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We get a strong promo from Lawler and an even better confrontation between Christopher and James Beard, as Christopher demands a match with Billy Travis but Beard refusing to authorize it as Travis is supposed to be suspended. A pretty crazy episode of TV, up there with the best Raws and Nitros of this time period in all honesty. It helps that we have two rather long-running feuds getting focus, with Lawler vs. Dutch and Christopher vs. Travis.

The Cable in the Classroom stuff is true--until this year when the rules changed again, ABC had to stop showing noon college football games other than a few weeks out of the season. And even at this stage of the company, the USWA was still regularly winning its timeslot. This sounds pretty devastating in the days before DVRs, though the live audience actually sounds enthusiastic.

Christopher and Travis are pretty much the entire focus of the show. Gilbert puts all of that over while also announcing his intent to follow his brother Eddie and take either the Unified or USWA title.

Crazy angle that could pretty much only be done in a studio--in fact I'm a little surprised that it took all the way until the dying days of the company to try something like this. As good as Christopher and Travis are here, imagine if this were Lawler and Dundee in '86 or Lawler and Gilbert in '88, much less the First Family jumping Jerry in '82. Still, this does feel like a heavily Monday Night Wars-influenced, "break the show's format if you have to to get a program over" booking move.

Cute finish as DDP gets poked in the eyes and backs into Diamond Cutting Luger to set up an NWO victory. This "birthday" stuff is still being pushed and I still don't get it. I think I covered the rest of the post-match stuff pretty effectively already. For some reason they felt the need to cut the audio of EVERYTHING--Bischoff, the crowd mics, and the announcers, so we get a closing segment that's somewhere between The Sopranos finale, No Country for Old Men, and Monty Python & the Holy Grail in terms of satisfying closure. This segment could have worked, vulture and corny voiceover and all, but was probably a little too ambitious.

Of COURSE Paul Gilmartin is Okerlund's "longtime, close, personal friend." Actually, not being a regular watcher of this show, I thought that was a before-he-was-famous Alton Brown for a second. Okerlund reacts to the turn like David Crockett would, which is fantastic. Fuck that Bret Hart heel turn bullshit or ambulance-hijacking stuff, this is your Segment of the Year. Seriously, this is just as entertaining now as it was then--one of a handful of angles that got my mother to mark out.

Kind of a crazy spectacle at points, but a big disappointment considering the bar Sangre Chicana has set for crazy brawls--even granting that he's years past his prime here. Sangre wins with some cheap interference and selectively blind officiating from Tirantes.

Very good match, though this is one I started to tune out more down the stretch whereas Aja/Manami drew me in, so I think I still liked that match better--I think Watanabe almost disappearing entirely had something to do with that. Still, Maekawa really stands out as fresh in this setting and it's amazing in a way how she's able to get so much out of pretty much nothing offensively except kicks. Still, it's clear she's a limited worker, as is Watanabe outside of her usual spots, so it's up to LCO to hold this match together.

Pretty decent action from what we see. I could give much of a shit about Hotta, but her hard-ass submission style does make for a nice contrast with Kyoko's down the stretch. And it's refreshing to see a big joshi match built around submissions. That said, the actual finish is REALLY, eye-rollingly contrived as Kyoko does this bizarre method of attempting a pin that's never been done and serves no purpose except for her to get pulled into a cross armbreaker.

In some way I think Loss is completely right about the staleness of this match-up and how a seasoned joshi viewer (or even a not-so-seasoned one like myself) could call out a lot of these spots and transitions before they happened. And the weird match coverage and announcing adds to the exhibitiony, traveling-match feel. And yet they pulled me in down the stretch, as they gave us a few good near-falls without overdoing it too much, and the final bell took me by surprise, which is about all I can ask for out of a draw. All in all a very good match, though I'm anxious to see what Aja does in new settings going forward.

Burning question: did Tatsumi Fujinami ever wrestle the Italian Stallion?

I think both of those felt more organic than the "tater tots" line, which is based on an awfully thin premise (Irish = potatoes = ... little potatoes?) "Paula" came from the fans first--to my knowledge, at least. I don't recall a babyface dropping it in a promo and then the fans picking up on it from that. Piper's kilt was pretty low-hanging fruit and was way less of a logical leap than Reigns' attempted catchphrase. Edit: Get your minds out of the gutter and try to rise above that very wrong-sounding "low-hanging fruit" line.

I have to say I don't at ALL like the idea of incorporating mic work into these rankings, just because an apples-to-apples comparison falls apart when comparing American wrestlers to the Japanese and Mexicans (Pierroth and maybe a few others excepted).

I definitely viewed it Contest's way when I watched this again on the '96 Yearbook--at one point, Hogan literally breaks character and practically pleads for Piper to get back on track. That said, Piper was such a rambler that it was often hard to tell when the working stopped and shooting began.

The Observer covering this main event is pretty fascinating, piggybacking on Loss' recent post about the NWO vs. Flair conflicts. Running down the key points: - Terry Taylor booked this show to have Jericho to regain the Cruiserweight title from Alex Wright, and the Steiners to win the tag titles from the Outsiders. Then the Wolfpac went to Bischoff and told him that WCW had been running too many title changes--two title switches were then changed to zero. - Zero title changes quickly got changed to one--you get one guess why that was. They had no finish planned for Hogan to regain the title, which is why they had to rehash yet another fake Sting gimmick. - Hogan was hit by a rock after regaining the title--Meltzer made it a point that this was a much more wrestling-oriented crowd in Sturgis than last year. Hogan got the proper reaction this time, and there was no particular hatred for Harlem Heat. As a result of that, he called an audible and ushered the NWO to the back. That resulted in the broadcast booth having to stall--which Schiavone did a commendable job of, drawing on his experience at the '91 GAB presumably. The last part of '97 really feels like the Clique will be going all-out to take over both promotions, and almost(?) succeeding.

Without exaggerating, I think the hot tag to Luger may be the single loudest crowd pop in WCW history, at least to this point. Good Lord. Match is thrown out almost immediately afterward, but Flair and the Giant are out to prevent a long NWO beatdown, and we go off the air with the brawl in progress. Not a super-remarkable Nitro, but a darn good one made almost great by this legendary crowd.

Nash draws a Bret Hart-esque cartoon of JJ Dillon and the NWO plays Spray-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey with it. This is possibly the only black-and-white paid-for announcement that sees face time paid to Scott Norton of all people.

Maybe we should have just run Birmingham every single week. They can alternate between Raw and Nitro so as not to burn the crowd out too quickly. Sheesh. Dillon still comes off as a dumbshit, though, not that that's anything new with his run.

Hall and Nash say nothing of note, not that they need to do much to get a reaction.

Glad to finally see some attention played to this angle--McMichael winning the U.S. title was a little much, but Jarrett as the Horsemen Wannabe was a little mid-card angle that was way more fun than it had any right to be. HUGE crowd reactions for everything--watch this and try to dismiss Benoit as a Vanilla Midget. He and Mongo are both over like crazy here, and while Birmingham is a classic southern wrasslin' town it's not exactly Prime Horsemen Country either. Well-laid-out match, too--McMichael comes in and they immediately take his leg out, meaning Mongo can simply lay on the mat and yell while Jarrett and Eddie do literally all the work as they try to take out Mongo's knee. It also provides a cover for any blown spots by Mongo to come. Clusterfuck finish that ends with McMichael popping Jarrett with the U.S. belt to give Benoit a win.

Yeah, whether you want to mark the birth as Hall's first appearance, Nash's first appearance, Bash at the Beach, or whatever, ain't NO interpretation of the NWO formation that puts it in mid-August. Weird as fuck and it's not like such a throwaway segment couldn't have been done in July.

I never liked DX and I doubt this Yearbook will change my opinion that much, but I can get behind watching Shawn and HHH work as a Nise Midnight Express, working some nice stooging spots along a few token slick double teams. Mankind seems really banged up at this particular point--even for him, I mean--and doesn't do much, though he does work a nice "babyface falls into the prone heel's groin" spot that's almost a guaranteed pleaser. Rick Rude makes his alignment perfectly clear as Shawn calls him out for backup. He distracts Undertaker long enough for Shawn to absolutely RUIN Undertaker with two sick chairshots. Really a fun match overall and very well laid-out, giving us just a tease of HBK vs. UT but not too much and making you want to see more.

We get a before-and-after montage of Atlantic City--I shudder to think what a 1997-to-now transition would look like. Then a recap of Austin's neck injury--the tombstone was brutal and really should have ended Austin's career, though his neck was already fucked up going into the match. Austin hasn't mellowed with the injury, as he eviscerates JR and the hotel room he's been put up in. He says that despite doctor's advice to do something else with his life, Austin states that he doesn't do anything else. Austin is hilarious here despite the gravity of the situation, taking time out of his tirade to tell JR not to "wipe his nose, it's pissin' me off."

Yeah, the Hart Foundation seemed almost instantly marginalized once Shawn turned--part of why I think the company may have peaked at SummerSlam.

Faarooq lays into Ahmed Johnson: "underneath all that black skin is a white man dyin' to get out ... you couldn't be white if they sandblasted yo' ass twenty times." Wow. Comments for Crush and Savio follow. Rocky's getting good heat already. "Die Rocky Die--that's the gratitude I get from you pieces of crap for my blood, my sweat, and my tears?" Rocky isn't there quite yet as he meanders a bit, but he's showing more potential than he has at any other point in the WWF. DOA show up on the TitanTron and challenge the Nation to fight them backstage. The bikes (as opposed to the wrestlers riding them) were actually over with live crowds, and *maybe* this feud could have had legs if anyone in the DOA could have worked a lick.