El-P

I loved the New Foundation back then. If only for their ridiculous look. Last time I re-watched NF vs Orient Express from RR 92, it had aged really well.

Well, if anthing she's got a good sense of humour...

I'm not arguing, just saying what I think is in Dave & Alvarez' minds.

WEEK 9 (March 01 to 06, 1999) Match of the week : Bret Hart vs Chris Benoit (Nitro). It may very well be better than the infamous Owen Tribute match, because it had the dynamic of Bret being the heel here. Of course the match is hampered by the fact it doesn't really have a finish, but damn what builds toward that non finish is excellent, probably the best wrestling I've seen thus far. Say whatyou want about Bret, but this is the crispest work I've seen all year. Worker of the week : Rey Mysterio Jr. He works yet another giant killer match on Nitro against Bam Bam Bigelow, and it's very good, and works a classic cruiserweight match against Juventud Guerrera on Staurday night, and it's excellent. Shows the great versatility of Rey in a 5 days stretch. Promo of the week : Arn Anderson sermoning David Flair. Classic serious Arn, who refers to Torrie Wilson as "that" while she's in standing next to him. Obnoxious promo of the week : Jim Duggan coming back from cancer is great. Jim Duggan praying in the ring, cutting a passive-agressive promo about him not going to change and not doing obscene gestures and not getting tatoos/piercing and waving the flag of the greatest country in the world isn't great. Comes off holyer than thou and very obnoxious to me. Reminds me why I've always hated his character. So yeah. It's awesome that he beat cancer. Doesn't mean I have to hear him wax poetics about religion on a pro-wrestling show. Funniest match of the week : The Cat vs Jerry Flynn (Nitro). There it is, The Cat has got his James Brown music, and he's gonna whoop somebody. Cool stiff martial arts match with Jerry Flynn, with the intervention of Sonny Oono, leading to a handicap match at Uncensored. The Cat is a pretty fun character and has developped into a fun worker to watch too if put against a guy who knows what he's supposed to do. B-show feud of the week : Barbarian vs Meng (Saturday Night). Of course this is a rehash of the feud of the previous year, but hey, I can take Barbie and Meng hitting each other hard every week. This was again a pretty good week actually. Ric Flair is hinting a subtle heel turn, as he doesn't give a shit about his son's double-cross and is only concerned about beating Hulk for the title, much to Arn's disapointment. It wasn't the right route to go, Flair had just won the company from Bischoff two months before and was the ultimate figurehead babyface. Goldberg is still not put back into the main event mix, he's feuding with Scott Steiner on TV, which elevates Steiner's status more than it downgrades Goldie's. Rick Steiner is back and already looks sloppy as shit. Not glad to see him clutter the higher mid-card. Buff Bagwell is back working too, looking buffed (pun intented) as all hell, and looking okay thus far.

Randy Orton is a star to the WWE audience. Mark Henry isn't. I guess it comes down to that in their mind, no matter how bad Orton would be in that spot.

Sex tape anyone ?

The problem with Tammy is that she cried wolf too many times now. She admited to having lied her ass off in every interview she did. Why would anyone believe her now ? So : _she is lying, and she kinda deserves to be dropped for bashing the WWE who aren't obligated to take care of her (for all the fuck ups, guys like Roberts & Hall haven't bashed the WWE while being taken care of). _she's telling the truth, and she fucked herself by being a pathological lyer in the past, as nobody will believe her this time around. I mean, that's the problem when you are labelled as a lyer. And I know the issue, as I have dealt with people like that. After a while, you give them the benefit of the doubt for so long until you reach the point of just not believing a word they say. Tammy has reached that point sadly. She sure needs help, and hopefully she find it somewhere, and I don't mean religion either.

Yep. Probably his best performance ever. I like Disco quite a bit.

If this was 1999, Russo would actually get Kendra Lust signed to work an angle with Cena.

Kendra Lust ‏@KendraLust Be sure to tune into Monday Raw u may see myself and @RachelStarrxxx in the front row Ah ! Hilarious.

And that sounds like a pretty smart worker to me.

Yeah. Kanyon's bump into the pool cracks me up every time. I think I remember Chastity sucking on a lollipop and the announcers making some joke out of it. It's too bad Raven left WCW, he was so much fun there, and really never was the same afterward, as ECW was pretty much dying and WWF never understood the character (and Vince hated him anyway : "Who the fuck hired Raven ??").

I don't see the strict separation between "two RVD" in ECW. The thing is, RVD hadn't developped his biggest signature spots nor his routine earlier on, but that doesn't mean he was a better wrestler. He was fresher in a sense that it seems he would throw out more random stuff and was less predictable. He was a totally chaotic worker doing some really bizarre looking spots with no ryhme or reason whatsoever, and it could be fun to watch in a spectacular trainwreck kind of way (like the Sabu matches, which I enjoy because of Sabu). One thing I agree with Dylan is that he was better on defense, which makes sense because he could be a great bumper and his offense looks like contrived shit most of the time (the guy is unable to throw a simple punch worth a damn). Once he found his routine he quickly got unbearable, because despite being spectacular athleticaly, he's just a shitty worker with an annoying character. So yeah, RVD was always bad. He's someone I really would be happy to never watch a match again. Jerry Lynn and Tracey Smothers gets major proprs from me for making me care about a RVD match at a point watching him was pretty much a complete drag (although Lynn did it while cattering to RVD's worst instinct and pushed them to their limits, while Tracey used his classic veteran skills)

Damn, of course. I always forget these guys were in the WWF in 98. But that's because my brain wants to forget about it. TAKA vs Rey, vs Eddie, vs Juvy. Same for Togo... Argh !!

Me too. And would probably not have died either. Main guys I would have liked to see in WCW instead of WWF during this period were Owen, Snow and Scorpio.

I'm pretty sure there is still yet to come a PPV match between Terry Funk and Norman Smiley with Ralphus, where Tony absolutely loses it by the end. If you haven't seen it... well, you'll enjoy that. It's a classic. Sounds good to me. Especially since Terry Funk vs Norman Smiley already sounds damn fun to me. (BTW, thanks for all the kind words, people)

I haven't watched WCW 96/97 in years, so no, I don't have a list of matches in mind (plus I really don't keep records anymore). I'm not saying he was having excellent matches weekly in WCW, he was *fun* and *solid* at best, but he sure wasn't a bad worker like say, Curt Hennig was in 1998. Of course probably none of his matches there would make a top 100 WCW list. Neither would any Disco Inferno match. Doesn't mean that Disco was bad.

I disagree. Hall had plenty of good matches in WCW, tags or single. And he was a good worker, much better than he was ever given credit for. The ladder matches with Shawn are as much his work as Shawn's to me, especially the second one. Was he past his prime in WCW and was he lazier here than he was in WWF ? Absolutely. Hall was also 38 in 1996. But the "Hall sucked in WCW" talking point is a myth to me. His ladder match with Bam Bam on January 25 1999 was quite good, and he worked hard at making it good. Hell, he worked hard to try and make Piper look half-decent, which was a lost cause to begin with. Hall gets a bad rep because of the hate for the nWo, but his work in WCW, although not as good as his WWF work, doesn't deserve that kind of bashing to me. The "Hall does the job but still makes people look bad" stuff is vastly overstated too. To be honest it never struck me at all. Hall was big on comedy goofying when he worked as a heel in WCW, and he was fun at it.

The stuff with Cactus was worthless. Scorpio/Bagwell was a good team who could get a decent match out of pretty much anyone (Scorp ruled). Plus Canterbury was a decent worker. Knight was the shits, always had been, never improved one bit.

I'm glad I'm not alone thinking Dennis Knight was a worthless worker. He may very well have been a hilarious guy to be around, but he was shit in the ring, from the first day I saw him as Tex Slazenger to his Naked Mideon days. Complete shit worker.

That's a good call too. Also, he wasn't really *over* by himself. He was over the day he figured he would come to the ring with a dozen strippers in thongs. I don't consider that being *over*. That's the Lance Storm syndrom : you don't get over by yourself, add a slutty looking girl at your side to hide that fact and get some reaction. Dawn Marie and Major Gunns represent.

I don't always include spoilers.

Hum... "including a Booker T vs Bret Hart which saw no TV celebrity and a clean finish (although it did get interrupted by a Disco Inferno backstage skits which was infuriating). They really have no idea what to do with Hart again after a few months of being Hogan's pal. Poor guy."

Going through WCW 93/94, Maxx Payne was a huge disapointment. For whatever reason was under the impression the guy was a decent worker. Not exactly. He couldn't have a good match with Dustin Rhodes in 1993, that says it all. I agree the character was fun though, and he was pretty decent on promo too. And yeah, the Badd Blaster in the face would be the highlight of his career. Wait, actually, him bashing the Nasty Boys with the guitar at the end of Nasties vs Sullivan/Cactus was the highlight of his career. He had the athletic ability (legit college wrestler, no wonder he was recruited by Bill Watts), but he never put it together. I also enjoyed him almost killing the Nasties Steienr-style at Superbrawl. Maybe with some time he would have developped into a decent worker, but as it is, the guy really wasn't good. The brawl with the Nasties was fun and all, but he really played the third Nasty in it in term of talent, and it's no surprise to me that once you replaced him with Sullivan the same match got a lot better. And no, his "documentary" was never released in any shape or form. I'm surprised it didn't pop out somewhere though.

WEEK 8 : (February 22 to 27, 1999) Match of the week : Rey Mysterio Jr. vs Kevin Nash (Nitro). I'll say some good things about Nash for a change. For all the deserved shit he got for being a manipulator and a terrible booker, he doesn't strike me as a selfish worker, and this demonstrate it. Also, he happens to have a few good ideas. So, Rey has lost his mask and he wants revenge on Nash. Nash laughs it off, accept the challenge and... gets beat. And it's not like he slip on a banana peel, Rey countered the jacknife and beat him. Nash's selling of the loss was great, he had a completely shocked facial while Rey was celebrating. So, although the deal about losing the mask was beyond stupid, I think Nash was not trying to bury Rey. Rey lost his mask in a tag match in which he got a visual pinfall on Nash and got cheated by Hall. Then he beat Nash clean on Nitro the very next day. Plus Rey said something interesting in the pre-match promo, that "the mask doesn't even matter anymore", which was kinda smart in a way to make people forgot that Rey had lost it, now the big deal was Rey beating Nash. And the match was actually very good, with Nash bumping really well for Rey. The last thing that really shows me Nash had no bad intention as a booker is that they re-showed the entire match on Thunder, which is something they usually never do. And they re-showed it on Saturday Night too. All in all, what comes out of this is that Rey losing his mask wasn't such a big deal, but Rey pinning Nash on Nitro was a huge deal. (of course they should have kept on pushing Rey, but... that's another matter) Promo of the week : Scott Steiner (Nitro) : Man, did he buried and made fun of DDP here, talking about getting his wife for 30 days (which was a lie) and her calling him Big Bad Booty Daddy. And then he calls out Goldberg, which got a big time reaction. WCW had all in the palm of their hands here. Steiner vs Goldberg seemed so much promising and fresh than rehashing Flair vs Hogan. But Steiner was just a midcarder sadly to the eyes of Bischoff & Co, while the audience already accepted him like a major top of the card heel. Hardcore match of the week : Hak vs Damian (Thunder) : Hey, it took Hak to get a fun Damian match in WCW. Until then he was basically treated as a jobber. Tenay was nice enough to mentionned his FMW past too (well, he didn't say FMW but you get the idea). Funniest moment of the week : Bobby Heenan cracking jokes after jokes about Ralphus in a dress, and Tony Schiavone just being unable to keep it straight. (Nitro). Once he saw Tony was beginning to seriously laugh, Bobby just wouldn't stop at all. Really funny stuff. The match was Chris Jericho vs Hugh Morrus, and it was quite decent too, a rare opportunity for Hugh Morrus to be featured in something else than a squash. Honorable mention of the week : Juventud Guerrera vs Blitzkrieg (Thunder) : Blitzkreig sure gets over with the crowd while doing jobs to Rey and Juvy. He was a spot machine, but damn was he smooth and explosive. Juvy gives him a very strong match which looked like a struggle, with lot of nearfalls. They may have had something with this guy. The more I watch him, the more his outfit look cheap though. And he came down to the ring with the Hollywood Blond music, which by this time had been used by a tons of JTTS including Marty Jannetty. Lack of production here. Random match of the week : Mike Enos vs Jerry Flynn (Nitro) : This is why I still love WCW. Enos had quite the enjoyable stint as a bad ass babyface in 1999, and Flynn put in against the right worker could produce some fun little stiff matches. This is one of them. Comeback-I-don't-care-for of the week : Rick Steiner showing up at the end of Scott Steiner vs Goldberg. Uh.... I didn't miss him. With the exception of a rotten nWo comedy vignette with Hogan as Flair, Nash as Arn, Hall as Piper and David Flair in the middle of it, Nitro was actually pretty good this week, with lot of fine matches, including a Booker T vs Bret Hart which saw no TV celebrity and a clean finish (although it did get interrupted by a Disco Inferno backstage skits which was infuriating). They really have no idea what to do with Hart again after a few months of being Hogan's pal. Poor guy. Raven finally came back with his "sister" Chastity at his side, which is great.