The Furious Flashbacks – WCW Superbrawl X

The Furious Flashbacks – WCW Superbrawl X

The worst PPV since the last PPV WCW did

Doing these WCW recaps is really starting to piss me off. It was ok back when they put on good shows or interesting shows or shows that had some important happenings on them. Now into 2000 there’s nothing doing. Even the reliable undercard guys are gone. Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko jumped to WWF and became big stars overnight making WCW look stupid for letting them go. They had no ready made replacements and their lack of star power at the top end was evident in the booking after Benoit’s defection. Sid and Kevin Nash were the only realistic main eventers they had left so they worked each other. Meanwhile the re-christened Radicals debuted in the WWF and were given a main event in their first show, which promptly did an enormous rating that killed WCW dead hammering the divide between the two shows greater than it had been since the peak of the nWo angle where the WWF was on its last legs. Now the reverse was true. So WCW brought back Hulk Hogan to put him into a feud with, shudder, Lex Luger. The idea being that Hogan was pissed off at the young guys in WCW taking his spot. Yeah, young guys like the 41 year old Luger who’d been main eventing since 1990. He went onto Bubba the Love Sponge and pointed out that no one in WCW under 40 could draw. And if you think that was bad Scott Steiner was happily shooting from the hip on his televised interviews saying that WCW sucked and name dropping Steve Austin. And now I have to watch another piece of crap WCW PPV. Although Vince Russo is gone the WCW booking team is now headed up by Kevin Sullivan, one of the worst bookers in the history of the company.

We’re in San Francisco, California. Hosts are Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay and Mark fucking Madden. A new commentating low.

BACKSTAGE Scheme Gene goes to get a word with WCW commissioner Kevin Nash. Jeff Jarrett is here instead to be acting commissioner because Nash can’t be bothered to show up at PPV’s anymore. Crowd tonight is 8,569, which means about three thousand empty seats this evening (an improvement over some WCW TV shows where 15,000 seat arenas were being quarter filled at best). The commentating team run down the card this evening. It looks awful. Eleven matches tonight as clearly WCW had no idea what kind of format worked. While the WWF was reducing the number of matches on their cards WCW was increasing theirs. So we get the genius of the Wall v the KISS Demon and Tank Abbott v Big Al (former jobber Al Green).

Cruiserweight title – Lash LeRoux v The Artist Formally Known as Prince Iaukea w/Paisley

This is a tournament final after Oklahoma had to give up the belt because he was too fat. Mark Madden annoys the hell out of me during the entrances. Iaukea now has a Prince knock off gimmick and Purple Rain knock off music. It doesn’t stop him from sucking. He’s gained a pretty ebony valet who talks for him who is by FAR the most talented person out here, including the commentary team. She’s now better known as Queen Sharmell. While Iaukea sucks Lash at least has the excuse of being green. This shows how poor the WCW cruiserweight division had become since the exciting days of Rey, Eddie, Malenko, Juvi and Kidman. Sign in crowd – “I want my release”. HAHAHA. Me too. Me too. My only amusement during this match is a combination of admiring Sharmell’s valet skills and checking out her ass. The match is a pit of suck from which there is no escape. They make a hash of a near falls sequence so I tune back out again. Iaukea then fucks up an Irish whip. I can’t help but feel neither one of these guys would ever be let on WWF TV. Sharmell is actually standing on the apron now to point out how Iaukea needs to stop being so shit. Lash comes back with some horrible strikes. Just awful, awful shit. Well, the match is nearly over now. Lash falls on his face and Sharmell runs him down. She holds Iaukea in place to prevent Lash hitting a super rana. Iaukea finishes with a brutal looking diving DDT for the pin at 5.47. ¼*. I’m just glad it’s over. Sharmell’s performance is the only entertaining thing here. She was in place for her spot and had a presence that the two wrestlers wish they had. She’s the only one who’s gone on to greatness so there ya go.

Hardcore title – Bam Bam Bigelow (c) v Brian Knobbs

Bigelow makes a better hardcore champion than the assortment of crap that held the belt before him. Obviously WCW won’t keep the title on him. Because this is hardcore out comes Fit Finlay to help his buddy Knobbs. He doesn’t bother continuing though and these guys brawl out into the crowd. Finlay is there too but Knobbs says he doesn’t want any help. More crowd brawling. Man, I bet Loo hated this. Oh wait… HE DID. This nothing brawl actually drags because Knobbs is so inept at anything. Table in the ring for Knobbs but he gets shoved through it himself. Madden continues to grate at my nerves. I’m close to muting the TV he’s that bad. Bigelow with the Greetings from Asbury Park. That should do it. He decides to throw a chair at Finlay and go up top like an idiot. Knobbs crotches him and hits a weak trashcan lid shot for the pin at 4.44. DUD. Urgh.

BACKSTAGE Ric Flair tells Lex Luger that on his best day Hogan was never as good as Luger is now.

Three Count (Evan Karagias/Shannon Moore/Shane Helms) v Norman Smiley

This would be a 3 on 1 handicap match, which is completely fucking pointless. No one will get over as a result. Smiley is already over. Three Count will look like total jobbers if they lose to a guy that’s traditionally been a coward but if they win, so fucking what? They beat a coward in a 3 on 1 fight. Three Count suck anyway apart from Helms who has the common sense to go after Smiley’s injured ribs. Smiley gives him the giant swing after Helms misses a huge attempted senton. BIG WIGGLE. No. Evan comes in and they dance but Smiley dances better and double clotheslines them. Shannon comes in to demonstrate how incredibly tiny he is. Norman Conquest! Helms makes the save. Three Count are making tags some of the time. Moore continues to look bad so Helms saves him again with a superkick and the frogsplash. Moore hooks up the Boston crab for the tap out at 4.05. ½*. Helms looked great. Shame about the match.

KISS Demon v The Wall

Tony & Tenay are both Kiss marks. I am too, which is the only reason I don’t skip over the Demon’s ridiculously over elaborate entrance. “If you know your KISStory” – Tony. That’s the best sample quote from Tony ever. Unfortunately the KISS Demon gimmick went to Dale Torborg, who sucks. But then sucking was never an issue when it came to booking guys in WCW. Wall beats him up. It looks like Gene Simmons is getting his ass kicked out here. I love that WCW signed a “main event” contract with Kiss, which meant the character based on them was guaranteed a certain number of main events. So this was actually billed as a “special main event”. Special in the respect that it’s fourth on the card and no one gives a shit about it. This is an ugly match in every sense of the word. Wall’s clubbering is weak. Crowd is bored. Wall’s backbreaker is weak. He got better but surprisingly not while he was wrestling in WCW. Wall nearly breaks his neck as Demon throws him on it. Demon goes up top to follow up but “chokeslam city” – Tony, Wall chokeslams him off for the win at 3.37. DUD.

Sidenote – every match has been five minutes so far. Not that I’m complaining. I don’t think I’d want to see anyone so far in a longer match than five minutes. Maybe Shane Helms v Norman Smiley but not with those other two useless fraggles as well.

Big Al v Tank Abbott

Big Al is jobber Al Green. This is a leather jacket on a pole match. Tank is wearing what appears to be long boxer shorts. Big Al looks like a weak version of the Harris Brothers. They punch at each other and this is terrible. They just shout at each other then another weak punch lands. Al lays Tank out with a big punch and he lies there for an eternity. What the fuck is that? Way to cut Tank off at the knees and emasculate him. Al stands on Tank’s face and Tank gets pissed off with it and pushes him off. Tank comes back with ugly shoot style punches. Tank boosts Al on his back and climbs to get the jacket but DROPS Al because he can’t stand on the ropes properly. “You fucked up” – crowd. Al takes a nasty fall to the floor and Tank gets the jacket at 4.34. -**. Absolutely shocking and not in a good way.

POST MATCH Tank pulls out a knife and puts it to Al’s throat saying “I could fucking kill you right now”. Well, he tried his best by dropping him off the top rope to the floor already. Meanwhile Tony speculates the knife may have been scissors to “cut off his beard”. Al’s beard? Al’s incredible invisible beard that only Tony’s special super-sight can see? No?

BACKSTAGE Harlem Heat 2000 have gained a manager. Its Clarence Mason re-named as J. Biggs. Stevie Ray makes a few weak threats to Booker.

Big T w/Stevie Ray/J. Biggs v Booker

Booker’s T was won by Big T in a match. I don’t think the T is on the line here. They give Booker stupid music that no one can possibly like and his popularity is practically gone as a result. In this match the rights to the Harlem Heat name are on the line according to Wikipedia but that’s not mentioned by anyone in the announce position. I’m guessing they think Ahmed is a better bet to wrestle than Stevie Ray. Well, if you want someone injured! Booker can’t even lift Ahmed because he’s so fat. He’s been making those big bucks pimping out teenage kids and getting fat off the cheddar. Booker walks Ahmed through this and bails to lay out Stevie as well. Ahmed must have won some sort of award for most deteriorated. The WWF were pushing this guy to the moon at one point. He was lined up against Undertaker and Shawn Michaels. Booker gets jumped by the two ringside extras. Big T still can’t take advantage because he’s too fat and slow. Booker with the axe kick and Ahmed can’t sell that right either. Sidekick. Ahmed looks woeful. A sad sight. Biggs jumps in there so Booker clotheslines him. Book End and Ahmed can’t get up for that either. Missile dropkick and the lights go out with Ahmed beaten. Why isn’t that a three count? The referee stopped because the lights went out? We have the lights up and another Nubian is out here. Big T hits the Pearl River Plunge on the distracted Booker and it’s over at 5.23. DUD. Ahmed was so bad here. He was dragged through the bout.

POST MATCH Biggs says this is the new and improved Harlem Heat incorporated. Great, now there are three of them who suck. They keep on adding numbers. The latest used to be the bodyguard of Masta P. No one on commentary recognises him and I can’t remember his name. Not that it matters.

BACKSTAGE Maestro and Symphony (Ryan Shamrock) have words for The Cat. If Ernest Miller can produce James Brown then Maestro will be his musical slave, or something.

Billy Kidman w/Torrie Wilson v Vampiro

The video package makes this look like the feud was slightly planned. Shame Vampiro sucks the meat missile. Mark Madden is getting to be completely insufferable. Vampiro looks for possibly a powerbomb in the early going, which is ridiculous because you can’t powerbomb Kidman. He rana’s Vampiro out to the floor. Madden is even pissing Tony off by referring to Vampiro as “Vamp”. Probably doesn’t help that he keeps using industry terms like “draw” and “mark”. Torrie on the apron so we can see how nice her butt is. It’s also a spot where Kidman gets thrown into her knocking her to the floor. He bails out to show his concern. Vampiro is more interesting in fighting and bails for a chair. Torrie grabs it and Vampiro considers swinging for her but Kidman dropkicks him. Mark works in a “Torrie the Vampiro Slayer” line. “Prepared ad-lib” points out a clearly pissed off Tenay. The commentators all hate each other. Kidman slingshots in and Vampiro drops him thus fucking the spot up. So he repeats it. Kidman attempts to show him some competence and starts hitting spots. Rydien bomb gets 2. Vampiro comes back with the Rocker Dropper for 2. Tony calls it the “Dropper” because the Rockers don’t exist in WCW continuity. Madden thinks this match will be for the world title in two years. HAHAHA. In what promotion? Kidman gets a super rana for 2. Tenay points out that move won match #1 in this best of three series. Vampiro with a powerbomb. What the fuck? That gets 2. Back to the ropes and they fuck up the finish, which is supposed to be an inverted DDT off the top, and Kidman gets the pin at 7.19. *1/4. At least they tried but amongst the mess of spots half of them were badly blown. The powerbomb looks awful on the replay as Vampiro isn’t strong enough to pull Kidman back up so we see Kidman straining and holding Vampiro’s wrists pulling himself back up.

BACKSTAGE Terry Funk talks about how Ric Flair messed a lot of people around. But Terry Funk’s Dad was king of the deathmatches. He says Dustin Rhodes will be with him tonight.

ELSEWHERE Sid leaves his locker room.

ELSEWHERE David Flair, Crowbar & Daffney act all wacky.

ELSEWHERE Gene Okerlund gets a word with the Mamalukes. Vito has talked to Father Carmine and the big guy upstairs has given them the ok for the Sicilian Stretcher Match. Johnny the Bull is so upset he can’t eat his cheese sandwich. That’s pretty upset.

Tag titles/Sicilian Stretcher match – Mamalukes (c) w/Disco Inferno v David Flair/Crowbar w/Daffney

The goofball babyfaces have gotten slightly over because they actually try. Disco joins the commentary to make this even more confusing. He complains about the Sicilian stretcher match and Tony comes up with another worst line of the night with “this Mamaluke thing is a shoot for you”. Why would you even use the word “shoot” on the air? It just makes you sound like an idiot. Do half of the fans listening even know what a shoot is? Well, possibly after the stupid Russo booking at the end of 1999. The Mamalukes double team on Crowbar while Daffney screams randomly into the camera. She’s a nutball. She jumps in there and goes for a rana that Johnny the Bull shamefully takes. Some realism would be nice. Disco jumps in there and Daffney sprays him with mace. She has a lot of energy I’ll give her that as she bounces around the ring waving her arms around like a loon. The ring steps come into play and Vito gets run into them. Daffney reminds me of my friend who’s a poledancer. Crowbar breaks out the quebrada and he might actually be stopping this from sucking with his little wrestling inserts. Flair isn’t doing anything but that’s expected. Table in the ring and they tease being run into that before Vito powerbombs Crowbar through it. The Mamalukes double powerbomb Flair. Disco asks if that’s good for his team because he can’t see anymore. Tony tells him to order to replay and get lost. Madden tells him to shut up. Not a lot of respect for Disco there. At least the commentators seem like they have some cahones now but they’ve gone too far. Flair gets taped to the stretcher and the referee’s kindly remove him from the match at 7.54. Shouldn’t it be the Mamalukes who take him out of the building? That seems somewhat harsh. Crowbar goes solo and hits a slingshot pescado. The bell rings for some reason. Disco gets punked out. It’s 3 on 1 out here for the second time tonight. Johnny has a lead pipe and Crowbar just gets murdered with it. Vito goes up top with Crowbar on the table and he takes forever up there before hitting a weak splash through the table. Crowbar is dead so he gets dumped on the stretcher and taken out. But that’d be too easy so they tape Daffney to a wheelchair as well. Disco gets a big pop for taping up Daffney’s mouth and this is over at 11.22. **. And what do you know; longest match is MOTN so far.

BACKSTAGE Jeff Jarrett has “a play” for the Harris Brothers. Gene interviews Sid. He threatens to judge everyone and powerbomb them straight to hell.

PROMO TIME – Ernest Miller

He promised James Brown for this PPV. Some ebony fitty in the crowd gets caught dancing on camera. How embarrassing is that? Caught dancing to Ernest Miller’s music. At least she looked good doing it. Cat gets the mic and asks for James Brown to come out here. Why didn’t they advertise this? How much money did they blow on James Brown anyway? Cat, who is the face in this feud, cuts a confusing heel promo. A bad James Brown impersonator comes out. I’m confused again. Why have an impersonator come out here? Why not have the Maestro come out and heel all over Miller and then bring out the real James Brown. Out comes Maestro to point out that’s not James Brown. Maestro says Miller lost his wager. Maestro takes Brown’s hair off. “Don’t you ever disrespect James Brown”. This brings out JAMES BROWN complete with an enormous entourage. He must have like 25 people there. Maestro feints in a spot that almost makes this worthwhile. Miller’s dancing actually puts a smile on my face and James joins him. Well that was actually quite fun. Shame no one knew the actual James Brown would be there and it cost WCW $25K to get him there. Still it’d look awesome for an Ernest Miller entrance video and puts him over big time.

BACKSTAGE Scott Hall gets interview time ahead of the main event. Hall says he doesn’t have to get along with the bookers, just go. He makes a DX gesture. Most people were surprised he wasn’t fired after this show because he’d been so useless for the company but Hall went and injured himself tonight thus saving his job…temporarily.

VIDEO PACKAGE – Flair v Funk. Sadly it focuses on David Flair getting beat up by Funk last week rather than the feud they had back in 1989. Of course people wanted to see it back then. Now it’s just two old guys in a main event.

Ric Flair v Terry Funk

This is a Texas Deathmatch. Dustin Rhodes is in Funk corner. They don’t really talk about the history between these two particularly the last 80’s stuff, which was among both men’s most memorable matches. Funk survives some chopping before using the Spinning Toehold. Outside and Funk hits a suplex on the floor. Madden talks utter horseshit about how Flair has the advantage outside. Funk promptly suplexes Flair on the floor again for 3. Flair survives the 10 count. Flair kicks Funk in the nuts. Flair chairs Funk in the knee although the ones on the floor are hideously off (like 10-12 inches). Back inside and Flair goes to work on the knee. Figure 4 applied and Funk gives up. He survives the 10 count. Flair climbs and Funk throws him off. Flair takes his corner bump to the floor. Piledriver on the floor. Funk exposes the floor and pins for 2 (that was dumb). Piledriver on the floor again for 3. Flair survives the count but Funk has a table. Funk gets a mic and tries to force Flair to quit before bashing him in the noggin with it. Funk says he’s going to break Flair’s neck. PILEDRIVER THROUGH THE TABLE! Funk pulls Flair’s arm up otherwise that would have been it. Funk gets another table but ends up pinning again for 2. Funk tables Flair but Flair gets off the table and throws Funk through it off the buckles. That gets 3 and ends the match at 15.37. **1/2. I liked it a lot better at the second time of asking. I liked the pacing and the spots especially the table piledriver. The finish was weak compared to the brutal stuff before it. The table piledriver should have been the end.

BACKSTAGE Hulk Hogan cuts an interview. Luger’s got an arm breaking gimmick now and has taken out half a dozen arms including Hogan and his manager Jimmy Hart. Doesn’t Hogan remember what happened the last time he had Jimmy Hart as a manager? Hogan threatens to break Luger’s arm and break Liz in half. That’s not exactly the kind of babyface behaviour…oh wait…its Hogan. My bad. Tony even points out that the promo was more Hollywood than Hulk Hogan.

Lex Luger w/Miss Elizabeth v Hulk Hogan

Luger must have been on some serious steroids to have that body. Jimmy Hart’s management seems limited to promos as he’s not out here. Luger jumps during Buffer’s introductions. I thought no one was allowed to do that and why are they still paying for Buffer? What a waste of money. Hogan cheats a lot and chokes away. More choking. Hogan with a chair to Luger’s back on the floor. Luger gets a back elbow and stomps away. Yeah, don’t expect any wrestling from this one. Luger gets some posing in there though. Halfway through this match and so far there has been precisely zero wrestling. Hogan uses the cast to block a punch and Luger sells that like death. Oh, the irony. Liz whacks Hogan with the baseball bat but not particularly hard. Liz draws Hogan out where Luger attacks him from behind. This is so bad. Jimmy Hart is out here to grab the bat off Liz. Crowd starts getting very pro-Hogan so the Hulkster starts with the no selling. Big boot. Hogan listens to the crowd for a while. Too long! Luger low blows him and beats Hogan down again. But Hogan busts out the arm cast clothesline and legdrops Luger for the pin at 8.10. DUD. I wish I could go negative stars but they didn’t screw anything up. They just didn’t do anything.

POST MATCH Hogan goes to beat Luger down some more but in comes Ric Flair to clip the knee. Sting runs out to make the save. Logically we get a tag match at the next PPV right? Right? Nope. We get Sting-Luger AGAIN and Flair-Hogan to headline AGAIN. Talk about killing your own business.

BACKSTAGE Scott Hall and Sid Vicious leave their respective locker rooms and Jarrett leaves his office. All night long we’ve had a “mystery door”, which is now open. We don’t know who was inside. I personally don’t care because this is WCW in 2000 and they don’t have any good surprises lined up.

WCW title – Sid Vicious (c) v Scott Hall v Jeff Jarrett w/Harris Brothers

Jarrett is the US champion. Hall is now a babyface and is feuding with Jarrett. Or rather was because this would be their last altercation. Hall would disappear from the radar until turning up in ECW late in the year. I have that on tape somewhere. Might have to dig it out. Hall tries to suck up to Sid and then jumps him from behind. Hall’s selling in this so far has been poor. He looks in pretty bad shape. Sid lays out everyone including the Harris Brothers. Hall & Jarrett re-enter at the same time to cause Sid double the trouble but the Harris Brothers trip Sid up and post his groin. Jarrett picks off Hall with a swinging neckbreaker and stops off to celebrate. Rope ride. He keeps stopping off to stomp Sid. Sleeper on Hall but Hall reverses it. Crowd just doesn’t care about any of this. That would concern me. Your main eventers aren’t over. Lame referee bump. Sid clotheslines both the other guys and hits a double chokeslam. In comes Nick Patrick to impartially count two. Jarrett gets the title belt and nails Sid with it for 2. Hall takes advantage about Jarrett bitching and rolls him up for 2. Impartial referee Nick Patrick gets laid out by Jarrett and his Stroke. Sid takes out the Harris Brothers with chair shots. Charles Robinson is in now. Hall goes for the Razor’s Edge but Jarrett backdrops out. Stroke for Robinson too. Why do that? No one can count the fall if the referee is out. Jarrett lays out another ref. Now out comes Mark Johnson who’s in Jarrett’s pocket. Hall with the Razor’s Edge but Slick comes down with a serious elbow injury during the count. That’s just terrible bad luck for Scott Hall. Sid comes back throwing punches left and right. Jarrett has the guitar and he kabongs Hall with it. But look who’s out here; Roddy Piper. Jarrett tries for the pin but Piper relieves Slick of his refereeing duties. Jarrett takes exception. Sid chokeslams him. So now we have an actual impartial referee. Sid lines up Hall for the powerbomb and that’ll finish at 7.51. Less than 8 minutes for a three way title match? Jesus. **. It was ok and entertaining but it left a sour taste in the mouth.

The 411: WCW in 2000 and it sucks. What a surprise. Even without Vince Russo on board the shows were terrible. It took them seven matches to get over a snowflake. On PPV. That’s outrageous. Too many matches. Too much filler. I could have happily dropped most of the first six matches and given the main event another 10 minutes. 5 more for the tag titles. Not that the company would have booked anything good into that time. Now the funny fact; buyrate for Superbrawl 2000 was 0.10. That is the worst buyrate, ever. That’s not hyperbole. That has to be around 40,000 buys. If the WWE nowadays drops under 200,000 buys it’s a failure. Wrestlemania 2000, which was around the same time, did around 940,000 buys. If you don’t think that’s a fair comparison then King of the Ring 2000 did around 475,000 buys. Backlash did around 650,000 buys. You can see that WCW wasn’t anywhere near the same league. The Monday Night Wars were already over. Now WCW had to look forward to the PPV that was traditionally, albeit inexplicably, the worst of the year; Uncensored.

Final Score:  1.5   [ Extremely Horrendous ]