Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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Fun brawl going all the way through the crowd. ECW is definitely running pre-Hogan WCW-sized buildings at this point, and this is the type of match that would be much harder to do this well at ECW Arena. Sign Guy narrowly avoids a fireball (from the mouth) from Mahoney, which seems like a waste of the gimmick. D-Von brings a table into the ring and spreads thumbtacks on it. Then they light it on fire and Balls takes a crazy bump. The Dudleys win the tag titles. -
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Excellent match between WCW's two best workers in 1999. DDP looks awesome in this and has really mastered his in-ring heel game. I love him choking Benoit with his wrist tape while in a reverse chinlock. Bigelow and Flair run out to attack Benoit. Flair-Benoit would have been a cool direction for both guys at that point, but it wasn't to be. We at least got a good TV match on Thunder the next week out of it, though.
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I think what makes Benoit a unique case is that he was the living embodiment of a wrestling philosophy a lot of us celebrated. He was supposed to be the poster boy for a certain vision of what wrestling was. There would have still been some disgust for sure, but someone like Van Hammer doing the same thing wouldn't have hit people nearly as hard in the same way.
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Gene introduces Savage, who doesn't have much left to give and even tries stealing a Rock catchphrase. Madusa tries to do a riddle to explain who her favorite wrestler is, but has trouble spelling. All three answer that Savage is their favorite wrestler. This has no real focus to it other than obligatory references to Bagwell, who he's facing later in the evening. It's not like he's about to headline a pay-per-view or anything.
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Beginning of the tribute to Owen. Howard Finkel asks everyone in attendance to stand while they toll the bell ten times to pay respect to Owen Hart. They play a video tribute to Owen narrated by Vince. They even include a clip of him with Bret. Jim Ross explains what the format of the show will be tonight. We hear from lots of wrestlers, but we kept comments from Mick Foley and Mark Henry, who read a poem.
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Nash is out to talk about how he plans on being WCW champ for a long time. Savage's three valets interrupt. Nash makes a lot of jokes that only he seems to think are funny. Madusa tries to slap Nash and he stops her. Gorgeous George hits him with a crutch, which distracts him long enough for Madusa to low blow him and Savage to come out and do a lipstick job on him once again. Such a great angle they had to repeat it?
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Curt Hennig comes out to talk about how much he hates rap music. He wants to know what happened to good old country music. This whole feud was fun in a way, but also had some weird racial undertones. WCW looks so unhip. Then we get an announcement that WCW has signed a deal with Tommy Boy Records. I don't get why they're spotlighting Booker T so much. They never quite explain what kind of agreement they made and what they'll be doing.
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WCW pays tribute to Owen Hart with a quick graphic. I remember reading that some of the wrestlers wanted to talk about him in their promos that night, but were asked not to do so for whatever reason, although many still wore OH arm bands. Tony Schiavone opens the show by sending thoughts and prayers to the Hart Family.
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This was a war and Kohsaka is a machine! Koshaka is a guy who can pretty much do it all and Yammamoto has to pick his spots, but he makes them count. There was a lot of awesome drama here. I loved Kohsaka applying the knee bar and Yammamoto immediately rolling as quickly as possible to the ropes. TK teases a KO for several minutes, paint brushing Yammamoto with kicks in some cases but missing him completely for the most part. It’s clear they are setting up a payoff there. Kohsaka’s ability to apply holds from any position is pretty great. They bring the drama near the end of this and end up in a spirited strike fest that feels like a boxing match. I wanted Kohsaka to win this but I have to admit that was a great finish - just pelting Kohsaka in the corner relentlessly until he gets a KO. MOTYC.
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Video of Bret Hart yet again. Clips of Kevin Nash on the Tonight Show challenging Bret Hart to a match, saying he will put up $250,000 to face him. Then we see Bret in a follow-up angle agreeing to have a match with Nash on Leno. The match never happened because real life intervened in a sad way for Bret a few days later.
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They really stress on commentary how big of a match this is for HHH and how we’re really going to see what he’s made of. This is a very good brawl with Austin taking a few bumps on the floor that a guy with a bad back making millions definitely shouldn’t be doing. Nothing mind blowing here, but good intensity and a strong TV main event that’s really packaged as HHH’s coming out party. Interesting finish with Undertaker’s “symbol” coming from the ceiling and then him coming to the ring to attack Austin, where the heels end up trying to place Austin on the symbol, only for Austin to turn the side and end up hanging Undertaker. This match is really made better by Jim Ross’s fantastic commentary. This may be one of his best calls of all time, actually - shockingly great.
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Last few minutes. Bigelow is at ringside with DDP and interferes in his favor. Savage runs down and attacks Nash for the DQ. The three of them work Nash over after the match. Savage pulls out some lipstick and dolls Nash up. A fan goes after Savage and security has to intervene. This remains one of the worst main event programs a major company has done in modern times.
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Eric Bischoff does a sit-down interview with his gray hair and regrets. So insincere when he tries to be a babyface. He talks about being too complacent when running WCW. Wait, what about when he was running the NWO? He says WCW will be number one again. Never happened. It's a shame he has no storyline power to make that happen. WCW thought they could just reverse the faces and heels in 1999 and freshen things up, but after three years of enforcing a message, expecting us to believe that Hogan, Bischoff and Nash are good and Flair and DDP are bad is a tough sell. It's not a bad idea on the surface to flip the script, but you'd need some pretty sophisticated writing to pull it off properly.
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Why do ref bumps in a company with no disqualifications? I thought this was a fun match held back from being better because of Storm's inability to be aggressive. He's just not cut out for matches like this. It was well-laid out, but Storm just works too light for this match to be anything better than solid.
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Great match. Similar in some ways to the house show match, but fine tuned and a step above it overall. They are able to do some extra things like use the entrance ramp to their advantage, which reminds me of the best early 90s WCW big show matches. Guido is a beast on the mat, and I think they worked about as much matwork as can be reasonably expected in an ECW match without the crowd shitting on it.