[2000-04-12-WCW-Thunder] Brian Knobbs & Fit Finlay vs Meng & Hugh Morrus vs Terry Funk & Norman Smiley (Hardcore)

[soup23]

I really can’t stand WCW hardcore matches. Also, Funk has been dropped down the card to honestly a more appropriate level given his level. This had all the tropes you love. Concession brawling, someone getting dropped “30 feet”, shoddy camera work. Tony on commentary is Jim Cornette level screaming at us how this shows how hungry the talent is to impress Bisch and Russo but it looks pretty lazy to me. Dustin Rhodes runs out and lays out Funk allowing Norman to pin his own partner in the match. Great more cute booking. *1/4

[Loss]

"Meng speared a life sized poster of Goldberg. Meng used the poster to block Knobs spraying him with a fire extinguisher. Meng then threw Knobs off a 30-foot balcony." -- Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 04/24/00

 

It's funny that Bischoff and Russo have exploded WCW to rebuild it and one of the few remnants they've kept is the horrible Dustin Rhodes-Terry Funk feud. Wasn't the world just clamoring for that? And yeah, doesn't the talent know the way to impress Bischoff and Russo is to hang out with Hogan in the former case or cut promos with sex and drug references and shoot comments in the latter case? This match has too much try-hard and the chaos feels manufactured in a way pro wrestling usually manages to successfully disguise.

[GSR]

Match to determine who will be the participants in the Hardcore title match at Spring Stampede, where the winning team tonight will then go on to face each other at the PPV. They very quickly all pair off with Meng and Knobbs going into the crowd, Hugh and Smiley fighting up the aisle and Funk and Fit staying in the ring. Hugh lays Smiley on a table and goes for a running elbow drop off the stage, however Screaming Norman moves and he goes through the end of it himself. By now Meng and Knobbs have made their way to the back of the arena and to the concession stands. Knobbs hurls a plastic bin into Meng’s head before walloping him with a food tray. Meng fights back and throws Knobbs through a table. He spots a lifesize cardboard cut out of Goldberg, so forgets about his opponent and goes and spears that! Knobbs lets off a fire extinguisher, however Meng uses the speared Goldberg to block it. The two head outside and Meng sidesteps a charging Knobbs who flies over the balcony and surely to his death after Tony Schiavone claims “it’s a 30 foot drop!” Smiley and Hugh have made their way backstage whilst Fit uses a chair on the Funker in the ring. Hugh whips Smiley into a giant tiger’s mouth (which apparently is used as an entrance for the local hockey team), only to then crotch/impale himself one one of the tiger’s teeth, which allows Heenan to talk about “getting the horn!” Finlay DDTs Funk on the concrete before propping a table up in the corner. Funk with a low low and he whips Fit through it. Piledriver onto the table and here comes Dustin Rhodes (hopefully without a chicken in sight). Funk hasn’t seen him though and heads up top for a moonsault. Low blow on Funk followed by ‘Shattered Dreams’. Dustin repeatedly bashes Funk’s head into a steel chair and Fit and he head out the ring to collect a table. In the meantime Norman Smiley has returned, sees Funk laid out, covers him and gets the win for the Funker and himself. Oh dear…

 

Atrocious finish which negates the purpose of the match. Why didn’t Funk just lay down and let Smiley cover him in the first place instead of wrestling for the best part of ten minutes? Are we meant to think that Meng is that thick that he mistakes a cardboard cut out for an actual person? What happened to Knobbs? On the same point what happened to Meng? Why didn’t he return to the ring after Knobbs had supposedly killed himself? In fact why didn’t he even go and cover the corpse of Brian Knobbs? No chance of a kick out and he and Hugh would’ve advanced to Spring Stampede! Norman Smiley made me laugh with his screaming every time he would get hit; there you go, there’s one positive thing I gained from watching this!