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Hodge looks a LOT like a smaller modern-day Bruno. Crowd's muted but he definitely seems to be getting a nice ovation.

This is the one with Cornette's famous line, "Hulk Hogan, you are a household word--but so is garbage, and it stinks when it gets old, too." There was probably some Vince hand puppetry going on here but as usual, I think most of what Cornette says comes from a real place. And I'm growing sick of "icon" talk too, Jim.

Apparently that guy is Aries Spears--yes, he's a comedian, not the assumed name of an NXT signee. Never heard of him until just now.

More than the smearing of Bret and the Hart Foundation, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of Faarooq being vociferously booed for stating facts about 400 years of racial discrimination in the U.S. I mean, all the great villains tend to be "right" to some degree, but this seems more hamfisted than the Gangstas' SMW stuff. Rock gets some mic time, and is quickly becoming an equal to Faarooq in the NOD pecking order. Faarooq challenges the Harts to a match for "next week"--after 18 years of "tonight, in this very ring..." that was a slight jolt. But they were still sticking to a semblance of a predetermined show format until the Austin-Vince stuff really ramped up. This all gets great heat but I don't quite get the idea of having 3 hated factions all warring with each other.

Bret vs. Lawler from SummerSlam '93 is terrific and is highly recommended, though it's the kind of match that almost defies a traditional star rating since it's so angle-heavy. Lawler vs. Dreamer from the second ECW PPV is okay, though some like Loss like it way more than I do.

Garvin did a podium interview discussing the upcoming '92 Survivor Series from a heel perspective--predicting Flair & Razor would win their match and that Shawn would win the WWF title. It was a tryout of sorts for a non-wrestling role but it never came together for them. Garvin does the "9-1-1" during or after his match at SuperBrawl IV with Johnny B. Badd, so that's on the Network.

What separates Saggs from Knobbs for me is that Saggs was totally unafraid to bust out some weirdly advanced bomb move that you wouldn't expect, like a pumphandle slam. He wasn't always Mr. Smooth when it comes to execution, obviously, but you sometimes had to admire his effort. I too agree that the Nasties have quite a few hidden good performances outside of their famous brawls, but that neither guy is a serious top-100 contender and I really don't see a top-25 tag case, either.

Yeah, what else is there to add? Terrible match with no heat, nonsensical rules, a ridiculous dive off the cage that people forgot about two seconds after it was done, and a ridiculous clusterfuck of a finish. I and everyone else are just groaning whenever we see a bogus Sting now. I have no idea if that fan was a work or not but either way it just added to the clusterfuckery and not in a good way. There's the organized chaos that the WWF has been making an art form out of on Raw, and then there's just chaos. Easily the worst PPV main event of 1997 for a multitude of reasons.

Yeah, I didn't like that ending either. Savage winning is one thing, but the fake Sting finish is an even bigger cliche at this point than trying to crucifix bomb Rey Misterio, Jr. How ironic that this is actually one of the more convincing Sting disguises but for once Schiavone sees right through it. The match? Well, up to that copout finish it was fucking awesome, and an improvement over GAB. It had all of Savage's cool escapes from the diamond cutter, some great violence at the entrance way, an awesome stretch with Liz and Kimberly, and awesome selling by DDP and Savage both. Not MOTN honors by any stretch but could have been on many other 1997 PPVs. In the end Savage still did more in beating Page than Hogan and all the members of the Clique have often done in losing to people.

Not a good match, but I dug the ending--both the false one and the real one. We get a Judo Gene LeBell reference on 1990's WCW television as Zybszko temporarily gets a guillotine choke on Syxx, but Hall and Bischoff end up laying him out. Luger's fallen off hard ever since his quickie title reign, but this was more good set-up for the inevitable Hall-Zbyszko match.

I've been really cynical about WCW Hennig but this is a continuation in a string of good performances by him. He takes one big bump on the slingshot on the floor but otherwise stays within himself and still works with Flair to put on a decent, heated match. I didn't mind the DQ finish since Flair got a big payback spot for the door-slamming, but yes, the referee brigade was just absurd.

This felt like a Savage promo right out of 1986. Liz was at her best, too.

"Safe working environment" was quite the trendy talking point for heels in the fall of '97. This promo seemed to go about twice as long as it needed to.

There's your WCW MOTY and a worldwide MOTYC, though it's still too early for me to think about where specifically it will place. I think what separates this from your typical WCW cruisers match is the personal grudge here, that you don't necessarily get in these matches--that adds an extra layer of intensity and velocity to everything each man does. Rey's flying, which has rarely been more spectacular than it is here, comes off as the strategy of a man trying to survive, rather than just a way to show off. I agree with Kevin's point about the setup to the finish also--it had almost become a cliche for Misterio by this point, but they actually find a way to get to the attempted crucifix power bomb organically.

Bam Bam drops Douglas with a Rude Awakening en route to an upset win for the ECW title. I actually forgot this title reign ever happened so this took me by surprise.

Charming "she's got herpes" chant for Francine. Rude brags about being the only man in wrestling who can go anywhere he wants, wherever he wants...words that are VERY prescient.

What book is this?

Houston looked really impressive here, I thought--even better than he did against Liger.

This was probably a great match between two people with great reps that I'm anxious to see more of, pity about all the goons outside constantly getting in the way of me trying to watch the damn match. This probably worked better in context as other people mentioned but as it was, it was horribly distracting and not in a "drawing heat" kind of way either. Thankfully this ends the only way that it should have, with Jaguar pulling out a counter to get a flash win overcoming all the odds. When they were actually wrestling, the action was great and Jaguar is wonderfully fluid--very quick but not suffocatingly so the way Toyota can be.

I can't quite decipher everything Gilbert said but it looks like this was supposed to be a triple threat and Gilbert was begging off. Ian cuts an awful promo in response. Do I seriously have to watch these two again? Some stuff happens and some guys gingerly unscrew light bulbs before using them as unconvincing weapons and then Doug Gilbert runs in a bunch for a dumbass finish and this is outdated Memphis bullshit in an environment where that simply doesn't work.

I'm with Chad in that 1/97 is my favorite AJPW match (though not my #1 overall) and that this isn't as good, but that this is still a MOTYC in its own right. I honestly didn't see much in the way of "mirroring" here and I knew this match had a rep for that going in. But it's just a tremendous, well-executed, and at times heartstopping Triple Crown defense--I bit on several near-falls even though I knew the final result going in. Maybe it's not one of the all-time psychological masterpieces by comparison, but it's one of the best bomb-throwing contests of this or almost any other year.

I...actually have a lot of thoughts about this, but I don't know if I can properly convey them. It's a very, VERY odd match and sort of an interesting one...I'm just not sure that it's "good." I get what they were trying to do--Kawada not being able to move in on the shooter Takayama and getting frustrated by the fact that Yoshihiro can keep him at bay with strikes. And Takayama heels it up some, being slow to break holds when Kawada reaches the ropes, which I liked. But this is like 90% set-up and then 10% climax when I was looking for Kawada to get his opening much earlier than he did. In fact, there are a few points where it looks like Kawada is finally going to unleash some offense and then Takayama cuts him off. Most notably when Kawada catches a kick and prepares to lariat him, but Takayama just sort of side-steps and shrugs the move off. And I seriously couldn't tell if that was by design or if Takayama was actively sandbagging him. It felt a lot like Robinson and Inoki in '75, in any case. The closing stretch is good, but as I said, the set-up takes too long for me to call this a good match even though I was sort of fascinated by it and how Kawada was finally going to break through. In addition, I question the timing of working a match like this at this point. This feels like a debut bout to get over how different Takayama is and how the AJPW guys are going to have to adjust to him, rather than a match where he's already been a regular for close to a year. I'm anxious to see what if anything Dave has to say about this in the '97 Observers--I suspect that he hated it and that this may have contributed to the Takayama backlash that lasted into the early '00s. Even though there are criticisms to be made and it's not anything like a top-100 match, I still found it strangely compelling while I was watching it--it was like the criticisms didn't fully manifest until the match was over.

A really good effort and definitely the best singles Ace match I've seen. Ace had all kinds of cool counters to the nodowa by turning them into his own big signature offense, and Taue brought a lot of new shit he didn't ordinarily do, like the headbutt tope. A good finishing stretch that Taue wins but gets Ace over as a guy with guts who could have won with one more break.

Hogan, Bischoff, and Savage are back out to kick off the second hour. Now they're threatening to imprison everyone in the building until DDP, Sting, and Piper show up. Again, the WCW team refuses to take the bait. Hogan is very good here at selling how flustered he is--rarely do you see heel Hogan directly address and insult the crowd the way he does here. Now we're at the close of the show, and the NWO are a bit more cocky, as Hogan disingenuously apologizes for overreacting earlier. Soon they're confronted by a Sting figure, only to get jumped by two other Stings from behind. One applies a sleeperhold and it's pretty clear who these two Stings are. The rest of the NWO is out as the cage lowers, but lowering with it is the real Sting. We go off the air with the NWO frantically trying to escape the cage. A closing angle by the numbers? Yeah, but damn, every Nitro should be held on the Gulf Coast, because this Biloxi crowd was going absolutely nuts. That can go a long, long way.

Good segment from a guy that WCW should have done so much more with--but how many other guys can we say that about?