The Furious Flashbacks – WCW Fall Brawl ’99

The Furious Flashbacks – WCW Fall Brawl ’99

We realise Bischoff had lost it but what happens if no one is in charge?

When I said I needed some time away from WCW recapping after doing Slamboree I wasn’t kidding. WCW had reached the point where it was just too painful to deal with. It needed a huge and almighty overhaul. It was not forthcoming. During the summer months WCW became increasingly bad. Their big plans included inking shootfighter Tank Abbot to a three year deal and re-signing Dennis Rodman. Ahem. Not to mention Masta P, a rapper, who got paid something like a million dollars by WCW despite never wrestling. His promises of huge audiences never transpired. In fact WCW’s audiences, like their ratings, were in freefall. It had been one disaster after another and the fans had finally had enough. Starrcade ’97 had been bad but the Fingerpoke of Doom remained the moment where it all started to go truly wrong. If that hadn’t been bad enough WCW totally failed to bank in on the eventual destruction of the nWo and the group just faded away. No big PPV match pitting one side against the other like Vince McMahon did when he screwed up the Invasion angle. He got a few big buyrates out of it. Couple of decent cards. WCW had the same level of thing going on with WCW v nWo and they couldn’t find a way to finish it. The writing was on the wall for Eric Bischoff. Deluded though he may have been about overthrowing the WWF and putting Vince McMahon out of business he wasn’t so deluded as to not see the failings apparent in his own camp. Like Icarus he’d over reached and was now paying the price. His various attempts at recovering were all looking increasingly pitiful including a lousy angle where Kevin Nash’s limo was hit by a HumVee. The driver was never revealed. No match ever came of it. The logical and smart thing to do would have been to use this is an angle to debut Sid Vicious, the Arn Anderson stabbing squeegee wielding lunatic, but instead he just debuted at the Great American Bash with no fanfare whatsoever. While it was surprising that was it.

It got worse for WCW. Their venture with Master P was a disaster. When they fluked something good out of it with the West Texas Rednecks and their popular song “Rap is Crap”, which became a hit with country and western fans, the company decided to finish the angle. They spent all that money, got lucky with it anyway and then killed it. Genius. They would have been better off just burning the money in a bonfire in the middle of the ring. Then there’s Eddie Guerrero. Remember how the WWE did this huge overcoming adversity thing with him and booked a title run out of it? Remember how incredibly over that was? I do, it’s my favourite thing to ever happen in wrestling. Eddie winning the title is my best memory ever in wrestling. Well back in WCW he nearly died in a car crash. He should have died. He was speeding, drunk, asleep and not wearing a seatbelt. It was a miracle he survived. He rushed back thinking that he couldn’t afford to take time away. WCW largely papered over the return and re-debuted him quietly. It was around this point that Chris Jericho signed with the WWF. His debut left most of the talent in WCW, the real talent (the Benoit’s and Eddie Guerrero’s of this world) in no doubt as to which company they should be in. The “stars” of WCW were backstabbing like never before. Randy Savage went completely nuts at Road Wild and sounded off at Hogan, who himself at bitched about WCW’s direction on a radio station. Does that sound familiar? Hogan sure loves giving out opinions to anyone with a microphone who asks him. Eric had heard enough and told the entire locker room if they didn’t like it they could just leave. Raven did. He just got up and walked out. While this decision didn’t work quite as well for him as it did Jericho he was probably right in thinking that WCW would never let him progress upwards beyond midcard scraps with Chris Kanyon and Perry Saturn.

Bischoff’s ideas were starting to get more and more ludicrous as he now starting repeating his bad AND expensive booking decisions. They hired Megadeth AND Kiss to play concerts on Nitro, both of which tanked in the ratings. They hired Kiss AFTER Megadeth had played and given them their worst numbers of the year. Master P added no extra viewers, likewise Chad Brock (who?) who played a song on Nitro in August. After the WWF debuted Smackdown to make sure they could kill off Thunder as well as Nitro the WCW higher brass had seen enough and Bischoff’s reign of terror was over. He was “re-assigned” in early September. Quite why they didn’t just fire him is anyone’s guess. Ted Turner was so upset with Bischoff that he informed WCW never to even mention his name again. Accountant Bill Busch was put in charge and instructed to stop the money from leaking away. The result was a cull of all the useless crap that Bischoff kept booking. Road Wild was among the first to go (YAY). Anything that blatantly wouldn’t draw dime one was gone. WCW would have to cope with the wrestlers and booking. The chaos was right before this show. So WCW had no card coming into this show. Nothing. The plan for tonight? You probably don’t want to know.

We’re in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Hosts are Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan and Mike Tenay.

Vampiro/Insane Clown Posse v Eddie Guerrero/Rey Mysterio Jr/Billy Kidman

Speaking of musical acts who everyone hates; here’s ICP. Tenay refers to them as “America’s most hated band”. Amazing to think that not only WCW but also ECW and the WWF were dumb enough to pay them to work in their respective companies. At least the WWF had the common sense to not waste good talent on them sticking them in with the Oddities and actually getting good reactions as a result. WCW has them in with Eddie, Rey and Kidman. They’re teaming with Vampiro, the single most over rated wrestler in the history of the business. Bar none. At least the crowd appreciates Eddie. As they chant away the losers waste time on the floor. Shaggy gets beaten up because he sucks and his selling leaves a lot to be desired. Shaggy completely fucks up a wheelbarrow by falling on his face and lying there with his ass up in the air. Well, that is a position he’s familiar with. Pillow biter. The faces take their time and make Shaggy look like crap some more. Violent J tags in and he completely sucks too. When you can’t make a kick to the stomach look half decent then you have no business being in a wrestling ring. Vampiro comes in and that’s not a major improvement. Rey gives him the Broncobuster. This might as well be the faces wrestling three blow up dolls for all the heels are doing. Violent J does what he does best by getting on his knees….and hiding behind the referee. Vampiro comes in to powerbomb Kidman. What? You’re not allowed to do that! Vampiro with a spin kick off the top for 2. At least Vampiro looks like a wrestler as opposed to a backyarder like the two rappers. They just hit stuff with no rhyme or reason to it. J with one of the lamest chops I’ve ever seen before Kidman lariats him. He just stands there walking backwards slightly and takes it. Rey in with a quebrada for 2. Rey with the 619 and Vampiro whiffs on the cheap shot. Just totally misses. Outside and Rey collapses blowing out his knee. Well that’s this one fucked. Vampiro kindly works a chinlock while the other two losers stand around completely clueless. Rey can’t even stand. Vampiro goes after Eddie and he’s trying to cover this. Eddie manages to tag in with Vampiro virtually dragging Rey into the face corner to make it happen. Good job it wasn’t one of the other two or they’d have been fucked there. So now Eddie takes the heat segment in Rey’s place. Shaggy fucks up a leg jam slightly winging Eddie’s haircut. This is really dragging. Rey has disappeared so I’m guessing he’s back in the locker room. Shaggy totally fucks up a double team. Kidman crotches the clown and battles Vampiro. The latter hits a belly to belly off the top. Vampiro stands there. Looks at Eddie on the top rope. Stands there some more. Missile dropkick. Kidman goes up and hits the SSP landing his knee in Vampiro’s face at 14.13. That’ll learn ya! ½*. Mostly terrible. What did they expect from a couple of rappers anyway? It was like watching a “fans get to tag with Vampiro” match. And 14 minutes? Have they lost their feeble minds?

Cruiserweight title – Lenny Lane w/Lodi v Kaz Hayashi

So Lodi has gone from Raven’s Sign Guy to a Chris Jericho look-alike Sign Gay. Kaz is years before being anything special. He’s improved a great deal in Japan since this but back in 1999 he was pretty mediocre. Both of the West Hollywood Blondes are covered in glitter. To emphasise the gimmick Lenny mounts Kaz from the rear. Hey, a joke that no one is laughing at. Great. Lenny’s skipping on Irish whips gets a fair few chuckles though. Crowd chants “faggot” at him. Kaz boots Lenny in the ass a few times. Careful, you’ll lose your boot! Lenny bails and gets a hug off Lodi so Kaz takes a run up and dives onto them. Back inside they run a really obvious spot where Lodi trips Kaz up. They run something that looks pre-planned and fucked up before Lenny hits the wheelbarrow bomb for 2. Lenny gestures for the crowd to talk to his hand. Oooh, what a bitch. They do some more horribly pre-planned stuff. Not as bad as when guys like Konnan or say Stevie Ray do it but when guys like that can routinely get away with it, it sends a bad message to the younger guys. It shows that no on in the back notices when bad wrestling happens. The result? More bad wrestling. Lenny bails and Kaz hits another dive. Didn’t that just happen? Lodi attacks Kaz on the floor while Lenny complains of a hang nail or something. “Boring” chants the crowd. Kaz nearly gets it with a roll up but Lenny kicks out and hits a bulldog for 2. Kaz gets a powerbomb out of the corner and would finish but Lodi puts Lenny’s foot on the rope. “Boring” chants pop up again as Kaz hits a diving rana for 2. The problem here is WCW didn’t bother building any of these matches up beforehand. The heels hug leading to a heel miscue and Kaz rolls him up…for 2. Crowd was happily ready for the finish there. Kaz goes after Lodi because of this level of interference. Lodi hangs him up on the ropes and Lenny rolls him up…for 2. Lenny finishes with the Stroke (heh) at 12.09. **. They made some glaring amateur mistakes. The kind you don’t see on WWE TV these days because it looks bad. Otherwise they did ok. Especially considering the crowd didn’t care because of the zero build up.

Sidenote – Oddly enough Lenny never lost the cruiserweight title on the air. They just claimed he’d lost it to Psicosis on a house show. This would be because the Gay and Lesbian Alliance complained about the pair. So WCW claimed they were brothers instead. Yeah, that’ll work. Turner suits don’t like threats of boycotts so they were pulled off TV and eventually repackaged as the Russo tag team Standards and Practices.

PROMO TIME – Sad Mime Sting. The challenger for the title tonight gets some in ring interview time with Gene Okerlund. This is because they forgot to do it on Nitro the week before. Sting is on his own after the Wolfpac dissolved. Sting says he’s not associated with Lex Luger and they’re barely even friends these days. He threatens Luger and tells him to keep out of this title match. Which pretty much guarantees that Luger will interfere. Sting says he has no problem with Hogan but this is for the title. He doesn’t really say anything else and certainly doesn’t tease a heel turn, which is where they’re going with this.

First Family (Hugh Morrus/Brian Knobbs w/Jimmy Hart) v The Revolution (Shane Douglas/Dean Malenko)

Douglas recently came in from ECW and went about creating his usual Triple Threat style group to make an impact. Douglas gets the name of the town wrong thinking he’s in Saginaw, Michigan. Oh boy. That wasn’t even deliberate. He’s a babyface. You’d think he’d know what town he was in. This match is no DQ. Malenko goes low a few times on the heels. Horrible brawl to start btw. Both the heels are terrible at brawling. Knobbs is terrible at everything to be fair. Shane does a nice spot where he gets the crowd to hold Morrus before wailing on him. More brawling around the ring. This goes on for ages with no purpose or direction. Then they start making tags, which makes NO sense in a no DQ match. So what if I don’t tag, I can’t be disqualified. No one thinks this. Which is made even weirder by the opening brawl. Because this is all so horribly stupid and pointless there’s no need to recap it. Eventually Jimmy Hart interferes causing Shane to eat a heat segment while Malenko stands on the apron looking like a total Muppet. Shane makes the hot tag about as uninspiring as possible. Malenko comes in to clean house. No one cares. Seriously, no DQ! Nothing has happened in this match. Why even bother making it no DQ? Malenko takes an elbow drop and Morrus FINISHES with the moonsault at 9.26. *slow clapping*. DUD. Words fail me. Hang on, let me try. No DQ match and they never used any foreign objects at all. For most of the match they even made tags. Why is this no DQ? And why is Malenko jobbing to Hugh Morrus? The Revolution, a supposedly hot new stable, just lost to a couple of jobbers. I couldn’t even begin to speculate what the hell they were thinking here. So stupid.

TV title – Rick Steiner (c) v Perry Saturn

Saturn is also in the Revolution. This doesn’t bode well for him after that last match. Rick is one of those guys who spent his WCW run buddying up with the bookers and people that matter so his never ending push kept going. As a result he ended up being one of the most hated men in wrestling amongst the IWC and one of those guys who got fingers pointed at them for being the “old and useless” core of WCW. The fact he’s done almost nothing since WCW folded should support that. Apart from getting his ass handed to him by Vordell Walker. Tony points out that Buff Bagwell “isn’t here yet” to face Berlyn. That would be because Bagwell refused to lose. Even though it was Berlyn’s debut match. Talk about an ego. Meanwhile no one cares about this match because Saturn has been booked like a bitch since he clean pinned Raven. At least he’s not wearing a dress anymore. Saturn’s disillusionment with WCW was about as strong as anyone’s. He’d been working really hard and not risen above the lower midcard. Rick with a sloppy DDT on the floor. Crowd couldn’t give a fuck. I couldn’t care less. It’s sad to watch how badly WCW has sunk into the shit by this point. Rick manages a German suplex for 2. Rick threatens impartial referee Nick Patrick. But his impartiality is beyond reproach! There’s a kid in the front row with a Jushin Liger mask on and Bischoff couldn’t figure out how to market Rey Mysterio Jr? Sometimes WCW came across as SO stupid. Rick with a belly to belly. Saturn with one of his own. Saturn looks for the Death Valley Driver and gets it but Rick kicks out. Who the fuck booked that shit? He calls for the Rings of Saturn but Rick gets out and dumps Saturn into the buckles. Saturn superkicks Rick’s leg out on the ropes. He goes for a superplex but Rick throws him off and hits the bulldog for the win at 9.22. So, let me get this straight. Rick gets to kick out of Saturn’s finisher and then pin with his own because a) Saturn has a far better finisher b) Saturn has a far brighter future or c) Rick goes to Barbecue’s with the booker. I think we have a winner. * for the match minus three or four stars for booking that finish. Now the Revolution are 0-2. Tony helpfully suggests that if you count people instead of matches its 0-3. Cheers. Every cloud, eh? Idiot.

BACKSTAGE Gene interviews Hulk Hogan. He says he won’t stab the Stinger in the back. He says if he wanted to do it he’d have done it a long time ago because he plans, brother. He tells anyone in the back to come and get some if they want it. Oh boy, more run in’s. Crowd wants Flair.

Berlyn v Jim Duggan

So here comes Duggan to job as a favour. The problem with WCW is no one wanted to job to someone new. Bagwell refused to job altogether and now Duggan, fucking Duggan the washed up old guy who even WCW refuse to push, will only job if he gets to no sell everything. I guess it did make logical sense for the America loving Duggan to face the America hating Berlyn (Alex Wright with a different haircut). Duggan clearly mistakes a nostalgia pop for actually being over. That said; which of these guys is currently under WWE contract? (Unless he’s been released since February when I wrote this). Duggan no sells everything. Not even Hogan does that. Duggan continues to do so to the point where it’s more than noticeable. After 2 minutes it’s flat out ruining the match. Alex Wright must be getting deja-vu after getting the same treatment off Paul Roma when he debuted his goofy dancing German character years beforehand. Of course while Roma was black balled for ruining the match, Duggan isn’t so much ruining the match as making himself look fantastic at Wright’s expense. I guess he feels he has nothing to lose, which is true. Hell, with this company in the shit it’s in he probably got a pat on the back from Kevin Nash. Duggan tries to shoot on Berlyn and if that’s not the plan it almost always looks stupid. Especially when the guy trying to be a shooter isn’t as good a shooter as he thinks he is. Maybe Duggan expected WCW to make him into a main eventer after he beat cancer? Who knows? But like I said with Eddie Guerrero and his problems, WCW always wanted to plan their success. If they got something by luck they threw it away. Berlyn takes this one with a shitty neckbreaker at 7.57. DUD. This company was so totally fucked. It’s not even funny.

POST MATCH Heenan points out how big the bodyguard is. He’d end up getting a bigger push as a character called The Wall. Buff Bagwell has finally showed up backstage requesting a change in format. Mike Graham tells him to “be on time for once in your life”. SHOOT! Bagwell comes out here to hug Jim Duggan who isn’t impressed with him turning up so late. Yeah, “late”.

Tag titles – West Texas Rednecks (c) v Harlem Heat

Stevie Ray had nothing to do after the nWo dissolved so WCW, creative as ever, stuck him back in with Booker who was constantly hitting his head on the glass ceiling. The WTR are Barry & Kendall Windham and have Curt Hennig in their corner. The “Good ‘Ol Boys” theme music is truly dreadful. That replaced the near perfect “Rap is Crap” despite there even being SIGNS, honest to God signs, in the crowd with RAP IS CRAP written on them. WCW is so dumb sometimes it’s painful to watch. Speaking of painful to watch – can Booker T carry three guys in one match? The answer – no, and he never will. This wouldn’t be so bad if Barry wasn’t SO de-motivated. Everyone in the WTR seems happy to be doing it but there’s no hiding Barry’s desire to get another run at singles. Tony’s usual incoherent commentary seems to be forgetting that Harlem Heat ever split up today. Booker tries his best to stay entertaining but Stevie struggles with a double suplex. Booker has his work cut out for him.

During this dull as ditchwater battle I thought I’d step out of the action to talk about the tag team titles. 1999 saw an abundance of tag title changes. Keep in mind there was a run of shows where Benoit/Malenko, Raven/Saturn and Kidman/Rey just traded the titles. Following that the Jersey Triad held the titles until Heat reformed to win them back and then lost them to their opponents this evening. It’s September and there are still SEVEN title changes before the end of the year. Way to make those belts mean something! At least there are title defences, I guess. Especially if you consider at the start of the year the tag champs were Rick Steiner and Kenny Kaos and then the belts disappeared for a few weeks.

Back in the match nothing is happening. There’s some heat on Booker because he’s the only guy that can sell right. Barry gets ever so slightly motivated for about 30 seconds and looks to do something entertaining with the superplex. Nice floatover, as always. More heat. Booker nearly gets out with the Brisco corner roll up for 2. They run the formula ‘missed tag’ spot. Twice. The second time Stevie just ignores the referee. They run a really slow spot where Stevie waits ready to hit the Slapjack until Barry is ready to interfere. Cowbell on Stevie but the referee is too busy doing nothing to count the fall. Kendall, looking like a total dumbass, stands there so Booker can missile dropkick him for the pin and the belts at 13.05. ¾*. Erm, excuse me but that match wasn’t quite boring enough. Can you do it again possibly? The only, ONLY, thing I liked was that because Booker never got the hot tag he remained legal at the finish. Hey, a clever finish. How about that?

US title – Chris Benoit (c) v Sid Vicious

Oh Jesus. Just to make this clear – Benoit is the Revolution. Every single one of them has lost tonight thus making the “future” of WCW look like a total joke. Sid meanwhile is attempting to recreate Goldberg’s streak, which saw WCW do some truly stupid booking. Like counting a run in as a win in his 79 match “streak”. Or a count out loss as a win. Sid was pretty much useless by this point but WCW were so desperate for anything that they brought him back. Hell, ECW didn’t even book him in matches! The same ECW that once had John Kronus and Mustafa in their ring on a regular basis. Benoit is the only realistic choice for WCW in terms of pushing existing midcarders because they’ve done such a fine job of fucking up everyone else. Hell, they did the same to Benoit but he had such a groundswell support that they had no choice but to give him a push. So he’s US champion and facing a guy the company regards as a main eventer. Although presumably only because Sid won the WWF title back in 1996. Yanno, back when WCW were killing the WWF in the ratings. Sid makes a point of giving Benoit literally nothing in this one. At least when he wrestled Shawn Michaels the dominance was so totally oversold by Shawn that it made it entertaining. That and the fans were sick of the Heartbreak Kid. The New Yorkers booed the shit out of him and cheered Sid to the rafters. Here the crowd doesn’t particularly care about Sid but they love Benoit. He goes after Sid’s leg to try and even this up. Sid no sells a dragon screw and a dropkick to the knee but finally gets it when Benoit drops down on his knee on the ropes. Crowd wants Goldberg. Benoit may want Revolution but Sid is hoping for Evolution with that sloped forehead of his. Benoit takes the knee out again and dropkicks the ring steps into it prompting a great “Holy Christmas” call from Tony. Another one and Sid is fucked. Knees shattered. It should be over. But need I remind you where we are here. Sid forgets about the knee injury and knees at Benoit. This is SECONDS after the ring step spot. Benoit reverses into a German suplex and knees at Benoit again. Is he being that fucking stupid on purpose? It’s hard to tell with a moron of Sid’s versatility. This is the same guy who thinks he’s one of the biggest draws in the history of wrestling. I can’t even type that with a straight face. He’s not even in the top five biggest draws on this card. As if to demonstrate how completely incapable he is at wrestling to boot he chinlocks Benoit for a while. Something in the crowd gets more attention because Sid is plodding through this match now. Benoit dropkicks the knee again and Sid backbumps it. Fucking hell. Crippler Crossface! Sid powers up but Benoit still has it on. Sid gets taken down but lands in the ropes. Flying Wolverine misses. Sid with the powerbomb and that’s it at 11.47. Oh boy. Crowd sighs at that one. WCW can’t bring themselves to elevate anyone so in comes a guy from the WWF, again, who isn’t as good or anywhere close to as good as the guys they’ve got and gets the monster push. *1/4. I understand the urge to push Sid but why is it Benoit who has to take the job? Why not someone who’s drifting and doesn’t lose quite so often. Like Hogan or Sting to set up the Goldberg match. Oh yeah, because they want to turn Sting heel tonight. *slow clapping*

Diamond Dallas Page v Bill Goldberg

Remember when DDP planned out a great match with Goldberg in 1998 and ended up with ***1/2? Yeah, this isn’t quite the same. Well unless you just ignore those first three *’s Either they didn’t bother with a plan this time, which is a disaster area for DDP anyway, or the plan didn’t quite come out right. Goldberg is at least still over. Which makes you wonder why he ends up getting stuck on these bullshit midcard feuds that serve no purpose. Oh yeah, the politics. I forgot. Page is looking even older than usual. The referee finds a chain on him and a roll of quarters. Goldberg just ignores the latter and knocks DDP out of the ring. Seeing as Goldberg spends the next few minutes overpowering while Page just hides in the ropes I figure we need something to talk about. Oh yeah – buyrates. Last year’s Fall Brawl, complete with shitty War Games and in general one of the worst US PPV cards ever, did a 0.70. The audience has clearly learned from their past experience and this years buyrate is a paltry 0.35. It probably didn’t help that they forgot to book War Games. Not that they had anything approaching teams anymore since the nWo had died. The booking was so day to day that there was no plan beyond Hogan’s own ones. Since the War Games match didn’t figure into his plans this year it didn’t happen. DDP breaks out the International Object to get himself ahead. He calls for the Diamond Cutter then stomps away a bit. When a guy signals for his finisher it’s nice to at least see an attempt at it. Lex Luger did that all the time, which is another reason why I hate him. DDP continues to stomp away aimlessly and cheat while making no attempt whatsoever to win the match. The referee does an even worse job of not noticing the cheating. Say, let’s look over at the fans on the other side of the ring for a moment. How hard would it be to have Bigelow or Kanyon out here to distract? Goldberg meanwhile has spent three whole minutes just lying there doing nothing, like Tara Reid being railed. FEEL THE WORKRATE~! Goldberg gives up on selling so the Jersey Triad runs out here. They run distraction/interference at the same time (because there’s two of them) but still Page can’t get the pin. The heels jump into the ring but DDP runs through them all. Spear. Jackhammer. Goodnight at 9.03. ½*.

Sidenote – in order to keep Goldberg hot off the back of this convincing win he squashed Brian Knobbs, Hugh Morrus, Jerry Flynn and Horace Hogan over the next five weeks of Nitros. I don’t get it. Were they just terrified of him losing a second match if they put the title back on him?

WCW title – Hulk Hogan (c) v Sad Mime Sting

Hogan is in full blown yellow and red American Made Hulkamania mode now seemingly ignoring the previous three years of storylines. It’s the most powerful force in wrestling, brah. Hulkastalgia! Its limpin’ wild! For no reason Bret Hart comes out here. Well the reason given is to “wish them both good luck”. He’s also babyface now, which should practically guarantee Hogan-Bret in a babyface title match. Unless this is WCW, where it’s not going to happen and they flush their last remaining money match down the crapper in order to do a dumb heel turn angle with Sting that doesn’t even slightly take. Mainly because it had ZERO build up. Sting never once teased turning before tonight and even in his promo earlier didn’t tease anything. It’s booking a swerve for the sake of it. The pace in this one is painfully slow. Kind of like watching Starrcade ’97 only without the heat. Actually Sting gets far more here than he got at Starrcade because Hogan is no longer looking to completely bury him. He needs a strong heel to play off, you see. Not that Sting is anywhere close to being the right guy to do that. They’d have been better off establishing a connection between WCW’s strong babyfaces (Hogan/Sting/Goldberg/Hart) with some tension over the title and building up a stable of bad guys for them to fight. Only not the nWo. Ideally it would have been a chance to elevate some midcard guys by teaming them with some higher card heels. Not that WCW has any, which is probably why Hogan wanted Sting to turn. In fact the highest card heel they have who’s actually fit and able to wrestle is Sid. Hmm, maybe not “able to wrestle”. No wonder Russo tried his best to wipe the slate clean. Back to the match then although I’d rather not because it’s so tedious, so utterly devoid of interest that the crowd is just ‘there’. They want to see who wins but they don’t give a shit about the match. They brawl around ringside with Hogan using some dubious tactics, which is pretty much the norm for him. Back inside Hogan runs through an array of rest holds. Sting tries to come back but his elbows are so lame, so utterly worthless that no one cares. Hogan with some more questionable tactics like biting. Sting comes back with the Stinger Splash a few times. These guys are on autopilot. Sting misses a third and Hogan hulks up to a mixed reaction. Turned face a little too quickly, eh? Big boot and the legdrop but DDP has run in here. Diamond Cutter for Hogan. What does DDP have to do with Hogan? “What’s the point?” says Mike Tenay. Quite. Hogan kicks out. Diamond Cutter for the referee as the idiot Penzer tells us the winner of the match is…oops. Bret Hart runs out here to take out DDP. Their roles now reversed from their different undercard feud from before. Sid runs in here to prove he’s the only high card heel. Next man into the ring with Lex Luger. Sting ends up with Luger’s baseball bat. Hogan points out to Sting that Luger is a jerk so Sting nails him repeatedly with the bat. You have no comphrension of the depths of my soul! EMO-STING! Crowd pops huge. Scorpion Deathlock! Hogan is unconscious and the referee calls it at 13.54. ¼*. I love the fact that the crowd popped so huge for the finish, which was supposed to be this massive heel turn. There is some crap being thrown into the ring but not much. The problem they had was Sting didn’t do anything other than be a winner. It’s Hogan’s fault if he’s stupid enough to stand there and let Sting beat him with a bat when the title is on the line. But hey, WCW booking goes wrong. No one can really be surprised. What confuses me was how they can get a booking committee to pass this. One of the geniuses, Nash probably, decided this angle would work and then the other guys, like Sullivan for example, had to agree with him. Although Sullivan has shown he can book some pretty retarded stuff in the past. I bet this looked awesome on paper though. *slow clapping*.

The 411: In terms of delivering tonight’s matches went 0 for 9. That has to be worth some sort of special mention. Hey, you’ll never believe how awful the WCW PPV was! This one is to be avoided at all costs. There’s nothing to redeem it.
Final Score:  2.0   [ Very Bad ]