Loss
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Shawn is out to talk to the WM main event participants - Steve Austin and Mankind. A beat up Vince interrupts, wearing bandages on his forehead and a neckbrace while walking with a limp. Vince somberly tells us he stands before us a humbled and broken man. He simply wants to bury the hatchet and wants a fresh start. All he wants is for Austin to say he's sorry. Austin says some stuff that gets bleeped. Vince wants Shawn to do his job and order Mankind to face The Rock tonight in a ladder match with the title on the line. This closes out with Vince introducing Big Show (still billed as Paul Wight) as the special guest referee at Wrestlemania when Austin and Rock square off. Kind of a typical 20-minute dueling promo of the time. -
Hogan doesn't seem very over anymore with live crowds. He's out to give Flair until the count of 20 to get to the ring so Hogan can finish him off. Flair shows up - with a camera conveniently placed on him - and stumbles to the ring with an axehandle. Fan reactions to all of this show how no one is taking any of this seriously. The worst part of this is that the announcers claim to have no idea what has happened. So the announcers can't see these segments that we see at home? Come on! This just gets worse and worse. The Horsemen show up and the NWO lay them out, but come on - no one else in WCW is willing to save the President of the company from this. Fuck WCW. I wish they could come back to life and die again.
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Arn Anderson beats up Disco Inferno in the back because hey, why not? He ends up getting arrested. Then we cut to Bischoff as Flair's driver and the point of view changes at least three times in the first minute, and countless times after that. Flair should know better than what happened to him considering that Teddy Long did the exact same thing to him with Doom in 1990. This is executed far, far worse than that though. Hogan and Nash are in ski masks for no apparent reason other than to look evil and the NWO beat Flair down while a helicopter flies above them. This is HORRIBLE - one of the worst wrestling segments I have ever seen in my entire life, and it goes on far too long . This is incredibly bush league and fake looking. Just the simple act of Buff with a handheld camera filming this and showing up at the broadcast booth to demand production play it immediately would have completely changed the tone of it. What purpose does the helicopter serve anyway since they arrived in a hummer. They leave Flair for dead and take off. I won't even get into this being an extreme example of putting heels over when there is no intention for the babyface to get his moment. I'll save that.
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This was all smoke and mirrors, but it was smart smoke and mirrors and was quite well done. Big props to Vince taking that bump off the side of the cage and doing a match between a wrestler and a non-wrestler that was not a letdown in any sense of the word. Vince keeps flipping Austin the bird every time he's about to leave the cage. Big Show's debut was well done in terms of establishing him as physically capable, but the finish was a weird one as they pretty much made him a dumb heel right out of the gate. Michael Cole saying "It's Paul Wight!" sucked too.
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I think it's a self-fulling prophecy, although I do agree that it's harder. When the day comes that it can't happen anymore because it's impossible, wrestling has no reason to continue existing.
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Last few minutes. I'm there live somewhere. Billy Gunn is the referee. No heat for this at all. Ken's sister Ryan ends up helping Val after Ken audibly tells her to do so in a funny flub. Billy Gunn does a fast count and Val wins the IC title. Gunn and Shamrock brawl, then Gunn returns to the ring to attack Val too.
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Last few minutes. Chyna eats a Stunner and this comes down to Steve Austin and the Big Boss Man. Boss Man ends up destroying Austin with his nightstick while Vince cheers him on. Vince sends Boss Man out of the ring then decides to take on Austin himself, taking off his shirt then covering Austin for a three count and celebrating. I think he did this just so he'd have an excuse to show off his guns. Vince pours beer on Austin while The Corporation holds him at bay. Good last segment to build heat on the cage match.
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Just the finish. Goldust's music starts when Bluedust shows up on the Titantron. I'm not sure I get trying to do something with this guy outside of ECW. The act doesn't translate. Anyway, the distraction clears the way for Gillberg to get a pin, which angers Goldust enough to give him a Shattered Dreams. Then the lights go out and there's a blinking blue tint on everything and when they come back on, Goldust is covered in blue paint. Yeah, no wonder this didn't last.
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Brandon Baxter has been partying on Beale Street with Michael Hayes and feels great! Jim Cornette is out to interrupt him and cuts a scorched Earth promo. Cornette is upset about people getting into pro wrestling that have no business being in pro wrestling but making it. This is probably a therapeutic promo for Cornette, and I pretty much agree with everything he says. He closes by taking a cheapshot at Baxter's dead father and Baxter slugs him, only for heels to come out and do a big attack. Michael Hayes runs them off and hits Tony Falk with a classic left hand punch then does an awesome classic Michael Hayes promo. I love this run, and love seeing Hayes as himself for the first time in a decade or more.
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Sean Stasiak is out with his valet of two weeks, Stacy. He wants his sister Terri to meet Stacy, and he flew Stacy to the studio at her own expense. Stacy is polite and shakes her hand. Terri is hilarious, saying she was expecting Sean to do better and that she is obviously slow, being from the South and all. She DOES look like she's in her pajamas. This brings Lawler out to remind Stasiak that today is the last day she gets to be his valet. Lawler wants a word with Terri to get clarification on her comments. Terri is surprised everyone has all of their teeth and wears shoes. She complains about the Memphis Airport and says her bags were lost and that there's no way her brother forced himself on Stacy. Lawler talks about how Southern men normally greet women by kissing them on the hand, but he wants to show Terri he can take the Yankee approach of hard and fast too, and he grabs Terri and kisses her. She ends up liking it and they end up in a makeout. Stacy goes from thinking it's funny to being offended and we get a fight. She slaps Lawler and suddenly things are interesting. I really liked this segment.
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Last few minutes. I thought this was a very good match when we screened it, but the January match seemed to be the better of the two and we didn't have room for both. We still needed to include the finish of this one since it's a title change with Hayabusa and Shinzaki winning the All Asian tag team titles.
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Giant Baba has passed away. We see quite a few wrestlers mourning (and having a tough time) while Motoko enters a limo proudly holding up his picture. Misawa, Jumbo, Kawada, Kobashi and Taue stand side-by-side in a studio with the AJ announcer to reflect on Baba. It closes out with the ring announcer in tears doing Baba's intro. Holy cow. This is immaculate. I thought this was very tasteful and was a pretty emotional clip despite the language barrier. Everyone should see this.
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I was impressed by how smart this was. They started off with all the bombs, then settled into more of a mat-based match once they had the people on their side. They picked things up again with the daredevil spots after that, but some of the good and more basic wrestling got a lot more heat because of what preceded it. I can appreciate that. My first instinct was to say this went too short, but I think they made such great use of the time that I don't feel shortchanged at all.
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The thing is that even when promoters aren't thinking about how they are conditioning fans, they are still conditioning fans to something. Remember how for years people would stand up and look at the entrance waiting for a run-in when the finisher teases started?
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Match size matters. You can have a really big match, but if you don't know how to use it, you're not going to be able to create an exciting climax for your fans. A match that's too big for his own good could accidentally hurt someone too. But a really big match does give wrestlers locker room bragging rights sometimes.
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In fairness, there have been plenty of time periods where the booking is a mess - and that's not just limited to WWE - where the show has other positives. Also, from my point of view, I kept watching week-to-week for a long time because I thought things could suddenly get awesome at a moment's notice. As long as that possibility is there, I don't see it as hate watching. I see it as unwavering optimism.
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But if Hogan wasn't the biggest draw ever - let's say he was a star on the level of Lex Luger - would you still think all of those things were true?
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More unexplained camera bullshit. I think this might come across better if you could hear the crowd reacting to the conversations, but not having that really does make this seem like these guys are just executing some D-level short film. Anyway, Glacier tries selling his ring gear to Ernest Miller, which doesn't interest him, and instead, he and Sonny Onoo pawn him off on Kaz Kayashi, who ends up buying the gear. Get me out of this Thunder!
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Last few minutes. I alluded to this finish with Hogan bleaching Mongo earlier. Benoit is right there and can't be booked in this match to work as FIP? We only have the finish, but there was no pop for the hot tag and I'm guessing it was because Mongo can't work. Flair tries to get the crowd back into it and succeeds somewhat, but this match is lethargic. Oh, and there's the conveniently placed camera in the back and split screen - which Tony refuses to acknowledge seeing - where Hogan comes out to do the bleach thing and lead an NWO beatdown. Hogan's appearance wakes up the crowd, but this is so awful in how it's produced and once again, the point of view is all fucked up. This feud needed to be booked more 50/50, with the Horsemen isolating someone in Hogan's group and beating him up. Goldberg makes the save but Flair was doing pretty good on his own. Bigelow comes out to attack him but Goldberg runs him off. Get me out of this Nitro!
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Last few minutes of an embarrassingly heatless (seriously, it's so heatless that it's uncomfortable) and awful looking match with Sasso at ringside. Piper wins the U.S. title when he has no business being in the ring at all. Will Sasso takes a beating from Bret at ringside and helps Piper celebrate the win. Fans end up chanting for Roddy when master wrestling psychologist Will Sasso senses a dead crowd and starts a "Roddy!" chant. Then there's a ref bump because just booking a wrestling match with a winner and a loser is too much to ask from WCW. The title victory gets a pop but it's not at all the moment the announcers hype it to be since Piper has zero left in the tank. And WCW putting a title on Roddy Piper when Steve Austin and The Rock are on the other channel doesn't help the perception issue of WCW being filled with older guys at all.
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Clips of Bret Hart on MadTV, which was just about my least favorite television show ever. Bret Hart attacks Will Sasso with a chair and does a sharpshooter while the audience laughs and cheers, and we're supposed to buy this as a premise to set up a "real" match on Nitro. What the fuck is up with WCW suddenly having absolutely no concept of basic kayfabe and point of view? They've been slipping for a year, but this is something on an entirely different level.
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MORE SKITS! DDP attacks Scott Steiner who's stalking Kimberly as she's arriving in the limo. Scott Steiner takes off in the car with Kimberly before dumping her out. She takes a heck of a bump before getting carted out on a stretcher and put in an ambulance. This is an awfully hardcore angle to be treated as just another feud and not center the entire show around it, having Ric Flair do a speech to address and levy fines, suspensions, etc. And why wouldn't DDP get his revenge at the pay-per-view? Just awful, and the cavalier way it's treated in the big picture makes it come across as tasteless.