El-P

Two monsters against each other mostly never work anyway. The issue I have with this WM card, is that from where I stand, all three big matches are predictable as hell, with two of them consisting of one guy "getting his win back". And I never cared for Taker's Streak, which makes every damn WM Taker match the epithome of obligatory self-conscious epic with garanteed result anyway. I don't believe for a second that CM Punk can be any threat to Taker anyway. I really have no desire to watch anything involving Triple H, I was bored to tears by him by 2001, so using Lesnar this way really doesn't excite me one bit. And as much as I had fun watching Cena vs Rock last year, this year just doesn't seem that special to me. Any kind of upset in one of these three matches would make my day, but I very highly doubt it.

Plus Colon always had TV, hasn't he ? Onita was promoting without the support of TV for most of his first stint, which makes it even more impressive to me.

Blame Matt. If not for his own little joke, I would have gone straight to the snake picture.

The most embarrasing too. Although we never quite got a guy like Berlusconi at the helm, thank God ! "Italians do it better".

Hey, I almost posted *that* very picture as a way to apologize for subjcting you to the horror of the French MLP. I would have made a tired remark about "I want to be that snake" too. You know how much I love Mary-Louise too...

That's also the recollection I have from this match. I wonder though, as Piper has been rotten in the ring the few times I've seen him in 98 and 99 thus far. We'll see, I have one more week of TV to go (and what a Nitro it was... oh man... you better enjoy the "bizarre turn of the week" stuff... and the "stupid title switches of the week" stuff too...)

Good for her. This whole "independant contractor" is a complete travesty anyway.

Nope. He was working full time in World Class at the time.

WEEK 16 (April 19 to 24, 1999) Match of the week : Rey Mysterio Jr. vs Juventud Guerrera vs Blitzkrieg vs Psychosis (Nitro). Not a big fan of 4-ways or 3-ways, especially when it's not an elimination match, but this got so ridiculous in term of high flying and big spots that it was actually quite fun. They worked a semi-storyline of Psychosis and Juvy kinda working together at times against technicos Rey and Blitzkrieg, and the psychology or having to get rid of two opponents before being able to pin the third was well established. Obviously a way to get the belt off Rey without having him do the job, but having Blitz take the pin kinda made Psychosis's win a bit minor key. Honorable mention of the week : Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko & Kidman vs Rey Mysterio Jr. & Raven & Perry Saturn (Thunder). Rey and Kidman still are the tag champs, and the two other teams are gunning for them. Fun dynamics with Kidman and Rey not wanting to hurt each others, while the Horsemen are especially vicious. Arn gets physical at the end, which is always fun. Tag team wrestling has been the best thing on WCW TV in 1999 thus far in term of feuds and matches. Funniest match of the week : Goldberg vs The Cat (Thunder). The Cat does his five count deal with Goldie, but actually gets a cheap shot in. Not as dumb as one could think ! Very fun squash. Stupid angle of the week : Roddy Piper sends Ric Flair into a mental hospital (Nitro). He's Ric Flair's friend and wants to protect him from himself. Flair is batshit insane, fires Piper but wants a match with him at Slamboree for the control of the company. Piper accepts. Nothing makes any sense, it's all pretty damn terrible. Flair gets carried away after his match with Nash. Yes, Flair had a match with Nash, which saw Nash do backbody drops on Flair, a spot than Nash never ever does. There you go again Flair, forcing spots on people who never usually do them. Nash was quite good at selling for Flair though, very nice way to register the punches. Tweener turns heel/tweener turns face match of the week : Goldberg vs DDP (Nitro). So, DDP is a full fledge heel now, as he does a clear turn for the bad side during his match with Goldie, getting a foreign object and trying to bust his knee out. Goldi is only saved by Nash, who definitly turns clear cut face. What a mess of a main event scene, but at least now it seems like things are getting a little bit more clear, although Steiner and the rest of the nWo are still heels (except Hogan, who's out injured and who's a face). The match itself was actually quite exciting, no one gets more out of Goldberg than DDP. He let him kick out of his Diamond Cutter, which makes Goldie look like The Man. Good job by DDP. Line of the week : "It looks like you're looking for a job !" Tony Schiavone to Dusty Rhodes, who guest announced the Nitro main event and made a great pre-match hype job for it. Nitro was actually quite solid all around with quite a bit of fun matches and two big time matches/angles at the end. Odd fact, I totally remembered the hot girl behind Scott Steiner when he cut his weekly promo (the one on the right who seemed way into it). The Flair and Roddy angle is stupid, but outside of that, everything else pretty much made sense. They build toward Nash & DDP at the PPV, the three team tag match, now they can have a cruiserweight match too since Rey isn't the champ anymore, Buff challenged Steiner (although I don't expect anything from that match, Buff just isn't the worker he was before the injury). Oh, and Berlyn was sitting in the crowd. And Macho Man brought Madusa back to train Gorgeous George.

What a shock when watching Spring Breakers, from Harmony Korine. 2 minutes into the movie, after the opening credits, who shows up but Jeff Jarrett playing some sort of college preacher ! I got a big kick out of it. (The movie itself isn't very interesting though, full of meaningless depth)

I would have never pegged you as a Brony, John. Nor would have I thought John was a follower of the French right-wing extremist party the Front National. MLP, still hot in her 40's...

You can say that. But to me this is also why I hate the current format so much.

1994's booking wasn't very good. Flair pushed all his old buddies on top. Of course since it means Steamboat and Arn getting pushes, "workrate" fans enjoy it, but seen in context and in retrospect, Flair's booking in 1994 really looks egotistical and doesn't build at all toward the future. Austin, Pillman and Dustin all took major setbacks during Flair's run as a booker in 1994 (not to mention the unbearable Bunkhouse Buck push, which he only got because his cousin Robert Fuller was on the booking comitee with Flair), and Flair was all about getting a big program with Hogan, not work with the younger guys. Shane Douglas is 100% right about Flair during that time. To say I was very underwhelmed with the first half of 1994 is an understatement. The last real cool booking of the company before the good Nitro years was during Watts last months, in very late 92 and especially early 93.

Most certainly. But has there been a good wrestling *writer* thus far we can talk about ? They've all been pretty shitty.

This is the very exact quote I was thinking about. This synthetizes pretty much why Russo doesn't understand shit about wrestling and why he did so much harm. Of course it matters you fucking idiot.

Short answer : no. Wrestling needs bookers. The era of the wrestling "writers" has been worst ever in term of angles and characters.

WEEK 15 (April 12 to 17, 1999) Match of the week : Rey Mysterio Jr. vs Juventud Guerrera (Thunder). They already had a match on Nitro which was stopped after the Horsemen jumped on Rey. Juvy is in full rudo mode. it's sad they didn't get a real built in feud in WCW, seems like they only really got paired in random matches (they had a short deal while in the lWo but that was it). They fumbled on one spot, but the rest of the match is poetry in motion as usual with these two. Rey gets Juvy with a brutal top rope frankensteiner, Rey's execution of the move is explosive, and the way Juvy takes it makes it look even better. One bad thing though, was Juvy using the People's elbow. Made them look totally second rate. I'm amazed no one told him he had to stop doing this immediately. Nostalgia match of the week : Ric Flair vs Sting (Nitro). "For old times sake", as said by a hysterical Sting earlier on the show. Whoever wants to argue was still a great wrestler in 1999 oughta watch this match. He's in total routine mode, doing the same match he was doing 9 years before, looking old and tired doing it. And it's one of these match where Sting no-sells 90% of Flair offense, making him look like an old bitch. He also wears awful looking white shoes. Eventually, since these two knows each other so well, it turn into something enjoyable if you're into that sort of stuff, mostly because Sting works kinda hard at it, but Flair was clearly not even what I'd call a *good worker* at this point. He could be fun to watch at points, and could also be sad to watch. Sad promo of the week : Stevie Ray (Thunder). This to me signs the official death certificate of the nWo. This is Stevie Ray "taking over", burying Hogan who's injured, burying Lex, Nash and Steiner for various nonsensical reasons. The nWo as a main event faction was essentially dead for a few weeks now, but this is what ends it all to me. From now on, the nWo is a mid-card JTTS small group, and while Nash and Steiner still use the Wölfpack music, there is no nWo per say anymore. It's barely an afterthought. It's bizarre to think the biggest angle in the history of the company, and the second biggest one of the decade, eventually just petered out. Stevie Ray wants DDP's belt, he'll do the job later on the show. Bad promo too, as Stevie Ray was not just a bad worker in the ring. Stiff fest of the week : Barbarian vs Jerry Flynn (Saturday Night). My favourite C show feud. Thank you Jimmy Hart for booking this. You know the drill, Barbie and Jerry Flynn exchange stiff offens. Fun stuff. Payback match of the week : DDP vs Scott Steiner (Nitro). DDP was such in a bizarre tweener spot. Here he's full on babyface, coming out with Kimberly and taking revanche on Big Poppa Pump. Fairly heated and dynamic, with enough time to actually build to a very satisfying finish. Kim swings a mean chair. I didn't think we'd have an actual conclusion to this feud that made sense. Good stuff. Stupid angle of the week : Ric Flair signs some paper but doesn't even read it. (Thunder) Arn is going crazy because Flair is not even looking what he's signing. You know what this will lead to... WTF angle of the week : Savage makes a challenge to Flair, his girl vs Flair's "girl" (Nitro) If Gorgeous George wins, Savage is "reinstated". Except he was never suspended of anything, but whatever. George slaps the hell out of Robinson. This is goofy but quite fun actually. Debut of the week : DJ Ran (Nitro). He's all up in ya area. (seriously, he wasn't bad or anything, plus I heard he hated Master P. and thought it was crap) nWo dead. Buff Bagwell and Vampiro had a pretty bad match on Thunder. Bam Bam Bigelow keeps on not showing me much. Mickey Whipreck is a competitive jobber. Hogan gone for some time. Nash seemingly turning face again, or something, not really sure. The heel/face structure at the top is a big mess.

Ah ah ah ! How are you going to refrain yourself from strutting around the desk when the song pops up ?

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.