El-P

So Stevie Ray is the ugly girl that the pretty popular girl hangs out with to make herself look even prettier? Exactly ! That's really well put actually.

Yeah, this is one that I would have loved to see. NJ vs AJ. Furnas had an even better Frankensteiner than Scott. With the Steiners it would have been probbaly not much more than bomb throwing, but Furnas and Kroffat more than could hang on with them on that respect.

LCO (circa 97) vs Crush Gals (in their prime). Mita and Shimoda making Chiggy BLEED like a pig and having fun doing it, the sick bitches they were. Make a return match in a cage, I'm sure Lioness can come up with some stupid spot Mita would be more than willing to take. Greatest matches ever.

I was a huge Undertaker fan when I was a teen, so Paul Bearer was a big part of my early fandom years. I was totally shocked when he turned on Taker at SummerSlam 96, and I enjoyed his heel run with Mankind a lot. Sad to hear. Way too young to die.

Has Stevie Ray been mentionned ? He never, ever improved a bit from the day he showed up in 1993 to the day he retired. He did make Booker look like a great worker in comparison for a while though, so he served a purpose as far as "make someone look good", although not in the traditionnal sense.

Watching back WCW, as odd as it may seem to some people, I found out I had no problem watching his matches and enjoying his work. However, there has not been one single time that I haven't thought about it watching his matches, not one single time. And each time it eventually takes my attention away for a while. I have avoided the 95-97 period thus far to concentrate on the downward spiral of WCW, so I don't have to watch him and Nancy work together. I have no idea if that would be more uncomfortable to me at this point. I also don't know if I'll ever revisit this era, and maybe I'm not sure if I want to partly because Nancy and Benoit are all over TV together. Not really sure though.

Exactly. Once they bought off every competition, it was allright to talk about the past, with the twist of being able to rewrite history in a WWE-flavored way, depending on who's under contract at the moment of the DVD release/HoF ceremony/nostalgia show. When did the Hof became the second biggest event of the year ? When did the Streak became the biggest thing ever in wrestling ? When did WM eventually became a show based on dream matches from stars from the past or retiring ? When did "old-school Raw" began to show up ? The past became the future once there was no fighting to do in the present. Once those streams of revenu will have dried up, there's no telling what will happen. They might go searching for the next John Cena really quick.

He wanted to humble that no good Backlund jabroni, I guess.

I'd have a hard time believing that it prolonged his life. Benoit in WWE looked insanely roided compared to his late WCW days. Not saying he was pressured to take them, but still, the environement and being pushed harder against much bigger guys surely didn't help. Both he and Eddie looked badly bloated in their later WWE days, although Eddie looked almost as bad in 1995 in NJ. Both didn't need WWE to take steroid and to abuse them, but to say argue going to WWE actually prolongued his life. I don't buy it. WCW was more money with less insane travel and less pression (even if it was implicite) to take roids (especially, in a way, since they wouldn't have been put under that much pression since they were undercarders 4 Life). The personnal and psychological issue played a major role anyway, so it's not to say things would have been different in the end. Eddie and Grunge dying fucked up his brain probably as much as concussions did. In his shoot interview, Rene Dupree actually has an interesting theory about what could have happened, base don his on experience with drugs + alcohol + roids. He says he can totally picture Benoit getting in a blind drunken/drugged up rage and kill Nancy then black out, and not remmeber anything when he emerges. Leading to him snapping and we know the rest. Makes sense, well, as much as you can make sense out of such a tragedy.

Yeah, Savage was actually good in this role, he didn't get in the way of the match until his spot with Flair, did the job of counting pretty well and had a cool way of putting over the action at times.

PPV 4 : Spring Stampede 1999 Match of the night : Raven & Perry Saturn vs Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko. Most heated match of the card from the get-go. Someone must do something right. Saturn & Raven showed some pretty cool double-team move. Malenko works better as a heel, his wooden personnality plays out better this way. The ending is excellent, but also shows to how much lenghts Benoit was willing to go, which didn't do him any favor in the long haul. Honorable mention of the night : Rey Mysterio Jr. vs Kidman. Pretty long match which gets better as it goes, although with Kidman it never goes beyond a your turn/my turn formula, with each one trying big moves to end the match and countering each others. Upset win match of the night : Hulk Hogan vs Ric Flair vs DDP vs Sting. So, Macho is the special referee. Comes out with Gorgeous George, who looks like a porn star. Midlife crisis anyone ? I give credit to Savage for updating his look, although it includes getting back on roids which wasn't the best decision. Flair and Hogan look old at this point, and Flair just goes into routine mode instead of getting anything out of the setting of the match. Just bust out his cliché spots against Hulk and Sting, like he's doing extract from older matches instead of actually working the current one. He also blows up some stuff and depsite still looking crisp in spots, basically is the worst of the four. Can't say much about Hogan, as he's carried out after having his knee injured by DDP. Gotta find a way to not look like he lost another match on PPV I guess. DDP vs Sting is the best part of the match, and they work some good little stuff together. No explanation why Sting is back in 1997, but he's still really over. DDP winning the belt was nice for him, as he was the best worker in the match and he deserved it at some point, but it came at least one year too late, he wasn't at the peak of his babyface run anymore, and it's obvious people wanted Sting to win judging by the mild pop he got. Oh, I almost forgot Macho "betraying" Flair (how did he betray him anyway, Macho came off as a face) which basically led him to lose. Match had its moments. Get you win back match of the night : Kevin Nash vs Goldberg. They work Lex and Liz (well, kinda) in the match too as they were involved in the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom angle and the beatdown that followed, which is neat. Nash gets a lot of offense before Goldie's comeback. Nice spot as Nash actually leapfrog over the spear, that was pretty unexpected and showed that Nash was a resourceful worker when he wanted to be. Goldie gets his win back four months too late for it to really matter, but hey, at least now he's even, and also got his shot on Luger, so not complaining. ECW match of the night : Hak vs Bam Bam Bigelow. Chastity is in total slut look now, the announcer are all over her. This is the typical, bust stuff over the head of your opponent match, complete with Tony saying the trash can shots don't jurt as much as they sound like. Hak does alll the cool work and bumps here. Man, Bam Bam never cease to underwhelm, he's not too good and badly blows up a basic spot too. This is nonsensical but kinda fun thanks to Hak. Future of WCW match of the night : Scott Steiner vs Booker T. Steiner is an awesome heel, giving the people their money's worth, antogonizing, sometimes almost in a physical way, people in the front row. Deliberate Steiner kind of match, which works for Booker since he only has a few token spots he can put it in. Works quite well here, and Steiner heel tactics and ref intimidation are the bulk of the match, feeding Booker at the right time for his comebacks. Steiner wins the US belt. Long time overdue. Booker remains the TV title, so now you've got two champions that are over in the midcard and make both belts matter. Pretty good PPV, with a nice stretch of matches during the second half. Considering how horribly this was build (well, mainly the main event to be honest, the undercard was actually decently built), this was a rather good surprise. Steiner winning the US belt and DDP winning the WCW title freshen things up, the tag was very good and had heat, the cruiserweight looked good (with a nice Juvy vs Blitzkrieg opener), with only Disco vs Konnan being way too long and a useless Scotty Riggs vs Mickey Whipreck match thrown in (I like both guys, but this made no sense with zero build at all for either guy, especially Mickey). No stupid shit nor booking that made no sense (actually everything was well balanced in term of satisfying results for heel and faces). Best PPV of the year I would say thus far.

I remember quite a bit of totally disgusting misogynic comments about Nancy back then, from people would just couldn't fathom the idea that their wrestling hero Chris Benoit could have done this. Just horrendous stuff. Not to mention the ever coming up "She must have done something to provoque him" argument so to in a way "excuse" the perpetrator. There was some really terrible shit popping up at the time. The Sullivan theory was just out of this world insane.

I watched the Lawler match. This is about as good a Kamala match I've seen. And it still pretty much sucked. I'm sorry but Kamala brings about as much to the table as Brian Adams does weekly on Thunder in 1999. And I should know. Terrible looking and boring offense, despite having Jerry freaking Lawler selling for him. Comedy selling. He takes one good bump at one time. The gimmick is embarrasing at best and offensive at worst. Yeah. Not good. One Man Gang or John Tenta he isn't. Haku is isn't either. Bad and Boring. (and as much as I enjoy Lawler on multiple levels, 97% of punches as offense still does get on my nerves. His flying punch from the second rope still looks awesome though) (the referre was quite awful too btw)

Sid isn't exactly the poster boy for pro-wrestling fandom either.

I had interest in watching Rock come back last year. I was not disapointed and enjoyed the match a lot. Needless to say the idea of having a John Cena big celebration this year is not as appealing to me, especially after all I heard about Rocky looking about ready to explode. Lesnar vs HHH I could care less, since anything about HHH I could care less, although it can't be as horrific as his match last year with Taker. CM Punk vs Taker... mmm... I've been tired of the streak about 5 or 6 years ago, and Taker hasn't look good for the past three years. The only great thing he was involved with was the *awesome* Johnny Cash introduction a few years ago. So yeah, kinda curious to see that match still because of CM Punk, but not getting my hopes up. Swagger vs Del Rio, whatever. No interest in the undercard, although if Henry and Jericho get a good opponent it might be fun to see. So there will be my yearly WWE moment, but as much as I was looking forward to it last year because of the Rock, I'm not that much interested this year despite Lesnar. Biggest pop of the night should be Bruno.

I could third that match and drop Ai Fujita's name. Now *that* would fuck up this whole thread, I don't think anyone but FLIK could answer that one. But I'm going with that SMW TV match vs Tracey Smothers which ended by the swerves of all swerves, Ron Wright stepping out of his wheelchair to fuck Smothers up (sorry I don't remember the date and all, I don't keep track).

Never saw a match that I thought was good or interesting (from either WWF or Mid-South, haven't seen him elsewhere yet). The gimmick was racist as all hell. The guy had cool looking back kicks and singular maneurisms. Gimmick was racist as hell. I dunno. The guy played his role right. I guess. I'd rather watch Kimala II.

This.

Not saying it's not valid, but it had been overstated at points to me. Maybe less so now than 3-4 years ago, I'm not following closely enough, but like Jerry said, it really depends on who is debated and for some guys it pops up quite quickly I believe.

AWESOME !

Yeah. Look at Raven. But seriously, this kind of thinking also seems flawed to me. Tons of dull and mediocre workers know what and how to do things. It doesn't mean they do those things very well nor that those things make a great, exciting or compelling match. Hence the "he played his role right" talking point being one of the most overrated lately.

WEEK 14 (April 5 to 10, 1999) Match of the week : Raven & Perry Saturn vs Rey Mysterio Jr. & Kidman (Nitro). The tag team championship keeps on delivering each week. This time, we get Raven & Saturn vs the smaller champs, and they do bump like crazy, including Kidman taking one of his ridiculous bump to the floor. Rey is very clearly the best worker in the company, which also makes it the best worker in the big two (I'd argue that Tajiri was better than him then). ECW match of the week : Hardcore Hak vs Mickey Whipreck (Thunder). This is pretty surreal. Whipreck had injured an ankle in his debut match against Kidman, so he was off TV until then. Good little match. They had no idea what to do with Whipreck, no idea why they signed him. Dream match of the week : The Cat vs Norman Smiley (Saturday Night). Two of the most entertaining characters on the roster, and they can't get a match elsewhere than on the C-show. Meanwhile, we get a battle royal on Nitro with all the nWo B-team guys. Depressing. Anyway, this is a fun little match. Wiggle is not showed on TV, and even Tenay and Hudson joke about the whole "controversy" stuff. Comeback match of the week : Jim Duggan vs Lenny Lane (Nitro). This is Duggan's first match coming back from cancer. Looks pumped up as hell, with his large scar on the right side. I wasn't happy with his comeback promo a few weeks back, but this match made me smile. Fuck cancer ! Debut of the week : Nitro's new look. This is what WCW needed to get back in the ratings. Yes ! I think Jericho almost tripped on the giant C. Death of WCW angle of the week. Sting returns in black and white and points to the video screens, which play a video of Macho Man announcing the main event for Spring Stampede, a four-way match with himself as the guest referee. Okay. Bare with me. Earlier in the show, there was that long sequence of promos by Flair, Hogan, Goldie and DDP which led to a four way on Nitro for the title. It was made clear that Flair was calling the shots, and *he* made the match himslef as he was provoked by DDP and attacked by Goldie after he first gave Hogan a title shot. Sting was supposed to adress the fans. So, ending of the four way sees Sting rappeling down to the ring, like it's 1997, baseball bats and all. Which already makes no sense. And then that abortion occurs. So, the WCW production team put together a video of Macho Man announcing a four-way match that includes Sting and himself as a guest referee. Makes the whole company looks like a total joke on so many levels that I won't even go into it. Also probably the laziest build to a PPV main event ever. Nash's booking of the main event scene is putrid at this point. I forgot, it seems ike DDP is not really a heel after all, not yet at least. Sting ? Who the hell knows why he's back in black and why the hell he's getting a title shot. Macho Man helped Ric Flair defeat Bischoff in January, so by all acount he was a face by then, but now that everything is upside down, who the hell knows. As far as him making the match and being a guest referre, this is just booking at random. It's simply as bad and nonsensical as anything Vince Russo did. Godawful stuff. WCW really looks like it's totally crumbling from the top at this point. There's no direction whatsoever. The undercard stays fun thanks mostly to the tag team scene with Rey/Kidman, Raven/Saturn and Benoit/Malenko (Hennig is injured, so sadly no more him/Windham). The US tournament gets Steiner vs Booker T in the final. Way to make fuck up the TV title. They seemingly put Hak with Bigelow simply because they used to be ECW guys. The fact that Chastity turned on Raven had been forgotten. Rick Steiner is having a bad mini-feud with Fit Finlay (he basically squashes Finlay at every turn), and Buff Bagwell may be the candidate for "most degraded worker" this year. He's bloated and looks all stiff. Not a good comeback, I'm glad they took him away from Steiner.

The jokes write themselves. Ric Flair vs Roddy Piper at Mania.

Getting a plate of ramen from Kawada would be the most surreal thing ever to me.

I enjoy him more once I got to know the real guy behind the charcater. I've said it before, something that comes through to me is that he loves it so much and put so much into it.