El-P

Good match with nice psychology and selling on both part. The WCW locker room emptying to jump on the nWo guys is fun until you realize it doesn't mean anything and it's rather just a way to show a ring saturated with bodies and remind that WWIII is the following Sunday. The nWo really has obliterated WCW during that show (and the previous ones) to a ridiculous degree.

Would have been useful sometime in 1996 before Rey and Psychosis debuted.

Rather pathetic.

Didn't he get in trouble with WWE at some point when he was posting really harsh stuff about Trip & Stephy on his website or something ? He was very active and bitter (and hilarious at times) for a while and then all of a sudden just stopped talking about WWE (or anything current) altogether.

Funny as hell. Well done. Bischoff is such a sleazeball, you want to slap his face, especially when he's doing the pause at the end over Larry's fallen body. Good heat for Starrcade coming up in a month. WWIII really seems like an afterthought already.

He had a fun match with Savage the previous week. Second segment, second nWo appearance. Well, at least he mentionned he didn't want any help, so there's no reason for WCW guys to defend this former nWo traitor for now.

I can't praise Rude enough here, and WCW did a masterful job with this segment (see, it's 1998, they suck two weeks in a row then deliver the good stuff), totally embarrassing WWF in the process. First Montreal reference on WCW TV, but unlike the upcoming ones, this was very effective because Rude was too smart and too good of a promo to fall in the usual trappings. He bashes Michaels (wonder what Nash & Hall thought of that; they were holding the fake tag team belts and Syxx is out injured at this point) and McMahon, but in a way that always comes back to put over Bret, who's supposed to join the nWo, then takes the attention to the nWo and then to the Stinger, which brings back memories of old. Great promo, and the work before and after (from Hall especially) were building up their respective feuds. Bischoff is in heaven listening to Rude. Really good segment.

If that's the case (and you're most probably right), what was the rationale for Justin Credible doing 2000/01 then ? Well… It's not like KC has been on fire lately anyway with a few exceptions like the Bret Timeline (and soon the Martel one which looks great on paper).

I thought the same thing. Oh, our poor selves.

It's the 80's WWF state of mind. Babyfaces are all the best of friends. Even if one of them only turned a few weeks before.

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz…. They couldn't get Corino for any of their Timeline ? Really ?

Well, I sound like a broken record, but Sting who saved DDP and Luger countless times this year is getting beat up, and no one comes to his aid. Luger and DDP were just there a few minutes ago !! Fuck, those nWo beatdowns were ridiculous at this point, and WCW looked like a bunch of shitheads. Really, the whole WCW vs nWo feud was dead. The nWo had won. The peak of the feud was Luger winning the belt on Nitro. After that point, there was nothing but personnal issues (Flair vs Hennig / Giant vs Nash / Sting vs Hogan) and no one gave a shit about WCW anymore expect Larry Zbyszko. From that perspective, it's kinda obvious why Sting and Luger eventually joigned the Wolfpack in 98.

All of a sudden, the booking fell apart on top, leading to the godawul Piper vs Hogan Age in a Cage match, terrible mistakes that would never have been done before, nWo oversaturation on Nitro, counterproductive promos (Bischoff and Hogan basically promoting Sting's movie) etc... And once in a while, a pretty damn good show. Just like in 98. WCW just doesn't look like the killer promotion it had been from Spring 96 to the Summer of 97, at all.

Rewatching all this stuff in context, 1998 actually began in late October/early November 97. No wonder Starrcade 97 was a failure.

Man. WCW's booking on top was litteraly falling apart. This served no purpose and looked like a kayfabe-killer shilling segment.

Truly awful way to even mention Bret on WCW TV when he was not "one of many" but very clearly the hottest news item in wrestling at the time. They totally fucked up from the very beginning. And it looked like a complete mockery, complete with butchering the canadian national anthem, how would anyone really believe Bret had joined the nWo ? This is 1998 already, indeed.

Maybe I don't remember the story well, but the end result is the same. Jericho got a surprise pin instead of getting nothing at all. Not a bad deal overall.

I don't get the criticism either. Jericho was no one on the totem pole. He had a bunch of cruiserweight title reigns that were totally forgetable and was relegated to an afterthought at this point. The story is that Hall was just supposed to beat Jericho in a competitive squash and that Hall himself proposed to let him at least get a surprise pinfall. No idea how true that is, but I don't see how Chris looks bad here. It got a huge pop, the announcers put it over big and it was a nice segway to the angle with Zbyszko as Hall looked even more like a big bully that had just been humiliated by losing to a smaller guy. Good stuff to me.

I'm a Raven fan, but this really goes nowhere. Plus it doesn't make a whole lotta sense to air vignettes like this once raven has already been involved in angles, Clash and matches on WCW TV. Just poor timing.

Either fucking embarrasing botch, either a fucking stupid idea (she's supposed to be Kamala's bride or something ?)

Not the epic press conference you'd want for the biggest match ever, but a decent job. Sting kinda looks like he's afraid indeed, backing away while holding a bat.

I really didn't know him, but this is a sad sad news. Yeah, feels eerie when he was posting just a few days ago.

Hogan works his ass off here. One of those "DDP puts together a match that has no business being as good as it should", especially coming off the awful Piper match on PPV. I know at this point WCW = Sting, but still, the Steiners who were scheduled later and Luger was wrestled earlier not even showing up to defend DDP makes them look like they couldn't care less about WCW at this point. That weak part aside, Sting going through the B players by himself makes him look like a superhero. Yeah. Vincent, that "WCW SN miracle worker". That was pretty pathetic.

Better than the Eddie match to me. Finlay looks awesome and crisp working with Benoit. He badly needed a haircut though, he had a terrible look. Great counters and stiff looking work, just a pleasure to watch.

Crowd isn't that much into it at first, but they build the anticipation right down to the point of getting big time "Larry !" chants. They were all really effective. Gene almost cracking up when Hall asks him "down where ?" when he wasn't expecting it was funny.