El-P

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.

No picture nor short video. But better this than nothing.

Awful match. Stupid booking. More fake Stings. Piper and Hogan going out of the cage together via the door 2 seconds after Tony said "If Hogan does out he wins this match !". Piper winning two months before the biggest match ever. No heat. This is right out of 98, hell, even 99. Yep. The honeymoon was over. The writing was on the wall. The fact Savage fucked up his knee which basically would end up killing his career for nothing in a godawful match is really sad too. Age in the Cage. Yeah. The WWF via Cornette really could have a laugh at this one, when they had Steve Austin on the verge of megastardom and a young hot prospect named The Rock. WCW had finally lost the plot after one year of greatness.

Totally forgot about how good this one was. Dusty marking out when they thow each other into styrofoam tombstones is awesome too. I always love Liz getting physical, no matter how awkward she can look at times, plus Kimberly dragging her by her hair was much better and more realistic than a shitty looking catfight. Savage's selling was top notch here, and the sloppy elbow was a great touch. Too bad they had to do this stupid finish with yet another fake Sting (seriously ?). I don't mind Savage winning, as he's the big star and DDP has been elevated by this feud anyway at this point. Yeah, the last big time Savage match although he worked a few pretty good stuff with Bret in 98.

This is all about setting up Hall vs Zbyszko because this was a total nothing match, as always with those two together, boring test of strenghts and sleeperholds. Luger was on autopilot, his last good match seems eons ago now. The highlight is Larry Z putting a submission hold on Syxx. Okay, were are the dozen refs who jumped on Flair twenty minutes before ? *sigh*

Decent match with Hennig looking better than Flair (not hard at this point), but ridiculous finish. The referees deal is just inconsistent booking and it's rather infuriating, plus the belt stomp doesn't make a whole lot of sense since Flair didn't use the metal plate to bash Hennig's face in. Hennig has looked better than I expected during those last previous weeks.

Just want to say that it was so cool to see Savage & Liz back together on screen as heels at this time. They just fit together so perfectly, with Liz looking better than ever. Truly the greatest pro-wrestling couple. And yes, good promo and cool jacket. I just understood *now* why Savage didn't wear the nWo colors that night.

WCW MOTYC & MOTDC. If anything, this match shows that the quality of execution does matter, especially when you work that kind of style. Yeah, one of Eddie's greatest performance, and the picture perfect cruiserweight match, the apex of the style in the US.

Not exactly putting heat on Piper vs Hogan. But a nice trolling promo nonetheless.

A Fit Finley semi-competitive squash. Okay. Nothing special really.

Third segment on the show with those three guys. More fake Sting that the announcer still can't identify on the first glance. Bischoff making a second McMahon reference, again a terrible idea when your show is clearly losing steam while the opposition is getting hotter. This whole angle is awkward, doesn't make sense and really doesn't accomplish anything. Nitro has been pretty bad two weeks in a row now. You can feel the peak has been reached a few months ago, and even the undercard doesn't look so good now.

What's there is great, but it's typically the Nitro format which gets frustrating. The clean win kinda came from nowhere.

Better than the nursery, but still a far cry from the atmosphere of the ECW vignettes. Still kinda cool though, but Raven really needs to get some issue to talk about now. He's cruising here.

Cool hype segment for Eddie ve Rey. Rey still isn't that much of a promo, but it doesn't matter here, as the production helps get the importance of the match across.

Cool segment indeed. I wish they had done more of this.

Don't know what to think about this angle, really. Looks kinda forced to me. I have a hard time believing Piper laid out the entire nWo B-Team.

Match was pretty good, Hennig has showed up to work again. But both the finish and the angle afterward were terrible to me. First off, why Flair shows up just as DDP's got the upper hand ? Why does the security stops him while they don't do shit when the nWo is around ? And this really looked like a three count to me. So we get a Dusty finish here. And then another repetitive nWo beatdown. Steiners ? Nope. Giant ? Luger ? Nope. But a bunch of fake Sting as cannon fooder. Sorry, but this is lazy, half baked booking, borderline ridiculous booking to me. So okay, the real Sting is the one who doesn't sell and finally we get somewhat of a cool moment. But the nWo stuff on this Nitro has been pretty bad.

Holy shit. That's sad.

Indeed. And Piper has been surprisingly strong since he came back. However, as far as the beatdown goes, I'm surprised you accept yet another lame "obvious fake Sting" angle. Really lazy booking here. And like Tony said "where in the world are the Steiners ? Where in the world is WCW ?" Piper basically gave the Steiners the tag belts, and they can't show up to defend him ? Really ? So no, not a good segment to me. It's a rehash of bad stuff that looked stupid before.

Way too many cuts and shots indeed. And DDP isn't exactly cutting a money promo either. B+ for effort though, but those WCW vignettes just don't look half as good as the nWo ones.

The Steiners were still crazy over, but they were really boring to me at this point. Just a bunch of big spots and Rick doing the selling. Ugh. The Faces of Fear and Mortis & Wrath were the ones having interesting matches together, plus the Steiners have been an afterthought since they choked at Road Wild. Yeah, big heat, but Syxx defending in place of Nash and a non referee doing the count make it way too screwy to me. The tag belts were still dead at this point, and the upcoming months won't help.

Raven was *supposed* to be an annoying prick throwing falsely deep rants and self pity parties. This vignette is decent but far from his ECW stuff, and he doesn't have an issue to talk about yet. It's like they just reset the whole angle after Stevie Richards was let go.

That was a hoot. Bischoff really was overconfident at this point, he shouldn't encourage people to go watch red hot DX and Steve Austin.