RIP Supreme

Supreme vs. Necro Butcher XPW 5/24/08

PAS: This was a no-ropes barbed wire match for the XPW King of the Death Match title, on the first XPW show in five years (they ran once more in 2009 and then the PDM/XPW show reviewed down below).  Necro is the perfect guy to bring in for this kind of match, he was in the tail end of his prime, and still perfectly willing and able to put together a big time death match performance. Supreme was right there willing to take all of the big bumps, Necro right hands and chairs to the head. There were a couple of really neat cut offs by Supreme, a sneaky lightube shot to stop Necro from pushing him on a barbed wire table, and throwing a bucket of thumbtacks to stop a rush. I tend to enjoy the regular brawling parts of these matches more then the death match parts, and there was some really fun bumping into chairs and jabbing with soda cans.

ER: Anyone who bought a ticket to see Necro Butcher vs. Supreme in a big time death match main event, easily got their money's worth. Necro really knows how to bring gravitas to a match like this, and Supreme does his part by doing what he's good at: dangerous bumps, lots of blood, an ingenious match turning cut off spot, and a hot dog neck roll so impressive that he is impervious to a collar and elbow. Supreme gets busted open all over the place, from mouse traps and barbed wire and gruesome table bumps. We get a big suplex off the apron through a barbed wire and light tube strewn table, then a Russian legsweep through a totally different sharp and stabby table. Necro punches Supreme in the face, headbutts a tube into his head, and walks around barefoot like a total psychopath. The ring and surround area was filled with broken glass and here's Necro walking around with no shoes. And just as I start to think about how stupid and endearing Necro is to be wandering around a death match with no shoes, sure enough, Supreme breaks out one of the finest, smartest, wonderfully timed spots in death match history: Stopping a speeding Butcher by throwing down a spike strip in his path. Supreme utilized two "desperation" moves in this match, making unexpected headway while being dominated, and fanning out a bucketful of tacks into the pathway of Necro is some twisted sadistic Kevin McCallister level evil. Necro is suddenly wounded hopping around and trying to avoid tacks, dropping to his butt to frantically slap tacks out of his feet, and that's when Supreme starts stomping Necro's feet into the tacks! This is sicko stuff, done at the perfect psychological point of the match, the kind of logic that inserts itself into the best death matches. We get a couple of other nasty falls into tacks, and I loved the finish of Supreme just dropping his weight onto Necro in the tacks.


Supreme/Johnny Webb/Kaos/Carnage vs. Halloween/Damian 666/Bestia 666/X-Fly PDM/XPW 8/2/11     Part 2

PAS: This was a really great performance by all 8 guys, and especially awesome performance by Halloween and Damien. This was in a junkyard, and may have been as good or even better then the best Zona 23 stuff. The in between brawling was pretty great, everyone through good punches, and there were a bunch of fun weapons shots including Kaos getting drilled in the head by a flying garbage can from out of nowhere. They built to the big car spots, including Damien taking an totally psycho fall off of a scaffold ribs first on a car windshield. Supreme was more of a minor character in this match, but looked good in spots, and got his bowling ball head smashed into a windshield.

ER: Wow this ruled, a match that we would have placed ungodly high on our 2011 MOTY List (if we had one). This was how you do a wild brawl, with a great junkyard setting surrounding the ring, truly a performance where every single person contributed something big. At the center was a tremendous Damian performance, one of the wildest garbage brawl performances ever, with several different unnecessarily ugly bumps taking by the 50 year old! This was Damian with a boiler as big as Supreme's outbumping the man who was literally known exclusively for his crazy bumps. Damian is a real violent lunatic here, and this was the kind of setting where the bumps from a guy delivering a move were just as ugly as the guy taking a move. Sure, you just suplexed someone onto the roof of a car, but that means you took and arguably uglier bump because your back landed right where the windshield meets the roof. Damian wings a galvanized washtub at Supreme's head (and this washtub was really the 9th man in this match, and was at least the 6th best guy here), powerbombs Kaos on that washtub, hits a big suplex on the ramp, misses an elbowdrop off the bleachers (incredibly rickety bleachers that a 50 year old man should not be even attempting to climb), takes a wild bump over the guardrail into the crowd/chairs, and then peaks things by taking the undisputed bump of the match by getting knocked off the camera scaffold and landing hard on a car. Totally insane bump for anyone to take, totally suicidal for a 50 year old man to take it.

Crazy bumps were the order of the day in this match, with the centerpiece being a cruelly unforgiving washtub that had to have given half the participants sciatica. Kaos ate a powerbomb on it, X-Fly ate a powerbomb on it, Kaos did a suplex that landed the edge of his back on it, everyone else either had it banked off their head or landed kidneys first on it. Whoever brought that washtub was a real sadistic asshole. Halloween bled buckets and hit two different violent spears, including one onto a car that looked fantastic. Carnage got the back of his head sliced open, Supreme took several tough bumps onto chairs and through tubes, Kaos took at LEAST eight different powerbomb and suplex variations, Bestia hit a big crossbody off the scaffold, just total chaos. This whole thing was pure uncut insanity, not a second of it worth the body damage that surely resulted from the insanity. I had no clue this match was out there, but I imagine I'll go out of my way to make sure many more find out about it.

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Worldwide 2/13/99

By this point Worldwide the WorldWide format left a lot to be desired, as the first 45 minutes were recap, with a couple short matches at the end. You think it would have been more successful to have the matches scattered throughout the show, but lets be honest they did not care about the WorldWide format at this point. So most of it is Shiavone and Larry Z recapping events, with occasional exclusive promos and interviews.

Vincent cuts an awesome promo with Gene about how Hollywood left him in charge of the nWo because Stevie Ray was a little slow. Before starting this project I would not have predicted that '99 Vincent would be one of the guys I most look forward to.

1. Kenny Kaos vs. Bobby Eaton

When did this tag team superpower break up!? As you (likely don't) recall, after Rage got hurt Kaos asked Eaton to be his tag partner, because who has more tag team experience in WCW than Bobby Eaton (in kayfabe that storyline actually makes sense) but clearly it was a short-lived partnership (or this match was taped 16 months in advance of air date). And Tenay and Hudson are awesome as they sell total shock that these partners are now fighting ("I'm gonna get to the bottom of this in the locker room!"). Eaton looks really great here, not just his punches (which Kaos really sells like bombs), but in the way he covers up Kaos' botches with big snap bumps. Kaos goes for a press slam at one point but clearly can't get Eaton up, so Eaton wisely starts struggling to make it look like he escaped from the slam (as opposed to getting dropped, which is what happened). To his credit Tenay picks up on it and sells it as such. Match could have actually been really good as Eaton was on fire and Kaos was at least trying, but it goes barely 2 minutes, ending with Kaos' (always cool) springboard clothesline.

2. Konnan vs. Chad Fortune

Boy, when you get two matches on a show and one of them has Konnan vs. the less famous member of the WCW Pit Crew, you know you're deep in the shit. But you know? I kinda dug Konnan vs. Chad Fortune. There were flaws in execution, and there were general weaknesses that both guys have, but the match was laid out way better than I or anybody could have expected and in 4 minute matches the layout is really important. You have a limited time to work, but a bad layout can really make a 4 minute match drag. If you have one guy control for 3 minutes and the other guy make his comeback and win in the last minute, then not only does the match stink because the winner brushed off all the loser's offense because it was his turn, but more often than not we get some lying around and chinlocks because the eventual loser can't logically fill 3 straight minutes of time.

So in Konnan vs. Fortune we have a back-and-forth 4 minutes, but it wasn't worked your move-my move, it was actually worked super smart. Fortune ambushed Konnan to get an early advantage, Konnan made a comeback by craftily reversing a Fortune move, Fortune himself made a comeback by doing the same, and Konnan won when Fortune got too cocky. So in 4 minutes they were able to tell numerous stories, have multiple control shifts, have believable and logical transitions, and end with a satisfying, competitive match. That's more than you can say about 80+% of WCW syndicated matches.

They have a lot working against them: Konnan is a candidate for worst worker of the WCW syndicated era. I believe he could be better than he normally came off, but was usually too focused on getting his shit in instead of making things interesting for the viewer. His syndicated matches are usually short, selfishly worked, with his moves usually done in the exact same order with the only thing changing from match to match is how smoothly or awkwardly his opponent gets into position for those same moves. Fortune is a tall guy with a shaved head wearing horrible baggy pants (think Kevin Nash pants, but not leather/pleather) and an anal bead necklace.

Match starts great with Fortune doing an awesome running dropkick while Konnan is fiddling with his pants or something (how do those things stay up during his matches?). Konnan transitions back by reversing an irish whip, but eventually Fortune rakes the eyes to go back on offense, and hits an awesome Dibiase-style fist drop. He goes up top and Konnan gets up, but in a nice twist Konnan doesn't run over to catch him (avoiding that annoying thing where a guy only does top rope offense when he gets caught and thrown off), nor does Fortune still try to do the move he was originally going to do when it's obvious to everybody but the guy on the top rope that the move is going to miss. Instead Fortune just jumps down and runs at Konnan with a clothesline. It naturally misses, but I appreciate them mixing things up. From here Konnan hits a nice bulldog (none of that silly hand on the back of a guy's head garbage, but an actual headlock driving a guy's dome into the mat) and locks on the Tequila Sunrise.

Was the match epic? No. Were all the moves super smooth? No. Did Fortune ever look like he had an actual chance of winning? No. But did I enjoy it? Yes, way way more than I could have anticipated. One of the better miracle matches I've seen in awhile.

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Pro 8/17/96

1. Chip Minton vs. Diamond Dallas Page

This wasn't much and I'm kinda shocked that WCW never tried to push Minton at all. I mean, how often does an actual US Olympian get into pro wrestling? He was pretty raw but had some obvious talent. Instead we get a bunch of Larry Z griping about how bobsledding won't make him a better wrestler and acting as if Minton was leading a bobsledding invasion against WCW wrestling.

2. Jim Powers vs. The Gambler

Alright, I'll be honest with you: Jim Powers is not very good at pro wrestling. But what's even worse is that he's not very good in a completely boring way. He does hip tosses. He rams guys' heads into the turnbuckles. He throws a super light dropkick. He has just nothing going for him at all. You can't laugh at him for being horrible, your brain just goes blank for 4 minutes. So thank god for The Gambler, who tries his damndest to have a fun match with Jim Powers. He doesn't succeed, but he tried. This was at least notable for being one of the few matches where The Gambler controlled the match and took most of the offense. Powers was working comebacks most of the way through so Gambler got to control with Arn Anderson-meets-Chris Elliott charm. I wish actual good wrestlers would try and work a competitive match with him.

3. High Voltage vs. American Males

Hey, you know who used to be good? Marcus Bagwell. I really liked him in this, working the hot tag for Riggs. He had a really nice dropkick, cool shoulderblock and a great crossbody off the top for the win, and this was an enjoyable 7 minute tag. You know who wasn't good back then? Kaos (or "Chaos" as it was spelled here). He was just totally lost and it was a testament to how decent Bagwell was that this thing didn't fall completely apart. Kaos was totally baffled by rope running spots and got way confused during all those exchanges.

***Baseball Rambling Below***

So all through this show they've been showing an ad for an old Sega Genesis baseball game (World Series Baseball 2?) and what so odd about the commercial is Brad Radke is the guy they used as the sports star hawking the game. Now Brad Radke was one of my favorite non-Giant ballplayers of all time. He was a small market guy who played his whole career on the Twins and retired when he wanted to, while he was still a relevant player. What made me really like him was his numbers always looked worse than they actually were, and he regularly got overlooked as a really good player because of that (Matt Cain would later hold many of these traits Radke held, and Cain is one of my all-time favorites. What made me love him so early on was it felt like the Giants finally had their own Radke). I mean, in the last couple seasons before he retired, Radke had a 5+ K/BB ratio. That's great. But this was not later career Radke being featured in a commercial. 1996 was only his 2nd year, and what was notable about his first couple seasons was that he gave up more HR than any other pitcher in MLB over those 2 years, giving up 32 in '95 as a rookie and 40 in '96. His rookie year ERA was 5.32 (5.42 FIP, oooof). And this commercial was amazing because Radke was in it for just that reason: he gave up home runs. The commercial showed him giving up bombs and painted him as a bad luck loser. For a 23 year old player to make fun of himself like that just made me love Radke that much more, and even more awesome that he averaged 5 WAR over the next 5 seasons after this commercial. So not only did Radke make fun of himself, but he had the last laugh. Awesome.

***Baseball Rambling Over***

4. Scott Flash vs. Mark Starr

This could have been a really good jobber match, but Norton just absolutely refused to sell anything that Mark Starr throws. It was real bad. He just walked through punches and kicks and made it pretty clear that Starr was a doofus. It did show just how decent Starr's punches were, when they can look good even when somebody doesn't acknowledge them. Norton was a beast here, so I get it. But I felt bad for Starr. Norton's shoulderbreaker is a vicious, reckless move that looks insanely painful.

5. Chris Benoit vs. Joe Gomez

Jim Powers, why can't you be as hilariously awful as Joe Gomez? Gomez was just awful. Hilariously awful. Even Rachel noticed how often he tossed his hair back while horribly executing basic offense (did BJ Whitmer watch a lot of Gomez when he was younger?). Here he does an insanely slow backslide set-up, stopping midway to whip his hair back TWICE. By far the best part of the match was Gomez missing a running crossbody block off the ropes. What made it so great was the fact that Gomez clearly did not know he was missing the crossbody. This is what a missed crossbody looks like when Joe Gomez clearly thinks he's going to be crashing into Chris Benoit. But Benoit ducked, and Gomez flew hilariously/dangerously/awesomely into the ropes, and then rolled to the floor. It was spectacular. Later in the match Gomez goes up to the top and it looks like he's climbing ropes for the first time right here and now in front of the world. Every step up looks super shaky and he has to stop on each rope to regain his balance. Yes, he did not even climb up on the buckles, he climbed up on the ropes right next to the buckles. When he finally disastrously gets to the top, he leaps off with the worst top rope splash I've seen, coming in way forward heavy, like he was attempting to do the Worm by first leaping off the top. He just flops there hilariously, and then lies there on his face, a total failure pile. Even better, Benoit just kinda lets him lie there for awhile, face down, until casually walking over and putting on the crossface. Thank you, Joe Gomez.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Saturday Night 1/16/99

26 hours away from Souled Out from Charleston, West Virginia!!!

1. Barry Horowitz vs. Wrath

I forgot Wrath had the awesome "Running With the Devil" intro to his music. And I have no recollection of Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Wrath from Souled Out. Wrath looks like the most juiced out of his gourd Burt Reynolds from "White Lightning" here, like he's all hopped up on Joker's toxin from Arkham Asylum. This is more competitive than you may have guessed, and Horowitz gets to hit a cool leaping back elbow from the 2nd rope. Wrath alternates between selling Barry's offense and then completely ignoring it. Barry's kicks to the stomach looked way better than Wrath's.

Nitro Girls calendar ad! Who was regarded as the hottest Nitro Girl anyway? I assume not the one with the super gelled dyed blonde curls? Was Spice the hottest? What was the name of the redhead (I assume Fire or Fyre or Figher?)? Maybe Chai? Who was the least hot Nitro Girl? Whisper? Can we get a consensus 1-10 ranking?

2. David Sierra vs. Chad Fortune

Crowd goes absolutely bonkers for Fortune and I assume it's because he's a gigantic Aryan guy in pleather flame pants against an ethnic guy. In fairness to those ethnically-insensitive fans, David Sierra really does look like a background character from "Quest For Fire" here, and HOLY SHIT Fortune does an awesome delayed fist drop and I suddenly want a "Best of Chad Fortune" VHS. Fortune's pants and giant link necklace look horrible. I don't think he's that good. Here's a selection from the "Monster Truck" section of his Wikipedia page. You may have misread that, and to be clear, Chad Fortune has a "Monster Truck" section on his Wikipedia page:

"Based on his professional wrestling background, he decided to dye his hair black and later his look to match the character of Superman."

Clearly Chad Fortune is the Daniel Day Lewis of monster truck driving. Dude doesn't even talk to crew members unless they call him Clark.

3. Mike Tolbert vs. Meng

Tolbert attacks Meng with leg kicks but Meng has the ability to no sell gassed/tanned/oiled/ponytailed jobber offense and immediately locks on the Tongan Death Grip. This was like 20 seconds.

4. Jeff Warner vs. Disco Inferno

Now I think Wikipedia is lying to me. Here's an excerpt from Jeff Warner's Wikipedia:

"He formed a tag team with Art Barr (who was using a "Beetlejuice" gimmick) called "The Juice Patrol" with Warner going by the name "Big Juice"."

 Oh, come on! No way does a jacked 6' 4" white guy go by "Big Juice"! How hilarious would that make Warner?! Also, there is a whole subsection of his Wikipedia page titled "Max Muscle" and all it says is:

"Contrary to popular belief and information often posted on the internet, Jeff Warner DID NOT portray the WCW character Max Muscle/Maxx."

That seems like a weird thing to drum up controversy over. Did some kid ask him one time at c-level WrestleCon "Hey, are you Maxx Muscle or is his table over there?" and Warner was like "Well just so people aren't confused we better clear the air." So just in case you jerks were curious, Jeff Warner WAS NOT the guitar tech during Creed's "Take Me Higher 2002" tour. He WAS the guy who did a few lines of coke off a Staind jewel case with the DJ from Crazy Town that one time, though.

Some guy in the crowd has a laquered sign that says "Disco Inferno....THE MAN". Front row.

5. Chris Adams vs. Chip Minton

Adams comes out in a GI and this is fucking ONNNNN. This was during the Adams/Minton feud where they were feuding over who gets to use the nickname "World Class". Adams does all sorts of cool shoot-type stuff here, including rad single legs, stomping on Minton's calves, and throws some brutal elbow shots. Then he plants him with a vertical powerbomb and just levels Minton with a great superkick. To really show Minton who's boss he finishes the match with some weird Volk Han submission, using his legs to choke him out while also hyperextending Minton's arm. Looked real weird and nasty.

6. Scotty Riggs vs. Scott Putski

Well, this wasn't one that excited me out of the gates. Riggs is a pretty decent foil for Putski (who goes to a chinlock 40 seconds in) and Putski throws a decent elbow drop. Most of the match is Riggs working over Putski's knee with some pretty nasty knee work (high half crab, punching him right in the knee, bending and twisting his knee over the bottom rope). Putski does an admirable job of selling the knee on his comebacks and you start to BUY the INJURY! And then Riggs hits the 5 Arm for the win. This would have actually been good if Putski's comeback offense was better.

7. Bobby Eaton/Kenny Kaos vs. Bobby Duncum Jr./Mike Enos

These are two weirdo tag teams and on paper this looks like a bank full of money. I know the Kaos/Eaton team formed because Kaos needed a partner with Rage injured, so went to tag team legend Eaton to help him out and condescendingly asks him for help ("it's not like you've had much success doing anything else, Bobby") but I have no memory of a Duncum/Enos team. This match is kinda disappointing as it only goes a few minutes with all guys showing off by seeing who has the best powerslam (Enos) and who throws the best elbow drop (Eaton). You get some nice Eaton punches, and then the match ends awkwardly with a sloppy Duncum leg drop that saw Kaos kick out at 2, but the ref counted 3 anyway and then people kinda stood around awkwardly while we cut to Mean Gene. Oooookay.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Saturday Night 12/19/98

1. Glacier vs. Mike Sullivan

Glacier's back! And he's still not that good, but kinda better than I remembered him being. Mike Sullivan is also back, and he is even worse than I remember him being. And I don't remember Mike Sullivan at all. Glacier was weird as he really didn't bump much, and sometimes his offense looked good and stiff, and other times his kicks looked about as good as Eric Bischoff's. Here he threw some really cool jabs in the corner on Sullivan, really odd southpaw shots to the temple that looked really cool. And then Sullivan charged out of the corner with some of the WORST babyface-on-fire punches I have EVER seen. His fist was soaring right past Glacier's head, thrown at a 3/4 slot, so that his wrist was kinda grazing the side of Glacier's neck. Bleeecccch. But he bumped real big for Glacier's kicks and stuff, so...something.

2. Kaz Hayashi vs. Hole in One Darsow

Kaz has been one of the brightest spots of these shows, looking downright top 20 in the world in everything. But here he gets to do nothing. There isn't really a match. Darsow works the stick and looks awesome in his gold gear, and is pretty funny teasing the crowd. "Who's having fun to-NIGHT!?" *tepid response* "Yeah, I wouldn't like living here that much either." Golf challenge breaks down, Darsow is DQ'd.

3. Al Green vs. Wrath

Green did...not get much offense here. Wrath looks like the best possible version of Rocky Mountain Thunder. Wrestles like him, and looks like a really juiced version of him. Same haircut, too.

4. Chris Jericho vs. Booker T

Booker T was a guy that I liked in 1998, but it's pretty shocking in retrospect how bad and sloppy he looked most of the time. He has been one of the worst things about going back and watching this stuff. It's not just that he looks lousy most of the time, it's also that he was usually one of the bigger names on any given syndicated show, so his matches would get way more time. So guys like Kaz Hayashi would get 3 minutes, while Booker would get 8. Jericho looked really great in the first half of this, really getting into position nicely for Booker, and just having an insane amount of body charisma. Jericho was me and my sister's favorite wrestler in 1998. He just slayed us and this was dead smack in the middle of the top knot/kimono/Ralphus era. He was totally killing it here until Booker gassed and Jericho locked on a chinlock. AND LORDY was it a bad chinlock. Not one part of his arm was touching one part of Booker's neck. It looked like a guy posing for a picture with his arm around his mother. That happens for awhile and then Stevie Ray runs in for the DQ. Gross.

5. Barry Horowitz vs. Kanyon

Kanyon on the stick was so money. Like a bank full of money. Crowd was way into him here, and they were way into this battle of Jewish Faith vs. Homosinuality.

6. Kaos vs. Prince Iaukea

I weirdly enjoy both of these guys, probably more than most people. Iaukea seemed like a who would get good. There was always a moment in each Iaukea match where he would have a giant bump and you'd be like "This guy is going to be awesome" but then you realized you were saying that for like 5 years. High Voltage is a guilty pleasure of mine. I admit to always marking out for their springboard moves. And that's really the best part of this match, right at the end: Kaos hits a big springboard clothesline and Iaukea leans way into it and sprawls out all nasty from it. We rewound many times. I think this Iaukea guy is going to be awesome.

7. Chris Benoit/Dean Malenko vs. Vincent/Bryan Adams

Well this match was fucking awesome. People are going to pull out the "pretending to like a shitty wrestler to sound kewl" card, but holy shit is Vincent one of the best things about this rewatch project. Dude makes total throwaway matches watchable, and he really steps up his game in bigger matches like this. He is responsible for holding this one together, actually. Benoit looked good and dished a beating, but the beating was made way more fun by Vincent stooging around the ring for him. He was really weird, in that he always seemed like he was playing a guy that wasn't really a wrestler. He's probably most similar to Stevie Richards, I guess. Neither guy really has any offense, but what they do they do really well. Vincent is such an anomaly in that I don't remember him being any good at ALL in WWF. I don't know when exactly he got good, but he is flat out awesome in '98 WCW. His control segments are great, as he dishes out tons of backrakes and clubbing blows. His clubbing blows are awesome as they aren't quite punches, aren't quite clubbering, but they land somewhere around the dudes neck/throat and look awesome. He bumps great, and always makes tagging in Adams a big deal, either by desperately scrambling to him or by cockily strutting over to take him in like "Yeah you know I was just beating your ass, now here's the big man." Match gets tons of time, gets some good nearfalls, and is a great Vincent showcase. Great stuff.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Saturday Night 6/26/99

Dave Burkhead vs. Van Hammer

God bless him, Burkhead and his "buff guy that got fat" body tried his damndest here, but Van Hammer. But, Van Hammer. A lot of men have tried, but, in the end, Van Hammer.

Al Greene vs. Barbarian

OK, this episode ain't starting off too hot. WCW had an odd habit of booking Al Green as a heel, then putting him against other heels. I like the Barbarian a lot, but he didn't look great here and Al Green looked better than I remember him being. TomK had a good story about a diner he goes to in New Orleans that has a wall of autographed celebrity photos, people like John Larroquette, James Gandolfini, Willard Scott...and Al Greene. I've always wondered where those pictures come from. Do the celebrities carry them around with them and hand them out to the restaurant when the owner asks? Or does the owner just have a large number of 8x10s of guys like The Dog Al Greene? I once was at the bad mall in my town, and saw Willie Nelson walking around. I went up to him and quickly found out it was NOT Willie Nelson, but it was Almost Willie, the world's #1 Willie Nelson impersonator. He had a bunch of 8x10s in his bag and signed one for me. So does The Dog Al Greene just carry a bunch of 8x10s around with him?

La Parka vs. Kenny Kaos

Well this was just too much fun, with Parka taking some crazy bumps for a bunch of Kaos clotheslines and actually getting in a whole bunch of offense (including punching Kaos right in the face a couple times). It's been beaten to death by everybody by now, but WCW really just did not know what they had with La Parka. Crowd is crazy hot for the guy in this match. He could have made them a whole bank full of money. Shoot, here we are 12 years after this episode aired and Park is currently my favorite wrestler in the world. Weird.

Barry Windham vs. Rey Misterio Jr.

Jeez, Barry Windham's SUUUUPER tight and SUUUUUPER short jean shorts are the most disgustingly distracting piece of wrestling attire I've ever seen. I would rather seen him in (technically smaller) trunks, as these awful denim shorts just looked like the most uncomfortably ball-strangling piece of clothing possible. Every time he moved or shifted I kept expecting a testicle to rupture. His whole outfit is completely preposterous, with the nut-strangling short-shorts (they were so short the pockets were sticking out the bottom!), cowboy boots, giant knee brace, tank top, and gardening gloves. WTF? Match was fun but ends prematurely as Kendall just runs in and starts beating Rey down, leading to K-Dawwwwg, Swoll, Chase Tatum all running down and getting their swell on and just kinda....looking like shitheads.

Bobby Blaze/Lenny Lane vs. Curt Hennig/Bobby Duncum Jr.

Hennig/Duncum were almost as awesome as the Kendall/Barry Rednecks duo. They just tore Lenny and Blaze apart. Duncum was decent in the ring, but his strengths appear to be his work outside the ring. His distraction spots from the floor or apron were done really great, and he does a bunch of cool stuff (stuff that seems to just not exist in modern wrestling) from the apron to keep the babyface on their toes (grabbing at them when they get close, yelling threats, being awesome). West Texas Rednecks stuff has really aged the best out of all the '99 WCW stuff.

Great exchange from Hudson/Tenay during the 2nd West Texas Rednecks match:

MT: You know, Larry Zbyszko loves this song [Rap is Crap]!
SH: Really? I wouldn't think Larry would listen to anything made past 1912.
MT: Well he told me during Thunder last week that his favorite music is Bob Seger!
SH: Larry Zbyszko loves Bob Seger!?
MT: Yep, BIG rock and roll fan. You'll have to start watching the Thunder broadcasts more often!
SH: Now why would I want to do that!?

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