My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 10/23/99 & 10/30/99

10/23/99

Scotty Riggs vs. Adrian Byrd

ER: I hate when WCW episodes have the ambient noise vacuum running throughout matches. There's no way the live crowd sounded worse than this static. This was a decent match until a couple clunky moments during Byrd's brief comeback caused a flat ending. There was a fun story going on (that likely only existed on commentary) that Byrd had just won a match on the previous episode, and this was his chance to put an actual winning streak together. Riggs had some nice controlling offense, I liked his crossface shots in a chinlock and he had a nicely timed dropkick. But Byrd's comeback was too brief and his dropkick was a less interesting version of the same dropkick Riggs already did in the match. Riggs looked like he was trying to throw punches Lawler style, those low rising angle looping righthand uppercuts. I don't totally remember Riggs punching that way all the time, wonder if it was something cool he had picked up in USWA years before and was airing out. Finish didn't look great as Riggs went for the Showstopper (a Rocker Dropper) and Byrd dropped early. They still showed a replay of it.

Barry Darsow vs. Luther Biggs

ER: Darsow is in his Blacktop Bully gear and comes out yelling how he doesn't know who Barry Darsow is, he's the Blacktop Bully! And who was Luther Biggs anyway? Was he a Power Plant guy or some producer who got to do an occasional onscreen role like Big Dick Johnson (who was never a guy I actually saw but remember reading about in the Observer). Biggs' onscreen roles coming in WCW and TNA make me think he was some kind of writer or something. He had size (he wasn't much smaller than Darsow, and Darsow is a big guy) but no kind of good look. But you know what? This match was a ton of fun. Biggs is really good at playing a non-wrestler learning to wrestle. Darsow worked over his arm in fun ways, and Biggs finally came back with a great eyepoke and two nice body shots (the first one with his bad arm - which he then sold - before switching to his good arm). The whole thing was very satisfying and you could tell Biggs was actually pretty decent. Darsow hits a nice lariat, falling to his knees similarly to a Dustin lariat. He also gets Biggs up high for a nice backdrop suplex. Finish was a well executed 1999 finish, with Johnny Boone getting bumped and taking a really fast folding back bump across the ring, then Bully getting cracked with Coach Buzz Stern's clipboard so Biggs could get the pin. A weird match I didn't know existed, a couple different angles that existed only on WCW's C and D shows.

ER: Also, we may have only had two matches this episode, but that means every match was able to feature a Riggs or a Biggs. That some agent didn't feel the need to swap opponents for two meaningless matches, shows the cruel insides of a truly joyless human. Imagine having the opportunity to give me, 20 years into the future, Riggs vs. Biggs and not taking it.


10/30/99

Hardbody Harrison vs. Chuck Palumbo

ER: During the entrances to this match Larry Zbyszko drops a real gem:

"Hardbody Harrison's a mean guy, he could really hurt someone."

Boy, when Larry's right, he's right. Palumbo would later become a favorite of mine in WWE. His WCW jungle boy persona is a lot more raw, but in hindsight you could see the big potential there. My buddy Jason was an early Palumbo backer, got him some bragging points by the time Palumbo was throwing everybody's favorite big right hands up north. Palumbo was more about showing off his vertical leap in this portion of his career, so we got more leaping spots than ass kicking spots, which aren't as interesting. Several times his leap actually detracted from his offense: He hit a light crossbody that could have landed heavy, but he opted to float over Harrison; later he hit a flying shoulder tackle that focused way more on how much hang time he got on the tackle than how good the tackle looked. But he still had good punches this early on, and his shoulder tackles looked like they would improve with time (and they did). He had a great powerslam here and a cool Booker T spinkick that finished it. Harrison wasn't ever very good. His best feature was that he looked like a total sleaze, and thinking of that as his best feature now just reminds us all how awful pro wrestling is.

La Parka/El Dandy vs. Kendall Windham/Curly Bill

ER: It really doesn't get more exciting on paper than this, for me, when I throw in a disc of WCW. These are four of my syndicated WCW favorites, and it's such a fantastic styles clash that winds up being nothing like a styles clash in the least. And that is because Kendall Windham is a man and treats Dandy and Parka as his equal. This is among the highest in ring respect I've ever seen a heavyweight treat Dandy with in WCW, with Kendall going toe to toe in and excellent punch exchange, Dandy rightfully standing with the big Texan. Kendall is straight fire in this match, maybe his greatest match in WCW. He puts on a total clinic. He felt like CW Anderson working more like Barry Windham, and if that doesn't make you want to see this match then I have no idea why you would be reading this review. His punches all look great, he hits a real bulldog, a big diving lariat, kicks guys right in the gut, looks like a total star. The bulk of this is Kendall/Dandy, and it's awesome to see Dandy not eaten alive and treated like an actual big punching brawler. But this is the Kendall show, he works like someone slipped truckers speed into his beer and he whipped around the ring like this was a handicap match. It was everything I ever could have wanted.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Saturday Night 6/20/98

1. Yuji Nagata vs. Hardbody Harrison

Hardbody Harrison was like the least surprising sex trafficker in the history of sexual slavery. I'm assuming most people who watched WCW around this time just thought that he was working a "forced sexual slavery" gimmick. It was like Clay Aiken's interview announcing he was gay. I assume most people in attendance were expecting actual news, not something that everybody had known immediately when they first found out who Clay Aiken was. It would be like B.B. King holding a press conference to announce he has hypertension. All that aside, match itself was really fun. Nagata kicked a dirtbag around the ring and Harrison bumped around really nicely. That's pretty much all I wanted.

2. Van Hammer vs. Reese

This wasn't very good at all, but WCW's match structure made bad matches better than similar WWE bad matches. WWE matches are much slower paced and always have to feature a chinlock spot before the babyface starts his comeback. WCW lower card matches were usually just guys go-go-go for 3 minutes. So even if their offense wasn't very good, at least there wasn't much lying around building to a heatless comeback. You had guys rushing through spots and bad matches seemed more action-packed than they probably really were. I get the freakshow aspect of Reese and probably wanted him to be better than he was. It was stunning how bad Van Hammer looked here since he'd probably been wrestling 8+ years at this point.

3. Stevie Ray vs. Mike Tolbert

So this was better than it should have been. Maybe it looks better because it immediately followed a Van Hammer match. But Stevie Ray actually looked pretty decent here, with some nice elbow drops and big right hands. Mike Tolbert was not very good here, but I have a new weird appreciation for him after a recent Segunda Caida review drew some well-worded, humorous and most importantly informative criticism from a gay interest blog. I'm planning an actual response to the Mike Tolbert = mega hunk post, so I'll go into that more when I eventually write that. Tolbert is a green bodybuilder type who isn't very good at getting into position for things, so that results in some chinlocks with Stevie Ray trying to get him on track. The guy is not very good. But this was one of the better Stevie Ray performances (whatever that means).

There's a commercial for an N64 baseball video game and the player in the ad is Ken Caminiti. Phil is gonna have no clue what I'm talking about, but there is literally no more perfect baseball player to have during an ad featured on pro wrestling than Ken Caminiti. The ONE baseball player whose heart exploded due to steroid and drug use, and he's promoting a video game that's sponsoring a pro wrestling program. It is too 100% perfect. Ken Caminiti does pro wrestling better than most pro wrestling (including nailing the death spot).

4. Eddie Guerrero vs. Diamond Dallas Page

Really good fast-paced 6 minutes here. Eddie is maybe the wrestler I miss most (out of those that have died, not just retired). It's a treat watching him here as he hams it up with the crowd the whole time and challenges DDP to keep up, which DDP seems pretty game to do. There's a fun armdrag mirror sequence with Eddie stooging a bunch. Eddie bumps big for DDP and the crowd is way into both. Match ends with an awesome DDP powerbomb into Diamond Cutter and the crowd loses it. Surprised to see Eddie go down fairly easily, but DDP was becoming a pretty massive star at this point.

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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.

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