[2000-05-03-WCW-Thunder] Battle Royal

[soup23]

New Blood comes all out. I had forgotten that Ernest Miller was a member. After some promos between Bischoff and Flair we get a big battle royal. I will say this basic set up got over the old vs new faction mentality better than anything else we have seen so far. A few minutes in, the ring fills up with the leftovers so the whole roster is out there now. Dammit WCW, quit getting in your own way as this just muddles up the focus and you legit have 30 people in the ring at one time and most are just standing there. Tank comes out and they try to present it as this big deal. Flair is in street clothes beating up Shane Douglas with a pipe outside. The battle royal booking itself was kind of a mess IMO. Some of the feuds going on are fine and good with eliminations but other stuff is less forgivable like Kronik being presented as monsters and just getting casually eliminated and someone like Scott Steiner getting the boot from Hugh Morrus. We also get Madusa and Asya coming in halfway through the match and they enter themselves. What a fucking mess this has turned out to be. Here comes Duggans music and he comes out still getting a big pop. Duggan in May of 2000 cleans house. The Ominous limo opens up but the camera man is only one foot tall and can only film their feet I assume. It turns out to be the Macho Man for what I think is his last appearance in WCW and therefore a truly major promotion in his lifetime. Him cleaning house in the legend roll feels more earned than Duggan although throwing out Wall and Awesome together in one motion may have been a bit much. The final four are Hogan/Kidman and Douglas/Flair and here comes Bret Hart who slams a chair on Hogan and then leaves. It still seems like they are trying to set up a Hogan vs Bret major match down the road. Flair eliminates Kidman and locks the figure four in the ring. Russo has the bat but accidentally hits Douglas. Douglas gets eliminated and Flair is your winner. Flair gets the title shot at the Great American Bash. Hardcore Hogan gets taken through a table on a baseball bat shot by Bischoff as Macho Man raises Flair’s hand. Meanwhile, Jarrett and DDP are climbing the scaffolding of the set. Macho checks on Hogan as the show fades to black which is a fitting end to his major career. What a mess this was with all sorts of stuff going on. Some really good, some really bad. It is WCW 2000 encapsulated into 26 minutes. **

[Loss]

Battle royals really need careful layout to be anything worthwhile. This is just sensory overload with no focus. Notable mainly for Randy Savage's last-ever appearance in WCW, randomly reappearing and disappearing. Flair wins the match and thus a title shot at the Great American Bash.

[GSR]

The New Blood make their way to the ring, each carrying a weapon and with Ernest Miller brandishing a lethal slip on red shoe! Eric Bischoff says how they tried to do things the right way, be sportsmen, but that wasn’t good enough for the Millionaire’s Club, and tells them that if they want guerilla warfare they’ve got it! Ric Flair’s music plays and he’s leading the Millionaire’s Club (including the likes of Curt Hennig, Hugh Morrus, Chris Kanyon and Horace Hogan). He says that they’ve got nothing left to prove tonight, but if they want to go one more time, they can have an ‘over the top rope’ Battle Royale where the last man standing gets a shot at the World title at the Great American Bash. That’s good enough for Bischoff, and the Millionaire’s Club make their way down the aisle and into the ring to get this started.

 

I didn’t count the numbers to check, but the commentators talked about this being 11 vs 11 in terms of New Blood and Millionaire’s Club members. After several minutes Konan, Bam Bam Bigelow, Disco Inferno, Johnny the Bull, Big Vito, Ron & Don Harris, Stevie Ray, Big T (Ahmed Johnson), Teddy Reade, Norman Smiley and Tank Abbott all join the fray, apparently on the orders of Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff to make sure that the New Blood maintain the numerical advantage. The ring is jam packed now! Chavo Guerrero Jr., Lash LaRoux and Van Hammer show up at some point, however the cameras miss their arrival, concentrating on Sting and Vampiro who’re going at it on the arena floor. Asya and Madusa are next to involve themselves, which in turn brings out Mona! At least people are being eliminated but I don’t think this thing will ever end… Jim Duggan (with entrance music!!!) now! ‘Hacksaw’ gets a good reaction from the crowd, eliminates four or five people in double quick time then hops over the top rope eliminating himself. Ridiculous! A limo arrives and we just see a pair of feet walking towards the building as the commentators speculate on who it could be and whose side they are on. Bloody hell, it’s Randy Savage! He goes straight after the New Blood and eliminates Shawn Stasiak, Mike Awesome, The Wall and Chris Candido (who takes a cracking bump, probably made up in the fact that he’s getting to work with Savage). As soon as he arrives though he goes, leaving through the ropes. DDP with a ‘Cactus clothesline’ to eliminate himself and Jeff Jarrett and we’re down to four. Shit, BRET HART!!! The Hitman waffles Hogan in the back with chair (sending him rolling out the ring) and with his work done, he too returns to where he came from. Flair with an Irish whip on Kidman, Hogan pulls down the top rope and he goes flying over it. Figure four on Shane Douglas by the Naitch and here’s Vince ‘bloody’ Russo! He goes to hit Flair with the rubber baseball bat but accidentally nails ‘the Franchise’ instead. Flair picks up the bat, and one swing to Douglas’ chest sends him tumbling backwards over the top rope, giving him the win and the title shot at the Great American Bash.

 

For the vast majority of this it was just too crowded for anything meaningful to happen and you could see the wrestlers standing around doing nothing. It was a sea of bodies in there. I can understand the premise of Russo and Bischoff sending out more wrestlers so that the New Blood maintain the advantage, but the new additions ended up fighting the New Blood and Tank in particular was indiscriminate on who he’d attack, including the women! Talking of which, why were they even there? Then you had someone like Duggan arriving and eliminating himself. When there is a World title shot on the line? Maybe I’m just trying to apply too much logic to this. The appearances of Savage and Hart were ‘holy shit’ moments and this is worth watching from the ‘Macho Man’s’ arrival onwards but you can skip the first twenty minutes.

[AstroBoy]

I guess it was an ambitious idea to try to shove so much into one match. . . perhaps that is commendable. But in reality this was such an overload of everything that nothing really had a chance to stand out anyway. They really do try to fit in a ton and there are the mini-stories and angles woven into the middle of the battle royal but it was hard to have much of a takeaway here. Savage looked humongous in his little appearance. I thought it was funny how Douglas also blatantly walks over to get into place so that Flair can eliminate him and win the match and title shot.

[Migs]

I had to check this out just to see Savage's last WCW appearance. Hated the weird coverup (why on earth wouldn't the camera just pan up?) He kind of looks and works like an inflated version of himself. No idea why he heads off to go after Candido. The Bret Hart thing is equally pointless - why is all this being burned off as surprises on an unannounced Thunder battle royal? So WCW.