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Episode 60: Bash at the Beach 1997
41 Plays1 year ago
One year out from the formation of the nWo, WCW holds another match that could change wrestling forever - at least to hear the commentators tell it. We're not sure Dennis Rodman's stint in the nWo is as notable, ourselves. Plus: Which Mortal Kombat characters (effectively) make an appearance? Just how many flips and dives can the luchadores put in one match? Who do the WCW sound guys evidently think has joined the nWo? And does Hulk Hogan know just what dogs do to fire hydrants? 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 Setting the Stage
00:00:00
Speaker
Hall wears his tag belt and carries Nash and carries Nash's. Sorry. Holy crap. He's so strong. Wow.
00:00:35
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 if you cut my co-host, Alec Pridgen, in half, he'd, well, he'd bleed to death, probably. That's a true statement. A graphic and also a true statement, yes. I mean, it is October, so I had to work in something gory and scary.
00:01:03
Speaker
I mean, by Star Wars rules, you can sort of put them back together with like a piece of metal. They did it to Darth Maul. Yeah, you got better. I'm not sure we want to judge our narrative consistency by the rules of the prequel trilogy era. Fair enough. How's it going tonight, Al? Good, how's it going with you? It's going good.
Main Event Build-Up: Hogan & Rodman
00:01:26
Speaker
Well, tonight we are taking a look at the very non-Halloween, Bash at the Beach 1997, Hollywood Hogan and Dennis Rodman crash the beach. Maybe next time take proper beach piloting lessons before you take it out for a spin, guys. Jeez. Yeah, drunk piloting is not good. Even at the end of the beach. I mean, the sand is obviously softer than, you know, a field, but still. I wouldn't be aiming for the sand.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah. Bash of the Beach 1997 was held on July 13th, 1997, at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of 7,851 fans, of which 6,354 paid. That's recorded as a sellout. We have about 450 less fans in attendance than last year, but still close enough, I guess. Bash of the Beach 1997 earned 250,000 pay-per-view buys, which is actually better than the prior year.
00:02:20
Speaker
It's not surprising that they'd be doing well right now, of course, since we're well into the super hot NWO angle at this point. Absolutely, yeah. So we're back in the same arena, but will the show be just as good? To find out, let's go to the ring.
00:02:39
Speaker
Listen up! Round and treat! When I lay down conscious, you spray painted me! You slap me! You humiliated me! What comes around?
00:03:11
Speaker
Hogan and Rodman are going to change the face of our sport, but we don't do something about it right now.
00:03:26
Speaker
Our opening video package sets up the main event. The Giant and Lex Luger versus Hulk Hogan and Dennis Rodman. Gotta be honest, after seeing Randy Savage unable to get a decent match out of Rodman back on the Road Wild series, I didn't hold out a lot of hope for this match. On the plus side, it is a tag match that does limit and cordon him off there, so hopefully that makes it better. Yeah.
00:03:51
Speaker
The video package is short, but does a perfectly acceptable job of at least showing the gist of what's going on and why. I'm trying to figure out why does Giant either sound distorted or is
Themed Presentation and Commentator's Insight
00:04:02
Speaker
distorted? Why? Like, what's the effect of that when he's talking? It feels like they've got some kind of weird, like, slight filter on the audio. Throw just off a little bit.
00:04:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I don't know if they're trying to like do something for dramatic emphasis or what is just there enough that you actually notice it instead of it being subtle. If that made that was like the most backwards way I could possibly have stated that, but I think you got my point. Yeah, no, exactly.
00:04:29
Speaker
I mean, a cool effect. You wanted to have it there and people just sort of take it in. Whereas this one's a little distracting. The first thing I hear is that weird distortion. I'm like, what's going on? I got the speakers off. That was when we first watched this. So like something a lot of like the streaming off somehow, like it's, but then everyone else had normal. So clearly that's not it.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Tony Schiavone welcomes us to the show as we get shots of the beach-themed stage setup, which, if you can see it through the copious fireworks and smoke from said fireworks, is quite similar to the prior year. Glad to see that, of course. I definitely prefer the elaborate sets. Yes. It's good to see that the lifeguard stand survived the nasty boys versus the public enemy match. I mean, if someone was swimming, they need someone to watch over, right?
00:05:15
Speaker
I so wanted to go into the Baywatch theme there, but I held back. I held back.
00:05:20
Speaker
I will say it's just two shows in a row with the lifeguard stand, but no follow up lifeguard match from that 95 show. That's true. That's interesting because you'd have a perfect opportunity. They could just put that next to the ring. Yeah. And when someone fell out, someone could like dive dramatically off the stand and run in slow motion at them. Yeah. I could be wrong in this, remembering partly wrong, you know, that happens. But a vague memory of during the guest host era of raw, they had David Hasselhoff on the show.
00:05:46
Speaker
at some point. It was like, I feel like you're right on that. Yeah. And they had, they had something like they called it a lifeguard match. Like they had, they actually did like sit in a lifeguard stand next to the ring. Like we're talking about. It's like in the same spot where the front steps were the terrible, dangerous front steps used to have for the room. That's, that's either correct or a wonderful shared hallucination.
00:06:09
Speaker
Tony oversells the main event, proclaiming it one of the biggest wrestling matches in the history of our sport. Getting getting in early on that in the history of our sport line that he likes to turn to in the later days. Yes. Is he like paid? But every time he says that specifically, he should be. So there's an extra 50 for it's his version of buffers ready to rumble. Yeah, exactly. So he didn't license out for like what, 40 million dollars from crazy numbers he sold to our game license.
00:06:38
Speaker
Tony and co-hosts Bobby the Brain Hienan and the American Dream Dusty Rhodes are dressed more casually than last year, with Tony and Hienan in Hawaiian shirts, and Tony and Dusty wearing leis. Dusty, oddly, is otherwise dressed all in black. Honestly, if I had to pick one of these three to be the most formally dressed, it would not have been Dusty Rhodes. Yeah, right?
00:06:59
Speaker
Tony asks Hienan, who he thinks will be DDP's tag team partner, in his match against the NWO's Randy Savage and Scott Hall. Hienan says he's asked a lot of people if they're the partner, and they won't answer. Tony asks Dusty about the main event, and Dusty says the event has a lot of media attention, but wonders if Rodman will be as good in the ring as he is on the court. He suggests that if Rodman does a bad job, the NWO could end... somehow.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's really weird WF logic there. Yeah. You know, on a second thought, this one tag match didn't go right. I'm just done with this whole take over the company thing. OK, I can maybe give one explanation. The NWO is kind of united under the leadership of Hulk Hogan as their commander and inspirational leader and such and dictator. Hogan, presumably, was heavily involved in wanting to work with Dennis Rodman and bring him in and pal around with him and all that sort of stuff.
00:07:56
Speaker
So if that directly leads to the NWO's humiliation, then I could see a storyline going where that starts the breakup because people are like, oh, you keep making bad decisions. Yeah. So they were like a year out from that actually happening. Yeah. Yeah. Not of a Rodman, but it would have been funny if they just referred back to this part of that angle. So Dusty somehow ended up right. That would have been nice. Yeah. Tony gives us a let's go to the ring as we head to our first match.
First Match: Wrath & Mortis vs. Glacier & Ernest Miller
00:08:24
Speaker
Let's go to the ring, the first out of nine tonight and fish at the beach. So our first match is Wrath and Mortis with James Vandenberg versus Glacier and Ernest the Cat Miller. The referee for this one is Jimmy Jett and Mike Tenet will be joining the commentary team for this one.
00:08:46
Speaker
After Glacier had been going around being people being undefeated and all, they suddenly brought in Mortis, who they referred to as the skeleton in his closet, so of course he dressed as an actual skeleton, because Celty is not this company's strong suit. To be fair, it's a very cool outfit. Oh no, it is, absolutely. That wasn't going well enough, I guess. He didn't thoroughly defeat Glacier for whatever past sins he must have done to Vandenberg and Mortis. By the way, if you ever want an actual answer to what history they have, you'd never get it.
00:09:16
Speaker
They never actually wrote one, clearly. Yeah, yeah. They just hand-tatted forever and then they give up on Glacier completely and just don't even talk about it ever again.
00:09:24
Speaker
It's always been interesting to me that they didn't have Mortis dress in yellow. Because Glacier is clearly meant to be sub-zero. Yes. From Mortal Kombat. So and Mortis is a skeleton guy. Yeah. And Glacier is mortal enemy. So clearly he should be themed off of Scorpion. But maybe they figured that will be just a touch too much and we'll get sued for it. So he's clearly Scorpion, but he's in the green that's more like reptile. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:09:51
Speaker
Ironically, Raph is actually the most connected to Mortal Kombat. Of course, guest starring on Mortal Kombat. Oh, gawl, I forgot about that. Yeah. As far as Northmore goes, this is funny, because I don't know if it's a shared idea or, you know, quite coincidental, or it does, you know, someone cribbing their homework from each other. But WBF had a thing where Team Canada, you know, the evil bright-hearted stable, were beating up, I think, the Patriot and other people.
00:10:19
Speaker
And suddenly a large muscular karate knowing fan runs to the ring, fights them off. So that turned out to be Steve Blackman. Right. We basically get the exact same thing here, like four months earlier with Ernest Miller. Ernest Miller was in the audience. They don't really mention him until suddenly he hops the barricade, runs in and starts kicking Rath and Wardus to defend Glacier. And then they go, Oh, of course it's Ernest Miller. You know, and they act like everyone knows who Ernest Miller was. Of course they don't.
00:10:47
Speaker
if you thought that karate might have known who was the time but it wasn't exactly
00:10:51
Speaker
It's not like Chuck Norris ran and saved the day. So. Right. Right. Yeah. To be fair to them, at least he is a competitive karate fighter that has been quite successful. So I know part of the reason he's here is, you know, he's a karate instructor that Eric Bischoff knows. But at least that's not his whole story. He just he actually is a karate champion. Correct. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like the dentist that becomes fake Bill Lugosi and play a knife in our space just because right happens to be the dentist for the director.
00:11:20
Speaker
Right, right, yeah. So now, Ernest Miller and Glacier are a tag team to give them some warm-up on the go-home nitro and keep talking about the vague, ominous story in history between Rath, Mortis, and Vandenberg in Glacier. Mortis, Rath, and Vandenberg are out first in intimidating red lighting. Mortis looks like a cartoon supervillain. Rath looks like he got half dressed up as a cartoon supervillain, but forgot part of the outfit.
00:11:49
Speaker
He's got a creepy staff and he's got a Mortal Kombat looking kind of mask and a robe, but under the robe he just has very normal looking wrestling tights. It doesn't have like the comic book filling kind of design that mortises do. It really has the feel of like the two roommates go into a Halloween party and one guy's like super into Halloween. He's got his costume. He's got, you know, like the wings that will go up and down and he's made a costume for his friend. He's like, all right, I'll wear it, but I'm wearing my black t-shirt or this and my regular jeans. Yes. It's like if I get it feel bare to take it off.
00:12:22
Speaker
Literally, the first sound you hear, the first song you hear on here, which is the wrath and mortise combined theme, I believe, is clearly them doing Dr. Feelgood. Yeah, I can hear it now. Yeah. Yeah. At the very end of Tony's Let's Got the Ring, when you put in that you'll hear that just start. Literally, I'm like, does Dr. Feelgood? They didn't even try to cover that one. DB's in the back going, I don't know, I think your song is too similar.
00:12:51
Speaker
Glacier and Ernest Miller are out next to cool blue light and lasers, and of course Glacier really looks like Mortal Kombat Sub-Zero as was the intent. Miller at the moment is a much more serious character than he'll later become, with no sign of the dancing James Brown inspired gimmick. He's just a karate dude right now. I do kind of like his sort of leopard print theme going throughout.
00:13:10
Speaker
I did like that, they at least gave him something that suggested the cat. Yes. So he's not completely without character, it's just that he's not the fully developed the cat that you'll later get. Mortis and Wrath ambush Cat and Glacier, and Wrath and Cat end up outside. Glacier is uncharacteristically aggressive in the early going, overwhelming Mortis, and distracts the charging Wrath to allow Cat to springboard in and kick him out of the ring.
00:13:38
Speaker
Cat in for a two count off a jumping spin kick. So Mortis tags Rath. Tenay oddly builds Cat up by going over his football history rather than his, you know, legitimate martial arts history, which would be somewhat more relevant. Yeah. It's very strange. Yeah. Maybe it's like subliminally a push for the whole Rodman. You know, he played basketball. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that could be pretty coincidental, but that could be a theory.
00:14:09
Speaker
Cat lands Rapid Kicks, but can't take Wrath down, so he tags Glacier, but Wrath runs them into each other, but when he turns his back, they double dropkick him for two. A Mortis Distraction gets Glacier Scissors kicked hard. As Henan notes that Glacier is currently undefeated, Mortis and Wrath trade off against Glacier, manipulating Cat into distracting the refs so they can kick a chair into Glacier. They get multiple two counts, including a double team powerbomb and neckbreaker.
00:14:37
Speaker
Glacier dodges a Mortis moonsault, but Wrath stops the tag by clubbing Cat off the apron, but an angry Cat springs in anyway and levels Mortis and Wrath with rapid kicks and some very nice spin kicks. Wrath and Cat end up outside, and Glacier DDTs Mortis, but Vandenberg puts a chain on Mortis' boot before putting that very boot on the ropes. No worries as Jett is oblivious.
00:15:02
Speaker
Glacier sidekicks Vandenberg, but that leaves him open for Immortus' chain-assisted sidekick for the three count and the win. Tenay notes that Glacier is no longer unbeaten. Cat checks on Glacier and poses like he's screaming, NOOOOO to the sky in a big morning hero moment. Yes, that's very good.
00:15:24
Speaker
We finally busted that block of ice, Vandenberg notes, adding that when you stick your nose in our business, we rip it from your face and shove it down your throat. That would be a very weird Mortal Kombat fatality. That would be, yeah. Interestingly, we get a different theme for Mortis and Wrath's victory than for their entrance. Huh, I didn't catch that. The entrance music was like that generic rock, like you said, of Dr. Feel Good ripoff. Yeah. But the post-match sounds more like a pipe organ with a beat.
00:15:54
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's true. It must be public domain as I'm 85% sure that I heard it in the WarioWare games block tower mode. Yeah, I think you can remember something with that big fan. Very familiar as well. Yeah, yeah. Maybe this pipe organ music is Mortis' theme, which would make sense. That's what I'm thinking, yeah. And the first one was Wrath's theme. Yeah.
00:16:13
Speaker
Or alternately, one of these is Vannebruch's theme. I thought, I can't imagine he has his own theme. He only manages you guys, so. But it's possible they spend the money giving his own theme music, too. Or just like the general faction theme or something like that. True, yeah. But he still has his own because he was the first one. That's possible as well, yeah. Yeah. And Mortis is the one that gets the pin, so. True. Thoughts on this one?
00:16:34
Speaker
I thought this was a decent to good match. It's not a great one for sure. To be fair, you have Miller who's still fairly early in his career. He hasn't quite gone in the, I'm a karate guy who's also a wrestler thing. He nailed the karate stuff. Given his background, it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's nice to see that. You know, occasionally they'll bring a boxer in to work a thing and they're suddenly not good at boxing, which is kind of funny. So at least he kept that.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, it can be very hard to learn to do a move that you are used to doing full contact in a legitimate sport and do that faked, fake it and not actually hurt a guy. Sometimes guys can end up like pulling it too much or or getting so concentrated. I don't want to hurt this guy that ends up looking faker from them that I would from someone who didn't know how to do it in the first place.
00:17:21
Speaker
They sort of get in their own head and their timing will be off or the range will be off. You know, absolutely. And I think, yeah, definitely credit to Ernest Miller here. He does a very good job of working his kicks into a performance.
Jericho vs. Ultimo Dragon: Chemistry and Performance
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, the only thing he doesn't quite know really well is that first movie does where he hops in the ring. Yeah, that part of the press, but he didn't really do like a strong kick. He kind of just like taps him. Yeah. Here's something I'm curious about. Do you think the fact that he is a karate instructor after his competition work might have made him better at doing the worked kicks? Because you need to be able to do work with your students without actually hurting them.
00:18:03
Speaker
That's yeah, that seems logical. Honestly, that's, I'd never thought of that before, but that, that would make sense to me. He spent a lot more time doing sparring or you're showing him how to do kicks. What you see with Ken Shamrock. Yeah. Ghost going straight from fighting into wrestling for Vader knows full well, what happens if he doesn't hold that stuff. For me, the story of this match is that there's four guys.
00:18:27
Speaker
really trying to sort of show up, they're like, look, we're on the opening match on this big show, here's all this media attention because of Rodman, and of course, TV's doing well as well, so you're gonna get a high audience no matter what. It feels like so much of this match is Mortis, even literally that Powerbomb Neckbreaker one, is one Canyon would use with Raven, like six months from now or a year later from now.
00:18:52
Speaker
So a lot of this feels like he wrote the DGP style related match came with these complicated bits. And obviously he's not the only one doing them so credit to wrath for instance his sort of rolling die off the apron is actually nicer than I expected to be. The only downside I think is that
00:19:10
Speaker
I think they're trying to work a little more complicated than some of them are used to. So there's bits like, when they got to set him up for a move, they set him down and they're like, oh, he got to turn him like to the left or the right, for instance, they sort of reposition or they get repositioned themselves for a move. Like when Wrath does his slinking across the middle row. The second row, yeah. Elbow. That goes fairly slowly. You can see him sort of aiming and positioning himself a bit, which is a wrestling thing where he's obviously going to miss, but at the same time, it just feels like he's going,
00:19:38
Speaker
Okay. What did they tell me to do? Like he tried to think about what can we tell him to do? Like for dangle to go at everything. And, and to be fair, he's a big guy to be doing that move. So I can imagine a lot of it is concentrate on don't slip, don't slip, don't slip, don't slip as well. So yeah, again, that's not to say that they really mess anything up. It's just, you can tell they're, they sort of positioning getting here for the next spot. Whereas they don't quite have the transitions as down as well as like DDP does. And that comes with experience.
00:20:06
Speaker
The other thing, the finish. I like that even the commentators point out the oddities of the finish. Okay, so Mortis is down. He's been hit at the DUT, hits what's under the bottom rope. So Vanuver takes this chance to put the chain around him, and then put it on the top rope, as opposed to just leaving it under the bottom rope, which would also cause a rope break. Yes. And in fact, what he does by putting on the top rope, that'd be really flexible. Sorry. So it's like putting him on the bottom rope,
00:20:35
Speaker
is it makes the ref look at his foot more now than just in the chef's foot. And that means the reference that go, huh, did he always have a chain on his foot? This is the same ref who can't hear the chair being kicked as well. Yes. There's some serious problems related to wellness checkers on these refs and WCW at this time.
00:20:56
Speaker
And I'm still not quite clear how putting a single, like, loop of chain on your foot, kicking guy in the chest would knock them out. I know they could feel good, but I don't think- It's made of depleted uranium, so. Oh, okay. You can tell they are trying to do more complicated stuff and really show up. They don't really botch, it's just timing's a little slower and there's this repositioning a bit, but we're all still pretty good match.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'm in general agreement. I was surprised at how good this was. Everybody involved worked really hard, and while it wasn't as fast as some of the cruiserweight openers we get, it still had a quick pace and it kept moving. I liked Cap better here than in some of his later stuff, actually.
00:21:37
Speaker
His kicks looked really good, and he hit his spots pretty smoothly overall, though there's a couple moments where he briefly looks a bit confused. Like you said, he's not very experienced in the ring at this point. Both teams have good teamwork, including some very nice double team moves. Like you said, the ending is a tad awkward, especially Vandenberg calling the ref's attention to the very boot he has just put a weapon on, which should have caused an immediate DQ. But otherwise it goes fine.
00:22:05
Speaker
I maybe would have considered swapping this with match two or four for the opener, but this was quite fun and did a good enough job of getting the crowd going. Yeah, I agree with that.
00:22:16
Speaker
Fortunately, both teams are absent from the next show, which, of course, we've already covered, which is Road Wild 97. But, to their credit, Wrath and Mortis will be separated, for the most part, from the whole Earth Motor Glacier thing. They're kind of dropping this, not abruptly, but they're sort of easing it out. So, come the very next show, which is Fall Brawl, they're putting a position to actually be challenging for titles. So, at least they're not just peering off faces here if it is nice. They're getting rewarded from booking here.
00:22:45
Speaker
So Ernest Miller, for the most part, hasn't wrestled a lot, post-WV, what he briefly worked. But he came out of retirement in 2018, actually, to team up with Bullet Bob Armstrong, the father, of course, of Bird Dog Jesse James and Brad Armstrong and the other people from the Klan, and Glacier. Oh, interesting. He also teamed up with Haku and, fittingly enough, Ice Train in 2019. Interesting.
00:23:12
Speaker
We cut to DDP being interviewed as part of a chat on the WCW website. A user named ilovecows asked who DDP's mystery partner will be in his match against the NWO. I was about to make a joke about the early days of the internet, but really, usernames have not improved. No. DDP ruthlessly mocks the username and claims his partner will be Diamond Dallas Dad, his father.
00:23:40
Speaker
Paige is very funny here, but admittedly probably doesn't do wonders for Tony's attempts to pitch the opportunity to talk to wrestlers online. Yeah, that's for sure. Yes, come online and be openly mocked by our stars. I mean, there's some people, to be fair, they might actually enjoy that. That's true, yeah. Yeah, but if your name is called out and made fun of, and you end up on pay-per-view broadcast, that's probably a mixed blessing. Yeah.
00:24:05
Speaker
Heenan proposes torturing page for information and suggests that Tony has been similarly grilled before. Tony agrees that he has. Should we be calling the FBI? Yeah, what's going on there? Did someone cut a hole in your chair or something? Should we be worried about this? Dusty seems to agree, though really he might just be amused by the word grilled, I can't tell for sure. That's fair, yeah.
00:24:31
Speaker
Our second match is Ultimo Dragon, repeatedly called Ultimate Dragon because what are names anyway, versus Chris Jericho for Jericho's WCW Cruiserweight Championship. Referee for this one is Mark Curtis and Mike Tenay is still here. So two weeks earlier, they had a special house show event where Jericho won the title from six. They later broadcast this, weirdly enough, as Saturday Nitro. So even 1997, they were adding shows that people weren't asking for.
00:25:02
Speaker
I don't know if they were going to have six in a match like this and they changed their plans abruptly. Having a win at a house show feels like you changed plans abruptly. So I don't know if they were planning something else with six and Dragon, but in this case, it's just a match we need to do, guys. Okay. Dragon's in his light blue outfit tonight. His very loud pyro seems to surprise him.
00:25:25
Speaker
Jericho has his wonderful teen movie music, which starts twice. On the ball tonight, production crew.
00:25:35
Speaker
Matt wrestling to start, and each lands on their feet off of monkey flips. They trade arm drags, then block each other spin kicks and drop kicks with their own. Jericho gets caught by Dragon's handstand kick in the corner, and Dragon lands monster kicks and works the neck, but Jericho double power bombs him with shocking ease. Then gets two counts with Ascenten, stalling vertical suplex, an impressive corner flip moonsault, and the tiger driver.
00:26:00
Speaker
Jericho goes for a superplex, but Dragon blocks, so Jericho tries drop-kicking him off the turnbuckle. Dragon kind of drops off early, so Tony nicely covers by claiming that he dodged. Maybe jumping all the way to the floor is not your best dodge attempt, but you know. Yeah, yeah. Fair play to cover, yeah. Yeah, he just clearly, like the kick clearly misses, so he can't claim he got hit. Yeah. So he does his best with it, which I thought was pretty good. Yeah, fair play.
00:26:27
Speaker
Jericho springboard crossbody to Dragon. Dragon gets his boots up on a second-rope elbow, but Jericho shoves him out of the ring on a top-rope Frankensteiner attempt. Hienan, justifiably, asks if that's a DQ, and Tony ignores him because there's no way he's accounting for WCW's stupid rules. Yes. Jericho tries a splash, but Dragon dropkicks him in mid-air. Multiple counters lead to Dragon's Asahi Moonsault, and Dragon has totally won the kids in the crowd over he is their new superhero. Yeah.
00:26:58
Speaker
dragon back in and Jericho barely makes it before 10 with really impressive timing. He's literally flat on his back on the floor mats at nine and is in the ring just as 10 is about to be counted. When I like that the commentators with Hina especially plays it as he was trying to get as much rest time as he could. Yeah, really good.
00:27:21
Speaker
Dragon gets two counts with a Hurricane Rana and La Maistra Cradle, off of Jericho's own, encounter to the Handspring Elbow, and they trade two counts off of Jericho Roll-Up. Jericho gets two with the Lion Salt. Frustrated, he tries again, but Dragon drop-kicks him in mid-air. Jericho blocks the Tiger Suplex, encounters the Dragon Sleeper with a knee to the face. Dragon hits a Moon Salt.
00:27:46
Speaker
Jericho counters the Tiger Suplex with a Tiger Driver, but that's countered with a Herak and Rana, but Jericho counters that with a Victory Roll for the 3 count and the win. Quite a sequence to end that. Yeah, right? Jericho looks surprised that he won. After celebrating, he goes over to Dragon, and the two shake hands in respect. Thoughts on this one? I thought this was quite a strong competitive match between these two.
00:28:12
Speaker
I actually did do some research. They had wrestled about three times, I believe, over the years leading up to this, over in Mexico, I think once in Japan as well. They actually have two more matches, I believe, on main shows or pay-per-views after this as well. Yeah, you can definitely tell from this match that these guys are used to each other already. They're very smooth together and they work in a lot of complicated counters that build on some history.
00:28:40
Speaker
Well, it's funny too, because we have an actual lucha match later in the show, but there's definitely, there's a prevalent sort of lucha feel of this match as well. Yeah. With the pacing, because there's less time for like, stop and, you know, like get a crowd to cheer or, you know, cause no one plays, it really plays the heel of this match. So you don't like hit a big move and, you know, get the crowd to boo you or anything. The pace is definitely like a Mexican wrestling match, which can be quite enjoyable as life will like that.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah. The biggest point where they, where they genuinely just stop and clearly wait for a reaction is after that counter, counter, counter simultaneous kicks sequence where they pause are like, okay, let's let the crowd realize that we're evenly matched, which is a great sequence for proving that I think, uh, excellently done. Yeah. That's one of those spots that's really impressive a lot of the time, but there was a point where I got to use so often.
00:29:32
Speaker
It came a clichรฉ, you kind of have to stop doing it for a while. Just let it breathe a bit. They have a good version of it here, though, I would say. There's two-edged sword here, because on one hand, like I said, they've got some really complicated counters and sequences here. Unfortunately, that does lead to a few moments like the drop out of the ring stuff, you know, the spot with the drop kick. They don't quite go as well as they hoped for.
00:29:57
Speaker
It's them mildly botching. There's no real bad mess ups, but also we're doing really complicated things. So it's not like going back to the previous series, we had Mongo and Brian Adams who couldn't work. Basic closed line-up for run moves. Oh, that was still one of the worst. Yeah. So being fair to them, they messed up a bit while doing really complicated bots, so not as bad.
00:30:22
Speaker
And then this one, not in a way that hurt the internal reality of the match. Like Tony was able to explain the few botches as something that realistically could have happened. No, that's fair. Yeah. The only downside of this match really is that for the most part, the crowd doesn't seem that excited about it. It's really disappointing with how much accidents going on and how well done it is that the crowd not popping more than you would hope.
00:30:49
Speaker
At a certain point in the match, the children in the audience have clearly been won over by Dragon and are cheering quite heavily for him. Right. But at one point early in the match, I think we even get like a we want sting chant. Yes. Well, that is prevalent during this time period. It's probably not something you chant during the match that you're most interested in. Yeah. And this is a rare thing for me, but I feel like if they had found some way to have six show up, like don't have a screwy face, don't have a run energy cue or anything.
00:31:16
Speaker
maybe have six like show up and try to interfere and get chased off or something. I think that would have given the crowd a little more engagement because as it is, it's a really good match between guys working a fast, complicated style. But as Derek himself has noted, his character was so white meat and vanilla that so many people just didn't really connect to him. He felt artificially like AstroTurf.
00:31:41
Speaker
And so it's him and a guy, Dragon, who they've seen before, but he's not like a regular name that they go, oh, Dragon here, this guy's really good. There's not enough people do that. So it's two people they don't see mostly invested in, and maybe the guy they really want to see, you know, if they hate him, is six and he's not there. Having them involved somehow, but without really ruining the match, I think would have gotten a crowd pop and then they'd have
00:32:06
Speaker
crowd go oh these guys are fighting just you know despite this guy he wants to get them so maybe they have more investment to the thought yeah could have had a cool moment where like he tries to interfere and they just both team up and beat the crap out of him and he goes running off or something so yeah that could be that could like you don't build up the fact that both of these are faces and neither one tries to take advantage
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, maybe he tries to form an alliance with Dragon. Dragon doesn't want that because he wants to win fairly and all that. Yeah. I think that would have helped the crowd reaction a bit, which is a shame because the match is really good. They just don't care so much of it.
00:32:38
Speaker
I thought this was an excellent match with quite a lot of variety. From a strong matwork beginning to some great acrobatic counters sequences to some excellent aerial dives, these two put on quite a show. It really built up over the course of the match, and in the later match, the two ended up frequently countering moves that had been successfully used earlier, showing that they learned not just from prior fights, but from this very match.
Raven's Philosophical Promo and Character Depth
00:33:00
Speaker
There are a few minor slips in this, but they pale in comparison to the massive number of complicated sequences that these guys nailed perfectly. Amazing match and very entertaining. Fittingly, exactly two weeks from this show, Jericho will lose the title to Alex Wright. It was on a regular night tour this time, not a Saturday night show. Okay. He, of course, will get his rematch of Road Wild, a show we've already covered.
00:33:27
Speaker
On the other side, nine days after the show, Ultimate Dragon would beat William Regal, or excuse me, he'd beat Steven Regal. I'm forever going to call him Regal because I knew him first from WVF and WVV. He would win the TV title off of Regal and go on to defend as a Clash Champions 25.
00:33:47
Speaker
We cut to mean Gene Okerlund, who says that he was out strolling on the beach earlier dressed in his current outfit, a tuxedo with leis. He seems to think it was weird that people gave him confused looks. Okay. Gene shells the hotline, claiming they might have news on who DDP's mystery partner is. 1-900-909-9900.
00:34:11
Speaker
Jean praises the crowd and goes over to find one particular attendee, Raven, who is accompanied by Stevie Richards.
00:34:25
Speaker
Hey, there's the man I wanted to see. Oh, my, look at this. You know, this man, if you could accompany me, this man, Raven, has been seen recently on a two or three WCW telecast. He's here. He's not affiliated as far as I know officially with World Championship Wrestling. Hi, pal. But Raven, you're here. There's speculation about Diamond Dallas Page's partner. And I'm certain you could probably shed a little light on it.
00:34:52
Speaker
Don't mic today me pal something it Trust and hate and love and faith and I don't understand Social grace the human race confuse me these words I speak Bring forth the world of emotions emotions of dreams lost dreams found
00:35:22
Speaker
and dreams I'll never see. So it is written, so it shall come to pass. But the question is, will I or will I not be Diamond Dallas Page's partner? But isn't that the same question that I've been asked time and time again since my childhood? Isn't the question really, have I any dreams I'd like to sell? Quote the Raven.
00:35:52
Speaker
Nevermore. Wait a minute. I asked you a straight question and you come up with this Edgar Allen Poe gibberish Raven. I want something more.
00:36:00
Speaker
What are you doing here? How you doing Gene Gene? I'm doing very good. Yeah, the dancing machine. Hey, what about this relationship between the two of you? Maybe you could shed a little light. Stevie Richards. You know what, Gino? You have this big, big question asked by Man Raven about being Diamond Dallas Page's mystery partner tonight.
00:36:39
Speaker
I'm a bit worried about Jean's views on the treatment of children now. A little bit, yeah.
00:36:47
Speaker
Except for some jerk shining a laser pointer right in Gene's face, which happens a few times in the matches tonight as well. This was a really good intro to the Raven character. Raven does a good job with his confusing philosophical poetry. And Gene does a good job looking at first intrigued and then just completely confused. And at ignoring the aforementioned laser pointer. And Stevie does a good job acting irritating and then getting punched in the face.
00:37:15
Speaker
Good segment overall. I really liked also Gene about halfway through the bit with he and Stevie talking to each other. It seems to realize that the crowd might not yet be aware of Stevie either. So we make sure to call him by his full name. Quite with a lot of emphasis on it. Good job by Gene there. And obviously both these guys had been pretty big in ECW, but there's definitely some concern that their mainstream minds wouldn't necessarily know. Oh, that's Stevie Richards or Steven Richards the way you want to call him.
00:37:45
Speaker
And obviously, definitely want to know who Raven is because he's going to get your character going forward the next few years.
00:37:51
Speaker
They definitely sold with this that Raven's appearance is a big deal. There's a lot of intrigue about how it's going to go. I think it's quite successful at building him up, even if you're not already aware of his time in ECW. You're like, okay, whoever this guy is, he's intriguing and being treated as important. I would not be shocked at all. I know this was the early days of the internet, but I would not be shocked at all if Raven's early appearances, especially here, led to people actually looking him up.
00:38:19
Speaker
Sure, yeah. Gonna find someone's Angelfire page and find out about Raven. Oh my gosh, yes. Geocities. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're transitioning to Raven because he's definitely doing his sort of real deep but also nothing line. I feel like that's gotta be from something he didn't, he really didn't just make that up. That's got to be. I don't know where you're from, yeah. Yeah. I wish I knew where that was from civically. The cadence makes it sound like a song lyric. It definitely is a song lyric. It has to be, yeah. But definitely gives it a vibe of someone that would
00:38:48
Speaker
just recite lines from the sandman comic but maybe not quite know how to do them properly, but yeah. Here's how I would say it, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, it's like just the right amount of logical but also ridiculous. He's not a joke character, so it's not comedic that he's saying this, but at the same time he's not so wise and all-knowing that you go, oh, I really would have believed this guy because he's still ultimately a heel.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, Raven is a character that needs to sound deep, but not actually necessarily be deep. Yeah. Ultimately, the idea of the character is that he is convinced that he's, you know, some kind of like savior character, but he's ultimately a selfish and pretty shallow person as a heel. So, yeah, I think they do a good job of getting that where he's like, he's saying a bunch of things and they sound philosophical, but
00:39:38
Speaker
You're not really sure that they actually mean anything and he ends up coming off whiny, which is exactly what they're going for. I think with them. Yeah, he was guys that knows Jim Morrison poetry and thinks that they are as wise, you know, and to conserve right line, cryptic lines like, you know, the doors lyrics, but ultimately they really don't and they really can't. So it definitely works there.
00:40:03
Speaker
It is funny, too, because as part of this build-up, when they're trying to build up the tag match, they have both him and Kurt Hendig come out at the end of Nitro. They sort of stand near the ring, and the interviewers are looking at him. There's a weird bit right before the show got off at the airport. Scott Hall of all people is looking at Raven who's standing there, going, who are you? What are you doing here? I make no connection in my mind between the interview and Raven, but apparently, at least at this point, due to the whole DEP story, it definitely is.
00:40:33
Speaker
That's funny, yeah. It's just a, it's a ceremony I never thought actually happened, but apparently it did.
NWO vs. Steiner Brothers: Strategy and Execution
00:40:40
Speaker
Our third match is the NWO, Masahiro Chono and the Great Buddha, versus the Steiner brothers, Rick and Scott. The referee for this one is Mickey J, and Tanay has left the commentary team at this time.
00:40:55
Speaker
So the overarching story is that the Indebio, in this case the outsider, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, and occasionally six, as we'll discuss later, are a tag champion, but really don't want to fight the Steiners for them. So they're doing everything they can to either avoid a match or get out of the match quickly. So they're going to do everything they can to not have the match.
00:41:15
Speaker
So eventually, in the build to this, we get the official debut of the NWO Japan, which at this point is represented by Muda and Shona we see here. Tenzan is also part of the group as well. They would actually beat the Stiners in an upset match, of course with some shenanigans involved because it's the NWO.
00:41:34
Speaker
So a bit later, the interviewer would finally seem like they're going to give the starters a straight one-on-one match. One-on-one be a team, that is. A match for the titles. And so if you beat, you know, beat the interviewer on pay-per-view, you'll get a match. But then they attack them with the help of Muda and Shono revealing that you actually have to beat them to get a title shot. Instead of say, you know, buy your buff bag while there's someone else.
00:41:58
Speaker
And it simply leaves a team that, with their help, has already beaten the Stiners. It seems like a gimme now that there's no way the Stiners are taking a towel shot, so that we're safe for another six months. We're in that era again, folks. Yeah. I think I said just when we were watching this originally, I'd be okay with the individual theme they use when they do it in Japan if they got the same guy that does the random insults and talk over him to do it in Japanese.
00:42:28
Speaker
That same delivery, everything, just like you're just reading Phaedic Japanese would be so great. Chono has an awesome shiny trench coat. He does. And Muda does a better job of looking like a Mortal Kombat character than the guys from the first match who were intended to look like Mortal Kombat characters. That is very true, yes. There's a cool horned skull mask and a dragon on his shoulder. Looks awesome. It's very nice, yeah. We get the return of Crabcam. Yes.
00:42:56
Speaker
The Steiner's, fortunately, enter to Steinerized. However, unfortunately, they are dressed in their plasticky red era outfits. Yeah, it's their weird, like, vinyl dressing outfit with their big, shiny blade belts. Do not like this era of the Steiner's outfits. Their overall look is fine, but just those... those singlets look horrible.
00:43:17
Speaker
We're also seeing the first of the subtle transition for Scott Steiner, whereas Harris still grown all along, but he's grown his goatee out. Yes. He's in the halfway stage between regular Scott Steiner, a big pop-up bump Scott Steiner.
00:43:33
Speaker
Chono and Buddha ambush the Steiners, but the Steiners hit flying clothes lines and Steiner lined them. So they roll out a guy wearing what appears to be a Sid Vicious shirt of all things. It's in Chono's face. Sid was actually in the WWF at this time, though he would soon leave it. I think it's actually in the next couple of weeks that he exits. It's pretty quickly. Yeah. But he won't actually rejoin WCW until 1999.
00:43:58
Speaker
Muda and Scott start the match proper, Muda Land strikes and bounces along to a Muda chant from some in the crowd, but a Scott double-underhooked powerbomb and Gorilla Press slam sent him rolling out to recover. Tag to Rick and Muda stalls a bit, then tags Chono. Tony notes both Chono and Muda are former world champs. Chono repeatedly eye-breaks Rick and hits his Yakuza kick, but a suplex from Rick sends him out to argue with Sid Vicious guy again.
00:44:28
Speaker
Muta and Scott back in, but Chono quickly double teams, including a electric chair drop that I'm not entirely sure was intended. No. I think Chono actually meant to hold Scott on his shoulders for Muta to hit something, but Scott reeled while selling and that kind of overbalanced Chono. Yeah. It looks like Chono just sort of had to go with it because otherwise he's going to flip off of his shoulders and he can't have that. So yeah, they recognize, oh, something's gone wrong and they turn it quickly into the electric chair drop quite well. You have to get improvisation there. Yeah. Yeah. Example of the guy's experience, I think.
00:44:59
Speaker
Muda and Chono wear Scott down, including Muda's excellent handspring elbow and power drive elbow drop, but Scott gets a belly-to-belly superplex, then tags Rick for Steiner lines and a scary overhead belly-to-belly suplex to Muda. A less scary one to Chono follows, and Rick gets two with a diving bulldog to Muda. Everybody fights, and Rick and Chono roll out. About a half second before Scott belly-to-belly suplexes Muda right where Chono would have been.
00:45:29
Speaker
Muda top-rope Frankensteiner on Scott just to be insulting. He then gets himself in trouble cheering for Muda. Rick comes back and counters Muda's handspring elbow with what Tony calls a dragon suplex, but it looks more like a German suplex to me, for two as Chono saves. As the ref's getting Chono out, Scott Frankensteiners Muda for two for Rick, but Chono pulls Jay away. Jay yells at Chono, and Chono actually begs for mercy. Yeah.
00:45:56
Speaker
Scott hits a top rope DDT onto Muda off of Rick's shoulders and rolls out, leaving Rick to pin Muda for the three count and the win. Chono actually had a clear path to stop that, but just kind of didn't. Yeah, Scott definitely runs in at the end to face him down, but within the six counts, it doesn't really matter. Yeah. Yeah. I suspect what actually happened was Scott was supposed to be standing in the way, but he forgot and belatedly ran in. Yeah, pretty much.
00:46:24
Speaker
Or maybe Jonah was just that terrified of Mickey J. I mean, they're both viable options. Scott yells that Hall and Nash can't hide anymore. Thoughts on this? That was a good match. I will say the early bit, especially, have sort of an odd pacing to them. They definitely build up to the teams like really fighting each other a bit.
00:46:46
Speaker
It's also the first, maybe the first of many matches where you get a big floor at the beginning where you knock the heel around and they roll outside the ring and recover. It's a classic spot, but they do it like the same way in the same position, like three times in the show. It's a little weird. Yeah. I think as a whole, they work well together. There's definitely some slight hiccups here and there, which is surprising that I feel like these guys have wrestled a bit over in Japan. They have a thing called the World Tag League in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
00:47:16
Speaker
And actually in 1996, Rick Steiner reached Japan obviously because they worked there a lot. This is the point where Scott's actually legit out with a back injury. So it's actually Rick Steiner and Muda as a tag team. That sounds like a cool tag team. That would be pretty sweet of you.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, the thing that's really sad to me is there's odd bits of repetition, like you're either adjusting for a spot or redoing a spot. Scott goes to that same corner, the heal corner by the way, twice, and it backfires on him. And there's a bit where trying to run up the ropes and sort of bumps into the brick Steiner. And then he comes back, second time he gets thrown over his head. And then late in the match they actually do the same spot again where he runs at him and gets thrown over his shoulder.
00:47:58
Speaker
Well, that was the first one is just sort of miscue. Like he was too fast or Rick wasn't ready, but something happens. That bump was like, Oh, you didn't go. Okay. Let's turn back. I'll do it again. But it's just weird that the repeating spots in the match set. Well, it's not super long. This isn't also super short. It's a little strange. That said that I'm glad the starters won.
00:48:17
Speaker
Because if they hadn't, then they would just be prolonging this whole story even more than they already have. Because again, it's been since January of this year, and we're in July now, with us finding ways to wear the N.W.O. donut from the tiles against the Tyners. So I'm glad they didn't try to like space that out to like fall brawl or, you know, Starrcade or something. Yeah. As you know, it is funny that the finish involves the ref of all people scaring Chono into the corner and not interfering.
00:48:44
Speaker
As by the fact that Shono's the guy whose old gimmick is I'm a big tough Yakuza guy. Yes. And my big coat. But it's this sort of deli middle aged looking ref. I gotta back off or he's gonna take me down.
00:48:58
Speaker
Maybe it's like the anime cliche where there's the guy who looks like they can't fight and they're the strongest fighter in the world. Maybe it's convinced that's what real life is like. Mickey J has been holding back this entire time. He could be world champ in a heartbeat if he came out for a match. Yeah. Yeah. Take down Hulk Hogan in a split second. Exactly. Yeah. It's a good theory.
00:49:18
Speaker
I will say, lastly, that their top role for DDT is scary, for say the least. To the credit, Scott and MudaDoo rolled through nicely. So while the E is still impact, it's not like Rick drops back and it looks like Muda gets spiked. They're rolling through definitely helped with that.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's a terrifying move. I have definitely seen it go worse than it goes here. This looked like ultimately it ended up safe for them, but it's a scary move to watch. Things go at angles that are not comfortable. Yeah, that's a lot of standard things over the years that are like that. They just do some moving like,
00:49:58
Speaker
Why would you think to do that? And who's who's agree like you try this on them? Yes. Yeah. You really want to know how they developed in particular, like the Steiner screwdriver. Yes, exactly. Like who who I get that you're good at this now, but who was your first attempt and are they still alive?
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's a spot that Scott used to do when he was an early single star. So like, you know, 1991, 92 even. Where he'd hold the guy for the fall away slam. He would just do a standing moonsault and slam the guy down. I'm like, why are you doing that? That is terrifying. Yes. I can see why he stopped doing it, but the first time you see it, you're like, whoa, what the hell? That giant ball of muscle just backflipped and slammed a guy.
00:50:43
Speaker
I thought this was a good, solid tag match, as you'd expect with these reliable performers. Good hard strikes, excellent suplexes, a few nice counters, and a great ending spot make for an entertaining contest. At the same time, I did find it a tad underwhelming. Chono and Muda, as you noted, Al repeatedly roll out of the ring, slowing things down. And some of the best spots in the match, like Scott's double underhook powerbomb and Rick's catch of the handspring elbow,
00:51:09
Speaker
had already been done by Jericho and Dragon earlier in the evening. That's true, yeah. This is still a good, fun tag match, but I just feel like it could have been better. Yeah, it's one of those things where you're
00:51:23
Speaker
Like if you, especially if you're like a real strong style fan and you hear, oh, this match happens. You picture all these spots in your head and you get a lot of them and they're most part, they're done really well. But yeah, there's just, it's that little extra isn't there, whether it's pacing wise, because they're playing NPO Japan, Muda and Chono that now they have to do the Hogan playbook and roll out and do a little jog and get away from, from fighting everything.
00:51:52
Speaker
If you have no idea who these guys are and you just see it, I think your reaction to it is Piedefin and Iris. Yes. If this is your first or at least an early experience with any of these guys, I think you're impressed and feel like you had a good match out of it. If you're used to these teams, then I think you expect a little more from them. But it's by no means a bad performance.
Lucha Libre Showcase: High-Flying Action
00:52:15
Speaker
No, no. I liked when Rick comes in.
00:52:19
Speaker
when he does his suplex to Chono. I like that he sort of gets him up off his feet, which is impressive given that Chono is a pretty big guy, especially relative to Rick, up for a few seconds like it's the elevated bear hug, and then Chono sort of begs off because he knows what's coming and then skips the throne. I like that in the match. There's a lot of good stuff like that, but yeah, the idea of these teams against each other, you picture so much and maybe you don't get all of it, unfortunately.
00:52:49
Speaker
So obviously the Stylers will finally get their world title shot against the outsiders. And we know how that goes. We watch our Listen to our Road Wild show. Yes. Notably, they give Chonomuda a nice bit of rebound. They feed an epic team when they follow Nitro. They feed the public enemy. And of course, as part of the NWO, they get involved in the Giants business, part of his angle where he's fighting the NWO and various people at that point.
00:53:17
Speaker
There's a weird wrinkle to the whole Inn about Japan angle. So curiously, the Great Buddha is part of Inn about Japan. However, they would pull an ankle where Kichimudo, the actual guy when he's not dressed up like the Great Buddha, is actually against Inn about Japan.
00:53:35
Speaker
So he's got like a split personality. Apparently. Yeah. Nice. They go for like a year before non face painted Muto eventually actually comes part of the group. It's very strange. Back in February of this year, if it's 2023, they held a big farewell show for Kije Muto or the great Muto. They built a whole show around it and he has this big retirement match and set to a Naito. Masi Ruchono had actually been retired since I think it's 2014.
00:54:04
Speaker
So what happened in the show is, Muda fittingly loses his final match, putting him over Naito. Afterwards, he gets on the house mic and challenges Chono, who's been doing commentary for the show, because he's Muda's friend. He challenges him to come around the table and have one more match against him. And they do. They have one more match. Chono unretires for one match so he could have the final match against Great Muda. Hmm.
00:54:33
Speaker
The two of them actually debuted against each other in their very first matches in New Japan, 1984. So it's kind of a way to book in their career like that. That's very cool. Yeah. Our fourth match is Huventu Guerra, Hector Garza, and Liz Mark Jr. versus Psychosis, Viano Four, and La Parca. So Al, I see your match of the night and MVP are decided.
00:55:03
Speaker
with Sonny Ono in a Lucha Libre six-man tag match. Referee for this one is Mark Curtis.
00:55:12
Speaker
Heenan begs for Tineg to come back out as the competitors start entering. Gerrera, Garza, and Lismark, who looks much more awesome than his name suggests in a Silver and Blue superhero outfit, are out first. Sunny Ono brings out Viano IV, Psychosis in Shadow Knight colors this time, and La Parca in a amazing mariachi outfit, complete with sombrero that matches his skeleton duds. Utterly ridiculous and amazingly awesome.
00:55:41
Speaker
His jacket is nice as well. Yes. I like that. So he's wearing a full black and white skeleton bodysuit. Yes. Complete with hood and mask, of course. And he's then wearing a hat over his hood and mask and wearing a jacket over his full bodysuit. Yes. With proper branding on it. He is sweating to death. I would imagine under there. Yes. Understandably, he takes that off very quickly as soon as in the ring and just has the the bodysuit and mask, which I'm sure are already hot enough.
00:56:11
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Tenay does indeed rejoin us and lets us know that this is under lucha rules so wrestlers can get in without a tag if their partner goes to the floor.
00:56:22
Speaker
We get a series of pairings to start. First, Lismark and Psychosis that ends with a Garza flying arm drag and assisted Lismark high angle drop kick. Then Viano 4 gets in and Garza hits a lot of acrobatic moves with 1970s Kung Fu movie noises. Including he and 4, obviously cooperatively rocking back and forth to get Garza to the top rope to flip 4 to the mat. Does look cool though. It does, yes. Hina jokes that we need an air traffic controller rather than a ref for this.
00:57:09
Speaker
It's not wrong.
00:57:17
Speaker
Things do not improve for Parka, as he holds Lizmark for psychosis, but Lizmark dodges so Parka gets hit. Again, Parka holds Lizmark for four in psychosis, and Lizmark dodges, but Parka dodges! Ah! Parka and his buddies shove each other until Garza interjects with a top rope crossbody, then rolls away so four in psychosis, diving to help, land on Parka. Parka, you need better friends. Yeah.
00:57:42
Speaker
Guerrero sentenced all three for two, for Garza, I think. There's kind of a pile of bodies there. Lismark, Guerrero, and Garza dropkick Parca, Four, and Psychosis out, then hit simultaneous suicide dives in an absolutely terrific shot. Psychosis, Four, and Parca attack Guerrero in their corner, and get two with Psychosis's top reverse waist hurricanrada. I have no idea what it's called, and Tene does not help me.
00:58:11
Speaker
It's almost like the Sunset Flip Power Bomb kind of move. Yeah, yeah. It's a cool move, but yeah, I have no idea what it's called. Varied two counts, with an oddly slow Guevara Hurakurana, a Garza Moonsault Splash, and a Lismark Springboard Moonsault. Psychosis and four whip Lismark and Garza at each other, but they dodge, so Psychosis and four close line each other.
00:58:36
Speaker
Lismarck and Garza put on The Star, basically simultaneous wishbone stretches to four in psychosis' legs. But Parka scoops up Gerrera and throws him hard into Lismarck's face to break that up. It's a great spot. Garza kicks a charging psychosis and, somewhat improbably, sends him into a perfect double dropkick on Parka and four. Actually, it's physics, Bob. I don't know what the issue you have. I miss MythBusters.
00:59:03
Speaker
Tony, confused, claims Garza kicked his own partner to add Forest to the Dropkick, and everyone else is too exhausted by the sheer number of moves to correct him. Yeah. Dodged swan dive splashes from Psychosis, Lismark, Four, Gerrera, and Parka. Gerrera goes for a super flex on Four, and Garza, Parka, and Psychosis all get involved, so Lismark Dropkicks, Parka, and Psychosis, and Garza and Gerrera head scissor them both outside.
00:59:32
Speaker
Lizmark gets a handspring moonsault on four for two. That's a confusing thing to say. That sends him out too, and everybody has a happy fun time doing complicated beautiful dives out of the ring, ending with a Garza corkscrew plancha.
00:59:46
Speaker
Garza and Psychosis close line each other down, and suddenly, Viano V takes IV's place. They do have their respective Roman numerals on their outfits, but it'd be easy to miss in the melee. It's like on the lower left hand of the waist. Right. Well, I say that and it's Roman numeral, so it's IV is switched out for V. Yeah. Not the most different thing. It's not like if II is switched out for IV. Yeah. You notice that.
01:00:11
Speaker
Five gets two counts, also confusing, with a leg drop and clothesline to Garza, but accidentally clothesline Psychosis after a Garza dodge. At least it wasn't Perka this time. Yeah. Garza hits an epic drop kick from the top rope to five, followed by a standing moonsault for the three count and the win. Dusty describes this best. That was a mouthful right there, boys.
01:00:36
Speaker
Hienen tells Tony he'll show him the proper way to call a replay, which apparently is to get T'Nay to do it for him. That's what I would do. Lizmark does some kind of strange hand gesture like a chomping gator mouth or I guess a shark or something. I don't quite get it, dude. Yeah, I don't know. Thoughts on this one? I thought this was a real fun match. It's definitely one of those matches that's a true spectacle.
01:01:01
Speaker
Watching this in 1997, you get a really unique flavor to it. Whereas watching this again, say, 2000, when QWAs become much more the norm and this kind of match, like we knew with that long rivalry where it's three count and the various groups fighting each other. Those are always still really good matches, but you come to expect that kind of situation because they're putting all those matches every week on Nitro.
01:01:24
Speaker
So when you watch this show where you're getting occasional tag matches, you're only getting six-man matches over on pay-per-view. So this one feels very fresh and different. The crowd couldn't identify Liz Mark Jr. on a lineup, or know why you should dislike Viano IV. They don't really know much about any luchadores other than, say, La Parker, who's the skeleton guy to people with the chair, or they see, you know, who we wrestle a bunch of times.
01:01:47
Speaker
That said, they really win the crowd over by this pure spectacle. And yeah, I think he described as a, this is like a stunt show kind of match. Yes. There's going to be bits where yes, they're obviously cooperating stuff. That's silly. If you really think about it again, like kicking the guy, so he drop kicks his own partner, that kind of stuff.
01:02:06
Speaker
That said, there's a lot of little nuances that they try to work in the match, like they work in that Laparca is not going along with his partners. And actually, if you noticed, when they do the switch with Vianno 4 and Vianno 5, the reason Laparca is not around to get him all the action at that point is he's actually hiding Vianno 4. He's using his body to cover him. And it speaks to his character. He's so confident. Hey, we switched our guy. We're going to win this match. I don't need to bother getting back in the ring and fight because we got it in the bag.
01:02:34
Speaker
They find little subtle ways that the characters are different in how they wrestle. Because again, you don't know their characters, you know, you know, the likes and dislikes. When they do the multiple dives, they all do the outside, they all do it a little differently. Garza has his ternio dive, which is really impressive. And you have Hoovah to Guerrero's one where he just chucked like six, eight feet out of the ring, clears the ropes like nothing. Super high in the air. Yeah. Oh, God, I'm so glad that they aimed that right.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yes. I hope we never had a problem with aiming that thing right, because that would really not be fun. You would be dead. If he did not have that aimed right, he would be dead. That's fair, yeah. Super impressive spot, but I'm so glad that I'm watching it on a show from 1997, and I know that he lives through it. Yeah.
01:03:23
Speaker
There's a part where they're all fighting in the ring. I believe Garth does a middle rope moonsault, and then Lismark just jumps up and does a top rope moonsault. So little things like that are really impressive. They find their own, well, I do this way, or like I dive, you know, I do a course redive and stuff like that. It doesn't speak to the character, but you can recognize their spot differently. It's not... Yes. Every match had someone doing a moonsault. By the eighth match, you'd be like, oh, moonsault, whatever.
01:03:50
Speaker
Which is a shame, because it's a cool move to do. You don't want to kill a move. So I like that they mix it up a bit here. It's one of the matches that's definitely bonkers. If you try to, say, write a match recap for it, I'm sure it's fun. That was a nightmare. Yes. I joke with you when you're talking about your word count. I joke that half your word count was probably this match. Definitely could have been. Definitely could have been, yeah.
01:04:13
Speaker
And several of the matches you feel for them, they got to be sort of like during the match. And then you know, like, Oh, I got three more dives. I gotta do, I gotta catch this guy. Credit workers do, they do some really impressive stuff that you really have to put the buyers in the line. For people that it's audience that doesn't know who they are, but that's wrestling. You want to try to impress people that you don't even know and hope for the best. I was absolutely spent after this match.
01:04:39
Speaker
They should have just ended the show here. It's like nothing's going to get better than this at this point. Right.
01:04:45
Speaker
The match was absolutely insane brilliance, one acrobatic move after another, delivered at a blistering pace. Yes, I'll complain about them not letting spots breathe, but in this case, if they let all the crazy spots breathe, this would have taken up the remainder of the show. Right. Considering the sheer complexity and speed of what they're doing, it's amazing how smoothly this goes, too. While they don't hit every single spot exactly right, they probably hit a good 90% of them with no problems, and the rest are good enough to work.
01:05:14
Speaker
And yes, there are parts of this that don't look like a competition so much as an elaborate interpretive dance, but the athleticism and intricacy of the moves is nonetheless impressive.
01:05:24
Speaker
Cool that we even got a bit of a twist ending here, with five replacing four, but ending up pinned by Garza anyway. I adored this performance, and I applaud all of these guys. And I am sorry for over-summarizing, perhaps in this case, and not calling out all the cool spots that happened, but I didn't want this to be our longest episode of all time. So... Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, for me, the high point of the match is the spot with the star in the middle of the ring. And for today, it's like, if you have an overhead camera, you can see where they're forming a star. Yes!
01:05:53
Speaker
How long has it been since we've seen a straight overhead shot? I mean, that was like a highlight of the early Starkades, but I think around like Starkade 85 or 86, I think that kind of stops happening. Yeah, it did definitely like have good shots that resulted from that. I'd love to have seen that again.
01:06:10
Speaker
I believe at the time you would joke that they just put a camera man like up in the rafters, you know, in a harness and left him there for the whole show. So maybe by like the 15th time the union is like, look, we're not doing that anymore. Two people have died from starvation left up there. You forgot Steve last week up there. He's still hanging there. We're not doing this anymore.
01:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, I distinctly remember, I think, Gordon Soli from the first or second Starrcade. I think it's the first one it might actually be. Praising the cameraman that he says is like 75 feet in the air. Oh, yeah. And praising the overhead shot. So I have fond memories of that shot and I wish they used it more often.
01:06:46
Speaker
But yeah, so I like that they have the elaborate star spot and then who he runs in the park. It is catches them briefly puts them in a hold. It's almost it's kind of like the like a torture wreck. Yeah, it's like torture wreck, essentially. And then just like looks down and just chucks in my Elizabeth. Yeah, as the as the just most just uncaring way that he could possibly have done done that, just like, yeah, I'm done with this. Yeah, exactly. You can't you can't see his face because there we go. Full skull mask.
01:07:16
Speaker
but you can feel the disdain he has towards them and maybe even his own partners at this point for getting put in the star spot through that. I love little things like that where you can tell, even if the guy never speaks a word on camera, you can tell how they feel.
Taskmaster vs. Benoit: Career-Ending Conflict
01:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, Parka in particular, I mean, I'm sure this is one of the reasons you like him so much, and I agree. Parka in particular, I think, is very emotive despite being fully covered. Rey, at least you can see part of his expression. But yeah, Parka is so covered up that you can't, but he manages to be so emotive even so.
01:07:51
Speaker
One for me as well is, well, he obviously can do some of the bigger spots. He's not the guy that does the tornado or does the running planter to the outside. For me, he's the stable block of these matches.
01:08:05
Speaker
Yeah. Because you could do one of these matches without him and it's just pure stunt show, crash, you know, slam each other and jump and flip. But without that other guy there filling that role, you're missing something, this sort of unexplainable something you're missing. And that's what he really fills in a match like this for me.
01:08:26
Speaker
Our fifth match is the Taskmaster, Kevin Sullivan, with Jimmy Hart and Jacqueline, versus Chris Benoit in a special career match. The loser of this match will, quote, never wrestle again. Referee for this is Nick Patrick and Mike Tenay now leaves the commentary team.
01:08:46
Speaker
So there's a lot of stuff to cover with this. We've covered some of this before, and probably I'm sure we'll again, because this few goes for several months. And a lot of it is very awkward giving people involved. Yes. With the hindsight. Honestly, even without the added hindsight, I mean, in the moment,
01:09:03
Speaker
You have Kevin Sullivan booking his wife to, you know, hang around Chris, you know, this angle where you fall in love with him and betray me. And that seemed to have actually happened. Yes. So even then it's like, oh, geez, you booked your own divorce, man, as they say. To Benoit and Sullivan's credit, with all that going on, they kept working together. Sullivan is astonishingly civil, considering what has just gone on. Yeah.
01:09:31
Speaker
It is astonishing how Sullivan is able to continue working with Benoit and not at least to any degree that I've ever been able to notice, try to hurt the guy during a match. No. Like he seems entirely trustworthy as in a partner in the match still, which is amazing. Yeah, for sure. Any you give to the other, it gets paid back. So that definitely encourages you to work together. But there's still a lot of that.
01:09:58
Speaker
If we start this, it's going to escalate. Let's not escalate it. That's mutually assured instruction. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, this goes very dark places eventually. Yes. I don't think we need to dwell on that right now. But even in the moment, it was awkward.
01:10:14
Speaker
Benwall, of course, is part of the Four Horsemen, and Sullivan is part of the, at this point, bare remnants of what's considered the Dungeon of Doom. Something just called the Dungeon. I guess they realized that Dungeon of Doom sounded really cheesy, and it did the entire time. Like, if you hit the dungeon, that sounds menacing. It still sounds silly, but I guess it's less silly. The Doom part makes it sound much more like Legion of Doom from Super Friends. Mm-hmm.
01:10:42
Speaker
In kayfabe, it's reached the point where these two can't coexist in the same company, let alone, you know, the same state. So they agreed that whoever loses would retire and that would end this whole thing once and for all. I do not envy Sullivan and Benoit having to follow the luchador match. No. Tony notes that we're going, quote, to the other side of the spectrum here. Jimmy Hart is dressed like a 1970s mob lawyer.
01:11:12
Speaker
Yeah. Jaclyn and Sullivan are clearly not getting along as they walk down the ramp. As Benoit walks to the ring, Dusty does a great job building up what retirement could mean to either guy. A brawl inside leads quickly to a Sullivan suplex to the outside, and Sullivan and Jaclyn double-team Benoit and send him to the barricades. Benoit fights back, so Sullivan just flings Jaclyn into him.
01:11:36
Speaker
Benoit and Sullivan brawl onto the stage, where Jacqueline tries to get involved again but Sullivan shoves her away. Sullivan uses a surfboard and beach chair against Benoit. Hart climbs the lifeguard tower for no adequately explained reason, so Benoit shoves it over and Hart falls into a beach hut in a spot that would have been awesome if it hadn't been in the absolute back of the camera shot. Yeah, right?
01:11:58
Speaker
Sullivan pile drives Benoit on the floor, lets Jacqueline get a few hits in, and hits his double stomp, but Benoit stuns him and rolls him back in. They fight inside for a matter of seconds before they're back out brawling around the ring and running each other into stairs, cameraman step, and barricades, even right in front of Raven. Finally back in the ring, Benoit drops Sullivan on the ropes, and hits a snap suplex for two.
01:12:22
Speaker
Sullivan bites Benoit, so Benoit bites him in the ear, in a clear reference to the infamous bite fight, Holyfield-Tyson II, which just happened a couple weeks prior on June 28, 1997. Yeah, it's a rare case of them emailing something in recent events. Yes, yeah. Benoit builds to the Crippler crossface, and Sullivan fades, but gets his arm up on the third check.
01:12:48
Speaker
Henan builds up Sullivan's resilience and determination as Sullivan agonizingly drags himself to the ropes, but Benoit just slaps the hold back on in the center. Sullivan makes the ropes again and slowly fires up, ultimately no selling some Benoit shops. By now, the commentators, all of them, are actively rooting for Sullivan. Yeah.
01:13:11
Speaker
As Sullivan gets Benoit upside down in the corner, the tree of woe, and lands charging knee strikes, Jaclyn gets a wooden chair from under the ring. She goes to hit Benoit, but Sullivan demands that she give the chair to him. So, she nails Sullivan over the head, splintering the chair to pieces. She gave it to him alright, Tony notes. Yeah.
01:13:34
Speaker
As Hart chases after Jacqueline to question her, Benoit hits his top rope swan dive headbutt to Sullivan for the three count and the win. Dusty calls Sullivan a great warrior and Tony, Dusty and Hienan build up the enormity of the loss for Sullivan and the end of his career. As Benoit leaves, Tony says Benoit can now put his feud with Sullivan behind him. Hienan says goodbye and thank you to Kevin Sullivan.
01:14:04
Speaker
Back in the ring, Hart yells at a recovered Sullivan that Sullivan let everybody down and let Hart personally down. Sullivan shoves him to the mat and goes for the shattered remnants of the chair, so Hart beats a hasty retreat, still screaming at Sullivan the whole way. Sullivan slowly walks away, clearly misty-eyed. Dusty gives a tremendous tribute to Sullivan and says that Sullivan loved the ring.
01:14:33
Speaker
Thoughts on this one? I think as a whole this is a good match. I'm a little split on certain parts of it though. The first part, the real chaotic bit where they're all fighting at ringside and Sullivan and Jacqueline and Hart are sent to the heels in this situation, constantly attacking him. Felt a little weird given that Benoit is part of a group that does nothing to stop them from being involved at all. It's a little weird.
01:14:59
Speaker
I did at least like that someone got to have a big fight on the beach set. This one at least. I suppose it would have killed the drama of the match if Sullivan had hit him with the rubber shark. Like on a previous show. If we definitely would have lost it.
01:15:17
Speaker
I just didn't like that first part of the match because it's real chaotic and for me that didn't play to their strong suit. But at the same time I guess I kind of get the idea is that this is a real sort of blood food at some point. Literally. So I get why they're just so aggressive in the get go. I didn't care for that part of the match as much I'd say.
01:15:39
Speaker
When they actually got in the ring, or at least in and around the ring area, I liked that part a lot more. That definitely was the kind of match that they can do together and they had done together. I thought that part was really well done. It's interesting the story they tell, where Sullivan really does, you know, he fights through the pain and escapes the cross face, eventually struggles to his feet and fights back.
01:16:04
Speaker
It's interesting thing because they really are giving them like one last big face push mid match. The tricking. I think it works because of where they are. Last year, he got a face reaction from this crowd. True. Yeah, because it's in Florida. And I think they make use of that to have him start out this match as a heel, but kind of slowly transition more face ish over the course of the match so that he can have his retirement moment.
01:16:34
Speaker
I'm kind of torn on this finish. I think it said before at the time we watched it. I get the idea that you don't necessarily want him to lose clean and you want it to sort of be a bitter thing that he's betrayed by Jacqueline. The timing is kind of weird because, you know, he's yelling about the chair and he has a good few seconds to realize you got to hit him.
01:16:56
Speaker
I thought it might work, but if you'd like turned away from her, like to say focus on Benoit. You can see that, yeah. All it goes is, she's holding the chair in front of her at like waist level, and he's yelling at her. Then he stops yelling at her, she lifts the chair up, he ducks his head down and closes his eyes, and it takes a chair shot. Which, obviously you have to do that, and I totally get why you do that, but you kind of want to cover that part of the bit up a bit. Make it look a little better is all I'm saying. I'm kind of wondering if it came slower than he expected it to.
01:17:25
Speaker
Bright, probably. The question I have in maybe part of long-term booking is why you won't have this happen to him this way and then have Benwah still attack him afterwards even though Benwah knows for what happened. I mean, there's no way you miss the sound of a chair breaking with someone's head like that. They'll let all the wood splinters around. I guess it's more heroic to hit him with another move, although that sounds more heelish as well.
01:17:53
Speaker
So the suggestion I would have is these guys have fought for so long that Benoit may not be convinced that that's enough to take Kevin Sullivan down. OK. These are the same guys that fought around like literally the entire arena. True. I think it's Great American Bash 96. I think so, yeah. I think you can see it as Benoit having a healthy respect for Kevin Sullivan's durability. OK. And there's so much on the line on this match, I would want to be sure as well. Right.
01:18:18
Speaker
Lastly, I'll say, obviously, we know the long-term risk of doing a top rope headbutt, which I don't know how you didn't know that at the time, as for as in doing it, a person calling these matches for him. But if you think that move's not dangerous enough, and it certainly is, now imagine it with a bunch of wood debris in the room. This is true, yes. Yeah, any kind of top rope move I wouldn't want to be doing with tons of sharp chair shards around the room. No, yeah.
01:18:47
Speaker
There's a minor botch here and there, and this is mostly a brawl, but man, this was a fun brawl. Sullivan clearly wanted to go out with a big fight, and he delivered with a very good performance. The two had intensity and brutality, but also mixed in some fun use of props. Not as wild as the beach brawl last year, but not as confusing either.
01:19:07
Speaker
The match was paced well and managed variety despite a lot of striking and built well to its twist ending as Sullivan fights hard, but just disrespects Jacqueline one too many times and pays for it. Special praise here for the commentary team who come into the match, treating Sullivan like the crazy heel he normally is, but slowly come over to his side as he keeps fighting back, matching the mood of the match quite well. This is not a bad way at all to end a full time career.
01:19:36
Speaker
We would, of course, see Sullivan briefly return with his old varsity club team on Starrcade 1999. So Sullivan is definitely retired and actually has more matches before the one you even talked about. He would actually unretire about a year later. He'd work for a high ending promotion. Okay, so picture this. So you've had your big epic review match where you end your career so you can be a backstage booker, but you want to come back for another match.
01:20:05
Speaker
Who do you pick for your big comeback match after this big moment on Bastion's Beast 97? Blue Meanie. Oh, no. So if you want someone to really give you the shine you need, you get Vincent. Oh, yeah. You get multiple matches to get to Vincent. That's his return as a return matches for any version of Ohio. Incidentally, Sullivan's last match official and cage matches from 2019.
01:20:35
Speaker
Fittingly, he has his final, at least so far, match against Brian Pullman Jr. added in his show. Reference to their old feud and everything? Yeah, exactly. You want to take a guess at how many matches he's had since his actual retirement, though? I made sure to count, I figured I'd use this. Okay, so it's something you could count. Yeah. So this is every match post this match. Okay, for any kind of promotion, just every match? Yes. Okay. His cage matches all of his matches, yeah. 40. 82.
01:21:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, okay. Well, some people just didn't retire. It's, I mean, it's still more legitimate than any of Terry Funk's retirements were. So, you know, yeah, that's true. As for more direct future, then one of the course end up in a tag team match at Broadwild, as we've seen. Yes.
Jeff Jarrett's Horsemen Drama
01:21:24
Speaker
Our sixth match is Steve Mongo McMichael with Deborah McMichael versus Jeff Jarrett for Jarrett's WCW United States Heavyweight Championship. Referee for this one is Jimmy Jett. Ah, Jeff Jarrett, the horseman that nobody wanted. After jump from Federation number six, Jarrett will be brought in by Ric Flair famously in a big in-ring promo announces the new star that's going to be part of the lesson for horsemen.
01:21:55
Speaker
As you like talk about, they would have a they'd have a woo off and the strut off. Yes. Which would go horribly awry for poor Jeff Jarrett. Yeah, Jarrett does his one strut over and over and over and Rick Flair does these like massively varied ways of doing his routine. And somehow this is supposed to make sure it looked good. It's funny as heck. I loved watching it, but it in no way builds up Jeff, Jeff Jarrett. Yeah. If the plan was a good pull to turn on him, it worked, but I don't think that was the plan.
01:22:25
Speaker
But yeah, so he plays a pretty strong injection from fans and in storyline from the other Horsemen other than McFlair. In spite of that, he would actually end up winning the US title from Demolinko on Nitro, which is the start of Demolinko's losing streak story which we've covered parts of in the recent past. The other aspect going on is that, while he's officially not part of the group, Jeff Jarrett does seem to have the eye of Mongo's wife, Deborah, who's also his valet.
01:22:52
Speaker
Nothing overt, but it's definitely Wick. When they were tagged together, she would seem to be watching him more than watching Mongers, she'd be distracted. That kind of thing, to hint at something going on there. People have been wondering, like, is she more interested in Jarret than him? And it's not clear. Yeah, it's always interesting to think about this period with Jarret, because I totally get why the crowd doesn't take to him. I believe it's probably about 75% that outfit. Does that help? No.
01:23:20
Speaker
But at the same time, Jared is a great performer. And I think actually would make a really good horseman. He would fit right in that group. He's that old school mentality. He wrestles good matches. He's from that proper era to really get what that group means and how to work within it.
01:23:41
Speaker
And it's such a shame that that just doesn't work. Yeah, I think they make of it what they can, but you really wish that that had worked out because I think Jared would have made an excellent actual horseman as opposed to the unwanted horseman that he ends up being. It's it's a massive shame. Mango says it's time for him to have a belt around his waist and Jared should never have jumped in his chili.
01:24:09
Speaker
Goodness, I hope it wasn't too spicy. There's no way Jared would avoid getting that in his eyes if he was jumping in it. Yeah, that's true. That was such a weird expression. That's like, that's got to be a weird regional thing. I don't know. Yeah, it's left me lost on me for sure. Mongo has his traditional briefcase and Deborah, of course, has her queen of the WCW sash. Yes, she does. I still hate Jared's outfit.
01:24:37
Speaker
Yeah, he even posts big guitar strings, it's not a good look. Yeah. Jared poses with his title, but Mongo steals the belt and poses with it too. Jared lunges in, but Mongo goes to hit him with the belt, so Jared flees. Jet finally gets the belt, as Jared says Mongo has to earn the belt just like Jared did. But then Jared gets the belt back and poses with it again to massive boos from the crowd.
01:25:01
Speaker
Mongo directs a Jarrett Sucks chant, so Jarrett retreats outside for a while. Finally, he returns, and we actually get started. Mongo overpowers Jarrett, swinging him around with ease, and hits a great spine buster.
01:25:15
Speaker
Mongo three-point stance, and Jarrett flees outside, selling the leg. Back in, Mongo wins a test of strength and sends Jarrett back out with a clothesline. They brawl over by Sid Vicious guy. Mongo chokes Jarrett with a cable, earning a warning from Jet. Tony says that would have been a DQ if they'd been in the ring. So wait, that's actually okay to do if you're not in the ring? What? I have more questions now than before.
01:25:44
Speaker
Back in, Mongo hits a dangerous-looking press drop, but then gets two with a power slam. But Jarrett dodges a running knee, and Mongo hits the turnbuckle. Jarrett furthers the damage with Mongo's own three-point stance charges, then goes for the figure four, but Deborah gets on the apron with Mongo's briefcase. Jett argues with Deborah, but she sneaks the briefcase to Jarrett.
01:26:09
Speaker
who nails Mongo hard in the arm and in the head, or the noggin-woggin, per Dusty. Jared disposes of the case and pins Mongo for the three count and the win. Dusty says he's dumbfounded, and Henan's confused as well. Jared celebrates with his belt and hugs Deborah, and she says she'll never give the US title up as the two exit. Mongo is distraught.
01:26:37
Speaker
Weird that two matches in a row had endings revolving around a female manager betraying someone. Yeah. Difference isn't how it happens, at least, I guess. True, yes. Thoughts on this one? I thought this was a pretty decent match, all things considered. You do have to definitely have to account for all the stalling. Yes. The match is, like, officially, like, what, six-and-a-half-menta I think is what it's supposed to be?
01:26:59
Speaker
I'm wondering how much of that is posed with belt, leave ring poses belt, you know, walk around outside the ring, yellow crowd. There's an excessively long intro to this match. Yes.
01:27:13
Speaker
That said, the actual match when you get it, as brief as it actually is, I think works quite well. They tell a good story that manga was just more passionate and angry because he really hates Jeff Jarrett and he's really driven to steal the title from him to get it back. So he's, you know, he's hitting him real hard and he's taking control, but he's also less experienced. So when things can turn against him, they can turn against him really quickly. Jarrett's a guy who even at this point has what
01:27:42
Speaker
Probably 10 years of wrestling is his career at this point.
01:27:46
Speaker
One of the running things throughout I find interesting is that Dusty really praises whoever gave his game plan to Mongo. The implication would be, of course, that it's like, you know, Flair or Arne coached him through a match out of beat Jarrett. But there's a point towards the end when he does the elbow drop to Jarrett when he's slightly outside across the ring apron. And he typically calls out that was a move that his buddy Dick Morock used to do. I have at that point, I am 1000% convinced that Dusty laid this match out to some degree.
01:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. You can't see a spot. You don't see a monkey hunter, but you can. You can almost hear his smile when he's talking about how someone gave his great game plan, how it's working.
01:28:26
Speaker
It's like, yeah, I did a good job, didn't I? I could see that. I could see Dusty being a good person to get involved in this, too, because he has that same kind of old school mentality that Jared will work with quite well. But he can give Mongo a good match design as well. I wouldn't be shocked if Dusty was involved in it. And if so, he's right. He did do a good match design. Oh, yeah. There's absolutely nothing wrong with him do that. And I know because we see the credit, he's listed as a producer on the show.
01:28:53
Speaker
It's just funny they sort of shows his hand a little bit there it seems to anyway One question have evolved in the finish is So the very first shot where he strikes from the elbow Is that really like part of the storyline finish like the headshot? He does is the knockout blow and that makes sense Like do you need the elbow shot to like wear him down? Like he do you know? Oh, he's definitely gonna block this so I should hit the elbow and then hit his head Or he just put his hand up and they won't with that
01:29:21
Speaker
I'm not sure. I mean, because Jared goes so quickly to the second hit, it's not like Jared's thrown at all. No. By that having happened. But I'm unclear on if that was an accidental Mongo forgot and got his hand up or didn't do the block right. Or if that just actually was their intent. It works well. I mean, if it was the intent, it looks good and it looked like it hurt. Yeah. Well, you hear that one. Yeah. Yeah. I hope it didn't feel as bad as it sounded because that looked and sounded very painful.
01:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's one of the cases where it's made of like a sort of like aluminum type metal. So when it hits against things, it makes a really loud noise. But I think it's fairly thin. This is why he just goes on full on straight swing right in his head. Yeah. But Mongo definitely like howls loud and Mongo is not a very good actor. So yeah.
01:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, I thought this was a perfectly acceptable match. Jared did a great job making Mongo look powerful, really throwing himself around on Mongo's moves and screaming in pain. Mongo, for his part, bellowed through the entire match, which helped him look intimidating as all heck. This is a very loud match. Yeah, for sure. All you needed to make it better was Lex Luger in there, man. Based on this show, we need Luger and Mongo and, I guess, Hector Garza in a match. Yes.
01:30:43
Speaker
The match has a good general plot, with Mongo being aggressive and powerful, but Jarett managing to outfox him and work the leg to set for the figure four. They got to the twist ending maybe a tad too quickly though. It would have been nice if Jarett did actually try the figure four after setting up for it, and only went for the reef case when that didn't work. Still, a short but fun match with these two.
01:31:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think long-term we look at a match like this. I don't think I'm going to have to look back and go, oh wow, this Mongo match and Mongo Jerry match really stands out to me. But given the expectations we generally have for a Mongo match, based on its level of experience and ability, it definitely rises above what you expect. Definitely because it will put the match together, what it really was dusty. This was definitely a well above average Mongo match and genuinely a fun match to watch. So yeah, I have no complaints about it. Yeah.
01:31:35
Speaker
Agreed. On the following night show, we have a big match between Rick Flair and Jeff Jarrett, which would end in a disqualification when the rest of the horsemen, including Mongo, would attack Jarrett formally for real this time if they cannot have the group. It was kind of unclear whether Flair still supported him, but after the turn on this show and then the beatdown afterwards, there's no question that Jarrett is no longer at all affiliated with the horsemen in any way, shape, or form. So you get the team of Mongo and Benoit, attorneys of law,
01:32:05
Speaker
to face Jared in his unlikely ally of Dean Malenko. Unlikely given that Dean Malenko, as you might remember from my setup, is the guy he won the US title from, via cheating. They would end up in an elimination tag team match at Road Wild. Tony asks Gene what he thinks about what just happened, and Gene says he's appalled. And speaking of being appalled, he says, there's buzz about the main event with Hogan and Rodman versus Luger and the Giant.
01:32:34
Speaker
Heck of a transition, Gene. Transitions, folks. Yeah. Gene shills the hotline with a scoop on DDP's partner versus the NWO.
NWO vs. DDP: Mystery Partner and Match Dynamics
01:32:42
Speaker
1-900-909-9900. Or, you know, you could just wait a couple minutes as that matches literally the next match on the show. Just one promo segment away. Yeah, right. How impatient would you have to be to call the hotline to find out what was happening minutes later on a show you'd already paid to see?
01:33:03
Speaker
It's a very good question. Yeah. Gene shills the upcoming Road Wild, and we get a brief ad for it in which the signers are riding to Sturgis pursued by an NWO policeman. Okay, then. We cut to an NWO black and white video promo from Hogan and Dennis Rodman. So, of course, NWO theme count one.
01:33:30
Speaker
Whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, Hollywood's on a roll, brah. The deal is, I've been on the porch so long. I've been running by myself. I'm the big dog. It's finally nice to find another champion. It's finally nice to find another dog.
01:33:48
Speaker
It's finally nice to find a fire hydrant that you have something in common with. And just like Hollywood has been rocked by Rod the Bot in Hollywood, just like the wrestling world is gonna be rocked tonight by Rod the Bot in Hollywood, Daytona Beach doesn't have a chance. Bash the Beach is Rod the Bot, the God himself,
01:34:15
Speaker
to enjoy the whole time of his life. Sweet! You be the man. You be the man. You are the man. I love to be the man. Let me tell you right now. They told him, you don't know where to hit you. Because you know why? That's Rod the Bob Hollywood Hulk Hogan. We're here to turn this town apart. And you know what?
01:34:41
Speaker
Accept it. We're not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere. No, no, no. You know what I like so much about you? It's the fact that you have a conscience. The fact that when you bust people right in the skull, the fact is you saved a couple lives. You left the giant, that big, nasty, more infected giant, and Flexy Lexy, that Hollywood wannabe,
01:35:08
Speaker
for us to beat up tonight. Daytona, you've been devastated. This town can't handle Rod the Bod. But tonight, we're going to take out the last two survivors, Hollywood and Dennis Rodman the Dirty Dog.
01:35:25
Speaker
You know what? We're gonna get your hands on that message. Would you please save a little piece from me? Please save just a little bit. He may be tall, but like they say, the bigger you are, the harder you fall.
01:35:40
Speaker
And you know what, bro? I didn't realize that everybody in the sports world was going to be watching tonight. I thought that maybe they would take the show, maybe they would wait just a couple more moments to see what's happening, but whenever there's a natural disaster, whenever the two greatest athletes on God's green earth get together,
01:36:04
Speaker
Everybody pays attention. You have no choice. You put the icing on my cake. You're great. I know I am. I know I am. You're great. I know I am. But you even better. You know I'm better. Because you know why?
01:36:41
Speaker
This still has the usual stylish NWO feel with the black and white palette, freeform camera, and constant NWO theme dang it.
01:36:50
Speaker
And they're always a bit rambly, but Hogan and Rodman just kind of seem to start talking here and just kind of keep going. Yeah. I'll say the thing we discussed in that first show where they got the proper NWO one, I think this might've been the nitro we covered. Yes. We talked about how overproduced these things were. And they talked about it, you know, the people involved to talk about it. They'd film like, feel like an hour or two hours of all these things and then cut it and paste it in, which it had to the disjointed chaotic nature of it all.
01:37:19
Speaker
They just jump a conversation because they different takes you. Let's take you stick three and then I want to take six here and take one here. Whereas this one, they basically point the cameras at them and say, yeah, save everyone. We're cool. It feels like this is them planning out the promo and doing some rehearsal and someone just accidentally turned the camera on. It's not bad. It's just strange.
01:37:41
Speaker
between multiple bouts of mutual admiration society and claiming that they destroyed Daytona Beach, they work in several bizarre statements, most notably Hogan calling Rodman a fire hydrant and himself a dog, which makes me wonder if Hogan knows what dogs do with fire hydrants. Guess not. And Hogan claiming he thought people would tape the pay-per-view rather than watching live, which doesn't suggest a great deal of confidence in W.S.W.'s performance. Well, before he said, tape it and then wait a couple of minutes.
01:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, but I sort of taped a lot of stuff off TV. That's not how it works. That's not how it works now. It was still honestly fun to watch just because it's so different from what you normally get with wrestling promos. And it was a massive improvement over the last Dennis Rodman promo that we had with his weird delivery of his shouts to Vader. Oh, yeah, that's true. But man, this one was bizarre.
01:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, part of me really wishes that, especially because he's around for the match itself, that Savage was involved in this. Yes. That's the only way it could be more in outer space, I think, than it is currently. Yeah. Well, plus Hogan and Savage have more natural repartee. You can tell Hogan's definitely trying to get that with Rodman throughout these promos and like on the show is putting up to this and then on this, even this show here.
01:39:01
Speaker
They definitely don't quite have that down yet. They'll have more practice, as we'll discover. But whereas Savage is there, you'd have a war control thing and they sort of cut to Robin to say crazy stuff. I feel like if you took a shot every time they said Rob the Bod, you would not make it to the end of the show. This is true. Among other things involved.
01:39:20
Speaker
I feel like during this you can tell Hogan is the one that has the responsibility for kind of like keeping them moving towards a conclusion. He does a pretty fair job of that. There's a few points where he kind of like brings in the next topic or cuts off a segment that's reached its end. Yeah, it makes sense as the more experienced performer. He's kind of like, you know, controlling the pace of the promo and it's actually not that long of a promo.
01:39:41
Speaker
When you first watch it, you think that this thing is like five or six minutes or something like some of the older endobio promos. It's actually like three. It's no longer than the Raven segment. So it's not like the incredibly indulgent thing at first. Sounds like it is. Yeah. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or a diss on my part, but I get it. I did actually ultimately enjoy this promo. It's very interesting. It's just it feels very strange.
01:40:09
Speaker
I think it makes sense thinking of it in context of the old NWO promos that, like you said, they would do this long conversation and then they would trim it. It's like they did the long conversation part and they just forgot to do the cuts. Yeah. Or it's scary you thought, this is the cut down version.
01:40:25
Speaker
There's not any awkward camera cuts or anything like that. Get the show and DVD in here, the full 25 minute version of the Robin Hogan promo. I would almost be curious enough to do that. I don't know. Almost. Yeah.
01:40:45
Speaker
It's one of the tricky things. So obviously, they've been doing these interview promos for a year at this point now, or just about. So on one hand, you're like, maybe you've done so much of that already. If you don't do it on this show, it'll be fine. But then the flip side, of course, is that they think this is the big show people are going to watch. We've been building up this rotten match as the match of the century, greatest moment in sports history. So if we don't do an interview promo, even if it's just the two of us, then it's a missed opportunity.
01:41:15
Speaker
So I kind of get why they did one, and it's definitely not as long as other ones, but it sure is even more rambling and less structured than normal. Our seventh match is the NWO, Scott Hall and the Macho Man Randy Savage with Elizabeth versus Diamond Dallas Page and a mystery partner with Kimberly Page. Referee for this one is Mickey J.
01:41:40
Speaker
So of course the story going out of this is that DEP would fantasy rebuke the New World Order as they tried to invite him, and they are started to feud.
01:41:48
Speaker
He'd have a bunch of matches with Randy Savage, of course, who'd do this whole thing where Randy Savage would pretend like he didn't know his name, and you just really disrespect him. Meanwhile, Kevin Nash is absent with legit injury, thankfully not a major one, but enough to keep him off PB for a while, which is why they involve six in the tag matches and such. This is why it's Scott Hall and Randy Savage versus DP as a big partner.
01:42:12
Speaker
So at the same time, obviously you have the Randy Savage connection there. So it doesn't feel like, oh, we got to sub out somebody and obviously it sounds assaulting the Randy Savage. I don't want to do that, that you're he's subbing in for somebody else because he's Randy Savage. You know, the big moment, of course, but this is the go home nitro before this. Randy Savage would say he's going to he's got to make a warm up match. He's going to show people really how to wrestle. He's going to show DP what he's got coming. So we'd face the little legend himself, La Parca.
01:42:43
Speaker
Matt would go on fairly normal until Renny Savage, thinking he had the advantage, would go for his top elbow. But of course he wouldn't land the right way because he's actually there to get two boots in the face as he drops down. And as he's recovering, Tully the Parkhead grabs him and does the Diamond Cutter. Throwing off his mask and revealing that he's actually DDP. That is amazing. It's a great example of how you can use the Gimmigola Park because
01:43:09
Speaker
As we noted, he is the largest of the luchadores, at least what we've seen. So even though, technically, I think DDP is slightly taller than him, the fact that he has a full bodysuit and is at least very close to the size really does help in the situation. Yeah, it's not like DDP disguising himself as Rey Mysterio. No, no. I will say also as, you know, the Le Park super fan of the duo,
01:43:32
Speaker
It's kind of a giveaway when you watch back the match, obviously knowing the angle, because the parker comes out, he dances a little bit, but he's dancing without his chair. Ah, okay. If he's a real parker, he'd have his chair with him. To his credit though, DEP does work in a little parker happy dance during the match itself. That's cool. He does actually try to do that, yeah. He actually did study the gimmick a bit rather than just putting on the outfit. That's cool.
01:44:01
Speaker
The tag match has announced two people will come into play that could be the tag partner. First, Raven. The other is Kurt Hennig, who very recently left the WWF. He was managing a young Hunter Hearst Helmsley. They seemed like they were building up some sort of feud where Hennig would turn on him, but then abruptly he left the company. So he's officially signed with the WCW, so I'm saying it now too.
01:44:27
Speaker
And so the mystery is who's going to be DDP's partner? Will it be Raven? Will it be Kurt Hennig? Or will Sid Vicious's shirt guy finally get his wish granted? Can you imagine DDP and the master of the powerbomb, mastered rule of the world? You know, those would probably be some of the best Sid Vicious matches ever because DDP would be plotting them. Very true. NWO theme count two.
01:44:56
Speaker
Hall and Savage are out first, accompanied by Elizabeth. Hall wears his tag title belt and carries Kevin Nash's, even though this isn't a title defense. Nice touch there.
01:45:07
Speaker
Funny that two Bash at the Beach shows in a row, we've got a NWO tag team match with a mystery partner. And Scott Hall is even in both of them. Yeah, the role has been reversed a little bit. Yeah, yeah. DDP and Kimberly come out next, and DDP's pyro, which isn't actually shown on camera, scares Dusty. DDP's mystery partner turns out to be Kurt Hennig. His pyro is visible. Yes. Tony points out DDP's eternally bandaged ribs.
01:45:37
Speaker
Savage and Paige start. Savage dodges a spinning lariat, but Paige catches him with a second, then beats him up. Savage rolls out and considers a chair, then taking a walk, but ends up just hurling in some flowers from somewhere, and getting back in. Poor Mickey J has to clean up the plant debris, as Savage and Paige spit at each other. Tag to Hall, who demands Henig, so Paige tags Henig. Hall throws his toothpick at Henig, so Henig spits his gum at Hall.
01:46:06
Speaker
Hall says something like, you haven't changed. These two had matches in the WWF when Henig was Mr. Perfect. Yes. And of course they were tag partners in the AWA. Yes. Henig outwrestles Hall and slaps him hard in the face. Macho and Paige lunge him briefly but Jay maintains order.
01:46:26
Speaker
Henig lands strikes, an atomic drop, an inverted atomic drop, and finally a flipping neckbreaker and shouts, now that's before stopping himself as the WWF would probably sue if he called himself perfect. Good catch, Kurt. Yeah, I guess you can say that's Henig would have quite a rush as well. Yeah, yeah. They really should have thought of a new moniker before this match so he could do that, but they just keep calling him Henig.
01:46:52
Speaker
It kind of pictured like DDP in the back without the stores. Wait, what do you got? What do you got? What do you got? I got something. Need something. Tag to Paige and the fans chant for him as he takes it to Hall. But Hall clotheslines him in the corner and Savage sneaks one in as well. Savage and Hall trade off concentrating on Paige's eternally bandaged ribs. Hall sends Paige through the ropes and Paige even makes sure to hit those rib first for maximum sympathy. Yeah.
01:47:22
Speaker
Savage flings him to the steps for about a 0.1 Siena. Yeah, it doesn't move much. Not really, no. Paige crawls over and lets Sid, Vicious Guy and his buddy help him to his feet. Back in, Hall gets a discus punch for a very close two count.
01:47:39
Speaker
Tag to Savage, but Page hits an inverted atomic drop, and collapses into a tag to Henig. Savage knocks Page out of the ring, and whips Henig to the ropes, just as Page is trying to use them to get to the apron. Henig hits the taught ropes hard. Page clearly doesn't realize what happened, but an angry Henig hits him, then walks out.
01:48:01
Speaker
Hall hits the outsider's edge on Page, and Savage hits the big elbow and arrogantly pins Page with one foot for the three count and the win. End up UO theme count, three. Henik walks out, and Kimberly nervously tries to get to Page, but Savage and Hall keep getting in her way.
01:48:20
Speaker
They finally leave and Jay and Kimberly get in to check on Page. The surprise commentators think this wasn't even an NWO plot. It was just Headegg's anger about Page's mistake. The fans champ for Page as he makes his exit, selling the whole way like a champ. Kimberly can be heard criticizing Page's choice for a partner, as Tony notes. Thoughts on this one?
01:48:45
Speaker
I like this one quite a bit. I am a little torn though, cause as part of the angle, it kind of just stops suddenly like that. So in a way it works because the whole point of this is really to have Henik show that he can still go in the rain. You haven't seen him probably seen Russell in a few years at this point. He's been off for a while. So he definitely got something to prove here. And it's just how current Henik was, it sounds like.
01:49:10
Speaker
Then, you know, we get the part where the D.P., of course, gets worked over. After you noticed it right before Hall throws him out, he gets in the little backslap, like with the D.T., what I'm telling him, we have to go out. Obviously, it's good, because if you just shove a guy out without warning him, that'd be really bad, especially dating what comes to that. Especially with this case, because Paige has to actually hit the ropes, getting more sympathy from the crowd. Exactly. Yeah, I'm glad they they plan ahead. Yes. So then once he finally gets his big
01:49:40
Speaker
tag in the match looking to go in the next direction, it abruptly stops because of the angle. It kind of works because it feels unnatural, but it's also the point. So it didn't wait for the pointing because you kind of want to see a more prolonged tag match involving these four men, and unfortunately don't get it. But at the same time, they execute the story really well. Like I said, you get Paige looking strong, and then Hank looking strong, and then the classic DDP fights back from underneath and comes back for the tag, and then just all goes awry.
01:50:11
Speaker
I'm a little torn as well on how you do the ending. I guess the idea is that because the ropes pulled so taut it just sort of hurts his back more than normal. But it feels like it would be more pack would be like actually pull the ropes down. He went over the top. Because otherwise, I mean, I get he's annoyed because he took what looks like a unpleasant bump on his back, which obviously is the sole injury that took him out of wrestling for a while. But it's not quite as impactful an injury seemingly as it maybe should be. That makes sense.
01:50:38
Speaker
I feel like that spot works, but it needed one other bit of tension to set up for it or something like that. If you had a little touch of tension and they get past it and then this happens, then it makes more sense. But at the same time, the fact that it feels unreasonable for Hennek to be that angry, I think actually maybe works in favor of the feud that's coming.
01:50:59
Speaker
yeah that's tricky because they they work this whole match abruptly stops thing so you get annoyed the match doesn't go anywhere but then same time that's what they're trying to get you to feel so yeah yeah you feel ticked off a headache as a result of this so i think it actually works really well and i i kind of do like that this looked like such a minor moment
01:51:20
Speaker
The fact that this doesn't look like, you know, a major betrayal and that it feels like something you could get past that it only happens once and he still gets so angry about it makes him clearly the heel. Right. He doesn't take that bump on the back and then yell at Paige. He just immediately hits him. Yeah, goes right to hitting him. Yeah. And clearly shows him into the ring to get beat up. So it's not even like
01:51:47
Speaker
He gets him and walks off and they drag him into the ring. Yeah. It feels very intentional. Fine. You go to that. I'm going to show you in the FB two up. I mean, yeah, you, you look at, uh, for the park and getting hit multiple times and by his partners in his match. And he had the patience of a saint, I think at that point. Yeah, it's true. I was really torn on that too. It's like, it feels like for this match, it would be better for there to be more justification before the feud going forward. It's really great that they did it this way. Mm-hmm.
01:52:16
Speaker
I found this a really fun match while it lasted. Henig looked really good and had some nice, smooth counters, and Hall really sold well for him and made him look like an immediate threat. It was a good move to have Hall be part of his first match back with WSW, given their pretty long history together, as you noted. I think that was good to have someone really familiar to work with.
01:52:37
Speaker
Paige was spot on as usual. It had good exchanges with both NWO guys. I really would have loved to have had a few more minutes from this one to let it develop more. Honestly, on the strength of the match to this point, I would have loved to see a longer form Paige and Hennig tag team versus the NWO. It feels like you have the makings of a really good tag team there. The two of them have similar mentalities about matches, I think, especially with him working with Savage too that, again, Hennig I think will be somewhat familiar with.
01:53:07
Speaker
But the feud we get is quite good, and I recall their Starrcade match being a barn burner, so... Yeah. It just was a tantalizing hint at what might have been. Well, and a broader story point, if this had worked out more, I would have paid his favor, it would have been interesting, because the whole idea of the end of it, or at least initially, is here's these guys that came from, you know, the other place, as they tangentially called it, in other ways they would say the other company or outside, all the terms they would use to not say WWF, literally on television.
01:53:37
Speaker
And then if the key to stopping them is calling another guy from the WWF in that was true against them, it could have been interesting to sort of turn their own sort of them as it were. That's true. Yeah. Didn't think of it that way.
01:53:52
Speaker
As mentioned, Nash would recover from his minor injury in time for World Wild, where he would reunite with Scott Hall, his partner, and get his belt back to challenge the Steiners. Meanwhile, Renny Savage himself would face a very large challenge at the same event. On the following night's row, EnigriDP would be annoyed at Henig, obviously, and would explain his rationale for faking his mystery partner. Basically, he explains that Henig was his fourth choice.
01:54:22
Speaker
So the thing is, he doesn't do it in a way it's like, oh, he's my fourth choice, he's the best I could get or something. He goes through his thought process and just sort of, matter of factly, says that he's the fourth choice. So it's interesting because it's not like outwardly aggressive. He's not saying it despite Henning. He's just, I guess, being honest to a fault.
01:54:39
Speaker
Well, DDP, you know, has to have with his binders and everything, probably had spreadsheets full of data about the wrestlers and proper contact times to get in touch with them and just, you know, couldn't. Of course. He's got their pager number and everything. Yeah. Yeah. But no, he explains his promo that his first thought for a partner facing it was, of course, Sting, basically they've called on him too much lately, which I quite get that logic, but OK. Because he just now started popping off the rafters and saving people.
01:55:06
Speaker
And he said his next choice would be either Luger or the Giant, but they have their own match going on tonight. So then later on, he of course goes for more revenge against the duo of Hall and Savage and the attack by Henig. Gee, why is he mad based on what you said earlier in the same show?
Flair vs. Piper: Veteran's Clash
01:55:23
Speaker
This of course would lead to a match we have at Road Wild between Henig and DDP.
01:55:28
Speaker
Oh, and the overarching story throughout as well is that, as we see at that match at Road Wild, is that Rick Flair is trying to recruit Henning for the four horsemen. Our eighth match is Rowdy Roddy Piper versus the Nature Boy, Rick Flair. Referee for this one is Mark Curtis. The duo were briefly together as a tag team. Have you saw in a six-man match at Slamboria Press Recall with Kevin Green?
01:55:56
Speaker
That was that was a honestly wonderfully entertaining little match. It was. They would challenge the tag tiles at a previous show but come up short. Flair being Rick Flair would place all the blame for the loss on Piper and have the forestman beat up by Piper after the match. He'd go on to call him a has-been, sometimes call him a never-was, and of course call him a wannabe movie star. Dang. I mean, I've seen a lot of Piper's movies outside of They Live, which is amazing.
01:56:24
Speaker
So it's not the most inaccurate insult. This is true. To be fair, Flair would go to the heel book of cliches and turn to page 452, which is bring out a fake Roddy Piper, in this case a mannequin, on multiple shows claiming that Piper has shown up and then make fun of him. On the go of Nitro, he would try it one more time. And of course, Piper would show up behind the mannequin. Flair being Flair would be so engrossed in his promo making fun of a Piper he doesn't even notice another person behind him.
01:56:54
Speaker
He'd be, of course, subsequently attacked by Piper, who did not take what he said very well. But he ended up in the ring where he'd be taken out by a forest and then three and one beat down. But then this match. And a buo theme count for. Briefly, as the sound guys accidentally start the wrong song for Piper's entrance before quickly correcting themselves. Yes. We're on for him tonight. Oh, yeah. Piper's pyro nearly drowns out the commentators.
01:57:24
Speaker
Flair has a blue and silver robe today, which looks great. It does. Heenan compliments it, too, so you know I'm right. Fair enough. Dusty asks, who knows Flair and his tactics better than Roddy Piper? Probably you, Dusty. Yeah. You spent literal years feuding with the man? Maybe Arn. Arn's pretty good, actually. Yeah, yeah. Tully, perhaps. DJ Dylan. Yes. Sting.
01:57:51
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Although, well, things forget every time, though. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Can't say that Sting knows his tactics. Yeah. It comes and goes.
01:58:02
Speaker
Piper attacks aggressively, landing rapid punches, and Flair flees outside. Back in, Flair trades chops with Piper, but Piper slaps him down for a Flair flop, and sends him flipping over the turnbuckle, then clotheslines him off the apron. Piper beats Flair up outside the ring using the barricade and the ringpost, and rewards a Flair eye poke with one of his own once they're back in. But Curtis warns Piper about choking, and Flair sneaks in a chop block.
01:58:28
Speaker
Flair works the leg with chop blocks and kicks, and despite Piper's bravado, he's clearly struggling to stand. Flair locks on the figure four. Piper slumps for a two count, but Flair makes the mistake of slapping him. Have you learned nothing from Sting? Or Luca, or even Luca did that as well. I guess Flair spots Sting so much he has his memory problems, I guess. I guess so. Piper fires up and turns the hold over, and Flair breaks the hold.
01:58:57
Speaker
Piper hits a swinging neckbreaker for two, but goes for a choke again, and Flair takes advantage of Curtis's warning to slug Piper in the crotch. Dusty calls Flair the dirtiest player in the ball game, and I'm not sure if he even realizes that was a pun. It's probably not. Flair lands strikes and dodges a Piper haymaker, but Piper lands rapid combination punches, then knees Flair in the traspisius thing per Dusty.
01:59:26
Speaker
Yes. Dr. Dusty Rhodes. Love Dusty Rhodes. Piper limps around as he beats Flair up, but Flair counters the sleeper with a jawbreaker and pins Piper with his feet on the ropes for four two counts, only breaking to yell at the crowd when they try to tell Curtis. The ref never once checks either. Yes. Flair goes up top, but Flair Karma strikes, and Piper puts on the figure four. Flair slumps for two, but gets the ropes.
01:59:57
Speaker
Flair sneaks a hand protector, per Henan, from his knee pad as Curtis, wanting to check on Flair, holds Piper back. A frustrated Piper shoves Curtis down, so Flair tries to hit him with the weapon, but Piper blocks, steals it, and floors Flair. Floors Flair sounds like some sort of Swedish tennis player. Yes.
02:00:18
Speaker
Piper goes for the pin, but Mongo runs in and distracts Curtis, as Benoit goes for the swan dive headbutt. Piper gets off Flair, sees Benoit, gets back on Flair, gets back on Flair, and gets back off just as Benoit dives so that Benoit can hit Flair. Which one of you looks stupidest in that scenario? I don't know. Discuss amongst the group. Yeah. Curtis goes to get Benoit out. Piper clearly sees Mongo, and even I believe points at him,
02:00:48
Speaker
but then tries to pin Flair anyway. Knowing Mark Curtis is looking the other direction, yes. Yes. So Mongo hits the tombstone pile driver. Flair rolls on top for two. Mongo and Benoit by now up the ramp look on as Piper no-sells Flair's chops and catches Flair with the sleeper hold. Flair fades and Curtis checks the arm once, twice, three times. Flair has lost consciousness, so Piper wins.
02:01:19
Speaker
So why didn't Mongo and Benoit come back down? They clearly saw that Flair had not won. I mean, that's a long walk. I mean, they already made it down once. I guess so. And Mongo's arm is owie, so. Yeah. Piper limps up the ramp. Good post-match selling tonight. Thoughts on this one?
02:01:41
Speaker
So for better or worse, this match is definitely the Rick Flair vs. Roddy Piper vs. Reyes hits match. Just slowed down quite a bit. It's not like that once they bring match where the two guys that should have been wrestling because they're way too old, sort of rolling very slowly around the ring. I think I described it as like turtles. This is the description I used to believe.
02:02:00
Speaker
Might have been, yeah. I think I remember describing that one as a good match played at somewhere around like one quarter speed or something like that. Like the actual mechanics of what they were doing was good, but just the pacing was very slow. Yes. So in this case, it's not like they're doing the move at slow speed like that one is. In this case, they're doing the move like the gap and the space between each move and like how long they sell it is definitely a lot slower.
02:02:27
Speaker
To be fair, and I'm going to be 100% honest, I mean, sorry, I did make sure I got this right. Piper, if my math was correct, was 44 at this point. And of course, it had a zipper placed. Yes. And Flare is actually 48 at this point.
02:02:39
Speaker
looking probably better than I'll look at 48 to be fair to him. So it's not shocking. It's not like I can't believe the, there is a wrestling slower. Obviously they got a wrestling slower. That's just kind of a given. That's the risk you run having, you know, flair and Piper Russell in 1997, when you'd, you know, you'd have flair and Piper Russell in 1981, the year my brother was born when they were fighting over the US title in the NWA. And of course in WV, WVF, they wrestled 91, so on and so forth. So you have so much.
02:03:08
Speaker
It's film to compare to. You can't help but make the comparison. It's just how that works. The train-up is, of course, a lot of old-school fans, especially at this point, are really what W.C.W. was bringing in. That's why Flair was like, even when he wasn't treated as a top face, was practically the top face. Even when he was a heel, he was practically the top face for the large demo of the audience. We've definitely reached the Flair is respected regardless of his character at this point. Yeah. So in this case, the match is definitely slower.
02:03:38
Speaker
But what they do with the timing in their defense is that they really make it about hitting some sort of move, whether it's the chop block or the series of punches and then pausing and really selling it. Piper really does a good job of selling the leg injury. For instance, throughout the match. Oh yeah. Objectively, it's a slower, more methodical match than anything else in the show, really. But they feel the time better. It's not like they just lock and say a headlock and sit there for two minutes to get their breath back.
02:04:08
Speaker
right there's a large demo that doesn't care about anything i just said and goes who would flirt piper and i've i've seen the rest little probably a hundred times and i love flinn piper so i don't care and that's perfectly fine you can you can enjoy the match that way for me i think even as silly as the timing involved that everyone was in a rare case i actually like the interference because
02:04:30
Speaker
It's a different angle on a Flare Piper match. It's not just them doing the greatest hits. Flare Karma, Seaper, so on and so on. Ipoke, etc., etc.
02:04:40
Speaker
Again, it's not really that done that well, because Benoit should not have fallen for that trick. Yeah, it was very strange. I don't know if Piper accidentally got off early and had forgotten the spot or if he was like, oh, I got to check if Benoit's coming, couldn't see him well enough or what. Yeah, because you kind of get a pass with the going for the pin aspect because he knocks Flair down to see the interference initially. Yeah. But then he gets up and gets back down again. Some point he would have noticed the interference and just not gone for the pin.
02:05:08
Speaker
And again, it's silly because the timing is with Mongo. The fact that he deadlifts Piper like that is pretty impressive. Yeah, it's one of his better looking tombstones, I think, actually. Yeah. So again, just be aware that this is a Flare and Piper match in 1997, and just know what to expect from it. The strength of their characters really makes it more durable than I, to be honest, I thought it would be watching this match, but it's definitely a different pace than anything else in the show.
02:05:36
Speaker
This match was mostly punches and chops, but it had a strong plot regardless, with Flare's usual strong legwork en route to the figure four, and a good subplot revolving around Flare and Piper's shared propensity for cheating that enabled Piper to mostly keep up with Flare's antics. Like you said, the huge personalities and a good overall flow kept it interesting, and the intensity both brought to the match made it feel appropriate for there to be so much striking.
02:06:01
Speaker
The ending felt off to me. There's obviously a number of points where it just doesn't seem like people are in the right place at the right time and people clearly see something but just ignore it. It makes no sense whatsoever that Mango and Benoit just leave after their interference doesn't work either.
02:06:17
Speaker
Still, it's a fun match overall, buoyed by strong personalities. Just a weak ending to me. I do agree that I like the concept of the ending of them having the interference. I like that the interference doesn't work. I just feel like they needed some other explanation there for why
02:06:32
Speaker
they stop interfering. Even if you had shown them walking out and not looking back, but they explicitly show them on the ramp, looking back, clearly having seen Piper just kick out. Right. Yeah. So it feels like they're about to charge back down to the ring, but they don't. Yeah. This is one of the matches where I think if they had done one or two spots slightly different than expected, I could have helped. Like for instance,
02:06:57
Speaker
The whole match is built around attacking Piper's leg because that's his weak spot because of the hip and, you know, Flair's thing. I could see if you, you know, have him, his legs worked over, he can't quite get up. Flair goes up for his, whatever he's supposed to do with the top rope. But maybe he actually does jump. He doesn't get thrown this time because Piper, like, he tries to run, but, you know, his leg gives that on him. Yeah. For instance, that, cause that carries the throw of the match and it makes a spot, not, oh, suddenly Piper gets up and throws him off because of course he does.
02:07:26
Speaker
Everyone loves those kind of spots. You know, the guy goes for move and misses because they expect it and because they like the guy. But every once in a while, if you just mix up a bit, especially with someone like Flair and Piper, I would have a nice little touch. Yeah, I was glad that you noted Piper's excellent selling during the match as well. He was doing an amazing job of keeping that leg injury going for the duration and letting it impact his movement even on moves he was doing successfully. Yeah.
02:07:57
Speaker
I don't want to say it's an 80s thing because you do see good selling even in the 90s, but it feels like that was a more common thing in the 80s. Yeah. I think because they were willing to let it slow the match down where the 90s you maybe have a little bit more of a feeling of we got to always keep the pace up. Yeah. So it was nice to see that feeling of like, okay, I'm going to let this happen. I'm going to let it impact everything I do again. For sure. Yeah.
02:08:22
Speaker
And the fact that he kept it going after the match too was really nice that he didn't do a normal walk out. He limped the whole way. I appreciate that level of dedication. Absolutely, yeah. Carrying back to the same rematch, Flair would end up in a singles match against six at Road Wild.
02:08:40
Speaker
I was he has mentioned during all this flare is still trying to court current headache before the horseman. As for Piper himself, he would be absent for quite a while. He would come back on television September, where you'd be pointed on on a 30 figure, which would be a way to have him around, but not wrestling as much. Yeah. Our final match is Lex Luger and the Giant versus Hollywood Hulk Hogan and Dennis Rodman with Randy Savage.
02:09:10
Speaker
Referee for this one is Randy Anderson. They go back to 1995, bash the beach, where for no apparent reason Dennis Rodman is here to help out Hulk Hogan. And now he's rejoined his buddy. This time he's come to the dark side. There's even more no apparent reason on the Baywatch episode where it's just an unexplained presence at ringside. Yes, that is true. I forgot about that.
02:09:37
Speaker
So yeah, now he's fully part of the NWO part of his attempt. They're doing, we're trying to branch out a bit, get more mainstream, even more mainstream attention, which will definitely never backfire on them. I'd say road wild of 1998. Never. That's, that's how he ended up briefly with an individual member of the NASCAR racing league. Right. Yes. Just very constrained to that. You think of the, the elite in the NWO Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Kevin Nash, Henry Sadler.
02:10:07
Speaker
Or it was the classic time where DDP is on, I don't know if you remember, TBS's Dinner in a Movie. Oh, God. Yeah. The host turned heel and joined the NDB Wo against him. And I guess the guy gets beat up by DDP. The least remembered, at least important, yeah, NDB Wo member. The host of Dinner in a Movie. But cross-branding TBS.
02:10:31
Speaker
Anyway, so, back to Rodman, he is now part of the group. He would show up on Nitro, hang around backstage, perhaps partake a little too much and partake a little too much. And he'd also miss practice for the Bulls, which the coach did not like and the others did not like.
02:10:46
Speaker
He would take part in a beat down or two, as shown in the video package, where he'd help keep Luger at bay. It's of course important to remember that Lex Luger is the number one contender to the world title, having won that four corners match at Spring Stampede. He had that great character fighting moment where the giant tags Lex Luger when he's got the chance to easily get choke slam on. I want to say Booker T, but it could be CB Rey. Because he knows that Luger is the right man for the job. He's the guy that could beat Hogan. He's the next guy for the thing.
02:11:15
Speaker
I think I might've given Giant MVP for that portrayal. I think you did, yes. I totally get that as well, yeah. There's a promo they'd run in Nitro in the go-home episode where he talks about the high point of his career so far as his tagging out to let Luger win. That's cool.
02:11:31
Speaker
So anyways, that brings us back around to all the media attention that they're getting for having Rodman.
Hogan & Rodman vs. Luger & Giant: Celebrity Impact
02:11:36
Speaker
But this point is, I would say near the peak of his basketball career. So if there's a time to get him on your show, this is the time. The question is, should you have him wrestling on your show? You'll see. Michael Buffer does the introductions, dubbing this a tag team match the world has been waiting for. Really?
02:11:58
Speaker
I mean, objectively that's true because we knew what was going to happen and then we had to wait for it. I guess so, yeah. That's just how time works, yeah. He doesn't mention willingness, yeah. That's true. Luger and Giant are out first to Luger's wonderfully catchy theme. Luger is apparently quote, famous for his rack of doom. So he stole the of doom from the dungeon, I guess. He was part of them. Yeah, that's true, that's true, that's true. NWO theme count, five.
02:12:26
Speaker
Buffer dubs Hogan and Rodman, a tag team the likes of which has never even been dreamed of, let alone been seen before. Wow. I praise. Buffer says Savage's arrival is a surprise and that he's perhaps acting manager. Is it that surprising to see an NWO guy come out with NWO guys?
02:12:50
Speaker
Tony gives a decent story explanation for Hogan recruiting Rodman for the match. That if he can get a non-wrestler like Rodman to win over Lucre and the Giant, it'd be humiliating for WSW. So it's kind of an extra dig of the knife for Tony there? Fair play. Hienan advises Rodman to take his sunglasses off and Tony wonders about the piercings. Dusty says he would yank on them.
02:13:13
Speaker
Hogan and Luger start. The camera focuses on pro boxer Andrew Galata in the crowd. A former Olympic bronze medalist, Galata, much like Tyson, bit an opponent during a match. Not at the Olympics, mind you. Much good.
02:13:28
Speaker
In 1996, he repeatedly punched Riddick Bowe in the crotch during a match, getting disqualified. Yeah. Yeah. This caused a riot. And for some reason, Galata was actually given a rematch after this in which he proceeded to again get disqualified for again, repeatedly punching Bowe in the crotch. At this point, who's at fault for that one? Fool me once. Yeah. Gotcha. I'm kind of surprised that WSW didn't give this guy a job in the hardcore division. Yeah. Right.
02:13:57
Speaker
Hogan and Luger trade shoulder blocks and roars, and Hogan flees outside for encouragement from Savage. Hogan challenges Luger to a test of strength and kicks Luger when he agrees, calling him an idiot. Okay, that was kinda funny. Hogan lands strikes and a slam, but Luger dodges an elbow drop and slams him. Hogan tags Rodman.
02:14:20
Speaker
Rodman slowly gets in, and someone with absolutely incredible aim, beans him in the head with a wrapper. Yes. Someone tosses one into Hogan too. Rodman repeatedly backs out of lockups, and Hogan whispers to him. Rodman manages an arm drag, and the commentators sell it like he's just won more world titles than Ric Flair, as Hogan and Savage come in to celebrate with him.
02:14:46
Speaker
You skipped my favorite part, which is before the armed drag, when he just locks up, they go, history has been made. History has been made tonight. I haven't even done a move yet. History has been made. Luger lands multiple armed drags to Rodman and a charging Hogan, and Rodman loses his bandana and sunglasses. Tony hopes the earrings go next. Hogan and Rodman get comfort from Savage.
02:15:11
Speaker
Back in, Rodman shoulder blocks Luger, and the commentators sell it like he just beat the Undertaker at WrestleMania. Yes! Luger clones lines him, and he tags Hogan. Luger tags Giant, and either Hogan nor Rodman can gain much ground on him. Giant spanks Rodman, and lifts him for a double-handed choke, but Savage draws Luger in to distract the ref, and Hogan boots Giant in the leg.
02:15:35
Speaker
Hogan and Rodman trade off wearing Giant down. At one point, Rodman just seems confused about where to be and actually trips over Hogan. Yes, he does. Yeah. Hogan and Rodman hit a double hip toss on Giant and both pin him, which gets to as apparently that's somehow a legal pin. Well, I mean, it's a tag team match. No. I had to try. I had to try.
02:16:00
Speaker
Giant tags Luger, who runs wild with clotheslines for Hogan, Rodman, and Savage. Rodman kicks him in the back for an amazing Luger cell, and Hogan belly-to-back suplexes him for two. Hogan hits the leg drop. For two. It was an arrogant cover, but Luger kicking out of that is big. Except the commentators barely mention it. Point of note, you know who else kicked out a leg drop at two. Sid Vicious. That's true, yep.
02:16:29
Speaker
See, the Cidvich shirt guy willed Luger to kick out. Yeah, it was all the willpower from that shirt, yep. Exactly, yeah. The crowd at least chants for Luger, so they care. True. Tag to Rodman, and he lands Nash-style back elbows and extended leg boot choke. While Hogan and Rodman celebrate, Luger tags Giant.
02:16:52
Speaker
Savage beats up Luger as Giant lands Headbutts and big boots to Rodman and Hogan, but Rodman Headbutts Anderson, and obviously fake Sting enters. Per 83 weeks and what happened when this one is Kevin Nash. Anyone with eyes, it's Kevin. Yeah, yeah, going over the top rope for his entrance makes it fairly obvious, yeah.
02:17:13
Speaker
Nash hits giant foot. Sorry. That's keep keep up the illusion sting Giant air quotes hits giant with a baseball bat Giant rolls out and Hogan and Rodman choke Luger Rodman holds Luger but Luger ducks and Hogan hits Rodman by mistake Luger scoops Hogan up for the torture rack and Nick Patrick runs down to replace Anderson as Hogan submits giving Luger the win
02:17:41
Speaker
Rodman and Savage each try to attack Luger, and each gets wracked in turn. The NWO retreats, as Luger goes to check on Giant. Hogan can be heard whining that they cheated. Sure. Thoughts on this one? To be honest, it's a pretty by-the-numbers tag team match, but it's definitely good that the bulk of it is worked by Hogan on the heel side, and really, I'd say Luger on the face side. Obviously Giant does his part as well, but
02:18:11
Speaker
those two with the most experience of anyone in the match makes the most sense. Yes, absolutely. The thing about this match is, of course, the announcer is clearly with like, I want to say Eric Bischoff yelling in their ear, like Vintik Man would famously do denouches for decades supposedly. We're told, you must hype up this match as the greatest thing in the history of mankind. Nothing before or after will be better than this match.
02:18:36
Speaker
Rodman locks up. History has been made. Rodman can jump. Who would have guessed? It's like they still not going to have worked him throwing a ball in the match. Like, oh my gosh, how do you do that? Yes. So if you really break this match down and cut out the stalling, I feel like there's probably not a lot more action than we got in the Mongo Jarrett match. And the finish is definitely overbooked. Who was honestly fooled by Kevin Sting?
02:19:05
Speaker
OK, even before he zips over the top rope, I'm like, oh, that's just Kevin Nash. There's no question about that. There's no debate whatsoever. To be fair, it is it is brought up in commentary on the opening of the next Nitro, and it's part of the thing I'll cover. So they definitely did not try to pretend like it was anything else. I mean, the commentators tonight still sell it like it's actual staying, though. That's the thing I know. I just mean by by the next night, they say, oh, I
02:19:34
Speaker
You know, we first thought from far away, I wasn't sure, but, you know, yeah, I guess you could maybe get them a little bit of a pass. Obviously they're saying it because they were told to say it, but make him a little pass because bear in mind that they're like in the back of the mirror. They're not like actually at ringside watching things. So they're watching the little monitor. If you really want to accept kayfabe and pretend like they weren't just told to say it.
02:19:54
Speaker
Maybe they could be fooled, but the audience is not fooled. Yeah, it's- No one in the ring is fooled. I'm glad they at least don't play it up where the giant is fooled, or Luger is fooled. Putting aside the hype, the ridiculous level of hype they give the match, nothing really goes wrong, per se. There's the one part where Savage clearly goes and talks to Rodman, and then he goes to a spot, which is not that surprising.
02:20:21
Speaker
There's a lot of those points, honestly. OK, they disguise one very blatant, one very blatant. They disguise them mostly, but really honestly count the number of times that Rodman goes over to Hogan or that Hogan gets Rodman over to him or that Savage is having a chat with Rodman. They generally disguised as them like celebrating about something. But I would wager that every single one of those and then is them saying, hey, Dennis, here's the next spot sequence. Remember this.
02:20:48
Speaker
The one I really had is the one where Savage pretty much gets on the apron and talks to him. They don't cover that one at all. The other one that is not particularly well covered is, or actually two, both when they're double teaming the giant, I think. One where Hogan yells very audibly to Robin, put your boot up, which can at least be taken as match strategy as well, so I don't have a problem with that. And the other one, when Robin gets confused and trips over Hogan, Hogan's like, no to the apron.
02:21:17
Speaker
Which, I mean, there's not much you can do. The guy has clearly forgotten what he's supposed to be doing at that point, so you kind of just have to tell him. But it is funny, you very audibly hear Hogan on both of those moments. Yeah. There's a one part too. It's when their teeth in the lockup before it actually happens. Hogan yanks him back by the belt. Yeah, he knows that. Yes. Yeah. He's like, I'm going to make sure you're back to the corner in case you remember. Yeah. Yeah. And then Hogan, surprise, surprise, whispers to him immediately afterwards.
02:21:42
Speaker
So I'm not necessarily here to defend around me. He can speak for himself, obviously, and I'm sure he has, but there's a certain level I could say it's his first match. You know, it's one thing to go, oh, here's what we're going to do in a match. There's nothing necessarily beyond the lights and have the crowd. Mind you, he is a pro athlete, so he should be better prepared for this and, you know, some brand of person their first match.
02:22:03
Speaker
There is a different thing from playing a game that you're used to playing and doing a scripted performance in a style you are not used to. Right. Yes, that's fair. When he's playing basketball, he he knows what he's been coached to do, but it's not literally I'm doing the spot and and Carmelone's going to get out of the way so I can get a get a shot. Obviously, right. It's still competitive.
02:22:25
Speaker
So I give him a little leeway with having to be coached here and there, because it is his first match and he gives him the lights. But it's okay, so it's weird, right? Just go by the commentary. So when Robin locks up, again, they say history has been made, the game has been changed, all these crazy things. With an arm drive, they act like he's Ricky Steamboat and he's greatest man in the world.
02:22:47
Speaker
Contrast that to when anytime things are turned against him like when he's armed dragged by Luger suddenly They're like real derisive towards him like oh, yeah Yeah, it was like it's like I would have liked if they it may be sell Oh, I'm surprised he'll do this move, you know surprised he learned to arm drag for instance But the fact that they make fun of him for like an arm drag and knocked her over Right on the praise of being amazing. It's so confusing
02:23:11
Speaker
Well, then you have them like hyper praising the guy and then him getting spanked. You actually spanked by the giant in the same match. And you're like, is the point of this match to build up Dennis Rodman as an interesting performer or is it to make fun of Dennis Rodman? I can't tell. Yeah, there's a real bipolar aspect to the commentators about how they feel about Rodman and his performance and what he can do. Yeah. Mm hmm. Because of that, the over the top praise almost comes off as sarcastic.
02:23:40
Speaker
Yes. It's really weird. I don't think it's supposed to be. I don't think it's supposed to be, but yeah, you can take it that way because of how the match is designed and how the rest of their commentary goes. This was a pretty bad match, but it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it was going to be. I know that's not really a compliment, but that's what I've got.
02:24:06
Speaker
Hogan, Luger, and the Giant manage most of the match, and Rodman does look reasonably competent in the few moves that he does. Like I said, it's very clear that he's being directed through the match, though, despite Hogan and Savage's good attempts at disguising it. The match is very slow-paced, in part as a result of their work with Rodman. It doesn't help that the commentators spend generous parts of the match praising Rodman to the moon for a very basic performance.
02:24:31
Speaker
In all honesty, he doesn't have that much more success than your average WCW chopper in this match. Yeah. But they praise him like he's a world title contender. Yes. As for the ending, fake Sting is obviously fake. The commandeers sound like idiots claiming he's the real one, but at least that doesn't actually end the match. And Luger does get a heck of a dominant looking win where he gets to put all three NWO guys in his finishing hold.
02:24:58
Speaker
I think Tony says, Jim, you know, go and put the rack on Sting as well. He's immediately accepted that Sting is evil. It's amazing. Yeah. So this was a bad match to me, but it did at least make Luger look quite good. So it accomplished a goal. That's fair, yeah. We've got Luger challenging for the title soon, as I'm sure you talk about in your wrap up. So it's important that he looks as good as possible. Yeah. I think this match does succeed in making Luger look like a beast.
02:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, that was my other note. At least this match makes Luger look very strong in the end, which is the goal. Yeah. Yeah. So strange and kind of awkward and slow match, but it does in the end accomplish its purpose.
02:25:43
Speaker
Luger's, of course, still number contender, and he's just gotten another submission victory for Hogan, so he definitely getting that title shot. Interestingly, he decides to take his title shot the Nitro before Road Wild. In a very divisive moment for a lot of people involved in this long-term story, he actually wins the title on Nitro. Purely in the moment, it's a great moment for WCW. It shows Halo coding can be beaten. We can finally win when it counts.
02:26:11
Speaker
Of course, the questions, the long-term story you're telling, should you have had someone else beat Hogan? I think we've discussed that quite a bit. Yeah, we've done that. Yeah. To be clear, I do not be grudge Lex Luger, his title win. I'm very happy for him in that moment, but.
02:26:24
Speaker
I wish they'd found a way to have him get a title win somehow around this, but I'm not sure when the timing was going to be. Maybe if he wins the title later off of Hogan, instead of rushing right to Goldberg, you know, getting his reign, maybe find some way there. Maybe he earned a win somewhere.
02:26:41
Speaker
I think we've discussed this a few times too, but there are so many people during this period that really deserve a title win. Because of the couple of huge stories during this period, the main NWO angle and then the Goldberg angle, it's really hard to find a place to fit them in.
02:26:59
Speaker
it's a real shame because it's like you there's so many guys you really want to get a decent size title reign but just they move so quickly from the main nWo storyline to the Goldberg storyline that there's not like this breathing room in the middle where you can do some more transitional stuff yeah i think somewhere in that gap from staying finally gets this title and loses it
02:27:21
Speaker
way quicker than you would think and Goldberg winning
Event Conclusion: Reflections and Impact
02:27:24
Speaker
it. You could squeeze something else in there, but like so much, this is us looking at it 20 plus years after the fact and going, here's what I would have done. And it's, you know, it's, it's all hindsight. Yeah. Yeah.
02:27:36
Speaker
the giant would end up wrestling right savage on Road Wild. Curiously, he'd start out the very next Nitro being very mad at Nash. As noted, he was not fooled at all by Kevin Nash as Sting. It is a little thing where he attacks everybody, takes out security guys, takes out two guys in the ring. They say he was kicked out the building or taken away, but of course, that's the way so he doesn't attack anybody else later in the show. But somehow between, I got to kill Kevin Nash because he, you know, he attacked me with the bat or it tricked me.
02:28:04
Speaker
he goes down and fight Randy Savage instead. I'm just wrestling for you. And of course, having to help us, we will see Rodman wrestle again in this series. I will say this was stronger than his Road Wild 1999 one, but I mean, that's a low bar, but I had to use that as a benchmark for anything, but it's still only really half for him at this point. So yeah, I get it.
02:28:28
Speaker
As the NWO retreats and Hogan bizarrely brings up an illegal man despite fake sting helping the NWO there, Tony signs off. And Bash of the Beach 1997 is done. So final thoughts on Bash of the Beach 1997.
02:28:45
Speaker
The good through line for this show is all the inter-card guys knew that this was going to be a big moment for them. Whether or not Rodman performed well or not is kind of a material for them because this would get a lot of eyes on them in the outside wrestling world and just generally more of an audience. So a lot of guys I feel really stepped up and really
02:29:06
Speaker
did what they could to stand out. As noted, I thought all four people in the opening match had a little extra there. Even if their timing was a lot, because they were trying so hard, they definitely over-delivered, I'd say. Dragon and Jericho also do quite well of that. It's just a shame the crowd doesn't seem to respond as much as they should. Steiner's in the end of a Japan match is still quite good, being as good as we had hoped. The lucha tag match is just ridiculous in all the right ways.
02:29:33
Speaker
Ben wants to solve an extreme counterpoint from this crazy flip match to a hard-hitting blood feud where they build up someone with another dog in his final match. Again, the 82 matches he had since, but in the moment it does really well. Jared, for his part, gets a really good match at a Mongo. Jared and whoever help put the match together. Mongo does what he can.
02:29:56
Speaker
As we discussed, the tag match is a real mixed bag because it really works as an angle giving you a match you really want to see and then take them away from you. Pepper and Flair's kind of a great hit, but it works fairly well. And then the main event is hype to all hell as the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it is okay.
02:30:16
Speaker
I don't think it's quite sure what you are, but I'm giving it extra leeway, I guess, in my case, but I absolutely see your take on that, because it is very slow, and they do the most basic stuff with Rodman, and act like he just, you know, did an inverted 450, so. I think I probably hold more against it than you, because I write the match recaps for it, and the number of times I wrote, Hogan goes to talk to Rodman, or Savage goes to talk to Rodman, or that kind of thing, I started holding that against the match. No, that's perfectly fair.
02:30:46
Speaker
taken as a match itself, it's not awful. It's just below average on the show, for sure. Agreed. This was quite a fun show up until the ending match, and honestly, that ending match was bad, but not the kind of bad that ruins a good show or drags it down much at all. It probably helped that the crowd actually maintained its energy throughout it, despite the action being slower. They kind of helped elevate it a little bit above what it was.
02:31:14
Speaker
Of the eight other matches, most had something good to offer, whether it be lucha acrobatics, brutality, or just good character work. Whoever was responsible for laying out the matches tonight did a very good job, as even matches with weaker performers had good overall plots and some fun twists and turns. We only had two actual promos tonight, three if you count the brief clip of DDP talking on the interwebs, which I don't know.
02:31:39
Speaker
I know I'll likely regret this next show because we always get promo overload whenever I say this, but I definitely could have used a few more. Maybe something for Flair Piper, a bit with Luger and the Giant building up the main event, or maybe a DDP reaction to Henig's betrayal. Sure. Still, what we got was at least interesting and oddly entertaining. And hey, we had to have time to shield the hotline.
02:32:02
Speaker
Production had its good and bad points. We've got another strong set designed tonight, and good use of graphics alongside beach-themed outfits, but the camera work had some quite poor angles and missed parts of matches, and the sound crew was not exactly on point. No.
02:32:18
Speaker
definitely appreciated the set being involved in Benoit and Sullivan's match especially as well. That seems to be a theme on shows. If WCW designs a nice set, some wrestler or another will be very interested in breaking parts of it. Maybe that's why they don't do nice sets that often. I guess so, yeah. But then again, this is WCW and being budget conscious is not their strong point. That is also true.
02:32:41
Speaker
The Tony Bobby Dusty plus occasional Tenet commentary team was fun as usual. I particularly liked their commentary for the Sullivan retirement angle as they really built up his career and it felt like a good send-off. Their performance does slip with their massively over-the-top praise of Rodman's performance in the main event, but they still did a good job getting match stories across and having fun discussions there and for the rest of the night.
02:33:06
Speaker
Still, it's a definite sign of the problem WCW commentary is going to have going forward, selling everything like it's the biggest and best ever seen even when it blatantly is not. Overall, while this had stronger moments and weaker moments, and definitely declined in quality towards the end, it was generally fun and quite an easy watch. It's a perfectly acceptable show that works to set up the angles that are going to carry WCW for the next few months.
02:33:35
Speaker
match of the night and MVP. So Al, what is your match of the night? So thankfully, some good competition here. Jericho and Dragons are quite good. The Lucid Six-Man match is great. They tell a really good story, so I can appreciate that. Jared and Mago, I believe what I thought it was going to be. The whole package of the tag match with All in Savage is quite good.
02:33:59
Speaker
For me, if I'm thinking about matches, I'm going to member them most out of everything. It's a total package for the match. They don't have to sort of dip pick a part. I'd say for me, it is the lucha six man match. It's honestly, this feels like a really unique spectacle on a show that we don't get a lot of. So I really would appreciate when we get it. And it's quite fun. Plus, I had La Perca. That also helps.
02:34:24
Speaker
Yeah, for me, this is between the lucha six man tag and Dragon versus Jericho. The former is an absolutely amazing stunt spectacular, and the latter is a sharp, well-crafted story of two evenly matched performers. It is amazingly close. I think... I've been going back and forth on this all day. I feel you. You didn't write mine out at the end.
02:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to give this to the six man tag as well. As you pointed out, it's a brilliant performance and it's also very different. Yes. I think we need to acknowledge that. You know, and the fact that there's there's so many guys putting out so many creative spots all at once makes it an even more impressive achievement. There's so many different parts to manage to that match that the fact that it all goes so smoothly is is really notable. Absolutely. Showstopper of a match. Absolutely.
02:35:22
Speaker
MVP. Sure. Bunch of people to quickly highlight Mortis because I feel like he seems like he definitely put a lot of that match together. A lot of the more complex stuff. Chris Kanan in general never gets enough credit for what he did. Dragon and Jericho, even though they couldn't really win the crowd over the most part, both were really impressed from their match.
02:35:41
Speaker
Everyone in this Luta six-man match, very degrees, was good. I mean, even, even the weakest part for me, like, which is probably his Viano four, he was like the power guy in the match. So he, he get it dashed up between the dives. So even he had his part to play. Then one solvent does do really well with their match. Honestly, giving Jared a lot of credit for both his performance and really tying his match together quite well. It's impressive on its own and he deserves credit for that.
02:36:11
Speaker
all involved to some degree with the tag match, being hauled in Savage vs DP and Henig. Again, in the shortest connection it is, they all did their part very well. And honestly, going back to it, Savage being a key part in really making as much as they could get out of the tag match involving Rodman, he really deserves credit for that as well as a less overt part of that match, because he's in the match, but without him, I can imagine what happened. Yeah, he's clearly there to help keep Rodman on track, yeah. Exactly.
02:36:39
Speaker
And yes, I am sitting in the park because he used the anchor of that match. It's like it's almost two on those. I pick him, but I really enjoyed his performance there. He was good. I consider it an entirely fair pick, even if you weren't a La Parca fanboy. Exactly. That's true. I accept that. Hmm.
02:36:59
Speaker
I think I'm going to do my usual thing, which is where if I don't pick a match, Madison and I want to highlight someone in it. So I think if I'm going to pick between the two, I'd probably say Jericho. Because even though his character himself admits he does not want it to be, they will let him be, you know.
02:37:15
Speaker
full on Chris Jericho. He was his crazy list and number of holes and all that. His actual entering performance is very smooth. He does risky spots that thankfully did not turn badly for him, like getting dropped because we made it while upside down, flipping like that. So for me of the two, I think I pick him. Okay. I'm choosing Kevin Sullivan. Okay.
02:37:39
Speaker
The man put on quite a brawl for his final match as a regular WCW performer, and he managed to draw genuine sympathy and emotion despite still playing the heel. And he did that right after the lucha match. That is an achievement. That's fair. You'd expect that to be the biggest dead spot on the show. The shot of Sullivan finally leaving the ring misty eyed is probably what's going to stick with me the most from this show. Oh, okay.
02:38:10
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Bash at the Beach 1997. 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 each show as we go through. You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, our heart radio, Spotify, tune in, verbal or audible.
02:38:36
Speaker
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 in pay-per-view figures, and to Gina Trujillo for our logo. Next up, bash to the beach 1998, like skinny dippin' in the shark tank. That sounds singularly unpleasant. Yeah, all of that's bad, yeah.
02:39:04
Speaker
but at least it's less generic than the alternate tagline, somebody's going down. Unless down into the shark tank. Oh no, stop them quick. I don't know. This is Bob Moore for Alec Prigen, signing off. Good night, everybody. Happy wrestling.
02:39:34
Speaker
Wow, I totally mistyped this one. Here's what I've got written. This is great. Rodman holds Luger, but Luger ducks and Rodman hits Luger by mistake. It was late. Rodman used the dagger of time to fix the mistake. Oh my gosh, I'm crying from that one. That was one of my better typos of recent memory.