El-P

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.

Come on Rey, you now you'll never be better than after you'll lose to Nash. In a tag team match. For Liz's hair. That's tradition.

Apparently not considering the massive outpoor of reactions since yesterday. But it's pretty shocking. Another one bites the dust, and a pretty young one too. He was one of the enjoyable NBT. Had he been brought directly though the WWE machine during the early 00's, he may have become something, he totally had the look they were aiming for at the time, and he was athletic as hell.

The match saw Hennig look more motivated than ever, probablt because of Benoit. He's totally worked up, bumps like a madman including hitting his head on the stairs outside after a single chop and generally works harder than he would during his entire WCW tenure. Then Flair proves me wrong by cutting a great, from the heart promo. Yeah it's obvious they were going for a Hogan vs Flair match at some point (which would happen in early 99 after all). The guy from the security falling down trying to catch up Flair was funny. With those three strong angle (Savage injured, Hogan vs Piper and this one), they sure did a hell of a job building to Havoc on this one Nitro.

Gotta love the fact that even as a heel, Liz got another "worried about injured Randy" angle to play. Yeah, strong angle. Tony is *cold* here, which is kinda cool.

I'm amazed how good the build for this match has been, as both Piper and Hogan cut really strong promo, Piper as the commisionner and Hogan as his great old self that he was during the summer. I have zero desire to watch this match, but damn this whole segment is as rock solid as anything.

Not really intrigued about the fact this guy was a football player. Surely it led to the dull McMicheal feud before the reboot of Goldy.

I don't think I had heard this promo before. And yes, one of the best he's cut in years. Too bad it won't lead to anything up to its measure though. Tony is excellent playing the whole thing off too. The Horsemen are dead, at least until 1999.

The survey always annoyed me, but it was an efficient little act to get some heat. We don't get one more for the good guys yet though.

Nope. It was her project, so there you go. I wonder who was the worst next to her ? AC Jazz ?

Yeah, this feature should have aired in 1996. But they look really cool. The angle is a classic and it's well done here. I enjoyed the fact the announcers didn't play dumb and blind to the fact it was Eddie. Wasn't he wearing the old Shane Douglas/Ricky Steamboat masked costume from 93 ?

I think this is the key. Indeed.

The idea sounds cool, although I don't have nearly as much free time as I did back in 2006. It was exteremly fun the first time around, and would probably be much easier now with the wider access to a lot more matches and such.

The most beautiful pro-wrestling match (yeah, I said pro-wrestling) I've ever seen, along with Mariko Yoshida's work against Yumi Fukawa. Probably one of my TOP 5 favourite match ever. Haven't watched this in nearly 15 years. Feeling old.

I love Dan Severn, if only for his match against Tarzan Goto in IWA Japan.

Tariel is one of the worst, most embarrasing worker I've ever seen this side of Tiger Jeet Singh, the Harris Brothers and Crusher Maedomari.

And yet when Undertaker flies his opponents to Texas to PRACTICE WrestleMania matches, nobody says word one. Funny that. Taker is a sacred cow. All his "epic" WM matches have been ridiculously overrated over the years anyway. And yeah, DDP was a laughing stock for ever because of his habits of planning things out, hardcores loved to tell the story of Chris Benoit, that wonderful human being, trashing his script as it was a great gesture of knightly defense of the pro-wrestling tradition. But Taker has been considered as this great big match worker despite the fact all of his self-conscious WM "epics" that he had to work once a year were more akin to Hogan vs Warrior than your old school Ric Flair main-event in term of how they were put together. Funny indeed.

Austin, Rock and Foley's standing don't diminish despite the Attitude era because they were the legit great parts of that era (that is, before it went into complete shit in 99 when even those three couldn't escape the Russo bullshit). Taker was more a hit and miss and the fact he was involved with Kane so much surely has something to do with it, although the whole Ministry and Corporate Ministry stuff was brutal in itself.

They totally lost the plot here. Hogan's ego is finally running out of control, after months of great, focused promos. Not only is he basically stealing Hennig's heat, but it's indeed a very petty way to take shots at Flair when there's no plan for a Hogan vs Flair feud in the future.

Agreed, it's a schokingly good promo from Piper, although he does say NWA instead of nWo. Kayfabe-wise, Piper has done a much better job that JJ Dillon in term of decision making. Luger vs Hall with Larry Z. as the ref is the logical continuation of the ongoing storyline, but shows that Luger has gone from being the Man for WCW during the summer to be a transition character for an upper midcard feud. He would still feud with Savage on top in the beginning of 98, which shows of screwed up the booking had become. Piper does also a good job hyping a cage match I have no desire to watch.