WCW Saturday Night 4/10/99

This felt like kismet. I made a sazerac and pulled a complete random disc of WCW out of the stack, and I pulled an episode almost 20 years ago to the date. Out of the couple hundreds of episodes I could have snagged, I get one with a near perfect round number anniversary. My mood is always up when I crank up some 90s WCW, but this feels like a Close Encounters level sign. This episode is guaranteed to rule.

Rick Steiner vs. Fit Finlay

ER: What did I say!? Finlay vs. a Steiner motherfucker! Send these two out to lead off an episode? I'm totally fine with that. It's predictably great, and it's a treat to watch Finlay eat more of a beating than beat up a junior. Finlay is a guy really great at putting over offense but his syndicated matches are most often him dishing the beating. Steiner hits a great lariat, and a fun powerbomb with Finlay holding onto the ropes to try to escape but just getting lifted and dropped. Finlay even eats a nasty hot shot on the guardrail, really crashes down onto it. And obviously Finlay isn't going to be eating a beating the *entire* match, so his makes the strikes count on his comebacks. He's going to hit some full force uppercuts and this is going to rule. What a predictably great start to things.

Norman Smiley vs. The Cat

ER: Six frat guys in the crowd are wearing no shirts and have SMILEY spelled out individually across their chests. Smiley was "men painting on their bodies in adoration" level. And this was a weirdly good bad match. I’ve never been very high on the Cat, although I know he has his fans. Sometimes you get Cat where his strikes look like they land, other times you get a bunch of really pulled sidekicks. Here we got a mix of that, so he’d crack Smiley in the jaw with a low kick, but then later hit a soft kick to the side, but then later he’d hook a crescent kick under the chin. Smiley’s offense looked great consistently throughout, so it was tough seeing him throw out some cool stuff and have Cat only half return the favor. Smiley always has a surprise, and we got classics like his awesome rollercoaster bodyslam, but he also used a trippy escape to get out of a waistlock and tossed out a couple of neat armdrags. We got Sonny Onto interference, things kept threatening to get real good - and then they would get real good - and then they’d go a little soft. Weird match, but felt like Smiley was a good opponent for Cat. Really if they tightened up a couple of hinges in this one, it would have delivered.

Juvy comes out with a tallish guy dressed as Konnan (complete with top buttoned flannel) wearing a Mil Mascaras match, billed as La Cucaracha. Juvy acts as Cucracha’s translator, with the masked man (definitely not Disco Inferno) whispering into Juvy’s ear and having Juvy say things like “This is definitely not Disco Inferno” and “This is a guy who can definitely beat Konnan”. Juvy wasn’t working overtly cocky heel like his excellent Juice run later in the year, he was playing it all more coy. Konnan comes out and does his catchphrases, but does drop a real nice G rated diss, which is a special skill to use and not sound silly (like a Nitro where Hogan said “Fe Fi Fo Fum, the Giant is a big dum dum”. It was fucking brutal.). He makes fun of Juvy’s promo and said nobody could understand him, and then says:

"Your English is as good as La Cucaracha’s Spanish which is as good as Disco Inferno’s wrestling”

It’s not mean, but like I said it’s a quality G rated diss. We get a not very good impromptu match and Konnan unmasks Disco. Fans got into the match portion, really wanted Disco humiliated. It’s an impressive reaction for an upcoming match that I hope I never see,

Barbarian/Hugh Morrus vs. Meng/Jerry Flynn

ER: I could have guessed these four matching up, but I don’t recall the Faces of Fear splitting up. Was this some pre-Russo “split up two regular-to-semi-regular teams and have them switch alliances and feud” thing? Definitely seen a tag with these guys, but haven’t seen it with the established teams scrambled. This is definitely a feud I don’t remember but damn was it great here. This is falls count anywhere and they work 80% of the match on the floor and in the aisle way, and they build it really great to peak it at what fans want to see. This whole thing goes barely 6 minutes, but it’s laid out flawlessly. We start with Flynn/Barbarian and Meng/Morrus pairings, both pairs brawling around the ring, and it’s all engaging stuff, but they knew just went to splinter off into the money pairing of Meng/Barbarian and Flynn/Morrus. It’s a trip seeing Meng and Barbarian go at it, but it’s a trip people want to take. When they splinter back to original pairings that’s when we up the fan factor by getting Jimmy Hart involved. Hart draws the incredible task of jumping Meng, and Hart actually starts kicking at Meng! Meng grabs Jimmy Hart by the fucking head…..

and the camera cuts away. It cuts away to Flynn and Barbarian who are literally just locked in a collar and elbow. It stays on them. Eventually we see Meng walk into frame and we realize that whatever Meng did to Hart was long over and long off camera. This was a porn producer missing the money shot because he was opting for a lingering still frame of the bedside table. Somebody should have been red-faced screamed at for this error. Unforgivable. We get a couple nice bumps into the ring steps (Flynn really flies into them), Meng hits a nice low blow on Morrus AND a really high leap standing dropkick, Flynn gets backdropped into a brutal Barbarian powerbomb (can't believe we got that spot!) and we get an awesome extended Hart chase after the match. Hart got involved again and does an incredible sequence running away from Meng and Flynn, working some amazing shtick and getting an actual loud laugh for me when he escapes down the aisle….but the pod bay doors on the Saturday Night set aren’t open! So we get the genuinely hilarious shot of Hart banging on the doors to be let in before Meng and Flynn catch him. Great segment to end a show on.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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WCW A-Sides? WCW Nitro 10/21/96

Bobby Eaton vs. Chris Jericho

ER: This match unexpectedly got a lot of time (nearly 8 minutes) and it really built into something fun after a slow, distracting start. You see, Syxx and nWo Sting came out under a big nWo banner and we would get occasional cutaways to those two in the crowd sucking away a lot of the attention. So there was a longish moment in the first half of this where Jericho held a hammerlock waiting for the crowd to come around. It was feeling like this was going to be a disappointment, but the whole thing snapped to life with a strike exchange. Jericho threw some nice slaps to Eaton's chest, then when they started throwing right hands I was in. Jericho would throw 2 or 3 for every 1 of Eaton's, with Eaton landing a couple doozies. Crowd didn't care about nWo members after this. Eaton fed Jericho some nice stuff, took his big springing dropkick that he bumped off the apron to the floor, Eaton takes a nice post shot then ducks so Jericho throws a back elbow to the post, shoot Eaton even takes a backdrop into the entrance way, far past the point the mats end. Eaton still gets a lot in this one even it's supposed to be building Jericho up for a match with Syxx, and we get a great Eaton kneedrop off the top right to Jericho's chest, and a cool reversal where he snaps a swinging neckbreaker to reverse a Jericho backdrop attempt, and I'm really glad this recovered and then some. It feels like nWo sucked the interest out of a lot of matches from this era, glad these two persevered.

We get a great Rey Misterio Jr. highlight package, him hitting a bunch of fast ranas while we get a lot of experimental 1996 digital video editing color washes and graphics, while some mournful instrumental guitar plays over it. Not mournful guitar like "Maggot Brain", but more like the mournful guitar in one of those scenes in Renegade where Lorenzo Lamas comes into contact with an old flame, and they reconnect somewhere at sunset, which is when he finds out she's now involved with the cartel.

Jimmy Graffiti vs. Dean Malenko

ER: This is the debut of Jimmy Graffiti, which is all kinds of weird 1996 wrestling. Graffiti is known better as Jimmy Del Ray, one half of the Heavenly Bodies, and it's shocking how much younger he looks without his Rod Beck fluffy mullet/handlebar mustache combo. A smooth face, sensible haircut, and his trademark pale complexion makes him look like the cruiserweight version of The Undertaker, if Undertaker was dressed like a 90s John Cena. I have no idea what the plan was, putting Jimmy Del Ray in baggy jorts and a hockey jersey with subway tagged wrestling boots, but he's out there and this weirdo must be face as Malenko was working heel opposite Rey during this time. And these two have a fun back and forth cruiser match, Graffiti getting a lot of nearfalls and taking some big bumps in exchange. Graffiti takes the Harley Race bump to the floor, getting his feet hooked on the bottom rope and dropping onto his head (and it's weird seeing Schiavone and Zbyszko doing commentary from a folding table right against the ring), and later Dean takes them both to the floor with a crossbody (potentially dangerous bump as it sends both to the floor faster than normal, Graffiti sprawling into the guardrail); Graffiti even takes a pretty mean backdrop suplex and eats some boots to the head from Dean. Malenko is overly generous with Graffiti, giving him several roll-ups nearfalls, Graffiti hits a big sitout powerbomb and a missile dropkick, gets to push out of the Cloverleaf a couple times, really he gets way more of the match than I would have guessed going in.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Sgt. Craig Pittman

ER: Fun little match that adds a nice twist into it's sub-3 minute runtime. It looks like it's going to be a Page squash, and we get a cool moment of DDP hitting his great piledriver slam (really looks like he's bouncing foreheads off mat), and when Pittman kicks out it lands DDP on top of ref Nick Patrick (who has worn a neck brace all night) and as he sells back pain from DDP landing on him you wouldn't believe how loudly the crowd cheers his pain. I didn't remember nWo heel ref Nick Patrick being so reviled. DDP does a real clever bit of business here as he is on the floor and starts soaking up Nick Patrick's cheers as his own, allowing Pittman to reach through the ropes and grab DDP's arm, yanking him into the ringpost. Pittman is really vicious going after an arm, and I especially like when he throws uppercuts and short arm shoulderblocks to someone, here he also gets to stretch DDP's arm all around the ropes and even gets a visual tap to the Code Red armbar. Alas, Nick Patrick saw nothing, and Pittman eats a Diamondcutter nicely.

Ron Studd vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: I like the concept of matching Jarrett up against a giant right before he is facing the Giant at Havoc, but they don't do much interesting with it. Studd lifts Jarrett up by the neck a few times, but then they have Jarrett actually hit a vertical suplex with no struggle at all, just gets on his tiptoes, tosses an arm over Studd, and lifts him right over. Then takes an eternity to lock on a figure 4.

Road Block vs. Lex Luger

ER: This episode is clearly booked around my sensibilities, as not only did we get the Jimmy Graffiti debut, but Road Block debuts on the same episode?! And I love how WCW used to handle the debuts of guys like this: Basically pretend you have no idea who they are. Road Block isn't going to beat Luger, but they're at least saying things like "who is this guy? He's huge!" There's a lot of Irish whipping in this match, both guys setting up nearly every attack by first whipping the other into the ropes or buckles, with Road Block standing up to lariats and throwing a few mean ones of his own. Big moment is Luger clotheslining Road Block to the floor, big bump for Block. Road Block is dressed like the world's largest swashbuckling pirate, with his two lane highway capris and a striped tank top that looks like something a lifeguard would wear, but the guy is huge, throws a nice lariat, and does an impossibly cool kneedrop right to Luger's face. The finish could have been really awkward, but Luger is so damn over and knows how to milk reaction that it totally works: Luger tries to get Road Block up for the torture rack, but can't. He tries twice and drops him. It doesn't appear that he is intentionally dropping him, just feels like he can't actually rack Road Block. Block just keeps standing back up after falling and getting back in position to be racked. After the second failed attempt Luger even looks to the hard cam and shrugs. But the fans never turn on him and nobody knew about the You Fucked Up chants, and since these are wrestling fans they just actually want to see him rack Road Block. So Luger tries it a third time, succeeds, the crowd flips out, Bischoff and Heenan flip out on commentary, and it turns out some actual human error made the moment a FAR bigger deal than if Luger had just got him up for the rack on the first attempt.

American Males vs. Harlem Heat

ER: Dear WCW, could you please show me the two teams from this era that I would LEAST like to see against each other? Great. Thank you. Also, WCW, could you give it more time than any match on this episode? Just let it go 10, see what these two teams have to offer? Cool. The match starts with Stevie Ray missing a stomach kick by 18", but does get better (although not enough to justify the runtime). Best moment came from Riggs hiptossing Booker T over the top to the floor and Booker bumping big for it (with Heenan rightly wondering why that wasn't a DQ). The rest was filled with a ton of AM dropkicks, a nice Stevie Ray lariat, Col. Parker taking his banana peel bump on the apron when Riggs hits him first, and one of those finishes that always seem to happen in matches with Buff Bagwell, where a pinfall gets broken up slightly too early or slightly too late, so the finish is really confusing and everyone stands around waiting for what to do. It feels like it happened too often in Bagwell matches to be a coincidence. Also, I gotta say I am loving Nick Patrick in his neck brace, holding his neck every single time he counts a pinfall.

The Fantastics vs. Faces of Fear

ER: 1996 Fantastics on my TV screen? What kind of magic episode is this!? But also, it's really weird that they went well over an hour into this episode without a tag match, and then ran back to back tag matches with two blowjob teams working the exact same match back to back. If you have the Fantastics making a weird one off 1996 TV appearance, maybe don't have your lame in house version of the Fantastics wrestle immediately before them. Also, as much as I like FoF, there's this expectation for Meng matches that rarely actually lives up to reality. Meng is regarded as one of the toughest dudes in pro wrestling history, so everybody always assumes that he has a laundry list of matches where he just takes mean liberties with opponents. But really, he doesn't. I have seen hardly any instances of Meng looking even slightly unprofessional - or even working slightly more stiff than normal - in any match. Look at any heel tag team squash match from 90s WWF and you will likely find a team that treats opponents worse than Meng does. That doesn't mean the matches aren't still fun though. This is mostly the FoF show, and honestly until the final 30 seconds of the match I wasn't sure that any of Bischoff/Heenan/Tenay even knew which Fantastic was which, or even knew their names. After hearing all of them repeatedly refer to each member of the team as "The Fantastics" the entire match (as in "The Fantastics really need to tag out here!"), it wasn't until Tenay actually mentioned Tommy Rogers during his hot tag that I figured at least Tenay knew. But then he *does* just call Bobby Fulton "Fulton", so it's possible he wasn't confident he could identify him as Jackie or Bobby. But just like with the American Males, we get mostly dropkicks from the Fantastics, with most of this worked as an extended FoF squash. We get one really great moment of Bobby taking a backdrop from Meng, but getting caught and powerbombed by Barbarian. Tommy takes a nice bump getting knocked off the apron by Meng, and even kicks Meng in the head a couple times to break up pinfalls (and again, someone knowing Meng's rep would then think that Meng was going to serve up a cruel receipt to Tommy, but that doesn't happen, because Meng only bites off noses outside of the ring), Fantastics throw a tandem dropkick off the middle and Tommy hits one off the top, but FoF amusingly win when Barbarian picks up Tommy for a front slam and Meng just kicks him in the head.

J.L. vs. nWo Sting

ER: I never understood why Jerry Lynn just went by "JL" in WCW. He was under a mask, he could have literally been any name, and it's not like the majority of fans knew who Jerry Lynn was in 1996 anyway. "Gotta keep these initials to stay true to my fans." This show was IN Minnesota. These are his people right here, and nobody knew he was a Minnesota boy. Had he been something 1996-cool like Laser Swarm or if the JL stood for something weird like Jett Lust, then he would have at least gotten a reaction for that. It doesn't get more non-starter than the name JL. nWo Sting gets a great reaction until people realize it's not actually Sting, and I love how he plays up all the mannerisms. The match is more angle than match, but I liked Sting's nice falling powerslam.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 6/23/96

J.L. vs. Brad Armstrong

ER: So like...nobody really knew who Jerry Lynn was...and he's under a mask...so why were they married to acknowledging what his shoot initials are? He's under a mask, fucking call him anything. Bobby Heenan, on JL: "I...I don't really know anything about this guy." Brad Armstrong's mullet is the embodiment of "business in the front, party in the back". The front looks so damn professional, a nice high and tight, and a one millimieter turn to either side makes him immediately look like a total degenerate. Like, straight on he's a nice guy your sister met at church, then he turns and he's that nice guy's speed dealing ex-friend from high school. And this is pretty great as Brad doesn't actually work heel, but he gives JL most of the offense, takes some nice rolling Tim Horner armdrags and eats a tough missile dropkick (man I can never spell "missile" right on the first go through. My fingers just move in all the wrong directions), Lynn really shotgunned him to the chest. But they do that spot I hate where JL hits a flush crossbody off the top, Armstrong splats on the mat fully 100% taking the crossbody, hits the mat hard...and then rolls it through for a 2 count. That takes me so far out of the match. The Russian legsweep does look nice, but they took a dumb route to get there.

Arn Anderson/Taskmaster vs. Leroy Howard/Bill Payne

ER: Ohhhhhhh shit Leroy Howard is Rastaman from BattlArts!! IS THIS THE ONLY TIME ARN ANDERSON HAS FOUGHT A BATTLARTS GUY!?!? He somehow only has ONE listed match opposite Valentine? None against Backlund...There's got to be a really obvious one that I'm forgetting or a completely bonkers one that nobody would know ("oh yeah I think he wrestled Urban Ken on a charity show"). This is history! I had also forgotten all about an Arn/Sullivan tag team. And this match was kind of weird. Howard is only in this match for the first 20 seconds, and the rest is basically Arn and Sullivan stomping Bill Payne. Sullivan gets all rowdy when he tags in, and goes for a fucking headscissors! Like a Ricky Morton/Marty Jannetty style headscissors where you pose for a bit with your legs around your opponent's head while your body is jutting diagonally away from his torso. There's a major problem, which is that Kevin Sullivan has zero hops, so when he comes running in, his legs make it somewhere around Payne's waist. And BLESS BILL PAYNE because he grabs onto Sullivan's leg and is holding Sullivan upside down, and still manages to take a bump as if he had been headscissored. Sullivan kicks him in the eye as a thank you. Later Arn would hold him in a Boston Crab and drag him to the ropes so Sullivan can kick him in the head a bunch. I liked Arn in this, which shouldn't be a shock. He dropped a nice knee and obviously hit a great spinebuster. I do wish we could have seen more of Leroy Howard though.

ER: There's a Mean Gene promo segment promoting the upcoming (June 30th) WCW house show at the MSG theater. This feels like a big deal, and BRUNO is on the card as a guest ref. I'm sure there's a 6 hour Between the Sheets pod that covers this house show in detail. WCW touring into New York City feels like a big deal (even if running at "The Theatre at the Garden" feels like a pretty good self-own, like laughing about doing a merely passable job at ironing your exes' clothes), and a quick check shows that this upcoming house show will only be the 2nd time WCW ran NYC in the 90s. AND they only ran NYC *FOUR TIMES EVER*! And the two shows in 1998 were free PR events, one of them a free show with a few matches in Bryant Park and the other an event in conjunction with MTV called MTV Ultimate Video Bash, which was a flat out absurd event. It was an outdoor event in the pouring rain, maybe a hundred fans in attendance, with the original idea that wrestlers would represent bands whose videos would play throughout the show (Barry Darsow represented Run DMC!) in a tournament. But it was pouring so hard that the only match that happened was Public Enemy, representing LL Cool J, which...I...you ARE ALREADY NAMED AFTER A LEGENDARY HIP HOP ACT. Anyway, PE fought High Voltage (representing Will Smith, which feels like a MAJOR missed opportunity to not be representing Public Enemy) in the rain, while we got the (probably?) never again commentary team of Shiavone, Zbyszko, and Matt Pinfield. The match is a couple minutes long, but High Voltage are great in it. This two minute match would have given them a standing on a DVDVR500. The ring is soaked and slippery as hell, and there are no mats around the ring, and they both go full speed on a spot where they get Irish whipped into each other, Rage bumps big to the floor, then takes an awesome tumbling bump into the barricades (remember, no mats) AND gets a Drive-By through a table. High Voltage owned this event.

Anyway, yeah, WCW only ran 4 times in NYC, in their entire history, and only two were "real" shows. This upcoming show on 6/30 was the realest, as the other was from 1993. This show was when they were much bigger as a company. The show looked good on paper, but it feels like a weenie move to only run the Theatre. Run MSG, even if you "only" get 4,000 people in there. Was there a deal in place where only WWF could run there? This whole show feels like a major moment in the promotion's history, and it's treated in this promo like just another house show. You'd think they would be advertising Bruno's name more. They bring it up and Mean Gene sounds like he thinks it's a big deal, but it only gets a quick mention. Before this I had zero idea that Bruno had ever done business with WCW in the mid 90s. I can't believe they didn't even have an onscreen graphic.

Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero

ER: I know it's easy to make these kind of statements after the fact, but my god can Benoit look like a dead-eyed soulless psychopath. Here he came out with Arn and Arn promo'd to the camera while Benoit just vacantly stared. Yeesh. I have a real hard time focusing during this one, but Eddie was a machine here. Benoit came off really sadistic - my perception or real, not sure - with some casually tossed off violent dead eyed offense; suplexing Eddie onto the top rope gut first a couple times, mean chops, hard knees to the stomach, all with this joyless killer face. Eddie bumps huge for all of it, but his comeback is a little bit too convenient. He just kind of snaps and then comes back with a snap suplex and hits a knees to the ribs frog splash. Kind of unsatisfying but it was hot as hell with the crowd. I don't like crapping on something the crowd is clearly hot for, and Eddie had great fire, just thought Benoit went from ice cold killer to overwhelmed a bit too quick. Arn Anderson had a great ringside cheat by pulling the top rope down to send Eddie flying to the floor. This was hot but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for it, but nobody could have any arguments with the move execution here.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Kensuke Sasaki

ER: A kid mugging for the camera by the entrance gets surprised when suddenly large thick Asian man with a mullet and leather jacket walks by an inch from his small head. DDP’s gear seemed so dated in 1996, I still think it is completely unfathomable that he became as big a star as he did. Two years after this he was huge, and here he’s coming out in lime green tights with a shiny pink vest, smoking a cigar and wiggling his fingers at the camera. Who was this look based on? What type of person was he mimicking for his character? I love how well it ended up working out for him. And this match rules. It has an unexpectedly hot start that it can’t really maintain, but DDP knew exactly what he was doing and how to work through with a Japanese guy who Florida tourist fans would automatically boo just for being Japanese. DDP made Sasaki the clear face despite Sasaki not being great at playing to fans, at all. DDP takes a nice amount of time to get Sasaki to agree to a handshake, then as their hands have barely touched DDP is already booting him in the stomach and throwing hard elbows, Sasaki hits a sharp back elbow right under the chin, DDP eats a fast lariat that sends him to the floor, and he writhes on the floor on his back, comically. It’s a great start to the match. DDP’s basics are nice, throws a good kick to the stomach, nice stomp to he gut, a couple nice short elbow drops high on the chest, and his long gangly limbs almost whip around when he takes offense. Sasaki was a short little bull, hits a nice big rotation powerslam, and takes the Diamondcutter really well. His sell was one of the best I’ve seen, landing normally, but slowly lifting his face off the mat like he was a cat running into a sliding glass door. He naturally rolled over for the pin, really expertly getting into position after the cutter. Very nice.

The Mauler vs. Sting

ER: The Mauler is Mike Enos, not called Mike Enos on the onscreen entrance graphic, but instead called The Mauler. His hair is breezy, chin length and flops when he walks. He has a small mustache, and looks to be the inspiration for Buck, who likes to Fuck. And this match is an absolutely perfect 3 minutes of wrestling. Flawless. It crams everything you want to see into 3 succinct minutes. These two (three, with Col. Robert Parker out with Mauler) could have worked much longer than that, but a perfect 3 is sublime. Sting gets to shine early and Enos bumps big all around for him, ending with him being tossed hip tossed and stumbling and bouncing through the ropes to the hard stage, then having Parker hold him back for running recklessly back into the ring. He eventually does, and he ends up taking an even bigger, more spectacular bump over the top to the floor, onto that hard freaking stage, and the fans are flipping out for Sting. Sting even grabs Parker’s cowboy hat and sees which side of the crowd is loudest so he could throw it to them. Every time Sting pretended to throw the hat, ref Randy Anderson would jump in front of him like he was Secret Service jumping to stop a bullet from hitting the president. Sting then threatens to stomp the hat and Parker is flipping out, but Mauler has snuck quietly around the ring and sneaks in and lariats Sting in the back of the head, a hard backbreaker, then hits a HUGE powerslam that gave him a nice strut as he walked by Kensuke Sasaki later that taping. THAT’S how we do powerslams in Florida, motherfucker. We end quick but it's a quality ending, as Parker gets up on the apron to cheat by Mauler gets reversed into him, then Sting kicks Mauler’s leg out and locks on the Scorpion Deathlock. This was aces, 3 minutes of the best stuff.

Faces of Fear vs. Sgt. Craig Pittman/Jim Duggan

ER: Weird, disappointing match. It’s almost entirely Duggan and Pittman, and Duggan is working pretty light, Meng acts afraid of Pittman, Barbarian fights with Teddy Long over Duggan’s 2x4 for way too long, just an unsatisfying match. There is early intrigue in the Meng/Pittman sections, Pittman goes for a couple cool amateur takedowns, and the best part of the match was the two of them getting tangled in the ropes, but neither wanting to break. So Meng had gone to the ropes to break a hold but then had a standing grapevine on Pittman’s leg and neither man was budging. It could have gone somewhere interesting, but it didn’t. Faces of Fear kind of looked like doofs here which just isn’t totally what I wanted to see. I bet there’s a cool match between these two teams. Duggan isn’t always a lame, and the potential for some amateur tough guy shenanigans seems high.

COMPLETE & ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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PWF 5/22/98

ER: PWF was a Carolinas based 90s indy operated by Italian Stallion (probably). PWF stood for Pro Wrestling Federation which is almost impossibly adorable. This was a handheld of a show they ran in West Virginia, with Eddie and Hector Guerrero inexplicably working a tag match, while Eddie was still very much employed by WCW and to my knowledge not suspended. 1994-2000 indy wrestling is kind of a fascinating thing, as once the change to DVD happened a lot of these cards never got transferred, so there's an absence of this era online. It was also a time when main federations were far more innovative than indys, and indy feds were still trying to be more like territory feds from years before instead of figuring out what the next big thing was going to be. So you have crowds with mullets watching wrestlers with mullets, wrestlers who all kind of wrestle like bad body WWF and Crockett jobbers, while actual bad body WWF and Crockett jobbers were working the main events.

1. Russian Assassin vs. The Breeze

ER: One immediate thing of note is entrance music hadn't gone through that terrible period of change, with the change happening just a year after later. Here we have the crowd getting excited listening to Assassin (who has nothing whatsoever Russian about him) coming out to late period Alice Cooper and Breeze (looking like Opie from Sons of Anarchy, but wearing a tie dye shirt) coming out to Skynyrd's cover of JJ Cale's "Call Me the Breeze". A year later nu metal would hit and half the workers of every southern indy would enter the ring to "Down With the Sickness" for the next 16 years. It's like that song immediately replaced "When the Levee Breaks" for all of the lamest reasons possible. And let's be honest, this guy is only called The Breeze because he really likes that Skynyrd song. I'm sure he's been a part of a tag team called The Street Survivors (which, isn't a terrible tag team name). This match is 3 minutes long and starts with an alarmingly bad punch exchange, and a missed clothesline where Assassin looks like he's miming throwing a football, poorly. It was the kind  of exchange where neither punch lands and The Breeze holds up his arm to block Assassin's punches long before the punches are thrown. And then, somehow, Breeze has really good corner 10 count punches, a shockingly good delayed powerslam, and drops two legdrops, with at least 50% of those legdrops looking good! Then he hits a kind of cool diamond cutter with him coming off opposite ropes like he was setting up The Pounce. 

2. The Bodyguard vs. Robert Gibson

ER: There's something really wonderful about the simplicity of indy names 20 years ago. I mean, The Bodyguard? Plenty of men have worked a bodyguard gimmick, but nobody has just said "you know what? My name ain't important. Just my duty." He comes out to Bad to the Bone, because someone had to. Ted Dibiase is his manager. Or client? We don't know because we're too busy being disappointed he could not choose one of the multiple smash hits from the eponymous soundtrack as his entrance theme. Gibson is coming off his ill-fated WWF run, still rocking his NWA duster. Oddly I recently (within the month) sought out Gibson vs. D-Lo Brown from Shotgun Saturday Night, as one night I got curious and wondered if Ricky/Robert had any singles matches during their few month late 90s WWF run. Turns out Gibson worked D-Lo Brown, Ricky worked Marc Mero. Just one singles match apiece. Couldn't find Ricky/Mero, but the Gibson/Brown match was plenty fun. Anyway. I'm not sure who the Bodyguard is but he has height and a workably decent build, the kind of guy who you'd think get a shot at some point. But Gibson was really great in this. He found a bunch of cool ways to work around Bodyguard's limitations. Bodyguard did not have a great shoulderblock, but Gibson sure made it look good. First one he takes a standard back bump, next one he does a great sell I've never seen where he runs into The stationary Bodyguard and just drops straight down to his knees, just hitting that brick wall and crumpling. Another shoulderblock sees him take a great bump through the ropes to the apron and floor. We get a couple bearhug spots (which I love) with Gibson escaping them first by boxing the ears and second by biting Bodyguard's forehead. Seriously Gibson was awesome here. Bodyguard has one surprisingly decent punch, some silly overhand tomahawk chops (I don't think I'd personally employ a Bodyguard who used overhand chops in a fight situation, but I am just one man). Dibiase grabs Gibson's leg and holds onto it for the finish, so that's his payday. And now I want more late 90s indy Gibson.

3. Meng vs. The Overlord

ER: What a weird little match. Meng was still in WCW at this point, but apparently has bills to pay. The Overlord looks nothing like what you'd expect any kind of Overlord to look like. For starters, he's wearing a singlet. He has that late 90s gassed Power Plant look, but is also kind of lean around the waist. Think James Earl Wright. And the Overlord is not as good as your average gassed Power Plant guy. Gassed Power Plant guys always had at least one thing they did shockingly well, like a nice press slam or nice elbow drop. The Overlord had nothing that looked good. Early on he botches an arm drag and tosses Meng into the ropes, the type of thing that Finlay would have wrecked him for in front of a Universal Studios audience. But Meng plays along and even sells for this guy. Meng is really fun in his parts, throwing an axe kick to the downed Overlord's balls, and hitting a brutal overhand chop that sounded like it had Lucha Underground sound sweetening. And then, suddenly, 6 minutes in, The Overlord reveals his gift: He can bump really great to the floor!! I mean, really, really great. So I had him pegged as gassed Power Plant grad, but really he was a gassed UPW grad this whole time! Meng casually tosses him through the ropes to the floor, and Overlord decides to just wildly fly through the ropes and onto concrete. Meng follows and chucks Overlord into the announce table and he flies violently into that! Overlord tries to get back in the ring and Meng punches him on the apron.....and Overlord does an awesome Harley Race "feet catching the bottom rope" bump landing back first on the concrete. Who the hell is this Overlord!? Once he gets back in he continues to suck, but damn, we'll always have that minute of awesome bumping.

4. Jimmy Snuka vs. American GI

ER: American GI doesn't seem like your typical indy heel gimmick. The guy has an Army shirt, a crew cut, doesn't bark orders at the crowd like a drill sergeant, is just a standard issue army guy wrestler. One who is clearly booked as a heel because the crowd isn't going to boo Snuka. Is West Virginia against the troops? Is this a smart local gimmick playing off of Virginia's world renowned Antimilitarism? This feels like a pretty standard 90s Jimmy Snuka indy match. It goes about 4 minutes, GI takes most of it. GI didn't look that good. I'm not sure who GI's manager was, but HE was good. He violently choked Snuka in the ropes, and later took a vicious bump off the apron from a big clothesline from GI. So Snuka took some middling offense, and then decided to go home: Hit a backbreaker, then went up to plaster him with the Superfly Splash, totally unprotected because his knees were shot at this point, brudda.

5. Eddie & Hector Guerrero vs. Black Angel & Super Ninja

ER: Holy cow. You guys. Eddie. Eddie Guerrero wrestled so damn well on a strange Virginia indy show. Also, Hector! Man what a killer match with essentially just 2.5 out of 4 wrestlers. I have no clue who Super Ninja or Black Angel are/were, but Black Angel gets a real nice reaction coming out. He gets kind of mobbed by fans, truthfully. Why? I do not know. He takes a snapmare nicely? Super Ninja is a guy who is at least workable. He has better timing than Angel, has better ring awareness (seems like every move Angel did would either wind up with he or his opponent lying in the ropes), and did a couple decent spin kicks. But you guys. Eddie. Holy cow. He was so damned good here. Fans are on him right away with the Eddy Sucks chants that were all the rage at the time, and he feeds them great. This match was a wonderful example of his stooging ability, showing genuine frustration (watch the intensity as he slams his hands on the apron after getting armdragged out of the ring), his comedy (watch him get excited and slap Hector after getting too fired up, then immediately beg off), and just his incredible wrestling ability. The way he took offense, the way he would slyly get into position for stuff, the way he would work the crowd from the apron, the big bumps he took to the concrete, the snap he would deliver his own offense with, the way he would feed the offense of people with pretty bad offense. Eddie was just really special. I'm not sure what circumstances lead to him working this show, but I'm glad those circumstances happened. And in all this Eddie talk it would be easy to forget about Hector, but Hector busted ass in this too! Hector was doing all sorts of cool suplexes, trying to set up complex roll ups that Black Angel would botch, and playing a great toned down second to Eddie. Eddie is a marvel down the stretch, taking increasingly impressive bumps to the floor while Ninja/Angel try to finish Hector, with Eddie's best bump coming as he takes a superkick on the apron and bumps backwards from the apron to the guardrail. Seeing kids leap in shock as Eddie flies into the rail in front of them was glorious. No clue why the Guerreros worked this show, no clue why they won the tag titles which I would guess were never ever defended by them, but I'm so glad that some guy sitting in a balcony decided to record this.

6. George South vs. Italian Stallion

ER: Man, I love George South. I watched a current George South match within the last 6 months and I still love super old even more Jesus-y George South. I love that he's a God fearing man, but also a bad guy. Like Jesus loves him, and he loves Jesus, but he's a bad guy. George South was one of those guys you could slot into a suddenly empty spot on the 500. "We have Black Buffalo on there twice? I guess put George South at 205." Italian Stallion gets a stunningly loud reaction coming out to the ring. Everybody wants to slap him five. He and South have two of the most incredible faded glory mullets you have ever seen. And I really liked this. It doesn't take much for me to like a South match, but Stallion was surprisingly game too, and I always love a couple of old dudes fighting. South is so good at the little things, he throws a couple of different great punches (really like his short uppercut), bumps big on armdrags and clotheslines, and can brawl. Stallion threw a shockingly good overhand right, cut really low on a missed lariat, had a big press slam and nice powerslam. And this was good! We get some amusing wandering brawling on the outside, as South would punch Stallion, Stallion would wander halfway around the ring, Stallion would punch South and South would wander back around a couple lengths of ring. But man I dig this kind of stuff. If I could be guaranteed a match as decent as South/Stallion on every indy card I went to, I'd be a happy live wrestling fan.

What a neat little time capsule of late 90s indy wrestling. I could watch stuff like this all day.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW WorldWide 11/3/96

We continue our little mini journey through '96 WCW. This episode turned out to be one of the all time best episodes of WCW syndicated TV. Catch it!


1. Scott Norton vs. Mike Marcello

Total glorious massacre. Marcello was like the nerdy Masao Inoue of waiting in the ring jobbers. He had a cotton ball in his ear and Schiavone talked about how he had an ear infection. Good grief. Marcello starts off really fun by rolling under a Norton clothesline, hitting a dropkick, rolling out of the way of a Norton elbowdrop (and Norton really plants his elbow on the miss), then leaping onto Norton's back like Inigo Montoya, but from there it's all Norton massacring him. Norton breaks out a couple headbutt variations that I've never seen him use (one with him holding Marcello's head and the other more of a thrust headbutt). Marcello was really good selling the headbutts, checking his head for blood. Okay, he clearly just thought he got busted open hardway, but it added to the match. He bumps around real nice for Norton, Norton destroys him with the shoulderbreaker. Yeah, this is what you'd want out of Norton vs. Mike Marcello. Mike Marcello, the poor man with the ear infection.

2. Dave Taylor vs. Bobby Eaton

We cut to the crowd booing Taylor, particularly a mother and her 10 yr old daughter, both of whom are seen wearing midriff halter tops. And oh shit this match is great (except for the stupid pinfall finish). This gets almost 6 minutes which is surprising, but Taylor jumps Eaton before the bell and just blasts him with a couple uppercuts, but the whole match is Eaton fighting back with his gorgeous and violent punches. Taylor does a bunch of fun bumps for all the punches, a few slow falling tree bumps, a comic spill through the ropes to the floor, and Eaton mixes up the blows between his beautiful shot to the jaw and blows to the body. A great spot sees Taylor go for a boston crab only for Eaton to punch him in the stomach, dropping Taylor at the waist, who then takes a punch to the face. Do you like perfect punches? Do you like nasty uppercuts? You'll like all of this. Finish is goofy now but may have seemed novel 20 years ago, as Taylor traps Eaton in the same boston crab position and does a flip over cradle, but Eaton gets a shoulder up and Taylor is the one who gets counted down. Which obviously makes no sense since nobody would have possibly thought Eaton was pinning Taylor in his position, but they tried to get cute on us. Taylor kicks the shit out of Eaton afterwards, as he should. Both guys looked killer here. Taylor had some cool leg picks and both had no problem dishing out stiff shots. One of the best Taylor syndicated matches, as usually his matches (win or lose) only get 2-3 minutes.

We get a perfect Arn Anderson promo on Luger, talking about how Luger has unquestionably the best body in the biz, and Anderson says "And you know, I think I look pretty good myself, but nobody would say I have a perfect body. But beneath your exterior, your body is made of paper mache, and I'm gonna expose that." There have been a lot of great promo guys in wrestling history, but I think Arn Anderson is far and away the greatest pre-taped backstage promo guy in wrestling history. There were always cool little layers to his backstage promos, things he would set up at the beginning and wrap up throughout the whole promo, neat little moments of personality, just perfectly delivered. Go ahead, name me one guy who is better at these type of promos. NAME ONE!

3. Faces of Fear vs. Casey Thompson & Cliff Sheets

What an odd little jobber squash. Casey Thompson and Cliff Sheets sound PRECISELY like the names of two men who deserve to have the shit kicked out of them by Faces of Fear. Except Thompson and Sheets didn't quite get the message. Meng jumps them at the bell with some absolutely nasty shots that neither of them expected, but they kept doing little things to be really annoying to Meng and Barbarian. Sheets and Thompson were wearing these ill-fitting matching singlets, but keep seeming to go against the script. They take the double teams, they take some nasty vertical suplexes (with a follow up stiff Meng splash off the top), but then do these little irritating things that just...feel like things they're not supposed to do. Like when Meng goes for an elbowdrop and Sheets moves, Meng seems like he didn't expect Sheets to move. THAT'S not supposed to be what happens!! Sheets is supposed to be the guy taking an unexpected elbow to the face. Meng isn't supposed to be the guy unexpectedly whiffing on a elbow! Later we get some hardway powerbombs where is seems like neither of our heroes Thompson and Sheets would quite rotate and land properly. Barbarian hits a nasty Kick of Fear and....Thompson saves his partner from the pinfall? Jobbers don't break up pins against the Faces of Fear! FoF actually seem genuinely confused, looking at each other like "who the fuck are these guys!?" Sheets and Thompson take headbutts, shots to the throat, Meng fishhooks one of them while biting their face, Hugh Morrus gets involved with actual capable punches, and these men finally get pinned. Who were these men, who tried to go off script with Meng? I fear for them and their loose cannon brains, but am also glad they existed 20 years ago. With their clear deathwish they probably drove home that night headlong into traffic.

4. Juventud Guerrera vs. Konnan

Holy shit you guys. This was great. Wanna see Konnan trying to work like Negro Navarro? Here ya go. Konnan locks on some weird submissions, works a cravate, works some weird Regal leg reversals, the world is confused. Juvy was crazy in '96, and Konnan clearly respected him as this might be the only '96 Konnan match I've seen that wasn't just a sloppily assembled Konnan moves exhibition. Konnan is a total dickhead standing and jumping on Juvy's face, but he also gives Juvy a bunch of stuff, taking all of his spin kicks and dropkicks. Juvy takes a wild flapjack bump to the hard rotating WorldWide stage, then flips out of a Konnan powerbomb on the floor, and since Juvy is a crazy person he ends up taking an electric chair bump on the freaking ring apron. You picture that being done in 1996. That feels like something that would happen in a modern indy dream match. Back in and Juvy botches a springboard whoknowswhat, redoes it into a backflip only to get brained by a brutal Konnan lariat for the win. I never EVER would have thought a Konnan match could have made a comp tape, but ladies, here it is. This match was bananas. Maybe the only good Konnan WCW match I've seen.

5. Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddie Guerrero

God I miss Eddie. He looked so damn good here. DDP also looked good and is a guy who ages really well on rewatch, just because you can tell he's always working so damn hard in his matches. Eddie starts the match at a super fast pace, and DDP is a loon so he aims to match Eddie's pace for the entire  8 minutes. That's awesome, and the result is awesome. You get him taking fast Eddie armdrags, and early DDP gets hung up in the ropes like when TJ Perkins does his Spiderman feint, grasping the ropes horizontally to lure his opponent. DDP treats it like a "Andre trapped in the ropes" spots and it works smashingly. God I love DDP. Eddie is not to be outdone in this so the match sees him taking three different and unique flapjack bumps (one off a super high flapjack, another with DDP doing a belly to back suplex but Eddie lands on his stomach, and another flapjack bump from the ring to the floor!), DDP does a really cool gutbuster, holding Eddie up on his shoulder like Scott Norton's shoulderbreaker, but then dropping him down stomach first over his knee. We get a hold the ropes abdominal stretch spot, but DDP spices it up by taking palm strike shots at Eddie's ribs. Eddie does a cool little armdrag to get out of it.

And then...

We hit one of the absolute worst WCW syndicated finishes I've seen. Maybe THEE worst. I had no memories of there being so many terrible finishes to these syndicated matches. I foolishly remember the opposite, with there being a nice hierarchy established and there being actual satisfying finishes. Clearly I was a fool. Here's the finish to Eddie/DDP: Eddie takes a bump to the floor, lands near Chavo. Eddie then gets DQ'd for Chavo interference. Chavo never touched anybody, literally was just standing at ringside. Eddie fell near him. Eddie was the one who took the bump, and then got DQ'd immediately after the bump. DDP was nowhere near either man at this point. It would have made just as much sense to say the overweight woman sitting on the Rascal wearing a No Fear shirt interfered, as she was just as close to DDP. We've officially found the worst ending of any match in history. If whatever happened here was worthy of a DQ then I'm not actually sure how pro wrestling exists. The DQ bell would sound whenever two guys looked somewhat cross at each other.

Horrible, awful finish to an otherwise completely awesome episode.

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2015 Indy Wrestling That Caught Our Eye(s)

Iceberg & The Highwaymen v. Tama Tonga/Luke Gallows/Meng SFCW 4/11

PAS: This was a falls count anywhere match in Gallows GA indy fed with the Bullet Club as hometown heroes. This was a handheld so the main problem was that he could only focus on one match up at a time, so you end up thinking "This Gallows v. Jake Davis punch off is great, but I want to see Meng and Iceberg hit each other with chairs."  Very simple southern brawl, where guys wander around and throw each other into walls and banks of chairs. Meng makes a totally awesome "Walking Tall" Bill Watts, as you totally believe he is still by far the toughest guy out there. Nothing mind blowing, but the kind of out there fun match which this list is made to discover

ER: I know what Phil's saying, you see something fun happening but somewhere off camera you hear a nasty CRASH and the sound of scattering chairs. It felt like Homer getting pulled inside during the big Mafia/Yakuza showdown and just listening to what he's missing. I like weird indies, and this had an odd feel to it. It's in a large gymnasium that looks more like a bathhouse or mausoleum, and if you look the entire front rows are made up of children under the age of 7. All the adults are in the bleachers, and it's all tiny children lining the ring. Tiny children, lining the ring, for a falls count anywhere match featuring Meng. This was short and sweet, Meng looked great for a guy near 60. Dished one of the prettiest piledrivers I've seen this side of Lawler, and could still hit a mean Kick of Fear. Gallows was a fun guy to follow though it's a shame we didn't see more Tonga. Iceberg is still a guy I dig (who I'm surprised is still going) and I love little moments like him going up into the crowd and seeing people scatter. God bless tapers man, so happy little tiny moments like this pop up amongst the YouTube morass.

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MLJ: Enter: King Haku 2: King Haku, La Fiera, Pegasus Kid vs Dr. Wagner Jr., Negro Casas, Sangre Chicana

Taped 1993-09-24 @ Arena México
King Haku, La Fiera, Pegasus Kid vs Dr. Wagner Jr., Negro Casas, Sangre Chicana

I realize I may have gone a little overboard with the gifs last time, so there will be none here. Full disclosure would tell you that there were just less things TO gif here. This is it for what we have online for Haku in Mexico which is a shame because he was pretty great in these two matches. I would have loved to see him in some more brawl-centric stuff. I see 31 matches with him in the Match Finder between 92 and 94, and a lot of them were Tv matches, as best as I can tell. Some of the match ups, singles matches, are pretty goofy. He beat Porky in the quarterfinals of a Heavyweight title tournament and lost to Rayo de Jalisco, Jr. I can't even imagine that second match. He lost to Rayo in a Grand Prix tournament final too. There's a trios where he's teamed up with Dos Caras and Villano III vs Canek, Pirata Morgan and Satanico. You have to admit that sounds cool. Oh wait, Atlantis, Haku, and Lizmark vs Emilio Charles, Jr., Satanico and Pirata Morgan sounds even cooler. Ah well, we've got what we've got.

And unfortunately, this one is much less of a Haku focus. Fortunately, however, it's much more of a Fiera vs Negro Casas focus. This was setting up a hair match between the two a week or so later. Yes, Benoit's in this too, and I don't often watch a lot of his stuff these days (yeah, I'm one of those), but this feels so far removed from who he was ten years later, that I don't quite see the harm. Sangre Chicana's here too but he's sort of a non factor.

I enjoyed the previous a lot more for a number of reasons. For one, it had more time, and used it well, with a lot of showcase exchanges and everyone getting to wrestle everyone else. This started out with some heat, though, and that's always welcome. The rudos charged right in with Casas beelining towards Fiera and the numbers game immediately being played. This lasted for a minute or so until Haku intervened, which lead shortly thereafter to the first of what felt like seventeen Fiera spin kicks in the match. It's a really nice move but boy did he go to that well a lot. This kicked off the rope-running and back and forth exchanges, the highlights of which (almost gif worthy) were a double strength top wristlock spot that Haku reversed on Chicana and Wagner and Haku hitting four one armed backbreakers in a row. I have in my notes Benoit doing a "reverse plancha headscissors" and I'm going to guess those were two moves. Also, Haku superkicking people all over the ring. I liked the finish of the primera a lot. Oh what the heck. Let's go with one gif here:

Segunda wasn't much, really. It had a lot of Fiera beating up Casa and a fun bit of back and forth finishes where everyone got to do something. Benoit hit a superplex but ended up tripled teamed and killed by a Casas senton. He ended up eliminated but it was all for naught as things end up Fiera vs Casas again and Casas loses to yet another German (after yet another spin kick).

The finish made sense considering that Casas was going over in the hair match. A fun little functional match but ultimately sort of hollow. Casas was around 32 here and already had so much of that character mastery down, but he could supplement it with bumping and selling and spots he just can't do now. I like some of the shortcuts he's come up with over the years but you can't watch this stuff and not notice how engaging and dynamic he can be. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

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MLJ: Enter: King Haku 1: King Haku, Pierroth Jr., Vampiro vs Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., Negro Casas

1993-08-22 @ Arena Coliseo
King Haku, Pierroth Jr., Vampiro vs Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., Negro Casas

Back to 2010 next week, but I need to break things up now and again or I go a little nuts. I've got a few things I'm going for here. First, I need to watch scattered amounts of Negro Casas in the early 90s because of something I'm going to do with OJ later on. I'm behind on that. Second, I really want to see some Haku in Mexico. Yes, I've more than learned to love lucha for the sake of lucha but I like seeing some wrestlers I'm familiar with in this setting as well. I'd say that seeing some prime Vampiro would be important too, just for historical value, but it's really not. Seeing Wagner, Jr. under 30 was kind of interesting though.

So this was a pretty weird match. It was two falls, and two fall matches can do weird things structurally. This one had a long showcase primera, where everyone pretty much got to wrestle everyone else, where the action kept flowing, and where the tecnicos got to look great. Then, between the falls, there was a beatdown on Vampiro on the outside, a pretty vicious one at that. You'd think the segunda would be a numbers-game beatdown on the remaining tecnicos, but it never really picked up that way. It was, instead, about them beating the odds (and the rudos) in a pretty convincing fashion until Casas made a desperation foul on Haku to end things.

I'm not 100% sure how to write this up, because I have about 10 gifs I want to post but I'm not sure I really want to go into too much depth on the action. I think I'm going to talk about it a bit more and then just post away. In general, the storytelling broke down both at the beginning and the end. In the beginning, it's because they gave away some match ups too early. For instance, Wagner was dodging Pierroth and that could have made for an interesting start to the match but after a bit of stalling they went right to it. Wagner was already good at letting things breathe, even if he, in the rudo role, didn't really get to show much of his charisma. Pierroth was pretty fiery though. I liked Haku's matwork stuff a lot. You forget that he could do stuff like this. It wasn't high end or anything, but it was simple and straightforward and effective, the sort of stuff you could see him doing in Montreal in the mid-80s against Martel or Bockwinkel. Neither Charles nor Vampiro showed me much. The crowd seemed split for Vampiro, with the girls cheering for him and others booing. He had some energetic rope running exchanges but nothing memorable. Charles was fine but just didn't get to do enough. He was definitely the third guy on his side. In some ways, I like (and miss) primeras like this. Right now, in CMLL, they'll run long falls, usually terceras, but they are more structured, with quick cut offs and switches, and a lot of tecnico vs the world sequences, and I like structure, but how wide open this was can be really enjoyable sometimes. Yes, they didn't keep a clean throughline of story but they also didn't lose things completely.

The best interaction of the match was Casas vs Haku, because Casas wasn't afraid to bounce off of him and eat all of his stuff and cower in utter fear. You'll see it in the gifs, but he just got completely killed, flying across the ring after a chop, eating an insane power bomb to end the primera and an even more insane choke slam later on, and my god, the foot choke! It's probably the best I've ever seen and Casas was so good in both taking and trying to fight back to prevent it. Haku had press slams and this crazy loose powerbomb where he almost pressed him. At one point (though I didn't capture it), he even caught Casas off the top with a press. He just looked like an absolute beast here.

The destruction of Vampire was well done too. I'm sure that went somewhere later. It was mostly Charles but Wagner got in on the act too. They took out the arm and then posted him heinously, and whenever he started to get up, while the action was going on in the ring, they'd just keep on him. It's just a shame that it never really led to a rudo advantage of any length. By the end of the match, Haku was just hitting bombs and the numbers game was there mainly to just break up the pins. It was really meandering by that point. Sure, the rudos didn't completely lose their heat between the destruction of Vampiro and the DQ finish (to avoid a German which I swear would have been the nastiest German ever), but this could have been far less one sided, especially after the power play began and still gotten the point across.

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Finlay Had Three Million Sides of Old Blind Horses Hides

Fit Finlay v. Meng WCW 1/10/98- EPIC

PAS: Goddamn does Fit Finlay syndie stuff hold up. This was basically a US WAR match, the equivalent of Takeshi Ishikawa v. Ashura Hara, just two lumpy badass dudes just killing each other with chops, kicks, punches and potato clotheslines. Finish was awesome with Finlay catching Meng in a Fujiwara armbar, Jimmy Hart jumps up to distract him. Finlay gets caught in the tongan death grip, and he just viciously headbutts Meng in the nose to break it, but he fails. All you want from a seven minute match between these two guys.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FINLAY

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Worldwide 9/22/96

1. Jerry Lynn vs. Juventud Guerrera

This was really fun, got about 7 minutes and both guys were just sorta throwing stuff against the wall. Lynn is wearing his absurd purple and gold puffy sleeve sequin jacket that says "Dynamic Lynn" on the back. Both guys spend the whole matches plumbing the depths of their offense, which is one of the most fun things about this era of Juvy. He does a crazy springboard somersault dropkick that looks like it should've caved Lynn's chest in. Lynn does some cool armdrags that Juvy bumps fast, as Juvy will do. This was the kind of stuff I ate up when I originally watched it. Fast armdrags, big ranas, missile dropkicks, springboard stuff, all of it. A lot of those matches have been kinda disappointing on rewatch, but occasionally you get one like this that fills the time admirably and delivers.

2. DDP vs. Disco Inferno

A guy who looks a lot like Dwight Gooden is in the crowd here with his kids, and Schivaone even says that Dwight Gooden is here. Which would be weird since He would've been on the Yankees at this point, who certainly would have been in middle of a playoff push in the middle of 1996. I'm not sure when this was taped but unless it was taped over the All Star break, that's the only time I could see Gooden being in the front row here. He could have been at tons of 1995 tapings. Dude had nothing going on that year. This match was short but fun, with DDP being enjoyable as a muggy, cigarette smoking heel. At one point he drops a low elbow on Disco and gets up slapping his belly, saying "you know where that was". Disco was a pretty easy guy to appreciate looking back. He seemed like he enjoyed his gimmick and here he had nice stomach kicks, solid jabs, a nice eye poke and bumped all over for DDP's offense.

3. Super Calo vs. Brad Armstrong

Short match, with Armstrong going over! Wasn't actually expecting that as the luchadors were getting a good push at his point and Armstrong was Brad Armstrong. Calo hits a sweet back elbow after running up the turnbuckles, and then hits his awesome slingshot senton to the floor on the Worldwide stage! Crazy. Armstrong takes luchador offense really nicely, and he folds Calo in half with a clothesline and then rolls him right through for the Russian Leg Sweep. Wish we could have gotten more than the 2 minute they delivered, but both guys looked killer in the wimpy time given.

4. Meng, Barbarian, Ray Traylor & Hugh Morrus vs. Scott & Steve Armstrong, Pepe Prado & Tony Mella (?)

Boy I couldn't tell you much about the two non-Armstrong boys. Heenan clearly doesn't know their names and keeps saying things like "Hey Tony, you know this guy who Meng is beating, right? I'm just checking to make sure YOU know." I assume they're both just Florida area workers. Mella is a big dumpy guy, and Prado looks like a more Cuban Keith Hernandez. Shoot "Cuban Keith Hernandez" would have been a cooler gimmick. I normally love when Saturday Night or Worldwide throws on a random WAR multiman, because they almost always get time and then you get to see weird 10 minute matches with an entire team made up of jobbers. But this barely gets 3 which is a waste. Traylor looked good here and laced into Steve Armstrong, who then tagged out to Prado, and the rest of the match was basically the Dungeon of Doom taking apart Prado. Barbarian launches him with a belly to belly off the top, Morrus splats him with the No Laughing Matter. Mella comes in for the save and gets punted out the ropes to the floor. Scott Armstrong wisely stayed on the apron through all of this. Not a horrible payday for Scott Armstrong.

5. Rock & Roll Express vs. Arn Anderson & Chris Benoit

Needless to say I was pretty excited to see these teams hit the ring with 10+ minutes left to go on the broadcast. And the match is totally great. Both teams get to go on nice long runs, neither works face or heel, which is really best option here as they work more of a mutual respect thing but with neither team going over the top with any of the "I respect you!" stuff. Instead we get a hot match with some nice turns, and then a long heat segment on Morton  (you're shocked, I know). All of Ricky's comebacks are really good, and all the Rock & Rolls showing off offense was really fun. It's always a kick seeing Gibson break out the delay headscissors. Morton does a real slick armdrag reversal of a Benoit powerbomb that I loved. Another great moment was Gibson going in for a deep armdrag, whiffing the hook, and just getting kicked by Benoit. Everybody throws snug punches and elbows and it makes the overall work more desirable. Ricky throws some nice corner punches, Benoit elbows Ricky in the mouth. There was some real great arm work on Arn, starting with him missing an elbow to the post. Ricky and Robert tearing the arm apart was real cool, matadoring Arn into a missed shoulder-first corner charge, and Robert doing a neat little slingshot knee drop to the arm after tagging in. I mean, Arn stops selling the arm at one point, but it doesn't really matter in a match like this. Finish is cool with the RnRs getting a visual pinball on Arn after hitting the double dropkick, but Benoit drops a cool top rope elbow on Ricky and flips Arn on top. Not a match I ever realized happened, let alone on a C-show main event, and didn't know the Rock n Rolls were even signed this late into '96, but it was as good as it sounds on paper.

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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 Worldwide 11/9/97

1. Mark Starr vs. Goldberg

Wow, the fans are booing Goldberg as he comes out. Old ladies are giving him the thumbs down. That means that they were giving Mark Starr the thumbs up right before this. How bizarre is that taken out of context? Look into the future just a couple months and see where Goldberg is. But here he is on Worldwide getting booed by old ladies. The match isn't much but it's really fun seeing a huge era in its infancy, maybe the last time that WCW got something right. You can tell that they knew what they were doing here. They couldn't have known just how big he was going to be, but it's really satisfying knowing that they at least had a plan and were seeing it through. Brain and Tony were talking big things for Goldberg the whole match, saying how he was gonna win WW3 and fight for the title. He was already using the "Who's Next?" catchphrase after the match. They were already putting over the spear and jackhammer finish. Goldberg has a nice powerslam here, and shows some major power by deadlifting Starr a couple times...and also awkwardly stands around for large amounts of time, just waiting for...stuff to happen. But again, it's really fun to see such a major part of wrestling history in its infancy.

2. Mike Rapada vs. Scott Hall

Damn, it's kind of crazy that guys like Hall were still appearing on Worldwide at this point (and in the 2nd match of the show!). I'd bet serious money that nobody anywhere near as big as Hall appeared on Worldwide from '98 to the end. And by the way this squash was really fun. Rapada got absolutely zero offense, but bumped HUGE for Hall, and Hall and Syxx stiffed the bejesus out of him. Hall threw some of the nastiest punches of his career, threw a corner clothesline so stiff that Tony and Bobby couldn't stop talking about it, Syxx cheated constantly and played it up to the crowd great (punching Rapada and then blowing on his fist, elbowing him on the apron and then hamming it up by shaking out his elbow). This is what a jobber squash should be.

3. Scott & Steve Armstrong vs. Harlem Heat

It's been kind of eye opening how bad Harlem Heat were in retrospect. It's no revelation that Stevie Ray looks bad in the ring, but I had really fond views on Booker before starting this. I remembered the Benoit matches, the Saturn and Martel matches, and generally liked his WWE run. But boy has he looked pretty lousy upon rewatch. I don't think I could name 5 sloppier guys in the promotion. He must have just had a really great Jan/Feb '98 and that's where my brain froze. All that being said, the match was alright. HH looked bleh, but they worked stiff so it kind of made up for it. Armstrongs are always game but really they weren't given tons here.

4. Shiima Nobunaga/Sumo Fuji vs. Meng/Barbarian

Well this was fun. The FoF squash the Toryumon boys for 4+ minutes, and while they no sold their offense the whole way through, they still allowed the boys do at least do stuff. CIMA hits a bunch of slick dropkicks, Fuji gets to actually work shoulder block sequences with Barbarian (and holds his own!) and the FoF throw tons of big boots to the face, big chops and big slams.

5. Renegade vs. Steve McMichael

Yeah, yeah. You see those two names up there and you know it's not going to be very good, right? Renegade walks out first and you go "Oh. Renegade is in the main event. Huh." And then Mongo comes out and you just kinda know what you're in for. And you know? It wasn't very good. But really this wasn't *that* bad. This was probably the best match these two are capable of, and that has to be worth something. It's almost 5 minutes, and the main thing that stood out to me was that they didn't rest at all. No chin locks. I've gotten so used to 4 minute WWE matches that no matter what have to include a chinlock transition to comeback, that it was kind of jarring seeing two big guys work a 5 minute sprint. Yeah, some of the moves didn't look good. Renegade looks like he couldn't punch through paper. But for what it was, an actual fast paced match between a couple of lugs, this worked for me.

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Worldwide 4/16/95

1. Meng vs. Bill Payne

So I called out Meng recently for being a shitty squash match worker, and he still sorta is. But here he was really fun. Maybe something happened between '95 and '97. I need to do a Meng depth chart to see when he started to get lame. His squashes are usually boring because he really has little dynamic offense. He throws a few chops, then he goes to Tongan death grip. But here in 1995 he has tons of offense. He throws these awesome knees from the clinch and hits a beautiful piledriver. He also does a couple cool superkicks that are less superkick, and more front kick right under the chin. They looked great. He also dished out an awesome running clothesline that he doesn't normally do, and in general worked as stiff as people imagine Meng works. We'll figure this out together.

2. Jim Duggan vs. Sledgehammer McGill

Holy shit Sledgehammer McGill?! I've never seen or heard of this guy before, and he's a pretty unassuming black 90s jobber (Steiners reject singlet, flat top), but he bumps like a freak for Duggan by dumping himself on his dome a couple different times on Duggan clotheslines, leaning way into Duggan forearms, even bumping over the top to the floor for one of them! Match went less than 2 minutes, but I want more Sledgehammer the bump freak!

3. Frank Andersson vs. (Not Thee) Manny Fernandez

Well I have never heard of Andersson, who looks like Sting/Tom Howard/Klaus Kinski/Rutger Hauer and apparently won the bronze at the 1984 Olympics in Greco-Roman. They talk during the match about him getting a title shot but I have zero memories of ever seeing him. He's kind of like a Glacier before Glacier, complete with blonde crewcut. But instead of karate offense it's all cool wrestling takedowns and suplexes. They're all rehearsed and really set up, but Manny got dumped on his head a few times by cool leg trips and an awesome deadlift belly to belly to end it. Did this guy ever work New Japan? I'd like to see him vs. Hashimoto.

4. Big Bubba Rogers vs. Kenny Kendall

Poor KK only gets a minute here. Poor guy had a good build and was as tall as Bubba, but it looks like he only ever got job duty for a few years in the 90s. How are there guys like Scott Putski or Jim Powers that get roster spots but guys like Kendall don't get a shot? I mean, none of them are any good, so why not Kenny? Why are there people like Frank!?

5. Marcus Bagwell/The Patriot vs. Dino Casanova/Romeo Valentino

Dino and Romeo were known as The Cream Team on the indy circuit. Ewwww. Oddly enough, The Cream Team was the name of an amateur gay porn Bagwell appeared in several years before this. This was 2 minutes and Romeo/Dino bumped like crazy for Stars & Stripes. I think if this was actually given 8 minutes it would have been a good match. As it was, Bagwell threw a nice dropkick, Patriot's top rope shoulderblock looked good, Dino did a full Jannetty bump off a clothesline. It was a fine squash.

6. Alex Wright vs. Arn Anderson

Boy, this finely illustrates one of the most obnoxious things about televised wrestling. The commercial break before the two guys even enter the ring, I already know the finish. As they cut to commercial after the Stars & Stripes match, Tony goes "AA vs. Alex Wright for Arn's TV Title is coming up next, and remember, TV title matches are a 10 minute time limit." I try and bet Rachel all of the money ever that this match is going to a time limit draw, but I show my hand too early and she doesn't take the bet. Back from break and they're all laying it on thick. Penzer is announcing the time limit which has clearly never happened in any other match you've ever seen that DIDN'T go full time limit, Heenan is saying "I don't think Wright could even last 3 minutes with the champ, let alone 10!" while Wright is walking to the ring. Just dogshit. Match isn't good, either, blatantly obvious finish or not. Wright seems reallllly nervous in there. It's kind of crazy. I don't recall many times seeing a wrestler and thinking, "Man this guy looks scared he's going to break something in there," but Wright seemed completely crossed up from go. You know his little trademark armlock/cartwheel mat transfer? Well they go to that, he slips, they start over, he trips on the kip-up spot and falls on his back, Arn stays with it, Wright gets up to cartwheel and ends up wheelkicking Arn across the face, Wright falls again, etc. Just unfortunate. But Arn tries his damndest and continues being a pro throughout. Who knows how much of an HBK shitfit would have occurred if he were in Arn's boots. Arn looks just fine here, doing all his cool offense that only guys like Finlay seem to do (scraping boot laces across the face, stomping hands). But holy lord the whole match is "HOW MUCH TIME IS LEFT ON THE CLOCK!?!?!?" and then Penzer does the 2 minute warning when the match is about 5:30 in and Wright botches the ending by hitting his finisher at the 10 second mark meaning Arn had to kick out instead of let the time expire. Just a total mess. To their credit the fans at Orlando Studios were going crazy with the time countdown so it worked to a certain degree live, obviously. But boy this couldn't have been more disappointing.

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Pro 8/24/96

Good grief Larry is wearing an absurd button up tie dye shirt and really seems like he's attempting to look worse than any number of crowd members wearing t-shirts with Taz dunking a basketball. I'm also convinced that t-shirts were only made in color "white" during most of the 90s. Thinking back to all of my No Fear shirts when I was in 7th grade and those were all white. This is just a whole crowd of white shirted people in weird fitting pants. You can't see much detail, but I'm assuming there were at least 7 Big Johnson shirts in this crowd.

1. Mike Enos vs. Chad Brock

Shit yeah this sounds fun on paper, and it really was a fantastic Enos showcase. Not only does Enos tear into Brock but he also makes Brock's sub-par stomach kicks look good. Enos shows ass for Brock and misses a giant elbow drop. Enos also hits an insane standing overhead belly to belly which is really impressive since Brock isn't a tiny guy. Enos' strikes look great and he came off like an absolute mauler here.

2. Faces of Fear vs. Chip Minton/Billy Payne

You know what? I'm calling bullshit on the monster Meng. This dude was the Bruiser Brody of the 90s. Everybody has heard so many stories about Meng biting peoples' noses off and bar fights and Finlay backstage staredowns and they just think this guy is thee fucking shooter. But you know what? Meng usually looks like dog shit in the ring. His strikes usually look like garbage and he rarely stiffs up jobbers. Billy Payne had a jheri curl mohawk and a horrible singlet. Nobody deserved a stiff beating more than this guy. And it just didn't happen. Barbarian worked Payne's ass over something fierce. Booted his face, threw some crazy stiff chops. Meng just makes goofy faces and locks on his death grip. He does hit a stiff atomic drop on Chip Minton, but that seemed more like Minton getting his trademark crazy height on moves and launching himself balls first into Meng's knee. So that's it, this is the moment where I no longer get excited for Meng vs. jobber matches. The guy was just too much of a lovable teddy bear to hurt poor little jobbers. All rep no actual video to back it up. Yeah, it was amazing that one time he speared the cardboard cutout of Goldberg, but I need some nose biting or finger breaking before I come back on board.

3. Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Rey Misterio Jr.

According to Chris Cruise this is the first time these two have met, and that's pretty damn cool if true (and it's not unbelievable as I don't think Chavo really worked anywhere before WCW. If he did then I've never seen it). Rey takes a lunatic monkey flip bump that lands him into the ropes and he and Eddy are like the only guys I've seen do that spot regularly and it just seems super dangerous. Rey recovers and sends Chavo to the floor, and hits a somersault senton and just splats butt first into Chavo and Chavo lands with a brutal thud onto the unforgiving rotating platform that the Pro ring is placed on. And Rey comes up limping and holding his knee. Hmmmm. I mean, knowing what I know now it's not a stretch to think that Rey's knees were already feeling like a bag of potato chips that had been stomped on, but we'll see how this plays out. Back in and Chavo starts wrenching and elbow dropping the knee so thank god. Makes me just think that Dean was missing physical cues in that other match, but...naw I have no clue what happened in that match. And HOLY FUCK Chavo hits a plancha to the floor and Rey absorbs it halfway on the stage and half off and they splat right onto the edge of that stupid ass stage set up and Rey has those 2009 Misawa "awwww fuck that hurt" eyes going on. Back in and Chavo hits a beautiful moonsault press just like his daddy, but misses a springboard crossbody and Rey pins him. Chris Cruise says that was impressive because Rey showed that he can hang on the mat as opposed to just aerial attacks, but Rey literally did nothing whatsoever on the mat in this match. Still, match was plenty fun.

4. DDP vs. Craig Pittman

Well...that was an 8 minute DDP/Craig Pittman match. About 3 minutes of this was DDP holding a chinlock, building to him getting caught with his feet on the ropes. So that whole gag happened. Pittman is a real odd duck as sometimes he looks really cool in the ring and other times his style just does not mesh and he moves really clunky. Like here. DDP will bump big for an old man and Pittman ate a clothesline real nice and took the Diamond Cutter on the floor but...this just didn't work out.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Pro 3/23/96

WCW Pro 3/23/96:

1. Joey Maggs vs. Lex Luger

So people bagging on Luger officially needs to stop. Dude was damn good as late as '97. He looked real good here and bumped around for fucking Joey Maggs, who doesn't actually jump as often as his name would have you believe. Luger worked this match 50/50 and it was weird for everybody.

2. Ice Train vs. The Gambler

Boy Ice Train was not very good. Here he blows a couple hip tosses and botches a shoulderblock. Gambler, however, was great, as The Gambler always is. His sateen little league coach jacket always looks primo, and he always gets his gimmick of being a gambler over pre-match, whether it be holding a deck of cards, or throwing dice like he did here. The problem here was that the cameras didn't do a good job of showing the dice before he starting rolling, so it looked like he was uncomfortably miming jacking off while looking straight into the camera. This went on for too many seconds before the big dice reveal (he rolled a 3). His character feels like something that would really work today, in one of those "ripped from the headlines" type deals. He could lose all his money in some sort of Bernie Madoff scam, or lose his home in a subprime lending scenario.

There's a man in the crowd with a tucked in Dolphins jersey who clearly has no idea how to boo while giving the double thumbs down. It's like he's doing a weird combo of "revving a motorcycle" miming, and "crying baby with fists balled into eyes". His buddies all walk that line of a) wrestling fan or b) developmentally disabled...or c) developmentally disabled wrestling fan (it's almost always C).

3. Kurasawa vs. Randy Savage

Best part about this was Savage has Hogan at ringside holding a chair, cheating for him the whole match. Savage needed Hogan's interference to beat Kurasawa. All the while they're building up Hogan and Savage about to face 6 dudes in a cage at Uncensored, but Hogan helps Savage beat Kurasawa.

4. Konnan vs. Kanyon

Boy Kanyon will bump fantastically to put over crummy Konnan offense. Kanyon takes no fewer than two moves onto his head here, including the finish DDT which Kanyon plants himself on gorgeously.

5. Meng vs. Hulk Hogan

I actually like this match-up and it is hilarious how much Hogan cheats like a motherfucker through this whole match. Not one move he does is legit or done after being provoked. Right out of the gate he's biting Meng on the forehead, arm, leg, backraking him, choking him on the mat, hitting him with a chair, all while the announcers are putting him over. But then Meng does all that shit back to him and Dusty says like only Dusty can "Well he kinda had that comin to him." I don't want to see Meng job to the legdrop and luckily Zeus and the Ultimate Solution run out and Rachel is like "That guy from the Ice Cube Coors Light commercial did wrestling?!" and Savage wisely pulls a chairshot instead of hitting Meng as hard as he could in the face, because Meng would have bit his nose off backstage.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 11/19/95

1. Eddie Guerrero vs. Buck Quartermaine

Just an Eddie showcase with Tony and Brain just blowing him on commentary. Can't really blame them. Eddie's '95 offense was really fun, with his smooth dropkick, rolling senton, brainbuster, superplex, snap back suplex and of course frog splash. Crowd loved him and was chanting "Eddie" early. Quartermaine had a nice back elbow and a decent crossbody, but you knew what this was. I miss seeing Eddie Guerrero wrestle.

2. Meng vs. Louis Astea

You know, Meng really didn't stiff jobbers in his old squash matches. I've seen a bunch of them now, and on a show with a lot of squash matches, he's usually the most gentle with his opponent. Why is this!? Why did he not just murder Louis Astea (pronounced often by Tony as "ASS-tee"). Astea looked like my childhood orthodontist, but if my orthodontist didn't have an awesome job and nice house, and instead had slacked off in high school and didn't go to college. This was over in a minute. Astea got launched on a backdrop, which was easily the best thing about this.

3. DDP vs. Chuck Williams

In just a couple years, DDP was a major star. I would not have predicted it. I mean, seems about even money that Van Hammer would have become a big star.

~Awesome World War 3 commercial with Mean Gene tantalizing the folks at home by letting them know the big names that would be involved. The list is really weird, as the top 5 was 1. Sting, 2. Lex Luger, 3. Randy Savage (those three make tons of sense to advertise as the top 3 participants, obviously, but things get weird with) 4. Shark, and 5. Disco Inferno. Did they think that highly of Shark and Disco Inferno back in '95? I mean, it looks super bizarre 17 years later out of context, but that had to seem just as weird in '95 right?

4. Chris Benoit vs. Otis Apollo

Now Benoit was a guy who knew how to squash guys. Otis Apollo was a chubby guy with a constant 5 o'clock shadow. He also had kind of a Davey Richards way of selling offense. Benoit threw a bunch of elbows and clotheslines at Apollo's throat, and Apollo would play it allllll the way to the back row, just doing hilarious double hands to the throat "I'm choking!" signs, hacking and gagging and just looking like a victim in a Heimlich Maneuver safety video. Benoit even shows him up on bumping, as Apollo's one move was a backdrop and Benoit got great height on his bump. Then moved afterwards when Appolo went for an elbowdrop. Apollo sure looked like he didn't realize he would be missing that elbow.

5. Ric Flair/Arn Anderson/Brian Pillman vs. Dave Sullivan/Joey Maggs/JL

You know this shit was awesome. First awesome thing? Horseman entered first! You'd think the trio of Sullivan/Maggs/JL would just be waiting in the ring, but they get an honest to god entrance and everything! Of course the main awesome thing in this match was the Horseman giving tons of offense to 3 of the lowest tier guys on the roster. Was there a lower member on the roster than JL at this point? Well Arn bumps all around for JL's dropkicks, Flair gives Maggs tons of offense, and most of the offense the Horsemen get comes because they cheat. All 6 guys look like they're having fun, and who knows, maybe Flair giving Maggs tons of offense led to Maggs getting a better-than-normal looking rat (who he of course picked up by calling himself "Humpin" Joey Maggs. I hope.).

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