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.


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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 5/30/98

Johnny Attitude vs. Disco Inferno

ER: You wouldn't think you could get farther down the pecking order than Johnny Attitude, but that guy holds wins over The Gambler, Barry Horowitz, and Lenny Lane. That's right, LENNY LANE. Horowitz and Gambler might be lower than luchadors around this time.  Disco is face here and several moms and children in the audience do some disco dancing and I don't remember him as a beloved face in 1998. And you know who I'm wrong about? Johnny Fucking Attitude. He comes off like a 0.9 Bull Pain here, with a hard back elbow and full force running shoulder blocks, big ass powerslam, really cool body shots in the corner (plus he wears black gloves, and wrestling punches look impossibly cool when performed while wearing black gloves). He's a big guy and still makes Disco look good (though Disco worked nice hard stomps to the chest and dug in on contact moves) misses a big elbow off the top and bumps big for a Disco flying shoulderblock and runs face first into a Disco back elbow. Johnny Attitude looked like the queen of the fucking neighborhood in this match, totally turned me into an Attitude fan. Disco plants him with a great piledriver to win, and really this isn't far off from being a Worldwide classic. Maybe Attitude started to suck when he shaved his head bald? Here he had the cool mullet with baldspot, which is infinitely cooler. I believe most of the Attitude I've seen was from 1999, when he had the shaved head, so we might have a lost WCW superworker here...will do future investigation...

Jerry Flynn vs. The Cat

ER: Flynn would have been a bigger deal if he had turned that mullet into a crew cut earlier. Yeah, I know literally one second ago I was saying Johnny Attitude was better with a mullet. But Johnny Attitude wasn't going to be accepted by fans as "a guy", so he might as well have some character, and a mullet is more character than a shaved head. Jerry Flynn was good, a good heel, a good 5 o'clock shadow mug, nice kicks, nice positioning, nice kneedrops, no problem leaning into kicks; Flynn was good and his looked played too much like a Canon Films karate villain in a pre-irony/pre-nostalgia TV world. And this match is a good one. The Cat tried out a couple kick combos and Flynn knew how to make them look good. Cat had a nice springboard and the match ending Feliner looked like something that should end a match. Flynn positioned himself really well for Cat's offense, missed his own offense with aplomb (with a big missed elbowdrop, a nice missed chest-first charge into the corner), and a nice kneedrop to the temple. I wonder how much of Flynn's team with Finlay exists on tape?

Damian/Ciclope vs. High Voltage

ER: Damian is so skinny here it's insane. He's super slender and isn't wearing faceprint, and looks like Pablo Marquez (in build and in general appearance). And this whole match rules. It's surprisingly competitive and they never come up for air, so the fans are into it the entire time. Damien gets a nice run of offense after ducking some Kaos Klotheslines, hits a nice spinning heel kick, gets caught on a crossbody but gets a nice nearfall when Ciclope dropkicks him over. Ciclope lands a nice stiff missile dropkick and it's great seeing HV bumping around for the luchadors and not treating them like flippy Mexicans. But any generosity paid by High Voltage gets paid in full by Damian and Ciclope. We got High Voltage weirdly working a mat game by targeting Ciclope with half crabs and a snug if not charmingly clunky STF. High Voltage stock is going way up with me lately. I always weirdly liked Rage's early 2000s NJPW run, and liked the premise of Kaos tagging with Eaton for a bit, but I've been enjoying them a lot lately. Kaos was even doing cool little things in this match like missing low on back elbows and a lariat, a cool stop-momentum powerslam, all nice. Oh, and we got to see some crazy suplexes, as if Rage was just ad libbing ways to potentially shift a man's spinal column.

At one point Rage lifts up Damian in the most flat out pornographic, tender embrace. He lifts Damian up for what I think is going to be a bearhug, but ends up cradling Damian with both hands clasped under his buttocks. They pause there, in that accidental seeming embrace, making eye contact, Rage refusing to admit that he accidentally started holding him by his butt, cradling him like a lover he's about to lay on a bed. You give me 5 chances to open up a random page of any 70s Viva magazine, and I bet you one of those 5 will reveal a couple holding this same position. Is this the suplex version of that thing where someone misjudges a handshake and ends up punching someone in the boob while someone has a half hug on them? But Rage is gripping under those buns, and - if you want a sweeter visual - and it's almost as if now Damian is Rage's child, pulled sleeping from the backseat of the family auto, asleep after a long day driving back from grandma's. And Rage lifts him out of that backseat, and Damian isn't totally asleep, but he's tired and likes being carried by his father, who he heard adults sometimes address as Mr. Robert Rage. But then, his short but hulking gassed out dad named RAGE just throws him over his head, as far as he can! Yeah, Rage held Damian seemingly accidentally under the buns, and then said "No. I can still make this a suplex!" Maybe even briefly thought, as he was propelling Damian by the buttocks, future merch sales flashed through his head as time stood still, picturing shirts and Slim Jim style commercials where High Voltage yells "Make it into a SUPLEX!"

He tosses Damian FAR with this butt throw, and then, does the exact same thing the exact same way with Ciclope. I played in a few jazz combos in college, and a jokey trope I always heard was that if you play a brown note during a solo, go back to hit that sour note another time or two, make any know it alls in the crowd think that it was your intention to squawk right there and also there. It always felt like the only carny trick I was ever taught. I'd love to think that Robbie Rage was also taught this jazz con, and after chucking Damian across the ring he thought, "Well, better do it again, to this other guy, and also more dangerously close to the ropes." I love this little match! Skinny Damian taking splatty backdrop bumps High Voltage's big springboard Doomsday Device lariat, a tough Kaos press slam and powerslam, and of course, that one special moment we all got to share.

Super Calo vs. William Worthy

ER: Worthy is not a guy I remember at all, and before he was introduced (already in the ring) I just assumed Ice Train's original run went WAY longer than it actually did (before they weirdly brought back Ice Train during the promotion's death years). Worthy is smaller than Train, but muscular, and looks good. He makes Calo look really good, whips himself really fast into a sunset flip and goes over hard and low on the match winning top rope headscissors, also misses a big elbowdrop with great height. I want to see more of Worthy. Also, how many singles matches was Super Calo winning at this point? I had never heard of Worthy before this match but I figured "eh he has a good build and some symbol on his tights, probably a guy who is going to beat Super Calo in a singles match."

Brian Adams vs. Bobby Eaton

ER: This doesn't even go 2 minutes, which is a real damn shame. Because for less than 2 minutes, it was really fun. Eaton throws some big punches, Adams drops a nice legdrop (which Eaton actually shifts to bring the leg closer to his throat), Eaton almost gets his teeth kicked on on a huge Adams big boot (Adams was raising it right as Eaton was ducking and the toe of Adams boot swung up about 2" away from Eaton's swinging down face, could have been realllllllly ugly) and hits a nice powerslam, but that's it! What a drag, feels like it suddenly got the call home, but it's a taped show so who cares how long they run? This could have been so much more, and they cram a lot into a very short runtime, but under two minutes in a main event? Get out of here with that.


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