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Episode 15: Starrcade '97
46 Plays5 years ago
In WCW's darkest hour, a hero will rise...and fall...and rise another time. For a year and a half, the New World Order has run wild over World Championship Wrestling, but now WCW's greatest champion and most beloved hero, Sting, has returned to reclaim the title and save those who once mistrusted him. There's no way WCW can screw this up, right? Right? But before that, the rise of Goldberg begins, WCW Monday Nitro is on the line, and a surprising performer brings joy to John's face. 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/
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to Let's Go The Ring. I'm Bob Moore with Alec Bridgen and John Mullins. Pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. I can stop now and if you can just take over. Just tag team.
00:00:42
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 I'm here with the podcasting team of the decade, though I'd actually call them the podcasting team of the century, Alec Pridgen. I think century's definitely better. Yeah. And, you know what, I think they're actually the podcasting team of a lifetime.
00:01:08
Speaker
And John Mullins. I only have like two lifetimes, and I'm devoting one of them to this show. Oh, okay. You're not a cat, then. No. Do squirrels have two lifetimes? Every time they blink, they were born anew. Oh, okay. It's like a reset button. But they can remember where the nuts are, apparently. Oh, okay. That's important. Yeah.
Starrcade 97 Overview
00:01:31
Speaker
Tonight, we're taking a look at Starrcade 97. Paybacks are hell.
00:01:38
Speaker
Starrcade 97 was held on December 28, 1997 at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., in front of a sold-out crowd of 17,500 fans, 16,052 paid. It received about 650,000 pay-per-view buys. Anybody remember what last year's total was? It's like $150,000 or something, I think.
00:02:06
Speaker
It was a little higher than that. Uh, that was a, that was two years ago, I think. I'd say like a third. Yeah. Last year was about 240,000. So yeah, this is about 2.7 times last year's total. In fact, Starrcade 1997 gets by far the largest number of pay-per-view buys out of all WCW pay-per-views, not just Starrcades, all.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's about 125,000 over the next largest, which is bash at the beach 1998's 525,000. Now it's worth noting that WCW's main competitor, the WWF, has in the past far exceeded this total. WrestleMania 5 back in 1989, for instance, hit 767,000 buys on the strength of the legendary Mega Powers angle between Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. Dig it.
00:03:00
Speaker
But, for 1996 and 1997, the WWF hasn't come close to those heights. Their best effort during these past two years has been WrestleMania XII in 1996, with 300,000, while WrestleMania XIII in 1997 scored 237,000. Now, that's still around last year's Starrcade, which was WCW's best at the time, but is actually beaten by WCW's Uncensored in the same month, which scored 250,000.
00:03:29
Speaker
When Uncensored is beating WrestleMania, you know things aren't going too well for the WWF. That is not a good sign, no.
00:03:37
Speaker
There's not really clear dominance throughout the year. The WWF is just about even with WCW's numbers throughout 1997, with both companies hovering between 100,000 to around 300,000 depending on the show. The WWF's traditional dominance then has vanished, and WCW has been running even with them. But with this show, WCW has blown the WWF out of the water with a huge total that the WWF has not matched for years.
WCW vs WWF: The Battle of 1997
00:04:05
Speaker
All eyes are on WCW here, and if they can pull this off, they've got a chance to push the WWF solidly into second place. I do have a note on the attendance. During commentary for the first match, which Rob is covering in a moment, they mentioned how full the place is. So I think it's Tiney asks, what's the latest number? 22 or 24,000 or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shivani notes the last number. He has a 24,300. Yeah, usual wrestling thing.
00:04:36
Speaker
It's the greatest attendance in the history of our sport. Yes, yeah. But yeah, I was like, wait, 20, you said 17. I heard it say 24. Yeah. And the stadium probably only seats like 20. Yeah. I have no idea, but I mean, as far as I know, these numbers are accurate. Oh, no, I believe you. That's funny. Like, holy crap.
00:04:58
Speaker
Editor's note here, I looked this up post recording, and the MCI Center, now known as the Capital One Arena, has a seating capacity of 20,356 people, which I would presume would be reduced for Starrcade 1997, as the entrance set hides one end of the arena. So yes, quite an exaggeration.
00:05:20
Speaker
We open with an amazing video package with Sting wandering around an abandoned building as shots of Hogan and the NWO fade into view. We get occasional flashes of text. He watches from the shadows. He's witnessed the ruin of an empire. Now he seeks the ruin of one man. This is an amazing opening, actually. It really sets the tone, I think. What'd you guys think about it?
00:05:48
Speaker
It's definitely good in that sort of over the top 90s way. Sure. Yeah. It's one of those things like you could be like, okay, this is, could be the opening to like a TV series, like a TV series. Uh, the production value is really high. You know, like a cross between the Crow and Highlander.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, it would be good. Yeah, I thought it was it's a totally different atmosphere than what we've seen in past shows and with promo packages before it's always been all you know, the narrator talking over the top of it and shots of the wrestlers like previous matches and everything which is good. Yeah, I like those but this just if you want something totally unique to open your show this really was totally unique. Yeah
00:06:27
Speaker
It's like Halloween though. Yeah. And they're using like the Game of Thrones font. Yes, yes they are. Or technically that means Game of Thrones was using WCW's font. Probably a little different, but yeah. There's two shows that kind of remind me of. One is that show Nightman.
00:06:48
Speaker
is around this time. I feel like I remember that, but I don't fully- It was based on Ultra Risk comic and it's on WGN. Okay. Because he's a serious figure who lurks and he like sees in the dark and he like knows what people thought. Yeah, I feel like I've seen like bits of that. Not Dark Man. No, no, no, Night Man. No, Night Man. And not the song either. And not a Mega Man villain. No, no. The other one is a little more ironic because it kind of reminds me of the show Black Scorpion.
00:07:16
Speaker
I know exactly what show you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or The Mantis. Yes. That's a very good Mantis, yeah. I wish that show kept on going. I was like the only one watching it. Me and you both, buddy. Yeah. Me and you both.
00:07:33
Speaker
As dramatic music plays, Tony Schiavone welcomes us to the biggest night in the history of this grand sport as massive amounts of pyro go off and we catch sight of several WCW wrestlers in the crowd. I'm not actually sure if they get counted in the attendance numbers in those cases. I guess technically they are occupying seats. So they mentioned during one of the early matches that they've paid themselves a fly there, which I know WCW and I know that's not true. Yeah.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, WCW never met a dollar that they couldn't waste. Yes. They would famously, even to the end, when they're losing money, they would pay the entire roster to fly them out there. Even if they had no plan to use them whatsoever. Yep, which by 99 was like 200 people. Jeez. Not counting crew.
00:08:23
Speaker
Tony is joined by Dusty Rhodes and Mike Tenet. No Heenan tonight, which made me very sad. Yeah. Tenet is good, mind, but he and Tony serve a similar purpose. They're both play-by-play guys. Their Starrcade desk is pretty cool, at least. Tony says that they've been waiting a lifetime for this event, but there's controversy about how to select the referee for the upcoming Sting vs. Hogan match. JJ Dillon is now chairman of the WCW Executive Committee, and he'll draw the name of the ref out of a hat.
00:08:53
Speaker
Tony notes the WCW wrestlers in attendance, and we get shots of several of them in the crowd. I spotted Harlem Heat, Ultimo Dragon, Rey Mysterio Jr., Glacier, Hugh Morris, Disco Inferno, and several others. I even caught sight of Barry D'Arso, old Crusher Khrushchev himself from back in our early shows.
00:09:13
Speaker
And Greg Valentine is there too. First time we've seen him since Starrcade 83. True. They're hard to spot because weirdly they're not all bunched together. They're sort of spaced out throughout the tendons.
00:09:28
Speaker
But on a lot of the hard cameras shots, you can recognize luchadores because they are sitting there wearing their mask. Yes. I know the park is on the hard camera for sure. Wouldn't that be cool, actually, if you were just a fan? Yeah. And you look to the side and you're like, oh, it's Rey Mysterio. I'm literally watching Starrcade with Rey Mysterio. Yeah. Or in your case, La Parca, obviously. Absolutely. Yeah, you go back to your chair and there's a guy wearing a psych house mask. You're like, I have questions. That would be Cyclope, by the way, who is a real wrestler they have employed.
00:09:58
Speaker
Dusty says that, destiny, from the time you want to be a great athlete, leads you to a final place. He goes on for some time about destiny bringing people places, and says, Sting versus Hogan is an example of why people train for wrestling. He says, it's time to hitch the horses to the post and get through the swinging doors, because there's a fight about to break out, and Tanay, during this, is visibly having to hold back laughter. It's a great bet.
00:10:24
Speaker
bar fight. Is Dusty confused and thinks it's Spring Stampede? I don't know. But it's just, yeah, there's a wonderful shot of Tanay just really, really gritting his teeth trying to hold himself back. And Tony by now is used to working with Dusty, I think. So he's just, let's go. Tony says it'll be the biggest fight ever, but also mentions that they got a note from the NWO saying that Kevin Nash, who was supposed to face the Giant tonight, would not be here.
Malenko vs Guerrero: Cruiserweight Clash
00:10:54
Speaker
It's time for our first match, so let's go to the ring. So our first match is The Iceman, Dean Malenko versus Eddie Guerrero for Guerrero's WCW Cruiserweight Championship. The referee for this match is Charles Robinson.
00:11:13
Speaker
The general story is that the Cruiserweight title has been very hotly contested, threat 97. They're really focusing on that having lots of big matches and a lot, particularly a lot of title changes. Just about every show for a while, like pay-per-view seems to have a title change, which definitely is too much. There's not like a long-standing storyline between Milenko and Guerrero, at least civilly for this match.
00:11:38
Speaker
They've just faced each other a lot over the past. Now do you think the cruiserweights became more important after they did New Japan because they had a larger roster of that and they kind of highlighted those kind of matches? I could see that maybe helping to bring them in because it's in mid-96 that you really start seeing an uptick of those. Yes.
00:11:59
Speaker
And it definitely becomes a very big thing for WCW over the course of that year and over the course of this year. Like I can't recall them even mentioning cruiserweight and BTS. Yeah. The closest we had was like, I don't know, on Starrcade, I think 84 or something. We had like a junior heavyweight or something. We do, yeah. And that's a vast, I remember you mentioning at the time, this is trying to be that kind of match, but it's not quite there. Yeah. It's two generic white guys that are like 240 pounds. Yeah.
00:12:27
Speaker
I mean, they're flipping a little bit, not really. It doesn't even have a stereo edit or anything, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, they don't have a Cruiserweight title until mid-96. I mentioned that on the 5 show because it's... Shinjiro Itani is the first WWE Cruiserweight Champion in a match held in Japan for some reason. So the title's only been around for about a year and a half at this point.
00:12:49
Speaker
To my point about title changes, they mentioned during this match that Malenko is a three-time champion, which seems like a lot for the short amount of time they've had the title. Yeah, yeah. Maybe a good boy. Malenko is out first, sans vest this time. Guerrero takes his sweet time coming out and sneers at the crowd as he does. He's a heel now.
00:13:13
Speaker
Guerrero taunts Dean and jabs at him, then hides behind Robinson pushing the ref towards Milenko. Milenko moves Robinson out of the way, but Guerrero hits a cheap shot to start off the match. They trade off with punches and fighting for holds to start, before Milenko largely takes control despite Guerrero's attempts to cheat. Milenko controls with strikes, including an amazing flipping flying kick and good power moves and counters. He even gets to three times off one hard whip to the mat.
00:13:43
Speaker
After Milenko escapes a backslide attempt and hits a power slam for two, a frustrated Guerrero screams at him to bring it, then sprints on his knees out of the ring in a pretty hilarious spot.
00:14:00
Speaker
Milenko backs away to let him back in, but Guerrero charges and lunges for his leg to take him down. Guerrero tries to work the leg, but Milenko comes back with punches, stopped by an eye poke. Guerrero scrapes his boot on Milenko's face and hits a low drop kick to a seated Milenko, but Milenko fires back with knees, a gut first drop on the top rope, and a lunging clothesline for 2 and 9 tenths. Milenko keeps up the offense and Guerrero signals for a timeout, even kissing Milenko's boots and offering his hand.
00:14:31
Speaker
The crowd advises Dean not to shake hands, and Guerrero tells them to shut up. Tanae at this point very nicely mentions that Malenko has a new baby girl, Larissa, born on Christmas night. Nice to have a call out there. Malenko dropkicks Guerrero in the face, and Guerrero rolls outside to break his momentum.
00:14:50
Speaker
Milenko continues dominating and countering everything Guerrero tries, but Guerrero finally drops behind Milenko on a suplex attempt to land on the apron, then snaps Milenko's back against the ropes. Dusty says that'll make your back crack and your liver quiver. Guerrero seizes control and batters Milenko's leg, using the apron and post outside and even drop-kicking the steps into Milenko's leg.
00:15:13
Speaker
Back inside, Guerrero gets a leg lock and then a huge powerbomb for two and a half, but Milenko gets some amazing counters of acrobatic Guerrero moves, but further hurts his own knee when he does a backbreaker. They end up on the top rope and Milenko knocks Guerrero to the mat, but his leg collapses as well and he goes down.
00:15:34
Speaker
He manages a roll-up for two, then a powerbomb, and goes for the Texas cloverleaf hold, but Guerrero kicks his injured knee to get free. Guerrero hits a dropkick to the knee, but misses a charge and spills outside, but catches Malenko with a shoulder block to the knee from the apron. Guerrero hits a top rope dropkick to the knee.
00:15:58
Speaker
Malenko writhes in pain, and Guerrero goes up again, landing the frog splash on the knee for the three count and the win. Guerrero sneers very nicely at the camera as he walks off with his belt. Thoughts on this one? So it was a tricky one for me because it's good, but I really thought it would be better.
00:16:16
Speaker
So, as mentioned, he had the baby, wife had the baby girl on Christmas night. This show is what, the 29th, I believe? 28th, 29th? 28th, I believe, yeah. Okay. Backstory for Blinco is that, obviously, you know in advance quite a while you can have a baby. So, it doesn't surprise you, you know.
00:16:37
Speaker
So he tells them three, four weeks out, don't book me for a star cake. I don't know when my wife's got a baby and I want to be there for her. Absolutely makes sense. Yep. They decide to promote him from that anyways. This makes him very unhappy.
00:16:54
Speaker
As the show gets closer, they realize there's a bunch of problems with people being on the show, which we'll have to cover as they come up. And apparently they determined that him skipping the show for just five reasons is too much. So they assist on flying them out on the private jet just to be on the show for the match. Jeez. Yeah.
00:17:14
Speaker
The family company, really. Yeah. So I think that hurts the match just for him, because he kind of, I honestly saw it, especially when I rewatched it. There is point early in the match, I think he recovers a bit, where he seems distracted between spots. There's longer gaps than just normal selling. Yeah. It's hard to really not end this, because he's, I don't understand why I'm not blaming him. Yeah. The pacing is off for me. All the moves they do are good.
00:17:41
Speaker
But the flow of the match is not quite as good as you would think, given who's involved in the match. There's kind of a notable break between moves. I was noticing that. I was rewatching this today. There's kind of a lot of applause between these spots where normally you get kind of a flow of them. Yes. Now, in the second half of the match, they definitely work on that. But yeah, I think it's a problem.
00:18:02
Speaker
in that regard. It's definitely his heart's not in the match, and they do all their stuff well, but it's not as fast-paced as you would think as well. It's definitely a more methodical, spaced-out match. I almost wonder if Milenko was convinced that they weren't going to have the match and maybe didn't do stream-event planning like DDP is known for. So it's definitely a lot of Eddie calling the match in the ring, or at least it feels like to me. The flow seems controlled by him, for sure.
00:18:28
Speaker
I can see that. It's a shame because I think they could and definitely have had five star matches and really great back and forth dramatic stories. But in this case, it's just not the same. And I know why, but it's disappointing. You can see that. But it's still not a bad match. It's just not a great match. Yeah.
00:18:48
Speaker
Well, I didn't have that bad of an impression with it. Now that you have, you know, know all the backstory and everything, that they had to fly them out there and everything, I really can see Malinka as kind of being just annoyed because one of my notes was, man, he's really tossing Eddie in the air. Like every move.
00:19:08
Speaker
is snappy fast and and and raw like he's not there's no finesse to it he's throwing eddie over his back it's like like i know that eddie might be helping that i don't know either way that one powerbomb kind of for sure is a real snap to it yeah no i mean like in in the span of like one minute uh instead of doing like a normal whips him into the ropes and instead of you know clothes lining or anything he just picks him up and throws him in there and just walks underneath him and then as soon as he gets up he throws him into the corner and then
00:19:35
Speaker
Eddie gets around, he just picks him up and throws him back over his head into the corner. So, you know, I was impressed with the amount of acrobatics, but it definitely made Malenko seem very strong, even though it didn't really benefit him in the end.
00:19:52
Speaker
There could have been a big pause with the rehearsal, probably why they had the list of things, but they didn't really work on the transitions. They would move to their spot at a leisurely pace and make sure they hit it. It was all to make up for that time. I think that's when they just put a little bit more oomph into each move. It just didn't look smooth.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, no, I get you guys's point on that. I think just that, like you were both saying, there's a lot of really good moves here, but there's not the full smoothness and the full togetherness that you're used to. I still think it was a nice opener. Like you guys were saying, it does get slowed down here and there, particularly there's some Guerrero stalling at points, which I think he at least has good character during. Yeah.
00:20:36
Speaker
But there is an impressive array of moves, and there's a nice storyline to it, I think. Milenko's knee gets injured pretty early, and he's not sure if he can safely go for the cloverleaf, so he tries everything else that he can think of, encounters everything Guerrero tries. But with Guerrero not going down, he tries the cloverleaf, and Guerrero uses the weakness that he gave Milenko early on to gain the victory. So there is a good connective thread to the match.
00:21:01
Speaker
There's some very cool counters here and a lot of hard slams, and I really love the finishing sequence. Guerrero hitting the knee with everything he can think of, even landing his frog splash on the knee. It was a really clever bit. The good match story and great moves still make it quite a hot opener, and the crowd was really into it. It just, like you guys were saying, wasn't as good as I was anticipating.
00:21:22
Speaker
There's parts going on when there's the pausing. I feel like he's supposed to be looking at Eddie and I could be angry. It's not anger in his eyes. It's almost kind of like just like, Oh, I'm here. It is Dean Malenko. Right. Right. I mean, he's known for being emotional. I know, but no, there's a political point just where he's like, he's knocked Eddie down and he's looking at him, but he's just kind of like, Oh God, I don't want to be here. Obviously his mind is somewhere else. Yeah.
00:21:52
Speaker
The following night we have Nitro, in which Eddie grew up with Sven's title against Ultimo Dragon, who as we saw was in the crowd. Looking very chill in his awesome jacket and still wearing his mask. Yeah, so Dragon wins the title the next night.
00:22:11
Speaker
So I don't know why he wasn't just put in this match instead. That is odd. Why wouldn't you just do the title win at Starrcade? Yep. Yeah, that would have been a cool moment. Instead, Dragon just gets to chill in the crowd. It gets better. So on the very first Thunder, they have a big thing, which we'll discuss later. But I guess they felt they need to have something interesting for the second Thunder. So they have Huichida Guerra win the title from Ultimo Dragon. So 10 days after this, you know the title change. Okay.
00:22:41
Speaker
The next Thunder, we need something exciting for Thunder. I know. Let's say Ray Mysterio won the title, too. Good gosh. And that leads to Sold Out, where he missed the independent title against Chris Jericho. Okay. So, yeah, by my point about there being a lot of title changes. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's three between this show and Sold Out.
00:23:05
Speaker
I'm sure they're all really good matches, but why? Why not on pay-per-view? Yes. Because they're all really good matches. Yeah, lovely. I just want to see who gets cheered for the most, so I'm going to have the next. Test in the waters? Yeah. There you go. Highly contested belt. Scott Hall comes out to the ring wearing a WCW tag team title belt that Tene says is fake. NWO theme count, one.
00:23:37
Speaker
Hall very slowly takes a survey of the crowd to find out if they came to see WCW or the NWO. Oddly, the crowd chants along with him saying NWO, but clearly favor WCW otherwise, as the NWO gets big boos and WCW gets big cheers. People love your chant. It doesn't matter what it is. That's true. That's true. We do at least get a really adorable shot of a dad helping his little son cheer for WCW during
Scott Hall and Kevin Nash Promo
00:24:04
Speaker
this. That's really cute.
00:24:12
Speaker
One more for the good guys. He's like 0 for three for the last three. OK, now I know everybody wants to see Hollywood beat up Sting. So he's wrong. And nobody, nobody is more interested in that match than me because it's Superbrawl. Scott Hall wrestles the winner. He does not. He does not. Lucky me.
00:24:43
Speaker
OK, now for some bad news. I'm still going to talk. The true giant, the 610 genetic marvel. Chatterfoss. And my big buddy, one half of the real tag team champions, Big Kevin Nash. Hey, hear me out.
00:25:13
Speaker
Big Kevin Nash is not gonna be here tonight. So what's the reason here? Yeah. Hey, he told me if you had a problem with it that you could meet him down there. Wow, that's a good call. Down where, you ask? Yes. You know where.
00:25:42
Speaker
So anyway, where's the referee? Get somebody out here and tell that big goof that he won a giant, a Franken goof. You just tell everybody that you won, okay? Um, Franken goof with scientist? What's Dr. Franken goof? Oh my gosh. I respect his MD.
00:26:07
Speaker
Hall mimics a Frankenstein walk, but Giant comes down to the ring. Hall looks scared of the Giant as he enters, and amusingly indicates to the crowd, the Giant is really tall. Giant grabs a microphone. First of all, let me start off by saying, I'm a forgiving man. Kevin Nash, I can understand why Kevin Nash isn't here. If I had to wrestle me, I wouldn't want to be here either.
00:26:39
Speaker
And they also say that I'm a patient man. I'll be here in professional wrestling for a long time. That is true. And sooner or later, Kevin Nash is gonna come back. And when he does, he'll find out that I'm the one, two real giant. And another thing, slick,
00:27:07
Speaker
I got another message for Kevin Nash.
00:27:12
Speaker
We never find out what that other message would be as Hall charges and punches the Giant, but Giant headbutts him down, military press slams him, and starts to go for a choke slam, but reconsiders, and hits a very nice jackknife powerbomb, Nash's own move, on Scott Hall. Hall lies unconscious in the ring as Giant walks out, and NWO members Vincent and Scott Norton come out and help Hall out. NWO B-Team theme count, one.
00:27:41
Speaker
I'm not sure why we couldn't have a match here instead, even if it was a short one, but I thought they did a decent enough job with this. I appreciated Hall really selling his fear as the Giant came out. And between that, Giant's promo, and Giant doing Nash's own move to decimate Hall, I think this did a good job of giving the Giant a win of sorts over the NWO, even if it wasn't a formal match. I liked Giant's very calm promo, transitioning into a real butt-kicking.
00:28:09
Speaker
This was a bit overlong, especially with the gigantic pauses anytime Scott all talks. I'm not fond of his promo style. Yeah. But it was a pretty good segment for what it was. Why were they even booking Nash vs Giant here, though? Shouldn't have been Outsiders vs Steiners to see who the real champs are.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's a fair question. They've been trying to play as a story, like the one true giant thing, having them beat up the giant and leading up to this match. They had completely broken his hand, so we can do the choke slam, but by the time this match happened, obviously his hand recovered, so it doesn't actually amount to anything, because it's not still broken here. They at least made a good use of advancing the story. Yes, yeah.
00:28:54
Speaker
You definitely get a sense of, you know, something has happened. Giant has gotten a win of sorts here. It's just, it is a little weird that they don't just go do a match between Hall and Giant then. Well, they did. It just was very quick. Yeah, true. It's the farthest I've ever seen someone headbutted. Yeah, that was a good sell of that one then.
00:29:18
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate Hall definitely. He does his joking around stuff, but he definitely gives Giant a good reaction. Like the stamping when he is ready for the Chokeslam? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. This reminded me more of like a video game than an actual like encounter. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:41
Speaker
at least the Scott Hall portion was probably long in that skyscrapers match. We had several. Yeah, it actually is. Yeah. Yeah. That was like about a minute and the Scott Hall portion alone goes like a minute 45 somewhere around there. So yeah. So we could have squeezed that and the shock master match from both to this. Yeah. Yes. You get a 10 matches instead of eight.
00:30:04
Speaker
For what it's worth, the reason that Kevin Nash isn't here. Nash contacted the company that day, notifying Eric Bischoff that he had checked himself into the hospital because he was having pains that he thought were perhaps a heart attack. Nash had a family history of heart problems and was known to be fairly careful about his health.
00:30:28
Speaker
At the same time, wrestling fans have long regarded Nash as resistant to losing big matches, and it has been rumored that Nash either fabricated or exaggerated his condition in order to avoid losing to the Giant on Starrcade.
00:30:42
Speaker
Eric Bischoff on his podcast, 83 Weeks, on the December 9th, 2018 episode discusses this show, and I'll be quoting him and mentioning him a few times tonight. He says at first he doubted Nash's call, but Nash did have the family history of heart problems, so when he wasn't feeling well, he'd gone to the hospital to get checked out, which was a good thing to do.
00:31:04
Speaker
Bischoff says that the hospital at first believed that Nash was suffering a mild heart attack, and this was due to a test showing enzymes produced as a result of muscle breakdowns that are actually caused by working out, but can also be produced as a result of a heart attack. So it's a test that legitimately was showing that he was potentially having one. But can show false positives. But yeah, showing false positives. Thank you. That's a much better way of wording it.
00:31:30
Speaker
So Bishaw feels that Nash's worries were legit and not an attempt to avoid jobbing to the Giant in this case. I certainly share doubts about Nash, but at the same time I know the sort of things that can start running through your head when you aren't feeling well and there's a family history involved. On the plus side, I've seen the Giant mat we do get sold out. This ends better for the Giant than that one does. Oh, okay.
00:31:54
Speaker
Our second match is a six-man tag. We have Vincent, Scott Norton, and Randy Savage, accompanied by Miss Elizabeth, versus the Steiner Brothers, Rick and Scott, with Ray Traylor, accompanied by Ted DiBiase. The referee for this match is Scott Dickinson. So this is a couple of storylines for intersecting. So the first storyline is that the Steiner Brothers, after a lot of issues getting them, have won the tag titles off of the Outsiders.
00:32:24
Speaker
The outside of the course, as you saw earlier, are disputing that, and basically go around for three or four months wearing tag belts that aren't real. Man, it makes giving that shield better. It gets to wear a belt that doesn't actually have one. That's kept the Stiners and the Crossers in the NWO, which is why, most of why this match is happening.
00:32:42
Speaker
Their manager, Ted DiBiase, was one of the original six in the NWO, but left it for a bunch of reasons to manage them instead. So more animosity between those groups. The other story is that Ray Traylor, the former boss slash big baba slash five or six other names of the time, we're done with the show.
00:33:03
Speaker
He had been also been part of the NWO. I believe he joins during the recruitment drive. They do, they have a year, the wizards are against us, ultimatum and a bunch of people join, which is the first sign that the group's kind of getting bloated in a way that shouldn't be. I thought you'd get Scott Nord and other people involved. I'm like, I don't know about that.
00:33:23
Speaker
Ray Traylor, for a number of reasons, leaves in the duo, which obviously, given that for life thing and they say in the song consistently, they're not fond of you doing. So, as he kept being targeted by them after leaving, the Stiners, being stalwart WW people, joined with him, and after they got this match.
00:33:44
Speaker
And as I understand it, this was actually originally supposed to be Vincent Scott Morton and Conan. Correct. Yeah, Conan was originally booked for this. Randy Savage is actually really not booked for the show at all, which is the truth. Which is very strange, yeah. Yeah. Bischoff, I think on the same podcast, talks about that. Basically says, you know, book everyone for every show. But, you know, it's Randy Savage. You're paying a lot of money. Randy Savage at Starrcade. Yeah. Yeah. Without going too much into people's personal lives, there is an issue with
00:34:15
Speaker
Conan's girlfriend found medical issue and he chooses to stay with her and thus he's not available for the show. So at last minute it's about Randy Savage, which all they considered as far as replacement partners go, it's pretty good placement. Yeah, yeah, I mean if you've got to find somebody quick to take someone's place on the match, Randy Savage is a pretty amazing person to bring in like that.
00:34:41
Speaker
Absolutely. Good surprise. Yeah. Sadly there's no one there to replace Vincent, but oh well. Norton and Vincent come out first, and interrupt announcer Dave Penzer as he starts to announce their original partner, Conan. The Steiners, trailer, and D.B. Asi are out next with the real WCW tag team titles. I love Rick's jacket with the Bulldogs on the shoulders. Oh yeah.
00:35:04
Speaker
Like I'd have a car, I think. The metal ones? Yeah. Yeah. Scott Steiner is from the Mirror Universe tonight with his goatee. Mm-hmm. Finally, Randy Savage gets his own entrance with Miss Elizabeth. NWO theme count? Two. There's a weird gigantic sign in the crowd that I noticed crafted to look like a giant hand doing the NWO's wolfback gesture. Someone spent entirely too much time and effort making that thing.
00:35:31
Speaker
Macho challenges Harlem Heat and takes his sweet time going to the ring until WCW head of security Doug Dillinger orders him to the ring. Scott Steiner and Randy Savage start us off. And by the way, we have two Steiners in the match and also two Scots in the match. So I'm going to be referring to Rick and Scott by their first names and Scott Norton by his last name. Just to be clear. You could just call him Flash. No. Oh.
00:35:58
Speaker
I like Bobby's idea.
Six-Man Tag Match Analysis
00:36:01
Speaker
His name is Scott Flash Norton. Apparently he's really good at arm wrestling. Yes. He beat people in a flash.
00:36:10
Speaker
Scott Steiner and Randy Savage start us off. Scott gets the better of it at first, and Savage slaps him, so Scott slaps him right back. Savage whips Scott into a knee from Norton, then drops him on the top rope and chokes him, tags to Vincent and Norton in turn to keep it up. Norton gets a nice counter of a double axe handle into a kind of elevated fireman's carry. Back to Savage, and Scott gets an amazing double underhook to one-armed powerbomb. Looked so cool. Really good, yeah.
00:36:39
Speaker
After a military press by Scott, everyone gets in for a brawl, and WCW dumps the NWO guys out. Trailer kind of sadly seems like an odd man out, as Scott and Rick do their tag team pose. Savage hides behind Elizabeth to get space for a tag. Norton asks for Rick, so Scott tags Rick. They're mostly even, though we get our first Steiner line in a long time. Kind of an ugly power slam by Rick and he tags Trailer.
00:37:06
Speaker
The NWO beat trailer up in their corner, tag to Vincent, and trailer murders him with a spinebuster, which Vincent sells via leg spasms. No, no, I didn't notice that. No, yeah, he just like smashes him down and you can see Vincent on the mat just going with his legs twitching. He went to the Yvonne Dudley School of Selling. Yeah, it looks very cartoonish, but the spinebuster is awesome. Yes.
00:37:32
Speaker
Trailer, Scott and Rick trade off beating Vincent up until Vincent dodges a trailer splash for a tag to Norton. Norton lands strikes and chokes trailer, and Savage takes advantage of the Steiner's protesting to the ref to get in some kicks. Vincent tagged him for his own shotty kicks, but after they collide, trailer's up first to tag Rick.
00:37:52
Speaker
Rick runs wild and slams each NWO guy, and trailer and Scott dispose of Norton and Savage. Rick lifts Vincent on his shoulders for Scott to DDT him off the top rope in a terrifying spot.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of forgot and seen that before. It is a terrifyingly amazing spot. Yeah. Scott goes for the pin, even though Rick is the legal man. Norton saves, and Rick knocks him out of the ring. Scott gets a top rope Frankenstein around Vincent. Savage saves. Dibyasi protests to the ref. Scott gets Savage up top, but Norton catches Scott with a kind of electric chair drop to set him up for the big elbow from Savage for the three count and the win.
00:38:31
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that Vincent and Rick were the legal men, but I might have missed something. NWO theme count? Three. Thoughts on this match? There's plenty of action in it. Yeah. Yeah. There's not a point, like actually I'll take that with one caveat. When Savage is not tagged in, I don't know where he is. He's not on screen. He's probably just sitting down.
00:38:57
Speaker
relaxing or something. Cameras all over the place, but the signers are always engaged with another man or someone's on the outside while they're doing their stuff inside. It's nice to see trailer doing big power moves alongside. He's known for that, but the signers look huge and he's still doing the same thing. I didn't get the whole savage. He was more into posing on this one and taking his time.
00:39:26
Speaker
But, you know, he did a good performance, especially for someone that's a substitute. Yeah, you kind of wonder if he's not involved in the match that much because he was called in late or that he doesn't have time, especially with Savage being known as, like, DDP a planner. Yeah, he was famously meticulously planning all of his matches out. So he has a day to book a six-man match, yeah, I don't think he has time for that.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, he's doing his own thing, which I think is good. But there was a lot of times where I was like, oh, he's still in the match. He showed up and broke a tag, and then he's out. Yeah. He's probably down the floor a little bit at some point, they might guess. Yeah. He seemed to do that a lot in matches. I did like that second to last move before they do the elbow drop, the electric chair, is what we called it. Yeah. I think that's called the electric chair drop, is when you pick a guy up on the shoulders and just drop backwards. Yeah. That's what they call it.
00:40:19
Speaker
I like that when he was walking up to do it, he was just like, just walking. Yeah. There's no, there's no, as he's watching his, his teammate get punched in the corner. Wait a minute. And then he did it. That was nice.
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, well, like John's saying, there's definitely a lot of action. It's a little disjointed because there's six people. Obviously the Stiners wrestled pretty similarly. They got their own moves, but there's cohesiveness in there. And this is fairly cohesive with them and trailer. He has his own sort of rough neck style of like a spine buster. Is it not our Anderson spine buster with the spin and everything?
00:40:56
Speaker
It's just like up and you're down again. It's a brute force spinebuster. Yeah. Yeah, he definitely fits as a third man for their group I think as much as anyone could probably in this scenario other than maybe it's more like Ben Walker probably fit really well, too But he's a pretty good fit boy half
00:41:10
Speaker
But yeah, obviously the fact that they've put Savage in last mid does only affect how much he's in the match. He does sort of come in and out. I think he definitely helps the match up for me, at least. Because nothing else I know when he's in, Vincent's not in. And Vincent has almost nothing really. He has that one palm strike that looks pretty good. Yes, that's true. But otherwise it's like choking on the ropes or choking on the ground or choking you again. Some other place he could find.
00:41:40
Speaker
I can recommend the match in the sense that if you don't like Vincent, he spends a lot of this match getting beaten up. That is true. That is true. I was actually kind of annoyed at that. I wanted to see him do more and not just be pushed around. The thing is, Jon, he has no more. No. What you saw him do is generally all he does in matches. Pretty much, yeah.
00:42:03
Speaker
When he was brought in, they played up his boxing background, which meant he just spends all his matches punching or kicking you, or choking you, because that's all he can do. He had the one moment to shine in WDF when he beat Tibiase. Weirdly enough, this is not addressed, by the way. Then both in the same match around each other, but... That is true, yeah. I mean, admittedly, they've been around each other for a long time to this point, so maybe they've already mentioned it before. Could be.
00:42:29
Speaker
There's a bit of a miscue on the timing for the ending as well, and if anyone knows this. Because DBS, he gets on the apron before they set up the corner spot for the finish, and I don't know what he's protesting. He said that a protest, like, nothing that seemed to have happened. I think he's protesting all the breakups of Scott's pins, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do we still have the rule where you only have one break? I don't know. It's WCW. We have no actual rules, I think.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, earlier we had Eddie Guerrero, should have been DQ, let's be honest, by putting the steps against his legs and kicking them. Yes. How is that not DQ, but I guess that's not. But yeah, he's obviously he's there to protest to distract the referee for this spot, but he's early, so he gets up 10 seconds, 20 seconds later and does it again. Yeah. So that's a little miscue for that.
00:43:21
Speaker
I like that Scott looks so strong, it's kind of a shame that they just had him take two moves and go down at the end, unfortunately. At least one of them is the big elbow. Oh yeah, no, it could be a lot worse. They could have him lose to Vincent, but you know. Yes. To the point where you get to look so strong and then just a real abrupt stop to it like that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. There were good spots to this match, especially Rick and Scott's fast sequence of cool moves towards the end, but this was pretty dull to me.
00:43:51
Speaker
There wasn't much of a story to it. It's just guys hitting spots on each other and trading off being in control. When the faces are in control, it's better than when the NWO guys are, I think. Vincent, especially, who, as you guys mentioned, doesn't really have much more than a few really basic strikes.
00:44:05
Speaker
But I do have to give him credit. He did a pretty good job selling all the offense from the faces. No, sure. Oh yeah. He's the guy taking most of the offense on their side, so he's actually quite good at that. Yeah. Even Savage doesn't really do much on this. At least Norton gets a couple neat power counters.
00:44:23
Speaker
This doesn't feel like a big noteworthy match. This is the show that's supposed to be the culmination of the WCW vs NWO angle. So this should be a big, aggressive, energetic match, but it just kind of felt to me like the sort of thing they'd throw together to fill a few minutes of TV time. It's just a basic match, nothing more. It's decent, but not.
00:44:45
Speaker
Interesting. They could have a stronger performance, I think, and to your point, story-wise, if it had been a straight two-on-two tag match with the tag tiles on the line, and then, say, Norden and Savage. Yeah. And you could still have Vincent out there at ringside, which is his general position in these matches. It's being adjacent to the matches, not actually in them.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah. And they trail out to back them up. Yeah, I think Vincent does pretty fine work character-wise. Yeah. It's just his wrestling, he doesn't really seem to do much. For sure. Well, they could have highlighted his boxing ability more, at least give him a couple spots where he looks like he's getting ahead and then just they throw one punch too many and then it's a series of moves back to back to back to back and then he's out, you know? He's good at selling all of them and go from there.
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean there's certainly things you could do. It's not a particularly memorable match, and it could have been. Right, yeah. It's a six-man tag with the Steiners, Ray Traylor, and Randy Savage all in it. And Scott Norton, I'll add too, as soon as he's a big belooka anyway. Yeah. I was a little advent sent. He's there too. Nah.
00:45:58
Speaker
You'd expect there to be more noteworthy events. Well, they didn't plan Savage, so that is a big factor. Yeah. It's underwhelming, I think, given some of the people involved. Yeah. I didn't feel that bad, but I was just whelmed. Oh, okay. Baseline level. You were even whelmed. Yes. Something like that. Plain old whelmed.
00:46:27
Speaker
Do you know why Vincent is named Vincent?
00:46:30
Speaker
No. It is a rib on Vince McMahon. Oh. Because this same guy, when he was over in the WWF, was known as Virgil, which was a rib on Dusty Rhodes, whose actual name is Virgil Runnels. So yeah, this poor guy has spent his entire career being jokingly named after people in rival companies. I believe later in WWE, he's actually named Shane. Correct. Which is after Shane McMahon. So it's just like...
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Seaman's Push didn't do more. They could give him a valet if it's Stephanie. Can we change Stephanie? Yeah. Us and the other have been great. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't have been, but it's funny. Sold Out, in a lot of ways, is a makeup show for this show. So we already have the giant Nash match. We didn't get...
00:47:20
Speaker
This show we got on that show. We got a rematch of sorts for this match as well. Another six man tag. The difference is Vincent's out. He's traded out for Buff Bagwell. So it's Scott Norden, Buff Bagwell, and Conan. Oh, I was hoping they would put Conan with Savage again. Yeah. Interesting.
00:47:48
Speaker
As for the Stiners, they're still tag champions, and that goes on for a little while. Still contested publicly by the NVO, but there's no actual blow-off to that. They just say that they're all tag champions, and then Stiners don't care. I'll just do it. Just kind of ignore it, because they know they're champions. We go on the stage to Mean Jean Okerlund, who shows the hotline, 1-900-909-9900, and welcomes JJ Dillon to the stage.
00:48:19
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, here in Washington and across the country and around the world, I want to introduce to you the Chairman of WCW's Executive Committee, Mr. JJ Dillon. And Mr. Chairman, I want to bring you in with one thing in mind. I mentioned regarding the hotline tonight, a lot of rank and file. JJ, these are people that are not scheduled to be here, but yet they're here apparently representing WCW. Can you clear the air?
00:48:47
Speaker
Well, Gene, as I've looked through the ranks of some 24,000 people here tonight, I've seen virtually every wrestler under contract to WCW. I think it's a tremendous showing of unity. WCW has a lot of stake tonight. Nitro's on the line, the big match between the legend Larry Zabisco and Eric Bischoff. And also, there is just a tremendous amount of interest in this match that we've all waited a year and a half for. And one of the matters that needed to be cleared up was who is going to be the referee.
00:49:16
Speaker
Staying waiting a year and a half for this match obviously wants to know that he's gonna get a fair shake Hulk Hogan Hollywood Hogan the reigning champion He's got an interest in who the referee is and it seemed like the only fair thing to do Was to take the names of all the referees put him in a hat have a drawing I've done that with the members of the executive committee observing and the name that was picked out Who will be the referee for tonight's main event is Nick Patrick? Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute
00:49:46
Speaker
JJ Dillon, in all due respect, that is going to raise a lot of eyebrows. Now, wait a minute. Nick Patrick is duly licensed. He's an excellent referee, and since his reinstatement, I can find no criticism whatsoever with any of the matches he's officiated. So he will be the referee for the main event tonight, and it is official.
00:50:06
Speaker
Well, I guess that's the politically right thing to do, I guess, in this political environment. Nick Patrick to be the referee in the greatest title bout of all time between Hollywood Hulk Hogan from the NWO and tonight, here at Starrcade, the return of Sting after a long, long absence. Needless to say,
00:50:29
Speaker
Let's get back to you Tony back at the broadcast very excited. Oh Man exciting that's that's a bop level flub at the end there
00:50:41
Speaker
the Return of String. It went extra shot that night. Yeah. I thought this was just a short but perfectly fine segment overall to interject some tension for the main event. I'm not sure that I buy that if you're setting up a random draw to get a fair referee, you'd even include the one referee who was solidly with the NWO earlier in the year, but it does add suspense to the storyline.
00:51:06
Speaker
Will Nick Patrick betray WCW again and side with the NWO? Or will he prove to be a good, fair referee? I don't know about you guys, but I'm sure it's going to be the latter. Last year was just a momentary slip, right? No, yeah, absolutely. It's back to being the most honorable referee once again. Everyone has moments that they mess up, yeah. Give them a little bit of that. So, two notes on this.
00:51:29
Speaker
First, when they originally announced that Brighthearted assigned with the company was joining, they announced that he would be the referee for the main event. They then changed their mind on that at some point, and that whole storyline where he gets appointed as referee for the semi-main event, where their Bischoff is dead.
00:51:47
Speaker
Secondly, the point of that story was that Ekbishov didn't trust any of the WWE referees for his match, because his match is super important. So they trick him into taking Bret Hart by saying he's part of N.W.O., which is they've been sort of tinting of that. So he's okay with Bret Hart because of that. But it makes no sense, we look at this one, because the drawing is all
00:52:12
Speaker
WCW referees. So what difference would it make? Which rep that Hogan doesn't trust is the referee? Yeah. See, this is the sort of thing where I think that they should have just, as a spectacle, put like one of those little baskets in the middle of the ring and then did it. Actually do it on the show. Yeah. And then later on, you know, when they're sweeping up that they all say, Nick,
00:52:34
Speaker
There you go. You know, that would have been a good little blurb or something. Yeah. So we could have had, say, Eric Bishop, Missy Hyatt on the front of the stage with a big bowl and drawing thanks from it. Ironically, with Larry Zabisco, I believe. Yes, that's true. Yeah. Who's his opponent tonight? I think that would have been fun.
00:52:51
Speaker
No, yeah, I kind of agree. It feels weird that we don't actually see the drawing. Yeah. It's the same rule of coin tosses for war game matches. Yeah. We're sure that they happen, but we never see them. Yeah. Yeah, true. Distress us. I'm looking forward to something that's fair. Yes. Very fair. Down the middle.
00:53:12
Speaker
I'm not biased against him like you guys are. I don't get it. We're not biased against Nick Patrick. We're biased for Nick Patrick. Yeah. Can you be biased for? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Our third match is Goldberg versus Steve Mongo McMichael.
Goldberg vs McMichael Match Highlights
00:53:35
Speaker
The referee for this match is Randy Anderson.
00:53:39
Speaker
Obviously Goldberg was not here last show. So that's a big change. He comes in about the middle of the year. So the story goes in is that he's eventually hired by Deborah to beat up Mongo McMichael and take a Super Bowl ring, the one he won with the Chicago Bears. So they're gonna play up the football background because Mongo played with the Bears and Goldberg at least briefly played for the Falcons.
00:54:05
Speaker
They are natural enemies. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. Football players. Um, but yeah, so they're supposed to have a match at another previous show, but they play at the angle where Mongo apparently attacks Goldberg and takes him out backstage, which remember that when we're much later and the mystique of untoppable Goldberg can apparently be beaten up backstage by Mongo.
00:54:30
Speaker
I'm sure he, like, shot a tranq gun or something, but it really takes away from his unstoppable streak when Mongo takes them out unofficially. I like Mongo. Kind of. Could have been weapons involved. Yeah, yeah. I know. It's just funny that he's unstoppable, except this one time where he's extremely stoppable. But so they sort of bait and switch that match at a previous show, so now this is the actual blow-off match between the two of them.
00:54:57
Speaker
Very few entrance themes in WCW are more suited to their performer than Goldberg's. Terrific, intimidating, and inevitable-sounding theme. Really, I like that one a lot. We get a shot of Raven's flock in the crowd before Mongo comes out. Still no Horseman theme, sadly, but technically I think they're disbanded at the moment. Mongo does still make the Horseman signs, though.
00:55:22
Speaker
They brawl on the entrance ramp, as Dusty says they've got a Texican and a Georgian going at it. Goldberg slams Mongo into the railing and carries him to the ring, throwing him in under the ropes. He picks up a table that, quote, happened to be at ringside. What? Literally not their last match. Yeah. I looked. It's a table that someone brought out before this match, basically. One of the fans brought it with them. Yeah, I guess so. And he leans it on the post.
00:55:54
Speaker
Mongo gets some early offense with some pretty good corner kicks and a side slam, but Goldberg takes over with a flying shoulder block for a couple two counts, shoves Mongo outside, and they brawl outside. Back in, Goldberg counters a Mongo top rope move with a punch to the gut, and asks how we liked that. It was okay, I guess? Goldberg's in full control with a nice little roll through into a leg lock for a few one counts. Goldberg keeps it up, but Dusty knows that Goldberg's normally beaten his opponent by now.
00:56:23
Speaker
Goldberg's spear, but a loose cover gets him too. Goldberg sets up the table, but Anderson stops Goldberg from throwing Mongo out through it, earning Mongo a one count. Goldberg dropkicks Mongo out over the ropes. Mongo, rather stupidly, gets up on the apron by the table, so Goldberg blocks his shoulder blocks with a knee, smiles at him, and slugs him to send him through the table. We get an ECW chant for that spot, really? Yeah. They wanted something.
00:56:53
Speaker
Goldberg rolls Mongo in. Mongo lands some strikes and tries his tombstone pile driver, but his back gives out. Goldberg gets up and hits the jackhammer for the three count and the win. Thoughts on this one? Obviously, it's not my actual first exposure to Goldberg because I've seen it many times before this, but as far as the podcast goes, that is not a great first impression.
00:57:16
Speaker
And to be fair to him, this is very early in his actual career, even training-wise. So I'm not judging him as like a blingo standard expecting to be great, but you can definitely see hints of what he can do. The ease that he picks up Mongo and carries him down to the ring is actually pretty impressive. Fighting him in. But then the trade-off is that roll through leg lock thing is not the most graceful in the world. I actually really liked that. I thought it looked good.
00:57:44
Speaker
I mean, it's not terrible. It's better than Hogan's armbar, but I don't know. Don't break the tie. Was it? It was beautifully horrible. Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks, John. That was very helpful. Well, to be fair, I'm not putting a lot of this like it's an even blame assignment. Yeah. So it's Mongo trying to roll through on a like a leg roll carry everything. It just move him. Imagine he doesn't do a lot. So I just thought it was good. I don't think it looks terrible. I just don't think it looks great.
00:58:13
Speaker
And I don't know why it's something working in E, three quarters of the way through the match. Oh yeah, I won't debate that at all. I'll say this, there are more terrible things in this match. So I probably didn't even, this didn't look bad in comparison to fair, because we were like dropping Goldberg and dropping each other and all over the place. For sure. But yeah, there's stuff I can't blame Goldberg for, for not being good. Like just how blandly the spear is sold. I mean,
00:58:43
Speaker
Mongo doesn't really go down from the impact. He's like hit and then falls afterwards, which just looks really bad. I feel like when he did the covered in matter, because it's like, you shouldn't get a three off of that move. No, do it, do it again. Yeah, do it again. The table thing is silly. The fact that it's just out there and then set up and Mongo decides to stand in front of it. Yes.
00:59:09
Speaker
Although, again, it's kind of an even assignment of stupidity because the way that plays out is Mongo does the shoulder block in the ring to Goldberg. I was thinking watching this even second time, knowing how it ends, that he'd do it once, twice, and the third time he's countered. He does it three times. It's the fourth time he's countered. He just wanted to break the pattern. So you're going to do that move four times in a row? Like, was Goldberg supposed to block it on the third one? And he just, he didn't, so he just did it again? Maybe. I don't know.
00:59:40
Speaker
And then why is that not DQ? The table happened to be there. He had no control over it despite sitting it up a few moments prior. Yeah.
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah. I'll give them credit for whoever put the match together. I don't know who the backseat people are at this point. But if you're going to have the spear as badly sold as it is and the table spot as so as it is, they at least have a payoff, which is them trying to do the tombstone and not lift them up. Yes. So whoever played the match out for them did a good job. It's not played out as well as I think they hoped it would be. Yeah. The match was floppy.
01:00:20
Speaker
And you know, there was plenty of moves. Actually the one, not the selling of the spear, but the fact that Goldberg jumped like three quarters of the distance of the ring to hit it was always impressive to me. It's one of those kind of moves that if you miss or mess up, it's kind of humorous. And you know what, you might actually get hurt because you fly it out outside the ring or get caught up on the other side.
01:00:44
Speaker
There was a lot of checking or set up for most of the moves. It seemed like Mongo would pack over before we lift them and everything. It didn't really look like it was much of a coordination between the two. It was very jaunty and there was some power behind the moves, but very little finesse. So for that one roll through, which was amazing.
01:01:14
Speaker
But in comparison to the, the, the cell that Mongo did at the very end was like, Oh, I can't pick them up. Yeah.
01:01:23
Speaker
There was only one point in the whole match that Goldberg really had any personality, and I thought that was before he conveniently pushed him into the table. The little grin that he gives him. Yeah, that part I really liked. Mm-hmm. I liked that, yeah. That was a high point, and that being one of the very few high points kind of didn't set the tone because it's towards the end, but that's one of the highlights of the match for me. And it's a shame that it was not like that throughout the entirety. Yeah.
01:01:53
Speaker
There's a few nice moves on Goldberg's part, but the overall story of this match is just really clumsily put together, I think. And aside from going through the table, injuring Mongo's back so he can't end his finishing move like you guys were mentioning, nothing really builds on anything. Speaking of the table, what kind of moron intentionally walks around from the table-free side of the ring to the side where his opponent has specifically set up a table before trying to get in? Here comes Mongo, I guess.
01:02:22
Speaker
I don't have much else to say about this one. Goldberg normally fights quick squash matches at this point, and I guess they were trying to see if he could go longer. This didn't really prove much of anything in that regard. I would have rather had the squash match myself. The jackhammer was nice though. That's a good finisher. I like how smoothly it transitions into a pin. It looks very brutal, but very efficient at the same time. Yeah, sure.
01:02:48
Speaker
So Goldberg's whole, part of his whole mystique is that he's sort of this unnaturally strong person. So you see the little bits of that, and he picks that guy up, and just easy can throw people around with the back hammer. At this point, fortunately, he didn't have much more than that. Obviously, he'll get better about that with more experience. You could see a little bit of why they like him so much in this match. The rest of the match does not live up to that. Yeah, I can definitely see potential in him. Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:17
Speaker
This is a very green or unpolished version of Goldberg. He really hasn't developed his character. At least in this match, they're not really letting that shine through. He's not the yelling maniac that we all know and love. Yeah. Tony predicts more of Goldberg versus Mongo in the future. That's okay, I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. You read the check now, it's fine. Yeah.
01:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's not really much more Mongo, Goldberg. Goldberg has a pretty big 98, which is about all I can say about deploying a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's a good year, that's all I'll say.
Chris Benoit vs The Flock Drama
01:03:53
Speaker
We cut back to the entrance ramp and Raven is coming down to the ring. Raven is scheduled to have a match against Crispin Waugh.
01:04:01
Speaker
Raven's old story is he did a lot of high-parval stuff in ECW. And this is around the time they start, both them and WDF start poaching ECW for talent. It's really heavy the next year or two. So he's brought in, story is he doesn't want to follow the rules. You know, he's all broody and angsty and you know, mid nineties teen, you know, he's an adult, adult who wears Sandman shirts. So that's something at least. Angsty, Pauly Shore.
01:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, the hair's about right now. Yeah, true. So he goes about recruiting a bunch of, basically went to mid-card wrestlers, giving them grunge-ier gimmicks at clothing. So you get the likes of Van Hammer, Kidman, Lodi, and Scotty Riggs, do form the flock. About a month or so early, he was challenged to a match by Benoit.
01:04:58
Speaker
And every week, Benoit comes out for his match, Raveny, that doesn't show up at all, a couple of times he's just not there. Other times he'll show up and then, you know, a little loady will attack him while fighting loady. And then next week I'll get him and then they'll keep building and building that up. Raven has since been forced into actually having a contract. I don't know why he was allowed to be on TV without a contract, but apparently, did Dylan let him go a few weeks before he tried to really enforce him having a contract with him.
01:05:27
Speaker
So now this is the blow-off after several attempts have been wanting to get his hands on him, this is the actual match for getting the payoff for that. Okay. Raven comes out wearing a leather jacket over a Dinosaur Jr. t-shirt, representing a band that had actually just disbanded in late 1997. They'd eventually reform in 2005. Yay. The ring announcer starts to announce the match, but Raven grabs the ring announcer's microphone and slumps down in the corner of the ring. He's working his posture.
01:05:58
Speaker
When I signed a contract with World Championship Wrestling, I stated that I would not conform to their rules, that I would not conform to their corporate structure. I also made sure that certain stipulations
01:06:19
Speaker
were included that I would be able to wrestle when I won, where I won, and who I won. And I've chosen tonight not to wrestle. I've also decided not to get paid. I've also decided to allow Saturn to finish off something that should have been finished off a long time ago, the destruction of Chris Benoit.
01:06:48
Speaker
Quote the raven, nevermore. Why? Saturn enters to an exceptionally annoying siren sound. Seriously, that was giving me a headache. I won't attempt to copy it. No, yeah. Dusty says Saturn deals in pain, blues, and agony.
01:07:10
Speaker
Tony talks up Chris Benoit and says that he has a lot of nicknames, but one of them might be The Buzzsaw. So coming up next, Dick Slater makes his surprising return to challenge Benoit to a fight and give him the first two rounds. Benoit comes out and grabs the microphone.
01:07:37
Speaker
I don't look at reality through any veil, nor do I see the truth through any veil. It is what it is, things are as they are, and I am who I am. When I rest, I rest in reason. When I move, I move with passion and there's nothing I feel more passionate about than in thick, flicking pain on the Raven.
01:08:09
Speaker
So he laid that out. Wow. So they had to do something to cover the fact that Raven is not well enough to do a full match as he is recovering currently from an inflamed pancreas. So yeah, another change of plans all of a sudden on the show. This is kind of the case with this one, I guess, overall. Yes.
01:08:38
Speaker
Raven does a decent enough job here and keeps it short, doing just enough to come off as a whining heel. Benoit does not do a very good job. He wasn't known for his promo work, and this is a prime example of why. To be fair to him, I'm not sure how much notice he had to prepare for this, but still, I think it would have been better for him to just come on down and glare at Raven or go after him and get interrupted by Saturn.
01:09:02
Speaker
I don't know if his promo has really changed by Raven not wrestling him or not. I feel like if Raven was booked to wrestle him and actually did wrestle, the promo still works regardless. Not really. I'm fighting Saturn instead of you. I'm more wondering, did they even have promos planned? Or did they add the promos purely because Raven's not wrestling? I got you. I don't know. I thought it was a little bit of a comic relief. He's like a diehard villain.
01:09:32
Speaker
trying to give his reasoning for taking Nakatomi tower hostage. Or one of those towers, whatever. Yeah. Nakatomi Plaza, is it? Yes. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. I think they did about what they could with it, but it's pretty clear this was not the original plan. Yes.
01:09:53
Speaker
So our actual match is Chris Benoit versus Saturn in a Ravens Rules match. That's a no disqualification false count anywhere match. The referee is Mickey J. Oddly, I was looking up referee names and IMDB also shows this same ref's picture for Billy Silverman, but that's a different guy. In fact, he's the referee for the very next match.
01:10:17
Speaker
Raven starts to get in the ring, distracting Benoit, but Benoit spots Saturn charging and chops him down. You can definitely spot Benoit glancing back to see if Saturn's charging yet, as Saturn waits for his cue, though. Saturn sports one of the dumbest haircuts I have ever seen. It's like he's wearing a scouring brush on his head or something.
01:10:39
Speaker
Rapid sequence to start with Benoit quickly countering out of everything Saturn tries and beating him up in the corner, then trying to invite Raven in. Raven stands very still. Saturn escapes more strikes with a cool, fast suplex, and they trade blows. Timing seems a little bit off. Benoit catches a kick and hits a dragon screw leg whip.
01:10:59
Speaker
Benoit counters an attempt by flock member Kidman to interfere, but when Benoit and Saturn end up outside, Sick Boy knocks Benoit down, and Kidman hits a pretty amazing shooting star press off the apron onto Benoit. Raven calmly watches as Benoit crawls back to the apron. Saturn takes over with a cool second rope leg drop, with Benoit propped on the ropes, gets a headlock, and gets a neckbreaker for two.
01:11:25
Speaker
Tony points out that Saturn is working Benoit's head and neck even though Saturn's finishing hold, the rings of Saturn, targets the arms. Excellent ascending springboard moonsault by Saturn for two. The ropes save Benoit from multiple pinfalls, but he does get a two count of his own off of a cool diving counter to a new strike. Saturn oddly forgets that this is an ODQ match and breaks off choking when Jay warns him. Saturn brainbuster gets two and three fourths.
01:11:53
Speaker
Benoit sunset flip for two. Odd spot as Benoit clotheslines Saturn down but falls over like he'd knocked heads when he clearly didn't. Saturn pokes Benoit's eyes and abuses to the head and neck some more. Saturn up top but Benoit hurls him to the floor. Saturn dodges a baseball slide but Benoit smoothly catches a clothesline and twists Saturn into the Crippler cross face on the floor mats.
01:12:16
Speaker
This is false count anywhere, so that could potentially end the match. So the entire flock runs over to beat Benoit up. But Benoit escapes as Saturn tries a springboard moonsault, and Saturn takes out the flock instead. I was getting ready to wonder what the flock was going on, Dusty says. Good thing that was a great dad joke for the show. Nice to see.
01:12:41
Speaker
Back in, Benoit hits a monster clothesline, a snap suplex, and the swan dive headbutt. Benoit fights off the flock, but Raven distracts him and Hammer hits him from behind, allowing Raven to hit the Evenflow DDT. Saturn puts the rings of Saturn on the unconscious Benoit for the win. Tony points out that Saturn working on the neck and head the whole time was to set up for Raven's Evenflow DDT, so a nice little twist in the match there.
01:13:08
Speaker
thoughts on this one? I watched it with you the first time, not knowing all the backstory with Raven and that. And I was kind of mixed on it. I felt like it was, like there wasn't a lot of story in the match itself. Kind of like, to some extent, with the Malenko Grand Match, it's well performed, but like there's something missing, like I didn't quite feel right. Then I found out stuff with Raven, why he's not actually wrestling.
01:13:33
Speaker
And upon rewatching, actually, I kind of like it better the second time, which is rare. I usually kind of stay the same on second viewings. So knowing that this match is put together very last minute, the impression I got is that they booked this match assuming Raven would be okay. And obviously he wasn't. So it was not like the new week style this match is going to be here. Yeah.
01:13:55
Speaker
Aside from things you point out like Win for Q, there's one is Nafu where they try to do the body press and they score the ropes and quite work. Other than those, I mean, there's a couple of more like that.
01:14:09
Speaker
Match, I think, works pretty well for me, honestly. As weird as it might sound, all things sittered, the way the match set up where basically Benoit has to fight the entire flock to get anywhere, it makes him very sympathetic as a face. Yeah, yeah. Because he was fighting from beneath there. It's a shame he didn't have any people that might help him, any like two or three or four people, maybe, that might have been friends with him to help him out.
01:14:36
Speaker
I do wish that they didn't have how overbooked the ending is. Were they all going to interfere like three different times? I'm a little disappointed that the most important man in the match, Sided Raven, for the finish is Hammer, of all people. I don't want to get the rub to Hammer in this match. At least all he does is distract him. Yeah, he hits him the one time.
01:15:01
Speaker
But aside from that, I thought it worked pretty well overall. I thought they, they build a good story in the confines they had. Like they mentioned that the work in the neck of a Raymond move and not Saturn's. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's pretty good. And on the, on the point of why like the horsemen who are, I think disbanded, but at least don't close, don't interfere. At least they did kind of explain Mongo's not doing it, but he just got beat up by Goldberg. So kind of makes some sense there. That's true.
01:15:29
Speaker
Very strange, no DQ match. There was a lot more traditional aspects to it, but I actually enjoyed Saturn's performance. I didn't think he had the worst haircut in the world. I actually kind of thought, this is my first time seeing him, kind of remind me of like a hybrid between Guile and Zengief.
01:15:49
Speaker
Like a mixture of baldness and crazy hair, and you know, it had guile's pants and everything. It was a little bit more burly. But anyway, I thought it was a decent performance. Each had some decent spots. It was nice to see Benoit actually come back and do it with some aggression here and there, but for the most part, you know, he had to deal with the whole flock.
01:16:11
Speaker
And honestly, I kind of wish the flock interfered more because then that one spot at the end, you know, he does look like he's overcoming a greater challenge, you know, only to be cut short. He's gotten that far and he finally gets his chance to deal with this person's had that soliloquy in the beginning and taunted him and everything that he was going to get some retribution. I really thought there would be more meddling.
01:16:37
Speaker
It feels odd to say because there is quite a fair bit of interference in the match, but it definitely feels like
01:16:44
Speaker
this isn't an ODQ match, you're all clearly willing to just pile on why isn't this match just Benoit basically versus the entire flock the entire time? It makes a more interesting drama. Yeah, I mean story, but it's just like explanation wise. It feels almost like, you know, if they literally started the match out with Benoit fighting off the flock, so they're recovering and then it takes them time to get to that second point, that would make more sense maybe.
01:17:11
Speaker
Well, I think the problem is you're looking at the flock as being like this really intelligent group. That is true. Bear in mind, Van Hammer is wearing a mesh tank top. Yes. Are they all corvids? Are they all ravens? Because ravens are pretty smart. I would assume so. I think so, yeah. It's like the second smartest bird, supposedly. Yeah, that's true. They could have done it better. They could have all been perched on the rope.
01:17:38
Speaker
You know? Or like looming in the background like Kerry and merger just gonna wait until he messed up and then they all swarmed him and then he drove him back out and they all like flapped and went away.
01:17:50
Speaker
I think that would have been a much cooler narrative. Yeah. So you want to dress like the bird people from Buck Rogers. Yeah. I would be OK with medieval doctors with the bird mask. Oh, the plague doctor mask? Yes. That would be amazing. Or even the thing from M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, where they're like in those big creepy masks and long tendrils scratching the door.
01:18:17
Speaker
I think they could have done a lot more drama with this and they only really, maybe one or two other points. It was nice to see Saturn change its orbit and take out the flock, but the ending was probably the best part for me. So do you notice with Kidman when he comes after he interferes that he's scratching himself? Do you notice that? No. Oh. So he does his move and he's itching and looks eyes are unfocused. Huh. They're trying to make it look like he does heroin.
01:18:48
Speaker
That's serious, that's his character. That's his gimmick. That's his gimmick. His heroine. He's like scratching himself awkwardly and his eyes are all blackened from that sleeping. It's just weird that that's his gimmick. Yeah, I'm the guy that does heroin. But also, do shooting star press is off the paper. My question is, if you do heroin, can you learn to do shooting star press? I can't disprove that. Are we advertising drugs?
01:19:13
Speaker
I mean, you'd be less afraid of breaking your arm like Richard. I guess that is so. Yeah. Does this seem also weird to have Saturn do the the hold on someone that's unconscious? Yeah. I mean, the idea there, I guess, is that he has to be the one to win and they're kind of calling it a submission, I guess, that he passed out in the hold. But I mean, the guy is out. You can just call the net. No, he can't. He can't say or he could just put his foot on him and pin him. But yeah.
01:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, for me this got quite sloppy at points, but it was still a fun match. We had a lot of creative moves, especially on Saturn's part. He's very fast and amazingly nimble for a guy with so much muscle. They didn't quite seem to have their timing right at points and there was some miscommunication, but again, I'm not really sure how much prep time they had for this, so a lack of polish isn't surprising. Despite all that, they kept a pretty fast pace and they made a full-fledged story, and it was interesting to watch Saturn build to Raven's finisher as a good foreshadowing of that interference.
01:20:12
Speaker
And good on Tony for being sure to point that out. It's unfortunate that they had to do this at Starrcade rather than the Benoit vs Raven match that the story was building towards. You really want to do the blow off here if you can. But
Buff Bagwell vs Lex Luger Showdown
01:20:25
Speaker
what we got was fun, and Benoit got to look quite good with rapid comebacks and fighting off the flock before the numbers just became too much. It did make me want to see more of this story, so I look forward to that in the future.
01:20:38
Speaker
I will definitely give Benoit props for how far he jumped for the diving headbutt. Yes. As much as I wish he hadn't done the moves of many years, the fact that he covered three cores of ring was really impressive. As is coming the pattern, so that would feature the actual singles match between Raven and Benoit. I'm going to pay for the show and I'll pay for it again. Yeah. I guess he's better now. About three or four weeks goes by. I got better.
01:21:07
Speaker
Our fifth match is Buff Bagwell versus Lex Luger. The referee for this match, as I mentioned, is Billy Silverman, otherwise known as Mickey J, according to IMDb. You know, all white refs look alike. Yeah. I'm excited for this.
01:21:25
Speaker
Lex Luger, basically in the absence of Sting, has forced to become the major face of WCW as far as going to singles titles for the company. So he's a reliable guy to let's show up and wrestle the matches for them. So he, of course, is a big target in the duo. And thus Buff Bagwell, who joined as part of the You're the Buses are Against Us initiation to go from being Marcus Alexander Bagwell to Buff the stuff. Yes.
01:21:53
Speaker
got to use in his later career as well, which is good. Basically, he's the guy who's fighting him because he's the cocky, know-it-all member of the NWO. So he's the most natural person to pick a fight with a guy like that.
01:22:10
Speaker
He brings joy to my face. He does? Yeah, because he's enjoying his role. Like he is like a sleazy car salesman and he's having a fun time doing it. I'm not saying I enjoy that part of it, but the guy is really celebrating that role. And I appreciate that. I think you and I have precisely the opposite reactions to both. Oh, it's fashion sense is amazing too.
01:22:39
Speaker
I do love the red and black sleeveless leather coat. It actually looks pretty cool, I think. He is pretty annoying, Bob. Yes. But he does it well. Okay. It's like a palate cleanser. I love the coat that he comes out with and the POV theme count too, by the way.
01:22:56
Speaker
Sadly, Buff kind of kills my goodwill by creatively, quote, dubbing Lex Luger, Lex loser. He shows off a crowd sign reading Buff is the stuff. It's been a while since we've seen the former Marcus Alexander Bagwell and he's become much more annoying and punchable. Yes.
01:23:15
Speaker
Luger still has his very catchy theme. Kind of weird hair this time though. Did you guys feel like that? It's like there's something off about it. As weird as this sounds, Luger looks years older rather than one year older with his hair down and then with it up. Yeah. Like to me. It could only be me thing, but he looks older just because the hair is down. Okay. I don't know.
01:23:37
Speaker
He has used a flat iron. He has strained it a little bit. It's got some nice waves. He's probably using the argan oil, making sure that it is sleek as the rest of his physique.
01:23:51
Speaker
And oh, and I know exactly, I know exactly why I like, I'm sorry to go back to bag one. Go ahead, go ahead. But I have a very strong impression of him because he reminds me of Bennett from Commando. And I don't know why, I think it's just the hairline, you know, the beard and everything. Yeah, I can see that general look. Yeah.
01:24:14
Speaker
I don't enjoy him. I just enjoy the amount of effort he's putting into it. You can enjoy it. You can enjoy him if you want. I do like Rick Rude, so I don't know. He hasn't started wearing his stupid hat yet, so there's that. Yes, he has a hat. Bag will get the hat. He has a top hat later. It looks really dumb. I thought he would have like a giant pirate's hat or something. No, sadly.
01:24:37
Speaker
His ex-power tech one has an eye patch, but that's unrelated to being a pirate. Yes. The guy would have a giant blue pirate hat with like a stuffed parrot on it. It'd be amazing. There you go. Okay. And maybe a working cannon that shoots. Gaffetti. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they had the one that, um, Johnny back. Yeah. Yeah. They just repurpose that. He is a one piece character.
01:25:06
Speaker
Trying to avoid current match, it's okay. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. They shove each other around the ring, and Luger proves the stronger. Luger spits on Bagwell, who dramatically falls like he was punched. Well, that's a first, says Tony. Luger continues dominating and hits a slam, and military presses Bagwell, considering hurling him to the floor but dumping him in the ring instead.
01:25:32
Speaker
Luger clotheslines Bagwell out of the ring, and Bagwell calls for Vincent, who comes down the ramp and gives him some positive reinforcement. Luger wins brawls outside and inside the ring, but Bagwell pokes the eyes to take control and uses basic strikes and choking to wear Luger down. Vincent joins the fun when Silverman is... when Silverman... Silverman! Silverman! Leaving that one in. Almost as good as Goldberg. Yep.
01:26:01
Speaker
Goldberg and Silverman would have it have That's an awesome tag team. It could be a good 80s cop show as well. Yeah. Yes. There you go. Let's follow NBC Vincent joins the fun when Silverman is lecturing Bagwell about the choking with Luger on the ropes Bagwell turns Luger's head to the camera and says hey mom. I'm not doing so good Bagwell thinks he's funnier than he is
01:26:26
Speaker
Luger gets a brief comeback with a big boot and diving clothesline, but he still days from Bagwell's stunning offense, so Bagwell recovers first and covers for two. Bagwell rear chinlock and headlock interrupted by a brief Luger comeback back to the rear chinlock and sleeper, just as I feel my soul leaving my body. Luger finally keeps the arm up on the third check on the sleeper and gets his knees up on a Bagwell splash. And that starts the true Luger comeback with clotheslines, atomic drops, and a running forearm.
01:26:53
Speaker
Vincent tries to interfere, and Luger hurls him into Bagwell. The announcers say the ref could throw this out, but he cares about the match too much. Darn. Also, what? Bagwell knocks Luger into Silverman to knock the ref out, but Luger gets a power slam and puts Bagwell in the torture rack.
01:27:11
Speaker
Randy Savage runs in, but gets military pressed and racked himself. Scott Norton comes down with what looks like Rick Steiner's dog collar wrapped around his hand, and Dex Luger then drags Bagwell on top and wakes Silverman for the three count and the win for Bagwell. NWO B-Team theme count, three. You can't put Savage in B-Team, you can't call it that. No, the B-Team theme is for Bagwell. Okay.
01:27:40
Speaker
I spotted a Sting Fears Cartman sign in the crowd. It is definitely the 90s. Oh yeah. Miss Elizabeth runs down to check on Savage and helps him walk out, as Vincent nicely lets her take most of the weight. Good guy. Great gentleman. If Savage wasn't coming down, who do you think would come down to this place? If he wasn't booked for this show? I guess it probably would have been Conan. Oh, I suppose. Okay, you're right. That makes sense. Never mind.
01:28:10
Speaker
Thoughts on this one?
01:28:30
Speaker
I do go back and watch again, others I do not. For instance, the 30 plus minute Sting Hawk versus the Nasty Boys match, a few shows back. I watched with Bob and didn't bother watching again. Yeah. No. Yeah. So. It did give us the Scorpohawks though. That's true. Something good came out of it. Yes. Yes. Questionably good. Well, I want to get the shirt to a little workout. Yeah.
01:28:56
Speaker
I'm just gonna get a brand. Right there. Okay. That won't be a questionable decision in a couple decades. We'll color it in. What the hell was this thing?
01:29:10
Speaker
Anyways, I mentioned that because I did not watch this match more than once. I watched it with Bob and I'm like, nope, not doing it again. So I, out-purposing, I don't hate Bofagwole's actual matches. Obviously the character is intentionally punchable, although he definitely goes a step above that. And I've seen him act in two movies so far, so that also doesn't help.
01:29:33
Speaker
I don't expect a great match from this. So I can expect he can do good matches when he's got good opponents and for the reason they book it to not be 15 headlocks. Yes. And chin locks.
01:29:45
Speaker
Weirdly, this match was planned in the long run, but yet has that constant stop-and-start feel like they were calling a match in the ring. Like the British Bulldog, Bret Hart match famously is, somewhere in 1992, where he has to coach, supposedly has to coach Bulldog through every spot because he's forgotten all of them. So they constantly stop being to tell him the next six spots.
01:30:07
Speaker
They planned this for a month, so I feel like they would have had this worked out by now. I guess this was the plan. Yeah. To be really boring and feel like a Scott Hall promo in a match form.
01:30:20
Speaker
I would say my biggest issue is we don't get much actual proper Luger selling. Yes. You can't really hear. He's doing it. But the miking on this show is weird. Like there's points on the show too where I'm sure the crowd is actually really yelling and you can't hear them well. So I think the same thing has happened with the Luger selling.
01:30:40
Speaker
There's only a few points where you actually get to hear it. Yeah. I think a lot of the cameramen are actually in the crowd because they keep on cutting to the other wrestlers in the crowd. I mean, and other parts of the show. Yeah. And it looks like everything is panned in. So then the mic might be picking that up if they're using those mics. Yeah. Now there is a guy standing on what is usually dubbed the fat guy step.
01:31:02
Speaker
Because there's a little step next to the ring that usually Jackie Crockett, who is a large man, would stand on and film from wherever the ropes. In this case, it's not him. It's a different guy there. You do see a bunch of times during the previous match. You see him almost get taken up by Saturn, for instance, being shoved nearly into him.
01:31:21
Speaker
And at one point, you get to see him pretty creatively, actually. He's trying to film on the floor. So he has a camera, he's holding it down by his legs and pointing it like, that's actually creative. I'm covering that into the Bagwell match because it's really interesting. I'm discussing cameramen in previous matches now. That's not a good sign, is it? It is not a good sign.
01:31:41
Speaker
The other big thing I've issued, obviously, is how we're booked the finishes, especially given the setup we have here. So I can assume that the people that are farther away, like La Parca and Sequo Pei, or like four or five rows in the back somewhere, or Lodi and the Flock, who may or may not be back at this point,
01:32:01
Speaker
I understand them not doing anything, but... So, just in the front row, we could easily hop for that little barrel barricade, we have what? Harlem Heat, the Ultima Dragon, Alistairio's out there. Risterio, thank you. Mortis is there. Glacier's right next to Rey Mysterio. Oh, yeah, yeah. Greg Valentine, you know. Yeah, oh, I mean, I'm not picturing him hopping over any barricades anytime soon. Yeah, it's true. But so, are we supposed to believe that this is a show of solidarity, that they're here for the show?
01:32:30
Speaker
And when it was blatantly seen to win matches, they're like, huh. Yeah. There they go again. It feels very weird that not one WCW wrestler jumps in to assist.
01:32:41
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. You could easily have this version ending happen, they interfere and say they stop Savage and then Norden somehow come up on the other side and attacks him. If you really want to have this screw job finished, that's fine, I guess. But the fact that that heals two different times, three if you count Vincent, run past all these faces that should be fighting the company against cheating. And they just kind of go, huh, yeah, that's not good.
01:33:07
Speaker
It's bad enough finish as it is for me because overbooked and it's a screwed up finish. But the fact that the faces could easily help and don't is extra insulting.
01:33:18
Speaker
I clearly like this match more than you guys. Okay, fair enough. Just because it was like a palate cleanser. Like after the previous ones, it's not often that I see someone that, you know, maybe it was the mic situation, but there's very few times that anyone's louder than Luger. My term that I came up with was wind bagging.
01:33:39
Speaker
because he was so loud when he was doing the move, not necessarily getting hurt. It wasn't boring to me. I enjoyed, they had some good exchanges here and there, but there was some disjointedness. But I think where they had a pause or something, they filled it with their characters.
01:34:02
Speaker
That's stupid. Look at me, Mom. That was dumb and everything, but it totally fit the Flash and all the other crazy stuff that he had done before that. So there was never a point where they weren't giving a good performance, even if they were standing still on the mat.
01:34:19
Speaker
Even during the headlock and chinlock spot? Even during that? Oh, you mean the Nuvo bear hug? Yes. I think I honestly zoned out during those parts. There we go. And I was just thinking about everything else that was working for me. So you got the Cliff Notes version of this match inadvertently, and that's why you like it more. Right. I mean, basically. No, I get you, though. He does have a lot of character.
01:34:47
Speaker
I mean, even Luger does, but I enjoyed, from the very beginning, I was like, okay, I gotta see what this is.
01:34:55
Speaker
It kind of carried me through the match, even through the monotony and repetitiveness. I know that Al doesn't like these endings anything, but I think the ending is the only acceptable ending to have the outcome because you could legitimately say, all right, you know, there's no way that Bagwell could beat him. So this is how they did it. Yeah.
01:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'm much more without on this one. This did not have very much to offer It had a little energy at the start and at the end and it was cool to see Luger get to rack Bagwell and then Savage as well But the middle for me was a tremendously boring series of headlocks chinlock sleeper holds It's okay to do a series of holds if you're transitioning through several different ones and doing creative things with them but done so repetitively and slowly like this it was bear hug boring for me and
01:35:46
Speaker
It sapped the limited momentum that the match could attain. At least Luger blessedly hit a faster series of moves as it went to a finish. Trim out the stalling and the lengthy rest hold sequence in the middle, and this would be kind of dull but short. But with it, it's very dull, and it's actually the longest match on the card.
01:36:07
Speaker
We got 16 and a half minutes for this. Just a really boring match with, like we commented, a really weird ending. So yeah, I was not thrilled by this.
01:36:18
Speaker
Last year, I wasn't as hot for Luger's previous match, the one with the imp with the giant. But I also gave them the doubt because that was basically they booked a Hogan match for Luger to fight him. It's easier for a guy with less experience to work through. Yeah. In this case, part of Buff Bagwell's character arc, per se, anyway he joins the NBA was he says he's been in the company seven years and he'll give him a chance. So there's no you got to get an easy match because he experienced things. Yeah.
01:36:48
Speaker
I do remember how I got through the holds. Okay. I was counting sting masks. There are a lot of them, aren't there? Yeah. I recall that now. There's one shot, I forget which match it's leading up to. I think it was up to the Hennig page one. They do a panning shot across the crowd during somebody's entrance and just sting mask, sting, sting, sting, sting, sting, all over the place. It would have been great if one of them was just sting and he stood up. That would be great. And then they cut off.
01:37:18
Speaker
Kind of like what they would do with Edge, where Edge would just come out of the crowd and then do a flip, kick the one, then leave. Yeah, yeah. He could have been part of the flock. Yeah, he would fit that tone. That's when he was getting ready to become a vampire, so you gotta prioritize things. And if they got Miyavi to bite him, that would be even better. Not Miyavi. Gacked. Gacked. Yes.
01:37:47
Speaker
As long as we imitated then like the first 15 minutes of that movie and not like the remaining two hours. Hey, pure depression. He actually got skills. He threw someone up in the air for like 25 seconds or something. Yeah. Any other defenses of this match, John? I'm just thinking of moon child right now. Probably for the best. Yeah.
01:38:09
Speaker
These two would have a rematch on the next Nitro, which Luger would win. So this match was entirely pointless. Okay. Interesting. Not like a match at the sold out, which you would think given the pattern of the show was coming, but no. Yeah. Literally Nitro. Yeah. Next night. Weird. So speaking of sold out, Savage's interference in the match would lead to a Savage-Lugar match at sold out. Okay.
01:38:36
Speaker
Our sixth match is Kurt Hennig versus Diamond Dallas Page for Hennig's WCW United States Heavyweight Championship. The referee for this match is Randy Anderson.
01:38:50
Speaker
Coming off of the previous show we saw, they've been doing this long-running story where DDP become a full-fledged face and is against the NWO. He famously pretends to join and then attacks Kevin Nash, which does not end well for him in the short term. He would get to challenge current headache for the U.S. title, which he had taken from Break Flair. They have two matches in a row on Becht of Nitros, both with winning DQs, making it clear that DDP could beat him, but the NWO would always interfere to stop that.
01:39:19
Speaker
Curiously, following that second match, they beat up DDP. And so the next week, DDP is not on the show at all. And Flair comes out and challenges Henig for him, which is kind of weird. He basically gets a promo on the guy he just been shooting with for somebody else. And in the same promo, he challenges Savage to a match, which also doesn't happen. Huh. Yeah.
01:39:45
Speaker
But yeah, so the story is just that DDP clearly, if given a fair shot, can win the title and finally get a big win of NWO, but they've been doing everything they possibly can to stop it. Okay. Kurt Hennig makes his entrance. NWO theme count? Four. Hennig dubs himself Flawless as he walks down the ramp, which is an adequate replacement for Perfect. DDP gets big cheers for his entrance, but we cut to the crowd, so we mostly miss his pyro.
01:40:14
Speaker
The leather vest is a neat look. As he takes the vest off, we see that DDP has taped up ribs. Paige rolls Henig up for two right off the bat, and rapidly goes for the diamond cutter, but Henig escapes and rolls out of the ring. Too smart for that, Henig says. Back in, they quickly trade strikes, throws, and holds, leading to a neat, spinning headlock takedown by Paige into a side headlock.
01:40:39
Speaker
Henig pulls the hair and knees Page and the ribs to escape, but Page faults over an attempted back body drop to pull Henig's hair and send him butt over tea kettle. Page lands punches, and one sends Henig flipping sideways over the ropes, but Henig snaps DDP on the ropes to take control. Henig abuses Page's ribs and hurls him through the ropes to the outside. A cameraman is too close and Page knocks a part off the front.
01:41:05
Speaker
Hennig chucks page into the steps to send the steps sliding away. Say it's about a point six on the John Cena step hatred scale. Yeah, for sure.
01:41:17
Speaker
I can't believe this is the first time I'm bringing this up. John Cena is an expert at flinging the ring steps as far as he possibly can. Whenever somebody chucks him into them, like the seps personally insulted his mother or something. He's Enigma Montoya and they're the person who killed his father. Yes, yes. From that point on, I have judged every time this spot occurs in a match off of John Cena's. Yes. It takes that mood to scale up leading. Yes, yeah.
01:41:47
Speaker
Back in, Hennig tears at Page's rib tape and works the ribs. Surprisingly aggressive, elevated rear chinlock from Hennig. He cuts off a DDP comeback with a big boot and clothesline for two. Hennig uses the ropes on a headlock and gets a two count when Page fades momentarily. Page gets his energy back and gets free with a jawbreaker and they trade blows. Page sends Hennig outside with a punch and leaps over the top rope onto Hennig, landing on his feet.
01:42:15
Speaker
Paige uses the barricade to beat Henig up and tosses Henig back in the ring, then pulls him crotch first into the ring post. Dusty asks Tenay if that's called a Huracam Rana or a Johnny Come Lately. Tony says it's called Crunch Time.
01:42:33
Speaker
Hennig uses the ropes to block a diamond cutter and puts his feet on the ropes for two. Rapid sequence of two counts for both off of a page roll up and inside cradle and a vicious Hennig clothesline. Page escapes the Hennig plex, formerly perfect plex. That's a much better name. They called the flawless plex? No, they should have. Yeah.
01:42:54
Speaker
Wavering on their feet, they land simultaneous punches and collapse. Paige gets up first. Henig reverses a whip, but Paige floats over Henig and smoothly hits the diamond cutter for the three count and the win. Huge cheers as Paige gets the win and heads into the crowd to celebrate. We get a terrific wide shot of Paige holding up the belt in the midst of the crowd and then giving the diamond cutter sign. Thoughts on this one? So for me, this match is an interesting contrast to what the last match was.
01:43:23
Speaker
because i was not as negative obviously on this match as i was the previous match but i was less positive the first time i watched it i thought it was kind of slow like i had a weird pacing to it but i really watched it again noticing more like you tend to do i know this is a it's interesting because it's methodical but they punctuate every moment quite well so they'll be slow for like 30 seconds into a big spot and so on and so forth
01:43:51
Speaker
This is an interesting contrast to that match and also to the lucha match, where it's, you know, dive, dive, dive, flip, flip, flip. There's almost no breaks for the most part. They find a good middle ground between having a slow match with like sudden impact moves and spots really well. So I definitely like it better the second time. I noticed more nuance to it for sure. It's less slow and more as they steady. Yeah. It's nice to see DUP finally get, uh,
01:44:18
Speaker
his big moment and actually win the US title especially given for us we just saw him literally a year ago trying to win the US title and how he finally gets it yeah yeah good story progression for us there absolutely yeah yeah henny good is a really good job of
01:44:34
Speaker
selling really strongly but he managed to sort of reign in his general desire to oversell like taking punches and do like double spins like he's in a deck of chan movie he does have the helicopter spin over the ropes though he does yeah he gives one in but yeah a lot of images he did a lot of that that did look nice when he rolled over
01:44:56
Speaker
But he can sometimes overdo it to the point where it seems comical, but he's generally good about making it just make the matches look bigger. Obviously his matches with Brett have very famous for that. So I like that it's a slow, but steady match that actually builds DDP up and just how impactful Diamond Cutter is. Once he hits it, that's Elders.
01:45:17
Speaker
I do have to wonder though, while I appreciate the lack of interference in Screwy Finish, why the interview doesn't bother to help him out, but they just helped by Five Plot. Yeah. Slight plot hole. But that's one I can accept because it gets me- Well see, they were worried about coming out to interfere with the match because they thought for sure the WCW guys would stop them. Yeah. Because they have no memory of the last 15 minutes. Very possible.
01:45:44
Speaker
Well, this is my first time seeing, I can't even think of his name, I don't want to say Heimdall. Henig. Henig. Henig. You know, I was actually kind of happy with the way that he did make DDP look. There was some questionable jumping and rolling and flipping and a few things, but you know, you got to carry that momentum.
01:46:06
Speaker
One thing that did surprise me was I actually thought at multiple points in this match that it would be over. They did a really good job where when they clashed it was something big, it was a nice combo. Even though I thought it looked silly at the time, they did a nice where they both took a shot at the jaw and they both just really fell down, showing that they were equally matched. Metal Gear Solid, Solid versus Liquid Snake, they do the double punch. It's that kind of scene.
01:46:40
Speaker
I was actually surprised at the bit where it looked like Diamond Dallas Page had the diamond cutter ready and he caught him hitting, just like grabbed the ropes. Yes. It looked good and it was a nice transition from there. I enjoyed the match. It was definitely better than the last one. I hate to admit that, but yes, it was a lot better. And it's nice to see DDP being able to come up on top, even though he has an injury and, you know, it looks like he had more to overcome in this match.
01:46:53
Speaker
It's something you would see in a comic book, but yeah. Yes. Yeah.
01:47:12
Speaker
Yeah, really nice match here. There's a tiny bit of slowdown with a quick walk outside by Henig early on and the mid-match Henig headlock, but unlike the Bagwell vs. Luger match for me, Henig does things during this headlock, making it more interesting, and Paige is really energetic fighting free to get the match's energy back.
01:47:32
Speaker
Hennig pinballed it around for Paige nicely, and Paige returned the favor and really sold how much Hennig's offense was hurting him, especially once the rib abuse started up. Some really nice moves from both. They had a great finishing sequence leading to a really nice diamond cutter out of nowhere. It was surprising. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, I'm kind of used to that with DDP, but I haven't seen this match before. No, me neither. When he suddenly hit that one, oh, oh, oh, he got it. It took me a moment to recognize it.
01:48:02
Speaker
Yeah, I gave it a hot ending, I thought, and a really great crowd reaction. They immediately are on their feet as soon as they realize what's happened. Good match, and like you, Al, just how weird is it that the N.W.O. comes out in force to help Bagwell win nothing, but doesn't come out to help Henig retain a title? It's like, get your priorities straight, guys.
01:48:24
Speaker
There is one possibly you could put out there, which is that, so Henry comes out wearing his traditional singlet. He changes the colors a lot, but he always wears that singlet from this part. But he's not wearing black and white. That's true. So maybe they saw on the back, like, oh, I see how it is. But he does come out to their theme, annoyingly enough. Well, the PA guy that worked for the interview. Oh, okay. He sees on his side. I gotcha.
01:48:49
Speaker
So you're just telling me that teal is the reason why this person lost. Yes. Colors are very important, John. You don't understand fashion. Yeah. No, what's funny is we joked on the thing on the previous show about how mentioning how the British Bulldog joined the deal like it was planned. And because then like what they have given a black and white version of is Rupert Tanya gear.
01:49:19
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, well, you have a current headache now who always wears pastels and these things that's, let's see him in black and white. Oh, no. Look, okay. So here's the thing. If you go to a formal party and you're supposed to wear a tux. Right. If you're not wearing a tux, do they let you in? Probably not. Okay. So when you're wearing a tux. I'm wearing a tux shirt in this situation. Like a t-shirt.
01:49:48
Speaker
See, when you're wearing a tux, what colors are you wearing? Maroon and white. Oh, okay. It's that kind of party. Reverse NWL Wolfpack, I guess? I don't know. No, no, you're right. It's a black and white party. So if you don't wear black and white, you get thrown out. Gotcha.
01:50:10
Speaker
Now that he's been put in this spot to be a strong midcard champion, DEP will have lots of really interesting matches, basically defending the title the best he can, overcoming the odds. He'll sort of get sucked into the Benoit Raven feud, which will have a bunch of really interesting matches through 98. We get a shot of Guerrero talking to Mark Madden for WCW's website, and it's on to the next match. But...
01:50:38
Speaker
Before we get to the last two matches, we need to briefly cover something that happened at the WWF's Survivor Series 1997. I'll be as brief as I can as we are primarily focused on WCW, but this has bearing on things that happen in these final two matches, so it needs to be mentioned.
01:50:58
Speaker
WWF stars Bret Hitman Hart and The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels did not get along. Back at WrestleMania XII in 1996, Hart had lost the title to Michaels in an Iron Man match. At WrestleMania XIII in 1997, the expectation was that Michaels would return the favor, losing the title back to Hart.
01:51:21
Speaker
Instead, Michaels discovered a career-ending knee injury, and infamously lost his smile, surrendering the title at a Thursday TV special. The career-ending knee injury turned out to be somewhat less so, only leaving him out for a few months, but did conveniently allow him to forego losing a match to heart. To be clear here, my understanding is that Michaels did have a knee injury, just that the severity was significantly exaggerated. Yes.
01:51:47
Speaker
Things got worse from there as they escalated a war of words and even got in a brawl backstage, and by fall of 1997 it was pretty clear that they could not coexist. No. Meanwhile, WWF owner Vince McMahon had signed Bret Hart to a big contract in 1996, but in 1997 told Hart, then the WWF World Heavyweight Champion, that he could not at the current time afford what he'd promised Hart. He advised Hart to negotiate with WCW.
01:52:16
Speaker
Eventually, Hart signed a contract with WCW, and his departure from the WWF was set. But, he was still champion.
01:52:25
Speaker
Now, you may recall that we mentioned that in late 1995, Medusa had left the WWF while still Women's Champion and thrown her title in a trash can on WCW television. Hart swore that he would not do anything like that, but McMahon told him that he needed to drop the title at Survivor Series 1997 to Shawn Michaels, who Hart hated, and in Hart's home country of Canada.
01:52:50
Speaker
Hart offered alternatives and got McMahon to agree to a non-finish to the Survivor Series match. So Hart would leave Survivor Series as champion, but surrender it on WWF's Monday Night Raw show before he left for WCW. However, late in the match between Hart and Michaels at Survivor Series, a spot was planned in which Michaels would get Hart in Hart's own sharpshooter submission hold, its similar distinct scorpion death lock. But Hart would reverse out.
01:53:21
Speaker
Instead, when Michaels put the sharpshooter on Hart, referee Earl Hebner ordered the timekeeper to ring the bell, signaling the end of the match. Famously, when the timekeeper didn't immediately react, Vince McMahon yelled at him to ring the f***ing bell. And that was it. The match was over, seemingly a submission victory for Michaels. The event would come to be known as the Montreal Screwjob.
01:53:46
Speaker
The WWF locker rooms were in chaos following Hart's exit. Wrestlers were angry at what they saw as a betrayal of one of the WWF's most respected wrestlers, some threatening to leave the company. Hart himself reportedly advised them to stay and fulfill their contractual obligations rather than threaten their careers on his account. But McMahon had strained his relationship with many of his performers near to the breaking point.
01:54:12
Speaker
For more on this story, I highly recommend having a listen to the New Generation Project podcast. The whole run is well worth your time, as it's a great podcast, but in particular, have a listen to episodes 79, 80, and 81, which cover Survivor Series 1997 and the documentary Hitman Heart, Wrestling with Shadows. They cover these events in exceptional detail.
01:54:36
Speaker
Yeah, just a note on that. So, Fred Hart, he's getting a documentary crew filming him because this is the end of his run in WDF. And obviously they have no idea what's coming in Montreal. So it just happens he has people filming his daily life leading up to this big moment. So there's a second camera crew not working with Rick Mann backstage during all of this.
01:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, that captures a lot of the moments that are around it. It's kind of, it's an amazing, like, coincidence of fate. Yes. That there actually is footage. Yes. That was the event took man, but not all that footage out, but someone else is shooting it, they have no control over that. Yeah. So interesting times, huh? Yeah. And that's less than, less than a month, by the bottom of the show, right? Yeah, it was the Survivor Series is in November. Right. So yeah, this would have happened about a month before this. Yeah.
01:55:28
Speaker
Our seventh match is Larry Zabisco versus Eric Bischoff with Scott Hall for control of WCW Monday Nitro. The referee for this match is Brett Hipman Hart. So around the point of Starrcade 96, they revealed that the real backer of the NWO was Eric Bischoff.
01:55:53
Speaker
And mind you how you explain him being powerbombed through the stage by people that apparently work for him, like Kevin Nash. I don't know. Deep cover. Oh, okay. Yes. He usually committed the bit, apparently. So once he comes openly out as the leader, he's throwing his all the power around. It kind of wavers between shows how much he can actually do.
01:56:16
Speaker
because he's able to override some matches, but then not others. And then he's controlled, but there's also a board and Dylan speaks for them. It's really unclear how nebulous the power structure is here exactly. And to be clear, he's the executive vice president of WSCW. So he is an actual executive there. He's not just like a character, yeah. Yeah. But he's also that as a character.
01:56:41
Speaker
Behind the scenes, he saw what fun and tension they were getting and wanted to be part of it. So he made himself his character, who'd just been an announcer suddenly the focal point of the interview as much as he could. Yeah. That's basically, that's really the way I did it. I'm sure he'd tell you otherwise in his podcast, but we know why he did it.
01:56:59
Speaker
He was being really vocal and authoritative with his power. Lozabisco becomes sort of the de facto voice of the WCW locker room on Nitro. Not really sure why exactly, other than just he's a wrestler, but he is. So they set up that there's issues between him and Bischoff.
01:57:17
Speaker
Zvisko is attacked by Nvuo, trying to help somebody. And Bishroff knocks him out, obviously with a lot of help, and then poses for a picture over him. And then he just interprets the leaflets celebrating his victory over there. He's really laying into Zvisko.
01:57:33
Speaker
Bisco, being very high-tempered, really wants to fight Bischoff. Bischoff denies it, tries to put it off, tries to put it off. Finally, he agrees to do it if J.J. Dillon puts control of Bunny Nitro on the line, which he does. So this match is not just like a personal feud in a fight, it's for control of a show.
01:57:54
Speaker
which they set up in a really long, drawn-out way on the last Nitro before this, where D&W takes over the second half of Nitro, and they spend 20 odd minutes at least changing out the ring curtains, pulling down the sign to bring new signs up, literally cutting the WSW metal placard things they have, cutting them down, cutting everything out for the last half of the show.
01:58:21
Speaker
Just a show, like a tease, like here's what NWO Monday Nitro would be like, because that's what they want. There's good and bad points to our parts of the show prep, I find. You get to get away with only watching Buff Bagwell versus Lex Lucre once. True. Where I have to watch it multiple times to do the show notes for it. Yes. I don't have to watch NWO Monday Nitro. True. And you do. True.
01:58:48
Speaker
I mean, if you want to see in real time where they make all the camera guys take off the DevsW shirts and put on Nitro shirts, go ahead. Real time, baby. That is an episode I will not be looking up anytime soon. I get the idea, but it's way too long. Montage. Yes, exactly. That's what we should have done. Hopefully not to the theme.
01:59:12
Speaker
Heart is out first with a vague approximation of his WWF theme. It's okay, but nowhere near as good. Bischoff is out next with his own theme. No NWO theme. I think that just actually turned Bischoff into the biggest face on the show for me. The backwards ball cap looks dumb though. At least he chucks it to the crowd really fast. He's wearing kick pads and Hall gives him some gloves to put on too.
01:59:40
Speaker
Zabisco, appropriately enough, gets the Nitro theme and a Nitro-sized load of Pyro. I think someone heard the theme start up and just thought it was the opening of Nitro. Oh, oh, hit the button. It's a good theory, actually. Yeah. Zabisco wears a great sparkly black jacket with a big gold Z on the front and legend on the back. The announcers admit that they are blatantly rooting for Zabisco and hope that they get to go slap Bischoff.
02:00:07
Speaker
Heart checks Zabisco and Bischoff to make sure that no one's hiding any foreign objects, and Bischoff gives him a gigantic smile as he does. The crowd gives a Larry chant for Zabisco, who looks genuinely touched by that. Bischoff wards Zabisco off with punches and kicks, and celebrates after tagging him with punches that really didn't do much. After more punches and kicks do nothing, Bischoff rolls out to get advice from movie buff Scott Hall, who proposes the crane kick from The Karate Kid.
02:00:36
Speaker
It's probably more topical than most movie references we got on dubstep. It's only like 13 years earlier. Back in, Zabisco lands strikes, and Bischoff tells Hart they were close fists. They weren't.
02:00:47
Speaker
Hart warns Zabisco anyway. Zabisco goes for the legs and eats a big roundhouse kick to the head that knocks him down, but Bischoff wastes time celebrating. Zabisco lands punches in the corner and throws Bischoff to the mat and rubs his face on it. Hart breaks that up for hair pulling, and breaks up a sleeper hold and head scissors hold for alleged choking. Zabisco uses a standing, reverse figure four so that he can't be accused of choking, and Bischoff makes the ropes. So Zabisco drops on his leg, and Bischoff rolls out, limping.
02:01:16
Speaker
And Zabisco rams Bischoff into the post and gets another lecture from Hart, then throws Bischoff into the steps for about a 0.2 Siena. Pretty weak, yeah. Not too much distance there. Another lecture, and Tony theorizes that Hart might be NWO. Hart stops a Zabisco, yeah. Hart stops a Zabisco punch in the corner. Sorry, here's this. Alpine's a heart attack here. Yeah, yeah. Jeez. He said Hart stops. Yeah, I had to say it.
02:01:47
Speaker
Now I can only think of that. Okay. Heart stops the Zabisco punch in the corner and Bischoff lands a roundhouse kick, then limps around and lands weak punches and some pretty nice kicks. Zabisco guards and absorbs Bischoff's offense as the crowd chants,
02:02:05
Speaker
Bischoff tires out and Zabisco confidently calls for more, but Bischoff has nothing left. Zabisco takes over with a suplex and a neckbreaker and props him in the corner. Zabisco punches Hall when he tries to interfere, but Hart drags Zabisco away. Hall frees Bischoff and slips a metal object into his kickpad. When Zabisco comes back over, Bischoff kicks him, but the object goes flying before he even hits.
02:02:33
Speaker
Dusty, bless him, tries to cover by saying it flew out from the impact, but it definitely flies out well before the blow even lands. You mentioned the lawsuit of getting hit with a piece of metal, being in the crowd and getting hit in the head. Yeah, it's like it's more dangerous to the front row than to Zabisco. Zabisco's out cold anyway, and Bischoff celebrates and talks to Hart, but Hart slugs Bischoff to knock him out. Hart gives a great casual shrug to an astonished Hall.
02:03:02
Speaker
Hall gets in and does a weird little jig and charges. But Hart easily takes him down and puts the sharpshooter on him. Hall taps as Zabisco wakes up and chokes Bish off with his own belt. Hart raises Zabisco's arm, declaring him the winner. It's not outright said, but I'd guess it's by disqualification for the kind of loaded kick since Hart very clearly saw the entire thing. I think he dodges, actually. He like leans back.
02:03:30
Speaker
A little bit. You see him tilt his head and watch the metal piece fly. Okay, yeah. He never sees the metal go by. He's like, he looks at it, he follows it. Huh? Yeah, he looks a pass for sure, yeah. Tony is elated and says the NWO can tear up any set they want, but they can't hide the fact that they're losers. Ouch. This whole match, I'm sitting here like making stupid puns in my head about Bischoff cookies and Nabisco crackers.
02:04:00
Speaker
Like, you know, desperately trying to call him Nilla Wafer or something. Nice.
02:04:11
Speaker
All right, thoughts on this match? It's an odd one. It's a weird kind of mix of comedy and serious wrestling. Because they're definitely trying to play up how comedically overconfident Bischoff is with his kicks and strikes. But then abruptly he'll do an actual kick and knocks Larry down and it's like, okay, what's the which? What is it?
02:04:32
Speaker
I think they do a decent job on that point of splitting it somewhat where Bischoff's punches don't tend to do much. Bischoff's kicks tend to be the things that will actually knock Larry down or something. And they look better too. They look a lot better. Yeah.
02:04:50
Speaker
No, I couldn't see that point of view. So last time we got Biska was what? First Battle Ball, right? Yes, when he was tasked with making something watchable out of a elegante. You were in there the first time, but yeah. Yeah. Same guy. Yeah. But yeah, so it's interesting. It's been a six year show gap for them, I believe. 91, 97, yeah.
02:05:12
Speaker
It's not quite as hard of a task this time, making something interesting out of what he's given, for sure. But yeah, it's something interesting that they put so much faith in him for this match with a non-wrestler, but also with these implied large stakes too. I'm sure there was some WWE guys in the back like, you know, I could have fought for control of the show. Doug had to probably back their moping, you know?
02:05:39
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting. I like, they, they make a clear divide between what Bitchoff can actually realistically do, which is occasionally hit a kick that sort of stuns you. And what this group do, which is basically the control when he's not being pushed away by Bret Hart. They tell a good story here. I will say, as much as I like the way the story is played out, I'm annoyed because part of it, because they're obsessed with insider lingo throughout it. They keep referring to like questioning whether Bret Hart is a tweener.
02:06:09
Speaker
Oh, that's that part. Yeah, it's several times. Yeah, they keep speculating. He's a tweener. I'm like, okay. Most people don't know what the hell you mean. If you don't know wrestling lingo, you think doesn't look like he's about 12.
02:06:25
Speaker
He's in between something. Yes. Yeah. He's not a face or a heel, he's in between. Yeah. And I know that, but I'm also watching this 22 years later, so unless it's really a fair comparison. And that's not like it's a one-off thing. They do a lot of that. And WF does it as well. VintookMan talks about there's no face in heels anymore, that Shado Gray promo from... Yeah. I think also 97. 96. I believe so, yes. 97, I think. I think so, yeah.
02:06:53
Speaker
Obviously the biggest thing for me is that the finish is both complicated and vague. Because it relies upon outside interference, the foreign object, but then the referee not being a bad guy, and then a war in the match to just go for some reason. They never state. They just say the winner of the match is Larry Zepisco. No, yeah. It's weird that he doesn't like go to the guy and say yo, he went blah blah blah.
02:07:21
Speaker
I do like that Bret Hart, he's being paid a lot of money to be here at this company, but he's also not super excited about the story. So he has fun, I let him do something. When he interacts with Scott Hall, I clearly having fun with them. Yes, yes. They haven't worked really well. But then when he's supposed to be celebrating the victory with them, he stopped to tie his shoe.
02:07:42
Speaker
Basically he was like celebrating the corner and he's like, yay. And he's like, yeah, yeah. Doesn't want to trip, you know, no, no, no. But when they shake hands, he actually looks the other way. He's like, yeah, whatever. But I kind of like that. I really loved the little casual shrug that he gives to Hall, though. That is that's actually one of my favorite moments of the night. That and the Goldberg smile. No, yeah. Oh.
02:08:06
Speaker
He's just really disinterested in this overall story. They give him a couple of things he finds in music. Yeah. Enjoyable. So he gets to have fun with that, otherwise he didn't really care. So maybe he is a tweener. They're questionable storytelling. You gotta be impartial as a ref. Yeah, definitely.
02:08:25
Speaker
There's definitely a very large difference in their fighting styles. I didn't really like the commentary during this, where they were talking about, like, martial artists can only do A. That the wrestlers can do everything, you know. It was funny to hear MMA mention, though. That's like a very new thing at this point, actually, if you think about it, so. That's true.
02:08:49
Speaker
But, I mean, this whole thing, I'm like, okay, well, if this guy's a martial artist, I'm like, he has absolutely no conditioning. If that's what he's playing up. I'm like, it should be the other way around, if anything. But I really like the story where, you know, they hastily put this metal thing in his foot guard and he's gonna kick him.
02:09:14
Speaker
And, you know, they do it real quick and like shot away. Like you see him like fumbling trying to get in there. But yeah, he tries to put it underneath at first and then you realize you have to put it in the top part of it. Yeah. Cause it's got to kick him with the top part of the foot. He's like, Oh, crud. Cause the straps in the middle of the foot. So, you know, he can't really like put it there. He puts it in the top. So it then tries to put the top on it. It doesn't even land on his foot or cover it. We.
02:09:37
Speaker
Heart's just watching this play out and I think that it's a really good way of looking at it. He's like, look, man, I did my best not to disqualify. Yeah. You know, like stop gloating. I think that they really wanted to have that turn at that point. So it was, it was like, I expect it to happen and I was, it was a good lead up to it. And the fact that like Heart is
02:10:02
Speaker
as you said, or like disinterested or whatever. But I really do see it as kind of like, this could have gone a different direction, whatever. You know, at this point I have to do something or say something and he's in a position to, you know, dole out what needs to be dolled out. And I know I like the ending. It wasn't weird for some reason.
02:10:23
Speaker
The interesting thing to me about putting the metal plate in, other than that it goes completely wrong, is that it's a great indication of how confident they are that they bought Hart. They are not worried about hiding this from him. They're worried about hiding it from Zabisco, but they don't care if Hart sees, because if Hart sees, he's not going to dequeue us. What are you talking about? We've paid him $7.5 million. We've got a contract.
02:10:48
Speaker
They're being so blatant about thinking that he's on their side that they give him the perfect excuse then when he's not on their side to be like You lose, you know, I just wish they would have said I just wish that they were more evident about it Yeah, yeah, that's not my issue. I don't mind the idea of it. Just yeah, they don't definitely don't say it's disappointing
02:11:06
Speaker
Well, they did a lot of good foreshadowing in this. I thought, you know, they're like, they're looking for weapons and they had him overly celebrate everything. Yes. And get on your nerves. He comes off very smarmy, which is actually very good in this match. Although picturing if he had actually bothered to check Scott Hall for weapons, because he would have had him down and have been really painful because he would have had their front. He's got a metal piece to have in the front of his pants. Yeah. Like in there. No.
02:11:35
Speaker
This was alright. They did a good job playing with which side Hart was gonna be on and making it clear that the only reason Zabisco didn't just annihilate Bischoff was that Hart kept interrupting his momentum to check his holds or break corner punches or things like that. So Bischoff doesn't come off looking strong even when he does get some sustained offense. Zabisco can clearly win. He's just getting adverse rulings from a very strict rep.
02:11:59
Speaker
Bischoff's kicks looked pretty nice, actually. His punches, not so much. Zabisco looked good overall. It runs long for what it is, I think, but good character work helps deal with the stalling, and aside from the metal object being much more dangerous for someone seated in the front row than for its intended target Zabisco, I didn't really have much of a problem with this. It's more storyline than match, but it's a decent enough storyline. It didn't excite me, but it didn't annoy me.
02:12:26
Speaker
Now, are we accepting the idea that it feels like there's so much in control with Bernhard and their side as referee that they don't need to bother calling in backup? I do in this case, I think. Okay, that's a question. I think that makes sense as an argument that we don't need backup for this one, guys. The ref is never going to rule against us. And he doesn't really give any sign that he's going to do so until he bunches Bischoff, at which point it's too late. Right, right. Now, just to clarify, I'm not asking a question, but
02:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have a problem with the lack of interference on this one because I think they think they've got it in the bag. This is one they definitely need to explain if they don't fear why. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's the highest stakes potentially on the show, really. And the tone of the match is totally different. You have old school wrestling where you don't have people grabbing their hair and rubbing it into the mat anymore in modern wrestling. Actually, the part that bothered me in the whole match was at the very end, after he won, he was strangling the guy with the rope. For some reason, that just seemed wrong.
02:13:23
Speaker
I was like, what are you doing? You're actually going to hurt him. Yeah. Well, Daniel Bryan did that in 2010 and he got fired for it. Yeah, that was the only part that bothered me, but it was very much an exhibition of other alternate styles, like an old timey match where you had a boxer versus some stronger man. That's what I got from it. It was like a circus thing or something along those lines.
02:13:48
Speaker
It's interesting to see Zabisco, like you were saying, Al, after so many years, he has the 80s wrestling style, a good 80s wrestling style, but an 80s wrestling style. And it's interesting to see that contrasted to really the rest of this card. And I think he actually, he has some good spots. There are moves that in the modern era, or I guess that I'm referring to this as the modern era, his 1990s, it's moves that in the 1990s are not
02:14:17
Speaker
big moves anymore for you to do necessarily, but he pulls them off in such a way that they still kind of feel like big moves. So I rather enjoyed watching him again, honestly, and I think Bischoff did his part quite well in this match. He has a very good bit of character, Zabisco has a very good bit of character, and they have a good storyline built around it. So it's not the most exciting match in the world, but it's not a bad way to spend your time.
02:14:46
Speaker
On 83 weeks, Eric Bischoff does talk about this match.
02:14:51
Speaker
him getting to the arena earlier than usual and kind of just being really nervous about this match and just saying, I really didn't want to let anybody down in this because I was aware I'm not a wrestler and saying my goal going into this was just don't screw up. You know, I can see that. Don't let the best go down. You know, it was really interesting to hear that because it's like, honestly, in the ring, he actually looked very comfortable, I thought. Yeah. Being confident and performing and everything. But
02:15:21
Speaker
I do understand, yeah, going up to that, it's probably like, oh my gosh, I could screw up one of these bumps I have to take and that could be it, you know? Yeah, he's had about a year of being in the ring doing promos and stuff, so he's used to being on camera, but definitely, yeah. Yeah. There's a certain level when you're the performer, not just a guy delivering live and dev. Yeah.
02:15:43
Speaker
So yeah, that's interesting, I think. I think I was, and I know this is a different type of wrestling, but I think I was more nervous for my wrestling matches than I was for like giving speeches. I think speeches edged out a little bit, but like, you know, I never felt that way when I was doing any other sport or anything else like that. But wrestling was like, I could come out of this really hurt. Or, you know, I could really hurt someone else.
02:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, especially if it's something that you haven't I'm sure even like when when you were in your earliest ones It was probably much worse in that regard than when you done Matches way down the line Mm-hmm as far as I'm aware like he's taken a move or two in the past But I don't think that he's done any matches before this point. I don't believe so. No, so who else I'm after this but not yeah Yeah, well actually Bob I would say my first matches were a little bit easier because I only knew so many moves I
02:16:34
Speaker
Like I had, I didn't have to choose. No, uh, no analysis paralysis going on. Yeah. No, I was like, I know how to throw an arm. I know how to, you know, do a head an arm and these three, four moves. If I'm on the ground, I do this and then the other, and then nothing else. Yeah. And then everything else is just try to get out of whatever they're doing. At what point did you learn the diamond cutters? He could win every match. Um, never see that was your mistake.
02:16:58
Speaker
No, I'd only have one match and then just not wrestle anymore. You can't pick people up or you know, whatever. Yeah.
02:17:09
Speaker
So obviously since Bisco won, the dreams of N.W.O. Nitro are gone forever. Yes. People are very sad to hear this. They don't make too much mention of it. They could mention one star in the match. But there's an extra stipulation in the match that Bisco gets to wrestle Scott Hall the next show. Oh, yeah, I think they do mention it briefly. Passing and passing seems like it's a big deal.
02:17:30
Speaker
So that leads, yeah, again, to this is a better example of not just give you the match to get the first time, but they had a follow up match for he wrestled Scott Hall. This time he's just emerged in his corner. So Sally's not a commentary, but he will be on the next show. OK. Our final match is Hollywood Hulk Hogan versus Sting for Hogan's WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
02:18:13
Speaker
Hogan as a patrolling person in the duo has for the most part had a pretty strong stranglehold in the title, keeping A1 at bay through lots of nefarious means and attacks and so forth. So at this point, the hope seems to rest on Sting, who would occasionally interfere for WCW in some sort of mysterious ways, even weapon behind like he did at the previous Starrcade, other times doing more overt stuff. But this is definitely the big thing they're promoting.
02:18:24
Speaker
The referees are Nick Patrick and Nick Patrick's sweet mustache.
02:18:41
Speaker
The point where they build a TV special around it during a showing of a movie. Promote TBS. Specifically Assault on Devil's Island, starring Hulk Hogan. This is Thing's first match since I want to say Fall Brawl the year before. I believe that's it. Because it's the aftermath of that where he turns his back. Yeah, he leaves after Fall Brawl, starts hanging out in the rafters and yeah, I believe he does not wrestle a single match until now.
02:19:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess since there were in the early, at this point in the early Internet era, they felt they couldn't have him, like, wrestle a house show or two, because they would end up on a news thing. Like, I was lost to him last night, you know, to go away. And over a year is really long for a scorpion. Yes. Although they can last a year without eating. Oh, wow. Yeah, they can modify their body into, like, a hibernated state.
02:19:37
Speaker
They hunt by sitting still in lion weight. That's their skill. That's terrifying. They can eat a third of their weight in one feeding and then not have to eat for another year. Wow. Heck of a diet plan. Yeah. I'm going for it. Yeah. Yes, this thing is tapped into his dark side, by which I mean he rented a bunch of James O'Barr comics and watched a movie and became croasting. Yes.
02:20:05
Speaker
Michael Buffer does the intros and says the WCW again. He calls this the most anticipated match in the history of pro wrestling. You know what might actually be? I don't think that's a super huge exaggeration actually. It's at least not like immediately laughable. No, it does take consideration. Yeah.
02:20:31
Speaker
Definitely at this point. I mean, like, it's pretty hyped. Yeah. Hogan enters first, despite being champ. Fitting in this case, since there's so much anticipation for Sting. NWO theme count? Five. Hogan plays air guitar on the spray-painted big gold belt the whole way to the ring. He chats with Nick Patrick momentarily. It's important to check with the ref, you know. And now, ladies and gentlemen,
02:21:00
Speaker
The challenger.
02:21:18
Speaker
One man's heart is ready to see. He burns up, dies, and a dark shadow falls over his soul. From the ashes, everything is great and real, but for the occurs. A wrong that must be brightened. We look to the skies for an indicator. Someone just like fear took the black hearts of the same man who created them.
02:21:49
Speaker
against an army of shadows of the dark world. The purveyor of good with a voice of silence and a mission of justice. This is state.
02:22:09
Speaker
We get a laser light show that shows images of Sting and scorpions and such. Per Tony Schiavone on his podcast, What Happened When, the kid doing the voiceover for that intro was Eric Bischoff's son Garrett. Oh, Garrett finally made the podcast. Garrett finally makes the podcast. I guess that actually, but I didn't know for sure. Yeah, that's interesting.
02:22:33
Speaker
Just in case, because the music is kind of loud there, I'm not sure how it's gonna come through. I'm gonna go ahead and read the speech as well. Also, because it's interesting. Yes, and that's those lines again. When a man's heart is filled with deceit, it burns up, dies, and a dark shadow falls over his soul. From the ashes of a once great man has risen a curse, a wrong that must be righted. We look to the skies for our vindicator, someone to strike fear into the black hearts of the same men who created him.
02:23:01
Speaker
The battle between good and evil has begun. Against an army of shadows comes a dark warrior, the Prevailor of Good, with a voice of silence and a mission of justice. This is Sting." I do have to say, I think it's a pretty cool intro. That speech doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense, but it's still a pretty cool intro. I think they used the thesaurus too much. A little bit, the Prevailor of Good, which I'm pretty sure is accurate on there, but the Prevailor of Good is a very strange line.
02:23:31
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I know they were going with like a post-apocalyptic, pseudo-cult thing, so they couldn't use like normal speech. Yeah. But I don't know, like I don't look to the skies for scorpions. But you do look to the skies for Scorpahawks. Yes, that is true. See?
02:23:56
Speaker
We're going to talk about that. We're always going to talk about that. Oh, okay. It's the brand, right? Yes. Sting walks out to massive cheers, coat hanging loosely off one of his shoulders, baseball bat in hand. That was really weird. Why is the coat hanging off one of his shoulders? Yes, I thought the same thing.
02:24:16
Speaker
Otherwise, really cool. Yeah. He just doesn't care. Yeah, I think he's going for emo. But yeah, to me, that does not come off right. No. This entrance almost works. He poses on the stage to Pyro and slowly strolls down the ramp. And we get some really cool overlays of Hogan in the Ring that kind of is very cinematic. Oh, yeah, yeah. In the same opening. In the opening credits, they'd use a double layer filter. Yeah, similar to the opening credits, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
02:24:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's just not quite right with the coat hanging off is like the one thing that screws this up a little where it just looks lazy instead of intimidating. Everybody showed him out at the last minute. It's like literally pull that up and this is a terrific entrance. Yeah. The thing that actually messed it up for me was like Hogan's moving around the whole time. Like if her face is always aligned when they did the flip of the cameras, it would have been much better. I mean, Hogan could do different stuff, but he's like in different parts of the shot when they're flipping.
02:25:16
Speaker
He's not great at sharing attention. A point that other people have made is that this entrance kind of strips out some of the mystique. You know, you have this big song and dance intro and this thing just kind of walks out. Do you agree with that? I can see the logic in there. You could easily have him come out during all the laser light show and that. And then when lights come up, he's just there. That would be cool.
02:25:41
Speaker
Or he's done, I know, the rappelling thing a few times, so that they could have done potentially. Yeah, John, what's your thought on it? No, I think it would have been better if he just appeared. Going back to my idea with the flock, he could have just been on one of the turnbuckles at the end of that thing, you know, and then jumped down and posed, and the lights could have gone out again, and then you could hear Hogan yelling. And then, you know, he's back up, and I don't know, they could have done a lot more with it. Yeah.
02:26:09
Speaker
I honestly, when they were doing the flashing between the lights, you know, I know that they always have a spotlight or something that shows where he's walking, but I thought they just messed up the lighting because they should be like him appearing from the ring somehow.
02:26:24
Speaker
Yeah, it just feels like there should be something bigger to this entrance. I don't think that it totally strips out the intimidation factor, but between he's just walking and the coat hanging off one shoulder, it kind of deadens it a little. I could see a difference in having the dark lighting has a laser show as consistent as it was.
02:26:48
Speaker
and then have the narration happening with the kid voice and him walking out while that's going on. I think they might not have done that simply because the moment Zing steps out on this stage you're gonna have massive cheers and you won't hear a thing.
02:27:02
Speaker
There's definitely better ways they could have done an entrance. I think on this anyway. I don't remember the coat being over the shoulder or anything like that. Honestly, was that the same hand that had the bat? The same that has the ball bat. Yeah. Well, maybe that's just to draw attention to it. Maybe. I don't remember carrying the bat. Just down like a little off his shoulder on the side. He looked like he was like dragging or just letting it sway where he's walking. So maybe that's why. Bob.
02:27:29
Speaker
Maybe. I think he's just doing sexy pose with the coat. Sexy emo sting. Is that better
Sting vs Hogan: The Main Event
02:27:39
Speaker
than crow sting? We can call him sexy emo sting? No? Okay, should I get to this thing now? Yeah. Okay. Stare down as Patrick talks to both. Sting takes off his coat, revealing basically a superhero outfit with a scorpion logo on the chest.
02:27:57
Speaker
Hogan shoves him and throws his bandana, so Sting slaps him. Hogan pushes Sting into the corner and tries a cheap shot, but Sting blocks and slugs Hogan hard, sending him stumbling across the ring to massive cheers with a Hogan sucks chant. Hogan offers a test of strength, but kicks Sting, taking control with punches and a clothesline that rocks Sting, but get no facial reaction from him.
02:28:19
Speaker
Hogan keeps up the offense, including a back rake, despite Sting wearing a shirt. But Sting dodges three elbow drops in a row and hits a drop kick to send Hogan rolling out to the floor. Back in, another exchange ends in two more Sting drop kicks to send Hogan out over the ropes. Back in again, and Sting works a headlock for a bit.
02:28:39
Speaker
Hogan gets a clothesline and suplex but sting no-cells and does a DX-style crotch chop as Hogan backs away in fear. Hogan pokes Sting's eyes and throws him through the ropes slamming him face-first on the timekeeper's table and hitting him with his own bat. DQ? Nah.
02:28:56
Speaker
Patrick does warn Hogan about using the post, as Hogan continues beating Sting up outside. Sting manages to send Hogan to the barricade, but Hogan dodges a stinger splash, and Sting eats barricade. Precisely two guys chant for Hogan. You sure that wasn't, like, Brutus and someone else? Yes, sadly, I'm sure. Neither one was using a bag of phones, so I know it wasn't Jimmy Hart. I mean, take off the shine outfit, it could probably blend in pretty well.
02:29:23
Speaker
Hogan drops Sting on the barricade crotch first for a punch, then throws him in the ring. Hogan builds to the big boot and leg drop for the 1, 2, 3.
02:29:35
Speaker
But wait! We see Bret Hart has come out and stopped the timekeeper from ringing the bell. Patrick and Hogan come out and Patrick orders the timekeeper to ring the bell, but Hart grabs a mic and says, it's not going to happen again. Hart says it was a fast count, as Patrick disagrees. It did seem quicker to me than Patrick's usual quite slow count, but nowhere near a true fast count. Hart punches Patrick, and Patrick really dramatically falls with his arms like over his head. So great.
02:30:06
Speaker
Best part of the match ring. Hart drags Hogan to the ring and orders the match restarted. Hogan begs for mercy as Sting beats him up and lands a Stinger Splash so energetic, it nearly sends Sting over the ropes. Bagwell and Norton hit the ring, but Sting punches both down, hits another Stinger Splash, and puts on the Scorpion Deathlock. Hogan tries to fight it, but finally nods his submission, and Hart calls for the bell, awarding Sting the win and the title.
02:30:36
Speaker
There's some things behind
Was Bret Hart's Interference Fair?
02:30:37
Speaker
the scenes that we're going to want to discuss, but before that, let's chat about the match itself just as it appears on the show. I'd like to hear your thoughts first, John.
02:30:48
Speaker
two matches in one. Um, I was very surprised at each time, uh, Patrick was putting the hand down, he tightened the his hold and like, when I hit three, I was like, Oh, okay, that's good. Uh, you know, like all this buildup and I'm like, this is what I was expecting, but you know what? All right. But as the announcer starts saying it hearts right there just to grab the mic.
02:31:17
Speaker
I think with the crowd being split in W.O. and WCW, I think they wanted to give everyone a narrative that everyone got to win. It's kind of funny, we're talking about how Sting should have maybe just appeared in the ring. When we have Brett Hardy who apparently just appeared at ringside. Yes.
02:31:39
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It is weird thinking about that. How fast did he have to sprint out there if he wasn't there or was he just sitting there? I missed what actually happened with him after. As far as that was relaxed. I don't think he was there the whole time. Yeah. I mean, he was literally right there. He didn't even like he would cut him off mid sentence. I was honestly okay with the first match.
02:31:58
Speaker
Yeah. There was a lot of good performance for both sides. And the funny thing was, you know, it made it sound like, you know, there was an error and they were trying to correct for it. Just like when you're in soccer or something and you get a bad call and they go, but I wanted to talk about the fairness of Nick Patrick. I know that he doesn't disqualify things. Yes, he doesn't. But I know. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah.
02:32:26
Speaker
But, you know, I thought this was a no DQ match. So I was fine with that because, you know, the main event, you got to let it keep on going. I know it's not. But when nothing was called, I was like, that's fine. But to his credit, he
Nick Patrick's Controversial Count
02:32:40
Speaker
seemed to be ragging on Hogan the whole time, even if it was, you know, whatever. He does kind of he does kind of play it as a straight rough. Yeah. All right. You stop that. And it is certainly one of the slower counts that I've seen from him. From Patrick?
02:32:55
Speaker
Yes. Oh, really? I mean, it was not, it by no means slow. Okay. But like I also come from the WWF era when it was shown called Steve Austin, like counting them out. One, two, three. Yes. So comparing those two, I honestly thought that yes, he was, he was down. He was counting right away, but I would consider it a legitimate pin, even though we had that interruptus.
02:33:24
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like a pretty regular count, right? The only difference I noted between it and Patrick's normal count is Patrick normally does this little, and I'm doing something visual now, even though we're an audio show, but he does this little like, he'll hit the mat and then he'll like rotate his hand and then bring it back up and do another one to get a kind of even pacing to it normally. And he didn't do that this time, but that's the only difference really between it and the normal Nick Patrick count.
02:33:52
Speaker
So that's interesting. So your take on it is, you thought that was a legit count. When they did it, and I think it was counter to whatever narrative they were actually going for, and Brett somehow, even though he was already there, was able to restart the match.
02:34:12
Speaker
when there was no real I mean other than the other disqualifying things that had happened there was nothing to really give rise to that and it seemed like Brett was kind of saving the show and at the same time trying to show that hey I'm a registered ref you know and refs argue all the time so screw this there's already that whole part about we tried to make this as fair as possible with this drawing and everything so you know I think that some of this was planned but
02:34:42
Speaker
the count itself
The Impact of Sting's Win
02:34:43
Speaker
just Analyzing that and none of the other stuff behind look like that we should have been the end of the match That was interesting to me though. So so you would have been okay with that. Yeah. Yeah
02:34:55
Speaker
I mean, I wanted Sting to win, but, you know, I thought that that could easily play into something else. You can go down a real dark path. Like, why was he, why was it out of the ring for so long? He's got to go to the roof now. I just, I just know that they could work whatever narrative they wanted to. You could argue that NWO rigged it and everyone's going to say, well, it was a fast count.
02:35:19
Speaker
and still make Sting out to be the hero and still appease the fans. And then you have Bret Hart, which is the newcomer, trying to set what his role will be in the company, saying, you know what? I gained a lot of points in that last match. And I think that this would go a different way. Let's start it again. And Hogan does a really good job of being like, no, no, I don't want to do that. I'm happy with my win.
02:35:49
Speaker
But no, overall, I do think it was planned. I just don't know if that was the point where they were supposed to have the three. I genuinely think that, you know, if that wasn't the point where he was supposed to fall, he was supposed to kick out. And he didn't. So that is supposed to happen, except it's supposed to be a fast count.
02:36:11
Speaker
So sting is supposed to be fast counted down Then that explains why Bret Hart comes out and it's like wait That's a total injustice because it would be where the way that you actually saw it like you justly pointed out is That looks legit. It looks like sting just lost and maybe like 10 to 15 percent speed extra, you know, like faster not like trying to throw it. Yeah
02:36:35
Speaker
That's why I wanted you to give your opinion first on it is because Al and I have heard about this match for years. I really wanted to hear the Just from looking at this show What does it feel like kind of thing and that's really fascinating? It's seeming like legit count to you and just being like why wait Why are they was the most legit thing in the part of the match at that point? Yes. Yeah. Yeah
02:36:58
Speaker
But no, like while he had him on his back and then rolled him up onto his shoulders and was tightening that grip, it looked like with that, not any way leisurely, with that normal or semi-normal count speed, that there was no way he could kick out, even if it was a little bit slower.
02:37:18
Speaker
was thinking there's no sign of a kick out like about to happen. It's like it's three and just afterwards his lady kicks out. He's just down and out. And then they immediately jump over to Bret Hart there. Yeah. It's funny to talk about this like most anticipated match ever and like match on like anything other, all this sort of big glowing things they say with this. It actually did remind me of a match I've seen before on the show. That is the opening match to record 94.
02:37:47
Speaker
with Vader vs. action item Duggan. Just to cover the inverse of that because in this case the heel is dominating so much when clear of the face whose story is only I can stop the interview, you're the face that says I can take you out.
02:38:04
Speaker
It feels like he needs a lot of help to be able to do that. The match is fully booked backwards just like that one is. Things should be dominating and then Hogan does an eye poke or something and that's how he gets any offense. You can even have the outside thing where Sting decides to jump at the guardrail from 20 feet away for some reason. Best outcome is you hit the move on there and you fall into the crowd. It's not going to end well for you either way.
02:38:29
Speaker
I've heard about this match before having really even booking as far as being super pro Hogan and controlling the match.
Hogan vs Sting: A Contradictory Match
02:38:36
Speaker
And I'm thinking, okay, maybe for exaggerating is a lot of people really don't like this match. So maybe they're exaggerating. It's like, Oh, he controls a little bit, but it feels like too much because it's Hogan and blah, blah. No, he definitely controls too much for me. It's inconsistent with how sting that comes back.
02:38:55
Speaker
So the punches, they definitely knock him down. Maybe they don't really super hurt him because he doesn't make like an expression like he's hurt, but it definitely takes a punch and goes down to one knee, like instantly, like the first punch he gets. But then he's a suplex and pops back up like nothing. So he can't be hurt, except that time he could be hurt. And then he's entering the outside, probably from the singer splashing miss and then from Hogan hitting him.
02:39:22
Speaker
Hogan rolls in the ring and dances around him for like, feels like 20 minutes before he does the leg drop after the big boot. Sting doesn't move at all, like he's actually dead. And then he's getting pinned and pulled an entire pin with no hint of him kicking out at all. Like it's not like we're kicking out at what would be four in a fast count. He's just actually knocked out completely.
02:39:44
Speaker
But then with 30, 40 seconds, maybe a minute tops recovery time, eventually up back at full strength, possibly more strength than before. It can immediately dominate him and throw individual out and then lock him in a hold. They never even tried to do in the match.
02:40:02
Speaker
It's undercompensating Sting for the most part of the match and then overcompensating to rush to an ending. It's very confusingly booked purely from a spectral standpoint. You know, he's strong, but he can't keep it up because Hogan find ways to cheat until the end when nothing can stop him.
02:40:21
Speaker
The ending feels abrupt, even if they joked about it. It takes forever to actually do the leg drop afterwards. Because it doesn't feel like it's building up to a finish. It just, he rolls into the ring and then it's booty. You're like, wait, oh, he's going to move or something. And then they go another five minutes. And he doesn't. Yeah. And he just lays there. Yeah. It's like he's like tranked on the floor and can't move. Yeah. It's very odd to me. Yeah. For me, there is far, far too little sting in this match.
02:40:51
Speaker
In a way it's kind of a generic baby face with heart versus strong heel that is invader kind of match. But normally those at least start with a lot of fire from the face and Stink gets barely any offense at the start or at any other time in the match for that matter.
02:41:06
Speaker
I'm not sure if I've conveyed that well in my recap, I'm trying to summarize and so you lose a lot. But there's not really a sustained period of Sting offense for the most part. He gets some shots in the corner, a few drop kicks, but until the very end he never really feels like he gets to have control. It feels stranger and stranger as the match goes on, and you just don't really get to see Sting do much of his stuff.
02:41:28
Speaker
Still, if it weren't for the weird false finish, this wouldn't be notably disappointing. You know, if we didn't have that, you could totally forget the rest of the match once he hit the point where Sting beats up Hogan in the NWO and wins. No one would care what came before that. With the confusing mess with the false finish, though,
02:41:49
Speaker
This falls down into infuriating territory. On perhaps their biggest night ever, WCW has utterly failed to deliver a satisfying ending to the story that they've been building for a year and a half. Sting looks like he failed. The NWO has run over WCW time and again, beating their best guys one way or another, and now WCW's great champion has returned.
02:42:12
Speaker
And he would have lost two if it weren't for Bret Hart, just kind of randomly deciding to stop the Timekeeper. That's what this looks like. It's a horrible ending to an epic storyline, and it does make me angry, actually. If I didn't say it, I felt like it was an error. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:42:32
Speaker
That was not what's intended. The fact that everyone is out there immediately after the second part, you know, everyone's like at ringside already. So they had expected Sting to win, you know, like only confirmed at that point, but the whole point from the third count to everything else was just confusing to me. You know, until Hogan's back and I'm like, okay, I get to watch a little bit more. That's fine.
02:42:53
Speaker
Yeah. But, you know, I didn't know what kind of angle they were choosing because, like, Sting's still dressed in black and white. He could be part of them. And there could be a toll. Like, you know, that would be a great thing. No, I get you. I get you. You're thinking, what if this thing is Sting comes out, like, lays down for Hogan almost? Yeah. Like, there is no hope. Holy crap, that's dark.
02:43:16
Speaker
Jonathan reading his search a lot, yeah. No, I mean, that's what I was thinking. I'm like, oh, man, Sting's really part of this, too. Now, who's going to say it? Is Brett Hart going to come and dig in? Yeah, that's an interesting. OK, I'll give you that.
02:43:27
Speaker
Well, you were the thing. Isn't there a line about like taking the garb of shadows and something in that whole spiel? I guess an army of shadows comes with Dark Warrior. Let's be clear, I could not understand all that. Yes. With the audio. Yes. You know, I did watch it a few times just to watch the whole lightning bolt through the eye thing look awesome. But I watched this three times just to see how I felt each time.
02:43:54
Speaker
I'm okay with both outcomes just because I don't have that background. That's what it comes down to. Like, you know, you were talking about how NWO is a big thing. Well, I have no reference. Right. Yeah. Cause we've been watching this just a Starrcade, Starrcade run. So you really don't get the show after show after out, show after show after show kind of build. I really wondered honestly going into this, if that would, if that would change a reaction and it does. Yeah.
02:44:20
Speaker
I'm looking at it as a story element. It could be a cliffhanger, a twist, or something to drive a new era. And again, I didn't give a lot of credibility or thought to Sting becoming part of NWO, but I did think about it for a brief moment. Like, no, that was too easy. I mean, there's no other dumb up to put the biggest face to fight the individual in an individual faction. They're not stupid enough to do that.
02:44:48
Speaker
And then I'm like, it's WCW. Yes, true. I'm conflicted. I know it's, I mean, it is, it's a hard match to think about with all the weird stuff that goes on. Sting wins, but I still have like a slightly better taste, you know, just because it doesn't feel quite genuine.
02:45:09
Speaker
So as we mentioned, the false finish is supposed to be a fast count. There's been a lot of talk about how this came to happen, and I want to bring out some comments from some of the major players. We got a statement from probably the best authority on the count when Ref Nick Patrick appeared on the July 2nd, 2017 episode of Ring Announcer David Penzer's Sitting Ringside podcast. Here's what Patrick said.
02:45:38
Speaker
What happened is the two people, Sting and Hulk, were... they were the two franchise guys. And the two franchise guys were butting heads at this point in time over what was going to happen. And one guy came up to me and told me to fast count it because I was already doing, you know, to get some heat so it would give him an out.
02:45:57
Speaker
And the other guy says, don't fast count it, just keep it nice and slow. And so the person that was in charge didn't, evidently didn't want to make the call, didn't want to pick a side, and made themselves scarce all night long to where I could not find them to ask them, hey, what do you want me to do?
02:46:16
Speaker
Patrick says he kept looking for someone to ask up until it was time for the match. He goes on to describe what he settled on. So I just did it differently than I normally do. I didn't do my 1-2-3 NWO heal ref count, but I didn't do my normal 1-2-3 1 second count in between, you know, back in the old days. Basically he split it down the middle.
02:46:43
Speaker
On the December 9th, 2018 episode of his own podcast, 83 weeks, then WCW Executive Vice President Eric Bischoff says of Sting, He had to go over strong. We had to end the story exactly the way the audience wanted it to end. On the highest note possible. That was the finish going in. How we were going to get there on a step-by-step basis, I can't tell you because I wasn't involved.
02:47:09
Speaker
Bischoff says, and he is careful to clarify that this was his perception, not definite knowledge of Sting's mental state, that he felt like Sting, quote, never believed it was really going to happen. He believed he was going to get screwed out of an opportunity, and he quit six months before this event. He quit caring. He quit taking care of himself. He quit preparing. He showed up with no energy, no anticipation, with no enthusiasm.
02:47:33
Speaker
It was just like, okay, you guys are gonna f*** me, so let's get it over with. That was the vibe I got. I don't think he really felt that way, but that was the vibe he was giving off. And as a
Behind the Scenes: Match Controversies
02:47:45
Speaker
result of that, we probably went through five or six different alternatives and options, maybe more, because we knew we were in trouble. Bischoff says they took a break at their meeting, and after Sting left the room, Bischoff and Hogan looked at each other, and Hogan said, brother, he's not ready. He's not into this. And I agreed with him.
02:48:03
Speaker
Co-host Conrad Thompson asks about how the change was communicated to Nick Patrick and Bret Hart. Bitchoff says,
02:48:20
Speaker
Then it went to the Kevin Sullivans and Terry, that behogan, himself, and Steve, that be sting. And everybody involved. And I'm sure that Terry Taylor probably chimed into a degree as he would and should have. I didn't get involved in the finish or the details of it.
02:48:34
Speaker
Conrad asks if Bischoff told Patrick to do a fast count. Bischoff says he would have conveyed what he was aware of to Nick Patrick if Patrick came up to him and asked him, but also says, I would have made sure that the referee was in the room while the finish was being laid out. It's not like on the way out to the ring the talent would get together and say, okay, here's what we're gonna do. The referees were as engaged, or should have been as engaged, in laying out the finish of a match as the two principles in the ring. That's the way it's supposed to be.
02:49:02
Speaker
Bischoff, however, admits that WCW had poor communication protocols and poor organization that caused a lot of confusion. So, those are some stories of how we got to this point. And I highly encourage you to have a listen to the actual episodes that I've noted for more of the story. The quotes I've read are a very, very small part of what's discussed. In particular, Conrad presses Bischoff quite heavily on his story. It's an involved, detailed, and often heated conversation.
02:49:34
Speaker
So thoughts on all that.
02:49:50
Speaker
That's how it feels. Yeah, and I will say it's a much longer discussion on his. No, yeah. So I've picked quotes that I thought got at precisely the events that led up to this point. He had a match that night, so. He did have a match that night too, so that's true.
02:50:07
Speaker
I'm forgetting the exact quote, but he has another quote somewhere in there that, as long as you get to the ultimate ending that I wanted, I'm not really fussed about how you get there, basically. It's not gonna micromanage. Yeah. Which... You should. Yeah, basically. For this, you should. Yeah.
02:50:26
Speaker
I think he was trying to save face at the same time, not a sign blame, which I think is a smart thing to do, or a cowardly thing to do. But in this case, no, no, I mean, genuinely, it's better to point at actions. We messed up, and I felt that way.
02:50:45
Speaker
Instead of saying, I did this, or this one person did this, he's like, well, the ref should be here, Terry Taylor should be here, things should be here. It's like, he's like, he's maybe the many people out there just trying to disperse all of it, it feels like. But there's no ownership. It's- Yes, exactly. This is what happened. And I think that's great in court of law.
02:51:05
Speaker
But not in entertainment. Like there's got to be some sort of, you know, the whole point of the horsemen and all these other factions and everything is someone's going to pay. And he denies all the fans that at the corporate level.
02:51:21
Speaker
Well, it's funny too, because I knew about all of the quotes, there's a lot more to this, but he is at some point asked about the Nick Patrick thing to some degree, what Nick Patrick's quote about not being visible, not being available. He basically says that couldn't happen, but then also kind of says it could. Yeah, he basically says it's not that he wasn't available, but that he would have told Patrick, go check.
02:51:45
Speaker
Personally, I think we can trust Nick Patrick's explanation. I don't think he has any reason to lie about it at this point. Right. I could see them from like not necessarily a job preservation standpoint, but like he was conflicted. He's got conflicted information. He's going to try to split the difference as best he can to still make it plausible that, you know, oh, he did change everything up enough that that they could still call question to what he did. Yeah. Patrick afterwards says that he
02:52:14
Speaker
Honestly thought for sure that someone was going to come and tell him you're fired. Mm-hmm either or but that doesn't happen Yeah, I think I'm I mean agree with you and with you on that Johnny's he's got conflicting information. You can't find out
02:52:28
Speaker
what the boss is willing to support him on. I think it's fairly obvious what the correct finish of the match is. It's the fast count, because otherwise none of the rest of the plan really makes any sense. Yeah. But you think Terry might be like, hey. He's got conflicting information. He can't get clear word from the boss, yes, I'm going to support you if you do the fast count, even though one of the other competitors, not naming names, is telling you don't do the fast count.
02:52:57
Speaker
then what do you do in that, in that position? That could even be staying at this point because they never just specify it. So I just want to lose like, screw this. You're going to screw me over. It's pretty clear. It's Hogan. I know that. I know. I know. But yeah, I think that is a good point. It's like, what do you do in that situation? He's doing what he can to try to preserve his job. He's trying to kind of do both. And it comes off very poorly, but
02:53:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, let's be realistic. If this plays out like it should, this whole story arc, the ending has to be, to some degree, Sting vanquishes Hogan. Hogan is no longer the big guy who gets to be main event and be the lead, whether it's the closing promo or whatnot. He's not the champion anymore. He's not the main focus. Now Sting is taking his spot.
02:53:50
Speaker
If that plays out, he loses a lot of power real or assumed in this situation. So suddenly, the situation just happens to play in his favor, makes it muddy, and it doesn't come out at the end of the interview. It was broken up because their leader is vanquished, and there's no unity more. Now they can draw it out for longer, and he can do more along with the promos and brag about winning and all that.
02:54:13
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, and they could do a role reversal. Hogan's bested. Now he's against the NWO and Sting takes his rightful place. See? There you go. Yeah. Could do that. But yeah, I'm trying to point myself in the Hogan mindset there as much as I can. Oh, sure. Yeah. But he's like, everything I have is built around me being the head of the NWO. Take that away. What do I have left? Hollywood. Yep.
02:54:38
Speaker
I have a couple more comments I want to read. This time, from announcer Tony Schiavone, on the December 28th, 2017 episode of his podcast, What Happened When? Regarding Sting and the change plan, Tony says, Regardless of what shape you thought he was in, here we are, and we've built it up to this. Don't change your mind. Make it work.
02:55:00
Speaker
Asked about the finish, Tony says, in hindsight, the finish should have been Sting going over clean. That's what it should have been. No Brett Hart, no heel referee making a
Did WCW Miss the Mark with Starrcade 97?
02:55:10
Speaker
fast count. Randy Anderson being the referee calling it down the middle, Sting goes over one, two, three.
02:55:18
Speaker
Personally, I'm with Tony on this one. We could talk about the specifics of the false finish all day, I'm sure, and how it got screwed up, but my problem starts before that. Even if we accepted Bischoff's comments on Sting's preparation, Sting is wearing an outfit that nearly entirely covers him. Who can even tell his build? It's not like the guy showed up 400 pounds overweight, he's still generally in shape.
02:55:40
Speaker
If he's in good enough condition for you to have the match, and good enough condition to win the match, then he's in good enough condition to win the match clean.
02:55:49
Speaker
WCW has been building for a year and a half to Sting winning the title from Hogan here. Just let it happen. It's fine to still have Hogan look strong too. No epic confrontation results in an easy win for the hero. But the story is the story is the story and a clear and strong win for Sting is the only acceptable conclusion to this story.
02:56:12
Speaker
If you feel like he isn't ready to be champion, you can figure out how to take the belt off him from there. But, you know, if you feel like the guy's downhearted and not motivated, a pretty good way to motivate someone is to make a really strong showing of support and belief in them, so that in and of itself might have changed things. We can never know, and I recognize that there can be other views on this, Bischoff clearly disagrees, but for me, it wouldn't have done any damage to WCW to just let Sting win clean.
02:56:42
Speaker
In any case, it's just a lame ending to a pretty amazing build, a sad waste of potential that undermined what could have been WCW's best ever storyline. If somehow this was alternate reality where it's not Hogan, where say it's Savage, for instance, and it's, you know, Hollywood Savage, or whatever you call them, and you get to the same point, everything else happening other than just you swap Hogan and Savage out. I feel like
02:57:12
Speaker
given no interpretation and history, sad would have put in the same spot. None of this would have happened. I would say that's a pretty good thing. It's not provable. Hogan, if I feel is the X factor in this, for one reason or another, whether it's whether I'm accurate or not, whether it's just my bias against him. I just feel like anyone else situation, the same point, that's not going to happen this way.
02:57:34
Speaker
I feel like you still might get to the point where Bischoff is like, hey, we need to do the fast count. I still don't get that decision, but that, from his own testimony, does actually feel like Bischoff's decision. Obviously, I feel like you don't get, hey, don't do the fast count.
02:57:53
Speaker
if it's not Hogan, which is where there's a really huge problem. But I think the thing that even gives it the opportunity to go wrong, I think really does feel like it's Bischoff saying, hey, we can't do a clean finish because reasons. Well, because NWO.
02:58:13
Speaker
I mean that they've been meddlesome. They don't always help each other, but they've been meddlesome at every point and stage during this thing. There's a lot of NWO fans there too, and they're like, well, if they're not least attempting to do things in their favor, maybe that's not good either. Maybe. It's not a great explanation. I just think you could have done it. You could have had the NWO interfere like they actually do after the count.
02:58:42
Speaker
where Bagwell and Norton run down and get the crap kicked out of them by Sting. Just have a larger version of that, maybe have some of the WSTB guys join in from the crowd, something like that. I'm going into fantasy booking too much, but it just feels like there's definite ways that you could get to this goal way better and have a really solid, cool ending, and this is not that. They cheapen it.
02:59:10
Speaker
It wasn't as cheap until we went through all this, to be honest. That's why I wanted to get your opinion beforehand, because I was really curious, like how this changes. The count, I just felt like someone messed up. And for whatever the intent or final outcome was, I was like, okay, what are they going to do with this?
02:59:32
Speaker
Luger leads the collected WCW wrestlers to celebrate with Sting, giving his buddy a big hug to welcome him back and carrying him around. Giant lifts Sting up, as Sting holds the belt high and the ring fills with WCW wrestlers. Hilariously Rey Mysterio sits on Hugh Morris' shoulders. Casual La Perca makes an appearance.
02:59:54
Speaker
We get a great overhead shot of the ring, just packed absolutely full of wrestlers, and the crowd is just super loud cheering. So yes, for the crowd present in the arena, this did still work. Hacksaw Jim Duggan sits on a turnbuckle to wave the US flag around. Sting turns to the camera and bizarrely shouts something about a mamacita. I'm not sure what he was going with there, but weird choice for your first words after the title win, Sting. And I think first words in like a year.
03:00:23
Speaker
Just about, yeah. Yeah. DDP comes in to give Sting a hug. Some dude in the background has massively outdone Saturn's stupid haircut by literally having a tiny little thin ring of hair shaved on his head. I about died laughing when I saw that. I have no idea who that guy is. Clearly inspired Tyson Kidd though. Yeah, yeah, true. I was gonna highlight the two contrasting looks just for effect.
03:00:48
Speaker
First off, you have Haxxiom Duggan, as you mentioned, sitting on the turnbuckle in the flag, wearing a tuxedo. Yeah, I forgot that. Full tuxedo. It's bizarre. It reminds me weirdly, there's that one dead wood film where the police chief, the whole movie is wearing a tuxedo. And apparently it's because he's going to go to an opera. Yes. And he's calling him for the crime. Haxxaw's going to La Traviata. There you go. Tonight's secret word is tuxedo. Yes, there you go.
03:01:17
Speaker
And in contrast, my boy LaParca, he's wearing, I think, the greatest ensemble in history of all time. I have to highlight it, because just saying casual LaParca doesn't do it justice. So he's wearing his mask with the built-in hood. He's wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt, the red, white, and green striped one, with Tommy Hilfiger signed on it, which I think was pretty common on those, I believe. Nice leather fanny pack right below that. And then I like to think it was dad jeans.
03:01:46
Speaker
Nice, loose, comforting blue jeans. Oh my god. He is wise enough to be on the outside of the ring for the wide hard camera shot. You see him walking along, you can see him in the- In all his glory. In all his glory.
03:02:00
Speaker
He fully follows Sting, knowing Sting's going to the corner. So when Sting is in the corner, like talking to the camera and that, but you're talking about right on his right, like the angel on his one shoulder is La Parca just there knowing where the camera is. Like I'm here too. Nice. He even makes sure to, as they're walking away, we raise the Sting's arm. Not sure if he's the hell with Sting. He's like, thanks. He's milking the screen time. He knows what to do.
03:02:29
Speaker
The NWO can bite us, Tony says, and Starrcade 97 is done.
03:02:38
Speaker
WCW was very, very happy on the following Nitro. And when there's one, we get the return of Bobby Heenan, who claims his previous appearance on Nitro, offering to work for the NBA doing commentary, with him being heroic, being the only one that would come up and support everybody. He just rejoins a commentary team, much to Tony's befuddlement. It's a great segment.
03:03:01
Speaker
But it sort of happens, that should have happened on this show, like as I mentioned, the Cruiserweight title change happens. There's also, Disco drops the TV title on Nitro, which is weird. Who, Booker T, both of them were sitting in the audience, apparently not worthy of a map on this show.
03:03:16
Speaker
Uh, the big story is that Hogan and Bewo are disputing the finish because of the let it fast count and the match being restarted. So Diddy Dillon tells us that Sting has agreed to a title rematch the very next night. He's going to put it all online again. He wants to be a fighting champion, no questions about it. Wants to be clearer that it, that it's legit. Yeah, absolutely. No, no shades of gray. With about 10 minutes left in the show, everyone starts coming up for the title match.
03:03:43
Speaker
Tony assures us that if this match goes along, we're gonna stick with it, and we're gonna see how this ends. So, Tony is telling us that we're running out of time, and I guess now we can't stick with the show. So the closing shot of that night show is Diving into the corner with Singer Splash, Hogan appearing to pull the referee, who's not Nick Patrick by the way, in the way, and then show just stops.
03:04:12
Speaker
So, in 1998 time, you got to wait a week, because Thunder hadn't started yet. For the following night, Sherwoody Dillon explains to us that you can't show us the footage of what happened afterwards, because it's being held up by the lawyers. I have no idea how that works.
03:04:30
Speaker
He tells us 100% that the match didn't end properly, that NWO people ran in, and WSW people ran in, and it was a no contest. So the whole let's resolve everything on NYTRO thing does not resolve anything.
03:04:47
Speaker
They want a big event to promote the very first Thunder, their new show they're essentially forced to make by TBS, which offends a lot of the people that were happy with their limit house show's limit TV time. Now they're being paid, and never mind, we paid the exact same amount of money and working twice as much. It's not wrong with the itch when we look at it.
03:05:07
Speaker
So apparently there's just too much controversy. So J.D. Dillon calls, Sting and Hogan to the ring, and in the main event of the first thunder, they announce the title is being vacated. And we are gonna get a rematch between the two to finally settle it for real real at Super Brawl. Which is not the next pay-per-view. No, sold out the next pay-per-view. Oh, yeah. We're skipping past that. It just gets worse. Yes, yes it does. So don't worry, in February you'll get an answer to the story that should have ended in December.
03:05:38
Speaker
Overall thoughts on Starrcade 1997? Okay, so as we talked about, it's a show that should be huge and epic and be the be-all end-all to all these stories, lingering and otherwise. It should be the culmination of everything. Unfortunately, due to a number of circumstances that maybe they can't control, some they can, it's basically a non-starter for so many and non-ending for so many of these matches.
03:06:09
Speaker
We either get matches that are fully nullified the next night, whether it's they have the rematch and the guy loses what's the point, or we have the towel chains the next night. Not on the show for some reason. Or matches that don't happen at all for, again, some good, some less good reasons. So we don't get a giant Nash match if we're promised. We don't really get the Raven-Beau match if we were promised. We don't get the six-man tag match if we were promised, at least in the form we were promised it.
03:06:36
Speaker
And then you get to the two final matches where they have the highest stakes and the least clear endings. Yeah. Like you were saying before, this could be a knockout punch, as it is. It's more like you try to throw a knockout punch, but sort of question yourself as you're going for it, unless you missed and fell over. Yes.
03:06:59
Speaker
It's not just one thing that goes awry. It's not like this is the perfect show and then this last match and thing gets messed up. It's a lot of little things that compile and then stack onto one much larger thing at the end that make you feel like you didn't really get your money's worth. And this company is ultimately not gonna commit to ending properly these big long stories that you've been investing yourself in. And that's the problem.
03:07:25
Speaker
The show had some high points and some fun things here and there. There's a lot of buildup to this, as Al said. Even though I only have a snippet in time when I only exist once a year and see that, even with everything that was going on, there's a storyline
03:07:49
Speaker
It should be the finish, but for me, like who knows what's going to happen. So I have that impression that like, you know, they could screw this up and they don't disappoint me. And yeah.
03:08:02
Speaker
I don't want to feel that way, but I think that it was just, you know, and I'm not going to point fingers at people, but I think there was a shift in power or shift in, you know, what was going to happen and narrative and everything. And some people just feared for their jobs, whether you're a superstar, whether you're a ref or, you know, someone that just joined the company, you know, it's a trial in the trial extends to the fan base.
03:08:32
Speaker
They took a real risk in in planning things the way they did And it really comes down to planning they get like we've got all the great ingredients here We got we got the best water best flour best tomatoes everything. Oh, right. We don't have any cheese for this pizza Let's throw some sawdust on it
03:08:49
Speaker
You know, because it looks the same. They could have had a wonderful product. And in fact, you know, they touted a wonderful product with the numbers and everything. Now you have a large fan base that is going to go home or stay at home with mixed feelings. Even if at the end of the day, they're like, all right, Sting won. They've undercut his victory. If they were trying to do some middle ground, they horribly failed at that.
03:09:20
Speaker
Yeah. You've got your moment to take your best shot at your primary rival. And this is the show that you put on? Come on, WCW. There are eight matches on this show. Of those three, Malenko versus Guerrero, Saturn versus Benoit, and DDP versus Hennek, are really any good. The rest aren't necessarily awful, but they're pretty dull.
03:09:47
Speaker
This was a card that urgently needed an amazing ending. And well, we've already covered how that certainly didn't happen. Two amazing endings. Yes. I love the whole wrestlers watching the show display of unity thing, but this show really could have used a lot of the people who were shown sitting out there in the crowd. It's particularly sad to see Mysterio Jr. and Altimo Dragon just chilling out there when they were so amazing on the 1996 show.
03:10:17
Speaker
And John, considering your love for the masked wrestlers on the last few shows, that must have particularly hurt. Yeah, well, you know, they were doing their part. True. The changes to the car definitely hurt. Saturn vs. Benoit is alright, but it's blatantly not Raven vs. Benoit, which is what was being built towards, despite Raven being ill and unable to wrestle. I'm hoping the WCW honestly just thought he'd be able to, but even so, if there's any doubt, change plans earlier.
03:10:43
Speaker
And of course, Kevin Nash doesn't even show up, which just feels weird. One of the two guys that started off this whole NWO angle just isn't even here. And the other, Scott Hall, is here but doesn't have a match. How strange is that?
03:10:59
Speaker
I think that in particular is why this show feels smaller than it should. The people who should be involved just aren't. We should be seeing Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, the original Disruptors, finally taken down too, but the best we get is an admittedly nice jackknife powerbomb from the Giant in a promo segment. I recognize that WCW may not have really had a choice in the matter with Nash, but it still hurts the show.
03:11:26
Speaker
The show struggles to get any kind of showlong narrative going. It could have used some promos from the NWO and those fighting them. I get why we don't want Sting to talk, with him doing the brooding Dark Avenger thing, but heck, give the mic to the Steiners, to Ted DiBiase, to Lex Luger, to DDP. Have them build up their own matches and build up Sting. Instead, we get JJ Dillon talking about drawing a name from a hat.
03:11:52
Speaker
built up is thus left to the announce team. And they're all right, but definitely not as fun as my favorite Tony Dusty Heenan combo. The interplay just isn't there. Mike Tenet is a good announcer, and he gives some good analysis, but I miss the fun of three guys watching the show and squabbling hilariously the whole time.
03:12:10
Speaker
I didn't end up paying that much attention to the announcers this year, which is a shame, as it would have been nice to have something to wake me up during the duller matches. And a big boisterous announcer argument over the Sting vs Hogan match would have done a lot to build it up. These three pretty much just agree with each other, which kind of feels redundant. Yeah, a little bit. I would have loved if they put the announcers in the hat when they drew in Dusty. We can't- what was the one that did it? Dusty ref? Yeah, that would have been awesome. That could- that'd be fun.
03:12:39
Speaker
If I don't get a call out of the middle, it's Lee Marshall.
03:12:44
Speaker
Overall, this is just a poor show. It's far from the worst we've seen, but it just doesn't actually have that much to offer. I didn't find it tough to watch. It moves at a respectable pace the whole time, and there's not much slowdown, but the action it's offering just isn't that interesting. I wanted this to be much, much more than it was. It needed to be better. WCW needed a special, one-of-a-kind night. Instead, it put on a below-average show.
03:13:14
Speaker
Uninteresting matches topped off by a screwed up ending to an epic storyline. The show is unworthy of the year and a half spent building up to it. Extremely disappointing.
03:13:26
Speaker
take the Infinity Saga that Marvel just did. So you have all these movies that build up in little ways and then obviously much more overt ways like the last two movies. So you get to the big final battle. Instead of them besting Thanos the way they do, they can do it and they decide interest Adam Warlock in Endgame, he comes in after everyone loses and kills Thanos.
03:13:50
Speaker
You're like, oh, I mean, it gets you the same place, but it's not the same. Yeah. That's kind of what this is like. It's not the same journey. Just a guy comes in out of nowhere, saves the main hero.
03:14:02
Speaker
apparently unjustifiably in this case, you know? Or if you want to put it in another way, the Fox deal happens earlier and they just had to introduce Wolverine in-game. As cool as that would be, if Wolverine saves the day, you're like, oh, what happened to this character arc? Yeah. Wolverine's here now, so I guess that's good, but I kind of thought Cap would stop. Yeah.
03:14:26
Speaker
WCW did not land a knockout blow on the WWF with Starrcade 97. Far from it. The WWF handily recovered in 1998, and in March, they had their biggest WrestleMania in years, hitting 730,000 pay-per-view buys, about 80,000 over Starrcade 97.
03:14:50
Speaker
WCW would very much run even with the WWF otherwise, but it was clear. WCW did not manage to claim the crown. Why is that? We can't assign all the blame to Starrcade 97, of course. In late 1997, the WWF hit on the beginnings of one of their hottest angles in wrestling history.
03:15:12
Speaker
The feud between Stone Cold Steve Austin and WWF owner Vince McMahon. There's not much that WCW could have done about that once it kicked into gear. And let's be clear, Starrcade 97 does not doom WCW. It just doesn't hurt the WWF. At all. We can never know how things would have gone if Starrcade 97 had gone off without a hitch because it didn't.
03:15:36
Speaker
But I think there's at least the possibility that if this had gone differently, if this was a more satisfying show, if the flaws we've mentioned had been addressed, the WCW would have gained and gained big. As we discussed when we spoke about Montreal, the WWF was in disarray in this time, with fans and performers alike angry. In a situation like that, people look for an alternative.
03:16:00
Speaker
If this show had gone smoothly, I believe at least a good portion of that disaffected WWF fanbase would have come over to WCW and not looked back. If this show had shown that performances and storylines mattered more to WCW than egos, performers would have come as well.
03:16:20
Speaker
How much that hurts the WWF depends on the specifics and the numbers, but there's at least an intriguing possibility. With these unique circumstances, WCW could have done enough damage here to claim dominance, to be seen solidly as the number one wrestling promotion.
03:16:37
Speaker
And this truly is their one and only chance to land that heart of a blow. These circumstances will never come again. In three months, the WWF will put its title on Stone Cold Steve Austin. Their brief period of vulnerability will be over, and they will never falter to that extent again in WCW's lifetime. I almost want to mix their worst month ever, December.
03:17:04
Speaker
It's usually January, but... Yeah, yeah. And normally the bad stuff happens in January, but this time, yeah, December. Comes a little early. Yeah. Early Christmas present. Yep.
03:17:18
Speaker
Alright, match of the night and MVP. How do you want to go first? Sure. So, there are eight matches in the show. There are three of them that are possible contenders, ones you've mentioned. The D.P. Henig, Benoit Saturn, and then the Milenko Guerrero match.
03:17:35
Speaker
for my record there's only two that don't have screwy finishes because as much as I will defend a lot of what happened in the Benoit match it is yeah it's intentionally a screwy finish for a storyline. I gave it a slight pass but it doesn't escape the bar completely. So it comes down to DP and Henig and Guerrero Milico and then before I just don't think
03:17:58
Speaker
Everyone had their full heart and mind in the first match, so they don't really hit the high as they should, which could argue it's a metaphor for how the show itself ends up. So for me, it comes down to the match that hits every point right, another clean finish, and gives you the ending you actually want to see from the storyline and building up for about a year. And that's D.P. Hennig.
03:18:23
Speaker
Okay. That said, I don't think they hit the full breakout moment in DEP Henig to overtake just how good Eddie Guerrero is in his match, Dutch and Salt Malenko. But I think he's clearly driving the match, Guerrero is in this case.
03:18:40
Speaker
He's putting a little curtain moment in the pauses that they need to get everything together properly. And then the second half, he has all the strong character moments, the running on his feet, the trying to kiss his boot. That is hilarious. All of that stuff to make an absolutely great heel. And top of that, he introduces the story element of tacking the knee and makes all his finished sequence around the knee. And so for me, MVP is Eddie Guerrero. Okay.
03:19:09
Speaker
John, match the night in MVP. Well, there were a lot of good matches as Al said, you know, we had some certainly interesting ones, some that made me laugh, some that had good characters in them and there's certainly some high points in them where for me it was like the storytelling was the important part tonight.
03:19:29
Speaker
and seeing some of those characters at Goldberg, for example, like seeing just a glimpse of what he could be and seeing the genius that is Buff Bagwell, playing the most, I know he's super annoying and it was annoying, but at the time, I don't know. How long did my mindset hold? Okay, give him time.
03:19:53
Speaker
By far, the match of the night for me was the main event. Stinging Hogan, just because it is the one that I will think about, it is the one I will take with me, it is the one that makes or breaks this show, whether it's if Broken is up to other people, but it is the one that I only match that I watch multiple times, and the only one that seemed to be the reason for the numbers and the interest in this show.
03:20:21
Speaker
Very true. All those things and the opportunities, whether they were taken or not, rested on this match. So that is why it's match of the night.
03:20:31
Speaker
No, that's a, that's a fair argument. Yeah. That it is the match of the night quite literally that it is the reason this show exists. And the only one that's probably close is the one that was right before that because it did change how the TV show was going to be handled. So those are the two main matches in my mind, but even the match that came before it pales in comparison to the gravity, the amount of sweeping changes that would come after that final match.
03:21:00
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. And my MVP is Bret Hart because he was the person that changed the outcomes of those last two matches. Yeah. And that's why I think he had the most influential role, even if it is whatever he is. I don't know how to describe that role, but I do know that he was the person that made the changes possible. All right.
03:21:32
Speaker
Well, for my match of the night, I was also choosing between Malenko Guerrero and DDP Henig. I'm going with the matches that made me happy match of the night rather than, but, but I think that's an entirely valid viewpoint job. I would not have considered that going into it, but now I'm thinking, yeah, that's, that's a very valid viewpoint on, on what a match of the night is too. But for me, I'm going with the matches that I really liked. You want to tell people about.
03:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm gonna go with DDP Hennig, the same as UL. Both are good performances, and Malinka Guerrero has a lot of creative moves, but DDP Hennig isn't short on those either, and I just felt the match more. He had a really good build throughout the contest, and somehow managed to effectively tease the Diamond Cutter while still making it feel like a surprise when Page hit it. Sure. Which is a hard contrast to get. Yeah.
03:22:30
Speaker
It's very close, but DDP headache just edges out in front for me. And for my MVP.
03:22:37
Speaker
I'm going with DDP. Honestly, he had a really good in-ring performance tonight, but more than that, he had really probably the only moment I connected with emotionally in the whole show. Him hitting the diamond cutter so suddenly, winning the title, and racing off to celebrate with the fans and the crowd just felt good. And good without any caveats or flubs or controversies that dragged it down. It just felt genuine, and it made me smile.
03:23:05
Speaker
Okay. That gets him my MVP because I needed something to smile about on this show. And that was a good moment. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. He's definitely in consideration. Just, just that shot of him in the crowd at the end with everyone around him, happy piling around him and him standing there with the belt triumphantly raised in the center of it all. Terrific moment. Just beautiful moment. So that gets it from me. Okay. Sure.
03:23:33
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Starrcade 97. If you've enjoyed listening to us tonight, you can find us on Twitter or Facebook as Let's Go to the Ring. Links will be available in the episode description. Follow us for episode announcements and other show details, and share your own thoughts about the Starrcades as we go through.
03:23:52
Speaker
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Podcasts, High Heart Radio, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, or TuneIn. And please, if you've enjoyed this show, give us a rating or review, and share the show through your favorite social media platforms to help others discover us. Many thanks to OSW Review for attendance and pay-per-view figures, and to Gina Trujillo for our logo.
03:24:16
Speaker
Join us next time for Starrcade 98. Who's next? The challenge has been issued. WCW may have missed its chance to land a knockout blow on the WWF, but make no mistake, WCW is still in the mix. And on the strength of a swiftly rising superstar, maybe they can make sure that the two companies will keep trading the lead for years to come. For Alec Phrygian, for John Mullins, Starrcade 97 can bite us.
03:24:47
Speaker
Fair enough. And we won't say we're down there. Down where? Henig dubs himself Flawless as he walks down the ramp, which is an adequate prep, which isn't ha. Ironically, I screwed that up. Yes.