My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Saturday Night 10/17/98

1. Lenny Lane vs. Kidman

If you had come up to me and asked "Is 8 minutes a long time", my snap judgment answer would probably be "No, not really". But it really does depend on what that 8 minutes is spent doing. 8 minutes waiting for your food to arrive? Not bad at all as long as the conversation is pleasant. 8 minutes waiting at a traffic light? Very long. 8 minutes of your lunch break? Well that goes by super fast. 8 minutes of Lenny Lane vs. Kidman? Well good lord this is a long 8 minutes. I'm not totally sure we needed a 6 minute Lenny Lane control segment, but brother we got it. Again, 6 minutes doesn't really sound like whole lot of time, but when filtered through the context of "Lenny Lane doing offense" then it becomes clear very quickly that Lane does not have 6 minutes of material. Lane has among the worst punches I've ever seen in a major fed. Sub Chris Chetti. Sub Shad Gaspard. Just punching a foot past Kidman's head. At one point he's clearly just making up stuff as he does some sort of people's elbow type legdrop, coming off the ropes and strutting and then kinda standing there before hitting a legdrop. He and Kidman get brutally crossed up on a bulldog spot which sees them running the same direction, side by side, with neither holding onto the other one, until Kidman just stops and falls onto his face. But luckily for us they redo the spot immediately so we know what it should have looked like. For those scoring at home on the "How badly did Kidman injure his opponent on the Shooting Star Press", his knees landed on Lane's thighs/knees, so Lane likely had some sharp pain and bruising, but is also thankful he didn't catch Kidman's knees squarely in the balls.

2. Barry Horowitz vs. Vincent

Man, I really really like late 90s Vincent. What the fuck? He has no offense whatsoever, but does little things that just work. He's like what Stevie Richards added to late 00's Sunday Night Heat. Here he does some cool hot shots on Barry, then chokes him in the ropes while hitting these awesome body blows. Horowitz does cool things too and I love him stomping both of Vincent's hands while he's on the mat. Vincent does really hilarious "ohhhhhh my hand...OHHHHH MY OTHER HAND!" selling. Some cool spots in this that you don't ever see. Vincent has Barry in a headlock and ran up the turnbuckles with it and when he went to flip it into a bulldog (like Kidman would do) Horowitz just planted him with a back suplex. At another point Vincent had Barry draped over the top rope, and climbed to the top to do a guillotine leg drop! But Barry moved an Vince crotched himself and it was awesome. I loved Vincent's finisher in WCW, too, the single arm DDT rolled into a Fujiwara armbar. I REALLY want to see Vincent against Finlay, Taylor or Regal.

3. Rex King vs. Wrath

Would have rather seen an old Memphis guy against Kidman or Vincent or Horowitz but whatever. King hits a nice dropkick and a really cool spinkick in the corner (that Wrath pusses out on). Wrath...does stuff...until the match ends. Guy just isn't very memorable in squash matches.

4. Meng vs. Hardbody Harrison

An actual fun Meng squash!! I kinda gotta give Harrison some credit on this one as he leaned all in on Meng's offense and took some pretty nutty things. Meng planted him with a powerbomb and hit a brutal piledriver. He also hit two different big boot variations and numerous stiff strikes. He also kept pulling up Harrison on 2 counts which is great. We all KNOW Harrison is a total sleaze bag, but it has to be said that he really LOOKED like a total sleaze bag here. And he had to be pissed that the cameras never focused on the image OF HIMSELF he had shaved into the back of his head. That shit don't come cheap.

5. Bret Hanmer vs. "Hole in One" Barry Darsow

Match sadly never starts as Darsow says he needs to work on his swing and get back into golf shape, so he leaves the ring and Hanmer gets the count out win. Hanmer was a large gassed up guy with a nipple ring (ew) who later got to be Simon Diamond's bodyguard Dick Hurtz in ECW.

6. Fit Finlay vs. Chris Jericho

If you heard Finlay/Jericho were given 12 minutes then on paper you'd think that would be a really good match, right? Well, it turns out it was pretty disappointing. Most matches on WCWSN don't get this much time, but these two didn't really seem like they had a gameplan to fill that much time. There were plenty of fine individual moments: Jericho hits a cool running shoulderblock on the floor, vaulting off a chair. Jericho does a cool tombstone reversal by doing a reverse rana, planting Finlay vertically. The coolest and weirdest moment sees Jericho go up top for an axehandle, and Finlay catches him in the breadbasket, like ya do. But what makes it super cool is Finlay sells the arm like a 220 pound human just came crashing through it from the top rope. Well, obviously that makes 100% logical sense, but I have never seen anybody do it before. Of course that would destroy your shoulder if you hit somebody while they fell from above. So Jericho instantly pounces on the arm, stomping on it getting to bust out one of his hundreds of armbar variations. But then the weird kicks in, as after a couple minutes of getting his arm worked over, both of them just kind of stand up and Finlay transitions back to offense, doesn't sell his arm again and Jericho never goes back to the arm. And that's really the story of the match, as both guys do things, they hit moves clean, but nothing went anywhere. It was a pretty solid waste of 12 minutes, but a waste indeed as it just never evolved past "just filling some time".

7. The Gambler vs. Saturn

Boy Saturn has some boring transitions back to offense. He just waits for Gambler to do his stuff, then just immediately does stuff back. Gambler does some cool things though, like hitting stomps with one foot while standing on Saturn's hand with the other. That's a real nice touch. He hits a go behind at one point that Finlay should have stolen. Saturn has him in a waistlock, Gambler grapevines a leg to attempt a trip takedown, Saturn braces to avoid being taken down, and Gambler dupes him by hitting the go behind. Saturn stinks bad in this though and it only goes 90 seconds.

8. Lodi vs. Konnan

Well shit. Those are not really the two names I'd be looking forward to getting this show back on track. And this match is not good. Konnan has the shittiest way of getting guys into position to take his trademark moves. It reminds me of old Eliminators matches where they'd just walk there opponents into position as if they were placing mannequins. Okay, just stand riiiiiight there. Don't move.

9. Scott Hall vs. Disorderly Conduct

Well Hall comes out - to the surprise of everybody - just looking multiple sheets to the wind, and then gives a super rambling drunk promo on Kevin Nash, saying he's giving Nash the night off because he can beat these two "JAY-brones" by himself. He also throws his toothpick at the camera, misses, shrugs it off, then pulls out another toothpick from behind his ear and nails the camera. Well okay that's fucking awesome. Match actually starts out fun with Hall being cocky and then D.O. taking over with double teams. Hall fighting back is cool as he was throwing some nice rights, but D.O. cheating to transition was better with them always throwing Hall into the ropes so the one on the apron could sneak attack. At one point Hall just kinda wants to go home though so D.O. stop doing offense so Hall can hit a couple Outsiders Edge.