PeteF3

Yeah, that sounded pretty scripted, from a guy who for whatever his faults always seemed to be pretty decent at "acting," at least when grading on a pro wrestler's curve. Dreamer is pissed about Bill Dundee being the guest referee for his title match. Lawler cuts a good but rather whiny promo in response.

We get an intensely uncomfortable moment with the Scott Bowden-lookalike announcer standing in the shot, and Lawler shoving him away and calling him "useless" and an "idiot." And he...promptly walks back into the shot again. Lawler and Dutch are having a back-and-forth over the title that's cut off by Tommy Dreamer--and even Beulah has made the trip for this one. Crazy 3-way brawl erupts that spills into the ring and into the crowd(!), creating one of the most chaotic scenes in the WMC studio since the Snowman at his peak. Dreamer clobbers James Beard who takes a crazy Mr. Perfect-style bump on the studio floor.

Rich cuts a decent but fairly generic promo. Yes, by '97 he's more enjoyable as the out-of-touch kook with the FBI. And who *are* these guys?

Awesome brawl, but why the fuck would Billy Joe *drop* his bat before engaging Christopher? Oh well, the angle itself is great, and a cage match in the parking lot is a pretty brilliant gimmick idea (especially with Travis being suspended) even if it's a year late and several dollars short. Christopher threatens the mysterious announcers with his bat and cuts a psychotic promo hyping up the match. Is there any footage of this??! Someone please tell me there is.

Who are these guys? Lance was out of action, recovering from a quadruple bypass, but did Larry Burton run off Michael St. John too? We get a recap of Billy Travis' greatest hits, both figurative and literal.

He also had a bit part in Invictus, so he's sort of run a full gamut. As the Commandant he's a total moustache-twirling 1940's-era villain and looks way out of place, but this is an amusing segment. And he's sure as hell better on the stick than Col. DeBeers.

Say what you want about unprotected head shots, but at least the WWF is pushing the hell out of the angle from Monday. I don't know what the hell the "story of the Undertaker" stuff is about either, and UT simply isn't cut out for long promos. Sort of like a certain individual being pushed today.

I liked this the best of Shawn's promos so far--going all the way back to 1995 or so. He does put himself over a lot, but at least he's putting himself over as the potential "first" guy to put the Undertaker down for good, which sort of puts UT over...in a way. Massive "Shawn Is Gay" chant towards the end of this. Shawn: "Don't make me come out there and [bLEEEEEEEP] just to prove it!" I have no idea what he said but it seemed to work in terms of pissing the crowd off even more. I also really liked Cornette, on commentary, characterizing Shawn as "the man who literally cheated Death at SummerSlam."

Hey--did anyone else notice that this was a Hase-style match, not a Kobashi one? That's my big original insight here. Yeah, this was slow enough that I was on the verge of tuning out at points, but I blame that on watching the faster-paced NXT show earlier this afternoon. The matwork is all very well-done, to Kobashi's credit, and we build to a hot finish where it really looks like Hase is going to pull off the upset. The only wonky moment was Kobashi's poor attempt at a giant swing, but I give him credit for having the audacity to try it *and* I think the poor execution actually worked in favor of the match, especially when Hase goes, "Oh, fuck that noise, lemme show you how it's done." I was eagerly anticipating finally getting to see an AJPW Hase match, and he didn't disappoint.

Chill-inducing segment without a lot more to say about--I don't think it was the parody that sunk this, it was the rather stupid and pointless Hennig turn.

Young Savage looks more like X-Pac.

"Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you." --Scott "David St. Hubbins" Levy

They're still pushing the narrative of Sting speaking "loud and clear" at the Clash--which he obviously didn't, but this is one of those things you can get away with when you're as hot as 1997 WCW. A lot of those "oh, WCW" moments just don't matter as much. Bischoff does a good job wearing multiple hats here, going from his usual cocky self (I forgot about his attempts to make "bite me" into a catchphrase) to a scared and angry man to a quivering pile of goo in the face of Sting.

Another strong match. Enzo & Cass losing is probably a positive sign for Bayley. There had to be at least one heel walking out of this with a title, but I thought they'd pull the trigger on the tag team here.

I love this crowd. The chants are clever and original but they all serve to put the wrestlers over and not just themselves.

That veered on the edge of being totally overbooked, but didn't get there--they sucked me in with that ending.

Neat little package to the feud even if I don't accept Dreamer's premise.

What was with that weird look she gave the microphone at the end?

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.