cm funk Posted June 22, 2013 Report Share Posted June 22, 2013 Meanwhile, Mona, who was young, attractive, a very good worker and who was getting over when she worked with Savage & Co, is doing meaningless women's matches on a C-show. This girl could have been something, but no, let's not have her do anything important nor get any TV time. Well, she did end up doing something and having a great WWE run I wouldn't blame you if you tapped out at this point. It's almost torture just reading this. I would have quit (and did IRL) months ago Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Guitar Posted June 22, 2013 Report Share Posted June 22, 2013 It's going to get really depressing from here on out. I remember this time period as really frustrating as there is still the bare bones of a potentially good promotion under the dross. There's still some good talent left ,but it's all been so badly mishandled at this point and in some case's is going to get more dumped on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Death From Above Posted June 22, 2013 Report Share Posted June 22, 2013 The Steiner run on top was great but I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't surrounded by plenty of garbage. Then Greed happened, it ruled, and so the company died. Of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BruiserBrody Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 Shitty wrestling can be hella fun! I reviewed the whole year of 1989 AWA TV a few years ago and it was entertaining to see the shitty angles, workers etc. R and B make the next few months a trainwreck of greatness - keep the reviews up, even if it's once a week. Your current pace was freaking crazy with watching 7 hours of WCW TV every few weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Nell Santucci Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 El-P, I'd like to see you continue the project as it's a great recap for me who, like you, stopped watching WCW when Benoit left. It's be great if you could review all of WCW's history. Maybe we can put together a book project of sorts for ECW Press where you just critically review WCW's whole history with an analysis on where exactly WCW went wrong and who the culprits were. It'd be a far more intensive, specific study than Alvarez' book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slasher Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 El-P, I'd like to see you continue the project as it's a great recap for me who, like you, stopped watching WCW when Benoit left. It's be great if you could review all of WCW's history. Maybe we can put together a book project of sorts for ECW Press where you just critically review WCW's whole history with an analysis on where exactly WCW went wrong and who the culprits were. It'd be a far more intensive, specific study than Alvarez' book. No. New topic please. The Death of WCW thing has been beaten to all hell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted July 1, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 1, 2013 I'll beat on the corpse unmercyfully then... ECW Press here I come... (or something). WEEK 67 (April 10 to 15, 2000) Oh, man, where do I start... Death of WCW "big idea" of the week : Millionaire's Club vs New Blood (Nitro / Thunder). So there it, is the big idea. Probably one of the stupidest concept ever, one that shows the absolute non understanding of pro-wrestling most basic's inner workings. Strip all the titles like the champions are meaningless. Turn heel all the "young guys" and turn babyface all the older established stars, no matter how hard the former booking team tried to get some of them over in distinguished roles. Vamp was getting over with the crowd as a babyface, turn him heel on Sting. Team Package were the two strongest heels on the roster, Luger especially had established a new version of his heel character that worked very well. Doesn't matter, now they are both babyfaces. Sid Vicious just turned heel on Hogan big time and was building heat for a Goldberg comeback. Doesn't matter, let's turn him back babyface. What the crowd invested in the previous weeks doesn't matter, what matters is Bischoff and Russo believing their own hype and being delusionnal enough in thinking *they* were the stars and the draws. Worst all of, the idea that a stable of older established stars called the Millionaire Club are supposed to be the babyface against the younger, hungrier generation who ends up looking like a bunch of whiners and crybabies. Amazingly stupid idea. Retarded feud of the week : Hulk Hogan vs Kidman (Nitro). Kidman was a mediocre working cruiserweight who got over strong as an underdog babyface thanks to his huge bumps and the way he was working from underneath as a fighting babyface. So let's turn him heel on freaking Hulk Hogan. Brillant idea. I won't go into the details of stupid promos and angles involving Hummers crashing cars. The killer, what makes this whole deal even stupider than it is, is this : in a Rumble sort of match on Thunder, Scott Steiner pinned Kidman clean in like 2 minutes. Yep. Lamest debut of the week : Shawn Stasiak "the Perfect Event" (Nitro). Comes out to a Mr. Perfect ripoff music theme. Attacks Curt Hennig. Yeah. The annoucers say "He was Meat in the WWF". Whaou ! What a star ! And now he's ripping off Hennig's old WWF gimmick. Money feud. Miscast debut of the week : Mike Awesome beats up Kevin Nash (Nitro). The ECW champion shows up on Nitro to attack Kevin Nash, and cuts a bad promo. If anyone needed a manager to talk for him, that was Awesome. Also, Kevin Nash is about the worst feud imaginable for Awesome, who needs a small bumping face to work well against. The killer here is that Awesome would job to Tazz on an ECW house show to drop the ECW title, then Tazz would job on WWF TV to Triple H. In essence, Mike Awesome jobbed to a WWF mid-card guy just after he debuted. Logical angle of the week : Shane Douglas attacks Ric Flair (Nitro). As Scott Steiner is confronting Flair, Shane Douglas, who was off in XPW cutting promos on Kevin Sullivan in the meantime, jumps on Flair from behind and beats him up. This is exactly how they should have debuted Douglas in the first place. Of course they have to have a match right on the second hour of Nitro, in street clothes, because building interest doesn't mean shit. And Vince Russo himself has to walk his stupid carcass down the ring to beat Flair up with a baseball bat, stealing Luger's gimmick in the process. Because Russo is not only a great booker, he's also a guy people want to see on TV... So yeah, Flair vs Douglas makes sense, but Russo is clearly getting the focus on his stupid ass, including showing up disguised as Sting on Thunder. Epic fail of the week : "Do you want to get your scissors ?" Eric Biscoff to Sid. (Nitro). And since it gathered zero reaction from the crowd (although Madden, who's unbearable, sold it like Bischoff has said something amazing), Eric said it twice. To zero reaction. That was pretty sad. And funny. And yeah, lots of nonsensical turns, two swerves already (Bischoff and Russo teasing a confrontation then getting along, and Bischoff betraying Hogan), lots of WWF references (including Russo dropping the names of Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko and Saturn, nice to remind your audience where the cools guys are), Kimberly getting a guitar squashed on her head (yeah, because what a wrestling show would be without good old woman abuse ?) and no clean match. So yeah, the Russo/Bischoff era began, and it's already the stupidest booked wrestling product this side of WWF 1999. In one week, they have proceeded to make things even worst than it ever was during the entire Russo's first stint. Nice jobs guys. Can't wait for what is to follow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Death From Above Posted July 1, 2013 Report Share Posted July 1, 2013 I remember Stasiak having one decent match, on a PPV with Booker T during that period he was stuck with that ridiculous GI Bro gimmick. So... pretty out of left field. Other than that, I've never seen him do anything that didn't bore me. He had a good look, but just couldn't put interesting matches together. The old dudes being the faces in the old vs. young thing sealed WCW's fate for me in hindsight, even if I did keep watching. The concept was probably doomed to failure either way as it drew too large a line (we're not going to have old people feud with each other? really?) but making the rich, power hungry veterans the faces was a colossal blunder of ego that not only reinforced the fan perception of one of the company's core problems, it emphasized it in their face directly. Just a bad idea. Having Awesome come out against Nash was a huge blunder, as it instantly kills Awesome because Nash is just so big, which ruins half of Awesome's aura. At the risk of being pelted with rotten fruit... I sort of enjoyed the Kidman vs. Hogan stuff, for just the utter bizarreness of it. But I was kind of a Kidman mark in the WCW days. And I'll admit part of it is probably "Well... I'm watching this anyway, I might as well find something to take amusement from," as opposed to it being actually good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted July 1, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 1, 2013 PPV 16 : Spring Stampede 2000 Well. 14 matches in a 2 hours and 40 minutes show. Do the maths. I have no intention of going into this one in details. The one thing I'll say, is that for a guy for think title aren't worth shit, Russo sure spends a whole lot of time doing tournaments and title matches all over his cards. The whole affair was mostly heatless, with Hogan getting the biggest reaction by far (how bad does that sound ?). The crowd was sometime confused, reluctantly cheering for former super heels Team Package, but most of the time didn't care at all, because all those matches involved heels vs heels or guys that are suppsoed to be babyfaces but really haven't done anything to turn. The only ones who got some reactions were the established babyfaces who had stayed babyfaces, like Sting and DDP, and established heels who had stayed heels like Scott Steiner (who now comes out to the old Steiner theme again, way to make him look like a lesser guy), and to a lesser degree Shane Douglas. Shocking, uh ? Comical booking miscast of the night : Mike Awesome. He was booked again Bam Bam Bigelow (well, actually the Cat, but he worked 90% of his match against Bam Bam) and Scott Steiner. Way to go guys. What's next ? Sid ? The Wall ? Awesome really doesn't look that big next to those guys. Wrestling being perception, the only thing that can get him over are his huge dives over the top ropes (since the Wall already burned out his gimmick of putting people through tables). Well done. Epic failure of the night : Sting covered in... nothing. At the end of his match with Steiner, Sting was dragged by Vampiro through the ring in a very transparent and lame reactment of a Taker angle several years back. When he emerged back, Madden acted shocked : "Sting is covered in...." Well, he was covered in nothing. Tony said "Sting is busted open !". Well, it didn't appear like he was bleeding at all. Oh, yeah, there was some lame red makeup spot near his mouth, but nothing spectacular at all. So Sting was "bleeding profusely from the mouth." Shit, that was priceless. I guess the idea was to do some kind of lame bloodbath gimmick a la Brood (a gimmick that was already stupid as all hell in the WWF) or something. Anyway, it was quite the epic fail. Also, Sting had beaten Vamp clean and decisively earlier on in the tournament, so I don't see why anyone would care, Vamp was a jabronie (and quite frankly, considering his in-ring work, didn't deserved much better). Clusterfuck of the night : Chris Candido vs Shannon Moore vs Juventud Guerrera vs Crowbar vs Artist vs Lash Leroux. Went about five minutes. As bad as it sounds. Because having Candido vs Juvy in a solid 12 minute matches doesn't cut it I guess. Notable because it's Tammy Fytch's debut, helping Candido to win. She was refered to as "Sunny in the WWF". Of course. "Debut I erased from my memory" of the night : Brian Adams & Brian Carke. Gawwwwwwwd. Then helped Shane Douglas & Buff Bagwell winning the tag titles over Flair & Luger. Russo was at ringside, and he's about as good a performer as he is a writer. Poor Shane, he just couldn't get his dream feud with Flair, Russo is clearly putting himself at the center of things here. Oh, I had forgotten about the damn Kronik. The nicest thing I can say about them is that they aren't the Harris boys. And that would be it. Ridiculous but funny match of the night : Terry Funk vs Norman Smiley. I really don't care for the screaming Norman character in garbage matches, but this one was funny because it was Terry Funk doing stupid shit and them going through a lot of stuff and tearing stuff up backstage before getting into the ring. Dustin Rhodes showed up at the end and attacked Terry Funk, to complete silence. Poor bastard. He went through divorce with his hot wife and now he's stuck in a pathetic company nobody watches and can't get over to save his life. It's unfair, Dustin deserved way better than this. Highlight of the match is Terry's little dance after he wins the match, it's priceless. Swerve of the night : Kimberly turns on DDP. Of course she does. And you can see it coming from miles away too. The match between DDP and Jarrett is decent, but DDP totally outworks Jarrett, whom I had overrated after his first few months in WCW. He's solid but really would be better off working a chickenshit Memphis style heel, the tough guy style doesn't fit him well, no matter how hard he tries to drop those Lawler punches at times. So Kim turns on DDP so she can be with Eric Bischoff. He already booked himself to be with Liz in 1998. Insecurity maybe. Well, at least Eric is a very good heel and should get some good heat from this. This PPV was seriously unwatchable for the most part. Seriously. Like a 160 minutes Russo-Nitro with no commercial. Just eye gouging in its stupidity, predictability (in being stupid and "swervy") and complete lack of decent wrestling. The only really fun match was Terry vs Norman, as the main event was totally flat underachiever stuff, as Jarrett just doesn't belong on that level, and shouldn't work main events until he gets his ass over at the very least, which probably would never have happened anyway. Of course, the only reason why he ever was put there is because of politics, which is extremely ironic when you think of it and why Benoit & co left the company in the first place. Jarrett indeed was the "chosen one" to be on top of a dead promotion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alucard Posted July 2, 2013 Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 Glad to see this back! Always entertaining reviews Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteF3 Posted July 2, 2013 Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 I'm flabbergasted that you're willing to go back on your word to take a break...and for this. At the same time, I was really looking forward to your reviews on the Russo/Bischoff return up through at least the Arquette title victory, so I'm glad to see that we're going to get them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BruiserBrody Posted July 2, 2013 Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 Thus begins 3 straight PPVs of somebody turning on DDP... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Nell Santucci Posted July 2, 2013 Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 Speaking of which, I fail to see why I was so worked up about David Arquette getting the title. It meant nothing anyway. Vince Russo really is pro-wrestling's version of the Manchurian Candidate - stuck in some Viet-Dunn camp for two years and just left a little confused about the balance between sports entertainment and pro-wrestling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vicious&delicious Posted July 2, 2013 Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 It is kind of funny how pissed off everyone got when Arquette won the title. This is a company who had Hulk Hogan selling for Jay Leno and Bret Hart feuding with Will Sasso. They had already completely exposed the business. Arquette was just the cherry on top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Death From Above Posted July 2, 2013 Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 At least the DDP/Jarret/Arquette three way super duper cage match was entertaining. Since Arquette just spends the whole match running away so it's basically a singles match anyway. Silver linings and all that. Thin, thin silver linings... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted July 2, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2013 Well, I did take a break. Sort of... WEEK 68 (April 17 to 22) Shoot line of the week : "J.R you can kiss my ass" Vince Russo & Jeff Jarrett (Nitro). Yep. They had a "New York" celebration in the ring with all the New Blood champions, and had Vince Russo & then Jeff Jarrett cut a promo including this brillant line. So that's what it is all about. Russo "proving JR wrong about Jeff Jarrett". Holy shit. The level of retardation of this man keeps on amazing me more and more. Not only do they continuously refer to the WWF, but they sure aren't in position to brag when JR and the WWF are printing money while they are booking a bleeding-to-death promotion into the ground, with pathetic ratings and PPV buyrates that have sunk lower than ECW's on one occasion. Just amazing stuff, demonstrating their absolute stupidity on every level. Horrible promo of the week : Vampiro (Nitro). This guy is a rather shitty worker, but he's a downright god awful promo. He was already terrible at doing 4th rate brooding Raven promos as a babyface, he's just pathetic trying to cut an evil, "dark" promo on Sting. Then Sting beats him up anyway. This guy had gotten over somewhat as a babyface thanks to his look and a few cool spots, but he's just dying here, he shouldn't say a word on the mic. Running gag of the week : Mike Awesome powerbombed through a table by Kevin Nash (Nitro). I swear this had to be a rib. In a matter of one week, Mike Awesome has been booked against guys bigger than him and now has already eaten his own gimmick spot, even before he could execute one of his own on anyone. Worst miscasting ever. To think it will only get worse for him makes me sad. No wonder he hated his WCW stint. Dissension spot of the week : Scott Steiner signs a match against Jeff Jarrett (Nitro). "Could we see the New Blood crumbling before our eyes ?", as said Madden who oversells everything to ridiculous and incredibly annoying degrees ? Seriously, after one week ? Holy shit, this second Russo run is already hilarious and makes his first one looks like Giant Baba booking AJ in 1993. The match itself is a nothing match, like every other match on the show. We also had the continuation of the awful Hogan vs Kidman feud, with more nonsense I just don't want to get into since I'm honestly fast forwarding through most of it (brawl in the parking, more Hummer, Hogan talking about Terry Bollea, because it's all a shoot this time you see), the in-ring debut of Kronik, who apparently are taking the Harris spots, Booker T having to get back into Eric Bischoff's graces (I have no idea why he's aligned with them anyway), Shawn Stasiak defeating Curt Hennig and a stellar cliffhanger in which Bret Hart shows up to hit someone with the chair, but we don't know if it's Bischoff or Hogan. Also, Kanyon is back along DDP, after slapping him around a few weeks before when he was Champaign Kanyon, but I guess this has been erased from memory, and they have to promote Ready to Rumble so everyone involved in this has to be a babyface. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alucard Posted July 3, 2013 Report Share Posted July 3, 2013 and a stellar cliffhanger in which Bret Hart shows up to hit someone with the chair, but we don't know if it's Bischoff or Hogan. Ha, I could never remember or find when exactly this was before but it always stuck with me as one of the more infamous "we're out of time we gotta go" moments in WCW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 3, 2013 Report Share Posted July 3, 2013 This is just fucking epic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted July 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 And we're getting to *that* week. WEEK 69 (April 24 to 29, 2000) Death of WCW title change of the week : David Arquette wins the WCW World Title (Thunder). The title already had changed hands on Nitro when DDP won it back from Jarrett (after an epic one week reign) in a complete throwaway 6 minutes or so cage match, so it's not like the title was worth much anyway, but this is a joke. And it is good to remind everyone that he won the world title in a tag team match that featured him & then WCW champ DDP vs Jeff Jarrett & Eric Bischoff, with special heel referee Kimberly, by pinning Bischoff. So yeah, he won the single title from his *partner* in a tag match, by pinning another non-wrestler. I don't think you can make it much more retarded. Of course they sold it as some sort of hilarious gag, as showed by DDP's reaction, but it was still a complete slap in the face of the remaining pro-wrestling fans that still subjected themselves to that godawful product by sheer loyalty to a brand they had followed for years. I'll say one thing about Bischoff, at least he's a good heel who isn't afraid to show his ass, unlike his mentally challenged co-writer. Most idiotic spots of the week : David Arquette doing the WORM - tons of gluey red liquid falling from the ceiling onto Sting (Nitro). The first one is mind-blowing in its stupidity, with Arquette executing a trademark WWF spot, which the crowd ate BTW. Nice to see that the WWF was more over on WCW's TV than anything else. The second spot was, well, another WWF trademark of sort, since it's the whole "bloodbath" gimmick from the Brood, only done ten times more stupider. That Vampiro vs Sting feud is eye gouging. Catfights of the week : Tammy Fytch vs Paisley (Nitro - Thunder). Yep, Candido is paired with the Artist to defend the cruiserweight title. But it doesn't matter at all (plus note that the Artist was the cruiserweight champ before they made all the champs forfeit the belts, but he still ends up in a cruiserweight title feud anyway. Dumb fucks.). What matters is having Tammy and Paisley do awful catfights and "wrestling" in skimpy outfits. Tammy was the best manager in the country from 94 to 96, and now she's reduced to the role of a skanky stripper (and in a company where you have Liz, Torrie Wilson, Miss Hancock, Mona, Daffney, Paisley and the nWo girls, 2000 Tammy isn't exactly the hottest girl around anymore). Candido is reduced to selling for Paisley. Depressing. Spot of the week : Hulk Hogan powerbombed through a table by Mike Awesome (Nitro). Well, that was unexpected. Match was Awesome & Kidman vs Hogan, and it stank since Hogan is about 2-3 years removed from being able to have any entertainning matches, but I admit I didn't see that spot coming. Hogan bled and took the powerbomb through a table, before being put through another one by Kidman, jumping from the top rope. I wonder if the fact Awesome is somewhat related (by being Horace's cousin of sort I believe) helped. I still couldn't care less about this feud, but I'll give credit to Hogan there, and Kidman is slowly developping into a decent sneaky chickenshit bumping heel as showed by a nice little match with Horace on Thunder. Promo of the week : Ric Flair (Thunder). Good stuff, although done in hysterical old Flair style, talking about working hard for the wrestling business since 1985 along with Luger, talking about tradition and stuff, and calling Russo a mark. It was pretty intense, emotionnal and actually made me want to watch the program progress (I mean Flair vs Douglas). Of course Russo had to ruin it by saying "It's the time of the show I'm supposed to be a chickenshit heel." and other shooty nonsense and WWF references (dropping the Lex Express, please...). Russo is not only a very shitty performer, not understanding at all how a heel is supposed to act (he's not even backing down from freaking Kronik), but he really does come off like a smart mark jerkoff saying insider stuff at an indy show thinking he's getting himself over. It's really pathetic to watch, and the fact he barely gets any response just shows how unefficient he actually is on every level. That's the big difference with Bischoff, who does fall into trap of insider jokes and WWF references (although it didn't seemed that bad when he was trying everything to make Nitro a hot product at the beginning) but who knows how to work as a heel. Anyway, this ends up with Russo kidnapping Liz because he "owns her" (yeah, because Liz being under contract with WCW and not Luger makes Liz his property or something), because what would a wrestling show be without some woman abuse, right ? He's not even able to carry Liz in his arms, that giant doofus who wears short sleeves because he fancies himself as some sort of big guy I guess... So yeah, Flair promo was good, but Russo ruined it. Cameo of the week : Marc Mero having a fight with Tank Abbott (Thunder). Mero was at ringside, and jumped on Tank when he attacked some old boxing trainer. After the Sable cameo the previous year, now Mero shows up ? I guess it won't lead to anything either. The product is pretty torturous to watch. Zero good wrestling on the show, the only thing watchable has been Mike Awesome vs Booker T, with Awesome looking like he could be something if pushed right. Booker has been doing the same spots routine since early 1999, to say how much I think of him at this point. The Misfists in Action (not named yet) came to his aid after he was beaten up by Steiner during the post-match, so we'll get yet another stupid idea on our hands pretty soon. Kronik have an interesting look for a bunch of Road Warriors redux, although Adams kinda looks like a giant buffed up metrosexual clown. We got a Bret Hart sit down interview on Thudner explaining why he hit Hogan with the chair, talking about how Hogan always avoided him going back to the WWF days yaddi yaddi yadda. More WWF references and more useless TV time since Bret wasn't coming back anyway. The interview was good though, but should have happened like in late 97. Miss Hancock is randomely showing up taking notes during matches again. It's hilarious (or pathetic) that they have no idea what to do with her. Mind blowing. Of course she's not managing Los Fabulosos anymore, because God knows no one wants to see Mexican wrestlers on TV. I fail to see anything remotely decent or fun at this point. WCW never sunk that low. BTW, the Nitro following David Arquette winning the WCW title did a 2,5 rating, which is lower than most of Kevin Sullivan's booked Nitro in February and March. So yeah, that was all worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditch Posted July 4, 2013 Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 BUT THEY WERE MENTIONED IN USA TODAY!!! That totally justifies anything because short-term mainstream publicity trumps absolutely anything measurable such as buyrate and ratings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Death From Above Posted July 4, 2013 Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 It's astounding how much of this stuff I'd blocked out of my mind. I'm like a government conditioned agent undergoing re-integration. That's not even counting the stuff you're skipping! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artDDP Posted July 4, 2013 Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 El-P, you are amazing for sitting through this. I found some episodes from this period on some old VHS tapes and I had to fast-forward through most of it. This is around the time I threw in the towel and gave up on WCW after being loyal to them for almost a decade. When Russo left the WWF in 1999 he said to Wade Keller it was due to two things: Feeling they weren't being paid enough for all the TV they wrote and the fact that his name, along with Ed Ferrara, weren't being mentioned in the press for the company's success at that time. I firmly believe that Russo left the WWF solely for that second reason considering he booked himself to humiliate Ric Flair and shave his head and also win the WCW World title in a Hell in a Cell match, among a few dozen other incidents designed to make him the top heel in the company. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted July 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2013 WEEK 70 (May 1 to 5, 2000) Goofy match of the week : Crowbar vs Norman Smiley (Nitro). Mix of garbage spots and comedy, and since I enjoy both workers, it works for me. It would be the only match I would actually enjoy this week. The big "funny" part is Norman showing up with his new partner, under a huge mascot costume. He gets stuck between two ropes for most of the match, looks fat and stupid, and plays a role in the ending of a match when he accidentaly trips Norman who falls into Crowbar's craddle but reverses it and still wins the match. The partner would be revealed at Slamboree, and it won't be a good idea... Stupid vignette of the week : Vampiro and Sting in the cemetary (Nitro). In a grainy B&W. Supposed to be creepy I guess. It's only stupid. Vamp crashes a tombstone over Sting's head. This feud is truly awful, like the worst Taker stuff from the Attitude Era. I wonder why, really... Heel promos of the week : Scott Steiner (Nitro / Thunder). It's not much, but these are actual pro-wrestling heel promos that work because Steiner hit his points, doesn't try to look cool and doesn't use any stupid shooty-shooty comments. It shows surrounded by just terrible, boring and flat mic work by guys like Jarrett and Russo, Steiner is a breath of fresh air. He challenges Hogan and Thunder, and they work a short fight with Hugh Morrus showing up to double team Steiner, who gets no help from the New Blood faction, leading to him snapping on Bisch & Russo backstage. Comeback of the week : Konnan & Rey Mysterio Jr. (Nitro). As heels. Yep, Vince Russo insists on having Rey Mysterio Jr. as a heel. No comment. Okay, I'm sorry to not go into details this week, but at this point everything is turning into a giant blur with lots of awful Russo segments, more red goo falling from the ceiling, 2 minutes brawls with interferences, a lot of bullshit involving Liz being Russo's prisonner (the only good part would be a hard slap she gives to him), a lot of bullshit involving Russo and Flair (Douglas is officialy a Russo scrub now, it's sad), a lot of bullshit overall. Thunder was a bunch of short "New York rules" brawls (no referee, with the wrestlers doing their own count... no comment) in which the New Blood got their ass kicked, and ending with a giant, overlong and boring battle royale which featured probably the last appearance of Randy Savage in WCW, showing up to help the Millionaire's Club (if you guessed that Heenan said "He's in the best shape of his life !" you'd be right), and Bret Hart showing up to hit Hogan in the back with a chair. It's pretty odd, the more I watch this, the less I seem to remember what a good wrestling show or even match is all about. It's like it's so bad it's erasing the mere concept of a good wrestling show in my brain. I admit fast-forwarding quite a bit, and I try to hang onto the very few things that may end up being somewhat fun at some point, like Scott Steiner. But this is without a doubt the worst "wrestling" TV I've ever seen, by far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 5, 2013 Report Share Posted July 5, 2013 I am in awe of Jerome getting through THAT WEEK and being able to carry on without feeling the need to jump out of a 30 story high window. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 5, 2013 Report Share Posted July 5, 2013 I didn't realize Heenan was still doing Thunder. Poor bastard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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