(2012 Scott Sez: This is an original rant from 1998, which I don’t think I’ve even read since the show first aired. So it’ll be an adventure for everyone!)
Live from Denver, Colorado.
Your hosts are some guy, another guy, and his dog Spot.
Opening match: Saturn v. Goldberg.
Lodi is at ringside again! Yeah! Odd choice for an opener, but whatever. (I dunno, seems logical to me, having Goldberg do the quick destruction to open the show and jack up the crowd.) Saturn actually weathers the first minute of offense and survives. Wow. Goldberg even takes some bumps outside the ring. Fans are so into Goldberg it's frightening. Saturn actually gets the majority of the offense in, as most of Goldberg's stuff is quick, high-impact moves which have no long-term effect (ie that powerslam looks cool, but it's no more devastating than a regular slam, dig?). Saturn fucks up an Asai moonsault, badly. Goldberg is sucking wind five minutes in, likely due to the altitude. (Probably also due to him rarely ever going a minute in his matches to that point.) Goldberg comeback, spear, but Saturn blocks the Jackhammer by hitting him in the nads. 'Bout time someone thought of that. Flock runs in, Goldberg fights them off, but gets caught in the Rings. He powers out, however (with much help from Saturn) and improvises a Jackhammer for the win. Not bad, all things considered. *** (Saturn would have to be a Greek god come to life in order to carry Bill Goldberg to a *** match, so I’m thinking that was high.)
Chavo Guerrero v. Ultimo Dragon.
Just your basic lucha match, with lots of the usual flipping and flopping but no real offense. (I’m not a fan of the lucha style, why do you ask?) Eddy is entertaining outside as he freaks out, though. Couple of glaring resthold spots ruin it in the middle. They mess up an another nice suicide dive. Dragon gets it in the groin accidentally (this is becoming a theme tonight...) but Chavo is a Nice Person so he won't capitalize. Just ask Barry Windham what *that* got him at Starrcade 87. (It got him PINNED, that’s what!) It gets Chavo the same thing, as Dragon comes back with the dragon sleeper for the win. *** (That’s actually not the same thing.) Eddy reems out Chavo afterwards. Poor guy.
WCW TV title: Booker T v. Chris Benoit.
Really slow match compared to their Nitro ones. Must be the altitude again. Benoit controls most of the match before a double-KO situation allows a Booker comeback. Spinebuster, pancake, Axe Kick, but the ref gets bumped. Benoit comes back with the Crossface, but the ref is out. Oh, fuck, I don't like the looks of this. (Ah, the days when Benoit was the internet’s version of Daniel Bryan instead of OJ Simpson.) Benoit goes over to revive him, Axe Kick, see ya. GOD DAMMIT MOTHER FUCKING SHIT! ** I hope you burn in hell, Eric Bischoff, you lowlife motherfucker. (Of course, Benoit is probably the one burning in hell right now.) The match wasn't even that great, only going about 12 minutes. (Ah, the days when I used to get worried about Benoit winning the TV title, a belt so prestigious that Jim Duggan went on to win it by fishing it out of a garbage can.)
British Bulldog v. Curt Hennig.
Now I'm pissed off. Rick Rude is handcuffed to Jim Neidhart here. Horrible, terrible, awful, atrocious piece of shit match. (But tell us what you really thought about it.) Vincent comes out dressed as a policeman and unlocks the cuffs (He was probably working as a security guard at the mall to make up some extra cash), and Rude nails Bulldog, Hennig gets the pin. DUD, maybe bordering on negative stars for the overbooking. (Given these two had maybe one good vertabrae between them, I’m thinking negative stars is a pretty safe bet. And now of course both participants and Rude are gone.) The nWo wipes the mat with Smith and Neidhart...uh, here's someone getting SCREWED in a gross INJUSTICE...shouldn't someone be coming out to save them? No? Oh, well... (Bret Hart was contractually unable to associate with Bulldog & Neidhart, lest the WWF legal machine sue for intellectual property theft.)
Prince Wanalaya v. Chris Jericho.
Jericho dedicates the match to Dean Malenko. I wish it was Malenko that was wrestling because the Prince starts it out with an extended side headlock and it goes downhill from there. Very slow, stalling match. They keep teasing a Prince upset as he blocks the Liontamer twice and hits some near fall situations. Dear god this match sucks. The Prince is not anywhere near Jericho's level and Jericho looks to be dogging it to begin with. (Jericho wasn’t exactly motivated for most of the year.) Finally, I'mokaya-Yourokaya is forced to tap out to the third Liontamer. Thank god. Now I never want to hear from this putz again. 1/2* Jericho steals the Hawaiian towel thingie for his trophy.
BUFF~! & Scott Steiner v. Lex Luger & Rick Steiner.
Buff comes out with a cast on his arm, and says he can't wrestle, so JJ Dillon brings out a doctor to check it himself and they proceed to do this little angle right there. Do we have *that* much extra time to waste on this show? Couldn't this have been filled with, say, wrestling? Of course, Buff is fine, and the match goes on, unfortunately. Chinlock, punch, kick, you get the picture. Luger cleans house, then a big fight erupts and Scott runs for the hills from Rick. The Rack is academic as Buff submits. DUD. Why do they keep making Buff into the fall guy if they want to push him? (Maybe he should call up Dolph Ziggler and ask him the same question.)
Mean Gene hypes the fact that a certain individual is in the dressing room, which might lead one to believe that another certain individual in the nWo might be coming back soon. Dusty Rhodes in the lockerroom is "too hot for TV?"
Special Added Bonus Time-Wasting Match: La Parka v. Psychosis.
Under normal circumstances I'd be delighted to see this. But it sucks. Badly. (So does this review.) Spot, rest, spot. La Parka picks up Psychosis one too many times and he ends up getting the legdrop and jobbing again. This was so bad it was embarassing at times. 1/4*
And now the announcers are wasting time by making some ridiculous analogy about a dog that uses up five more minutes. (I remember that! It truly was a ridiculous tangent that went nowhere.) Was Booker-Benoit supposed to go really long or something? Am I missing something here?
Baseball bat match: Kevin Nash & Hulk Hogan v. Giant & Roddy Piper.
Piper starts out for his side, thus sending this one down the crapper right away. Crowd is hot for this one, poor souls. Giant actually puts Hogan over his knee and SPANKS him at one point. And he SELLS it! I kid you not. (Perhaps if Hogan had done that with his own kids more often, Nick would have turned out better. Of course, now he puts his daughter over his knee and rubs suntan lotion on her ass.) The match was that embarrassing. There's exactly two wrestling moves in this fiasco: A Giant dropkick and Piper's sleeper. Piper gets the bat, but Hogan knocks it out of his hands. The Disciple comes down to ringside with a different bat (was something wrong with the first one?) and lots of dumb bat shots ensue. Then for some reason Disciple switches the first bat for the second one again, Hogan nails Piper with it, and the nWo wins. -** Hogan hits Nash with the bat and leaves him laying afterwards. I'm sure we'll hear about this on Nitro for the next six months. (I guess this was the birth of the Wolfpac faction of the nWo. Although now when you hear “wolfpack” it’s hard not to picture Nash, Sting and Konnan singing about how they’re the three best friends that anyone could have…)
US Title match: DDP v. Raven.
This is almost exactly like the three-way match from Uncensored, except without Benoit to keep it rooted within reality. It starts out good enough, but then suddenly they end up by the entranceway with all the breakaway props you could ask for. Then it's the usual WCW garbage match, with no blood or intensity as Raven and DDP trade goofy spots, throwing each other into tables and balsa wood barriers and jumping into bales of hay. I'm surprised they didn't use the huge cow that was set up, it was just begging to be used. Back in the ring, and Sick Boy brings a kitchen sink in. Ah, Kevin Sullivan is booking tonight, I see. (Thank you, I’m here until Thursday, try the veal.) Then the Flock interferes one by one, every one fucking it up while introducing new objects. DDP keeps kicking out, of course, until yet another new Flock member (Mortis? Horace Boulder? Horshu?) manages to connect with a Stop sign and Raven DDT's DDP on the kitchen sink for the pin and the US title. I'm thoroughly sick of WCW's attempts to be "hardcore". ** (Raven would only get 24 hours with the title, too.)
WCW World title: Sting v. Randy Savage.
Again, they start out good enough, but then it degenerates into another mindless brawl. Back out to the OK Corral for more foreign objects, including a stupid spot where Sting hits Savage with a bale of hay. A BALE OF HAY??? Tony: "That can be very abrasive." (We quoted that one incessantly for YEARS.) Quick, someone get this man a moisturizing cream, stat! Back to the ring for more weak brawling, and of course the ref gets bumped. Liz comes in and nails Sting with a chair, which he shrugs off (rightly so). But Savage pulls her in the way of a Stinger splash and she gets splashed by mistake. Savage hits Sting with the chair himself, and goes for the elbow, but now Hulk Hogan runs in and pushes him off. Good lord, can this get any more overdone? Sting with the slopdrop, but now Kevin Nash interjects himself, powerbombing Sting and putting Savage on top. I'd say barring anything else, we're going to have a new champion. And that's just what happens, as Randy Savage wins his 5th World title. Good for him, he deserves it. BUT, why put it on him if he's out with knee problems for months? I smell Hogan's ninth title reign starting tomorrow night... *1/2 (I also provide lottery numbers.)
Hogan and Booty Disciple protest from the entranceway as we're outta time. At 8:40?
The Bottom Line:
This nWo hyper-booking has gotta stop. I don't need four or five people running in on the main event, especially when I've already seen them earlier in the card. It completely ruined the World title match by putting the focus on Hogan and Nash's issue rather than on Sting and Savage. They were almost incidental. (How about that? Amazing how that works.) Everyone else seemed to have it in neutral, with the exception of Goldberg. He tried damn hard tonight, I'll give him that. (Probably because he knew he was getting the US title on Nitro.) Nothing else on the card did anything for me, however. I wasn't interested in the storylines coming in, and they didn't win me over going out. The Jericho match advanced nothing, the Hennig match advanced nothing, Sting-Savage was a clusterfuck, the bat match was crap, DDP-Raven was just mutual masturbation and we all know it, and there was a couple of meaningless subpar cruiserweight matches stuck on there with no fanfare. All in all, a card to make one say "so what?" Wait for Nitro, I guess. Same as it ever was. Thumbs down.
(This show sounds kind of interesting to me, actually. Kind of wish I had saved the tape so I could check it out again someday with some perspective.)
This is around the time period that WCW should have started moving the mid-card up the ladder. Instead of relying on the nWo split, celebrity wreslters, and Ultimate Warrior. They proved that they could do more than just put on good matches by this point and plus they had the best guy available to elevate them, Bret Hart. He had just got done making the biggest wrestler star on tv. I wonder what he could have done with guys like Raven, Benoit, Jericho, and Guerrero.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you could find this one on YouTube somewhere, Scott. It DOES sound interesting, though- but rather forgettable. I am 100% certain I watched this back in the day (I vaguely recall Goldberg/Saturn), but I can't remember anything else about it. The failure of the Sting push, the nWo/Wolfpac split, etc. all turned out poorly, as did the Buff Bagwell thing.
ReplyDeleteWas Bret REALLY forbidden from teaming with Bulldog & Neidhart? That's retarded.
Agreed. A failure to push anyone NEW (aside from Goldberg, obviously) really hurt WCW in the long run. But then, every company seems to make the exact same mistakes, and only corrects them when it's too late...
ReplyDeleteThey made DDP into a star with his matches against Macho Man. So why not use Hogan for Scott Steiner, Bret Hart for Benoit, Sting for Jericho etc.. Instead they kept the big guys with themselves, so only Goldberg was allowed to beat an upper guy.
ReplyDeleteDDP and Goldberg were the only new guys on the top of the card. I'm not saying they should have given Benoit, Jericho etc those types of pushes. But in 98, if they would have given them some kind of momentum up the card, it wouldn't have been so ridiculous to see them on top of the card in 1999 when they really needed them.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjKnTNzurcw
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned by jabroniville...
It sounds like a relatively missable show though, to be honest.
I was watching the Nitros that built up to this on 24/7, and honestly, I was hoping they'd put this PPV on the channel, because I really wanted to see Goldberg v Saturn. The build was great.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I thought of this, but since you mentioned Vince dressed like a cop, I thought I'd share. I read a story once from an independent wrestler, and he said he was at a show once where Vince was booked, and Vince said he was sent there by Hulk Hogan, to take care of "official nWo business". God bless the man who keeps kayfabe up, and is extremely crazy.
Oh, and for those who don't remember, this was 3 months after Sting was the hottest thing in wrestling. You know, when he won the title in a shit match, it was put up until the February PPV in a bout that still sucked and did nothing for Sting, and he lost it a month later to an injured Macho. Right on.
"A BALE OF HAY??? Tony: "That can be very abrasive."
ReplyDeleteMichael Cole would also note that you could get your fingers caught in the baling wire.
Nice fun fact about Bret Hart and the Hart Foundation. I always wondered why WCW didn't reform that stable since Bret wasn't doing anything anyways.
ReplyDeleteAnd Goldberg wasn't a bad worker as such as he had some really enjoyable squash matches and was probably one of the few guys that could work a *** match in just 5 minutes with the right opponent. And I remember the Saturn/Goldberg match being pretty good though it's been awhile since I've seen it so I wouldn't be to surprised if it's still worth ***.
Yeah, he talks about it in his book. It was part of the deal to get Bulldog released from his contract.
ReplyDelete2012 Scott says was hilarious in this repost. Great job, SK!
ReplyDeleteActually, had they done the NWO split, pushed Goldberg and DDP, had things happen as they did thru Starrcade and user '99 to build Goldberg destroying the NWO for good while building up Scott Steiner, Booker T, and Benoit it would have been very interesting.
ReplyDeleteNot to be that guy, but a bale of hay would hurt. Not because it's abrasive but they're deceptively heavy. It's the worst pro wrestling weapon: it doesn't look like it hurts but actually does!
ReplyDeleteThe Wolfpac was a good idea in theory. The problem was it came about 5 months too late and 2 out of the 3 guys who should have been in it, weren't. Putting Savage, Luger, and Sting and not Hall in that stable is beyond retarded.
ReplyDeleteAh Jericho at the end of his WCW contract. I love how he still has a chip on his shoulder for not getting to face Goldberg or be elevated. He and Big Show don't seem to grasp that WCW gave them the visibility to get on WWE's radar and eventually work there for a million years. And there were plenty of guys Goldberg should have wrestled but didn't, for whatever reason.
ReplyDeleteThis show was a bummer. Think about it this way: this was the sad coda of the hottest angle WCW ever had. Sting had the year+ buildup to Starrcade, "won" the title while looking like a chump, "won" it again against Hogan (only to serve the nWo split angle), and I really only remember one other title defense - Scott Hall. That was it. Sting should have had a triumphant run with the belt; if they were going to do the nWo split, he should have destroyed them. Looking further ahead, you had Goldberg as the next big thing. Given how hot DDP/Goldberg ended up being, could you even imagine how big Sting/Goldberg could have been? Sting ended up taking time off anyway, you could have made Goldberg by having him beat Sting, let Sting have time off, and run Goldberg against basically anyone.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Savage have like three one-day World title reigns ended by Hogan? At least two!
ReplyDeleteThe night after this show, Hogan did defeat Savage for the WCW title.
ReplyDeleteDon't know about Giant but Jericho's issue wasn't about elevation, it was about doing an entertaining angle with Goldberg that would have made each of them more money. Goldberg, however, made up some bullshit reason why they shouldn't feud and Jericho gets stuck wrestilng Bobby Duncam Jr. Tell me you wouldn't also be upset.
ReplyDeleteYeah, both the night after this show and when Savage won it in 99, Hogan beat him the next day.
ReplyDeleteWhy did Buff have the "~!" after this name? Did I miss him winning the Super J Cup or something?
ReplyDeleteThanks for holdin it for me, Mach' Brother!
ReplyDeleteWell sure, who wouldn't want to work with Goldberg in 1998? He may have had a good program idea, but there were a lot of guys who should've gotten title shots during his reign. Not to sound like Hogan or Nash, but Jericho was an entertaining midcard act at the time, but hadn't been positioned as a threat or main eventer. By the time they could've changed that perception, the belt was probably off of Goldberg.
ReplyDeleteI get your logic but that fact that Jericho was willing to get totally squashed in the blowoff still makes it seem like Goldberg was just an ass about the whole thing. It's not like Bill would have looked bad at the end of it.
ReplyDeleteBuff was pretty damn entertaining back then.
ReplyDelete(Jericho wasn’t exactly motivated for most of the year.)HUH? He was in the midst of the first big angle of his entire career! He had a character and was drawing huge reactions! He didn't get frustrated until September when Goldberg killed their angle.WCW Heel Jericho is the best Jericho.
ReplyDeleteThat's the one thing I hate about 24/7. They don't show the PPVs in tandem with the Raw/Nitro shows they're airing. I don't understand that. You follow the shows and then you miss the PPVs.
ReplyDeleteThere's this thing called YouTube. You may have heard of it.
ReplyDelete(Bret Hart was contractually unable to associate with
ReplyDeleteBulldog & Neidhart, lest the WWF legal machine sue for intellectual
property theft.) Wait, what? WCW had Flair and Savage feud, Savage and Hogan be best of buddies...no way this is legit.
I agree. I've never bought into the "nobody would have believed Jericho as a threat" argument, because who did Goldberg face that WAS taken as a threat besides DDP and Nash? Curt Hennig?
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Jericho and Raven were drawing bigger heel heat than anyone in the company in 1998, nWo included.
ReplyDeleteEh, I'm not so sure about that.
ReplyDeleteI believe this is the show where the proverbial "wheels fell off the wagon".
ReplyDeleteI watched this a few months ago and it is a really memorable show. The Goldberg and Saturn opener really is as good as Scott rated it. The review doesn't do it justice. The ending is phenomenal and Goldberg improvising the jackhammer at the end while hoisting Saturn on his shoulders is an awesome maneuver to behold.
ReplyDeleteThe other matches are all pretty entertaining in retrospect, and the main events are pretty funny if you're stoned enough.
I always loved the Spring Stampede shows. That dog diatribe metaphor is just amazing. You can only imagine Bischoff telling the announcers that someone wasn't ready to work so they need to talk for five minutes. It's so funny.
Right. All Jericho wanted was to be acknowledged, then speared and jackhammered straight to hell. Would have been great.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds somewhat sarcastic, but it's not.
ReplyDeleteGoldberg getting hurt before he plowed through the NWO is a gigantic "what if" when it comes to the history of WCW.
ReplyDeletewhat period are you referring to? If you mean Post-Starcade 98, then you are incorrect. Goldberg was around for a couple more months (fought Bam Bam at Superbrawl). He then supposedly went to film a short part in a movie, but if you look he was around during 99. His injury where he punched the limo came much later.
ReplyDeleteyou mean after Hogan sabotaged Sting at Starcade 97, he decided it was more fun to get into a program with Savage? Perish the thought. yeah Sting got royally screwed in all that. Hogan/patrick/whatever F'ed up the Starcade match, then his match at Superbrawl wa all about Savage/Hogan. he was an afterthought to the Savage/Hogan split and birth of the Wolfpac. he was never really near the top guy again until TNA
ReplyDeletesorry but I suggest you see Jericho's first book for a description of what occurred. Goldberg let the usual gaggle of idiots get in his ear and missed what would have been a great angle. Goldberg had little understanding of the business so he let the wrong guys be his guide and that resulted in the same "he's too small" type stuff that was outdated in 1993, much less 98 and 99. he was paranoid about being made to look foolish, showing a shocking lack of understanding about the basics of a heel/face feud and showing a shocking lack of ability to listen to the crowd reactions to jericho. He would have been much better off working a ppv with Jericho than the stuff he did.
ReplyDeleteBulldog was let out of an existing contract. He had to pay a buyout to Vince and agree to certain creative restrictions. Your examples all had expired contracts and signed with WCW.
ReplyDeleteyep. it was that bat match that soured me on WCW. I kept watching because i was not a big WWF fan (not a fan of Russo's booking even then) and never really got into Austin/Vince but it was all downhill from here. The last straw for me was the fingerpoke of doom. I know that's cliche but it really was. I was thrilled with Nash beating Goldberg because at the time I was a Goldberg hater (in retrospect he wasn't half bad) but Hogan coming back like that was the final straw. With rock/Mankind capturing my fancy, I switched to being a mostly WWF viewer with commercial breaks being Nitro instead of the other way around.
ReplyDeleteas Comdukakis rightfully wrote, that's just Kevin Nash's (and others) bullshit revionist history.
ReplyDeleteI think that's somewhat true. I recall them having some interaction, although they might've been Bret turning on them, but they weren't allowed to do a Hart Foundation angle.
ReplyDeleteIt kills me the numerous opportunities WCW had to kill the NWO gracefully and make big money doing it. first off course would be Hogan losing to Sting at Starcade 97. Next night Nash and Hall beat him down, pare the NWO down to core guys, cut the dead weight. Of course nobody helps Hogan while he's getting massacred because he's been such a dick for 2 years. Bischoff abandons him too. Hogan keeps getting attacked. Meawhile Sting defends his belt against all non-NWO comers including Bret Hart. Might get a couple months or three from that one. Hogan is being beat down again. Sting stands in the aisle. Turns around and walks back to locker room. Happens again. By this point the crowd is clamoring for Sting to help Hogan each week. Finally he comes down and clears the ring with his bat one week. Sets up Hogan/Sting vs. Hall/Nash. Meanwhile Hart coujld have won the belt, turned heel, whatever. work towards goldberg getting the belt. Eventually Hogan beats Nash to make the NWO disband. Now Hogan wants his title shot against Goldberg. puts over Goldberg. WCW continues on for years. I also understand wanting to milk the NWO one more year, so we go with the Goldberg running roughshod over the nWO until he reaches HOgan, who obviosly was the mastermind due to the fingerpoke of doom. At GAB or BAB or even Starcade if they could drag it out but keep it interesting, Goldberg gets his hands on Hogan and beats him again (yeah I know, good luck with that one bookers). Then you still have Bret/Goldberg. If Bret has been booked better, maybe he gets the belt. Either way WCW probably still survives.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Jericho's argument wasn't that they should elevate him right at that moment, but that if they didn't think he was worthy of a midcard squash match against Goldberg they'd never see him as a main eventer. He didn't even want it to be a match, just Goldberg finally getting him in the ring and destroying him.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't want or expect to be taking seriously, and that was the point of the entire angle - Jericho's cheating his way through Cruiserweight matches while remaining delusional and arrogant, so he starts running his mouth about Goldberg. Everyone knows Jericho claiming he can beat Goldberg is ridiculous, which makes him claiming he's done it and can do it again more annoying, which makes people want to see Goldberg crush him and shut him up. Nobody believing Jericho could hang with Goldberg was the entire basis of the angle but he didn't seem to grasp that.
ReplyDeleteRight. That's why all the revisionist history about Goldberg doesn't play out for me: he just did his spots in a vacuum, plowing through midcard guys, even after he won the title. Consdiering all the top shelf talent in WCW at the time, he worked with very few of them.
ReplyDeleteY'know, I think Saturn is one of those guys who is seriously under-rated by smart marks- he wasn't as good as some Cruiserweights, but he was a REALLY solid talent who put on some kick-ass matches and had a great, varied move-set. He tried shit on Goldberg nobody else ever did, and actually looked to be a solid contender.
ReplyDeleteMmm...watching something on a 4 inch screen in amazing 240p quality, in 10 minute pieces, or watching it in full, in standard TV quality, on a flat screen TV.
ReplyDeleteThere's this thing called wanting to enjoy programming, and not suffer through it. You may have heard of it.
It's actually completely legit.
ReplyDeleteHere's a thought: what if the three men were brought in under different names/gimmicks? Would they have been allowed to interact, then?
ReplyDeleteLike, could Bret Hart form a team with the masked "Jared 'The Butcherblock' Needles" and the face-painted "Don 'The Shitzu' Smeltzer"?
Definitely agree on Saturn - he wasn't so great that he could carry anybody to a good match, but he was a pretty good hand with a fantastic look. Seriously, I'd pick him in a legitimate fight over pretty much anybody that was a foot taller or a hundred pounds heavier.
ReplyDeleteI was psyched as HELL for that Saturn/Goldberg match - I was a huge Saturn fan at the time, and remember it seeming like two freight-trains were about to collide.
Co-signed. Saturn should have gone on to bigger things, but he was in WCW where that kind of thing didn't happen. He also had the interesting distinction of having the most kickass moveset on every video game from 98-2000 or so.
ReplyDeleteThen torrent it and stream it through your TV.
ReplyDelete