Wrestlepalooza 1998
Date: May 3, 1998
Location: Cobb County Civic Center, Marietta, Georgia
Attendance: 3,401
Commentator: Joey Styles

It’s been two months since Living Dangerously and not a lot has changed. It’s still Snow vs. Douglas as Snow’s insane rise in popularity continues. Candido and Storm are still champions that hate each other and are defending the belts tonight in a storyline that NO ONE has ever seen before. Van Dam has begun his two year long reign with the title and has his first big defense tonight: he’s fighting Sabu. Oh this could hurt a lot. Let’s get to this as the card looks somewhere between bad and ok.

We do the intro video before the show introduction this time which I like a lot better. The other way just takes me out of the show for some reason. It usually feels like they forgot to do the show opening or something and then went back to it.

F.B.I. vs. BWO

Suddenly I want some alphabet soup. It’s Tracy Smothers and Guido vs. Super Nova and Blue Meanie. The BWO itself is actually over and dead but they both wear blue and team together still so there we are. I want to hit Tommy Rich. The guy is just freaking annoying. He gets a huge F YOU chant directed at him so at least Georgia fans are intelligent. Nova and Guido, the two talented guys, start us out.

Nova is a superhero by the way. Meanie is just a fat guy that has nothing else going for him. Nova is well known for having a very unorthodox offense and it’s on display here. Meanie comes in and Rich says we need to have a dance contest. And the referee dances too. THANKFULLY Smothers jumps Meanie to end this mindlessness. And the referee slams both heels to get two on Smothers. What the heck am I watching???

Finally we get something sensible as Smothers hits a nice bicycle kick to Nova’s head. Meanie can’t even get into the ring correctly. This is what critics mean when they say this company was a joke. When you’re that sloppy, you have no business being in a ring on a major show at all. Meanie misses the moonsault, which is just about the only move Meanie could do without injuring someone else. Nova hits a downward spiral for the pin. And the faces do the YMCA afterwards. My head hurts again.

Rating: D+. It wasn’t bad, but for the most part it was an unfunny comedy match. Nova was cool, but other than that there was just noting at all that stood out here for me. Meanie was just a fat tub of goo that never did anything of note outside of ECW (Bluedust was nothing of note and yes I know he was in WWF for awhile) and the FBI were always annoying to me. It’s not bad but it’s nothing to write home about, or better yet it’s nothing to review. Wait what?

We recap Justin Credible vs. Mikey Whipwreck. This feud is STILL going? This was just a way to get Justin over which completely failed as there was one simple problem: Justin wasn’t any good. Paul kept trying to tell us he was but it simply wasn’t there. Justin got pushed until the company folded and was getting said push over guys like RVD. That should explain a lot to you.

Justin Credible vs. Mikey Whipwreck

So Mikey’s destroyed knee is all of a sudden fine. Good to know. He gets some good punches in and we’re on the floor already. They throw Justin into the crowd and he more or less crushes a fan. I get that this is a different kind of company, but dude, don’t half crush your fans. Justin shoves Mikey off the apron so that he crashes into the guard rail. We have our first chair of the evening and Mikey takes a SICK bump into it.

That looked like it would have nearly killed him but of course he’s fine. The fans chant Aldo at Justin. He was Aldo Montoya in WWF in case you didn’t know that. If nothing else he gets a nice counter to the Whippersnapper (Stunner, which Mikey used way before Austin) by just hooking him in a reverse DDT. It was very nice indeed. These fans are really annoying.

I get that they’re a major aspect of ECW, but to fans like me who aren’t huge fans and are the audience that ECW needed to grab in order to stay in business, they’re very annoying indeed. Justin gets suplexed through a table which of course is impressive even though we see it about five times a show.

And now it’s just about the chair and nothing else. It’s just big spot, two count, chair spot, two count, big spot, two count over and over again. Chastity, the valet of Credible, takes a BAD Whippersnapper off the top. And Justin gets the tombstone out of nowhere onto the chair for the pin. I hated that ending.

Rating: D+. So in other words, Justin lost twice in a row but he gets a more or less fluke win here and he wins the feud. ECW and most other wrestling companies have a major problem with this and it drives me insane. Just because you win the last match in a feud doesn’t mean you win the feud. Take Dreamer vs. Raven for example: Dreamer “won” the feud, but he lost probably 100 times and got one victory. How does that make him the winner?

As for this match, the ending was just big spot after big spot and then Justin got the tombstone for the random pin. That’s supposed to make sense I guess. Justin, who is supposed to be the best wrestler in the world according to Heyman, did nothing other than a throw into the guard rail all match but hits one big move to win the thing. That’s GREAT wrestling indeed Paul.

Rotten and Mahoney want their shot at the titles. They demand a shot and just get one. Ok then.

ECW Tag Titles: Hardcore Chair Swinging Freaks vs. Chris Candido/Lance Storm

They still hate each other and even though they don’t get along and fight each other, they manage to beat every team in the company as they do it. Don’t you just love Heyman’s brilliance? Mind you the challengers were in the arena to make their challenge yet the champions are here first. In a funny spot, they argue over who gets top billing. Oh I get it now: the champions came to the ring and were introduced before they actually accepted the challenge. Is Heyman even thinking?

The Freaks are Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney in case you were wondering. To my surprise we start with a wrestling sequence. Something tells me this isn’t going to last long. Good night Balls Mahoney is worthless. Rotten is trying to wrestle which works ok but it’s hard to take a guy who wrestles for a team called the Hardcore Chair Swingin Freaks seriously. They do a standard tag match here and it’s really not that bad. I’m very surprised. Rotten throws chops and the fans WOO.

They start a BRING IN FLAIR chant and my head begins to hurt. First off, just no. Second off, isn’t that exactly what ECW is supposed to be against? Third of all, I love how they just assume Heyman can afford that. The fans were stupid at times and were dragged around by Heyman by their noses. It’s really pathetic at times. Sunny shows up and the champions fight over Storm saving her. “Hey! You keep your hands off my fiancé! If she dies who cares??? YOU JUST STAY AWAY!”

And now we get to the flat out stupid part of the match. Balls hits his finisher. There’s no one around. They should win the titles. He goes to get a chair. That’s almost understandable I guess. Now let’s have the stupid part. He turns around with the chair in his hand and Storm jumps up with a springboard to come at Mahoney.

What does he do you ask? Does he throw the chair at Storm? Does he, oh I don’t know, MOVE? Nope. He puts the chair in front of his face so Storm can kick it into Balls’ head. That was just pathetic looking. On and Candido hits Storm with the chair so he can get the pin and they fight back to the locker room. This has NEVER been done before!

Rating: C+. Other than the freaking idiotic stuff at the end, this was ok. The key thing: for the most part they kept things toned down and had a wrestling match. Since Barely Legal they’ve toned the violence down a good bit and it’s been helping a lot. This was ok and would have been a lot better had the ending not sucked as much.

Ad for the merchandise catalogue and Heat Wave 98. That one’s coming soon.

We have a “Legends” ceremony from earlier. It’s Junkyard Dog, Dick Slater, Masked Superstar (Ax from Demolition) and Bullet Bob Armstrong. You know, a bunch of old NWA guys, because ECW and the NWA got along SO well. This was a nice idea, but when you look at it this was just stupid.

Shane Douglas, who is apparently held together with tape at this point, is brought out to be told about how tough he is. So despite all these injuries, it’s fairly obvious he’ll win tonight. We’ll get to the pure idiocy of this later. He runs down the WWF and Shawn, who had just left with the broken back that kept him out for four and a half years. Oh and he runs Flair down too. If Shane drew in the entire run of ECW what Flair or Shawn drew in a single year, I’d be stunned.

This is just Shane saying how great he is and how tough he is and how tonight might be his last match. Taz comes out to tease their showdown. Nope, we’ve still got another 8 months before that because the top face vs. the top heel isn’t a match we can have when the fans are begging for it of course. We get what might be the first F Bomb on an ECW PPV. Taz demands the Title be handed to him instead of you know, winning it.

Taz does a weird looking choke out that wasn’t the Tazmission and security breaks it up. Like I said, this match wouldn’t happen for EIGHT MONTHS. What they were waiting on is beyond me. Bigelow comes out to fight Taz and that’s broken up too. They handcuff Taz and arrest him for no logical reason as Shane is spitting up blood. I love how Shane runs down Shawn but he’s going to do the same thing: make this big come from behind win over Snow which makes NO sense but they did it anyway so Shane can look awesome all over again.

Oh dang it we have a New Jack match now.

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. New Jack

GAH IT’S THIS STUPID SONG!!! Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? New Jack is going to get destroyed other than some weapons shots because the guy can’t wrestle a freaking match to save his life but hey, let’s play his song while he’s getting killed. Yep, 30 seconds in and we have weapons. Why is this appealing at all? It’s just mindless violence that has no business being called wrestling.

Bigelow is better than this on so many levels and it’s not even funny. We’re in the crowd now as that song is still playing. Bigelow just throws chairs at him as this is supposed to be entertaining. I get that some fans want this, but it makes the whole company look amateurish as a result. If this was still a regional promotion, this would be just fine. But it’s not a regional company anymore.

They wanted to go national but they can’t let go of the hardcore nonsense and it’s really hurting the product quite a bit. This is going to get at least ten minutes of about three hours. And New Jack jumps off a balcony with a guitar shot to Bigelow’s head. So even though that should likely kill both of them, the fans cheer.

And now let’s just lay around for awhile because that’s a great use of PPV time. Ok to be fair almost all wrestling companies do the laying around thing. Bigelow hits the Greetings From Asbury Park which doesn’t connect at all but whatever. At least it’s over.

Rating: F. I get why it’s here, but it still sucked and was completely worthless. At least we get Welcome to the Jungle. I hate these matches or whatever they are.

We see Dreamer and Sandman getting beaten up by the Dudleys set to a ballad of all things. That was odd.

Dudley Boys vs. Tommy Dreamer/Sandman

Sandman cuts off the always funny Gertner entrance but the song makes up for it a bit. Beaulah is about as close to perfect as you can get. This is another “grudge” match where the grudge was developed between PPVs with no explanation as to what started it or any useless information like that. I get that Sandman’s entrance is cool, but they need to cut a minute or two out of it as it just goes on forever. Yep this is going to be a massive brawl because it’s been a full 4 minutes since we saw one of those.

And there’s the first table and my eyes roll immediately. This of course devolves into a massive brawl that has no semblance of anything noteworthy at all. We get some great shots of Beaulah and that’s about it. Sandman leaves because of his neck and after about five minutes of Tommy being murdered, Spike more or less replaces Sandman.

He gets a 3D for trying to save Beaulah but Sandman comes back in a neck brace. Yeah because he was able to see the doctor and the doctor released him inside of five minutes I guess. A pair of DDTs end this and the Dudleys lose.

Rating: D-. Only reason this isn’t failing is I’ve always thought Beaulah was beyond sexy. This was just ridiculous as Dreamer survived what should have killed him to come back and be fine. It was just a total mess and it wasn’t entertaining for the most part. They had no idea what to do with the Dudleys at this point.

So Sabu had a TV Title shot here tonight against Bigelow and he sent RVD, his partner, in to beat Bigelow up a bit but Van Dam wound up winning the title, leading to this. That’s actually decent.

TV Title: Rob Van Dam vs. Sabu

Something tells me we’re going to have a ton of weapons here and I base that on the fact that it’s a Sabu match. Van Dam gets on the mic after they feel each other out a bit and says this isn’t going to happen and it was a plan. Sabu of course goes after him anyway and makes the speech completely pointless. They actually go four minutes with no weapons. That has to be a record of some kind for Sabu.

We go back to the ring at about 8 minutes in for a change of pace. Oh never mind the chair is there with him. And hey we go back to the floor AGAIN. Joey talks about how brutal it is. I couldn’t agree more. In an impressive spot, Van Dam manages to crotch himself on the guard rail when there’s no guard rail underneath him. Joey: Sabu is deadly at throwing chairs. That can’t be a good sign.

Sabu of course kicks out of the Van Daminator and the Five Star because that’s perfectly reasonable. We’ve been going about half an hour now and I think I know what’s coming. I know this isn’t a lot of text for that long of a match but it’s been about 15 minutes of them just wasting time or laying around or setting up tables and chairs.

There’s been more or less nothing of note here and I’m sure some ECW fan will explain to me that I just don’t get this match and why it’s so great. I’d love one day to watch one of these shows with an ECW fan and hear them try to defend it. Sabu kicks out of the Five Star through a table. Yep that’s perfectly realistic. The move known as Starship Pain gets two and then Sabu gets two and the bell rings for the STUPID time limit draw. They yell at each other for a long time.

Rating: D. There were some interesting drama spots near the end but for the most part this match sucked. There was so much time spent laying around and ridiculous kicking out of moves that it just stopped being interesting. Most of it was on the floor and Sabu of course botched half of what he did. This was ridiculous and the third match in a row that was stupid, and considering the obvious ending coming up, this isn’t going to be a highly received show.

We hear from Shane who reminds us that he’s VERY hurt. We get WAY too long of a recap of Shane’s career and a quick thing from Snow saying he’ll win.

ECW World Title: Al Snow vs. Shane Douglas

So Snow is more or less the hottest thing in the company’s history as everyone likes him and he’s having the best matches of his career. Shane is hurt beyond belief here so to have him win would tick off the audience and completely bury Snow more or less guarantees that Shane will keep the belt here. This starts off like a good showdown match: with both guys being in control for a good while.

This is actually decent stuff with both guys only using a chair. Snow actually kicks out of the belly to belly suplex which anywhere else would be nothing but here it’s a big deal apparently. There’s also no interference for the most part until the locker room empties to watch the match. After a Francine run in, Snow goes up top for a sunset flip which completely misses and Shane drops down for the pin.

The fans go DEAD. I mean they are as quiet as any fans ever have been in ECW history. This was just stupid booking and you can tell Joey thinks so too. This would have been like Austin losing to Michaels at Mania 14.

Rating: D+. And that’s being generous. The problem was that Heyman had booked himself into a corner as he had Taz vs. Shane which he had to build to but Snow was WAY more over than both guys and should have won the title here. However, it had to be about Shane again who no one cared about other than like 8 people. Again, he held the title EIGHT more months after this, FINALLY losing it to Taz in January before leaving a little while later.

The problem was that Snow or Taz should have had the title but by the time they pulled the trigger with Taz the company was in major trouble. Snow was literally on Raw the next night and not seen in ECW again, and why should he have been? He just lost the biggest push of his career and was more or less crippled so that Shane Douglas could get another big push. And people wonder why ECW isn’t around today.

Overall Rating: F. This show was just bad as NOTHING happened here. Seriously, the TV Title match goes to a draw, Heyman’s idiocy eats Al Snow for a solid meal, the Storm/Candido feud is STILL going on and burying a team at a time, Sandman and Dreamer beat the best team in the company despite one being in a neck brace and Credible is apparently cool for beating up a comedy champion.

What was the point here? The Snow thing is just inexcusable, period. It’s stupid stuff like this that caused Heyman to be out of business and he should be considering this crap. Oh and someone PLEASE defend RVD vs. Sabu. I want you to.

Thunder
Date: January 8, 1998
Location: Ocean Center, Daytona Beach, Florida
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Lee Marshall, Bobby Heenan

So back in 1997, WCW was on fire. That’s well known, and it’s also well known that WCW shot itself in the freaking foot and various other places to mess up at Starrcade. Before that though, they were so big that they were ready to add another show to the schedule.

The result was Thunder, which was supposed to be a show where the guys that weren’t used much could have a place to get on TV and stay in the public eye while Nitro did the heavy lifting. Goldberg and Hart were supposed to be the two big Thunder guys. Kind of think of it like ECW but a bigger deal. Anyway, this is the debut and it’s an insane 3 hours. Let’s get to it.

We start with a clip from Nitro because Savage, the guy in the opening match isn’t here yet apparently. It’s the NWO arriving in separate limps. This was supposed to be them splitting, but of course that would mean they weren’t the biggest deals in the world anymore so that got thrown out pretty quickly. Geez Tony Schiavone was annoying.

We see some suit that no one had ever heard from before or since say that if anyone is caught doing anything bad will be fined. WCW, you just fail at life.

Nick Patrick is banned from officiating until they watch the tape on Thursday. Why can’t they just watch it then?

We see ANOTHER clip from that Nitro where Luger pinned Savage on a small package and then Savage beat the tar out of him. For no apparent reason Bischoff tries to get the chair from him, I guess because of that idiotic suit from earlier. The NWO fights and Nash hits Savage while Hogan tries to play peacekeeper.

Chris Adams vs. Randy Savage

Hey we get a match! This was supposed to be five minutes ago, but instead we just happened to have a bunch of footage that fit into the time period that we needed ready for us. Chris Adams was a big deal in WCCW with his biggest thing being bringing the superkick into America. Oh and he trained Steve Austin. He’s British by the way.

We hear WAY too much about Nitro and Starrcade as we begin the time honored tradition of talking about everything in the world other than the match going on. After Savage just beats the tar out of him for awhile, Luger comes in and nails Savage so Adams can get the pin. Naturally this is HUGE for WCW. Of course Adams never did anything again. JJ Dillon comes out to validate his paycheck and does nothing.

Rating: C-. Eh it’s all about an angle that went nowhere here. In other words it’s 1998 WCW. Adams was nothing at all and he was a jobber here. It never went anywhere but it was a TWIST dang it! Nothing of note here and a stupid way to open a show.

After we get back from break, Hogan and Bischoff come out with three different songs if you can believe that. We get the NWO theme, Bischoff’s theme and finally Voodoo Child. Hogan thinks he’s champion still. Don’t worry, he would have it back in four months because no one but him could carry it more than two months of course. Hogan talks and says nothing at all.

Ad for Saturday Night, which is funny that they actually thought that meant something anymore.

Mike Tenay is with JJ Dillon who says that Savage wins by DQ, making the whole thing earlier COMPLETELY POINTLESS. Luger shows up and complains that the suit from Monday decides to do that now after a year of the NWO attacking the faces. Luger would of course join the NWO in about four months. Naturally Luger says WCW has to unite. I’m getting a headache from this show and we’re not even 25 minutes into it.

Louie Spicolli vs. Rick Martel

Yes that Rick Martel. He’s not a model but rather an old guy in a leather jacket that had decent matches. He would shred his knee to death at SuperBrawl and end his career. Spicolli is yet another guy that got over because he died. He was a midcard jobber that wasn’t very good but since he was a lifelong drug addict that died of an overdose, he’s apparently a fallen hero or something.

The set is really different here as it’s like a cave theme or something. It’s hard to describe. The Flock is here, which could have been cool but they screwed it up a million ways to Sunday. As the announcers talk about money and the NWO and suspensions etc, Martel hits a spinebuster and the Quebec Crab for the tap out.

I freaking hate WCW commentators. This was about four minutes long and they talked about the wrestlers for MAYBE 20 seconds. And hey, after the match they discuss how different the Liontamer is than his Crab, because we can’t just TALK ABOUT THE GUY IN THE RING.

Rating: C. Again, this is your standard TV match. There’s not a lot to it but it’s Martel’s second match in the company so this was nothing more than a way to get him over. You know what else might have done that? Perhaps talking about him during the match. Make him seem like a big deal. We can’t do that though so there we are.

We see a clip from Starrcade where Nash no showed so he didn’t have to job to the Giant (Big Show). Who cares that it was the biggest show in company history? That’s another reason why WCW failed: Nash wasn’t punished at all for this. This was more or less the 2nd or third biggest match on the card and likely second, but hey, Nash can’t job or anything like that, so he bailed and nothing happened.

Instead Hall and Giant had a fight instead of just having Hall, who wasn’t doing anything that night anyway, against Giant. I mean it isn’t advertised but it’s hardly Scott Norton vs. Virgil. We’ll ignore the fact that we’re getting a full clip of a segment from a PPV that aired ten days ago. No reason that the people that PAID to see this should be upset at all right?

Tenzan vs. Ohara

Tenzan is a member of NWO Japan, meaning they threw a shirt on him instead of actually having a story. They were an actual stable in Japan so of course WCW decided that this was another reason to push the NWO feud, meaning that after about 15 seconds of talking about NWO Japan, we go back to talking about Luger’s rallying cry.

Other than that they just mention the WCW/NJPW show at Starrcade 95. Oh Tenay is on commentary here for this match. Tenzan hits a diving headbutt from the top. Hey, the NWO has won twice. Hey, it means nothing but let’s talk about what it means anyway!

Rating: N/A. There was very little here but what happened was fine. It was like two minutes so there we are.

We go back to Nitro from Monday with Hart talking to Flair about the world title. Since Bret was world champion when he left, he didn’t win the world title for nearly two years. Oh and Flair and Hart are about to feud apparently. Hart saying his catchphrase to Flair is actually a cool moment. This would be light years better if they just showed the promo rather than having the Thunder sound every time they made a cut.

Chris Jericho vs. Ric Flair

There was a point to a promo! I’m in awe. Jericho cuts a funny promo talking about how he’s not going to whine anymore and gives the announcer a suit jacket. The look on Penzer’s face is very funny as he’s like “Hey I got a jacket. Ok then.” Anyway, this is apparently their first meeting.

Flair has a ton of cheering and fans and Jericho is more or less bleedin charisma and talent so naturally both lost their push in about three weeks. This was when Flair was in decent shape and could still certainly go in the ring. Jericho just goes off with kicks and speed moves and gets great heel heat with it. That doesn’t mean he should be pushed of course.

Marshall references the 1924 Yankees when he means the 27 team but whatever. Well at least if he’s making obscure references he might as well get them wrong. Scratch that and reverse it. They talk literally nonstop about Hart and Flair for the opening part of this.

They mention that Bret won five world titles but don’t mention him beating Flair for his first because Flair never went to WWF remember? That never happened, mainly because it had WCW with a leg and a foot in the grave and had WWF pouring dirt on them. They keep trying to push the idea that the belt is from 1905. In case you’re confused, you’re right to be so as it’s just insanely complicated.

Short version: it goes back to about 1993 but they’ll call it 05 anyway because it technically kinda sorta is but not really but it’s so complicated we can get away with it. The World Heavyweight Championship that Undertaker has now though is far less complicated: it’s from 2002 and looks like the WCW Title, end of story. Vince of course uses the same lineage anyway to make himself feel better so there we are.

I picked that DVD up today yet I’m here reviewing a bad TV show for you so there we are. Jericho hits a top rope elbow shot which makes him awesome as it’s one of my favorite moves ever. So after doing NOTHING to the leg, Flair gets the figure four and Jericho immediately taps. Tony, after saying many times that Flair is a 13 time world champion, says that this has to be one of Flair’s biggest wins of his career.

My jaw actually dropped when I heard that. We get an explanation of the suit jacket thing as Jericho rips Penzer’s jacket again. This was the really stupid tantrum story where Jericho would whine a lot about a loss. Christian did the same thing around Mania 18. You know, because guys with that much talent can’t get serious pushes. No one would buy good wrestlers getting pushes of course.

Rating: B-. This was fine. The ending completely sucked but that’s what you expect here. You almost have to watch these without commentary as it’s just so freaking stupid at times that you can’t believe it. Jericho was treated like crap most of the time so once his contract was up he bolted and was at least given a mic and told to talk so he did. Three or four world titles later and he’s still a failure in the main event but he’s stolen several shows and is incredibly entertaining if nothing else.

DDP t-shirt ad. I remember these and loving them. The idea was they would more or less have an item of the week with Public Enemy playing the original Cryme Tyme and stealing them out of a truck and selling them through a secret phone line. It’s a lot funnier than it sounds.

Meng vs. Giant

Meng was a freaking monster most of his career as he could even put Giant out with the Tongan Death Grip. He has my birthday too. On his way to the ring, Tony says that Flair vs. Hart is happening at Souled Out (sponsored by Snickers). Tony messes up by saying that Heenan will be in the match somehow and Heenan freaks out. Giant gets an awesome looking backdrop on Meng.

I know it sounds basic but it was just freaking pretty for some reason. They announce Giant vs. Nash for the PPV as well, which at least has something to do with the match. And of course Meng is destroying him. As they talk, Giant gets the chokeslam and Tony has to say wait a second to count the pin. Meng was trying to get the Grip on Giant and if he had actually extended his arm he might have done it.

Rating: B. That’s just for that REALLY sweet backdrop. Other than that nothing at all happened here.

Steve McMichael vs. Goldberg

This was Bill’s first feud and it was over a Super Bowl ring. This is yet ANOTHER match paid for by fans who bought Starrcade, but who cares about them? We have their money so let’s just air it for free here. McMichael is the worst seller this side of Undertaker that I’ve ever seen. Goldberg didn’t sell moves, but that was the point. Mongo is just bad at it. The spear hits, called a takedown, and Heenan thinks Goldberg might be undefeated. The Jackhammer ends this.

Rating: N/A. This was the Goldberg Special as he was booked to hide his weaknesses very well. Tony, a former sports commentator, says that Goldberg made his living playing football in the SEC. I give up.

Tag Titles: Buff Bagwell/Konnan vs. Steiner Brothers

Hey it’s more NWO! We’re not even half done with this match. How in the world is that possible? This was when Ted DiBiase was the manager. There was an angle going on where both they and the Outsiders had tag titles and a unification was coming. Tony: “The Steiners are a lot more smarter than people think.” They go over the remaining card which has one big thing in it that I’m saving for later because it completely blows my mind.

And holy crab that was the worst botch I’ve ever seen. Buff was trying to use a reverse neckbreaker on Rick and Rick fell too early so Buff was standing there with his arms in the air anyway. Buff did the move anyway and Rick sold it anyway. That sums up WCW far to easily. Oh and Buff would have his neck broken by Steiner soon enough anyway. We see the beginnings of Scott’s heel turn as he avoids the double team with Rick to hit the Frankensteiner and get the pin on his own.

Rating: N/A. These matches are just way too fast to really grade. They’re going like two and a half to three minutes each and it’s just not fair to grade them based on that.

And here’s the thing I haven’t mentioned; they’re reairing, in its entirety, Bischoff vs. Zbyszko from Starrcade. I don’t mean they air clips or something. I mean the WHOLE FREAKING MATCH. It’s 12 minutes long not counting the intros which have a guest referee in Bret Hart also. This was one of the big three matches on the card, so why not air it for free a week and a half later?

Eric Bischoff vs. Larry Zbyszko

This is for control of Nitro but the winner actually wasn’t a clinch as you might think it was. There were real possibilities they would give Nitro to the NWO for a few months. That’s how insane they were with this one angle. I have a timer going here on how long this whole thing takes. Keep in mind that the live crowd has to sit through this. Actually they might not have as this is something you could easily add in later.

Larry comes out to Nitro’s theme which actually makes sense. Oh, Mike (Tenay, Rhodes and Schiavone are doing the commentary here). Remember Bret Hart is referee here. Larry is actually in good shape here. If he didn’t suck so badly when he wrestled it could have been worth having him wrestle occasionally. They did that anyway but whatever.

Bischoff is a karate guy so that’s all he tries to do. They put up a graphic to tell us when this was, as if we forgot that this was 10 days ago, or thinking that they’re actually airing NEW WRESTLING ON A NEW WRESTLING SHOW. Bischoff gets one kick that puts him down which wasn’t bad. And there we finally hit reality as Larry gets his hands on him and annihilates him.

Bret keeps breaking it up, including breaking up a sleeper that he said was a choke that actually was. He does the same with a headscissors hold. The thing is that Hart might have been joining the NWO. They actually try to imply that Larry is equal to Bret. In a funny spot, Bischoff tries to roll to the floor and just falls with a thud. It’s a great visual. Oh Scott Hall is at ringside.

The announcers keep getting on Hart when they should be kneeling down and fondling his balls for lowering himself to this crap. They actually say tweener as they decide Hart is in the NWO based on being a logical and fair referee. Oh how I hate WCW announcers. So after Hall interferes, Larry just stands there and covers up and now Bischoff is spent.

Larry proceeds to use the most basic moves in history before putting Bischoff in the Tree of Woe for absolutely no reason other than to do the main spot of the match. Hall loads up Bischoff’s foot with a piece of metal, but as he throws the kick the metal goes flying out of the shoe before it hits Larry. Naturally he just sells it anyway and the crowd audibly groans.

When I get to this show, you’ll see how completely awful this really was but how this fits in perfectly. For no apparent reason, Bret punches the heels who are more over than anyone not named Bret Hart in this match but in the name of legendary status Larry is over in the minds of WCW so there we are. There’s the Sharpshooter.

Larry has a belt for no explainable reason and chokes out Bischoff. And apparently Larry is the winner despite getting no pin or submission. This was just freaking stupid. They point out that the NWO could take over Nitro again like they did on the previous Monday but they still own Nitro anyway. So in other words, they could take over Nitro, they could throw them all out, but hey, WCW still owns the place!

Rating: F. Oh this was bad. Bischoff puts himself a match before the main event, for no apparent reason Larry wins, the foot thing was stupid, and the whole thing was just a joke. Seriously, they’re fighting over the a television show that apparently it doesn’t matter if they win or not. Are you wondering why this was a stupid match and why the show bombed like it did? Correction, didn’t bomb, but rather the ending and the aftermath failed.

I actually forgot this was Thunder. That can’t be a good sign at all. Larry comes out and apparently winning got him a shot at Hall at Souled Out. Yeah because a guy having one match in years can beat a guy like Hall who is a regular. Apparently they’re fighting over a feud from ten years ago.

This is actually a decent promo as Larry says that Hall took the easy way out and now instead of being world champion Hall is…one of the biggest heels in the world’s biggest wrestling company making more money that Larry made in his whole career. Yeah that kind of backfired on Larry.

We see MORE clips from Nitro, this one in September which is recent I guess. They beat up Boss Man and spray painted him. That of course is enough to transition us to this match.

Ray Traylor vs. Scott Hall

Hall makes sense, but this is Traylor’s (Boss Man) match because of a moment four months ago. That’s WCW for you. They hype up Giant vs. Nash and actually use the tag line of It’ll Actually Happen This Time! How in the world did this company ever make a dime? So in this one we have Hall destroying Boss Man for the most part until the referee goes down and Boss Man gets one shot in.

The announcers realize that this is the place where the NWO was formed so let’s guess what they talk about for the majority of the match. In a part that blows my mind, Tony is going on about Bash at the Beach 96 and Hall hits Boss Man in the face with his unofficial tag title belt. Tony says OH then acts like nothing happened and continues his thing about a show from a year and a half ago. Larry comes out for the interference and of course the referee gets up just in time for a Boss Man slam to end this.

Rating: D-. DAng it being long enough to grade. I’m glad to know that they managed to wait TWO HOURS to use the same ending to a match as earlier. This show is giving me a freaking migraine.

They say more from Starrcade from Baltimore later on. Starrcade was in DC. Seriously, this man is allowed free on the street without medication!

Cruiserweight Title: Ultimo Dragon vs. Juventud Guerrera

Dragon is champion here. As he’s coming to the ring, we start talking about Scott Steiner and Tony apologizes for missing him slapping a referee earlier in the night. They can’t play it again tonight and have to wait until Saturday Night. My head hurts again.

And now let’s act all shocked when Tony and company talk about the NWO the whole match until the very ending. Hey there’s a new champion. It was your generic fun spotfest with Juvi being made of awesome the whole match. He could have been a lot better had he been bigger, stronger and not Mexican. Seriously, name one guy of a non white race to do anything in WCW until Booker T.

Rating: N/A. It’s another 3 minute match that meant nothing really as it was all about the NWO just like the whole thing has been all year.

Bret comes to the ring and says he’s ready for Flair. Flair comes out and says he’s ready for Bret. This took three minutes.

Same DDP ad from two hours ago. That was a cool shirt though.

Lex Luger vs. Scott Norton

Let’s get an over/under on Savage interfering here. He doesn’t actually. Two minute match though and Bagwell and Savage come in after it ends. This show is trying to tick me off. It has to be. Nothing could be this terrible.

Rating: N/A. X, I hate you. You drove me to this.

HEY, let’s talk about STARRCADE since we haven’t done that at all!

For some reason this still surprises me as they show the full ending to Sting vs. Hogan and IT’S STILL A NORMAL THREE COUNT, IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A NORMAL THREE COUNT AND IT ALWAYS IS GOING TO BE A NORMAL THREE COUNT. I have to do this show soon and give a full reason as to why this was stupid. Mark my words: WCW died right here in this clip that is being aired.

This was just so bad and so ridiculous and such a freaking mess and so not what ANYONE wanted to see that the company was just shot dead by it. We get that there was controversy, but THERE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSY! This should have been 5 minutes and Sting nearly murdering Hogan.

Instead, we have a Montreal reference, a screwjob that was botched, and a thing that went on for two months before Sting actually became champion in the middle of February, but the thing that really killed it was Hogan had the title back in MAY. It’s not like Sting wasn’t a draw. I mean, this show wasn’t about Hogan.

It was about Sting, but Hogan insisted it become all about him again and that killed it. This was as foolproof as you could possibly make a show but this band of idiots managed to screw it up. That’s just amazing.

Seriously, they’re doing more of this. This amazes me.

So in another huge SCREW YOU to the fans that bought Starrcade, the Sting vs. Hogan rematch aired the following night on Nitro. Naturally, they ran out of time and had to end the broadcast before the match ended, so they are airing the footage here. At least this is something I guess you could say original as we haven’t seen it before. Hogan is in the Scorpion after missing the leg drop.

To the shock of all but no one there’s no referee other than the crooked one that isn’t really crooked because IT WAS A NORMAL COUNT. Hogan has a handful of tights on a rollup and gets three. So after the bell we keep fighting for the heck of it. The fans are dead after Hogan gets the pin by the way. Ok, apparently after the match ended it hasn’t ended because the original referee never called for the bell. He calls for it here though as Hogan gives up in the Scorpion again.

Dillon (who is the Commissioner guy of WCW in case I never mentioned that). Bischoff of course beats him up and Sting takes him out. So basically WCW and the NWO all come out and have a massive fight which they keep saying is a near riot. WCW unites to run off the NWO. So in other words, they did what Luger begged them to do BEFORE HE ASKED THEM TO DO IT. This of course was a huge deal which makes me think of the Sexual Harassment Panda episode of South Park where the big ending is everyone vs. everyone.

So back live we have Dillon in the ring to decide everything. He says the announcers must have formed their own opinions about everything. That’s just hilarious as he’s actually implying these guys think of anything and don’t have it fed to them. I’ve always wondered if it was someone telling them to breathe. The whole NWO comes out with him.

Sting needs to come down as well and bring the belt. Sting walking to the ring just looks odd. And the belt is held up until they can figure something else out. Immediately they decide this is a victory for the NWO because everything has to be bad for WCW.

And now we actually get to the important part of this whole show as Sting talks for the first time in over a year, saying that Dillon has no guts and that Hogan is a dead man. This was legitimately a big deal as it wasn’t something you ever saw but it happened here.

This led to SuperBrawl where they FINALLY had the title match and Sting won clean to start his two month title reign that ended with Savage getting it for a day so that Hogan could win it the next night. I’ve ranted far too many times on why this was so completely stupid and don’t have the energy to do so again.

US Title: Kevin Nash vs. DDP

THANK GOODNESS this is the ending. Hogan is with Nash here and I’d bet it ends in a fight. DDP won the title at Starrcade from Hennig. Oh apparently Nash had a knee injury and wasn’t at Starrcade because of it. And of course Nash would know nothing about faking knee injuries to get out of a big match where he was supposed to job.

No one he’s ever associated with has done ANYTHING like that. I think that might be a rib of some kind actually. And what a shock that Nash agrees to come back to fight one of his buddies. This is about five minutes long and you can see the DQ coming a mile away and there’s Hogan hitting Page. They beat on him and Giant comes out to have them brawl for like 10 seconds before we’re out of time!

Rating: O. As in oh I don’t care anymore.

Overall Rating: F. And that’s as high as anyone can convince me of. This was horrible. Counting commercials, we’re looking at about two and a half hours of television time. Of that, we had one match go over five minutes. That’s ok. I can understand wanting to get a lot of people on the card. The weird thing though: so much happened yet it seems like none of it matters.

Oh, MAYBE BECAUSE NONE OF IT DID! I will not and cannot agree with having a match from the PPV, a rematch from the PPV and about three more clips straight from it, ten days after it aired. Seriously, that’s just saying hey buyers, SCREW YOU. We got your money and now we’re gonna show everyone what you idiots paid 30 bucks to see.

Oh and on top of that, if you want to see the matches you paid for, you have to buy Souled Out AND SuperBrawl to see them. That to me is what wound up killing them. The ratings for the first night after Starrcade were HUGE. The next week they fell back to Earth because the fans that bought the PPV, the highest selling in WCW history, all saw that they were getting screwed over again.

The other problem here as usual is the commentary. The whole night was about the NWO or the fines from earlier or everyone being against WCW and how they’ll rise up or something and it just got freaking stupid. This is where the Attitude Era crushed WCW: versatility.

If you didn’t like the main stories, you had about 6 others to go with and they got treated like individual stories. WCW had everything tied into the NWO almost and people just got sick of it and when they got sick of it WCW had no idea what to do so they just stayed with the NWO hoping that somehow they could get something right. And that’s where Goldberg came into play.

The fans saw someone different, they saw someone new, they saw someone that could break up the monotony of this show. And then Nash beats him and hands the title back to Hogan all over again. People were just done with it and WWF was there waiting with open arms. The rest is history. Don’t watch this, not even for nostalgia. This was awful beyond words. Actually I hope not because if it is then I just wasted four hours.

Royal Rumble 1998
Date: January 18, 1998
Location: San Jose Arena, San Jose, California
Attendance: 18,542
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

We have seen our savior and he is called Austin. So it’s official: Steve Austin ranks somewhere just below free beer in terms of popularity at this point and is the undisputed king of the company. There’s just one thing: he’s not the world champion yet. It’s about as clear as you can make it that Austin is going to win the title at Mania, so this is another formality. However, a few things have happened in the last two months or so.

Number one: Montreal. We have no Bret Hart and Shawn and Vince are now pure evil, especially the latter. The other thing is Starrcade 97, where Hogan’s ego has managed to almost single handedly kill the massive lead that WCW was enjoying. Therefore, even though the results are clear, they have to do this right because if they do, the WWF could actually catch up to WCW (which they did).

Your other main event tonight is Shawn vs. Taker in a casket match, and you know what happens there. I’ve always felt the main event should have been someone else but I’ll get to that later. Anyway, Kane is now apparently face and will be here to help Taker, and you know he wouldn’t ever do anything like turn on him 6 days after joining him or anything like that.

As for the rest of the show, the roster has filled out a lot more now with a lot of the familiar Attitude Era people there now, such as Shamrock, Rock in his more famous form, face Mankind and the Outlaws. Actually a lot of the wrestlers are the same but now they’re in their best forms, which is often the most important part. I have decent memories of this show and it’s certainly important as far as history goes so let’s get it started.

The opening video is about being champion, which is what the show is mainly about so at least it makes sense. The set for the Rumble isn’t elaborate yet as it’s still the circular one that was used for years. Why were there always blimps in the arenas for these things? I’ve never gotten the point of that. Oh yeah Mike Tyson is here tonight too in what turned out to be a big deal for the company as far as going mainstream went. DANG he is getting booed out of the arena.

Vader vs. Goldust

This is actually the Artist Formerly Known As Goldust but I didn’t want to type that out more than once so he’s just Goldust in this. Let’s see: green hair and what we’ll call yellow and blue striped tights. More or less he’s just insane at this point where he’s expressing himself or something like that. It never made a ton of sense but it was different if nothing else.

Vader has just fallen through the floor as far as meaning anything went by this point for no reason that I’ve ever been able to come up with. Well I’ll give him this: he’s still energetic and the fans are WAY into him. Of course that means he’s not worthy of being anything but a jobber in Vince’s company, so there we go. Lawler actually says that he’s glad Goldust is back in men’s clothing for this match.

I think that sums up the Attitude Era pretty well. Vader is just beating the tar out of Goldust at this point. He throws Goldie into the stairs in the worst, weakest looking shot I’ve ever seen. Goldust stopped about 6 inches before he hit them and then tapped them. It looks horrible. We have a hot crowd if nothing else. After a decent comeback, Goldust kisses Vader, and you know what’s coming next.

Apparently Austin isn’t here yet. Why is it that he never got to the arena on time? After putting him down, Vader sets for the Vader Bomb. This takes literally thirty seconds. He deserved the low blow he got from that. There is little more entertaining to me than a big guy just dropping down on someone else.

In a cool looking visual, Luna jumps on Vader’s back as he’s setting for the Bomb again. He’s like screw it who cares and does the move with her on his back. The sight of Luna flying through the air and just stopping dead when Vader lands is great for some reason. Naturally this ends it.

Rating: B-. For an opener, this was a very good choice. The fans were into Vader and he looked quite solid out there. It was a standard beatdown and the ending spot looked cool. It wasn’t epic and it wasn’t supposed to be, so this was exactly right and I’m perfectly fine with it. For the life of me I don’t get the complete lack of push for Vader.

Austin is here and the Godwins follow him. Apparently all 29 other guys want to kill him.

Max Mini/Mosaic/Nova vs. Battalion/El Torito/Tarantula

Yep it’s a mini match. Sunny is referee here to give anyone a reason to care. The three faces combine to weigh less than 260lbs. That’s just amusing. They kept having these matches for no apparent reason other than an attempt at capitalizing on the Luchador craze, which I guess was a better idea than trying to use bad luchadors like they would do in a few months. Max weighs 87lbs and is very fast if nothing else.

Everyone has very generic gimmicks with Batallion being an army guy or something. We’re about two minutes into this and we just saw our 8th arm drag. It’s Trios rules here as in if one of the guys goes to the floor, that’s the same as a tag. We go split screen to look at Tyson who looks like he’s hamming it up for the camera, and to his credit he looks genuine at least. Like I’ve said a dozen times: if you don’t want to be there, at least try to look interested, and Tyson is certainly doing that.

The crowd doesn’t care about anyone in there other than Max. For no apparent reason, Sunny helps Max throwing dropkicks at the other guys. It made no sense but it got a pop so there we go. We hit the floor and there they go. It’s your standard everyone runs to the ropes and hits a big move and it works really well here.

I’ll say this for these guys: they’re not boring. They’re not particularly interesting but they’re not boring either. Max goes to the top (which to be fair is like from the top of a cage for a normal size guy) and hits a rana which leads to a cradle for the pin. This was so far ahead of last year’s Lucha stuff that I can’t even see it back there.

Rating: B-. Again, it wasn’t great, but it was exciting if nothing else. It kept you paying something close to attention so that’s better than nothing at all. Max was more over than all 5 other guys combined so it was smart to have him be the focus of the match.

Granted that might be because he was by far the most talented. Compared to last year’s old guys doing nothing for 11 minutes, this was a good deal shorter at about 8 minutes which helped it out a lot. That doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but three minutes can mean a big difference in a match. Think about how many matches you’ve seen that are about three minutes long. A lot of TV matches are, so there’s time to do a good amount of stuff in there. By keeping this one shorter it was FAR better.

The Nation is looking for Austin but all they find is a foam finger.

Vince and Shane are with Tyson. Shane looks so much more comfortable talking to him than Vince does.

We get a recap of Shamrock vs. the Nation, including Henry turning on him to join the Nation. This was when Rock was taking the leadership of the group over from Farrooq and is also IC Champion at the time, having been handed the title after Austin forfeited the belt to go after the World Title. Cole is with the Rock as we cut to a clip from the Free For All of the Nation arguing over who would win the Rumble.

Cole says that apparently there are problems in the Nation. Rock says apparently you’re an idiot. I love Rock ripping on Cole. It was always priceless. Rock offers advice to Clinton, continuing his gimmick of offering his input on social matters of the time as only he could. It helped play up the People’s Champion thing, and more importantly led to an interview with Gennifer Flowers at Mania where he debuted a rather famous line because of it, if you smell what I’m cooking.

Intercontinental Title: Rock vs. Ken Shamrock

Rock comes out alone here. The crowd is way behind Shamrock here as Rocky was flat out hated. We start with a fairly long feeling out period and then we all of a sudden get going. Shamrock is pretty good at the moves he could do, but the problem is he didn’t have a ton of things that he could do well. Since we’re in the Attitude Era, there’s a lot of brawling going on here which makes sense for Shamrock at least.

What doesn’t make sense though is Rock being able to go toe to toe with Shamrock in that area. If he’s supposed to be the best fighter of all time like JR keeps telling us, Rock is amazing then. In an amusing bit, Rock goes for a chinlock but does the arm motion that he would do for the People’s Elbow by swinging his arm around really slowly to hook the chinlock on. I love that.

JR says this isn’t the seniors’ tour which is a clear jab at WCW and how much they messed up the previous month’s show. As Shamrock goes insane, here’s Kama to allow Rock to get some knucks to knock out Shamrock. Now in a brilliant move Rock puts them in Shamrock’s tights. Ken kicks out and hits a belly to belly for the pin and the title. Rock gets up a bit later and says to check his tights. You can see the ending coming from here and the decision is reversed.

In a great moment, the referee is checking his tights and points to the crotch and asks what is that? It’s as humorous as it sounds. Yep, the referee gets the ankle lock too. They would do a similar screw job ending at Mania where Shamrock was named the winner again but didn’t get the title again. Rock would finally lose the belt at Summerslam in an epic ladder match with HHH. On a replay we see Rocky hitting him with the knucks.

We also see the problem with it as the knucks are on the back of Rock’s hand, but the way Rock throws punches, the part where the brass is sticking out wouldn’t have touched Ken’s head, but why should we care about that?

Rating: C+. This was what it was. It wasn’t meant to be anything great and they didn’t try to make it something it wasn’t which is the smart thing to do. The ending was at least somewhat creative so they get points for that. I don’t get why they did the same kind of ending at Mania, but whatever. This was fine. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible given what they had to work with here.

We see exclusive footage of Rock in his locker room taking off his boots when Shamrock jumps him. For some reason Shamrock has had time to take a shower and put on jeans while Rock doesn’t even have his boots off yet, despite Rock having left first.

Los Boricuas are looking for Austin. They find the DOA instead and of course they fight like they did for months. I think a combined 5 people cared in all those fights.

We recap the LOD vs. the Outlaws which more or less consists of old school vs. new and it’s not that interesting but it’s ok I guess. Basically the LOD are old and cool and the Outlaws are jerks. Nothing is different I guess. Oh and they beat up the LOD and shaved Hawk’s head while wearing Cartman shirts. Seeing South Park being considered cutting edge and underground stuff is just ridiculous to think of.

Tag Titles: New Age Outlaws vs. Legion of Doom

They’re wearing Favre jerseys for no apparent reason. Oh apparently Favre just beat the 49ers and we’re in the Bay Area. Hawk and Animal look at clips of them being beaten up and say that this is about pride or something. Animal is completely insane in this promo. Why are the LOD referred to as American Originals? I’ve never gotten the point to that reference. I’m sorry to shock those of you with heart conditions, but this starts out as a brawl. I know I can’t believe it either.

The heels try to run and naturally that doesn’t work at all. JR actually mentions the Horsemen on a WWF program. He follows that up by saying this might be a matter of time, more or less giving away the ending. There’s zero flow to this match at all. It’s just random insanity and I don’t recall any tagging here at all. That’s fine in spurts but it needs some sort of structure to be legitimate at all.

To further the insanity here, Hawk gets handcuffed to the turnbuckle while the injured Animal is beaten on. We shift over to a one on two match here with Animal fighting for all he’s worth. He hits a powerslam and has it won when a chair from Road Dogg breaks it up for the DQ as we STILL can’t have a clean ending in a match that means anything. They start the beatdown, but Hawk and the power of the 80s breaks the handcuff and after a bunch of chair shots, the LOD reign supreme.

Rating: D+. This match can almost sum up everything about the Attitude Era as a whole. You have a classic team like the LOD that got world title shots back in the 80s and then you have these two guys that aren’t great workers to begin with but get heat based off of shock tactics. There was little tagging and most of this match was brawling. There’s the Attitude Era in a few lines.

Some chick in Tennessee wins Austin’s truck.

We get a recap about how Austin is a marked man or whatever. In other words we get a package to futher drill into our heads that Austin will indeed win the Rumble tonight.

Royal Rumble

Fink claims that it’s every 2 minutes for intervals. It’s really closer to 90 seconds if you pay attention and considering the whole thing lasts 56 minutes, 2 minute intervals are impossible unless the last guy is thrown out before he gets to the ring. Cactus Jack is first and apparently Jack, Dude Love and Mankind got into a fight over who would be in the Rumble and Jack won.

Second is Chainsaw Charlie, who is more commonly known as Terry Funk in some weird crazy man gimmick. When I say crazy I mean crazier than usual. He brings a fake chainsaw with him, so Foley throws chairs at both him and it, which produce no sparks. There’s about 5 chairs and a saw in the ring and we’re underway. Aww the referee gets the saw out of the ring. Anyway, Funk says for Foley to blast him with a chair so he does.

Foley hands it to Funk so Funk can have a free shot. This is either cool or mind blowingly stupid. Tom Brandi is 3. Think Santino but less talented and stupider and that’s what you have. In a move that shocks no one, he’s thrown out in about 10 seconds. This is a weird hardcore kind of thing here as Funk has his customary convulsions. Number four is Rock to some weak heat. Ah ok there it is. Foley hits him with a trash can to show off their future hardcore epics.

The hardcore guys beat him up as Lawler is panicking. Mosh is fifth as I’m starting to hate the Attitude Era. He gets the biggest pop of all five guys so far. Naturally Funk goes for the moonsault and it misses. I don’t get the point in having such an insane start to the match. Phineas is 6th. He and Hank are heels here and it just failed on so many levels. More or less they switched to creepier music and wear the rebel flag so now they’re heels.

Yeah it bombed big time, so naturally they were pushed for about another year or so until the company woke up and let Hank go and changed Phineas to Mideon. Funk throws some chops and the wooing begins. Number seven is 8-Ball to continue the greatness of this Rumble. Seriously, considering there’s three world champion out there, this is just boring so far. Funk puts out Cactus as the crowd couldn’t care less.

Allegedly someone has attacked Austin but King won’t say who. Bradshaw replaces Cactus at number 8 to really enhance the greatness in there. Owen Hart is number nine, but Jeff Jarrett and Jim Cornette who were representing the NWA of all things jump him as Ross declares Cornette a stain on the underwear of life. For the love of all things good left in the world, someone lobotomize JR before he hurts himself. For some reason Owen gets huge cheers from Tyson. That’s just odd.

Owen can’t get in the ring and is just laying on the floor. Steve Blackman is tenth. He’s a complete WWF rookie at this point despite having a ton of experience in other companies before this. We mull around even more as the ring is way too full. All of the guys I’ve listed are in other than Jack and Brandi. Owen is still down as number 11 is D’lo Brown. There are 5 members of the Nation in the Rumble tonight which is kind of impressive.

Shamrock may have been the guy that got to Austin. Rock goes the heck off on Blackman with some insanely fast kicks. At this point we’re just waiting on some monster to come out and get rid of some of these guys. No one cares as there is zero chance Austin is going to lose.

Number 12 is Kurrgan. Now this was an interesting character to say the least. He was completely dominant so of course they made him a comedy character by the fall. He gets rid of Mosh so if nothing else he’s done his job. How weird is it to think that Bradshaw of all people would wind up having a 9 month world title reign out of all these guys in there? Mero and Sable come out at 13. Good grief Mero was a depthless character.

Blackman is gone via Kurrgan. Bradshaw beats on him a bit which at least looks kind of cool. Shamrock comes out to a BIG pop. He goes straight for Kurrgan and knocks him down with relative ease to allow a big group of people to dump him out. In 20 seconds, Shamrock has managed to get the crowd to actually cared about the match which the other 12 hadn’t been able to do in almost half an hour. Thrasher comes out at 15.

The ring is WAY too full at this point. There’s a very loud Sable chant. Lawler keeps talking about how he wants to fight Tyson which is just perfectly good cheap heel heat. 16 is Mankind as we hit one of my all time favorite Rumble bits. Yes, all three of Foley’s personas are in the Rumble. He puts out Funk with relative ease. In a very unintentionally funny moment, Shamrock is trying to get Rock out in the corner.

The tape freezes just for a second and Shamrock’s arms are under Rock and his head is laid on his stomach and the look on his face looks like he’s lovingly smiling. It’s just great. Anyway Goldust is 17th and this time he’s rocking a silver body suit with painted on women’s lingerie including g-string. The ring is WAY too full here. I would list them all off for you, but it would be Austin Fodder #1, 2, 3, 4 etc. There’s about 10 guys in there and no one cares about most of them.

Goldust puts out Mankind who wasn’t a big deal just yet. Jarrett is 18th and Owen finally gets in and beats the living tar out of him. After skinning the cat, Owen dumps Jarrett. There’s a big rant coming on Owen later so stick around for that. And from out of nowhere Honky Tonk Man is 19th. Rock puts out Shamrock as HHH and Chyna come out. HHH is hurt and not in the match. Owen tries to get rid of Goldust, allowing HHH and Chyna to use a pair of crutches to eliminate him.

Ok screw waiting for later. At the end of the previous In Your House, Owen had jumped Shawn to end the show, making his first appearance since Montreal. He beat Shawn up and then ran off into the crowd. Every single sign in the world said that Owen vs. Shawn would be the title match at the Rumble. Think about it: Owen comes back to avenge his brother’s honor so the drama and story are already there.

Owen can actually hang with Shawn in the ring so it’s not like the match would be boring or something. Owen was getting insane reactions from the crowds at this point so it’s not like they wouldn’t buy it. So given how obvious this was, Shawn vetoed it. Owen made the epic return and was promptly fed to HHH.

Yes, instead of going with the money match at the Rumble of Owen vs. Shawn, I’m assuming Shawn was afraid that Owen would either upstage him or shoot on him, so he somehow convinced everyone that the best choice was for Owen to just go back down into the midcard and job to HHH and Jarrett and stay far away from the title picture, and showing the power of the Clique, it worked.

Owen was made to look like a joke over the next three months, having a tiny feud with Jarrett that went nowhere and then jobbing to HHH to make him look good. At least Shawn got what was coming to him all those years later in the casket match, which he lobbied for. I hate to say it, but he got what he deserved.

Ahmed Johnson is number 20 and no one cares. He was just completely wasted by this point and it failed miserably. The crowd is pretty much dead here. Lawler lets it slip that Honky is his cousin. We accidentally hear someone say that someone isn’t cleared to wrestle which we’ll get to in just a few moments. Mark Henry is 21st. In a great stat, Henry is one of 17 people in this Rumble that have never been in one before.

Ross says Henry is handling the big Johnson. I’m not going near that one. There is no number 22 and everyone thinks it was supposed to be Austin. It turns out that it was supposed to be Skull, but he was hurt earlier in the attack by the Boricuas and was who the accidental voice was talking about. Phineas and Ahmed are gone with Phineas landing on a referee in an amusing spot. The crowd really couldn’t care less here.

Kama is number 23, and here’s the best recap I can give you: Rock, 8-Ball, Bradshaw, D’Lo, Mero, Thrasher, Goldust, Honky, Henry and Kama. Holy jobber fest Batman. Austin it 24th to an EPIC pop. I mean the fans went insane for that glass shattering. Literally everyone in the ring turns to the entrance to jump him, but he comes through the crowd and knocks out Mero and 8-Ball with relative ease.

Why in the world did they insist on constantly making Brown a big deal or at least trying to? Never mind he’s been upstaged by the failure that is heel Henry Godwin. We start the final five with Savio, who leads the completely worthless Boricuas who all go after Austin despite not being in the match. Naturally they’re easily dispatched. There are WAY too many people in there. I’m counting 11 I think.

Farrooq is 27th as all 5 members of the Nation are in there now. Naturally he beats on all of the other 4 members. I’ve always thought they missed the boat with Farrooq. He was clearly a great athlete with a solid character yet they never pulled the trigger on him. Rock and Austin go to the floor through the ropes. Dude Love is 28th which gets a nice pop. Foley was such a brilliant character when you think about it.

Kane was Isaac Yankem and Fake Diesel etc. Kama was Papa Shango, Godfather etc. The thing is, those other characters are never mentioned. They’re simply repackaged to give them a fresh start and that’s fine. Foley took it completely the other way. They made him all three characters at once with no attempt at hiding it. That’s very unique and I don’t think it’s been done otherwise. Anyway he puts out Bradshaw in about a second.

Rock does the overrated elbow on Brown and gets beaten up by Austin for it. At least Austin recognizes overrated moves. Chainz, another guy I thought could have been more than he was, is 29th making Vader number 30. There goes Brown to lighten us up a bit.

Ok, so with all 30 in, here are your possible winners: Rock, Thrasher, Goldust, Honky, Henry, Kama, Godwin, Vega, Farrooq, Dude Love, Chainz, Vader and Austin. I wonder who the win…never mind that joke is just stupid. Who thought it was a good idea to have 13 people in at the end? Vader puts out Honky. The crowd still doesn’t care at all. There goes Thrasher to a tiny pop.

Kama is gone as we’re starting to clear the ring out. Ross thinks Brown is still in for some reason. There goes Vega as Austin has dropped three in a row now. Goldust puts out Vader because Vader can’t do anything since he’s an over character. Instead we have to have a freak character be put over again. Henry and Goldust go out. Farrooq just shows off by throwing out Henry.

Chainz was put out by Austin over the corner and slammed into the steps which just looked SICK. The final four are Farrooq, Rock, Dude Love and Austin. I’ve always loved Dude’s Sweet Shin Music. Farrooq eliminates Dude. Say that out loud and see how ridiculous it sounds. Ross is ticked off for some reason at Rock resting while Farrooq fights Austin.

Farrooq was in for about 10 minutes while Rock had already wrestled earlier and had been in over 50 minutes at this point. I guess according to JR that’s nothing. Anyway the final two are Rock and Austin. They slug it out and the fans are buying every bit of it. After a Stunner Austin shocks no one as he’s going to Wrestlemania.

Tyson is happy too. We get a quick interview with Tyson, who despite calling Austin Cold Stone, which to be fair sounded far more like a slip of the tongue rather than him just not knowing what he was saying, says he’s very happy and looking forward to the main event. If nothing else, he’s very enthusiastic and sounds like a legit fan.

Rating: D+. This was a bad Rumble in every sense of the word. The big problem here is clear so I’ll ignore that. The problem is there’s no one out there that was even a potential challenger. There was almost no flow to this either. The closest thing to a story was the Nation but it got no play at all.

That’s the problem here: there’s no story or drama at all and it just crippled the thing. We knew Austin would win, but the question was how. The problem was there was no way to disguise the fact that he was going to win and it really hurt the match. There really was no way to make this great, but they at least could have made it ok.

We recap Taker vs. Shawn. More or less they were trying to just pick up their rivalry from the fall like nothing ever happened. Good night Shawn took a beating in the Cell. Kane has broken away from Paul Bearer and apparently has joined Taker to help him fight off DX. For some reason Taker accepted his brother that hated him with no issue at all. I’ll give you two guesses as to how that’s going to work out.

Casket Match: Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels

Fink looks REALLY weird for some reason here. It looks like he’s being forced to announce at gunpoint or something. We get a weird comment from JR about Shawn: He may not be in a class of his own but it doesn’t take long to call the role. Wait, what? If he’s the world champion and the best big match guy ever, why wouldn’t he be in a class of his own? Also, Ross tries to say HBK has a better record in big matches than anyone including Hogan. That’s just laughable.

Shawn’s overselling of Taker putting the lights back on is great. Shawn of course has to run here and punch where he can, but we get my favorite spot that Taker keeps using as he just grabs Shawn by the throat and throws him into the corner. I’ve always loved that. In a very cool spot, Shawn goes for a crossbody from the middle rope and Taker catches him in a two handed choke. That looked great. And there it is.

Shawn is backdropped over the top rope and slams him back on the casket, more or less shattering it and putting him on the shelf for four and a half years after Wrestlemania. You can tell something just isn’t right with him at this point, and oddly enough a fan shouts out BREAK HIS BACK while Taker is beating Shawn up. As usual, Taker is just beating the living heck out of Shawn.

That’s your formula for the majority of this match: Taker beats up Shawn, Shawn hits a little something, Taker beats up Shawn some more. Eventually Shawn hits a kick out of nowhere, but Taker doesn’t really do much about it. We go near the casket a few times which is always good, but the best part is Shawn in the casket and trying to get out while Taker pulls him back in.

It’s a very cool shot that’s been done many times since but never as well as there. Eventually the tombstone hits and Shawn is dead, but Los Boricuas (which is incorrect grammar but whatever) and the Outlaws run out.. Cue Kane, but of course he turns on Taker to throw him in the casket to keep the title on Shawn. That’s not the end though, as Kane nails Taker into the casket and starts walking it back up the stage.

In one of the most famous scenes of his career, he covers it in “gasoline” and lights it on fire. JR is FREAKING as we go off the air. Of course Taker magically disappeared from the casket, setting up his return just in time for a Mania match with Kane.

Rating: B. This one is hard to mess up. These two worked very well together and this was no exception. They’re just perfectly suited to one another and they showed why here. Granted they more or less did the exact same thing as they did in the Cell, but it still worked.

Obviously the bigger story here is Shawn’s back, but that’s been covered more elsewhere because no one knew how bad he was hurt at this point. The match was fine, but it was clearly more about the angle than the match, which is ok here.

Overall Rating: C-. This is a show where the individual matches don’t add up to the final grade. This is a lot more like a transition show than anything else, with most of what you see here just setting up stuff for later on. It set up Shawn vs. Austin which had to happen for the company to survive as well as Taker vs. Kane, but other than that there’s just not much here.

I really didn’t like this show all that much, but it was ok I suppose. There have been worse Rumbles, but not that many. Watch it if you haven’t seen it before I guess, but you likely won’t want to again.