My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Saturday Night 9/25/99

1. El Dandy vs. Lenny Lane

This is arguably the biggest "Dandy showcase" match that Dandy ever had in WCW. It was 4 minutes, but almost the whole thing was controlled by Dandy. He had more offense in this one match than probably all his matches in '98 put together. Lenny wasn't very good, but it was really fun seeing Dandy dominate a match and repeatedly cut ANYbody off. There were a bunch of nearfalls that actually looked like Dandy would be getting the pinfall (which shows what a rube I am since Lane was  Cruiser Champ at this time). But Dandy had all sorts of cool leverage roll-ups that looked really impossible to kick out of, and he got to work in his awesome punches into a few (never had the chance to be) "trademark" spots. The best was when Lane was "punching" him in the corner (man did Lane have bad punches) and Dandy calmly told him to stop, then when Lane went "Huh?" Dandy belted him. Tenay tried his damndest to put over Dandy but it just wasn't ever going to work. Still nice to see him getting this kind of match.

2. Alan Funk vs. Kid Romeo

It's cool that WCWSN was around back then to give guys like this time to have actual matches. The matches usually weren't very good as most of the Power Plant guys had no idea how to build matches or transition or string together moves properly, but it at least gave them 6-7 minutes in front of live bodies. All the matches always end up your move my move kinda stuff, but the moves usually look pretty crisp. Funk was always a guy I dug more than most as his stuff usually had a good snap, he would break out a couple cool gutbuster suplexes and he knew how to work hell better than the others. Finish was a total abortion with Funk rolling up Romeo and Romeo being too much of a goon to keep his shoulders down. Literally had both of them up. Tenay and Hudson are wondering why the ref is even counting and then when that wins the match both of them try and act like they must have been down from another camera angle.

3. Bobby Eaton vs. Jim Duggan

USA wages a war on Huntsville, Alabama!! This...wasn't that good. Duggan could not give less of a shit here, walking around the ring slowly and missing shots by a mile. Eaton tried but this was a couple old guys moving slow for 3 minutes before Duggan wins with the slowest loosest clothesline you've seen.

Scott, Steve and Brad Armstrong come out for a quick interview calling out the Faces of Fear. Sounds like a fun six man. Madusa led the interview and looked horrific. Gross fake tits, way too much body glitter for someone on the wrong side of 30, poorly done extensions. I mean they're based out of Atlanta. You'd think there would be SOMEbody in the company that could rattle off ten places that do decent extension and weave work in the greater ATL area. Shoot there is probably a weave competition going on RIGHT NOW at an ATL mall. Unacceptable.

4. Erik Watts vs. Steve Regal

This was actually really fucking awesome as Regal works a whole bunch of mat slickness all over Watts and Watts breaks out his fun and goofy big guy offense, like his step up rana. But damn did Regal look insanely good. All the mat stuff is blatant show off stuff, but it's the kind of thing I could rewind and watch over and over. Cool leg trips and arm drags and flashy leverage moves. Dave Taylor was with him at ringside looming over things like a background extra in Long Good Friday. Taylor starts cheating to win and Duggan comes out to even the odds. Duggan's 2x4 shots looks horrible but if anybody has the facials to put over bad strikes, it's Regal and Taylor. I assume this sets up a tag team match at some point. 

5. Disco Inferno vs. Spyder

That's right! You KNOW you were all clamoring for the one or two Spyder matches that exist. Spyder is kind of a great guy to point to if you're arguing that WCW had too many guys on the payroll. The Latino World Order disbanded in JANUARY! And the guy who was the non-wrestling guy in the faction is still around working random matches 8 months later. How many shows before this was he flown into? Match went like 90 seconds and Spyder looked pretty not good. Threw a clothesline at Disco's lower chest, couldn't throw a punch. Glad they kept this guy around.

6. Norman Smiley vs. Scotty Riggs

Fun match between two underrated guys. Rachel thinks Smiley looks like the worlds most ripped History teacher. I liked all these pre-Screamin Norman matches where he would bust out weird clotheslines or just front kick somebody in the nose. He really knew how to put over offense, too, making Riggs' elbow strikes look nice. 

7. Chris Benoit vs. Lash Leroux

Benoit looks like he is going to murder this guy. I do not know what Leroux did, but Benoit dealt him a furious fucking beating right here. Leroux got one piece of offense in: Benoit charged him in the corner and Lash got the boots up. That was it. Right after that Lash charged out of the corner into a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. The rest of the match was Benoit punching him, chopping him, suplexing him insanely fast, grabbing him by the nose and slapping his face, and locking in the crossface with Leroux's back bent backwards into a gross angle. Afterwards the rest of the Revolution comes out and Douglas and Saturn are wearing above-the-knee jean shorts with their Revolution shirts tucked in and looking like the Revolution was about to have an "End of Summer BBQ Bash".

8. Little Jeanie vs. Mona

Mona's gown singlet is one of the coolest wrestling looks ever. This was a real go go go 4 minutes with neither girl coming up for air. Mona was real great at building sympathy (wish I could hear the crowd's actual reaction, but the Stars of the Lid ambient noise machine was working in full effect this whole episode, just constant whirr of sounds approximating "Yay" and "boo") and she was good at running her offense together. Her finishing run was really great with a lightning fast handspring elbow into the corner followed by a bulldog to plant Jeanie, and finishing her off with an awesome surfboard cradle that has me and Scott Hudson marking out.

9. Scott, Steve and Brad Armstrong vs. First Family (Barbarian, Jerry Flynn, Hugh Morrus)

We get 7-8 minutes of this and it's all at worst decent wrestling. For whatever reason I was hoping for a bit more as most of it felt like time filling as opposed to building to something. Flynn looked really good here with a couple nice spin kick variations and big presence. Morrus (aside from his obnoxious ayuk yuk mannerisms) threw some nice elbow drops, including a big one off the top. Armstrongs were as dependable as usual, with Steve having a cool mat takedown/punches from mount segment with Flynn. And the Armstrongs fucking WIN! I'm sure all of you were expecting that result.


So many Surge commercials.

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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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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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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 7/4/98

My favorite way to watch my favorite wrestling is to just grab a random disc out of the stacks, no cherry picking, no looking up matchlistings, just going in blind. Sometimes you get bent over hard and end up sitting through Stevie Ray vs. Konnan, and other times Orion smiles upon you and you get a gloriously random mix of the most fun wrestling ever. So I went into the vaults and pulled out 7/4/98, the 222nd birthday of this great nation of ours. And WCW wished America happy birthday with one weird fucking episode.

1. Vincent vs. Marty Jannetty

First off, Marty fucking Jannetty (!) gets a clean pin over a member of the nWo halfway through 1998! WHAT!? Vincent looked awesome here, hitting an assortment of fistdrops and "Hitman" style elbow drops. Then Jannetty somehow gets the win. Insane. Did not see that coming. That's one of the great things about syndicated WCW, is that you get weird hierarchy matches between people that you've never seen win one match. Who wins a match between Van Hammer and Scott Vick? There are often no foregone conclusions with these matches. I didn't even know Marty was employed this late, let alone winning matches.

2. Lenny Lane vs. Spike Moore

Spike Moore was a guy I have NEVER seen before. He was wearing a pirate skull shirt and kinda looked like Droz. Match was close to getting the full point, before Lenny sold a roll up like a clothesline and then they just awkwardly cut to a finish. Moore hit his shoulderblocks really hard and looked decent. I could not find any information on the guy. Anybody?

3. Magnum Tokyo vs. Bobby Blaze

Blaze threw some fine suplexes and Tokyo grinded his crotch in Blaze's face a bunch, and Larry Zybszko kept calling Magnum "The Japanese". What? Really? This match could not take place anywhere else.

4. Villanos vs. High Voltage

THIS was totally awesome, with Villanos looking great as always, and RAGE and KAOS hitting their fun springboard power moves and bumping shockingly well. RAGE and KAOS were a pretty damn fun team looking back. I remember enjoying Rage's NJPW stint earlier this decade, but didn't remember if he was any good or not. For a team that jobbed constantly in WCW, the Villanos always seem to get put over strong on commentary and by their opponents. Teams always give them a bunch of offense (even if there's usually quite a size difference). Shoot, Brian Knobbs had a competitive 8 minute match against one of them, and most heavyweight workers don't get that much of a rub from Hogan friends. Good times.

5. John Nord vs. Goldberg

WHAT THE FUCK was Goldberg doing on WORLDWIDE in the middle of 1998!?!?!?!?!? Was this taped in like 1997!? Why was John Nord wrestling in 1998!? What the hell was happening here? I love you WCW!!!

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