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?

I haven’t laughed so hard in YEARS.  That was great.

Announced on Raw.  Another inductee coming later tonight.

Thoughts on this?

I’ve spent the last two weeks writing it.It’s going to be a series on an old school company and why they’re no longer with us.  At 15 and a half single spaced pages, putting it in one post seems like a bit much, so starting Tuesday, it’ll be here in five days.  Look for it, and I hope you’re a fan of board games.

KB

Royal Rumble 1992
Date: January 19, 1992
Location: Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, New York
Attendance: 17,000
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan

Oh yes. OH YES. This right here is in mine and several other people’s opinion, the best Rumble of all time, and there is one man to thank for that: Ric Flair. Yes, the Nature Boy himself has arrived to save the company after WCW did the absolute dumbest thing of all time and allowed him to just walk into the open arms of Vince. Without going into the whole rant which is in my Survivor Series 1991 review, Flair was more or less told that he would become a completely new character or be fired.

Flair actually had a brain and realized he could be a main event star in WWF at a moment’s notice and that’s exactly what he did. The icing on the pizza (delicious, you should try it someday) was that he had legal possession of the NWA World Title belt, the one that is currently known as the World Heavyweight Championship. This led to Heenan showing up on WWF Television with the NWA Title.

The look on Gorilla and Neidhart’s faces were so priceless I don’t even know where to start. That would be like John Cena showing up on Impact. To say it was huge was an understatement as it rocked the wrestling world. Anyway, Flair claimed that he was the real world’s champion and helped Taker steal the world title at Survivor Series. Hogan threw the urn’s ashes at Taker and rolled him up to steal the title back.

Based on all that insanity, Jack Tunney vacated the title. We’ve had no champion in about two months here, and there just happens to be a huge battle royal coming up. So therefore, in one of the only things that Tunney EVER got right, he makes the 1992 Royal Rumble for the WWF Title. OH YES! Tell me that doesn’t sound completely awesome. For the entire build up to this, Heenan kept saying this is Flair’s chance to show that he’s the best.

Remember that, as it’s one of the most important things to the show. The only bad thing about this is that we have to put up with the rest of the card before we get to the Rumble. Dang I’m looking forward to this. Let’s go.

Naturally we go over half the entrants to the Rumble first. I like being surprised better though, but whatever. We hear that the Mountie took the IC Title from Hart over the weekend, which was simply done so we could save Hart vs. Piper for Mania.

Orient Express vs. New Foundation

The New Foundation is comprised of Owen and Neidhart. We get our first WILL YOU BE SERIOUS from Gorilla so I’m happy. This is the era of the baggy pants which were just flat out odd in my eyes. We hear about the substitutions. Brian Knobbs has a bad shoulder so he’s replaced by Haku. Jannetty is out as well. Something about a bad haircut I believe, and he’s replaced by Nikolai Volkoff. My goodness what a terrifying concept of a match that is.

Something tells me that this isn’t going to be as good as the other version of this match that had the Rockers in it last year. So far I’m right. We’re already doing far too much mat work here. In something you don’t see that often, the faces dominate the at least opening half of this thing. Ok, they’ve dominated most of this. The ending must be coming soon right? I mean it hasn’t been a bad match but they’ve had ten minutes already.

With guys like the Rockers going a long time is fine, but Anvil? Something doesn’t connect there. Tanaka is wearing a black shirt in here for no apparent reason. Naturally the commentators won’t shut up about the Rumble, which at least makes sense here. It does guarantee a new world champion, so at least there’s a reason to talk about it nonstop. After some interference (shocking I say, SHOCKING!) from Fuji, the Express take over.

This match is running long, and they’re in the deadly territory of being long for the sake of being long. That is never a good thing. The match is ok, but I don’t think it needs this much time. Finally we have the hot tag to Anvil, and the Rocket Launcher ends this one.

Rating: C+. This was a decent match, but there was no way this should have gone on this long. Last year’s stuff was great as they just went out there and went insane, but here it was Owen against two other guys and then a hot tag to Anvil. That’s fine for something like a ten minute match, but this didn’t do it for me. Again, not a bad match by any means, but it just didn’t work, at least in my eyes.

Alfred Hayes talks about Bret’s loss at a house show where he (kayfabe) had a 100+ degree fever. This was I think two or three days prior to the Rumble. Somehow this sets up Piper against Mountie. We get a long clip from the show. They really need to show more stuff from house shows as they’re a great way to save some TV time and still advance the shows. Oh apparently Piper came in for the save for Hart and Mountie beat him up, setting the match up. That makes sense at least.

Mountie says he’ll win.

Piper says he’ll win, but in a much funnier way.

Intercontinental Title: Mountie vs. Roddy Piper

The idea here is that Piper has never won a title, but can win two tonight. This is really just a formality as I don’t think anyone believed there was a chance in Mountie retaining. This is more or less the height of Piper’s face run as he’s been feuding with Flair for awhile. He’s living proof that you don’t need a title to be a major star. The pop is great here as he’s just massively over. Piper stars off hot here, beating Mountie up with relative ease.

Heenan is hilarious, plain and simple. He’s panicking over what number Flair has and is desparate to get to the back and find out, coming up with great ways to have to go check. He offers to go get a diet drink for Monsoon. It’s a lot funnier than it sounds. Why do I love the jumping back elbow so much? It just looks awesome. Hart interferes but Piper is FAR too smart for that. He hooks a sleeper about as casually as you can imagine and gets his first title.

He uses the shock stick afterwards which still sounds like a doorbell. The celebration is great here, as Piper really was over to say the least. He didn’t win another belt until a few years ago with Flair, but this was great. He deserved a belt, even though he didn’t need one. It’s a cool moment though.

Rating: B. The match was a complete squash but it was never about the match. This was giving Piper something for his years of work and that’s just fine. He would go on to have a great match with Bret at Mania, so there we go. This was a cool moment and that’s all it was supposed to be.

Hayes completely barges into Hogan’s locker room and asks for an interview. To be fair, at least he gives him one. He says he has no friends in the Rumble today. He’s off steroids here as his look is completely changing.

The Bushwackers say they have a surprise for the Beverly Sisters. Apparently they’re going to feed them to Jameson. Jameson was this nerd character that was just bad.

Beverly Brothers vs. Bushwackers

Still I wonder how these guys had jobs. My guess for this is a comedy match. That scares me to death. The Genius is managing the Beverlies here. Gorilla says that the Bushwackers have been licking their way through the competition. That line speaks for itself. The match gets going as Jameson has a sandwich. No one has ever gotten the point of this guy, so naturally he kept going on and on. This just goes on and on.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Luke and Butch actually did something. All they’re doing is going to the ropes after some bare bones offense and shouting to the crowd. The heels aren’t much help either as they’re just not that good. We are LIVE! I guess even the camera guy couldn’t take watching this for such a long time. I can’t say I blame him. This is just going on FAR too long here and nothing at all of note is happening.

It’s just generic stuff that isn’t interesting at all. They’re just beating on each other with no rhyme or reason. Oh and Jameson is nervous. That’s all there is here but it just keeps going. The fans are more or less dead here too. After literally almost 15 minutes, the Beverlies win it. Oh but wait! Jameson has to do something stupid! Apparently he doesn’t like the Genius so he kicks him in the shin. Yep, that’s about it.

Rating: F-. Do I even need to explain this?

Gene is with the LOD, who are the tag champions here. They just say they’re not afraid of the Natural Disasters. Hawk does have a good line where he says the Disasters want to throw their weight around. That’s ok, because the LOD want to throw the Natural Disasters’ weight around too.

Tag Titles: Legion of Doom vs. Natural Disasters

This is tag match #3 out of 4 matches. The Rumble is next, thank goodness. This undercard has been crap in every sense of the word. The matches aren’t interesting and other than Piper vs. Mountie, nothing of note has happened. I mean really, Owen and Neidhart vs. two jobbers and jobbers fighting jobbers. How interesting does that sound? At least this should be kind of fun at least. LOD’s pop is great.

Naturally this is mainly just a strength contest to begin with. Dang it with the stupid formula stuff all night long. I can almost call out the match as it goes. It’s just generic stuff that power guys do with the Disasters taking control for most of the match. Why should I be interested in this? In short, I’m not, and I like these teams. Here’s the comeback. Yeah, I really don’t care about this. That’s the problem with a huge match like the Rumble for the title closing the show.

Also the talent is all in the main event so no one is interested in something like this. The good thing is that the Rumble should be pretty star studded. Oh come on. A freaking COUNT OUT??? That’s how we end this? We don’t event get a solid ending after having to sit through that? I’m already annoyed and that’s what I get for it? Freaking bad booking there and it got no reaction at all. When the LOD get no reaction, you can tell there’s no interest at all. The Disasters won by the way.

Rating: D. This just feels like a bad house show so far. I mean really, the IC Title changing hands is the only thing on the whole show so far worth mentioning and that was a five minute squash. As for this match, it was just boring. This was like a trailer for a future match. It didn’t work at all and I wasn’t interested in it. Factor in that I’m a big fan of the LOD and the Disasters so this was a great sounding match to me, yet it falls flat. This show has sucked so far, and it has sucked HARD.

Sean is with the Natural Disasters. Man he must have been wearing Eau de Twinkie or something to get them back there that fast. They say they should be champions because they won. That’s actually a good argument: they beat the champions in a title match. That sounds to me like a title change. All it means is the feud continues. Thanks for that.

Piper is FIRED UP over winning the IC Title. He’s even more insane than usual. If you don’t believe that wrestlers use cocaine, find a copy of this interview and I guarantee your view will change. He dedicates it to Colt, without saying who that is. It’s his son. I like that. It was really quick and didn’t come off as cheesy at all. Roddy Piper being quick and simple. You’ll never hear that again.

Sean is with Shawn Michaels who is freshly heel turned. It’s a week after the Barber Shop, which we recap so this is the first televised Shawn appearance as a heel. We get a replay of it, and Heenan saying that Shawn doesn’t need Jannetty is awesome. Shawn is about the level of Chris Masters if he’s lucky here, so this is the epitome of filler.

Back then, the implication that Shawn could win the world title was absurd. Now it’s a legit possibility if he’s every wrestling for it. He’s a textbook example of someone rising through the ranks, so keep an eye on people you see. You’ll never know what they could become.

Hayes is with Flair in what must be an intermission. That makes sense. With the Rumble coming up, you want to give the people a chance to get popcorn or a burger or a Coke or something like that. For once, I agree with that idea. Flair says he was #3. This was for the home video release as no one ever said what number they had.

Flair cuts a generic promo with a chipped tooth. That looks odd. You can tell he is excited though despite how calm he looks. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: Flair in his prime was as good as anyone else, plain and simple.

Savage says that he’s won the title before and he can do it again.

Sid, who was rapidly becoming a major force in the company a la Batista in 2005, says that he’ll be champion.

Repo “Smash” Man says that he could take the title. If you ever want to see someone that has gone from one gimmick to another with such smoothness, look right here.

British Bulldog, who was the real dark horse for the title here, won a battle royal in London so he’s got some recent experience in these matches. It sucks that he never got the title because I think he could have been a solid transitional guy. He certainly had the power for it and that powerslam could beat anyone.

As Jake and I discussed once though, there was never really a time for him to do that, other than maybe beating Diesel at Great White North, but even then I don’t know if it would have worked. He was really awesome though.

Jake says he’ll get what he wants. He would be gone by Spring.

Flair and Perfect say Flair will win. Perfect comes off like a television pitch man here and it works really well in a weird way. Flair’s promo here is in his over the top style and it works like an absolute charm. This was a combination that was so awesome it’s unreal.

The just about to turn face Undertaker says he’ll win the title again atop a pile of carnage.

Hogan says that today he gets to prove a point. Amazingly, there are the slightest heel tones here. That could never happen, could it? More on that later.

And now it’s FINALLY time for the Rumble. Heenan is nearly hyperventilating. This has me hyped despite how bad the earlier stuff was. Shut up Howard! I want my Rumble! Oh there we go. OH BLAST IT it’s freaking Jack Tunney. The booing is about as audible as you could imagine. This guy is just annoying.

I think he forgets the name of the match. He tries to say it and then calls it this event. Even Heenan is shouting to get this going. Tunney was annoying as hall. After another request for Heenan to be serious, it’s time to get going at last.

Royal Rumble

Bulldog is in at #1. Heenan is absolutely hilarious here with how worried he is. DiBiase is in second and someone actually has a Sherri shirt. I didn’t know they even made those. This isn’t a bad way to start: a pair of guys that should be in the Hall of Fame. DiBiase hits the ring and we’re off immediately. The beauty of the format they have this year is that there’s automatically a story in there with the title on the line.

Gorilla says that DiBiase has been very successful in Rumbles as of late. As of late? There’s one a year, so as of late equals the last two years I guess. Not to mention DiBiase didn’t even wrestle in the 91 Rumble but rather in a tag match. So in other words, doing well as of late now means that two years ago he got about two thirds of the way through. Heenan points out that someone should just hit the floor and kill time, which is actually a very smart thing to do and perfectly legal.

They establish early on that Martel holds the Iron Man record, so that more or less guarantees that it’ll be broken or heavily challenged. They mention that Luke has the record for shortest time, which is incorrect as he was in there nearly twice as long as Warlord. My goodness I’m a geek. DiBiase is out in less than two minutes as Bulldog hits a dropkick to be all alone. Flair is third and I have to rewind it a few times to get Bobby’s reaction again. He PANICS.

Gorilla says Brain can kiss it goodbye. This sets the stage for the rest of the match as we all know that it’s going to be the Flair Show here, so let’s see what we’ve got. For one thing he’s rocking the black robe that’s always been my favorite. He’s strutting early so you know this is going to be good. The atmosphere here is off the charts. Heenan and Gorilla are stealing the show though with their commentary as Heenan is panicking and Monsoon is needling him for all he’s worth.

Smith gets Flair to the apron but doesn’t watch him hit the floor. Dang he’s got to stop doing that. Jerry Sags of the Nasty Boys is 4. Sags jumps Smith, and in the words of Dusty Rhodes, “HE BE CLUBBERIN! AND HE’S GOT A BICYCLE!” Smith puts Sags out with the same move he used on DiBiase so we’re back down to Flair and Smith. Gorilla says that all’s fair in the Rumble. I need to mark that down as I’m sure he’ll contradict that later on.

Out fifth is Haku, Heenan’s old client. He goes right for Smith, which leads to a brief double team. Flair goes for Haku and gets chased to the floor. You can see Flair planning everything he does as he’s being the sneaky master and playing it to the hilt. He goes to Haku’s head with a knee drop which as I’m coming up with a joke Heenan points out that it won’t hurt Haku. He’s a proud Samoan stereotype.

After Haku beats on Flair even more, Smith dumps him with relative ease. HBK is in at 6, as Gorilla gets in another great line with “Some guys hate Flair more than others.” HBK has connections with both guys in there so that’s actually rather interesting. Michaels hits a crescent kick to Flair as it’s years away from having a name yet. Flair pops up almost, but to be fair it looked like he got his hands up.

Smith puts Shawn to the apron and DOESN’T MAKE SURE HE HITS THE FLOOR! My goodness you would think he would have learned his lesson for three years later. Shawn goes for the kick on Smith but it literally doesn’t make contact with his head at all. The way the camera is set up couldn’t have been worse as you can clearly see the foot going over Smith’s shoulder.

He sells it more than Flair did though so there we are. Heenan is looking for a drink with a kick. He’s really the highlight of this match not named Flair. Shawn gets crotched on the top rope in a spot that never gets old. Santana is in at seven in his El Matador gimmick.

He goes for Flair as Bobby is screaming for Perfect to get out here. So far, seven guys and seven champions. That’s pretty good. Actually, all seven guys were at one time in their WWF/E careers, tag team champions. That’s quite impressive I’d say.

Flair gets his first low blow in of the match on Smith which Heenan doesn’t even deny. You know this is a big match based on that alone. Heenan says he’d do that to his grandmother if he had to. That’s just hilarious. The Flying Jalapeno puts Flair down as Barbarian comes in to break the tag champions streak. How did he still have a job at this point? Gorilla points out in a near creepy tone that Barbarian doesn’t like Flair either. He’s the jobber I guess.

Texas Tornado, who beat Flair for the world title back in I think 84 is in at number 9. Flair goes right after him to renew their rivalry. Von Erich was pure jobber here as he hadn’t meant a thing in about a year and a half at this point. Heenan points out his old strategy of bringing in a big wrench and beating people with it to win. That’s either brilliant or cause for a citizen’s arrest. At number ten, stealing the single digit monopoly is the Repo Man. WOW that joke sucked.

His comedy here is impressive, especially considering at one time he eliminated Andre the Freaking Giant from the Rumble. Heenan points out an interesting thing: why should Repo run to the ring? Why not avoid some punishment? That’s actually really smart. I’d do it. Slide in the ring then slide back out and go out into the crowd or something then climb in at the end. Stupid kayfabe messing stuff up.

Greg the Jobber Valentine is in at 11. He and Flair know each other pretty well too. It amazes me how many people Flair has interacted with over the years. That’s very impressive. Think of it like this: Taker has been around forever right? He needs another ten years to be around as long as Flair, and he’ll likely be gone in five years. Michaels is literally holding on by a single foot which would become his trademark.

In at 12 is the 320lb Lithuanian Nikolai Volkoff! For some reason that’s a popular line that I’ve just never gotten but it originated here. Still, only Barbarian has never been WWF/E tag champion of the entrants so far. For no reason whatsoever, Valentine puts Flair in the Figure Four as Volkoff is thrown out. Gee thanks for coming Nicky. Boss Man, rapidly approaching jobberville, breaks the Rumble into its teen angst years by being number 13.

He just punches the heck out of everyone, namely Flair. Valentine is tossed pretty easily. Repo is thrown with ease as Boss Man is clearing the ring which was desperately needed. Flair surprisingly back drops both Smith and Von Erich out with relative ease. Those came out of nowhere. That leaves us with Flair, Santana, Shawn, Boss Man and Barbarian in case you were wondering.

Shawn and Santana eliminate each other to set up their forgettable Mania match as Hercules is in at 14 and hammers on Flair. Flair high fives Barbarian and then chops him to send Heenan to his 10th heart attack of the match. Barbarian tries to dump Flair, but Hercules dumps Barbarian and gets dumped by Boss Man, leaving us with the cop and Flair. Well I’ll give them this: there haven’t been any dead spots.

Flair hits nearly 30 minutes as Boss Man does some weird martial arts thing. Flair throws him out with ease again as Heenan says that’s enough and Flair should be world champion. We get to the end of the first half with Roddy freaking Piper! The fans are freaking here as they hit the floor through the middle rope. Piper is hammering him. Flair hits an atomic drop but gets the Three Stooges eye poke for his troubles.

Piper goes WAY old school with the Airplane Spin, the finisher of Gorilla Monsoon himself to set up a sleeper. Now this strikes me as odd. Piper beat Mountie with a sleeper after beating on him for about four minutes and Mountie was out like a light. Flair has been out there for about 30 minutes and he can stand a longer sleeper than Mountie who was 5 minutes removed from being fresh? Does that just sound odd to you?

In another weird looking thing, Piper knocks Flair out with it and then picks him up and puts it back on him. Well ok then. Jake is in at 16 but wisely just sits back and lets Piper beat on Flair. That’s really smart when you think about it. Why should he risk getting thrown out or use any energy? That’s what people mean when they talk about wrestling psychology. Anyway he jumps Piper from behind as Heenan is all of a sudden a Jake fan. DAng it I love Heenan.

Jake starts the DDT sequence on Flair and Heenan actually thanks Piper for the save. Literally seconds later, he’s calling Piper a no good skirt wearing freak. Bobby really is cracking me up here. Seventeenth is Jim Duggan who gets a pop and a half. What is the appeal of this guy? I’ve yet to see him not get a huge ovation. Gorilla admits that he’s impressed by Flair.

With Flair on his stomach, Heenan says he’s on his feet. I guess you can’t always be awesome. IRS is in at 18th as this match is going really fast for some reason. He more or less beats on everyone and gets his tie pulled. Now that’s just not that neighborly. Nineteenth is Snuka who is about as much of a jobber as you could ask for at this point. He just had been passed by and it’s a shame considering how innovative he really was.

Also he needs to wear the short tights as they just work better for him. Gorilla and Heenan go over the big names remaining and Heenan panics some more to give me yet another great laugh. Gorilla slips up though and says that the big names get preferential treatment. Oh that’s not going to go over well with Vince at all. I can picture the screaming he’ll be doing. Granted I’d need to turn up the volume to hear but the visual is awesome.

We crack the top 20 with the Deadman who is just about to go face as I mentioned above. He’s also got Paul Bearer now so things look as normal as they can with him. There goes Snuka and he’s on Flair now. Heenan is just gone at this point, screaming that it’s over and he has nothing left. Taker actually goes low to stop Duggan. That’s not something you see very often at all. The twenty first guy is Savage to a solid pop.

There is some amazing talent in there. Jake runs for his life of course as he continues to has such a mastery of the psychology. A high knee from Savage takes him out though and in a moment of insanity he jumps over the top and takes out Roberts. They make a last second save though and say that he jumped himself so he’s still in, which contradicts everything they’ve ever said as far as rules go so there we go.

I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone screwed up that was supposed to win and got thrown out by mistake. It would be interesting if nothing else. Taker and Savage are going at it. That’s a very interesting match indeed. Piper and Duggan are kind of hard to tell apart. It’s annoying. Gorilla is surprised that Flair is fighting, which means low blows and punches but whatever.

Berserker is in at 22 as we’re really getting close to the ending here. You can tell Heenan is nervous as he says that Flair should weasel his way out. That’s amusing on many levels. 23 is…Virgil. Well I guess they had to have a few jobbers in there. We get the old standard of jokes as Brain says that Virgil took the gold belt and had it bronzed. Granted that’s a smart idea considering it would be very rare.

Taker is choking Flair. There’s really not a lot going on here as it’s just a lot of basic stuff. However they’re managing to keep it interesting which is hard to do. Piper beats on Virgil, his former student. Twenty four is Colonel Mustafa, who has a job despite the war having been over for a year now.

Vince, learn how to drop a gimmick when you need to. That’s a very important life lesson. For some reason Monsoon calls Flair Martel twice in a row and isn’t corrected. WE ARE LIVE! To make things even more confusing, Martel is #25. He’s naturally a heel here and goes right for Flair for no apparent reason other than logic. Savage throws Mustafa out to no reaction at all.

It’s Hogan in at 26 to set the arena on fire. He grabs Taker and Flair so there we go. Hogan takes out Taker with a clothesline and then backdrops Berserker out about three seconds later to clear the ring out a bit. That’s good too as it was really needed at that point. Virgil and Duggan eliminate each other so we’re four men lighter than we were a second ago.

Make that three as Skinner is here at 27. Hogan has Flair up and Bobby starts crying in perhaps the funniest part of the match yet which is saying a lot. He starts praying which has me cracking up despite having watched this match at least 10 times. He again pleads for a drink as he sounds like an AA dropout. Quick recap: Flair, Hogan, Skinner, Piper, Martel, IRS and Savage and they’re joined by Sgt. Slaughter.

That means there are ten guys possible that can win. Martel puts Skinner out to a yawn from most people. Hogan and Piper go at it and all things are right with the world again. Flair has set the Iron Man record, which Bobby says is good enough to make him champion. 29th is Sid Justice who is a major face at this time. That means that thirty will be Warlord for no reason at all. Flair is still on offense which is pretty cool.

There’s Warlord and for some bad reason, Flair goes to the top. I wish Heenan noticed it too as it would be great. He and Hogan are on the floor now and Flair takes a suplex. Ok, so the final guys are Flair, Hogan, Piper, Martel, IRS, Savage, Slaughter, Sid and Warlord. There goes Slaughter so we’re doing to 8. Since I just reviewed Wrestling Classic an hour or so ago, I smell a bad tournament! In a very funny moment, Piper is in trouble from IRS but he grabs the tie and eliminates him with it.

That’s great stuff. Hogan Hulks Up after a chop and Flair is scared to death. Hogan and Sid easily dump Warlord, which for some reason surprises Gorilla. Ok then. Sid dumps Martel and Piper to get us down to Hogan, Flair, Sid and Savage. That’s a pretty good final four. Savage is gone and we’re at three. Hulk Hulks Up again. Flair can’t do the Flair Flip which is impressive since he’s worked this long.

Hogan is dumped from out of nowhere by Sid and the ending is clear now. Hogan screams that Sid stole his belt and grabs his arm. Flair sneaks up behind him and throws him out to win the title. Bobby’s orgasm could flood the whole state of New York. Hogan keeps going after Sid on the floor to make sure that no one but him gets the spotlight. Heenan says yes 32 times inside of a minute. That’s impressive.

Rating: A+. This is the greatest Rumble of all time, hands down. The emotion, the action, the ending, and the talent were all top level and it worked perfectly. Watch this Rumble right now as it’s worth every minute of it.

Now for the interesting part. As Flair and Perfect leave, we have Sid and Hogan fighting in the ring, and you can hear the fans booing Hogan and cheering for Sid. This of course had NOTHING to do with Hogan thinking it was time to retire and it was all his idea.

In the back, Tunney presents the title to Flair in front of the “press”. Flair cuts one of my all time favorite promos as he talks about what it means to be a champion. He’s just dripping with emotion here and he gets a nice little jab in at the NWA and WCW by saying that it’s just the WWF Title that means anything in wrestling.

This was a very novel idea at the time as other than the inaugural Survivor Series, no heel had ever won the main event on PPV before in the WWF (Taker vs. Hogan wasn’t the main event technically). That’s simply amazing and Flair says that it’s his time now and he just proved it. He’s absolutely right.

Overall Rating: B. That’s how good the Rumble is. Other than that and the moment of Piper winning, this show is horrible. Look at it. It’s just random stuff thrown on there with zero rhyme or reason. That’s the problem with having such a great Rumble: you take away the rest of the card.

Now to be fair, they were really betting the farm on the main event working and to say it paid off is an understatement. The main event is incredible stuff that will not get old to me no matter how many times I see it. I think the recommendation here is pretty easy: watch the Rumble and then watch it again. That’s more interesting than the first half of the show.

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Monday Night Raw
Date: March 4, 2002
Location: Frank Erwin Center, Austin, Texas
Attendance: 8,849
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

We’re heading into Mania here with I believe only the go home show after this. The NWO is in town tonight and they’re not happy with Austin. This is a request for something that happens in here if I remember it right. The main event tonight is Angle vs. HHH in a cage, which I guess is some kind of softening up match for HHH that I’d assume Jericho had something to do with setting up. Let’s get to it.

We open the show with a shot of Vince who says Flair won’t be here tonight, drawing big booing. Vince says that therefore tonight it’s Fan Appreciation Night and announces the aforementioned cage match. His eyes look all crazy here and he says tonight things are back to normal. Oh yeah this was when Flair was making him crazy.

A member of the NWO will be in action tonight. No name is given but that’s intentional.

Steve Austin vs. Booker T

Now how’s THAT for an opener? Booker is mad about losing his shampoo deal and Austin has a bad knee due to the NWO. If I remember right they broke a cinder block over his leg. For no apparent reason his OTHER knee was bandaged afterwards but whatever. They go into the corner to start and it’s a brawl. Austin does some WHAT stomping and some WHAT chopping. Booker takes over with an elbow shot and stomps Austin down into the corner. Off to a chinlock and here’s the NWO, meaning the match is thrown out. It wasn’t long enough to rate but it was nothing special.

Austin VERY clearly blades on camera and then gets hit in the face with a wrench to bust him open. Booker is gone. There’s something so awesome about Austin and Hogan being in the same ring. This just kind of goes on. By that I mean for like 4-5 minutes. Hall Stuns him.

After a break, Austin is STILL in the ring. Ever Austin, he won’t take the stretcher out.

Scotty 2 Hotty/Albert vs. Test/Mr. Perfect

What a strange heel team. Test says Perfect is his partner for the fans or something like that. It’s not Booker due to him being in the match earlier. Albert vs. Perfect to get us going. Test comes in without his tag being seen so Test beats on him instead. Perfect comes in but can’t Perfectplex him and there’s the tag to Scotty. No one, I mean no one, cares. Everything breaks down and Scotty loads up the Worm on Test….and then he walks into a Perfectplex for the win. This was nothing.

Test and Perfect beat him down until Rikishi of all people makes the save. Perfect gets a Stinkface.

Angle makes fun of the What chants and is glad there’s a cage match tonight. HHH needs to worry about him. Angle says he has nothing to lose tonight.

Tough Enough 2 premieres Thursday.

We get a clip from Smackdown where Goldust stole the Hardcore Title from Maven.

Speaking of Goldie, he’s in the ring with Lillian for an interview. That was the first 24/7 rule usage in years so Goldust quotes movies. Taker was Hardcore Champion for awhile but no one challenged him out of fear. Cue Taz with a challenge.

Hardcore Title: Taz vs. Goldust

Taz takes over to start and kicks Goldie low. Jackie is the referee for no apparent reason. Shattered Dreams to Taz and here come the weapons. Taz kicks a trashcan into his head and there’s the Tazmission which is easily broken up with a trashcan lid shot, which is also good for the pin. NEXT.

The NWO is drinking Austin’s beer. Nash says he’s bored so let’s go take a walk.

RVD is fighting Regal later and won that shot after winning a triple threat last week, which we get clips of. Oh wait the match with Regal is at Mania. He gets Storm tonight and Storm pops up, saying he’ll be serious tonight. Rob says lighten up so Storm slaps him. Rob says that’s cool, we’ll settle it in the ring.

We look at a history of Christian freaking out on Arn Anderson because he wants to quit. DDP comes up and becomes his mentor or something. Page says we can start with a smile. Anderson has no idea what to think of this.

Page and Christian are in the back working on Christian’s Page-esque grin. It doesn’t work but Page says that’s a good thing. Christian gets a phone call and says pull the plug. His grandmother is about to die and apparently when she dies he gets a lot of money. Page has no idea what to think of that. Somewhat funny stuff.

The NWO beat up a stage hand wearing an Austin shirt.

Godfather is at WWF New York. He’s been back for like a month and a half and has done nothing at all.

Women’s Title: Jazz vs. Trish Stratus

Jazz is champion. Trish tries to fire away but Jazz is just too strong. Jazz slams her down and drops a leg for two. She hooks a wicked STF and Trish is in trouble. Trish finally makes the rope and makes her comeback. The not yet named Chick Kick gets two. Stratusfaction is blocked and Jazz literally throws her so hard she rips Trish’s top off. Now Trish hooks an STF on Jazz who also makes a rope. Trish won’t break on 5 and it’s a DQ.

Rating: D. The match sucked but it’s the first match out of four that I can actually rate. When you’re almost halfway done with the show and it’s the first match to break 3 minutes, you might be having a problem. For absolutely no apparent reason, Trish didn’t win the title in her hometown of Toronto at Mania. I still don’t get that.

Stephanie is on the phone with Y2J. Jericho is lost in Greenich and is trying to find Stephanie’s lotion called Pristine Mist. Of I remember this episode. HHH pops up behind her with a box. She finally sees him and gets off the phone. HHH makes Stephanie is a W**** jokes and Stephanie finds a bottle of her lotion in the box.

Here’s Taker on the bike. His match at Mania was with Flair, but Ric is taking care of a family emergency. Oh wait it’s not set yet. Taker is trying to get him to agree to the match. Got it. We get a clip from last week with Taker beating up Arn Anderson. Since that wasn’t enough though, Taker went on a little trip this morning. He says Flair is at a hospital tonight, because Taker left him no other choice.

This morning, Taker went to visit Flair’s oldest son, David. We see a clip from this morning where David is training at a WWF facility. Taker comes in and DESTROYS him. They go into a shower and Taker gives commentary. This is really reminiscent of Gunner going nuts a few weeks ago on Impact, but Twith more talented people. David: “What are you doing?” Taker: “What do you think I’m doing? Beating you up! That’s what I’m doing.” Taker kind of cuddles him and talks to Ric. It’s implied that Taker will beat up more Flairs if Ric doesn’t say yes.

Rob Van Dam vs. Lance Storm

Rob beat him last night on Heat which is why this match is happening in the first place. Er…second place. They quickly head to the floor and RVD hits the spinning kick to the back. RVD tries his rolling monkey flip into the corner but Lance kicks the knee out. Can’t argue with the thought process there. Van Dam fights out of the corner but Storm breaks up the Five Star attempt and hits a superplex for two.

Storm wraps the leg around the post and Rob is in trouble. How nice it is to see a match actually getting some time on this show. There’s a leg drag and Storm hooks the Mapleleaf. See? PSYCHOLOGY AGAIN!!! To be fair though, he was trained in the Dungeon so you know he’s going to be smart. Rob gets in a shot but can’t jump to the top due to the knee. Storm tries another superplex but gets knocked down and a sunset bomb gets two. Springboard clothesline gets two for the Canadian. A spinwheel kick puts Lance down and the Five Star ends it.

Rating: B-. For a five minute TV match, this was pretty awesome. It’s no classic or anything and it might be due to how weak the wrestling has been on this show so far, but I was digging this. Then again I like Storm’s in ring stuff so I’m extra biased. Still though, fun match and I was really liking it.

The NWO plays Rock Paper Scissors to determine who wrestles tonight and pours hot coffee onto the coffee checker. Who has a guy whose job is just to check coffee? Hall is wrestling tonight if you’re curious.

Music video on Rock set to P.O.D.’s I Feel So Alive. This was a recurring thing they were doing at this time, usually set to My Sacrifice by Creed. I could do without the song when I see him ask Hogan for the match at Mania, which is still a pretty awesome moment. This eats up a bit too much time. Rock is cool and all, but is there really a point to this?

Back to the NWO and we hear that Rock is going to be at Smackdown. They have a hopper with names in it. They use it to pick Hall’s opponent. Hogan: “I hope it’s not Andre the Giant.” They seem nervous, so I’ll set the Squash-O-Meter at about a 15/10.

The NWO is in the ring and Hall says the fans appreciate the beating he gave Austin. Whoever comes out next, he sees as Steve Austin.

Scott Hall vs. Spike Dudley

I’m as shocked as you are, and I knew who the opponent was. What exactly do you expect here? Jerry calls Spike Austin, Hall is in street pants and an NWO shirt, Spike gets in a few shots and it lasts about 150 seconds. Razor’s Edge ends it.

Mark Henry returns. Recently he won a strongman contest. He’s officially the World’s Strongest Man. And so it begins.

The cage is lowered.

We go to the back and Angle comes in to see Stephanie, who has her back to us. He sees her and says “Holy sweet mother of God.” I remember this and I thought it was hilarious. Not the payoff but Kurt’s reaction. The camera swings around and Stephanie’s skin is all messed up because HHH switched her lotion with something else. She freaks and it’s a pretty funny scene.

Kurt Angle vs. HHH

Cage match, escape only. They feel each other out to start for a few seconds but it’s quickly a fist fight. Angle goes for the door so HHH kicks him low. All Game so far. Angle finally hits a clothesline to take over. He goes for the escape but HHH throws him back to the mat. A low blow puts HHH down as Jerry keeps talking about HHH’s balls. Belly to belly puts HHH down and Kurt pounds him in the corner.

Here are some rolling Germans for HHH. He goes to leave but the door isn’t allowed to be open. Uh….why not? HHH comes back with a facebuster and up he goes. Angle’s attempted save misses but his second works. Back to the ring they go as Jerry talks about HHH. Angle Slam hits as the door was open for a bit. Angle walks into a Pedigree but here’s Stephanie.

To her credit she rams Teddy into the cage and slams the door on HHH’s head because that’s what you do to guys about to win cage matches. Angle goes to leave but Stephanie won’t let him out so he’ll hurt HHH more. HHH is busted a bit by a shot into the cage. Angle goes to leave but walks in on his own decision.

HHH counters with a slingshot into the cage and both guys are down. Stephanie slides a chair in but it’s right between the two guys so it’ll likely be a race to who gets it. Double clothesline puts both guys down. HHH grabs a DDT onto the chair and climbs. Stephanie comes in and cracks him with the chair the does it again. She grabs Kurt and pulls him out for the win while HHH is stuck in the ropes.

Rating: C. Did you know Stephanie was involved in this? If not, just open your eyes, because she’s in it EVERY TWO SECONDS. Angle could have been anyone out there and it wouldn’t have mattered. He was there as a soldier for Stephanie but in the end she had better luck against HHH than he did. Gee, I can’t imagine who wrote this storyline can you?

Overall Rating: D. The matches were short, the main event was weak, and if it weren’t for the 5 million videos about it, I wouldn’t have had any idea that Mania was coming. It’s two weeks before the biggest show of the year and the world champion doesn’t even make a cameo? Does something seem wrong about that? Anyway, nothing to see here and a really weak show before what I thought was an underwhelming Mania.

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