how they would fix the issues brought up in the match. That to me makes it a success. It’s not great, but it’s very good.

Overall Rating: B. This was a mostly solid show. If you factor out the Taker/Yoko debacle this is an instant A. Razor vs. IRS is probably the weakest match but it works very well and certainly isn’t bad at all. The Rumble itself is a good one and the tag titles is must see stuff.

You factor in all those things and this was a very good show. There’s more here than just the Rumble, but that’s the centerpiece. Overall definitely a good show and well worth checking out, as long as you’re not a diehard Taker fan because you might want to shoot your TV.

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Monday Nitro #60
Date: November 4, 1996
Location: Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Attendance: 7,568
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Bobby Heenan, Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko

We’re into November now and World War 3 is in three weeks. Well 20 days but you get the idea. Ok so it’s really 15 years ago plus a few months but we’ll be here all day if we get into that. Anyway after last week, there’s not much to go on so hopefully we really get things going tonight. Let’s get to it.

Sting is in the rafters. DiBiase, Vincent and Giant are in the crowd and looking up at him.

Tonight we start a tournament for the new WCW Women’s Title.

Eric isn’t here tonight, but rather in Portland trying to get Piper to sign a contract. Remember that. It becomes REAL important in a few weeks.

We get a clip from Havoc where Piper yells at Hogan. Tony says the fans have demanded it, including over the internet. Tonight a word is promised about the signing.

Marcus Bagwell vs. Brad Armstrong

Sting leaves before the match starts. Man even he hates Buff. Riggs it at ringside too. Random question but where have the Steiners been? Are they still out from the car wreck thing? Bagwell does the clap thing and to his credit, the crowd is doing it with him. Technical match for the most part as they’re on the mat a lot. One thing that’s unrelated to the match: there are fans in the front row leaning over people (nice guys) to try to see themselves on a screen. I guess there are monitors or something by the entrance. That helps a lot as far as the videos they play.

We take a break (in the opener? Between Bagwell and Armstrong?) and come back to Armstrong hitting some armdrags (with his strong arms I guess) to frustrate Bagwell. Bagwell hits him in the face and the brawl is on. The fans are getting into this too. A dropkick puts Bagwell down and he gets tossed to the floor. Bagwell does just the same, hitting a dropkick and a clothesline to put Armstrong on the floor. There’s a dive to the floor and Brad is in trouble.

The NWO is in the crowd. They seem to be in the same place we saw them earlier so presumably they’ve been there the entire time. Why we’re looking at them and should be surprised to see them eludes me but a lot of what WCW did eluded me. Ok now they’re leaving. A tornado DDT gets two for Armstrong. There’s a gutbuster for Bagwell and what looked to be a forearm to put Armstrong down. We get the same ending from Fall Brawl 95 with Johnny B. Badd vs. Pillman where they both hit cross bodies and Bagwell lands on top for the pin.

Rating: C+. Marcus Bagwell vs. Brad Armstrong got 15 minutes and a commercial on Nitro and IT WAS GOOD. I’m in an alternate universe here. Brad was almost always at least watchable but Bagwell was a tag team guy and the same wrestler he was five years earlier, so why in the world did this get so much time? I’m not sure but it worked pretty well.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Ice Train

We’re reminded of the NWO watching Page last week. Page whispered something to Nick Patrick before this starts. The NWO (Outsiders) are in the crowd watching again. Train easily overpowers Page to start and knocks him to the floor. Page is starting to look a lot like he would during his main run. The Outsiders leave. Page guillotines him on the top and hits a top rope clothesline to take over.

Tony says Teddy has become a role model for young people all over the world. I can see the tag team matches being made on playgrounds all over the world. Sunset flip (and a bad one at that) gets two for Train. Larry says Piper vs. Hogan would be the biggest match of the 20th century. I never thought I’d say this, but Larry has been in bigger matches than that would be. Pancake puts Train down for two.

Swinging neckbreaker gets the same and a huge kickout, sending Page onto Patrick. A powerslam and two splashes get a slow two. Page gets knocked to the floor when the Outsiders come in and destroy Train with the title belts. Patrick is on the floor with Page. The champs leave and the Cutter ends this.

Rating: D+. This was more angle than match, which is something you can usually say about Teddy Long’s clients’ matches. It’s cool to see the Outsiders doing something to pull someone up and it certainly worked with Page. Was there a kayfabe reason why Patrick never went on medical leave? I never got that.

Cruiserweight Title: Dean Malenko vs. Scotty Riggs

Dean vs. Psicosis is announced for the PPV. The bell never rings so technically this is just a big prematch exhibition. Riggs has a bad shoulder coming in. Tony: “Well he’s trying to win. That’s a good sign.” Well what else would he be there for? A pottery class? Syxx pops up in the crowd as Riggs hits the post shoulder first. Riggs doesn’t seem to mind as he turns on the jets and sends Dean to the floor. There’s a plancha and back in a top rope double axe gets two. Scotty goes up again but Dean falls against the ropes and Riggs crashes onto the apron. Bagwell throws him back in and Dean gets an easy pin.

Rating: C. Not a bad match here and it foreshadows the troubles that the Males would have. Ok so maybe foreshadows is too big of a word given that they would only last like 3 weeks but you get the idea. Dean looked good here as did Riggs, and that ending fall looked awesome and painful at the same time. Decent little match.

We get a clip from last week with Mongo helping steal a win for Benoit.

Hector Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit

Hector is Eddie’s older brother and possibly even more talented. He’s also a dead ringer for Eddie if you just glance at him. I’ve often gotten them confused until I took a good look. Flair has had his surgery and Anderson is out with a back injury. On Saturday, Benoit said Sullivan is no longer the man he used to be. Sullivan pops up and says he’ll hurt Benoit in Baltimore. He’s actually talking about a house show.

Hector speeds things up and hits almost a Vader Bomb from the top rope out to the floor onto a standing Benoit. Benoit’s shoulder is still taped up. Hector works on the arm and mixes up the attack on it, because Hector Guerrero is smarter than most wrestlers. He goes to take the tape off and we take a break. After an NWO t-shirt ad, we come back to Benoit hitting a knee to put Guerrero down.

He draped Hector over the top rope with a release suplex and Guerrero is in trouble. Benoit works over the ribs and hooks an awkward abdominal stretch. Hector is basically crouched down and Benoit is bending over. Benoit hammers him down as Tony hypes up how amazing the second hour is. There’s the explosion. Hector grabs a small package for two. Guerrero speeds things up and uses a rolling tumbleweed style cradle for two. Woman breaks it up which isn’t a DQ. Benoit grabs a rollup via the distraction and uses the ropes for the pin.

Rating: C+. Another long match which again works. Benoit could move better this week which is a nice perk. Hector wouldn’t be around that much I don’t think so this was really just to avenge Eddie I guess. Nothing that great but they were moving well out there and the psychology worked so big points for that.

We look at Giant and Jarrett from last week. The Horsemen and Jarrett are in the aisle and Jeff says he’s the lead horse right now. Was he ever officially inducted? Benoit protests and says business pertaining to the Horsemen will be dealt with by a Horseman. Jarrett talks about getting WCW together as Sting watches. He just kind of goes on and on while we look at Sting.

The announcers talk about Sting.

Lee Marshall is in Florida for next week’s Nitro.

WCW Women’s Title Tournament First Round: Reina Jubuki vs. Madusa

Jubuki is Akiri Hokuto under a mask. Reina takes over quickly to start and chokes Madusa down. Another female Japanese wrestler comes out and watches. Her name is Zero apparently. Sonny Onoo rants like a heel Japanese man would in pro wrestling. Madusa hits something like what we would call the Stratusphere but Jubuki hits a release suplex and missile dropkick for two. The American grabs a quick German to pin the Japanese for the win. Too short to rate but it was way better than most modern female matches.

Michael Wallstreet vs. Chris Jericho

Wallstreet takes it to the mat quickly but Jericho works on the arm and then grabs a headlock. He tries to speed things up and Wallstreet fires him through the ropes. Tony calls the attorney of Nick Patrick a Schyster. I have a feeling there was a wink in there somewhere. Wallstreet pounds away as the announcers debate what the name Lionheart means.

Off to a chinlock and after awhile we look at the crowd. I can’t say I blame them as things got really boring all of a sudden there. Jericho comes back to break up the boring chants which were coming quickly. Missile dropkick sends Wallstreet out to the floor. Jericho gets sent into the post but as they come back in he grabs a quick small package for the pin.

Rating: D+. Nothing special here at all but they didn’t have much to go on. Jericho needed the ring time at this point and putting him in there with a veteran like Wallstreet was a good idea. This wasn’t all that bad but it’s nothing interesting at all. Basically just a way to make sure people remember who Jericho is.

Patrick and his attorney are here again and Jericho says there’s nothing wrong with the neck and that Patrick works for the NWO. Somehow this turns into an argument about Jericho’s dad playing in the NHL. Teddy comes out to yell at Patrick too. The attorney brings up Teddy being suspended while he was a referee like 8 years ago. Jericho cuts him off and says that’s the past, what Patrick is doing today.

We get a video from last week with Luger chasing after Sting to end the match with Booker.

Lex Luger vs. Booker T

Before the match we get an inset promo from Luger saying he’ll be waiting for Sting whenever he’s ready to talk. Luger grabs a delayed vertical suplex to start and seems to be more focused than he was last week. An elbow puts Booker on the floor and we take a break. Tony promises that if anything happens during the break, we’ll see it on replay. There’s no replay, so I guess we can assume that they just stayed in the same place during the break.

Powerslam gets two for Lex. Booker grabs a release Stun Gun to take over. Lex gets thrown to the floor where he takes a kick to the ribs from Sherri. Booker works on the back out on the floor. Back in the ring a hooking kick puts Luger down again. Side kick results in Booker crotching himself and Lex makes his comeback. He hits a powerslam and calls for the Rack but Booker grabs the rope. There’s a side kick to take Luger down and Colonel Parker is here to hug Sherri. An enziguri puts Lex down but Parker gets on the apron for some reason. Booker yells at him so Luger rolls him up for the pin.

Rating: D. This was a chore to sit through. The problem basically was that I don’t think anyone thought Booker was going to get a decisive win here so it was just kind of waiting around until the end of the match. That’s a very boring kind of match to watch and I stopped this whenever I could to do ANYTHING else. It wasn’t bad but it was very uninteresting.

Sting is still watching.

Eric Bischoff calls in and says that things are going well with him and Piper, but there’s no match signed, due to attorneys and agents interfering. He won’t say what’s wrong but he’s going to talk to Piper in Toronto next week. This goes on for awhile. Remember this segment. It becomes very important later.

Remember last week where we saw part of the Hogan vs. Piper showdown from Halloween Havoc but it was clipped for time? Well here’s the FULL version! That eats up ten minutes.

Here’s the NWO to end the show. Hogan demands a spotlight so he feels like he’s in California. Here’s a clip from Santa With Muscles, as we’re actually playing the “my B-movie is better than YOUR B-movie” game between Piper and Hogan. Hogan, as Santa, beats up some goons/thieves in a mall. Back in the arena, Hogan talks about the Cable Ace Awards or something and threatens to come to the ceremony and steal Ted Turner’s award. Is there a point to this at all? Hogan says Piper is scared and hiding out with Savage somewhere. He poses to end the show.

Overall Rating: C. Well it was better than last week due to the matches and wrestling being a lot better, but at the same time, nothing happened here. That’s the problem with having a main event like the big battle royal as everyone of note is in there and there might be a few other matches on there, most of which are just midcard matches. Things pick up speed soon enough though.

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And I’m sure people still want to turn him heel right?  I’ll never get some people.

Those of you that have read my stuff for years now (thanks for that) know that I like to talk about WCW. The company officially closed over ten years ago and yet there are still people that talk about how great it was. Now yes, WCW had some absolutely dreadful stuff over the years, most of which I’ve at least touched on. However, what people forget is that WCW had some flat out AWESOME stuff that today’s WWE wishes they could do. WCW had WWF beaten and then screwed up, and today Vince McMahon and WWE rule the wrestling world totally and completely.

Now, there have been books written about how WCW died and went out of business and all that. However, there are a few things we’re not quite clear on and to be fair, I don’t think there’s a clear answer out there. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, the purpose of this piece is to try to figure out who killed WCW, when it happened, what caused it. This is very important to start things off with: I don’t have a specific answer to those questions as I write this. I’ve tried to figure these answers out for years and I thought maybe by writing it out I could come to some sort of conclusion. When I started reviewing the late WCW shows I thought about doing this and was going to call it “Jumping the Shark Backwards”, but I never got around to it. Here it is now though, so let’s see if we can figure it out.

One major note: about 99% of this isn’t researched and most of it is coming off the top of my head, so if I mess up a few dates or names, don’t be surprised.

Another warning: this is LONG. It’s easily the longest piece I’ve ever written on wrestling so don’t expect it to be quick like a lot of other things I write. There are stats, history lessons, my thoughts on things, and a lot of other stuff. It reads almost like a college paper so this is going to take awhile to get through.

To begin with, I’ll give you a brief(ish) history of WCW. For the sake of clarity, we’re going to say that WCW officially started when Ted Turner took over the company, which took place on November 21, 1988. Now before I explain how we got there, I’ll go a bit further back into history. Not that it’s important to this, but I like talking about the history of the sport I love. If you’re already familiar with the way the territory system and Jim Crockett Promotions worked, skip ahead a little. The first paragraph after the history lesson begins with “Now that we know how it started, how did it die?”

See, today wrestling is way different than it originally had started as. WAY back in the day (as in like before the 1950s) you would have local territories and local promoters would run their individual areas. To cross over into another promoter’s territory was almost an act of war, which would somewhat be the case into the mid 80s. In 1948, a group of promoters combined to form the organization known as the NWA. The basic idea was they would all still run their territories, but there would be one name over all of them and one champion to rule them all. Local champions would exist, but the NWA World Champion would travel around.

For a non-wrestling analogy, think of the NCAA. You have your Big East, your ACC, your SEC and so on, but they’re all members of the NCAA and while you’ll have conference champions, there’s one NCAA Champion. Then imagine that champion traveled to individual conferences, wore trunks and tried to pin the other players down.

Anyway, this was the dominant situation for about 12 years, until two guys named Toots Mondt and Vince McMahon Senior thought that the NWA Champion, Lou Thesz, wasn’t a good enough draw in the northeast where they ran a territory. They withdrew from the NWA and changed their name to the World Wide Wrestling Federation (that’s about as abridged and simplified as saying a babies come from a mother’s stomach but you get the idea).

More companies eventually did this and the NWA started to realize they were in trouble. At the same time, a man named Jim Crockett promoted in the Carolinas area. His son took over the company and became president of the NWA. At the same time, Vince McMahon Jr. (the Vince that most of you are familiar with, had a radical idea: what if wrestling was a national product? I want this to be clear: this was INSANE at the time. Nothing had ever been attempted like this and most people laughed at him.

Then Vince got evil on them. He started going around and taking up all of the talent around the country from various promotions. Now his dad had this wrestler that was a heel, but was offered a part in a big Hollywood movie. Vince Sr. said you’re a wrestler, not an actor (there’s a joke in there somewhere) so if you take the movie, you’re gone. The wrestler took the movie, became a sensation, then went to the AWA, wore red and yellow, and Hulkamania was born. Vince Jr. bought his father out, brought back Hogan, and the rest is history.

Now around this time, Jim Crockett Jr. (both big time players in the 80s were juniors. Kind of interesting) had taken over and came up with an idea of his own: why can’t I own more than one territory? So basically, Crockett did the same thing Vince did: he went around and bought up every major name in a bunch of territories or flat out bought the territory itself. He had his own empire going in the southeast and for all intents and purposes, he owned the NWA (note that officially he didn’t but he owned about 90% of the talent anyone would want to see).

Crockett did really well for awhile, namely on the strength of the Flair vs. Dusty feud and the Four Horsemen. He had a national TV show on Ted Turner’s TBS station and life was good. The problem was he had a booker named Dusty Rhodes, and Rhodes was a little crazy. He would create what is known as the Dusty Finish, which would involve a fall going down and then something happening to cancel it, he created the Bunkhouse Stampede, which was a cage match battle royal where the idea was to throw people out of the cage (think about that for a minute and guess who won) and then came up with the idea of putting the world title on Rick Steiner, who was more or less the Eric Young of his day.

Combine this with Crockett overspending on things like jets and buying all these promotions and Ronnie Garvin as world champion and Vince messing with his PPV debut and Hulkamania and it’s no wonder why he was broke relatively soon. Enter Ted Turner, who bought the promotion flat out and took over on November 21, 1988, which is where we’ll say WCW began.

Now that we know how it started, how did it die? You’ll hear a lot of different theories about this, but for this case, I think we should use the process of elimination. Now for an opening suspect, the most common answer is the day that Jamie Kellner, one of the new bosses at AOL-Time Warner, canceled WCW programming on TBS and TNT. I’ve heard the argument and statements that it was that move that killed WCW and it’s still as stupid today as it was then.

Just think about this for a few seconds. Kellner had built up a lot of what was the FOX Network dominance. The guy knew what he was doing. Do you really think he would have killed off WCW programming if it still had value? By 2001 when the switch was pulled, WCW had been driven so far into the ground that there was absolutely no way that it was going to come back. Scratch that. It could have, but it was going to take YEARS to do.

Why in the world would they want to keep the company on the air when it was so damaged and bleeding money like it was already doing? This idea that Kellner and his cutting off the programming was what killed WCW is just wrong on all levels. He didn’t kill WCW. He simply put it out of its misery.

We’ll move back in time for the rest of this and go to Bash at the Beach 2000. This is a far less likely candidate because it’s really not that remembered. The idea here is that there was some kind of worked shoot which we’re still not sure how much was a work and how much was a shoot. It was Hogan vs. Jarrett for the title, Jarrett laid down, Hogan got the title and was never seen again. Russo came out later and buried him and made Booker vs. Jarrett the main event where Booker got the world title.

What did this wind up meaning? Nothing. The ratings didn’t go up, no one ever mentioned Hogan again, and Booker was moved up to the main event out of nowhere. A telling sign about WCW and the state of their world title at the time though: Booker is famous for being a five time world champion in WCW right? He won all of those in a span of about 9 months, including a span where he was injured for awhile. The title at this point was completely worthless because no one could keep it more than 5 minutes. We’ll get back to that very soon. This isn’t the right answer either so let’s keep going.

The next suspect is one David Arquette. I’m sure you’re all familiar with this story. For some reason WCW thought it would be a good idea to have a movie featuring the company. In short, it BOMBED, but that’s not the point here. In an effort to market the film, WCW took one of its actors and made him HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. Yes, an actor was world champion at the same time that HHH was WWF Champion.

So to the shock of no one, the angle bombed and they didn’t take the title off him immediately. Instead, they let David Arquette keep the title until Slamboree 2000 where they had a triple cage match with him vs. Jarrett vs. DDP. Jarrett won the title after Arquette was standing on top of the cage by himself for a few minutes and could have grabbed the title. While it’s a stretch, it could be argued that this was more of making the title look worthless. You know, beyond the fact that the real life husband of Monica from Friends was WCW World Champion.

Let’s compare this to WWF and Drew Carey who was in the 2001 Royal Rumble. In 2001 he was promoting a comedy PPV and Vince put him in the Rumble. He took the spot that was going to either Chaz (Mosh from the Headbangers) or D’Lo Brown. Both Carey and David are about the same level of celebrity status and they’re here to promote something that not a lot of people are going to watch anyway. What does the WWF do?

They replace a jobber in a match where he absolutely won’t be missed. Think about it: what would Brown or Mosh do in the match? Hang around for about seven minutes and be destroyed by either Taker or Kane or someone like that. Would anyone really miss either of them being in there? Not in the slightest. Instead, you get a celebrity in the match where he might bring in a few fans to the show. See, that’s how you use celebrities.

You put them in a place where they don’t make a big difference at all, but they seem like they do. That’s smart business. You give up a little something and while you likely won’t get a big payoff, you might get a decent one. If not, you lost Mosh or D’Lo for one night. That’s something you can live with and if nothing else, Drew gets publicity and you look like nice guys. Now on the other hand you have WCW, where a celebrity of about equal status was there trying to promote something.

What does WCW do? THEY MAKE HIM WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION, thereby making the wrestlers look pathetic, the title look like a joke, their PPV look like a bigger freak show than a pro wrestling show normally is, an more or less drive yet another spike into their own coffin.

Instead of having him do something stupid with Disco Inferno or something for like 5 minutes on Nitro, they said that this actor is on equal footing with the champions of the other major company at the time, which at that time would have been HHH. See why they went out of business so fast?

To top it off, at the end of the show, Kanyon came out to help save DDP from a beatdown. Mike Awesome then threw Kanyon off the triple cage and through the ramp as the announcers said that this was the worse On top of that, Arquette came back at another PPV later on. Again, no one cared. The movie bombed, the title looked completely worthless, and WCW slipped one step further to worthlessness. We’ll call this the first of the potential suspects.

In reverse chronological order:
1. David Arquette Wins World Title – May 7, 2000

Royal Rumble 1993
Date: January 24, 1993
Location: ARCO Arena, Sacramento, California
Attendance: 16,000
Commentators: Bobby Heenan, Gorilla Monsoon

Well, a bit has changed in the last year. For one thing, about two weeks before this, a show called Monday Night Raw debuted. This completely changed the world of wrestling forever. No longer did we have to watch Sunday morning Superstars to get wrestling. We now had it every Monday night in prime time. That really did change the world of wrestling forever. Other than that, Hogan is more or less gone at this point.

He would be back just in time for Mania to steal a title that he had no business being around after guys like Bret and Flair had worked so hard for the past year, but he’s Hulk Hogan and therefore awesome and can get away with stupid moves like that. Savage is on commentary for the most part now but he occasionally wrestles like he’s doing tonight. More on that later though.

Also tonight, we have the relatively rookie wrestler named Razor Ramon getting a world title shot. He was never actually in the Rumble. He always was in some kind of title match or injured. That’s saying a lot. Anyway, not a lot of people remember this show, which could be good or bad. Let’s see how it goes.

Oh and Narcissist debuts tonight.

Alfred Hayes does stupid stuff with fans as I need a revovlver.

Beverly Brothers vs. Steiner Brothers

I guess we can officially say we have a Rumble tradition as this is the fourth year running for a tag match opener. There is ZERO talking during the Beverly entrance. The Steiners get a traditional one though. Rick and Scott were there for little more than a year, but it worked very well I’ve always thought. They’ve been here about a month at this point though so this is their showcase match more or less. Wow that’s a bad draw for them as the Beverlies suck.

Heenan points out that the headgear Rick wears could be a weapon. Technically yes but it’s far better than cauliflower ear. Gorilla and Bobby are at it again, but Gorilla says the Beverlys have been successful. Did I miss something here? Scott gets an armbar and control according to Gorilla, which sounds like something on a game show. Also according to Gorilla, his taxicab driver said he could have sold his ticket for 50x its face value.

So in other words the driver admitted he might illegally scalp it. Yep that’s very smart there buddy. They reiterate that this is the first time where the winner of the Rumble is guaranteed a title shot at Mania, and thereby the tradition is born. Since it’s their first big match, let’s have them get beaten down for the most part. That’s perfectly logical isn’t it? The Steiners are getting beaten up here really badly and it’s just a poorly booked match.

If you’re going to have tag jobbers, then have them look like jobbers. By doing this it looks like Rick and Scott can’t beat a couple of horrible guys. We are LIVE! I always get a kick out of those. They come from nowhere and they don’t tell you anything at all. Also, what kind of an expression is getting a kick out of something? Wouldn’t that hurt instead of being amusing? The Beverlies are bad. Like, really bad.

We finally get to the hot tag but the fans are kind of bored here as it’s just taken too long to get to that. The tag looks awesome as Scott is on the ground and dives for Rick but he goes through the ropes and lands on the apron. That was sweet looking. Rick more or less beats them up by himself until Scott comes back in.

They set him up for a Doomsday Device move but in another SWEET counter, Scott rolls up one of them into a victory roll and the Frankensteiner ends it soon after. The ending two minutes were great but the rest was just bland.

Rating: C-. This is mainly for Rick’s beard and mustache which I think are alive. There’s no way those things aren’t at least creatures of some sort. As for the match, I don’t get why they would have the Beverlies, one of the most boring teams of all time, go in there and beat up Rick and Scott, one of the best of all time, for such a long time. It just made them look weak and while the dominated the end, I didn’t care by then, which defeats the purpose of the match as a whole.

We hit the recap of the Rockers as I’m surprised Okerlund is still with the company at this point. He and Heenan would definitely be gone by the end of the year. Anyway, the Rockers were awesome minus that whole winning anything. We have the Barbershop Incident and Marty was out for a long time.

Shawn started doing this thing where he would fix his hair in front of a mirror in the ring. Marty came from the crowd and Shawn saw his reflection in the mirror which was awesome. After the beatdown swung it at Shawn and hit Sherri who was Shawn’s manager. That led to this match.

Intercontinental Title: Marty Jannetty vs. Shawn Michaels

Sherri is here first as I think they’re trying to go with a Mega Powers Explode angle here. The aisle seems very short here for some reason. The arena is good sized so I don’t know why they would have to do that. Shawn’s belt is blue here for no apparent reason. Shawn is already selling like a mad man. In another unintentional funny moment, Gorilla answers the question of has a woman ever been in love with you by saying are you kidding me?

This is mainly about Sherri because she’s clearly more important than the title involved here. More or less we’ve had all Shawn beating on Marty here as we have this continuing theme of the faces getting beaten up. It’s mainly working on Marty’s left arm which confuses Gorilla for no apparent reason. Watch a string of matches and tell me how many times you see a guy working on the right arm. It simply doesn’t happen.

This is reminding me of the Hardy matches when they feuded as there’s just something odd about seeing these two fight. It’s just not working for me. I don’t get the need for the long pauses in commentary. It’s kind of annoying. Why does Shawn oversell everything? He hits the post shoulder first so both guys have bad wings at this point. In case you missed it the first time, WE ARE LIVE!

We apologize for taking you away from a decent match to let you know that, but we feel a shot of the crowd and a reminder that we’re LIVE is more important. For one of the only times that I can ever remember, the reverse suplex to the floor works for Marty. Sherri smacks Shawn on the floor and only Bobby and Gorilla seem to care. Wow Marty Jannetty can’t do a DDT to save his life.

They’ve picked up the pace a lot here and the crowd is suddenly alive. For reasons of it being required the referee goes down. Marty holds Shawn for a shoe shot from Sherri as my love for alliteration grows. Of course it misses and she’s completely distraught. Amazingly no one seems to care. Ok not really but I wanted to make it seem like it meant something. In a rather dumb ending, Shawn yells at Sherri, Marty gets up, Shawn kicks him and we have a pin. Sherri won’t talk to Gene in the back.

Rating: C. Well, the opening was just off for them but then they turned it up again. The ending was just odd all together though. The problem is these two had a far better match a few months later when Marty actually won the title, which for some reason didn’t happen until May which I’ve never gotten. The chemistry was there to an extent, but at the same time it just wasn’t clicking, which I know sounds weird but I can’t word it any other way.

In the back, Sherri is overreacting at an insane level as Gene even curses. Shawn runs back and looks like he’s going to hit her but Marty runs in for the save. For some reason an orange goes flying. This was just dumb.

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Big Boss Man

My, that’s a lot of Bs. Boss Man is just about gone here and is a complete jobber to the stars at this point. Bigelow is freshly returned to the company here and this is I think his first non squash match. There’s zero story here, which just furthers the squash theory. We’re eight seconds in and Boss Man is looking destroyed already. This is all Bigelow here as the announcers aren’t even talking about the match but rather something about Gene and Bobby in Vegas or something.

You can clearly see the fans leaving to get food or whatever in droves. I don’t get why Boss Man was never pushed really hard in the midcard. He’s a jobber here and he’s getting solid pops. They go to the corner and Bigelow gets the traditional 10 punches to the neck. It’s also a fairly morbid match as both men are dead now. Bigelow’s submission here is just holding onto Boss Man from behind. Yep that’s it.

This is just not interesting at all and it’s going on for too long which seems to be a running theme tonight. FINALLY Boss Man does something and he gets a decent back drop on Bigelow. That’s pretty impressive. In another stupid ending, he just clotheslines Boss Man down and hits the headbutt to end it. What’s with that lately?

Rating: D+. It saddens me to see a guy that I always liked like the Boss Man reduced to this. This was a squash and not a very interesting one either. Bigelow completely destroyed him here in the IC Special. I just don’t get why Boss Man was pushed so far down. He wasn’t bad at all and apparently they saw something in him as they kept bringing him back. This was about 10% Boss Man if that, which really is a shame. Bigelow would have a strong initial run and then just fall completely flat.

We see a clip of Razor beating up Owen. Yep that’s not very interesting. Gorilla and Bobby sound odd here. We get a short promo from Razor saying he’ll beat Bret.

WWF Title: Razor Ramon vs. Bret Hart

This was allegedly supposed to have been Warrior instead of Razor. I’ve read that from multiple sources including Bret himself, so I think there might be some truth to it. Warrior had been in the title picture when Bret took it from Flair from out of nowhere. If nothing else it makes sense here for Warrior to have gotten the shot here. I think they went with the right choice in Razor though. Granted Warrior had been thrown out for steroids allegedly so there we go.

Anyway, Razor had been hanging with Flair as a top heel for no apparent reason and then he got a world title shot for no apparent reason. I think he was supposed to be this incredible tough guy but it never really was explained why he was so awesome. Granted he certainly was, but it would have helped a bit.

His character was more or less taken straight from Scarface, but he got incredibly lucky: at the meeting where he pitched the character, Vince and Pat Patterson thought he was improving it and thought he was brilliant. Even still it’s a great character, but DANG what a way to get over good with the boss. Bret, rocking the pink jacket, says that Razor has made it personal.

I guess that’s because of the Owen attack which is kind of a story so I’ll take that over nothing at all. Razor is really young in his WWF time here, having been there about five months at the time. In a very cool shot, we see Bret ready to come through the curtain and getting himself fired up. He stands there for a bit looking like he’s in a coma and at a high point of his music he snaps forward and turns into the Hitman. That was sweetness.

Stu and Helen are of course here as is their custom. Bret winning here is pretty much a given, but a title match is better than nothing at all. Before the bell, just a quick reminder that WE ARE LIVE! This is working pretty well at the start as it’s fairly clear that Razor has a limited but solid offense. He had nearly 10 years experience at this point, but he’s not a great worker yet.

Over the next few years he would just nail the character so well that it could be kind of overlooked. We have a not entirely short early beatdown by Bret which is fine as he’s making Razor look solid. Razor is helping himself as well with some good selling. Naturally we have Bret in trouble soon after this, as Razor works on the ribs. This goes on for awhile and again since the match is pretty good I can’t really comment on it that much.

It’s a very basic style with Bret being in trouble a lot but coming back with some basic offense here and there. Razor keeps him down though and avoids the Sharpshooter at all costs. Bret finally gets off the mat for a bit and we go at it some more. For no reason whatsoever, Ramon uses back to back Greco-Roman knuckle locks, more commonly known as a test of strength. Brain says this could help him work on the ribs. Am I missing something here?

Bret doesn’t get moving quickly that often but when he does it really does work. In a GREAT ending sequence, Bret rolls down the back of the Razor’s Edge and gets a sunset flip for two. Razor kicks out and Bret grabs the legs, locks the Sharpshooter on from the mat and turns Razor over for the tap. OH YES!

Now that is Bret just being awesome out there and using his natural skills to just flat out beat someone he’s in there with. That’s awesome. It’s almost the same ending he used against Perfect in 91 at Summerslam, but man it’s still cool.

Rating: B. This was a solid enough match for sure, but it could have been just a hair better. I have no clue how, but I know it could have been. Bret was at his best out there, sort of showing Razor where to go without holding his hand. This is what they built the company on for a long while, until somehow Hogan managed to sneak in and take the world title despite not having been doing anything even remotely associated with it for about a year.

Heenan is ready to unveil Narcissus. He’s actually in the arena and not on satellite which surprises me. This was a big deal for the fans of WCW who didn’t know that Luger had jumped. Heenan is liking Luger’s body WAY too much here. It sounds like he wants to jump him or something. Also Luger is posing to some really bad pop/techno music.

I don’t know why Heenan wasn’t associated with him more than he was. I never got that. Bobby gets in a jab at Perfect before Luger talks. He doesn’t help the overtones by mentioning the people getting on their knees before him. It’s an over the top yet effective intro so I’ll give them that.

Caesar and Cleopatra are here for the foreshadowing the idiocy of the World’s Largest Toga Party at Mania. They look so bored out there and they actually try to make this sound serious. It’s just freaking dumb. Move on PLEASE.

With no big string of interviews this year, we’re ready for the Rumble.

Royal Rumble

Flair is out first as he wins the award for worst luck in Rumble history. He would get 30 about 14 years later so that’s all fine I guess. He would lose a loser leaves town match the next night on Raw, so guess how he does here. Anyway, we have a battle of the old guys as Bob Backlund is in at 2. He gets zero reaction which is a shame as he really was great. Both guys are wearing red which is interesting looking. HA I beat Heenan to pointing that out!

Wow actually Heenan would last until the end of the year. Sorry for referencing something I said a few pages ago but I just looked that up during a dead spot. Gene would be there until September. I had those dates way off. In at three is Papa Shango which is just about the oddest pick you could have to join these two. Surprisingly he lasts about 20 seconds as Flair sneaks up on him to put him out.

That’s not something I expected but it makes sense. Flair and Backlund are having what should be a pretty historic encounter here, but dang I just couldn’t care less. This would have been epic 10 years earlier, but geez this isn’t interesting at all. DiBiase comes in at 4 as the talent out there is insane. He and IRS are tag champions at this point.

Heenan is sharp here but he’s not up to what he was last year. Granted that’s nearly impossible to pull off. My goodness DiBiase and Flair would be an epic duo. I don’t think the feud would work though. Fifth is Brian Knobbs who was kind of feuding with DiBiase’s team at this time. Wow he just doesn’t fit the mold of the other three in there. DiBiase gets his face rubbed into Knobbs’ arm pit. And people wonder why he left doesn’t associate with wrestling much anymore.

Virgil is in the ring maybe 2 seconds after his buzzer goes off so I’m thinking he jumped early. Naturally he and DiBiase go at it. My goodness he was generic. Backlund is 43 years old by the way. DiBiase puts on Knobbs for a little retribution. At far less than two minutes after Virgil, Lawler comes in at seventh. Flair goes through the ropes to kill some time.

It’s just completely odd to hear Heenan talk about Lawler. We get another funny now line as Bobby says Lawler is Vince’s boss. Again less than two minutes go by and we have Max Moon who may or may not have been Konnan. We’re almost at 1/3 of the way through this and it’s not that interesting at all so far.

Lawler is wearing white/gray which looks like it has flowers on it. It’s really odd looking. Lawler puts out Moon as Genichiro Tenryu of all people is number nine. I can feel the smarks cheering from here. He goes for Flair as I request not to be soaked with semen until after 9pm. Heenan says that Tenryu must be the inspiration for chop suey with all those chops. No that would be Kobashi. Wow I spend too much time on WZ to know that.

Gorilla doesn’t have a running clock this year which I think is a first. Oh he’s told something. Apparently it’s been 20 minutes. Considering I’m watching this online and we’re at 18 minutes on the counter and the match didn’t start until about two minutes, we know that’s a lie. Not to mention he says this before #10 comes out, and with two minute intervals and considering that 1 and 2 are there together, math wise we could only be at about 16 minutes max.

Perfect is in at 10 as Heenan has a bigger heart attack than when Hogan came in last year. Naturally he goes straight at Flair which was a great rivalry that I wish we had gotten more of. For a recap, we currently have Flair, Backlund, DiBiase, Virgil, Lawler, Tenryu and Perfect in there. Perfect really was awesome at this time as this was the height of his face run. He would beat Flair clean the next night (or a week ago depending on how you look at it) in a great match. Bobby is FREAKING here.

You know I wonder what would happen if say Flair won the Rumble and then lost his career the next night. Would there not be a Mania title match? Literally as I finish typing that question, Gorilla says that should that happen there wouldn’t be a title match. It’s like we’re psychos or something! Anyway Skinner is 11th as this is just kind of looking bad so far. Perfect dumps Flair to a HUGE pop. That’s good to hear.

The Hall of Famer Koko B. Ware is in at 12, wearing but not rocking the bright green pants. Who did he sleep with to get a job for so long? I’d love to know. Perfect continues being awesome by putting out Skinner as Heenan challenges Monsoon to a fight. The Rumble is 13 years old now as it’s Samu. Nothing is happening here as we’re really just going through the motions.

Berserker comes in and we now have Backlund, DiBiase, Virgil, Lawler, Tenryu, Perfect, Ware, Samu and Berserker. Good night that’s a lot of jobbers. Perfect drops Lawler to get us down to 8. DiBiase, Ware and Lawler team up to take out Perfect after a long struggle, which disappoints me as he certainly could have gone on a lot longer as a bigger deal.

Virgil is gone too and we’re at 6. The first half ends with Taker who is allegedly the favorite in this match? Sure why not? Taker drops Samu with relative ease as hopefully he’s the guy that drops the jobbers.

Berserker and Backlund are on the floor fighting but are both still in it. Taker throws out Tenryu as I’m guessing that he didn’t get a fair break, he could outwrestle everyone in this match put together, and he had a five star tag match with some other Japanese legend about 4 days prior to this? He also should be going to Mania for some massive crossover show with another company being brought in to make it an international organization.

The fact that no one popped for his entrance, anything he did in the ring or his elimination is irrelevant as well because they just don’t get it and the in ring work is more important than ratings. Just thought I’d spare some morons some keystrokers of idiocy there. Taker vs. DiBiase is an interesting…oh blast it Terry Taylor is in this match. He’s on the Garvin scale of annoying wrestlers. THANK YOU TED DIBIASE! He put out Taylor and Ware in one shot!

Granted he got chokeslammed just after it but I’m happy now. There he goes though so we’re at Backlund, Berserker and Taker at the moment. Since we just had a cool moment, let’s have a stupid one here as Giant Gonzalez debuts. For those of you that don’t know it’s a guy that’s taller than Khali but with about ¼ of his wrestling ability.

The thing is they used the same exact storyline to introduce Khali: Daivari, or in the original case Harvey Whippleman, had managed a guy he had sent after Taker (Kamala and then Hassan/Henry) who Taker had destroyed. The monster appeared, beat up Taker a few times, leading to a major fight that Taker would win. See? It’s the same thing and the main reason why Khali was hated.

We old school guys knew what was coming step by step and it just didn’t work. Gonzalez, who isn’t named here, wears this weird suit that makes him look like a caveman. I can’t believe that at the time, people actually compared him to Andre the freaking Giant. Taker puts out Berserker to make it him alone with Gonzalez. In a standard camera shot, Gonzalez’s hips are above the top rope.

Taker comes up to his shoulders. Damien Demento comes in at I think 17 and Gonzalez throws Taker out, which for some reason counts. Yep that’s about it. Backlund and Demento aren’t in the ring but they’re still in the match so keep that in mind. Taker gets beaten down by Gonzalez which actually was a big deal at the time. This goes on WAY too long as IRS comes out at 18.

About a minute later Tatanka comes in as we realize that the Rumble more or less has started over, which is freaking stupid but whatever. Taker tried to sit up but fails so Paul Bearer has to help him. Sara, Michelle McCool, Paul Bearer, write your own joke. Taker limps after Gonzalez because the Giant worked on his leg. Yep, a monster worked on his leg in his debut. That’s just absurd. No actually it’s stupid.

They try to say Gonzalez was 8 feet tall. It was more like 7’7 but whatever. Jerry Sags is in next at 20 as we get the amazing coincidence again of having a member of the tag champions against a member of the challengers twice in the same Rumble for I think the third straight year. What a coincidence!

Typhoon comes in as Heenan says that they’re getting fresher. Well not really but since this Rumble has completely sucked I can understand his lack of good lines. Fatu is in at 22, more commonly known as Rikishi.

The problem with the reset earlier is beginning to show as we’ve got an army of nothing but jobbers out there that simply aren’t going to win. There’s also the issue of the roster here just flat out sucking. Earthquake is 23rd so we have the Disasters in there together. He goes right at Typhoon as their team was just about to split up. Quake dumps him out with relative ease as I really want this stupid match to end but we’ve got another 7 guys to come out.

Oh for the love of cheese Carlos freaking Colon is in next as Gorilla calls him a youngster. He’s 45 here and older than Backlund. To the majority of you his kids are more famous: Carlito and Primo, although they’re far less talented. He puts out Demento though so he’s already paying dividends. In next we have Tito Santana as we’re getting close to the end here.

VERY allegedly, he was supposed to win this at one point, but since he’s the only person to claim that I have a huge problem believing it. Fatu is out. To recap, we have Tito, IRS, Backlund, Sags, Earthquake, Colon and now Martel as I’m guessing he’ll fight Santana. Of course he does. DANG they feuded for what, 4 years about a team that was together less than one. That’s even better than the Evolution feud. IRS is out.

Heenan redeems himself a bit by saying Backlund is like a spider monkey. GORILLA MONSOON SWORE! I have never once heard him curse and he did it like it was nothing. Actually there was a tiny little hesitation before he said it which makes me feel better. Yokozuna, who is a relative newcomer at this point, is number 27. He throws out Tatanka with more or less ease and does the same to Carlos. We get Yoko vs. Quake as Owen comes in at 28.

Heenan says he can’t hear Gorilla despite them being on headset together. Yoko actually belly to bellys Quake over the top. That was cool looking. Repo Man is 29th as I’ve made a counting error somewhere in here. Ah there we go it’s fixed now. Everybody gangs up on Yoko but amazingly he fights them all off.

The 30th guy is Savage, so the final list of guys is Backlund, Santana, Sags, Owen, Repo Man, Martel, Savage and Yokozuna. Ok, now in case you’re just an idiot when it comes to old school, you can pretty much guess who this comes down to in the final two. Yoko puts out Santana and then the same to Owen. Repo is gone and we’re down to four. Have to give it to Backlund: this is impressive. He knocks out Martel clean as Heenan is amazed.

Yoko puts him out to a chorus of boos. It amazes me that he was jobbing to Razor at Mania in a glorified squash match. He goes over an hour, setting a new Iron Man record to a great reaction and gets treated like that. If nothing else put him out there with Shawn or Santana and let them tear the house down old school style. So we’re down to Savage against Yoko as Backlund is getting a big ovation.

We get a short one on one match here as Savage gets his ask kicked for a good while. But then, there’s a comeback! Savage has Yoko in real trouble and does something no one else has ever done by knocking him off his feet! Then we get to the ending which I’m not sure if I like or not: Savage has Yoko down and goes up for the elbow. He covers Yoko, who powers out of it, throwing Savage over the top to win the Rumble.

At first I hated this, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. Savage is as intense as anyone has ever been, so for him to get his mind clouded by being on such a role and go to what is his instinctual finish makes sense to me, even though it’s obvious that it’s scripted. I can live with this and it was a creative way to eliminate him and keep him looking strong at the same time. The Japanese flag waving for a Samoan wrestler takes us out.

Rating: D+. This was BAD. The Gonzalez thing divides the match in half and the first half is even more boring than the first. Backlund is the undisputed star of this match though as he went out there for over an hour and put on a great performance that never once was too farfetched to believe. As for the ending, this is something I wanted to address. I’m torn on whether or not this was the right ending to the Rumble.

I know that Vince wanted to push Yoko as the monster heel, but I think he was completely missing the boat here. What I would have done for my summer feud: Savage vs. Bret for the title. Now think about it. Those are two of the best workers of all time. Are you telling me that those two wouldn’t have put on a freaking classic at Mania? This is where my issues with Vince show up. No one, I repeat no one, can convince me that Yoko was a better choice for the huge push than Savage.

If you don’t believe me, watch Bret vs. Yoko from Mania 9. Yoko was just too fat to be in any real trouble and the match sucked as a result. This was Savage’s first real chance to shine with Warrior and Hogan gone. It’s not like he was incredibly old at the time (he turned 41 in November of that year) but he certainly would have worked for a feud over the summer.

He won multiple world titles down the line in WCW so he certainly still had the it factor. The fans were behind him and Bret hadn’t really gotten a big rub at all. Beating Savage clean certainly would have done that for him.

However, Vince continues his love affair with big huge men that can’t do a ton in the ring (by comparison to Savage that is) so he goes with the David vs. Goliath match, stupidly not realizing that the only thing that could make Yoko look credible for a full match was a power guy, which he got in Luger later in the year.

Either way, the Rumble sucked as once you got down to the final ten there was zero doubt who would win. The announcers were bored out of their minds too, which for Monsoon is saying a lot.

Overall Rating: D. Well let’s see. We have two ok matches, an ok one and a really boring main event. Yeah the D is a generous grade I think. The Ramon and Bret match is the only thing worth watching here as other than that the whole show is just flat out boring. Marty and Shawn is ok at its absolute best but it just falls flat on its face for the most part. The Rumble is just atrocious.

Nothing of note happens, Savage and Yoko are the only two that you think have a shot at winning, with Hogan gone there’s no real A-list star in the match, and it just doesn’t work. Gonzalez also kills the thing by eliminating Taker after about five minutes which isn’t good either.

This whole show was just awful other than a few moments, which certainly weren’t enough to validate this as one of the major, and at the time only, shows of the year. Don’t watch anything on here, not even the best match as it’s like saying someone is the best poster in the prison. Just a bad show all around.

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Monday Nitro #59
Date: October 28, 1996
Location: America West Arena, Phoenix, Arizona
Attendance: 6,300
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko, Mike Tenay, Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan

We’re FINALLY done with Halloween Havoc and the big reveal: Roddy Piper is back. Hogan and he literally talked until the show went off the air last night and neither really said anything. Tonight we begin the road to World War 3 which wasn’t a world title match for Hogan because he took that show off I guess. Hogan vs. Piper wouldn’t happen until Starrcade where the ending was pretty stupid. Oh and the Outsiders are tag champions now. Let’s get to it.

Larry is in a sport coat and a Superman t-shirt. He and Tony talk about Piper arriving last night. The still of Hogan’s face is GREAT.

TV Title: Steven Regal vs. Juventud Guerrera

Sting, in white facepaint, is watching from the rafters. Oh here we go. Some NWO fans come in with signs and the fans all react. Juvy and Regal hit the mat and wait for things to calm down. Syxx pops up in the crowd with a mic. The match basically stops and Syxx says he’ll be Cruiserweight Champion. Now the match gets going again as Syxx gives Sting a recruitment speech. Juvy snaps off a rana and a dropkick. He loads up the 450 but Regal moves. The Stretch ends this quickly. Too short to rate, especially with the match just stopping for about 45 seconds for Syxx.

Tony is about to interview Regal but talks about Sting first. Sting gets up and walks away.

We get some stills from Luger vs. Anderson last night.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Mike Enos

I don’t like Enos’ chances. Enos slaps him almost immediately and they go to the floor. Page sends him into the barricade to take over. Back in a Batista Bomb gets two. Top rope clothesline hits an we’ve got Outsiders. Page points at them so Enos can take over. Enos points at them and maintains control. I guess he’s better at time management than Page is. Enos points at them again and hits a powerslam again. He loads up a Bulldog powerslam but takes too long, letting Page hook the ropes and counter into a Diamond Cutter. The Outsiders seem pleased as Page gets the pin.

Rating: D. Eh it’s just a three minute match so how bad can it be? This would start the angle that made Page a star which I’ve been mentioning for months. See? I’m not crazy. Enos had signaled that the running powerslam was his finisher, which is impressive since I didn’t know he had one. You learn something new every day.

Stills of Dean winning the Cruiserweight Title last night from Rey.

Dean Malenko vs. Jim Powers

There’s a player from the Suns in an NWO shirt. Psicosis comes out to watch the match. Powers controls to start with headlocks but Malenko uses the technical stuff to get us to even. They go to the mat and Powers grabs an armbar. Dean is a heel here if you’re not familiar with this period. Off to a chinlock as Nick Patrick has a sore neck and argues with Teddy for awhile. Powers makes a brief comeback with an atomic drop and clothesline for two. A right hand gets two. Knee lift puts Dean down and a powerslam gets no count because Patrick is arguing with Teddy. Dean rolls Powers up for the pin.

Rating: D+. Nothing to see here other than to continue the Patrick is a bad referee and is feuding with Teddy Long storyline. I don’t remember what Patrick has against Long but I guess we’ll get to it soon enough. Powers is fine at what he’s doing which is just easily jobbing to people, but he’s pretty boring. Granted that’s his job so it’s hard to complain.

Still of the Dungeon vs. Horsemen last night. The Horsemen won but Benoit and Mongo got laid out. Sullivan and Woman had words but we don’t know why yet.

Jeff Jarrett vs. Ricky Morton

Memphis explodes! Jarrett controls early but Ricky works on the arm. Morton hits a spinning crossbody out of the corner for two. Jarrett suplexes him down and Tony plugs World War 3’s ticket info. Top rope cross body is rolled through for two but Jeff hooks a neckbreaker to keep control. Figure Four is rolled up for two. A knee crusher sets up the Figure Four and it’s over.

Rating: C-. Again not bad but just there to get Jarrett on TV. He was so painfully uninteresting at this point and I don’t think anyone cared about him at all. They basically did the same thing with Hennig like a year later and it actually worked. Jarrett didn’t get over as a serious guy until he ditched the country music, but that was years away.

Giant, with the US Title which isn’t his, says he had Jarrett last night but Flair saved him. He runs down the Horsemen, saying that Jarrett will be chokeslamed soon. Jarrett says bring it on. He says it after Giant leaves but he does say it. Jarrett also becomes the probably 58th person to say WCW has to unite to face the NWO.

Amazing French Canadians vs. High Voltage

High Voltage starts off fast and beats up every French Canadian in sight. Rage vs. Oulette start us off. We launch fireworks to remind the fans that the show is two hours long, because the wrestling match going on doesn’t tell them that the show is still going. Savage isn’t here tonight. The foreigners take over and hit the Rougeau Bomb onto Kaos and then load up the Quebecers’ Cannonball finisher before the Nasties run in for the DQ. Too short to rate but it was just there to give the Nasties two teams to beat up.

The Nasties yell about Hogan and swear revenge. They don’t belong to WCW, just like Sting and Piper. They’ll always be Nasty though.

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Jimmy Graffiti

Graffiti jumps him and hits an electric chair drop for two. Rey comes back with a springboard moonsault for two. A rana takes Graffiti to the floor but Rey is sent into the railing. Graffiti gets up on the apron and hits a flip dive to crush the more famous one. Chinlock by Graffiti but Rey casually gets up, speeds things up and hits West Coast Pop for the pin.

Rating: D+. All of these matches have pretty much been interchangeable tonight. Nothing has lasted more than about 4 minutes and nothing has been really interesting. Everything has been focused on what happened last night and it’s really slowing things down. The matches haven’t been bad, but they’re all coming and going with nothing really happening at all.

Lee Marshall is in Grand Rapids, Michigan to hype up the show.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit

Please give them more than four minutes. We have like 40 left in the show not counting commercials so it’s not like they don’t have time. Benoit is all taped up from the beating last night. After a break we’re ready to go. Mongo and Debra come out just a few seconds into it, apparently to watch out for the Dungeon. We get an inset interview from Jimmy Hart and Kevin Sullivan who say there’s something about Woman which is going to be revealed soon.

Eddie is banged up too so the match consists of them both trying to get going but every time they do something physical they have to stop and lay on the mat for a long time. Benoit goes after Eddie’s bad ribs. Back in and Eddie is in agony. Benoit hooks on a seated abdominal stretch but since he’s hurt, Eddie fires off an armdrag which really injures Benoit.

Back to that stretch after some more slowly moving around. I don’t remember what caused Eddie’s injuries but I think it was a match with DDP. Wikipedia says I’m right so there you are. Eddie wakes up and pounds away in the corner but he has to pause again. He hits something that looks like a flying headbutt and both guys are down. Woman offers a distraction and Mongo pops Eddie in the ribs with the briefcase so Benoit can steal the pin.

Rating: C. This is a hard one to grade. As far as a match, it’s dull due to having to go very slowly. However, it would have been REALLY stupid to have them go out there and fly all over the place after we saw at least Benoit get mauled last night. I’ll go with right in the middle because the match made sense, but it was still kind of boring.

Nick Patrick and his attorney have an “interview”, which means the attorney is rude and spins things. It’s Jericho’s fault apparently. Jericho comes out and calls BS, saying Patrick is NWO. The attorney suggests Jericho needs anger counseling. Teddy comes out and blasts the attorney so the attorney threatens a slander lawsuit. This just goes on and on for like 4 minutes.

Booker T vs. Lex Luger

This would be a very different match a few years later. There’s no Stevie or Colonel Parker with Booker. There must be a LONG segment planned to close the show because we have well over 20 minutes not counting commercials, so it was probably about 9:30 when this match started. Colonel Parker has a quick promo, saying his gaffe last night (came in with the cane, Hall stole it and clocked Stevie with it for the titles) is all just blown out of proportion.

Lex takes over to start with pure power and sends him to the floor. Booker takes over back in and Sherri yells at the basketball player outside, saying he can help Booker win. Booker gets knocked to the floor again and things slow down one more time. Lex pounds him down in the corner and is acting more aggressive than usual. Lex hits a forearm and we take a break.

Back with Booker holding a chinlock. Wow a match getting over ten minutes. I don’t know how to handle this. Booker takes over and hits some of his basic stuff as Eric seems to drool over the idea of Piper being WCW. The Hangover misses and Lex calls for the Rack, but Sting pops up in the crowd and stares Luger down. Lex jumps into the crowd and runs after Sting for the countout loss.

Rating: D+. This was an elongated version of what we had going on earlier. Nothing to see here but they had a lot of time so they let them go for awhile. The problem is Booker wasn’t ready to do this yet so the match was pretty boring. It’s not that bad but it was again there just for the ending.

Eric talks about Piper calling WCW and asking for five minutes to confront Hogan. Here’s the whole segment from last night which basically says that Piper is as big a star as Hogan and Hogan is terrified. They talk forever and Hogan keeps backpedaling. Why Giant didn’t destroy him is still beyond me. This goes on for about ten minutes. The line of “If they didn’t hate me so much do you think they would have loved you so much” is pretty dead on though. They cut off the ending due to time.

Here’s the NWO to offer a rebuttal to last night because they didn’t talk enough there. Hogan gets a spotlight and says he told you so. As for Savage, he respects him due to carrying the burden of WCW. Hogan implies sex with Liz I think. After about two or three minutes he addresses Piper. He lies about what we just saw (classic heel move) and says Piper is scared. DiBiase says Hollywood is going to entertain us now so Hogan poses to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. I really wasn’t feeling this one. Everything here was kind of a big recap show for Halloween Havoc. Nothing at all was advanced in the main event as the whole ending was just a quick thing from Hogan which goes nowhere. I still don’t get why they went with Hogan vs. Piper in 1996 and then in 1997, but it made them a fortune so it’s really hard to question them. It doesn’t pick up for about three weeks though.

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Monday Night Raw
Date: January 9, 2012
Location: American Bank Center Arena, Corpus Christi, Texas
Commentators: Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler

It’s the week after HE IS HERE and Chris Jericho is back. That being said, I don’t know what to expect from him. Maybe he’ll actually say something this time? Either way, things almost have to be better than they were last week. We’re getting close to Rumble time too which is always interesting. Let’s get to it.

After a video of the ending of last week’s show, here’s Kane to open the show. He says people are wondering why he’s embracing hate, and it’s because the people are in denial. Everyone gets up next to a spouse they can’t stand and go to a job they hate and go home to children who are brats. Everyone has delusions of hope like Cena himself does.

Cena represents hope and success. The people should see Cena as unfulfilled hopes and dreams. The people are all liars when they cheer for Cena because they think cheering for an underdog makes them good. Look at Zack Ryder for example: The people made him a star because he’s an underdog. Last week Kane tried to drag Ryder to the depths but Cena stopped him. That just delayed the inevitable though, because Kane wants consequences.

Cue Cena and it’s a brawl immediately. A clothesline puts Kane outside and they brawl up the aisle. They fight into the back and they’re outside. They’re over a kind of pit which looks to be a few feet deep but you can see the bottom. There’s a production truck and Cena is knocked into some metal stuff next to it. He hits Kane in the leg with a pipe but is knocked into some boxes. He gets up and Kane is gone as we go to a break.

Sheamus/Santino Marella vs. Jinder Mahal/Wade Barrett

All four are officially in the Rumble. The non-main event guys start us off as Cole tries to explain to us what the turban is for because he’s a man of the world or something. Off to the Englishman who beats up the Canditalian who is waiting on the tag to the Irishman so he can hopefully beat up the Indian that he’s mad at. There’s the tag and Sheamus cleans house. Brogue Kick to Mahal and the Cobra gets the pin at 2:52. This was nothing, and Mahal continues to look like nothing compared to Sheamus.

Miz complains to Ace and Otunga about the Truth attacks lately. Brodus is debuting tonight apparently. Miz wants private security but Ace says he’s Big Johnny, not Little Jimmy.

We get a Hall of Fame inductee announced tonight.

The first inductee is…….Edge. We get a video about his career. There’s going to be a second inductee tonight as well. Cool.

Miz is trying to get a bodyguard in the form of Mason Ryan but he gets turned down.

Ryder is on the phone with his dad, talking about how afraid he is of Kane. Eve pops up and he says he’ll beat Kane up later. He’s off the phone and asks Eve for another date. She actually says yes but it’s after her match later. Both of them leave separately and a door opens behind Ryder. Kane pokes his head in and then goes back out as we go to a break.

Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan

Well this is a surprise. This was set up via a video on WWE.com where Kofi questioned Bryan’s methods of winning the world title. I hope they showed that to the live crowd. Bryan’s weight is up to 210lbs so maybe they’re back to faking weights. Kofi hits a springboard cross body for a fast two but Bryan rolls him up for the same. This is non-title if I didn’t mention that. Bryan does his corner moonsault so Kofi comes out of the corner with a cross body. In a SLICK counter, Bryan lands in the LeBell Lock and we’re done at 1:14.

Bryan does the big celebration again post match. And here’s Big Show. He gets in the ring and Bryan begs off, saying he hated the ending to the title match. The title is too important to end like that. He offers Show a title match anytime he wants. Show says Teddy agrees as well, so there’s going to be a title match on Friday, no DQ and no count-outs. Oh dear. They shake hands and Show leaves.

Royal Rumble Moment is the end of 1994 with the double winners.

Justin Roberts introduces Brodus Clay as being from the Planet Funk and being the Funk-o-Saurus. He has dancers and is coming out to ERNEST MILLER’S WWE music. WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I WATCHING??? He’s DANCING! I swear I’m not making this up. He’s in a red track suit and has a red hat on.

Brodus Clay vs. Curt Hawkins

Total squash and he dances a lot. A cross body ends this in 65 seconds. This is BIZARRE.

Zack Ryder is brushing his teeth and looking in a mirror. He keeps thinking someone is watching him and leavesl.

Miz tries to get Rosa and Epico/Primo to protect him. They say no and leave but Punk pops up to NO reaction.

They go to a break here and thank goodness. I need a minute after what I just saw with Brodus.

Jack Swagger vs. CM Punk

Ace comes out and says that if Punk wins, Swagger and Vickie are barred from ringside at the Rumble. Ziggler tonight has to fight Cena to keep things fair. Feeling out process to start with Punk working a headlock but Swagger taking it to the mat. Punk goes up for the elbow so Jack hits the floor. Swagger takes over with his size advantage and hooks a quickly countered ankle lock. Off to a double chicken wing kind of hold and then a waistlock. Swagger is knocked to the floor and a suicide dive takes him out as we go to a break.

Back with Punk starting his comeback. He fires off some strikes and hits the knee in the corner but the bulldog is thrown off and the Vader Bomb gets two. Another attempt at a Bomb is countered but Swagger takes over again quickly. He loads up a superplex but Punk shoves him off for a top rope elbow….for the pin? I thought he kicked out but apparently not as Punk gets the pin at 13:57.

Rating: C. Not a bad match here despite what the referee shows was a bad call at the end. Not sure if that’ll play into the Ace as referee thing or not but it could have been an honest mistake. I mean it’s not like Swagger was going to win either way. Decent match and while I think Swagger should go face, he’ll be ok as a jobber to the stars like this.

Replay shows that it was a bad call and Cole freaks.

We see the ending of the Cena vs. Kane fight earlier.

Cena and Ryder are in the back talking and Ryder thanks Cena for everything he’s done for him.

The Bellas are talking in the back when Ricardo pops up. They brought him all the way from Mexico to give Del Rio a message. Miz interrupts them and says Ricardo is going to draw out R-Truth by insulting him. Ricardo says no but Miz threatens him.

The second HOF inductee: It’s still not Savage, but it’s THE FOUR HORSEMEN!!!

Here’s Ricardo to insult Truth but he’s very nervous to do so. He says that Truth’s breath smells like a rotten burrito and that’s enough to draw Truth out. Truth doesn’t know why Ricardo would want to pick a fight with him. Even Little Jimmy thinks he’s a good R-Truth now. He asks Little Jimmy if he should let Ricardo go. Apparently Jimmy doesn’t like Ricardo so Truth should turn Ricardo into a human pinata.

Ricardo freaks out so Truth asks for a song. La Cucaracha in fact. Ricardo gets WAY into this and even says this is a remix halfway though. Truth asks him to do it again and Ricardo knocks the mic out of his hand. Ricardo takes a Little Jimmy and here’s Miz for the beatdown.

Jericho time. He gets an entrance from Roberts and does the same entrance that he did last week. He’s doing the same thing he did last week with the whole running around the ring. No mic that I can see. Oh now he has one and the music ends. He poses on the corner and hasn’t talked yet. The mic is to his chest….(this is high drama stuff people) and he looks like he’s about to cry. He takes a minute to compose himself…..and is now crying. The music comes on and he walks out, still not saying anything.

Another Rumble Moment: 98, Austin wins.

Eve Torres vs. Beth Phoenix

Eve has new music I think. It’s 10:51 before Beth comes out so they’re going to have to blaze through this. And never mind because here’s Kane. Since women in wrestling are idiots, Eve gets out of the ring and STANDS THERE. Ryder runs out to save her and they run off to the side of the tron. No match.

We cut to the back and Ryder throws her into a car. The tire is flat though, so Ryder CHANGES THE TIRE. We take a break as Pep Boy #4 keeps at it.

Ryder defends against Swagger next week.

Ryder is still changing the tire when we get back. Call AAA dude. I’m sure they have some luchadores that could help you.

John Cena vs. Dolph Ziggler

No entrance for Dolph and the bell rings at 10:59. Ziggler starts fast and hits a quick Fameasser for two. Off to a chinlock and Ziggler does a headstand while holding it. Cole: “You couldn’t do that King.” Lawler: “Why would I want to?” Good question. Ziggler drops some elbows and does the situps. Cena starts his comeback and we cut to the back where Ryder is STILL changing the tire.

Kane finally comes to attack him and Ziggler throws on a sleeper. We cut to the back again and Kane chokeslams him into the pit I mentioned at the beginning of the show. Ziggler puts on another sleeper but Cena hits an AA to escape. He goes to the back and I guess the match is thrown out at about 5:00. I’m not going to rate it due to the match just being a placeholder for the angle. It was nothing of note anyway.

Cena gets out there and Kane jumps him. He smothers Cena down again and Ryder is just laying on the wooden pallet he was chokeslammed onto. Cena is left laying too. Kane stands very tall to end the show.

Overall Rating: B-. This was a very different kind of show but I was liking it a lot. Things were a lot more comedy based than they were last week and it was certainly a more memorable show. The wrestling was just ok but they played things up as over the top and overly dramatic tonight and I thought it made for a much better show. Also the HOF stuff is a nice touch so few complaints here, other than the lack of in ring action.

Results
Sheamus/Santino Marella b. Wade Barrett/Jinder Mahal – Cobra to Mahal
Daniel Bryan b. Kofi Kingston – LeBell Lock
Brodus Clay b. Curt Hawkins – Cross Body
CM Punk b. Jack Swagger – Top Rope Elbow Drop
John Cena vs. Dolph Ziggler went to a no contest

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I think I can live with this too.  Still no Savage though?  Really?  Wait…..Benoit is in the HOF now.  Interesting.

Thoughts on this?