Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 41: Spring Stampede 1999
34 Plays3 years ago
The Spring Stampede series continues...and so too does the rise of Diamond Dallas Page, who has his biggest opportunity yet - a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship. Can he dethrone the ever-so-slightly power-mad Ric Flair? Also: Can Goldberg get his revenge on Kevin Nash? Can Konnan even hope to stand against the raw might of...Disco Inferno? And WCW's booked every single lower card title to be occupied by only two matches...that's not weird at all, right? For all this and more, let's go to the ring!
Music by Michael Gary Brewer at https://www.instantmusicnow.com/
Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/letsgo2thering , or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LetsGo2theRing/
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
drop anything. Sat down so hard my headphones fell off.
Introduction to the Podcast and WCW
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Let's Go to the Ring, where we take a look at the good old days, and not so good old days, of World Championship Wrestling, series by series. I'm your host, Bob Moore, and flying over the head of a referee to co-host with me tonight is Alec Bridget. Thankful I stretch for the show, just in case. That was an impressive flying sidekick, Al, but you are gonna pay us for the window repairs, right?
00:00:59
Speaker
I'll get you next time. How's it going tonight? Good, how's it going with you?
00:01:05
Speaker
It's going alright,
Critique of WCW Mayhem Album
00:01:06
Speaker
going alright. I listened to the WCW Mayhem album out of the way over here to get in the mood. Oh, good. That is a terrible album. It's pretty bad. Especially if you like wrestling music. Yeah. Because it has, I don't know, like 14 tracks on it or something like that. I think of which maybe five or six are actually wrestler theme songs and of those you get like 45 seconds to a minute of the actual theme song, usually overdubbed with announcers.
00:01:30
Speaker
oh it's like they recorded a live nitro broadcast and then just threw in other random rock songs yeah at full length none of which i liked so it's like hey did you like ddp's theme well great you get to hear about you know 25 seconds of it also the only related rock songs that they didn't put on there it smells like team spirit so well naturally
00:01:55
Speaker
They interject random bits of Tony Schiavone commentary. He's probably the most featured artist on the entire album, which is good for him. You know the thing where you try to sync up Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz? Maybe try to sync up the WCW Mayhem pay-per-view with the album. See how it works. Probably not very well since they definitely have audio on there that says it's from Nitro. Yeah, well, you know.
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, tonight we are not covering WSW
Spring Stampede 1999: Expectations and Background
00:02:23
Speaker
Mayhem. We are covering Spring Stampede 1999. The Good, The Bad, The Showdown. With that title, this really should end with a triangle match, but it doesn't. Yeah, I mean, a square is kind of a triangle if you're really bad at, you know, shapes. You know, it's two triangles kind of put into each other. Yeah, I suppose, yeah.
00:02:49
Speaker
Spring Stampede 1999 was held on April 11th, 1999 at the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington, in front of a sold-out crowd of 17,690, of which 16,799 actually paid. The Tacoma Dome, which is the largest wooden domed arena in the world, is said to be constructed of wood that came from trees broken by the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Okay.
00:03:18
Speaker
It seats between 10,000 and 21,000 people, depending on the event and arrangement, assuming wrestling's on the larger crowd size, but cuts off a good chunk of the arena. Again, 17,690 seems pretty reasonable for sold out. Yeah. Thank you. If you look at like the hockey seating, it's pretty close to that hockey, maybe a little more. Yeah.
WCW's Decline and Event Insights
00:03:37
Speaker
Spring Stampede 1999 earned 220,000 pay-per-view buys. That's about 30,000 less than last year. But it is still on the higher end of shows for 1999, unfortunately. Going from last year where six shows earn more than 300,000, this year only five even hit the 200,000 range. And only one, Superball 9, reaches the heights of 1998 with 450,000.
00:04:01
Speaker
Wow, even Starrcade, like their big one. Yeah. WSW has fallen from the heights it reached in late 1997 and through 1998, but they're not out yet. No.
00:04:13
Speaker
WCW's new weird logo glares at us, and we go into an opening video package with no narration and loud chugging guitar that just shows us the participants in tonight's main event. Sting, Diamond Dallas Page, Hogan, and world champion Ric Flair. And the other highlighted match tonight, Kevin Nash versus Goldberg. It's an okay video package, but really no story coverage whatsoever and nothing that plays to the cowboy theme.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's a shame. OK, not quite nothing. There is an extremely faint overlay of what looks like probably a rodeo. It's so faint, though, that I only realized it was even there on my third watch of the opening. Oh, geez. They should have put like a gate graphic over Goldberg and then he does the spear. It breaks like he hit it. Yeah. Yeah. That would be nice. Yeah.
00:05:05
Speaker
The show logo, at least, is nice. It's a stylized spring stampede with bull horns growing out of the top, framing the new 1999-2000 era WCW logo within. It's one of the only show logos that looks genuinely good combined with this era's WCW logo that normally clashes horribly with everything. Very much so, yes. So, quite an accomplishment, guys. Good job. Yeah.
Event Design and Commentary
00:05:30
Speaker
Host Tony Schiavone welcomes us to the show as fireworks go off along the stage, which is, again, a rather nice little Western set, not as elaborate as the prior two years. It kind of feels like they built it out of what they had left over after DDP versus Raven and Savage versus Sting last year. Yeah. Rather than giving it its own design. Yeah, you can't get new parts. We're going to use these same things.
00:05:52
Speaker
That's actually much more finance conscious than WCW normally is. I don't picture that normally recycling things. Well, they probably did is they probably flew the props from show to show every single show just to make up the difference. Probably. Why are we taking with us? Who cares?
00:06:13
Speaker
They actually did manage to assemble a reasonable little Wagon Yard kind of set, though I like it. It's spoiled only by the inclusion of a couple little Caesar's signs, which aren't really quite on the Old West theme. I assume they can be sponsored by Tombstone Pizza, huh? Yeah, that would have been smarter. Yeah.
00:06:30
Speaker
The commentary table this year bears the new Spring Stampede logo, backed by brown netting, which suits the theme pretty well. Yeah, it's not bad. Sadly, the commentators still haven't dressed up, though Tony is in a leather jacket this year. He's joined by co-host Mike Tenet and Bobby the Brain Hienan. The continuing absence of dusty roads from the series makes this show's alternate tagline, somebody's getting dusted. Nothing but a cruel taunt. Aww.
00:06:58
Speaker
Tony builds up the four-way match for the world
Hardcore Match Analysis
00:07:01
Speaker
title, and Henan says that if Mike Tenet is joining them, it must be Thursday. I'm guessing that's because Tenet hosts Thunder? Yes. Okay. Correct.
00:07:09
Speaker
Tony asks Henan about Goldberg versus Nash, and says Goldberg wants revenge from Starrcade 1998. Henan says Nash is the only wrestler who holds a victory over Goldberg, albeit via Taser. And Goldberg doesn't like that, so he's gonna get his revenge. Tony asks about the four-way world title match, and Tanay says that the four fighters are important, but so is the special referee, Macho Man Randy Savage.
00:07:38
Speaker
Steve Austin's old music hits, and it's time for our first match. So let's go to the ring. So our first match is Blitzkrieg versus Hovintu Guerra for the right to challenge for the WCW Cruiserweight Championship on the next Nitro. Referee for this one is Charles Robinson.
00:07:59
Speaker
Sadly, Steve Austin's old music does not signify the biggest return WCW could possibly have engineered at this point. Yeah, right. Instead, his old theme has just been appropriated for masked cruiserweight Blitzkrieg, who looks like a cross between a Power Ranger and a Mortal Kombat Ninja. That's fair. It shouldn't work, but it does. Yeah.
00:08:19
Speaker
He's billed from The Cosmos. Hienan asks if Tony knows where that's located, and Tony jokes it's right next to Parts Unknown. Hienan says it's about a half a mile from Yakima, Washington. It's rare, but I think Tony actually out-quipped Hienan there. Oh, trying to happen eventually, I suppose.
00:08:38
Speaker
Hoeven to Guerrero's music should be in a Zorro movie. Yes. His tights are complicated. Yes. Silver, red, black, gold, all sorts of iconography and designs. They're exciting but busy. Yeah. That weird rib pattern around the crotch too. That's not where the ribs are. Yeah, there's a little thing where it's like little pointed spikes pointing at the place you don't really want to be pointing stuff at. Yes. It is not the worst crotch related imagery tonight though.
00:09:07
Speaker
That's true, yeah. Yeah. Rapid counter wrestling leads to a Guerrera drop toe hold for two, but Blitzkrieg nicely locks on an ankle lock right after his kick out, only for Guerrera to leg scissor roll up him for two. They acrobatically work around a Blitzkrieg side headlock, and Blitzkrieg catches a charging Guerrera with a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker for two.
00:09:31
Speaker
They trade chops, as Henan jokes, the arena will look like Mount St. Helens because WSW action is gonna blow the roof off. Ironic, given the roof's origin. That's true, yeah. Gerrera counters another Tilt-a-Whirl, but Blitzkrieg catches him with a handspring back elbow. Each guy gets the crowd to count along as they hit the other one in a funny revenge spot. Weird sign in the crowd. Hogan likes to Kota. K-O-D-A.
00:09:59
Speaker
I tried to figure that out, but nothing really made sense unless Hogan's into Denmark's music publishing scene, some Texas radio stations or modular housing solutions that would not be offered until 23 years after this show. I mean, he's a he looked at the future a lot, man, very possible.
Critique of Riggs vs. Whipwreck Match
00:10:17
Speaker
I guess so.
00:10:20
Speaker
Guerrero springboard dropkick to Blitzkrieg's head, and Blitzkrieg rolls out, so Guerrero hits a suicide dive over the top rope. Tene says, Hoovy has about eight years of experience, but Blitzkrieg's a rookie with two months' experience, quote, with WCW. Yeah. That's true-ish. Aside from a 1998 dark match, he's only been in WCW since January 1999. Late January. Yeah.
00:10:44
Speaker
However, he's actually been wrestling since 1994, so this is eight years versus five years, not eight years versus two months, as Tanay does have to admit later on.
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's like other groups or other organizations, these other things. Yeah. Because Hina starts to take it too literally. He says, man, this guy's great for two months of experience. And today's like, well, actually. Yeah. Guerrero brain buster for two. And he tries the Rita Romero special in elevated surfboard hold. But Blitzkrieg frees himself and falls ribs to ribs. Ow. On top for two.
00:11:19
Speaker
Impressive Blitzkrieg acrobatic kicks, including a flip off of Hoovey's body, and he sends Hoovey outside with a dropkick. But when Blitzkrieg dives out, Hoovey dropkicks him in the chest. Back in for just a second, Blitzkrieg reverses a tilt-a-whirl to send Gerrera out, then hits a beautiful top rope slingshot springboard moonsault to the outside. Wow.
00:11:43
Speaker
Back in, Gerrera counters the powerbomb to a hoovy driver attempt, but they trade counters and Blitzkrieg hits an inverted DDT for two. They try something on the top rope,
Praise for Cruiserweight Title Match
00:11:54
Speaker
but slip and fall to the mat. Thankfully they landed safely. Blitzkrieg goes up for a sky twister press, but Gerrera dodges. Another hoovy driver, but Blitzkrieg counters with a roll-up for two. Some jerk in the crowd calls, boring. I'm like, what? What about you watching, man? He is very wrong.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yes, extremely. Insane top rope spinning flip body scissors by Blitzkrieg for two. Blitzkrieg puts Guerrero up top again, but Guerrero counters with a super hoovy driver for the three count and the win. Holy crap, I would not have wanted to take that one. Yeah, I really trust the money for that. Yeah. Thoughts on this one?
00:12:35
Speaker
It was a fun high-flying match. I thought it's really nice to see Blitzkrieg. He's not around in WCW all that much, unfortunately. So you got to really sort of take the highlights you get with him. Cruiserweights in general, they really fight for pay-review space. So when you're in the company for literally less than a year, like he is, you really got to make that count. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
Other than a few bits where they didn't quite get the move right, like the part in the corner you talked about, and we did the rotation, like this sort of spinning pin thing, it's not quite as smooth as I've seen. Other than that, he's really good. Absolutely. His energy's quite good. He didn't have any extra character, like he didn't get mad at the crowd or try to amp up the crowd, he just kind of performs.
00:13:24
Speaker
That's pretty mild critique, honestly, because a lot of these guys, they're just thrown out there to wrestle. They don't really have a long term story for them. So if Hogan went out and didn't do anything with the crowd, you'd be like, it'd be shocking. Yeah, it's terrible. But it's kind of like not what they're expected to do. And maybe they're not really encouraged to do it, because if you get over, then Hogan, then over. And I think that that's a case where the two months experience in WCW does become a factor that he's used to wrestling, but not necessarily in front of huge crowds. Sure.
00:13:52
Speaker
This is what did we say? Seventeen thousand people. Yes. That's a different thing. Trying to work with a crowd of of that level. You know, we're a hoovy. You can tell we'll
Tag Team Match: Horsemen vs. Raven & Saturn
00:14:01
Speaker
occasionally do some call to the crowd or just looking around, seeing what reaction he's getting and that kind of stuff. And like later, like Ray Mysterio does that very well. But yeah, Blitzkrieg, I would suspect that's an area where you can see, oh, he's only been in WSW a short time. He's not used to full fledged TV, pay-per-view type of stuff.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah, with him and Whoopi, it's definitely a case of them being really ambitious, not always hitting everything exactly right, but more times than not hitting it quite well. Yeah, yeah. The other thing I really liked is that they tease the obvious finish.
00:14:36
Speaker
multiple times, they don't go for it. They, you know, counter or dodge or anything. So when they build up to a big finish, like they do the counter in the corner, it feels like, Oh, my narrator move didn't work or this didn't work. So I have to do this.
00:14:52
Speaker
And it's nice too that he catches him with it in an unexpected location, an unexpected way. So it makes sense. The guy was ready for the hoovy driver. He was not ready for, countered into the hoovy driver out of the top rope position. That's just like, Oh my gosh, I wasn't expecting it here. It makes sense why he's caught by it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good match.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, I thought this was a seriously fun opener. That one flubbed top rope spot aside, and they quickly recovered from that, Whovie and Blitzkrieg worked really, really well together and matched each other's pace, providing a number of excellent, rapid, and creative counter sequences that kept me guessing. Both got plenty of chances to look good and pulled off some great acrobatic moves, and they did just enough to give a connective thread of a story, aided by some good commentary to point out some of their strategy.
00:15:47
Speaker
I've seen a lot of hoovy, of course, but blitzkrieg I'm much less familiar with and he really impressed me here. He's quite good. I think he quickly fits in very well with WSW's Cruiserweight division. He's a good addition to the mix and I do hope we get to see more of him though. Like you said, he's not around for very long. So I imagine he doesn't make too many paper views. Yeah. Still, hopefully during 99 he can be a bright spot. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a little warm at least. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:14
Speaker
who, being the winner, gets the title shot. He would not win, however. It's a little more of a long-term title, but I'll cover that when it relates to the title match later. Tony describes our next match as a, quote, real kick him in the rear end type of match.
00:16:32
Speaker
and throws to a video package that the commentators just go ahead and narrate over of Bam Bam Bigelow and Hardcore Hack, ECW's Sandman, beating each other up and throwing each other into hard objects. In one match, apparently, Raven's kayfabe sister, Chastity, sprayed Bigelow with a fire extinguisher. I assume you're going to have more of an explanation for that in a moment, Al. You'd think so.
00:16:56
Speaker
So our second match is Hardcore Hack with Chastity versus Bam Bam Bigelow in a Hardcore match. Referee for this one is Mickey J, who sadly I recently heard passed away. He did, yeah. Our deepest sympathies to his family and friends and maybe they'd be blessed with memories of better days.
00:17:19
Speaker
There's not a super huge story following these two in the ring. The bigger story is actually behind the scenes. So at this point, Dargon99, there's a big talent rate on ECW. With WCW, they bring in a lot of guys to fill in with people like Raven, who's been there a while. That included people like Sandman, as we see here, as hardcore hack, which is a definite downgrade, I feel like. Yeah, yeah. The Sandman sounds much cooler as a name. Yeah. There's also Mikey Whipperick, who we'll see later.
00:17:49
Speaker
who sadly got to keep his name. Yes, fair enough. Every time I'm writing his name in my notes, he keeps trying to autocorrect you, Mikey Shipwreck. I'm like, why does that sound better, Google? What's going on here? What does that make sense to you?
00:18:06
Speaker
But yeah, so they brought on the ECW guys because this is the point where ECW is both doing well as far as getting promotion through, at this point, video tapes and to a lesser extent, pay-per-view. But at the same time, they're also not making as much money as you think they'd make doing all this. So when someone's like, hey, I'll guarantee your payday every week and every month, they're like, yes, please. Yeah. And a lot of them went. Chassis is also one of them. She's not really talked about as much. She also was ECW as well. Oh, okay.
00:18:36
Speaker
Before Raven left, she actually was his valet. Ah, okay. So there's that connection there. So at a previous show, there's a big match involving Raven, Bigelow, and Hardcore Hack. And the idea is that Chastity is Raven's sister and she's out there. Confusingly, she helps him beat up other people, including Hardcore Hack, during the match, but then turns him at the end of the match to let Hardcore Hack win.
00:19:03
Speaker
It's a really weird long con. I'm gonna beat you up so he won't expect it when I beat him up instead. Which may make sense if you're the Sandman. That's the kind of logic that goes to your brain. Yeah. But yeah, so now she's aligned with him and she is, on her previous show, helped him in a magic it's biggle by using the fire extinguisher. Oh, okay. As to why people use fire extinguishers as weapons, that's just a thing in wrestling.
00:19:29
Speaker
Hack comes out wrapped in barbed wire, carrying a table, and wearing a t-shirt that I'm pretty sure I've seen Raven wear before. Chastity comes down with him, carrying a kendo stick. I never quite got how weapons associated with a disciplined and heavily armored Japanese sport ended up the weapons of choice for certain hardcore wrestlers. Yeah, it's true. I guess they like it because it makes a good sound. Yeah, that is true. That is true.
00:19:54
Speaker
It's like maybe one of the guys, like, you know, Justin Credible, who's most known for that, other than the very Sandman here, attended, uh, you know, his nephew's karate class is like, Ooh, that sounds nice. Oh, are you in this now? Tony notes Chastity is quite attractive and tries to get Tanay to say so too, after checking if Tanay's wife is watching. A somewhat flustered Tanay excellently dodges by instead talking about how she turned on her brother Raven at the previous pay-per-view. Good job there, Tanay. Yeah, good save.
00:20:25
Speaker
Tony cuts Tanay off, as Bigelow enters with a custodian's cart full of weapons, and Hack, sans barbed wire, which he's left on a ring post, charges to join him so the match is on. Bigelow rams his weapon cart into Hack, and they brawl, ending up near the stagecoach from the set, where Hack pulls a table out that's buried in hay under the stagecoach. Why is that there? And has it been there since last year? Why not, Henan says.
00:20:55
Speaker
That's not an answer, d***. Hack props Bigelow on the table, climbs up with the stagecoach, and hits a front somersault dive to put Bigelow through the table. Bigelow is up before Hack, which says a lot about this match. Yeah, it's weird that they already built to the, I can knock you out, have to climb the structure and dive on you already. Yeah, and then he's just up first. Yeah. You're like, what? Meanwhile, Chastity has unpacked the weapon cart nicely for them.
00:21:24
Speaker
They brawl back to ringside, and a trash can gets involved again. Tony points out that trash cans are probably the least harmful items in the ring. That's true, but probably don't say that, Tony. Yeah, right? Especially when they're about to use trash cans roughly 78 billion times in this match. Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
Hacks stuns Bigelow with a chair and goes out to prop a table between the ring apron and a crowd barricade, then goes back in as they brawl with a variety of weapons. A broom gets involved, so Tony and Tanae delight in sweeping puns. It's good to hear Tanae join in that time. Yeah. Hienan wonders if Bam Bam is taking up curling. I'm still very confused by that sport. I watched it a lot on the Winter Olympics and I don't get it.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the things I don't know how you got from point A to point B creating this. Right, right. Yeah, it's like the rules as they consist together, actually, like you can kind of get them and understand them. Yeah. But figure out how they came up with the rules in the first place. It's like, what? Right. I mean, bowling is weird, to be fair, but it's like, take object, throw another object at the end. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
00:22:33
Speaker
Bigelow puts a salad bowl on Hack's head and punches it, which seems like it would hurt Bigelow's hand more than Hack's head. A Hack attempt to counter a Bigelow suplex goes horribly wrong, and Bigelow falls straight down on Hack's knees. First attempt at an actual wrestling move in this match, and it's a disaster.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still confused by that one. Like he did not have the timing right or like he couldn't get him over. It's really strange. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't even get him up at all. No. He like lifts him up about a quarter inch and then he just drops him right on his own knees and screams, which thankfully he was OK, but that probably felt very, very bad. It looked like it did. Yes.
00:23:16
Speaker
They brawl around using a ladder and smash each other into it, then Hack puts it on Bigelow and somersaults off the top onto the ladder atop Bigelow, and then Bulldogs Bigelow onto the ladder. Hack retrieves another table and a barricade and puts them both in the ring. The earlier table has fallen down, so Hack has Chastity set it back up, then sets the ladder by the ropes nearby. Tony laughs into helpless laughter trying to call this. Yeah, right.
00:23:42
Speaker
With Bigelow down near the ropes, Hack climbs the ladder, even though it's in a position where he could basically do nothing to Bigelow without hitting the ropes on the way down. Shockingly, Bigelow pulls the ladder over and Hack spills out through the table, almost as though that's the only reason the ladder was in that position in the first place.
00:24:02
Speaker
Back in, Bigelow hurls Hack into the ladder, but Hack beats him up with a crutch and puts him on the barricade, but Bigelow dodges a Hack leg drop and Hack crutches himself. Ow. Yeah. Chastity tries to spray Bigelow with a fire extinguisher, but it won't work. She excellently freaks out when Bigelow glares at her, and he takes the extinguisher and sprays her in much of the front row. You would think a guy with fire on his side wouldn't be very good with that thing.
00:24:31
Speaker
but that's why he's pointing it away from himself. True, true. Hack sets up a table and hits a kendo stick assisted the Russian leg sweep to the barricade. A dazed Bigelow crawls to the corner where Hack lands punches, but Bigelow picks him up and hits the greetings from Asbury Park through the table. Hack rolls over onto the fire extinguisher and Bigelow pins him on top of it, which technically shouldn't count because Hack's shoulders are not on the mat. It mercifully gets three anyway.
00:24:59
Speaker
Bigelow beats his chest in celebration, bellowing, that's hardcore. Who's hardcore? Why are they asking who's hardcore? I mean, hardcore hack is hardcore. Well, I guess maybe he's disagreeing with that. Oh, OK. Tony advises fans not to try this in their backyard, and Hienan helpfully suggests they use their living room instead as it's more fun. I'm sure WCW's lawyers loved Hienan's statement. Yes, I'm sure they did. He does save it, though, by saying if they fought in Tony's living room, no one would even notice, implying it's full of garbage.
00:25:30
Speaker
Thoughts on this one? Ah, what a deep note I wrote for this. Lots of weapon shots. No psychology. A few botches. It's all spectacle. Pretty much that's all there is.
00:25:44
Speaker
I mean, for better or worse, these kinds of matches are just people walking around hitting or slaying people with on-do or through objects or into objects. They're never like working a body part. There's really not even like a story of like a guy taking control for a long period of time. It's just all to move. No, you get up and move and I'll get to move.
00:26:04
Speaker
There's barely any selling in the match to begin with. I mean, Bigelow, as noted, gets straight up after a table bump. Hack takes not that much longer, as I recall, to get up after the one where he fell outside the ring through the table. Yeah. There's no sense of it being there's no sense. I think that's a good description. Yeah. But there's no sense of like them wearing each other down really at all. It's just mindless weapon strikes. Right.
00:26:29
Speaker
to go back to the comparison we made talking about Lucha on the previous show, like the parka match. You can look at really well crafted matches as being like a really elaborate movie fight scene. Like you see in like a James Bond movie or something like that. Then you have the sort of stunt show thing we talked about with Lucha where you know it's all working together. You don't hide it very well, but you see the spectacle of these flips and dives and everything.
00:26:56
Speaker
This is basically like when you watch a thing where there's just a big bar fight in the saloon, really. And just people punching and hitting people with bottles, and that's pretty much all there is to it. Yeah. You bring up the lucha matches. That's an interesting comparison because I had a similar comparison on it. We discussed last year that the lucha matches are, as you said, cooperative but heavily choreographed sometimes. You see behind the curtain a little bit more, but it's worth it because of the interesting choreography. Yes.
00:27:25
Speaker
This is very similar in that you see beyond the curtain very often because you see them setting up spots for each other basically like the latter bit where he sets it up near the ropes for no other purpose than to get thrown off of it. Correct. So it's very much like that in that you see behind the curtain except without the interesting choreography.
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Like I said, it's like when you watch the Western, they have the big saloon fight. Everyone's just kind of standing in a big pile. Things are being broken. People will sit across the bar countertop, all that kind of stuff. But ultimately, you don't remember what so-and-so did in this fight. You just remember, wow, that's a lot of stuff that happened there. What's next?
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah, I thought this was a collection of spots more frequently silly than brutal, albeit still overly risky to the performers, connected only by brawling and occasional strikes with weapons, without any sense of story, character, or strategy beyond me is tough, me hit foe with object. Yeah, pretty much.
00:28:20
Speaker
I can enjoy a good chaotic brawl, see last year's DDP versus Raven for me. Right. But you have to tell a story and this one did not. No. And as we mentioned, some spots were just incredibly blatant in their setup. The spots just exist to exist and half the time the two barely bothered to sell them at all. So this kind of just goes on until Bigelow blessedly hits a finisher and ends it. It's unnecessarily dangerous and mostly dull.
00:28:45
Speaker
Right. When you have parts like Bigelow, when he's waiting for Chastity to try and interrupt. So he's standing there holding a ladder of his head and then goes, uh, just like looking around, waiting for something to happen. Yeah. He actually does sort of toss it on Sandman, which one was unimpressive because it's just, you just sort of dumped out there, but also probably still hurt. Yeah. Cause he's throwing a metal ladder to somebody.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, there's no way that that hits you in a way that feels okay. Yeah. Somehow an edge of something is coming down on your soft fleshy bits. Right. So everyone is getting hurt and you're not getting the benefit at least of a looking cool process. Yeah. At the Great American Bash is the next time we have a hardcore match is between hardcore hack and Brian Knobs. So that's something that also exists.
00:29:36
Speaker
New announcement everyone, we are not covering the American Patch series. No, I kid.
00:29:43
Speaker
So Chastity, right around that match, she's abruptly fired from WCW and vanishes from wrestling for a bit. Basically, standards of practice that WCW win, I guess, played Ted Turner, discovered she had been in, let's say, an adult film in her past, which, you know, I'm not judging. People do things, it's a job, whatever. But yeah, when you're working a multinational TV show, essentially, they're not fond of that. Yeah, I can see that.
00:30:11
Speaker
Not really clean there, yeah. Not being something they particularly liked, yeah. So there's, sadly there's no big like payoff to like the she betrays Raven and you know, he gets revenge and everything. Cause he just kind of leaves abruptly after that match because of that. Okay. Yeah. Our third match is Scotty Riggs versus Mikey Whipwreck. Referee for this one is Johnny Boone.
00:30:38
Speaker
In very recent memory, we had the flock disbanded by way of Perry Saturn and his actions, as well as DDP to a certain extent. That left all the people from the flock to do new things. I was a kid and they rebounded quite nicely. Finally stopped doing heroin and won a title or so, which is good. Good for him. I like to think that that diamond cutter last year shocked it out of his system, just like immediate drug cure. Fair enough. We'll have to try that places, I'm sure. Good idea.
00:31:08
Speaker
Scottie Riggs was just kind of hanging around in the flock with an eye patch. The idea being that he took a bump on a chair of his face and he had to wear an eye patch. So now no one likes him, apparently, just according to Raven anyway, he just kind of believes him. So no, that's not happening. He suddenly rediscovered body positivity. So, hey, that's upside. He's become Rick Rude version 2.0.
00:31:31
Speaker
I would more characterize it as Rick Roode version 0.7. Yeah, it's an attempt to make Rick Roode 2.0. Is that better? Yeah. I'm not saying it succeeds, but that's the idea. As to Mikey Wiprick, he is also around. Yeah, that's pretty much the description of it. Yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yes, Scotty Riggs is now doing a Rick Rude gimmick. He comes out with a hand mirror to admire his looks. He does have a nice sleeveless robe though. It's red and black. He joined the wolf pack. Uh-oh. No, not really. It does look pretty cool though. I actually like the robe. Yeah.
00:32:10
Speaker
Mikey Whipwreck, on the other hand, comes dressed as a cross between a wrestler and a customer at your local RPG and board game store. Yeah. He's got a do-rag, a t-shirt with exceptionally nice artwork of a knight fighting a dragon on one side and the dragon breathing fire on the other, and fairly standard wrestling tights. Yeah. It doesn't really work together at all.
00:32:31
Speaker
Well, he has that combination like sock and like leg covering. Yeah. I believe he's he's dealing with knee issues right now. So it's sort of like oppression socks kind of thing. You kind of wish that he'd just gone full Cena and done like jorts or something like that. And yeah, that would actually work better.
00:32:48
Speaker
Even if he wore the leg covering thing underneath it, actually just going, I'm wrestling in street clothes fully. You either need to do full street clothes or full wrestling gear, not both. Right, right, yeah. Riggs doffs his coat, gesturing disbelievingly at Wipwreck, and referee Boone looks amused.
00:33:10
Speaker
Riggs does Rick Rude hip swivels and shoves Whipwreck around, tauntingly tugging his cheek. Riggs throws Whipwreck around and walks over him, bragging about his looks, but Whipwreck slaps him hard. Twice. Whipwreck lands strikes and a dropkick, and Riggs falls outside, where he amusingly puts up his dukes but has two days to find Whipwreck so he just gets hit from behind.
00:33:32
Speaker
Wipwreck puts Riggs head on the ropes and leg drops him, then Drop kicks him through the ropes, slingshots over, and hits a Hurricane Rana, but Riggs dodges another leg drop, and Wipwreck lands hard on the apron, so Riggs knocks him into the barricades. Riggs lands some vicious strikes, but wastes time posing, and tries pinning Wipwreck with a single finger for one. Tony references Chris Jericho's, uh, single-foot pin. Yeah, it's no yeah, baby.
00:33:57
Speaker
No. Riggs keeps up the beating and earns two with an elbow drop. Whipwreck eventually gets a boot up on a corner charge. Whipwreck earns two counts with a second rope dropkick, Russian Leg Sweep, and Hurricane Rana. Riggs dodges a clothesline, and so does Whipwreck. But Whipwreck doesn't dodge a flying forearm, and that earns Riggs the three count and the win. Well, that was sudden. A little bit, yeah. Riggs celebrates with a little hip swivel on the ropes. Thoughts on this one?
00:34:27
Speaker
It's a decent match, but it really feels like a TV match, you know? Totally agreed. Yeah. So I get the idea. So they repackaged Scottie Riggs. He has this whole I'm good looking gimmick, which by the way is the only line he has to say or like subversion that I'm going to look at me. Yes. I do have to say he is a handsome fellow. No, yeah, I'm not taking it away for sure. So it's a good guy to give the gimmick to, but he clearly is very, very new to doing the gimmick.
00:34:52
Speaker
Right, right. But yeah, so I get the idea. He has this new gimmick. You really want to repackage him and show what he looks like and see what he can do. But this doesn't feel like it really belongs in his review. No. They don't act like this is some sort of blood feud or there's even like some quick story like, oh, so-and-so attacked me in the back. Now I want to fight him. You play the video before the match and at least you have something to go off. Right.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah, the story they seem to try to give it is that Riggs doesn't take Wip Rec seriously as a wrestler because, you know, the outfit. Right. But the eyes. Yes.
00:35:24
Speaker
That would work better if they hadn't just repackaged Riggs. Yeah. Like if you have the well-established Scotty Riggs character who's been doing that character for several years. Right. But you're trying to have Riggs establish a new character for himself and also use him to establish that this guy can wrestle, except you also got to establish Riggs so he has to win. Right. So they're trying to accomplish like three or four things in this match and therefore none of them really work.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah. And because there's no like proper buildup of this guy on the like six different shows they have at this point, it just highs new guy. Who's this guy? Who's this person? The crowd has nothing to gauge reactions for. Yeah. They're assuming, you know, who he was because he was an ECW basically. Yeah. And with the rigs are assuming you remember him being a tag team with buff Bagwell. Yeah. But yeah, do you fakely, but yeah, not, not so much.
00:36:20
Speaker
Riggs is all gimmick here, and he went with basically a worse version of Booker T's flying for him. Yes. I'm way to the match, but somehow it never occurred to me why he's named Scotty Riggs, like where they got the last name from. We get the weapon. Oh, okay. I mean, it seems obvious to me. I'm like, why didn't I figure that out? Yeah, I can see that. I guess I don't spend much time thinking about Scotty Riggs, so that's probably why. To be fair. Well, I read that, I'm like, oh, that seems really obvious, yeah.
00:36:47
Speaker
I'm just surprised they didn't actually, uh, give him a patriotic gimmick and give him his old theme song, but just says American male, American male, just do it. Just just cut the S off and you, oh yeah. You could reuse basically the entire song then. Oh yeah, that's true.
00:37:03
Speaker
Yeah, once I got past the distraction of Whipwreck's oddly mismatched outfit, this was okay. But it's just kind of an average match. I agree with you, it's very much just a TV match that really should probably have just stayed on one of the regular shows. Yeah. I do think that Riggs did decent enough with his character work, even though the character is just basically Rick Roode doing a hip swivel.
00:37:24
Speaker
Yeah. And Whipwreck did do some nice diving moves, so there's nothing really wrong with this. It's just that they don't do anything to elevate it beyond the average match and make it special for a pay-per-view event. Exactly, yeah. I mean, even having them cut a pre-match promo would have helped. Yeah. Having one or both of them do something would have helped.
00:37:41
Speaker
Anything to just give it something that makes it worthy of being pay-per-view level. Yeah. This really is slightly above a jobber match. Yeah. To kind of get over Riggs's character. It's just slightly above a jobber match because they're also trying to get over whip rack a little bit. That's true. Yeah. But yeah, it really belongs on one of the TV shows.
00:38:02
Speaker
Now, to be fair, I think Whipwreck is pretty good at his role. He's not bad at it at all. Once you get past the oddness of his look and everything, he does his few, like, highlight moves pretty well, I thought. Absolutely. And he makes a decent, like, underneath baby face. That's a good role to fill for him. I think it's a combination of because Rick is so new to this, he does have enough character to make that feel extra special. Yeah. And because neither one gets a real big rub from this, it doesn't really have much impact.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. This is the only pay-per-view appearance for Scotty Riggs as his gimmick. Oh. It's also his last pay-per-view appearance. Oh, okay. Yeah. He would be released as part of budget cuts in September of 1999. Oh, that's a shame. I mean, he's never been standout, I don't think, but he's never been bad. No. I guess a lot of you have so many people and they cost so much money.
00:38:58
Speaker
And WCW actually cares about how much money it's spending for a brief period of time. Yes. When they finally hire an accountant, it goes, wait, you're doing what now? Yes. Yeah. We owe how much in legal fees to defend DDP's theme song? Yeah, right. Ironically, though, it's funny. So Briggs gets fired by WCW. Where does he go? ECW.
00:39:20
Speaker
With all these people leaving East W to go to West W, he does the opposite. Apparently he was, or is, I don't know, a personal life friend with Rob Van Dam, so he got a job there, where he gets to basically, he had to be his friend and then betray him, they have a match. Okay, fair enough. Good to know that he got something else from this. Yep. Wiprick would appear next on the pay-per-view at the Great American Bash, another show that's looking really good the more we discuss it in the future, where he wrestles Van Hammer. Oh.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah, we're 0 for 2 from this show in the future, Bob. Yeah. Okay. Great American Bash 1999. Not looking pleasant. Gotta have some upsides.
00:40:00
Speaker
Tony tells us the next match is Conan versus Disco Inferno and throws to a video package covering their feud. It appears that Disco bragged about having a music video award or maybe insulted Conan's or something and one of those things annoyed Conan or something like that. It's not a very clear video package so I'll cover the story in a moment. So our fourth match is Conan versus Disco Inferno. Referee for this one is Scott Dickinson.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah, so basically what happened is Conan being a big station in Mexico has a music video, which, because I'm watching on the peacock version, they cut because they don't have the rights to and don't want to pay him for it. Okay. The whole crux of the feud is something I'm told exists, but I'm not shown. Nice. It's great. Disk response is to make his own, which they also don't show.
00:40:47
Speaker
Wow. I don't know. Maybe it's too close to the Conan one because it's the parody one in the story. So it could be the parody is protected quite clearly under fair use rules of the United States copyright acts. So, but it's kind of, it might be greater because it's something they don't own and it's not like famous. The pair to use the actual song in it or something like that. Yeah. I don't know.
00:41:06
Speaker
Either way, Cisco in front of us, I really don't care if I didn't get to hear it or not, so in all fairness. It's also worth noting that there is a bit of a patch friction, which should be mentioned in commentary, but isn't. I don't think anyways. So at the beginning of the year when they did the NPO Elite storyline where they merged together, they kicked Conan out of the Wolfpack. But for some reason kept disco hanging around. They were actually in the Wolfpack, but he was adjacent to them so long it to wear a shirt.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think they do actually mention it on commentary that they booted Conan out of the wolf pack. It is a, yeah, does it feel like that's a big story impact? Yeah, it feels like it's more about the music video than about you belong to a group that beat me up and kicked me to the curb. Right. So yeah. Conan comes out in a football uniform sort of shirt and camo pants, which is a bit of an odd look. He grabs a microphone, but WSW fails to turn the microphone on for about half of his promo.
00:42:04
Speaker
He briefly insults the NWO and runs through his parade of crowd participation catchphrases. Disco is announced as representing the NWO Wolfpack, but blessedly comes out to his own theme, so NWO Wolfpack theme count zero. That briefly made him the biggest face on the show to me. We get a somewhat artistic bit with his entrance as it's shown superimposed on a disco ball. Yeah, it's not bad.
00:42:31
Speaker
He wears a silver shirt, silver cowboy hat, and camo pants. Also an odd combo. Yeah. Disco informs us that you gotta be a cowboy to wear a cowboy hat. Good to know. Yeah, yeah, okay. There's a very odd sign combo. In sequence, we get a sign claiming that disco cannot dance, and one requesting that disco dance. Yeah.
00:42:57
Speaker
Conan, who wore camo pants with a totally mismatched shirt in his entrance, grabs the mic and criticizes Disco's very similar outfit. There's some kind of saying about pots and kettles, I think? Yeah, yeah. I don't think it translates to Spanish, though. Disco decks Conan as he's putting the microphone down, then doffs his shirt and beats Conan up, even hitting a respectable version of Conan's own rolling lariat. The crowd actually grants him some cheers for that before going back to booing him.
00:43:26
Speaker
Disco goes up top, but Conan shakes the pockets of his pants at him? That's so unnerves Disco that he hops down, and a quick counter sequence leads to a Conan float over Bulldog. Conan gets brief bursts of offense, including a neat rope-running arm drag, but Disco keeps knocking him down, including a nasty diving back elbow to the face.
00:43:48
Speaker
With both of them wearing chain necklaces and camo pants, they look like a tag team that's randomly drawn against each other at a battle bowl show. Yeah, I can see that. Disco works around a chinlock. Conan breaks it periodically, but Disco earns two with a swinging neckbreaker and again with an elbow drop and keeps catching Conan with the chinlock again.
00:44:10
Speaker
Disco hurls Conan outside, but Conan reverses a ringpost ram and sends Disco to ringpost in barricade. Back in, but Disco kicks the middle rope into Conan to stun him. I don't think I've seen that too often. Yeah. Disco fist drop for two, and he goes back to the chinlock, but Conan breaks free one more time, dodges the second rope elbow drop when Disco takes too long doing finger guns, and hits his rolling lariat.
00:44:36
Speaker
Conan catches a jumping disco into a cradle DDT for two and rolls him up for two, but disco gets two with a float over a swinging neckbreaker. They rapidly counter multiple strikes and grapple attempts, and disco tries the last dance, a stunner, but Conan shoves him away, boots him in the gut, and hits disco's own last dance for the three count and the win. Today calls that the ultimate slap in the face.
00:45:01
Speaker
Conan dances around like he's drunk, as his music plays so loudly, it's near impossible to hear the commentators discuss everything. Thoughts on this one? I'm torn because it's not a bad match, but it's very oddly booked. Disco was like really in control of this match for like way too long.
00:45:18
Speaker
We'll see, there's another example of this later in the same show, that made the same guy booking it, who knows. But it feels wrong to me because it's like, Conan isn't like, start the offense and then get countered and held down. And his host bots are so brief, they don't really feel like a comeback at the start for a long time. That said, Disco's offense is not terrible, though it's not like other matches you've had where they put a guy who's not good in control of a match and it really drags him down.
00:45:46
Speaker
I think that the crowd is at our time dealing with the match because it's disco by frankly dominating the whole thing for so long. Disco controls so much the match and his finisher is the finish. But his finisher over as well, even if he only takes it. That is true.
00:46:03
Speaker
I like Conan's offense here. My only critique was kind of a weird bit. His Cradle DT looks a little off to me because for one thing, there's a lot of setup like the half lift up with like straight legs, then you drop them down. But he's trying to go over like a snap sort of DT.
00:46:22
Speaker
But he also makes sure to roll disco over. So it's like he does a half DT half suplex cradle DD T plex. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it doesn't look like he ever takes a DT from it. It looks like it takes a weird middle of the year suplex kind of spot. It doesn't look terrible. It's just kind of, it's a neat looking move, but yeah, I agree. The landing feels a little strange. Yeah. It should be one or the other.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that the match is so heavily built around. Let's see how good Disco Inferno is. Not a choice I would have made, but it's not the worst one. Yeah, for me, it felt like the first third and final third of a pretty good match, but they forgot to plan out the middle. Yeah. It starts out reasonably hot, with Disco surprisingly aggressive and Conan managing only a few counters. A nice shift on what one would have expected, honestly, I thought, given the storyline. Yeah, the commentators kind of talk about it that way as well.
00:47:16
Speaker
And it ends quite well with some quick exchanges and lots of near falls encounters. It's just that the middle section consists mostly of chin locks by disco interrupted only by a few brief exchanges that feel significantly simpler than the rest of the match. It's like they got one of DDP's match binders, but lost pages 25 through 53. So every chin lock is one asking the other, geez, man, you remember the diagram on page 47? No crap. Let's do a ring post ram.
00:47:44
Speaker
It's a shame because there's quite a bit to like at the beginning and the end of this, I think, but the middle section just drained it of a lot of momentum and it struggled to gather it back up for the finish. So while it had a good ending, I thought it felt pretty flat. No, I can see that. Yeah. Like I said, I'm just still stuck on how much they built around just going for no control in the match. It's very strange.
00:48:05
Speaker
It's interesting because the story makes it sound like Conan should be the one that's all ticked off and being aggressive. But Conan doesn't act like that coming out. He's just kind of goofing around and everything. So I don't know. Maybe they're going for the idea that Conan doesn't take disco seriously and gets in trouble for it. But we just saw a match with that theme, though. Admittedly, this one does it better.
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think it would have worked if, like you said, if that's the story you're going for, have him hit a strong move or two, but then be slow on like a cover or slow, like lift him up really slowly, like, you know, brag into the crowd and then, you know, hit below the belt or something or throw him under the ring or something like that. Yeah. So, like, Disco shows that he's strong and then he looks and that he can counter. Right. But just from the get-go, he just aggressive and controls everything. You're like, oh, okay, that's weird. Yeah.
00:48:55
Speaker
It felt a little bit odd, but I thought was at least interesting anyway. Yeah, it's true. Conan would remain embroiled in the NWO storyline of Stym have been kicked out, which would lead to a match against TV Ray at flambรฉrie. Which we have covered and is not great. Yeah, I can't remember if that actually made either of our worst matches of the series list, but I know it was in consideration for both.
00:49:21
Speaker
It didn't help Stevie Ray in his ranking for the show overall, but that way. Our fifth match is Kidman versus Ray Mysterio Jr. for Mysterio's WCW Cruiserweight Championship. Referee for this one is Randy Anderson.
00:49:40
Speaker
As I mentioned, in the previous match segment, the flock broke up so that opened up a lot of people for new gimmicks and characters, Kidman thankfully doing quite well with his new character. They also had the ending of the LWO storyline, which is merely less remembered than the flock storyline, but was a thing that existed and kept her too busy for a while. So now with that out of the way, the pair are teamed up together.
00:50:06
Speaker
It's kind of the start of the all filthy animals thing that becomes more clear later on. I don't know if they're super clear about them being like a grouper at this point. They're two crazy guys that are friends and they wrestle. So their whole thing is they're friends, but they're also competitive. So Ray challenges Kim for the title and wins it on Nitro from him, usually gonna move to catch him off guard.
00:50:28
Speaker
The week after that, the pair, for some reason, are booked in a tag title match against the then champions, Dean Blanco and Chris Benoit, who lose via some stuff happening involving Raven Sadin, which we'll cover for the later match. So now they're tag champions, but Kidman still has his mandatory rematch in place for the title. So on a show where you have tag champions that don't defend him, they're instead wrestling each other for a different title. Okay.
00:50:58
Speaker
Kind of weird, there's an overlying theme of the show with the weird use of titles, let's say. Just a bit, yeah. We'll see more of that later. Kidman comes out wearing his half of the tag titles, and Conan's kid brother comes out wearing similar camo, but has coordinated better than his big brother with a camo vest as well. Oh, wait, that's Maskless Rey Mysterio? Yes, yes, it is. Nicely comes out with his half of the tag titles too, along with his cruiserweight belt, of course.
00:51:26
Speaker
They shake hands, all smiles, then rapid counters and a few strikes, and they lock hands, flipping and maneuvering for position. A Mysterio monkey flip earns two for both, as both shoulders are down, but Mysterio amazingly floats over from a prone position, and mostly lands on his feet after a Kidman monkey flip, then counters a Kidman tilt-a-whirl with a head scissors, soaking in applause from the crowd. That exchange was a great example of what we talked about with Lucha, visibly cooperative, but still amazing to watch. Oh yeah, absolutely.
00:51:56
Speaker
The acrobatics continue, and Kidman catches a charging Mysterio and sends him over the top rope to the floor. Kidman seems to hesitate momentarily, then dives over the top rope onto Mysterio. He and him wonder if cruiserweights can even have a match fully in the ring, because they love doing dives and juna cabanas. Tony gives him some grief for that one.
00:52:18
Speaker
They fight outside, and Kidman counters a Mysterio body scissors with a barricade drop, then hits a leg drop over the barricade, and rolls Mysterio back in for two. Mysterio soon heads scissors Kidman back outside, and follows with a moonsault from the apron, but Kidman catches Mysterio on his shoulder. Kidman doesn't normally get to pull strength stunts. Perk of fighting Rey Mysterio, I guess. Yeah. I like that he sort of braces on his knee, then hits one knee down, then it gets back up as well.
00:52:47
Speaker
Kidman charges for the barricade, but Mysterio gets free, shoves him into it, and hits a spinning head-scissors takedown, but accidentally rams his own face into the steps in the process with a loud crash. Yeah. Ow. That's a rough one.
00:53:02
Speaker
He moved the steps a whole 0.35 Siena there. Yeah. He then kicked him for at least another 3.5. Yeah, he's understandably ticked off his rolling rod and holding his head and boots the steps away. Yes. I don't blame him. That had to suck. I mean, you know, you like tap your toe on a door, you kick the door. It's not a big a deal.
00:53:26
Speaker
Back in, Mysterio earns two counts with a springboard thes press and a springboard moonsault. Kidman encounters a rope run Huracara with a running powerbomb for two and gets further two counts with a backbreaker into a slam and a sit-out powerbomb. Anderson's counts, by the way, are really fast in this match. They're consistent, but they're really, really fast. Yeah. He's trying to keep pace, obviously.
00:53:50
Speaker
Kidman slides Mysterio outside and hits a shooting star press from the apron. Today Miss calls it as a moonsault and Tony says he's going to have to note that on his calendar. Yeah. Kidman unfortunately lands knee to knee with Mysterio, which did not look fun. Yeah. Kind of nurses his leg for a little bit after that. Yeah.
00:54:11
Speaker
Back in, Kidman tries a splash, but Mysterio dropkicks him in mid-air for two. Heena and Toni have a nice discussion about the two being tag champs and how they don't want to hit the other guy that hard, but they have to go all out in order to win a match like this. Mysterio's super bulldog gets two. Kidman back body drop and power slam, but Mysterio clotheslines him outside and hits an amazing rebound springboard flipping sentin', then gets well-earned high fives from fans.
00:54:40
Speaker
Back in, Mysterio top rope splash, but Kidman clotheslines him out of the air for two. Hienan proposes filling Mysterio's pants pockets, which are very numerous, with weapons. Tony says you wouldn't even have to take a weapon out, just kick with it in the pockets. I guess if you just shake him at someone, they'll scare him off the top rope as well. Apparently, yeah. It would make more sense if he had weapons in his pocket, you'd hear like the jingling of metal and like, oh crap, he's gonna kill me. Yeah, yeah.
00:55:07
Speaker
Tony is great here, but I think in this match, he's like Sarcastic Sting from Starrcade 95. Yeah, for sure. Just a totally different attitude for him all of a sudden. Mysterio gets two with a Hurricane Rana, but eats ring post on his charge. Kidman tries a powerbomb, but you can't powerbomb Ray Ray? Yeah. The facebuster earns Mysterio two. Kidman double-arms sit-out facebuster and flipping powerbomb from the top for two.
00:55:34
Speaker
Mysterio top rope body scissors into a super bulldog, and he thinks it's over, but only gets two. Tenay points out that's the move that won him the title, so he got overconfident. Kidman rebound bulldog for two. Mysterio top rope guillotine leg drop, then a standing moonsault for two. Mysterio can't powerbomb Kidman. Yes. Also, why is he trying?
00:55:58
Speaker
It's impressive that he gets him up there at all. Yeah. I did all the people that do the power bomb spot. Yeah. Ray Mysterio. Yeah. Kidman up top for the shooting star press and the crowd gets to their feet in anticipation, but Mysterio shoves his foot to knock him onto the ropes. Then it's a super hurricane Rana and springs into the pin for the three count and the win.
00:56:21
Speaker
Mysterio exhausted celebrates with his belt and then walks towards Kidman as we cut to replays Feels like we probably should have stayed with that for a moment longer for some character moments Like were they okay with each other or are they angry? Yeah, I don't know No time. We are desperately out of time apparently thoughts on this one
00:56:41
Speaker
It was a really good match. I like that they did a lot of the same kind of stuff you saw in the Hoovy Blitzkrieg match, but I thought they had the pacing really well. There's occasional points in that first match where they're rushing between bits.
00:56:57
Speaker
Like when Blitzkrieg goes down and Hubie picks him up for his finish and he gets countered, that happens in like a really fast fashion. Whereas if you pause a little bit for picking him up and then he counters, that gives a crowd time to build anticipation, that kind of stuff.
00:57:13
Speaker
And there's another bit almost from the opposite angle where Blitzkriegs ended up down in the ring and Hoovey goes to the apron. Yeah. But they seem to miscommunicate a bit on just how much time they want to wait there. So the camera is focusing on Hoovey just kind of standing there for an extended period of time. Yeah. Before he finally does a springboard in.
00:57:30
Speaker
Right. But yeah, so we see this match in contrast, they get that balance really well. They hit a big move, let the crowd react, you know, go for a pin. So everything happens. Essentially, it's digested, to put it in a weird way. And then the next thing happens. It's not done so quickly that it loses impact over time. Right.
00:57:51
Speaker
There's nice little bits of character as well, where like, Vible Ray being overconfident, like that. I definitely feel for poor Ray hitting his head in those steps, that could not have felt good. Which is kind of weirdly, it's funny because there's a discussion about the trash can not being Data's weapon, but then the steps would be quite, quite effective, unfortunately. If those are actually steel, not aluminum, but still. Yeah.
00:58:14
Speaker
We had credit to Ray too, because he could have taken a move like that and it really affected the match in a negative way. Not that it would stop him from working the match, but it could have really hurt the pace. He couldn't have been thrown off with the injury, but he, if he didn't know he was hurt, but he saw the second half, he wouldn't necessarily know. I'm really impressed with how he continues after that and with how Kidman continues after clearly hurting his knee on the shooting star press onto the outside.
00:58:40
Speaker
Both of them, like you said, you'd be hard pressed to detect any change in their performance after that point. The announcers actually do a good job of making it part of the story all the same by saying, oh, they've slowed down a little bit probably because Ray got his bell rung and stuff like that. But they could have left that comment out and you would not really have been able to tell that much. It's very, very impressive how well they carry on.
00:59:04
Speaker
I kind of like the accidental foreshadowing of Ken then hitting his shooting star press from the apron to the floor because he's not going to hit it in the ring at all. Yeah. I'm a little confused by his casual pedigree though.
00:59:17
Speaker
It's just so weird. He just casually does to reject his pedigree and said 1999. It's hilarious. Yeah. I forget what I called it was double under hook sit out face buster. I think I said or something like that. Yeah. It's a pedigree. Yeah. It's totally triple ages pedigree. It just hits it like it's nothing and it gets no more reaction than any other move. So like no one else is paying attention to it either. Yeah. This is so weird.
00:59:40
Speaker
As good as Kidman's game plan was, which is, you know, really working power moves and counters. After the first time, he should not have tried the shooting star press again, because it didn't work. Like I'm going to attack bro. Oh, you counted me. Well, maybe this time you won't hop on the counter. Oh, no, you did.
00:59:58
Speaker
I do love though, I mean the crowd is clearly into that move. They'd spring to their feet as soon as he goes up there in that final moment. They can feel it coming. It's really cool. There's another great crowd reaction midway through it as well where Kidman's countering one of Ray's moves into a power bomb, into the running power bomb. And you can hear two guys in the crowd an instant before he takes his first step in the run yelling, power bomb! They're getting great reactions from the crowd the whole time. It's great.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree in general, despite a couple unfortunate and painful looking flubs, this was one heck of a match. Mysterio and Kimman put on an excellent show with a series of ever more spectacular stunts mixed in with a story that nicely built from trying to just out wrestle each other and likely keep their tag partner mostly uninjured to realizing that if they wanted to win, they had to go all out. The commentators did a great job of highlighting that as well.
01:00:53
Speaker
There's some exceptional acrobatics in this as you'd expect with these two. Yeah. But with the exception of one slightly over choreographed segment at the start, they keep this an actual match rather than just a collection of spots. It feels like they're taking bigger and bigger risk and hitting harder and harder to win, dialing it up as each previous level doesn't get it done. So impressive work, especially like we said, in not getting derailed by the headache and knee ache.
01:01:20
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the thing with matches like this as well is that you can have big spot A and big spot B, but if you can't fill in that gap between them, then it's just not a match. It's watch me do this, watch me do this. That's all it is. Yeah. But you get these nice bits like Kidman jumping up a clothesline to kind of ray between things. So that helps it feel like more like a match and not just people doing spots.
01:01:46
Speaker
They've made it a good cohesive hole. Yeah. They've got all the bridging stuff in there that you really need in order to, to have, like you said, or to feel like an actual match, an actual fight. You can't just do your big spots. You have to do the filler. The filler sounds bad, but no, all the, all the bridging work you have. Yeah. Yeah. There's a gel that hold them in together. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely great match. Mm-hmm.
01:02:14
Speaker
So this is kind of interesting. So this show was April 11th on the April 19th, nitrous. So eight days later, they would be a match between ramus deer defending a screech word title against psychosis. All people have them nowhere blitzkrieg. And who took Herrera who would have obviously lost the week before psychosis actually wins the title. Okay. You're like, Oh, that's interesting. Next week on nitrous, psychosis defense, how to get your material and lose at the back.
01:02:43
Speaker
I guess at least they were both on TV this time on like last year's trading, everything on house shows. Oh yeah. That's true. That's very true. Yeah. So that runs that whole boss entirely pointless. As they say, as the tech titles, the two would hold them up to slamboree where they're defending them in a three team match to open the show. Okay.
01:03:05
Speaker
Tony throws to a brief video package showing Benoit and Milenko of the Horsemen versus Raven and Saturn, where Raven and Saturn think they've won the tag belts but in fact were disqualified because Raven used the tag title as a weapon right in front of the referee. Not his smartest move. He got revenge by helping Mysterio and Kidman win the tag belts and this upset the Horsemen so the feud goes on.
01:03:27
Speaker
By the way, what I think is Raven's actual WCW theme sneaks through here. Often it's replaced on these shows on Peacock anyway. Yeah. That car, car, car. Yeah. Yeah. So our sixth match is the Horseman Dean Malenko and Chris Benoit, accompanied by Aaron Anderson versus Raven and Perry Saturn. Referee for this one is Charles Robinson.
01:03:51
Speaker
the horsemen were the tag champions. They had to go through an extended, whole storyline. There was a tournament they had to try and win, which they didn't. Then they had to come back and win the titles for real, which they finally got to do, only to drop them, what, 15 days later or something like that? To the kind of random team of Mysterio and Kidman. With the storyline, obviously, that Raven and Saturn are feared. It's a little weird that after all the work, they get so little time to enjoy them.
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, which seems to be a theme in 99. Yeah, it's a little bit. And even more in 2000. Yeah. In 2001, they kind of dialed back a little bit. To be fair, everybody has short title reigns in 2001 because the company's only around for three months. Right. But three months for a title reign is massively long for this period of time. Fair.
01:04:43
Speaker
The kind of odd couple, but by a successful tag team of Raven and Saturn, I guess just petty really. They got caught cheating and didn't win the match. Not like the horsemen cheat behind the back and cost them the match. They lost, I always sue, relatively fair and square, but then cost them the title match later. Yeah. So this match really feels like it's supposed to be a tag title match, but no, let's put the titles on Kidman and Rey for some reason and have them not defend on pay-per-view. Cause why not?
01:05:14
Speaker
We get the Horseman theme this year. Yes. Arne accompanies Malenko and Benoit, but Arne is too cool to wear this year's honestly kind of crappy Horseman t-shirt. So he just wears black. Fair enough. Peacock proves me right by replacing Raven's theme with his WWE one for this entrance. Somebody just missed the video package, I guess.
01:05:36
Speaker
Saturn wears chainmail, a vinyl skirt, and yellow contacts, and he and Raven lug a table out with them. I like this new version of the Public Enemy, Al. Eh, we'll see. Tony says Saturn claims he was never a member of the flock. He was just Raven's friend. Sure. Seems to me like he was a member of the flock, though. Yeah, it's truly not true. Yeah. The crowd starts playing with a beach ball. Jerks. Yes.
01:06:06
Speaker
Saturn outwrestles Benoit, but Benoit chucks him outside. Saturn fights off both horsemen and tags Raven. Raven clotheslines Benoit, as Saturn sweeps Benoit's legs for two. Back to Saturn, and Raven suplexes Benoit into a Saturn top rope splash for two. Back to Raven, and they try to double team Benoit some more, but he dropkicks Raven out of the ring, and Malenko and Arne beat Raven up while Saturn accidentally distracts Robinson.
01:06:34
Speaker
The Horseman earned two counts off a Malenko suplex, a Benoit backdrop, and a monster Benoit clothesline. Robinson almost misses a Raven roll-up as he's distracted by Malenko, and Tanay implies that he's biased due to being pals with Ric Flair. The Horseman wear Raven down, but he finally makes the tag to Saturn, who runs wild on the Horseman, including Arne, who bumps off the apron to the floor, which seems rather inadvisable given he retired for health reasons.
01:07:04
Speaker
Saturn beats Benoit up, but Malenko sneaks in to hit a nasty right hook. But Raven saves with an electric chair drop, as Saturn adds a crossbody. Great double teams in this one. Benoit breaks up a Saturn Death Valley driver and hits a German suplex, assisted by a Malenko dropkick. Benoit and Raven spill outside, and Malenko hits a double underhooked powerbomb into the Texas clove relief.
01:07:32
Speaker
Saturn eventually gets the ropes to a huge howl of disappointment from Arne. Yeah. Saturn Death Valley Driver for two, as Benoit saves, with the swan dive headbutt. That earns two for Milenko, shocking Arne, who was already climbing out to celebrate. Arne's dumbfounded expression is pure gold. It's amazing, yeah. Great.
01:07:55
Speaker
Benoit and Malenko trade off wearing Saturn down and earn two counts with a Benoit backbreaker and Malenko knee drop. Malenko works a sleeper hold and Raven breaks that up, but Benoit switches in without a tag to get two on Saturn off the sleeper and again with a bridging Northern Lights suplex. They keep trading off, but Saturn earns two off a sunset flip on Benoit while Malenko was legal.
01:08:22
Speaker
belly to back suplex by Saturn, and he makes the hot tag to Raven, which is high on my list of things I never thought I would say. Yeah, right. Raven runs wild on the horseman, and Saturn throws a chair into the ring, so Raven dropped Tohold's Benoit onto the chair. DQ? Nah. Nah. If you wanted evidence that Charles Robinson is not biased towards the horseman, there you go. Yeah, right.
01:08:46
Speaker
Saturn sets Malenko on Chekhov's table, but Arne saves Malenko as Saturn dives, so only Saturn goes through the table. Malenko pulls a DDP by shoving the chair into Raven's face. Raven really should have seen that coming. Yes. But Raven hits the even flow and goes for the pin, only for Arne to climb in, grab the chair, and as Robinson lectures him, act innocent and leave after leaving the chair on Raven's head.
01:09:12
Speaker
Benoit hits the swan dive headbutt onto the chair on Raven. I'm sure I would have thought that spot was awesome in 1999, but it's 2022 and I know where stuff like that leads Benoit. Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah. A barely conscious Malenko rolls on top for the three count and the win. Anderson and Malenko help Benoit up and we can see he's bleeding. Looks like from the bridge of the nose. Yeah. The horsemen celebrate as Malenko and Anderson help Benoit walk up the ramp.
01:09:43
Speaker
Thoughts on this one? I thought this was a good match. I thought they had a good competitive nature to it. Early on, especially, they really tell the story that in spite of not being a famous tag team, especially compared to the Horsemen, Brave and the Saturn have good double teams together. Because they have longer history than you would think watching WCW. They also say they knew each other in high school, which I don't think is really true. I don't know on that one.
01:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, I know there's some weird stuff with Raven's Backstory at ECW involving summer camp as a kid, but pretty sure that involves Sandman and not Saturn. I don't get those two mixed up pretty easily. It'd be hilarious if it just turned out that literally every single wrestler in ECW had attended the same summer camp as kids. That would be pretty amazing, yeah.
01:10:32
Speaker
But yeah, so it tells a good story that they are able to fight back and it only comes to the horsemen cheating to get an advantage and then hold it. They do a nice job with that showing them constantly turn a fire from underneath. It's weird seeing Raven as the strong competitive baby face for sure. It is, yes. Hey kids, here's your role model, the cult leader. Yes.
01:10:55
Speaker
Nevermind the fact that they sort of casually retconned his backstory earlier the year where he's actually a spoiled rich kid. Chastity's a sister and this little thing with a trust fund, but they basically get banned at this point because no one really cared about it, I guess. It's apparently an interesting story idea, but they did no follow through with it because it's WCW. It's just kind of a random footnote that, oh yeah, by the way, River's actually rich this whole time.
01:11:20
Speaker
For me, the hardcore element is really not necessary. It's definitely an example, not even just the awkwardness of the whole panel aspect of it. It really feels like the whole thing in this company at this point of, ECW is really successful, let's be ECW. But they can't fully commit to it, so they'll have a normal tag team match where a table spot and a chair spot happen.
01:11:43
Speaker
Yeah. And again, there's no real good answer to why, like you get why the swan dive at the end is not a DQ because Robinson is not looking at that because he's looking at Arne, who is doing a great innocent act as he leaves the ring. But some of the other stuff, it's like, it's unclear why it doesn't lead to a disqualification, which is admittedly kind of a problem tonight in a couple other matches as well. Yes. At least one of them tries to address it in a silly way. Yeah.
01:12:12
Speaker
But yeah, I agree. I don't think those spots were really necessary at all. It was just kind of, these guys are from ECW, so let's do a little bit of hardcore, but not a lot of hardcore, just a little bit. Yeah, just a little taste of hardcore. Yeah. So it's funny because the whole idea is let's watch this hardcore match, see all this hardcore stuff, but then let's also watch every other match for that too, practically.
01:12:35
Speaker
The finish is obviously extremely awkward to watch given who it is. And I guess the big head from a bit, you could see him bride a block it more than he does, but he does not want to do a good job. Yeah. Yeah. He really clearly hits like direct on, on that one is just, uh, it's a creative spot, but it should not have been done at the very least not with a headbutt. No.
01:13:02
Speaker
elbow drop, splash, I don't know, leg drop, something like that maybe, but just find something else for him to do in that spot, because it definitely is an injury that happens there. Well, between this and the latter rolling spot with Sandman in the second match, there's a weird logic of, instead of putting a guy on a weapon and then hitting him with something, you put the weapon on them and you land on the weapon, take the 80% of the damage, it's bizarre.
01:13:32
Speaker
Same as just dumb for like best thing is backup for rolling on a guy. He's like no went back from that. Yeah. It's a little odd to timing wise that they don't quite get it time perfectly. Like Raven has enough time where you really think he would recognize. Oh, there's a chair on my head. Yeah. Right. Before Benoit jumps. Yeah. It's not quite time. Well, for sure. Yeah.
01:13:56
Speaker
Aside from that, I thought, yeah, excellent tag match. It's filled with great teamwork and some really interesting and cool double team spots by both teams. Arne nicely adds to the match on the outside, providing some great reactions and very occasional interference without distracting from what's going on in the ring.
01:14:13
Speaker
There's a good story here of Raven and Saturn's toughness and Guts versus the Horseman's typical efficiency and discipline. And it remains unpredictable all the way to the finish with a lot of late match swings that could have been the ending but weren't. It's a terrific tag match and it kind of made me flashback to some Anderson's tag matches. Even as it felt very modern with the spectacular double teams, there seemed to be that sort of storyline going on in it. So really excellent work.
01:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, they're torn a little bit because they're going for the strong heal team can control the match by keeping the advantage and changing out and doing this and that. But the strong, singular faces can't do as well because they're constantly double teamed or behind. But at the same time, when they can double team, they do quite well. It's kind of half and half there, but it's still well done. They've done a good storyline for it overall, I think. Yeah.
US Title Tournament Highlights
01:15:09
Speaker
As mentioned before, the two teams would be in a three-team tag match to open Slamboree. Okay. Against Kidman Immature. Tony says tonight we've got the final match in a tournament to crown a new United States champion and throws to a video of Ric Flair announcing said tournament. I look at my Rolex!
01:15:33
Speaker
It's 12 o'clock midnight last night. I can't find Scott Hall anywhere. So Scott Hall, you, as of last night, because I say so, are no longer the US champion. Poor, poor red and black world pack. I have stripped him of the title. As a matter of fact,
01:16:01
Speaker
There's gonna be a title tournament, a US title tournament, WCW style. It starts tonight between Bigelow and Ming. The conclusion will be at Spring Stampede, and we'll have a new US champion, WCW style. Not only Scott Spiner, Chris Jericho, and Spiner got the win.
01:16:28
Speaker
and advanced on in the tournament, but he was Saturn and Booker T. going at it. And Booker T. and Saturn, two of the finest athletes, and it was Booker T. who came away with the win over Perry Saturn, getting out of the attempt of the DVD. Chris Jericho had lost, as we saw earlier, to Big Papa Pump, but that did not stop the king of loopholes. You want him in? Is that what you got?
01:16:53
Speaker
I like him. I'm back in the tournament? You're back in the tournament. Thank you very much. I don't know how I'm going to explain that. He was back in the tournament and he faced Booker T on WCW Monday night drop. He was back in the tournament because of an injury to Kurt Henning putting back in.
01:17:11
Speaker
But it was big pop pop pop. Scott Steiner, who came into the ring, interfered with the steel chair and caused a disqualification allowing Booker T to score the win.
01:17:23
Speaker
Big Papa Pump came out, though, guys. When these two guys had another match, this was a return match. And even though Booker T was already in the finals, this match happened off Thunder on Wednesday night, Mike. This really was a strange situation because Chris Jericho applied the lion tamer to Booker T. But who came into the ring to make the save with the slapjack? Stevie Ray.
01:17:46
Speaker
So Booker T wins on Thunder, and of course wins on Nitro to propel himself into the finals here against Big Papa Pump. With that in mind, here's David Prince. Respectable little video package here, I think, that went over the tournament events pretty much fine, but we'll let Al cover those momentarily. I did notice one thing that was a little bit weird, though, is they start with clearly showing the Bigelow versus Meng match, and then they don't show how the winner of that match gets eliminated. That, yeah, that's true.
01:18:17
Speaker
Not important, I guess. Just skip over them. Yeah. Bambam Bigelow and Meng are not people that I would skip over. No, no, no. So our seventh match is Big Papa Pump, Scott Steiner versus Booker T for the vacant United States Heavyweight Championship as the tournament finale. Referee for this one is Johnny Boone.
01:18:40
Speaker
Scott Hall won the US title early in the year, but is absent. But it's probably a mix of real and kayfabe, it's hard to tell from this point. Once they made his gimmick that he was drunk for a while, it's hard to tell where fiction and reality intersect with them. Part of the idea is that Flair, as president for life, which is an important plot point, he's president for life, so he should still be president right now, not that it really matters. But his own house, he's in charge of WCW.
01:19:10
Speaker
It's getting a bit power hungry. Although he doesn't really do anything with the idea that he stripped the title from Scott Hall, then take it away from the interview. Oh, so I guess it was kind of a pettiness to him because, you know, he steals the world title from them. So I'm going to take this away from you too. But it kind of me just a means to the end because Scott Hall is not actually around. Yeah, sadly. If they like did something where they implied the horsemen were responsible for Scott Hall's absence or something. Sure. Then you could do it. Yeah.
01:19:38
Speaker
Or like he made a point of putting both of them in the tournament and different spots to try and get a vantage, but they're nowhere near that. Right. Like there's half of a story here, but not the rest of it to make it quite fit. Like what does he have to gain from main becoming US champion? I don't get it. Maybe hopes they can get Meng to wear his bodyguard suit. Oh yeah. And Meng said, only if you get me in the US title tournament. Oh, okay. That'd be worth it then. Yeah.
01:20:07
Speaker
Also a note in the video package, Chris Jericho managed to lose twice in the tournament. Just a weird thing to do. Let's put him in the tournament and have him lose twice. Notably, he loses to Scott Steiner and Booker T who are both in the finals. And then he has another match against Booker T apparently where he also loses, right? Yes. Poor Chris Jericho. I mean, you're wondering why he's on his way out.
01:20:32
Speaker
I do love the very subdued bit with him and flair in the office in the video package, at least that they show where Chris Jericho, more polite and quiet than I have ever seen Chris Jericho in my life. Yes. It was just talking to, to declare. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Whether he's letting him back in. Yeah. Although I don't think it's brought up in commentary, it's kind of notable as well. So Booker T is TV champion at this point. And the person he won the title from is Scott Steiner.
01:21:01
Speaker
Oh, OK. They do mention that he's TV champ, but they don't mention that part. Yeah. Let's get to my point again about titles. The TV champion is not defending his belt.
Booker T vs. Scott Steiner Analysis
01:21:10
Speaker
He's trying to try to win a second belt. Yeah, I have less of a problem with that one just because it is the TV title. And I feel like you have an argument if you say we're primarily defending that one on the TV shows. But but it is frequently a pay-per-view. Right. Yeah. And to be fair, what else are you watching pay-per-view on?
01:21:30
Speaker
Movie theater. We're still doing that, right? No, they stopped doing that in the mid 80s, Bob. And a Beowulf Pack theme count? One. Scott Steiner is out first. He has his own face on the crotch of his tights, which is an interesting decision. He knows where he wants you to look, obviously. As mentioned, there was a worst crotch-related artwork piece then, Hoovin' to Carreras. Yeah.
01:21:59
Speaker
I don't know how he got away with the barely altered Superman logos on the sides either. Yeah. It's bizarre. Must have DDP's lawyer. I guess so. Steiner yells at the fans all the way down to the ring. Tony mentions Buff Bagwell's recent return to in-ring competition. Was that from last year's injury?
01:22:18
Speaker
He recovered a little faster than that. Basically, they rushed through a storyline where he was out injured, came back, they pushed into that he might be a face because, you know, sympathetic because he's injured, but then he immediately comes to heal again. Oh, okay. No, what happened more recently is that Bagwell was sort of acting his major role for Scott Steiner, and he was instrumental in accidentally in him losing the TV title book of T.
01:22:45
Speaker
He tries to make peace with Scott Steiner, and surprise, surprise, Scott Steiner is not about making peace. So Scott Steiner attacks him and takes him off TV for a bit for that. Scott Steiner, we're at war and peace, but it was just war? Yes. He read the important part. Yeah. Booker, TV champ, comes out with that belt around his waist.
01:23:07
Speaker
Not really fond of his outfit tonight, it's black with silver flames. I think he's got another one that's silver with black flames, and I like that one a little bit better. I'm thinking black with like a bright blue flame, that'd be good. Yeah, yeah, good to see that potentially working. Steiner threatens Dave Penzer, then goes to let an excited screaming lady feel his muscles. He and him wonders how much she charges to haunt a house.
01:23:32
Speaker
Steiner just kind of wanders around ringside for a while, getting in arguments with fans. One guy hilariously tries to muscle pose at Scott Steiner. At. Scott. Steiner. Yeah. Couple guys, actually. Neither is even close. No. Tony at least gives us a good line. We fans annoying Steiner. Well, we've proved that many of our ringside fans had a lobotomy before they arrived. Yeah. I had a really good snark from Tony tonight. Yeah, for sure.
01:24:01
Speaker
Steiner finally gets in and pretty much gets right back out. Back in, and Booker gets the better of a couple exchanges, but armdrags Steiner, who rolls out again.
01:24:13
Speaker
He wanders, then finally gets back in, clubbing Booker, but Booker hits a flying clothesline and arm-wringing kick, then throws Steiner outside. Fortunately, he follows with a flying splash. Booker wins an outside brawl, and back inside, Steiner calls for a timeout because he's been working so hard. Yes. Booker kicks him because he's had enough breaks. Yes.
01:24:34
Speaker
Booker dominates with some great big swinging clothes lines. He gets a really good rotation on those. But as he tries corner punches, Steiner crotches him on the ropes, then slugs him out to the floor, where he beats him up and hits him with a chair, which doesn't draw a DQ, as Tony knows that Boone is scared of Steiner. Although, I want to diagram that chair shot though, okay? So, he doesn't swing the chair.
01:24:56
Speaker
he puts his hand over the front top bar of the chair and sort of nudges him with his hand with a chair behind it. Yes. It's the Triple H actual sledgehammer sledgehammer shot. Yes. Where he can always tell if he has a fake one or a real one because of how he swings it. Yes. It's like he's this big, intimidating guy and that's the weakest way to do that kind of thing. I guess bizarre. Maybe that's technically why it doesn't get de-hued for it because he actually hit him with his hand, not the chair. Yeah, that's true.
01:25:27
Speaker
Though that would still be a fist load, so... Oh, yeah, that's true. Back in, Steiner line, and Steiner drops an elbow, then does push-ups. It's too easy, he proclaims. Steiner beats Booker up, and chokes him, intimidating Boone as he does. Hienan says, Boone's aware if he DQ'd Steiner, he'd be taking a trip to the hospital.
01:25:49
Speaker
Steiner owns two counts with a backbreaker, then a belly-to-belly suplex and a muscle-posed pin. He grabs Boon and screams in his face, and Boon does a terrific job of looking terrified. Which may mean it's legitimate. Hopefully acting terrified. Yes. Steiner punts Booker in the nuts, and Boon warns Steiner while backing away. Yeah. Hienan proposes that Tinego stop the match, but notes he probably wouldn't be coming back.
01:26:18
Speaker
Yes, that's true. Bear hug by Steiner. Hug, Tony says, expressing my sentiments exactly. Yeah, it is the worst bear hug. He's not even off the ground. Yeah. A guy like Scott Steiner ought to be able to do better than that. Yeah. So Booker D is just standing up facing Scott Steiner, who occasionally sort of squeezes his wrist in a little bit. Yeah. And he's like, ah, no.
01:26:46
Speaker
Booker tries to free himself, but Steiner belly-to-belly suplexes him. On other suplex, but Booker floats over and DDTs him. Booker fights back and gets a great kick combo and a series of closed lines, but Steiner pulls poor Boone in the way. Boone is down and Booker checks on him. Steiner tries an ambush, but Booker counters with a beautiful jumping axe kick and builds to the Harlem sidekick, but Boone's still down. Booker counts three himself, but he's not a ref so it doesn't count.
01:27:16
Speaker
See, if he had worn a black and white outfit, it wouldn't have counted. Yeah, see, his mistake was wearing silver. That's right. His NWO 2000. Oh. Booker revives Boone, but Steiner knocks both of them down.
01:27:31
Speaker
Booker spinebuster, but Steiner knocks him off balance on the top rope, hits a super frankensteiner, and drags Boone over, forcing his hand to count, one, two, but Booker kicks out. A barely conscious Boone does signal that was a legit two count despite his hand being manipulated by Steiner. Yeah. Heenan says Steiner's gonna blame everyone but himself.
01:27:55
Speaker
Steiner produces a taped up object and tries to punch Booker, but Booker dodges, hits a kick combo, and tries a suplex. But Steiner slugs him with the object as they come down, then hides the object. Randy Anderson had come down to check on Boone, but Steiner drags Boone to the ring, then pins the unconscious Booker for the dazed ref to deliver the three count for the win and the title. Couldn't have just pulled in poor Randy Anderson for that instead, that's... He just really doesn't like that Boone guy. Come on Randy, help a guy out. Right?
01:28:26
Speaker
NWO Wolfpack theme count? Two. Steiner takes the belt and celebrates with muscle poses. There's an interesting juxtaposition in the crowd. Signs right next to each other proclaim, Flair sucks and Flair is God. Hopefully those two fans never see each other. Yes. Thoughts on this one?
01:28:45
Speaker
I'm definitely of two-minded by this match. So the beginning where it just stalls and stalls and stalls, just like the one he does at the next show, which we've already covered, Slampery, it's way too long. Way, way too long. Yes.
01:29:00
Speaker
When they actually get in the ring for the middle portion of the match, I thought it was actually quite good. Booker and Steiner definitely have chemistry together, as we show them when there are like 600 matches against each other over the next year and a half. The fact that Booker T's final WWE match is against Scott Steiner, should say something about that.
01:29:20
Speaker
So I really liked that part of the match. So I kind of go, okay, well, they're getting this stuff out of the way because in the other match, it was constantly being stopped for him doing that nonsense. He being in control, just leave the ring and yell at people some more. So that match had no flow to it. This one keeps the flow for the most part after that part's over with, which is good. But they haven't reached the Scott Diner just can't beat the huge section and I did not like it.
01:29:46
Speaker
I get this door they're going for the ref scared of him won't count DQ but. It.
01:29:53
Speaker
It was one to think would work if he had immediate comeuppance. Like if he tries to do it something, though, I don't want to get DQ'd and gets hit and pin bugger T, you go, okay, that's why you do it. Let him do all that. Build and build and immediately have it not work. Instead, he does like 10 different things that are illegal in the same match and gets to win anyways. And after doing things so blatantly, he then hides his cheating at the end.
01:30:21
Speaker
That is true, yeah. I think that would actually make it work a little better as well if they actually just did say Boon is legitimately so terrified that he sees the object and still won't dequeue him. Yeah. Just go fully with that. Yeah. Or if you're going to have Booker T win, for instance, have him pull that weapon out or whatever that's supposed to be, a vague piece of metal wrapped in athletic tape, which somehow holding it makes you punch way harder, apparently. Depleted uranium. Oh, OK.
01:30:53
Speaker
If he goes to grab the Booker T, kicks them and takes it and uses it and wins. That works. It's a weird thing too, because I've seen a version of that finish the whole object in my fist thing and then hide it in like three different Randy Savage matches from the eighties. Yes. As a very old school, interesting, but also outdated sort of thing to do.
01:31:15
Speaker
It's in fact the ending, I believe, of Ricky Steamboat versus Tully Blanchard from Starrcade 84, if I recall correctly. Well, yes. But no, I remember because I watched one of those DVD compilations about how great Rainy Savage was after he died. And they had like three different matches from Tyrion they used to say and finish. I'm like, guys, maybe pick different matches under the exact same finish. Because they're all like MSG house show and you could have done better. Yeah.
01:31:39
Speaker
Yeah. So it's weird. It's basically the reverse of the disco inferno Conan match. The first part and the last part I don't like, but the middle part I like. Okay. Yeah, fair. So they can all put together really good matches. They just can't quite do them in the same match. Yeah. I thought this was a decent match when it was actually occurring. Yes.
01:32:00
Speaker
There's so much stalling, particularly early on. We're probably halfway through the match, honestly, before it starts being a match rather than single spots separated by Steiner going to yell at the crowd. That really stops it from gaining much momentum. They do have tremendous crowd interaction, though, so this is probably one of those matches that was really fun or terrifying to be there for, but not as much fun to watch.
01:32:26
Speaker
Once they actually got going, they set up a good story of Booker frustrating Steiner and Steiner scaring the hell out of poor Johnny Boone so he could cheat with impunity. I didn't mind that as much as you. I think I was liking where that was going largely because Boone was honestly the highlight of the match for me. He did a good job in his part. He did a great job. Sheer terror and actually displaying near unconsciousness later. One of the better referee cells that I've seen. Yeah.
01:32:52
Speaker
The match did build to some very nice spots in the late match and the ending went off fine, but it just took too long getting to the action. So it kind of lost me and I could never quite get back into it. It's kind of a consistent problem with heel Scott Steiner. Unfortunately, he's great at his moves, but terrible at pacing.
01:33:10
Speaker
It's a little funny, too, to think about it. So Scott Steiner waits till Booker T is picking him up for a suplex. Did that try and knock him out? Yeah. That's the worst time I tried to knock something out. Yeah. And he does it. He actually does the punch when he's suspended directly overhead with his head facing the ground. I was like, at least let him start bringing you down in suplex position first. So you're going to fall on your back. Right, right. You're very lucky that Booker falls unconscious backwards instead of straight down.
01:33:37
Speaker
I wasn't too wahmsy, I prefer clean finishes and, you know, don't like DQ in general. You could have done a funny DQ finish for this, have Scott Steiner do the bit with his weapon, and just conceal from Johnny Boone, but Randy Anderson, who's right there, sees it. Yeah. DQs are from the outside and just runs away. And poor Johnny Boone's left there, I've been great.
01:34:00
Speaker
Especially if you do it with Randy Anderson having no sympathy for Johnny Boone. What? Oh, no. Yeah, absolutely. Sider just murders poor Johnny Boone. Yeah, exactly. Kind of fun with that. Well, so I have Boone when I'm fun with that, but everyone else. But yeah, I do agree. I think Booker T does a pretty good job with the Scott Steiner heel formula overall. He makes something of it, but yeah, you just still have way too much in the way of stalling with him.
01:34:24
Speaker
Yeah, he has the right level of dynamic through offense that you get a lot out of the moments when they are actually wrestling. Yes. So it makes up for a lot of that. Yeah. Booker T would get involved in a bit of family drama, which they started to tease a bit in the video package involving Stevie Ray before his title match at Slambria against Rick Steiner. Okay. As for Scott's daughter, he'd be talented for the new title by Buff Bagwell, which in case you missed me talking about it was not good.
01:34:54
Speaker
Yeah. So if you're listening to these in a order, good luck. We go to the internet table where Mark Madden asks Ray Mysterio his thoughts on the match with Kidman as an animated horse gallops across the bottom of the screen for some reason. Why not?
01:35:11
Speaker
No one turns on Ray's headset, nor that of Madden's co-host, whose name escapes me. So it's very hard to hear this. Mysterio says something about it being a difficult match, and they gave each other their best. The other guy asks him something about it. There's going to be problems between him and Kidman. And Mysterio says, no, it was a one-time match. He's got the belt, but now they're tag partners again, and they'll take on all comers. Raven, Saturn, Dean, and Chris. It's funny to hear him call the Horsemen just by their first names. Yeah. Well, they're friends, you know.
01:35:40
Speaker
Madden asks if the bond is as tight, and we cut. I guess they just couldn't fix the headset or something, so they cut. So it was a decent enough promo from what I heard of it, which wasn't much. I gotta say, of all people, if you're gonna cut a mic, why not mark Madden's mic? Just like all the time. Yeah. Like forever. That'd be great. We cut to a video package that would like us to know that Goldberg and Kevin Nash do in fact exist.
01:36:04
Speaker
Oh, that's confirmed then, good. It spells out their names letter by letter, in case you weren't sure how they were spelled, with annoying sound effects, then shows Goldberg and Nash beating folks up, then spells their names again, just to make sure you know. Not a good video package, really, and it tells us basically nothing. Hmm, yeah. Was that Slambree 99 that had video packages like that too? Yeah, I think so. Or was it like constant advisement that these wrestlers exist, but not telling you anything about their storylines? Yeah. Apparently that's the 99 thing.
01:36:33
Speaker
Sizzle reels of them doing stuff, but not in context of anything happening. Yeah. So our eighth match is Kevin Nash with Lex Luger and Elizabeth versus Goldberg. Referee for this one is Mickey J.
01:36:51
Speaker
The important show to remember for this match is Starrcade 1998. Goldberg is 173 and 0, defending his title against Kevin Nash, who managed to pin him after at least three run-ins and Scott Hall using a taser. Also worth noting that Kevin Nash was booking this match, in case you didn't guess that. I do recall that actually being a pretty decent match except for the ending though. No, yeah.
01:37:17
Speaker
Except the whole idea that they just killed a streak and gave it to Nash for no good reason. And then obviously that would happen afterwards. Yeah. The match itself was fine. I was surprised that it was actually. Mm-hmm. Middling my low bar for Kevin Nash matches aside, you know, I was genuinely impressed by it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that means that Goldberg finally had a loss and it's due Kevin Nash.
01:37:41
Speaker
Since then, he's had no losses. Mind you, he can be in multi-person matches or tag matches and he doesn't win, but he'd never pinned. That's the way you get around that kind of stuff. At this point, he is whatever number he has in one. He's regained his streak, although it's nowhere to do the same number it was at this point.
01:38:03
Speaker
Worth noting that during the build of this, we have a nitro weather in Montreal, and there's an entering conversation between Bret Hart and Goldberg. That's the famous Goldberg Spears Bret Hart, but is knocked out by it. And Bret Hart pulls up his hockey jersey to reveal that he's wearing a metal plate strapped to his stomach. Nice.
01:38:23
Speaker
And if you're wondering what that matters, it doesn't. Bret Hart didn't come back until late in the year, thus leading to this Darkade match with him in Goldberg. Yeah. So like six months from now, remember that video on Nitro because then it matters. That is a cool idea for a spot though, at least. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. But I guess it's emblematic of what you've been describing for, it sounds like most of the stories on this show that they have like a half or two thirds of a story and don't actually do the whole thing.
01:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, basically Bear in Mind 2, Bright Heart at this point is out with a groin injury. So they're not going to be able to match right away. Right. So why just not have him show up at all until he's ready to come back? Yeah, just save that idea. Yeah. Save that idea. Use it when it matters. They're like, no, no, we're Montreal. Let's do it now. Screw it. Yeah, so it's pretty straightforward. Kevin Nash is successful. He's got the only win on Goldberg's record, so he wants to get it back.
01:39:17
Speaker
NWO Wolfpack theme count, three. Nash comes out, accompanied by Lex Luger and Elizabeth. Luger has an interesting NWO shirt on. It's the logo with a mixed red and white background. Kind of looked like a version of the Union Jack to me. It does, yeah. Goldberg comes out alone and does the pyro shower thing, which always looks cool. He gets a really good breathing smoke shot this time too.
01:39:43
Speaker
Tony is annoyed at Entertainment Weekly for daring to ask why pro wrestling is so hot and proclaims it's always been hot. Hienan says wrestling is hot because golf doesn't allow run-ins. That would be interesting. They should probably allow that sometime in Mario Golf. It is to be so braggadocious about how wrestling being caught when you're on the downswing. Yeah, well, I mean, gotta keep morale up. Yeah, I guess so.
01:40:09
Speaker
Jay signals for the bell, but Nash takes a microphone and gives us a hey yo in honor of Hall. Nash says Goldberg might not know it, but Wolfpack is in the house. I think he knows it. I think he can see you. Kind of. Yeah, it seems fairly obvious when he's looking right at you. Yeah, right. Tine points out that the hey yo was also a taunt at Goldberg, reminding him of a stargate loss thanks to Hall.
01:40:33
Speaker
Goldberg slowly manages to push the larger Nash to a corner, but Nash throws him into it and lands knee strikes, punches, and elbows in between boot chokes for an extended period of time, then earns two counts with a clothesline and sidewalk slam. Goldberg crawls for the ropes and pulls himself up with them, so Nash chokes him there and drops on him, giving a confident smile.
01:40:53
Speaker
But Goldberg ducks a big boot and hits a high-velocity flying shoulder block, then muscles Nash over for a suplex. Goldberg dodges Nash's punches and kicks, returns his own, and sidekicks Nash down for a huge cheer. Goldberg tries the spear, but Nash leapfrogs him and Goldberg slams right into poor Mickey J. With the ref out, Luger smacks Goldberg with a chair.
01:41:18
Speaker
Nash tries the jackknife powerbomb, but Goldberg slugs him in the balls, and apparently holds on. Heenan references the old iron claw holds. Ow. Luger charges, but Goldberg disposes of him with a big boot for a wonderful Luger cell. You gotta get one in there somewhere.
01:41:39
Speaker
Goldberg spears Nash to more massive cheers. Goldberg readies himself, then muscles Nash up and hits the jackhammer for the three count and the win. I just realized both these guys have finishers that start with Jack. Oh yeah. That's a weird coincidence. Goldberg did a respectable jackhammer on Nash. I thought he just doesn't do the bit where he pauses in the middle with his opponent suspended because yeah, that ain't happening. No, but he had good form in it. No, he did. Yeah.
01:42:07
Speaker
Retribution is Goldberg's. Tony yells in a pretty great call as Mickey J still clutching his stomach where Goldberg speared him raises his hand before collapsing and rolling out of the ring. We got some really great ref selling going on tonight. Actually. Yeah. Luger checks on the fall and Nash, who to his credit is really super selling that Jack hammer still down. Nash finally gets up only as the replays come to a close, leaving to the booze of the crowd. Thoughts on this one?
01:42:34
Speaker
So this is the other match on the show I thought was booked really weirdly. Yes. Kevin Nash comes right in and just dominates Goldberg for, it feels like a real long time.
01:42:44
Speaker
I would say it's probably half the match time. Yeah. And it sounds just like he hits him a bunch of times. He does the throw him into the corner back and forth bit, which is a weird bit where Goldberg like sort of half runs and stops. They don't quite have their timing right on something. Yeah. That's when Nash is going to hit the sidewalk slam. Yeah. I think Goldberg maybe thinks it's going to happen the first time, but Nash wanted to do two throws and then do it. Yeah.
01:43:09
Speaker
So yeah, he runs full speed to one corner, runs full speed the first half of the way to the second corner, then almost stops, but then sort of gets shoved away and then goes through. Yeah. So it's one of the ones where I'll give him credit more for a subverted expectation because Goldberg as the fast starter absolutely makes sense. That's literally what he's still doing today. Yes. He had to set up Matt to their day and did that. His only thing now is he just spears you right away because he doesn't know what the card we used to do at this point, to be fair.
01:43:39
Speaker
So I think if they just done that for this match and not done it for the disco Conan match, I'd have less problem with it. But I'm seeing the same thing I thought was weird, but also twice. Fair. Yeah. Yeah.
01:43:53
Speaker
Getting past that, Goldberg's comeback is really strong. He's Goldberg. He has a good intensity and energy change. Nash is willing to sell. Nash is actually willing to almost sort of do a spin kick, which is interesting. He has two punch and then does like a half spin kick and then he raises like up to about, I don't know, a butt-thumbic level, you want to say, for that kick? Which is unexpected for Kevin Nash. So that's interesting.
01:44:20
Speaker
This flying shoulder block is kind of terrifying because he goes past him. Yeah, Goldberg nearly spills out of the ring on the thing. It's hilarious. It tells him they couldn't time it better than have Luger like be positioned, like take the end of the dive, like slide that into him. Negative Luger. Well, we saw the promise of the worst chair shot of the show with whatever Booker T had done, nobody's got Steiner. Luger's was not great either. He holds it backwards. Yes.
01:44:48
Speaker
He holds it backwards and I think because he's aiming at Goldberg's head and he's really cautious about it. Yeah. So it's more of a hit than nudge with the back of your hand, but it's not much better. Yeah. It was a very strange looking chair shot. It's yeah. Luger has been around for long enough. He knows how to do a chair shot. Yeah. All right. Bizarre.
01:45:12
Speaker
It's nice also that they got around the screen finish, Goldberg's down, comes back, they tease like he might lose again, and then he overcomes it, so it's a nice subverting of that. It's a nice sort of riding the ship at Goldberg, who is otherwise booked really strongly in WCW, it's just they abruptly kind of forgot to do that one show. So it's sort of them reminding you, oh yeah, Goldberg's this really strong guy who shouldn't be able to be beaten.
01:45:39
Speaker
I think they had to make it feel really close on this one in order to make the other one feel like it was not a completely horrible game. I had no problem with that with that part. Yeah, I think they did a good job of this one of having some real attention to it around whether Nash would just win a second time, despite it maybe feeling a little overextended in the beginning. Yeah, it just it's just the way it's so one side at the beginning. It's like he really repowers Goldberg and other people. Right. Yeah.
01:46:07
Speaker
This one was definitely a little bit odd. Like we said, it had that very slow start with a very extended beatdown of Goldberg, who actually didn't even leave the corner for about the first quarter to third of the match. That's true, yeah. From there, it turned into an epic super heavyweight battle if you cut out everything but the biggest spots.
01:46:26
Speaker
They would hit a big move, sell for a while or look around meaningfully, then hit another big move. So there's good character work and the big spots are appropriately big, but it feels like you're watching the highlight reel of the match rather than the match itself at times. Kind of the inverse of what we talked about with Rey and Kidman. This is the example of what you get if you forget to write the bridge spots. It feels cool still, but it doesn't feel like they've really told a complete story in this one to me.
01:46:53
Speaker
The ending did feel great, though. Jay did some epic selling of the spear. Nash played up his overconfidence so much it felt really good to see him get his comeuppance. And Goldberg managing even a somewhat abbreviated jackhammer on a guy the size of Nash is legit impressive. Oh, yeah. I still had fun with this one, but it owed a lot to the atmosphere as the match itself was pretty simple. I agree with that. Yeah.
01:47:20
Speaker
So coming out of this, at Sambury you'd have Sting challenge in Goldberg with the idea that he went to be the second person to defeat Goldberg at this point. No one else has done it since. So that's good of Dorian's zone. There's also a bit I'll explain a little more in depth after the next match where
01:47:37
Speaker
By the way, Sting is briefly world champion following this show. Worth noting, I'll explain more of that later. The match where he loses it, Goldberg's involved. I think there's the idea that Goldberg was the one that stopped him from winning the match. So that's more personal tension between the two of them. Oh, OK. They can hardly blame Goldberg. Hey, I'd be world champion if you didn't, yada, yada. As for Kevin Nash, he'd be the one to challenge for the world title of Saperie despite losing here.
01:48:07
Speaker
Go figure. We cut to a video package for the four-way match. It's perfectly fine work again. It just goes over the four guys in the match, basically. It is a little weird in one aspect though. The world champion is mentioned second.
01:48:24
Speaker
Not first and not last. Yeah. Second. That's true. It's just strange placement. You'd expect him to be highlighted one way or the other, either listing him first and then listing the challengers or listing all the challenges and saying, can they beat the champion Ric Flair? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.
01:48:42
Speaker
So our final match is the Nature Boy, Ric Flair, listing him first. Thank you. Versus Diamond Dallas Page versus Hulk Hogan versus Sting in a Four Corners match for Flair's WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Referee for this one is the Macho Man, Randy Savage, accompanied by Gorgeous George.
01:49:04
Speaker
Flair would become world champion in very controversial fashion on a previous paper review. He would beat Hulk Hogan, who famously would win the title of being the finger broke of doom. Arrogably one of the worst things they ever did. Yeah, I feel pretty confident in agreeing with that one. Yeah, definitely top five. So essentially what he does, we'll go over that more when we cover the actual show where this happens.
01:49:28
Speaker
Flair gets the corrupt referee, Charles Robinson, to easily ignore the rules of the match for himself. And let's allow him to beat Hogan.
01:49:39
Speaker
It is weird because he watched the night tour after this. The commentators are actually really happy this happened. They have no problem with the player doing all this because they figure, well, they did it to us, so it's okay. Yeah, because Hogan's full heel end up you when he goes into that match. Correct. They kind of do a double turn during it. Yeah, which somewhat works. I think it mostly works. I think they do a fair job of it in the match, but they haven't fully cleared in the commentators, I guess, on how they're supposed to be reacting to it in that respect, which
01:50:08
Speaker
If you listen back over the NWO storyline in general, this comes up occasionally that the commentators actually do just fully endorse. Why don't we just cheat, too? Yeah. And it's always such a strange thing when they do that. It's like, no, the entire idea is you guys are supposed to be better than them. Right, right. It's not always easy to be a better man, I guess. Yeah.
01:50:29
Speaker
Now his champion flares got a lot of people gunning for him. He immediately has Goldberg coming right for him, which can't be a good place to be in your life at this point, especially as well as Kevin Nash, who claiming that he took a title shot because he beat Goldberg, you know, three months ago.
01:50:45
Speaker
Sing has been gone since Halloween Havoc. They wrote him off TV. So he skips the whole fake book of doom interview reemerging thing completely. So we have no more wolf packaging, which makes you happy, I'm sure. Yes, very much so. I do like the red and black coloring on him. But yeah, storyline was it's not great.
01:51:05
Speaker
Never liked the outfit either. I do recall, I think from our Starrcade series, doesn't he spend like the last part of 98, 99 and 2000 out with various either actual injury or at least injury angles? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So Flair has been making a point of trying to avoid all of his challengers. So now he has three of them and top of that, he's got really savage who definitely has a gripe against him.
01:51:32
Speaker
I don't have mentioned that before, but Randy Savage, of course, with his career has six world title reign, which is pretty impressive. Even if two of them last like 24 hours. All six of his world title reigns and at either the hands of Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan. Okay. So here he is refereeing a match involving Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. Only people to beat him for the world title.
01:51:55
Speaker
Actually, I think they mentioned Savage has had a beef with every single competitor in this match. True. At one point. But yeah, they don't go into detail a lot. Yeah, I don't know why, but his return is real last minute as well. Because Sting's return is built up for the match, but he didn't actually show up until this show.
01:52:13
Speaker
But yeah, with Savage, he appears in the final show and talks about how he's gonna be impartial as partial as he ever was. But that's about it. It's no long build of him. It's just, by the way, we have four people and the world title. We need one more thing. That's already Savage in here. Okay. Surprisingly, no Michael Buffer tonight. Oh, yeah, that's weird, isn't it? Yeah, we actually have normal ring announcer Dave Penzer still on announcing duty for the main event. I was shocked by that.
01:52:40
Speaker
Penzer lays out the rules. All four men in the ring at the same time, one fall to a finish. Savage is out first with his new crappy generic rock guitar music that doesn't have much of a melody. It's rare that I'll prefer pomp and circumstance to something, but yeah. If only there was a way to mix those two together. Ugh. Stroblights are cool though. Yeah. Tony and Hienan are more interested in Gorgeous George. Tony talks up how Savage has been friends with and foes of each of the match competitors.
01:53:10
Speaker
Flares out next in a great red and gold robe. It is super glittery. It is very glittery, yeah. DDP is next with huge pyro for the sign of the diamond cutter. And next is Hogan, so NW Wolfpack theme count four. Now do we know for sure whether we're getting the NWO theme because it's a redub?
01:53:31
Speaker
I feel like he was also using the Wolfpack theme at this time rather than the Jimi Hendrix thing, but I'm not sure on that. Yeah, sure, at some point he was interchangeable with that. Yeah. He wears the unified NWO shirt design that Luger wore, then does his normal shirt tearing act. Mixed messages? Yeah, right?
01:53:52
Speaker
Finally, out last, this is Sting. He has a nice scorpion logo on the back of his coat this year. It kind of reminded me of the Mortal Kombat dragon. Oh, man, yeah. Tony goes over his history and the change that he's gone through from the early days of his career. Paige pairs off with Hogan and Flair with Sting, but they quickly switch dance partners, and Hogan clotheslines Flair out over the ropes.
01:54:18
Speaker
Paige opportunistically sends Hogan out too, and the beach balls back. If I was in the crowd and that came to me, I would pop it. Yes. Hogan brawls with flair outside, as Sting and Paige fight in the ring. Sting and Paige miscommunicate a bit on a move. Paige seems to be going for a DDT, but Sting falls like it's a swinging neckbreaker. It gets two.
01:54:40
Speaker
Paige goes for the Diamond Cutter, but Sting shoves him away, so Paige goes for it again, but Sting clotheslines him down. Sting builds up to a Stinger Splash, but Flare lunges in to save at one, and Hogan follows. Hogan vs. Paige and Sting vs. Flare leads quickly to Flare Karma, but Paige and Sting soon end up outside, where Sting may actually hit his Stinger Splash with Paige against the Barricade. Not on camera though.
01:55:07
Speaker
Meanwhile, Hogan and Beats flare up with his weight belt and punching, and we get a flare flop. Flare lands chops, but Hogan hulks up. You punch, punch, punch, big boot, leg drop, but Sting and Paige have come back, and Sting stops putting the scorpion deathlock on Paige to break a Hogan pin on Flare. Paige rewards Sting by dumping him outside again and follows. Outside, Sting again hits what might have been his stinger splash to the barricade, again not on camera.
01:55:36
Speaker
Great job, WSW. You missed it twice. The Bigfoot of wrestling. They catch it when he misses one, though. Yeah, right. Every time.
01:55:46
Speaker
Meanwhile, Flair Chop blocks Hogan and gets the figure four. Hogan eventually rolls it over, but Paige gets back in and boots the crap out of Hogan's leg. Nearly gets a diamond cutter on Flair, clotheslines Flair out, and locks a ring post figure four on Hogan. Sting eventually saves, but the damage is done and Hogan's unable to continue. He's taken out by Randy Anderson, Doug Dillinger, and trainer Danny Young as Eric Bischoff looks on so he can get some camera time.
01:56:13
Speaker
Well you know it's serious that Bischoff shows up, that's not real. Yes, he does his everything in serious face. Yes. Actually, he does a pretty good job with that. No he does, yeah. We're down to three, and Paige calmly watches as Sting and Flair fight, until Sting no-sells Flair's chops and clotheslines him to the floor, which is when Paige lunges into clothesline Sting for two. Paige elbow drop gets two as well, but Flair's back, so Paige counters Whip with a kick, caught by Flair, into Paige's awesome spinning lariat for two.
01:56:43
Speaker
Sting's back up and gets a stinger splashed to Paige. Paige nearly counters a slam into the diamond cutter, but Sting escapes and hits a one-handed bulldog.
01:56:53
Speaker
Flair and Sting go after Paige, but he flings Flair through the ropes and counters a Sting tombstone pile driver into his own for two, saved by Flair. Flair sends Paige outside, but Sting superplexes Flair for two. Flair backdrop for two, and he grabs a sleeper hold, but Paige gets in and puts a sleeper on Flair until Sting jawbreakers both of them. Fun spot there. They're down for nine. Macho's counting looks like he's flexing. It's hilarious. Yeah, that's true.
01:57:24
Speaker
Flair and Page attack Sting, but he double close lines them down, beats them both up, Stinger splashes Flair, and puts on the Scorpion Deathlock. But Page saves. Sting floats over a Page Suplex and hits the Scorpion Deathdrop for two as Flair saves. I guess Sting wanted to show Page wasn't the only one that could rapidly counter into his finisher. Yeah, there you go. It's pretty smooth, actually.
01:57:47
Speaker
Flair knees Sting in the crotch, and locks on the figure four, but Sting manages to turn it over, but Flair turns it again, but close enough to the ropes that Sting can grab them. But, Savage kicks his hand away. Savage drags Flair, and thus Sting, to mid-ring, and a confused Flair keeps the hold on, which makes him easy prey for Macho's top rope elbow drop.
01:58:11
Speaker
Savage chills on the top rope and counts, but Paige is up at nine. Paige stomps Sting, but flares up with an eye poke. But Paige ducks a flare chop and smoothly hits the diamond cutter for the three count, the win, and the title. Macho brings Paige the belt and makes his exit, and Paige climbs up on the turnbuckle to celebrate with his belt raised overhead in a terrific shot. Paige exits as well, leaving Sting and Flare still laying in the ring.
01:58:41
Speaker
Thoughts on this one?
01:58:42
Speaker
I like it a lot, eventually. For me, the beginning part, when it's four people, is a bit much to follow. I don't think they really ever got a good four-person formula in there. They have good, you know, one-on-one sections, but I'd always feel disconnected. Won't be outside, you couldn't see it. Either they didn't follow them in the outside, or they would fall through in the ring, and you couldn't see both. Right. Once they did the injury with Hogan, I thought they had a good three-person match, which is actually pretty good.
01:59:11
Speaker
You're able to do the big move, someone breaks a pin rather than kick out bit so you can make people look stronger matches like this by having constant save. It's definitely a good focus on counter wrestling as well. Having everyone know that counter wrestling is nice. It shows familiarity and shows like they're sort of experienced with these people.
01:59:33
Speaker
It's interesting to see that I think they're really trying to make Paige be a heel through the match. I think it mostly works, but yeah, it's interesting to see that tradition happen during this. They show a viciousness to him in this one that you don't see with face Paige. True. So the whole idea is that he's a real bad person because he injured Hogan. He did a lot of it to be fair, but he did the second half of that.
01:59:56
Speaker
I think the main thing that makes it a little bit more heel-ish, and to be fair, the announcers don't fully build it up as outright heel-ish yet at this point, but I think the thing that can lead you to thinking that way is that he's doing it while Hogan is still in the hold, taking advantage of
02:00:13
Speaker
them both being immobilized and everything. There's a few points where Paige is very opportunistic through the match. They could have left that and not done anything with it, but I can see them. If you're saying Paige is going to go heal soon, that's a good way of showing hints that that's going to occur, at least. Yeah, it's a shame that you can't be smart. What he waits on lets the two of them fight. You can't be smart and also a good guy, apparently. Yeah.
02:00:38
Speaker
No, you have to be constantly fighting the odds, even when there's no reason to be a good guy at wrestling at this point. Yeah, true. It's nice to see Paige get his moment here, even if the middle of them turning heel, which is...
02:00:51
Speaker
It's a shame he don't get big baby face earned his way page when the title, you get this version. It's still rewarding for him, I'm sure, at a personal level. And everyone would just see, but I feel like if he got his big hero sort of welcome win like Sting would get and Goldberg got, it might be on the level with that. Whereas here, it happens on this show, which is all other things. He didn't get to win on Holly and Havoc or Starrcade. He still gets his moment, it's just not quite the same.
02:01:21
Speaker
I think it's still a big moment for him, but it's hurt by the way the show ends as well. That it's just like him, him raising the title. Oh, we're done. Yeah. You know, rather than normally you get some announcer discussion afterwards or something like that. It's highlighted and it has that really great camera shot there, but it's not as highlighted as you kind of want it to be for a guy that has waited so long for this to happen. Right.
02:01:43
Speaker
As we've discussed in the past, there just was never like a great time during 97 or 98. 97, he's not quite the right level for it yet. 98, they've got a whole bunch of other things going on and there's maybe not a great place to slot him in necessarily. You can see where they're kind of stuck waiting this long for it, but yeah, it does feel like it's big, but it should be bigger.
02:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, well, it could be that, you know, him taking the power away from the crazy vengeful flair, but it's him being more heelish to win it from flair, so it's not quite the same. Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that.
02:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, this does fall afoul of the common multi-man match problem, I thought. It has as frequently just a series of singles matches with competitors that change up, rather than involving all that many spots where three or four guys all participate. But I agree with you, the match gets a little better once it's down to three men. They just seem to have an easier time rapidly trading off partners, or at least playing up character with why only two guys are fighting, like Paige just chilling out in the corner. But even then, there's not a lot of combination spots.
02:02:48
Speaker
That said, for the entire thing, they do a good job of showing the competitors need to pay attention at all times. There's various points, like you pointed out, where competitors get really close to a win only for someone to lunge in to break it up.
02:02:59
Speaker
So I really enjoyed the teases at finishers, especially the number of times that page gets so close to sneaking in a diamond cutter. Again, everyone does everything that they can to avoid that move, which demonstrates his power. And importantly, page never actually hits it until the ending. Nobody ever kicks out of it or breaks that up. No. Yeah, that's true. Even in a chaotic multi man match where they'd have a good excuse to have that not lead to a pin, they protect that move. Yeah. It's really cool to see that actually.
02:03:30
Speaker
I'm really torn on Savage's involvement. It's interesting, but it really feels unnecessary to the match story. Up until the end when you have to set up the Flare stuff, yeah. Well, I mean, even then, to be honest, Sting's already legally escaped the hold, so Flare's already been stopped from winning without Savage, and Flare's already done enough damage to Sting to stop him from being able to fight for a bit. It feels like you could've just had Flare stand up and boom Diamond Cutter.
02:03:58
Speaker
And that could be it. You don't need Savage to also hit an elbow on Flair. The only thing you can maybe say he does by elbow-dropping Flair is give Paige a little bit more time to recover, but... I think it's less that they're trying to say he's there to help Paige when he's just there to take a shot at Flair because he's mad at him.
02:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I think this is a timing thing if it doesn't gain the ropes and then him pulling apart if he come in earlier like Flair thinks he's gonna have to win because thing can't quite wake the ropes and then he does that so it's him taking a shot because you said Flair can't move he's in the hold. He wants to break it I think that makes sense that they're going for he wants a shot at Flair, but yeah
02:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. Like, so basically if Singh hadn't quite made the ropes yet and he did it, I think I'd have less of a problem with that. Yeah. Because then that'd be a little more, there was at least a reason for him to do it, that it stopped flair from winning. And then you can say, okay, but then pages victory is pages alone. Right. The actual ending spot page hitting a typically great counter into the diamond cutter is excellent. There's just a few odd points getting to that ending.
02:05:05
Speaker
Overall though, fun main event. Maybe a bit disappointingly low on the kind of chaos I would hope for for a multi-man match, but still fun. Some very good character work and some great crowd reactions, and of course a wonderful moment for Diamond Dallas Page to make this a good watch. The other thing discussed with this is the whole Hogan situation. Does that feel like a legit injury and they have to think about the match or not?
02:05:29
Speaker
I don't think so. I mean, yeah, I don't think so either. But I think it feels like a good storyline injury though. I don't have a problem with it as a spot. I think it feels like a great use of Paige as starting to show that more vicious side. Like I said, he really, really, really goes after Hogan while he's trapped and then doing the ring post figure four and everything. I don't have a problem with it because I think it's being used to build up the new time in Dallas page. I think my issue with it, it connects to a lot of Hogan stuff.
02:05:59
Speaker
whether it meant to be or not. It feels so certain like Hogan is having the, oh, I'm hurt, that's why I have to leave the match and explain why he doesn't win the title of that show. That's the perfect excuse. Well, I wasn't in the match when it ended. I mean, no one pins him and he's not even around to do anything about it.
02:06:17
Speaker
Yeah, but he gets his butt kicked and brutally attacked and injured by someone mid-match and can't defend himself against it. And proves that he suffered enough injury from the figure four to not counter anything that DDP is doing. So I'm not really sure that if that was the plan, it didn't work. Yeah, I'm not saying it's the well-made plan necessarily. And it feels like an asterisk to explain why he didn't win. I'm not saying it's him being made to look better than I was, because obviously that's not the case.
02:06:45
Speaker
But I feel like maybe he thinks, well, if I'm in this title match, someone's going to widen him with a title if I'm in here. Like I don't imagine he did like that where he's in a title match and he's either not champion or he didn't win the title. I don't know. I'm not even sure on that. I don't really get that from that one. I get, to me, it's more of a let's build up DDPs attitude and kind of show that there's something different about him where he wants to actually eliminate a competitor.
02:07:11
Speaker
Like I said, I'm not even sure on this. It's just something's off about the whole thing because these try so hard to make it seem like a real injury and you don't necessarily believe it. So like, I don't know. Well, I mean, anytime they're doing an injury angle, they're trying to act like it's a real injury. But I mean, extra, extra, extra, you know, for the show, I mean, because they don't do an injury angle other than, you know, ref bumps, except on this part of the show. Yeah. I think you and I are going to disagree heartily on that one. I don't see any of that.
02:07:39
Speaker
Hm. In my defense, it's kind of connected to the whole, Hogan is always playable side to side situation, so it's hard not to see him trying stuff. I certainly understand given things like Starrcade 97 having a suspicious attitude towards Hogan. I just don't see it in this case at all. That's fine, yeah.
02:08:00
Speaker
As great as the build up of DDP finally getting his world title was, they kind of immediately ruined it. So literally the first shot of the first Nitro post break stampede. It's him being interviewed in the back, talking to somebody. He's attacked from hand by Scott Steiner and instantly knocked out.
02:08:18
Speaker
to be fair, he's hit by a chair. So it's not like he's pumped out, but it's like he's immediately knocked out and he's like taunted. So I was like throwing stuff at his unconscious body like, wow, our world champion folks. So that was a earlier in the night segment.
02:08:35
Speaker
So now they cut to live, apparently. They have a fight on the parking garage. Diner runs away and apparently grabs this DDP's car, which Kimberly is just sitting in. It's really weird. As one does. Yeah, it's like he drove up and started fighting Steiner when she never got out of the car. Like they just were stopping for groceries or something. Yeah. Oh, honey, don't don't don't get out. I'll get this.
02:08:57
Speaker
So he starts driving chaotically in the backstage. So now suddenly Scott is doing car stunts, by the way. It seems like a terrible idea. Yeah. So it leads to the bit where it's implied that he pushed Kimberly out of the car. So she like does the stuntman tuck and roll thing where he sees he's wearing full gloves, like a full jacket and everything like a pad or everything. You're like, huh, that's a natural thing to happen.
02:09:19
Speaker
Well, you know, Paige was taking her to her live BMX performance. Oh, okay. She's off to stuntman school anyway, so she's prepared, okay. Just so happened. Lucky, lucky. Yeah, it's lucky how that worked out. Yeah. So, 15 days after the show, D.A.P. is talent for the world title on Nitro by Sting. I don't remember if it opens the show or something, but it's early in the show. See, you actually win. You're like, oh, D.A.P. starting over. That's kind of weird.
02:09:47
Speaker
That leads to DP complaining to still president Rick Flair. He gets to have a rematch on the same show where now it's world champion sting defending his title on the main event of the show against for tapered DDP Goldberg and Kevin Nash. Okay. And Rick Flair, by the way, entirely happy to give a title match to the guy who beat him for the title. Yes, correct. This leads to DP win the title back on the same show. Okay.
02:10:14
Speaker
So yeah, I hope your door stings real time rate of 50 minutes. Yeah. Maybe an hour, depending on how early the show it is.
02:10:23
Speaker
D.P.'s actual opponent, Paperview, coming up to Sambury would be Kevin Nash. The story, to your point, is that he takes Umbridge with D.P. attacking and injuring Hulk Hogan, who's his buddy, sometimes, I guess at this point, still buddies. It's hard to tell how they feel each other sometimes. So he gets how it met based on that. And again, despite losing to Goldberg. Yeah, fair.
02:10:48
Speaker
As for Flare himself, he would go madder with power because he lost the title. He would throw his weight around and try to fire people and everything. So that would lead to a story where he's ducking a challenge from Randy Savage, who obviously has a beat with him from the show, which leads to that match where Gorgeous George has a match instead of Savage.
02:11:08
Speaker
Well, it's probably something good, but it's still weird that Ray Savage is not wrestling on your show. It's a bizarre idea for the match, but it was actually one of the more entertaining things on that show. Yeah, that's true. And he would be talent for his presidency by Roddy Piper, which don't think it matters. Again, president for life. Well, whatever. Well, see, Piper is going to kill him. And that will solve that particular disconnect.
02:11:36
Speaker
Heenan tells the others he is gonna go get some champagne, and we see one more shot of Paige holding up the title as Tony signs off, and Spring Stampede 1999 is done. Quite a rapid ending to this one, too. Yeah. So, overall thoughts on Spring Stampede 1999? Overall, it's a pretty good show. You have some really strong matches. The opener is really good. You have really reliable talents like Ben Mwamalenko getting a chance to shine, which is nice.
02:12:05
Speaker
The main event scene has some strong moments. You get really good crowd reaction through a lot of the matches. It's ultimately like usual, it's still not quite as strong overall. You get more crowd reaction usually, but less work rate and all that stuff, the usual. That said, it's still a good show. The worst stuff in the show just doesn't feel like it belongs on a show, but it's not terrible. And the hardcore match is not great, so yeah.
02:12:35
Speaker
Kind of doubling back to that one there, circling back to that. But yeah, it's overall a pretty adorable show, and it's very brisk because they take no time for video packages of media, or going to do really anything on the show. Yeah, it's all right.
02:12:51
Speaker
I thought this wasn't near as strong a show as 94 or 97, or even as 98, but it was still a pretty good show. There were a few more obvious missteps this time, with one match I'd call solidly bad, and a number of others that were just average, but were burdened by strange pacing or weird booking decisions.
02:13:11
Speaker
It did have some great moments and some great matches as well, but whenever it established some momentum, it did something to lose it, to break up the flow or to drag itself down a bit. But at the same time, something great would often come along to help the show out again. So it rarely ended up firmly in either camp, bad or good for very long, with the exception of the middle of the show where we got Mysterio versus Kidman and the Horsemen versus Raven and Saturn right in a row. That was a great section. Yeah, for sure.
02:13:40
Speaker
The stories could be interesting, but the storytelling was hampered. There were no promos other than brief clips in the video packages, and one bit at the internet table with poor Ray where they just didn't turn his microphone on. It does keep the show moving at a rapid pace, Scott Steiner aside, but it hurt the match stories, as there's nothing beyond the commentary team to emphasize themes, build up to matches, or reinforce what happened.
02:14:05
Speaker
They do a good job with that for the most part, mind, but things still sometimes fall flat. Heck, we don't even get to really see the ending of the story for Mysterio versus Kidman. The match, sure, but that story did not end at the pinfall. No. It ended when we saw whether they were still friends and we didn't. Yes. And Paige's title win, we get the triumphant thrust of the belt Skyward and the show's over. Yeah. We don't even get the commentary team discussing it back to the desk. It's just over.
02:14:34
Speaker
As a result, the show can feel small, even though some pretty consequential things happen.
02:14:40
Speaker
Some of the match choices don't really help either. Some have clear stories to them, but others just feel like their TV match is slapped on the show, or are pay-per-view worthy in action, but in story just seem to be the build-up to the match that's actually important. For instance, Blitzkrieg vs. Guerrero is a fun match, but it's the number one contender's match, not for the title, because that's otherwise occupied. Similarly, Raven and Saturn face the Horsemen in a really fun contest,
02:15:05
Speaker
but they can't face the tag chance because they're facing each other over the cruiserweight title that Blitzkrieg and Guerrero want. He didn't like the commentaries trying to say that this match is so heated that it's almost bigger than a title match? No. Okay. They do try that. Yeah. I mean, they got to try something. Yeah, it's true.
02:15:24
Speaker
It makes for some interesting storytelling, but it isn't linked well enough on the show to make it stand out. Maybe if Mysterio and Kidman got to react to both of those other matches, or Guerreira got to react to Mysterio and Kidman's match, it would have tied them together better and emphasized how important all of them were.
02:15:42
Speaker
Commentary tonight was quite fun, though. Tony seemed to be in a really odd mood, snarking more openly at both of his fellow commentators, where he normally kind of plays the straight man and only bickers with Hienan. I rather liked it, actually. It was fun to hear him play a different role than the norm.
02:16:01
Speaker
They do make a few missteps here and there, and there's some awkward bits with everybody quiet or everyone talking over each other. And there's some more missed calls than on many shows with even today making flubs, which as Tony points out is a rare thing. Yeah. But all the same, they gave the show an interesting atmosphere and they were fun to listen to. Yeah.
02:16:20
Speaker
Presentation otherwise was not as strong as the previous shows. The set design was still fun, but it looked like leftovers from prior years and wasn't near as highlighted as in past years. There's not much emphasis of the theme elsewhere on the show. One cartoon horse aside. Yeah. And of course there's several points where we miss seeing something important because the cameras are showing the wrong thing or because we cut to something else at the wrong moment. And of course there's poor Ray mute stereo. Yes.
02:16:50
Speaker
But still, despite some very visible flaws, I found this a largely enjoyable show. There's some points where it slows down or stumbles, but it's a pretty easy watch overall. I'm not sure I can quite say we're 4 for 4 this series, maybe 3.5 for 4. But this has been a great series and this show does not screw that up.
02:17:10
Speaker
Yeah. There's a, always a back and forth thing, especially at this point in wrestling is how you present paper views. Do you go, I know everyone that's watching this show must watch all nitros and thunders and Saturday nights and whatever shows they have outside of this too. So they know what's happening. It's okay. Versus maybe put things on here in case, Hey, you know, a friend invites his friend over, watch the show he talking about. Yeah. Otherwise he has to explain everything to him.
02:17:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I think even assuming that everyone does know the storyline, I think you just want to have something, a promo, a really good video package, something that just re-emphasizes the importance of what's happening and makes it feel bigger. Sure. Like if you've done a good job on TV, people are really interested in seeing these matches already. Sure.
02:18:03
Speaker
It's something that the WWE always does well. It's just that extra little touch on the actual pay-per-view that's going to remind you this is epic. It doesn't necessarily have to remind you what the story was so much as just be like, oh my gosh, you want to see this? Energize you for the match. So I think that's something that the WWE kind of misses out on sometimes. And this is one of the shows where they definitely do. I can see that. Yeah.
02:18:30
Speaker
Match of the night and MVP. So Al, your match of the night. Some pretty strong contenders here. Opening is really fun and energetic. It's just not quite crisp enough. I think if we saw the third and fourth match between these guys, we'd see the more posh version of it. The tag match is really good. The necessary hard kill, man, the unfortunate hindsight cringe factor of the finish doesn't help things. And there's some things that don't quite make sense, like having table spots in there.
02:18:59
Speaker
The one thing that works most for me is Mr. Euro Kidman. I think they have a really good match together. Like I said, this is not the full story because that's presentation issues in the whole show, but you get a lot here. You get good amount of action. The pacing's well done. The moves are allowed to breathe. People can experience them properly and it all delivers really well.
02:19:23
Speaker
I had the same three matches that I was choosing between. I thought all of them were terrific matches, but I'm going to agree with you. I give the edge to Mysterio versus Kidman, and I'm going to say for two reasons. First, it did a really good job with a story of slow escalation, and it played to the tag partners and former opponent's histories.
02:19:42
Speaker
And second, even though they had two pretty nasty hits with Mysterio going face first to the stairs and Kidman jamming his knee, they did not let it shake them and they kept things going nice and smooth. So it was a really impressive performance in that regard as well. MVP.
02:19:58
Speaker
That's a bunch of good choices on here, honestly. As a ringside person, not that Arne did a really good job, but his limited interference and his reactions. That face. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. Blitzkrieg is a really good, strong one here.
Potential MVPs and Performer Highlights
02:20:13
Speaker
Again, I think if everything had tied together a little more, you'd absolutely be on MVP as a real show up stand out thing. Absolutely. He's definitely not a bad pick at all. I was leaning more towards Booker T initially, because for me, I thought he delivered his part of the match with Steiner really well. He had the good energy to really liven up the part when they're actually fighting.
02:20:35
Speaker
And even when they're not, he has a good character, it's not just dead air with both Bagwell, he's kind of standing around waiting for the match to happen. No offense buff, but it's true. And for me, Booker T gave a very enjoyable, as much as it can be, Big Papa Pump match at this point. I've seen other people have matches with him and it's not nearly as good. He elevates that a bit with his part of the match.
02:21:06
Speaker
But I think again, more of the thing about it and more you talk about it, I'm actually going to go with bring Mysterio. Oh, okay. Cause he was really good at his match. He got a limited bit of promo on the back. So he's tried to do more stuff. Yep. Just credit. And he was good for wicked here. And more importantly, he powered through an injury, which could have definitely derailed the match has been said, did not let it affect them all that much and really delivered in the ring. Yes.
02:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, I thought, like you, a lot of great performances tonight. I love when we have a lot of choices for these awards. Absolutely. I'll call out Mysterio as well. Kidman as well for that match. Blitzkrieg, I agree. Terrific surprise and really shocked me with how good he was.
02:21:52
Speaker
And I'll call out Tony on commentary. Yeah, sure. And of course, like you said, Arne for just that wonderful, that one expression itself alone almost earns him MVP. Right. And he was good for the rest of the match, too. But I'm going to give this to Diamond Dallas Page. Ah, OK.
02:22:08
Speaker
This is Paige's night, and beyond that, I felt he did so much to bring story, drama, and character to that Four Corners match, sneaking in attempts at the Diamond Cutter all over the place, playing up sneakily watching others fight, brutally assaulting Hogan to eliminate him, among other things.
02:22:25
Speaker
He was clearly aware that he had to prove himself worthy of the title here, so he did, pulling out all the stops to prove that he deserved the title he was finally getting. I think he's responsible in that match for a lot of the match's drama. I'll agree with that, yeah. Bringing his typically good storyline plotting, where you can see a through line from the start of the match to the finish of the match with what he's trying to accomplish in it. So I really, really appreciated his performance and getting to see the little details he was introducing throughout the match.
Conclusion and Next Event Teaser
02:22:57
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Spring Stampede 1999. If you've enjoyed listening to us tonight, you can find us on Twitter or Facebook as let's go to the ring.
02:23:06
Speaker
Links will be available in the episode description. Follow us for episode announcements and other show details, and share your own thoughts about each show as we go through. You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, TuneIn, Verbal, or Audible. And please, if you've enjoyed this show, give us a rating or review, or share the show through your favorite social media platforms to help others discover us.
02:23:33
Speaker
Many thanks to OSW Review for attendance of pay-per-view figures, and to Gina Trujillo for our logo. Next up, Spring Stampede 2000 Stomp of Approval. No, really, that's the subtitle. Oh. And hey, we've had four perfectly good shows in this series. Surely they can keep this up to the finish line, right? Right? I mean, what could go roost though? I mean, wrong.
02:24:03
Speaker
This is Bob Moore for Alec Pridgen, signing off. Good night, everybody. Happy wrestling. With the ref out, Goldberg smacks Goldberg. Well, self betrayal.
02:24:29
Speaker
It wouldn't see it coming, or I guess you would. How'd that work? Multiple personalities, I guess. Yeah, yeah, sure. What's sad is I didn't write it that way. I just completely misread what I wrote this time. I can't blame past me for this mistake.