Fire Fundraiser: WCW Saturday Night Weirdness, Part II

Part II of our donor-requested WCW Saturday Night Weirdness:

~The Victory Lap, 9/4/99: This episode was notably weird because it featured one-time only appearances and appearances from wrestlers you had assumed were fired years earlier. Scott Putski worked his best of 70 series against Scotty Riggs, and NOBODY was thinking Scott Putski was on their payroll this late in 1999. Clearly an example of a guy who kept showing up for work so they kept using him, until Janice in Accounting realized "Wait a minute we haven't paid him since April 1998!" And speaking of that, this show also has a Disciple match. You know, The Disciple, Brutus Beefcake's short-lived gimmick as a Ultimate Warrior acolyte. For some reason he pops up on this show against the Cat, one full year after Warrior had left WCW. It's possible this match was taped a year earlier, but regardless we have a gimmick one year removed from storyline relevancy. Maybe WCW just wanted to give Disciple the sendoff he and the FANS DESERVED. A proper farewell to all of Disciple's fans, like the worst possible Derek Jeter thanks for the memories tour, Ed Leslie working round the horn with all the worst possible match-ups on the roster.

Perhaps MOST importantly, however, was that this episode featured the lone match of No Limit Soldier 4x4, the largest, fattest member of the NLS (even bigger than Swoll...I think!). I had no clue 4x4 even wrestled a match in WCW, but if I had to draw up a short list of "Worst Possible Opponent for Debuting 4x4" then #1 on that list would be Brian Knobbs. Now, specifically, that list was who the worst opponent FOR 4x4, the person. Knobbs was a great choice of opponent for me, the viewer. There are wrestlers who work stiff, like Finlay, but you rarely get the impression that Finlay is putting his opponent in danger by being unprofessional. Knobbs has the feeling of being unprofessional FAR more than he feels like a guy with his opponents' best interests in mind. So as 4x4, he of the mammoth prison yard weight routine body (all arms and chest, no ab work), wearing his absurd spaghetti strap camouflage tank top, as 4x4 rolls into the ring Knobbs immediately makes clear to everybody that 4x4 is not safe by stomping him in a really violent way. 4x4 stumbles to a corner and Knobbs throws some expectedly unprofessional stiff elbows. 4x4 clearly has no idea what to do in a ring and so therefore is reliant upon the guidance of his partner in, who - again - Knobbs would be the worst choice of somebody to guide a rookie gently through a match (maybe New Jack would possibly be worse). Knobbs actually does take a couple bumps for 4x4 (Knobbs at least usually had no problem taking violence in return, he would also just clearly take cheap shots where his opponent normally would not) and the First Family and No Limit Soldies eventually run in. 4x4 was just silly. He looked about 400 lb., but couldn't have been more than 5'10". His tiny tank top straps made it look like he was wearing a tube top. And these lucky fans were there to see it!

~Spyder Baby, 9/25/99: If you're ever looking for specific examples of late period WCW having too many guys on the payroll, they don't come much better than Spyder. Spyder was Art Flores, and before this the only thing he did in WCW was act as Eddie's bodyguard in the LWO. He was the non-wrestling member of the LWO. And yet here we are, 8 months AFTER the LWO has disbanded, with the only LWO member to never wrestle during the LWO's tenure, wrestling on television. Yes, here we are, months after the LWO disbanded, watching the least known member of the faction having a match. And it turns out that Spyder isn't very good at pro wrestling. His attempts at punches were almsot cute, and then he threw a clothesline at Disco Inferno's lower chest and Disco didn't actually know what move he was supposed to be taking. The confusion on Disco's face looked like the face a man would make in a sitcom, attempting to plug his electric razor into a Russian outlet. Glad they kept Spyder around 8 months for this 80 second match. Where have you gone, Art Flores?

~He's Coming Back!, 3/11/00: This episode featured a bumper announcing "Shark Boy returns to Saturday Night NEXT WEEK!" Weird, because I've never seen them announce ANYbody coming back who had been away, but preposterous because they chose to hype SHARK BOY as the person returning. And you know there was one kid out there asking his friend, mom, self "when is Shark Boy coming back" and that kid got really excited during that going-to-commercial bumper. And, as we all know, the ratings for the following week got a significant bump*.

*I did not look up the ratings for the following week

~Buncha Weirdos in a Pole Match, 4/1/00: The main event of this episode was a Hardcore 6 man for the Hardcore Title, with the Title on a Pole. And the participants were Brian Knobbs, Adrian Byrd, Dave Burkhead, Norman Smiley, Rick Fuller and The Dog. That's the main event. And it is 6 men who normally don't make it into main events, all beating each other with weapons. Sounds pretty basic for this era. Chairs, trash cans, assorted garbage, ladders, etc. all get used. But then something weird happens: Dave Burkhead becomes the sympathetic babyface that the crowd wants to see win the title. It can't be understated how shockingly over Smiley still was here, but at a certain point this became the Burkhead show. Burkhead took far more punishment than everybody else in the match. I picked up on it. Fans in the audience picked up on it. And we all willed Burkhead towards the 100% completely meaningless WCW Hardcore Championship. Burkhead takes a bunch of gross late 90s style unprotected chair shots, trash can shots, gets smacked in the back of the head with a ladder, takes a rough bump to the floor, gets a ladder thrown from the ring ONTO HIS FACE while he's lying on the floor after his bump, but there he was, on the turnbuckles, reaching for that title, championship gold literally at his fingertips.....eh but Knobbs hit him with a trash can and just grabbed it. This was the last match Dave Burkhead worked for WCW. Truly, it was his Waterloo.

First runner up for maybe the most impressive thing about this episode is, at the time of this writing, nobody featured on the episode is presently deceased. No small accomplishment, that, when watching 15+ year old pro wrestling. There were 32 workers on the 4/1/00 broadcast! ALL of them are still alive! (I admittedly am assuming that Adrian Byrd is still alive, which could backfire on me since at this point he would be a black man in his late 40s with a history of steroid use. Those right there are several checked boxes on the "Are You at Risk of Imminent Death?" questionnaire.)