[2000-10-02-WCW-Nitro] Sting & Scott Steiner vs Jeff Jarrett & Booker T

[soup23]

Sanders makes a relevos suicidas match for tonight with Steiner and Jarrett on opposite sides. Steiner gets on the mic and says he is going to kick Jarrett’s ass as well so the plan may not be going as well as they drew it up. The match itself is pretty good and in ring, some pieces of WCW are starting to come together. Steiner is effective as a monster and Booker and him are the marquee pairing against each other. Booker and Sting have some rough moments against each other and I contemplate whether Booker will rank on my top 100 for the year or not. I want him to be better than he has been and I can’t blame the booking entirely. Booker is much more comfortable vs Steiner and hits a good spinebuster. It is weird to see Jarrett and Booker tagging out but that is the nature of these matches. Jarrett and Steiner have a good sequence with each other too. Steiner makes some mistakes by not going for the cover. Booker and Steiner are left alone in the ring even though they aren’t the legal men. Silverman gets the sidekick and Jarrett goes to slam the guitar on Sting but Booker intervenes. Jarrett then goes to smash Booker with the guitar but he ducks and Sting gets hit with it. Jarrett gets the pin and they move on to the 49er match. One of the better Nitro matches of the year sadly enough. **3/4

[AstroBoy]

I thought this kind of sucked. There was no real flow to anything, the dynamics hurt the match instead of adding interest, and this could have benefited from a faster pace. Scott Hudson says Scott Steiner has an "imposing facemask" which is a ridiculous thing to say, as if Booker T is going to be scared off somehow. I really liked Steiner's forearm shivers on Book in the corner. I didn't think this was much at all.

 

*3/4

[GSR]

Mike Sanders is confronted by Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner backstage and tells them that there’s been a bit of a power struggle between himself and the Cat, before informing them that they’ll be facing each other in a tag team match with Booker T and Sting as their respective partners, where the winning team will go on to face each other later in the night for the World title. 

Jarrett tells Booker that he wants Sting and to get out of the ring as he’s starting this.  Maybe he should’ve let his partner begin after all as within the first sixty seconds he’s already been on the receiving end of a face jam and a ‘Stinger splash’.  He goes for the ‘Scorpion Deathlock’ but Jarrett with a poke to the eyes puts a stop to that.  Sting ducks a clothesline, lands one of his own and both men tag out.  A big “Booker, Booker” chant erupts causing Steiner to leave the ring and get in the faces of some of the fans in the front row who’re chanting.  ‘Big Poppa Pump’ backs Booker into the corner off a collar & elbow tie up and then hammers away with forearms to the jaw.  Harlem side kick and Steiner tags in Sting forcing the two fan favourites to face each other.  Booker gets the better of the shoulder tackle but they then botch a hip toss.  There’s a lot of down time in this so far.  Side headlock by ‘the Book’, now Sting is the one backing him into the corner, however there’s no clean break as Booker shows that he’s prepared to bend those rules when there’s a World title match on offer.  Sting reverses the Irish whip and Steiner pulls down the top rope sending Booker sailing out over it.  For some reason ‘the Stinger’ then slugs Steiner, his own partner, the only thing I can think of being that he wants to win this ‘clean’.  Jarrett attacks Steiner and now they’re going at it.  ‘Big Poppa Pump’ with a big press slam on ‘Double J’ and a clothesline for Booker, but he would rather do push ups than go for the pin.  It looks like he’s going for an ‘Oklahoma Stampede’ however after slamming Booker into the turnbuckles he slides down his back to avoid it.  Spinebuster by ‘the Book’, who makes the tag, although Jarrett’s caught with a belly to belly by ‘the Suplex King’ as Madden has taken to calling Steiner.  A Sting clothesline sends him over the top rope to the outside, but ‘Double J’ reverses the whip on the floor sending ‘the Stinger’ crashing into the guard rail.  Inside Booker and Steiner are battling it out, Booker lands the axe kick but as he goes for a second Harlem side kick of the night, Steiner pulls referee Billy Silverman in the way and he gets taken out.  Jarrett breaks a guitar over Sting’s head and Steiner tackles Booker rather than breaking the cover up, meaning its Jarrett and Booker who advance to the title match.

I know it’s to be expected in a match where enemies are forced to team together but, when there’s such big prize on offer for the winning team, I find it ridiculous that they can’t put their differences aside for the greater good.  The work was okay, if a little slow and pedestrian at time, and I predicted the ref bump about thirty seconds before it happened.  Steiner preferring to tackle Booker rather than break up the pin at the finish added to the non-sensical nature of things, unless of course he couldn’t care less about becoming World champion.  Which went completely against the story the commentators were telling about how he was the only one of the four who had never been WCW champion and how this was such a great opportunity for him.  Typical WCW then!