Loss

Last few minutes. This match again I see. Douglas wins the ECW title. Joel Gertner and the Dudleys approaches Douglas and suggests that he dump the Triple Threat and join the Dudleys. Bigelow and Candido come out and we get a big Triple Threat/Dudleys brawl. The ring fills with guys to break it up and eventually the Duds brawl with Balls Mahoney and Axl Rotten. Finally, New Jack and Kronus are out. is this where The Gangstanators were born? Saturn is crazy to do that spot on one leg. I'm assuming that injury was legit.

This is an awesome match, and they both deserve credit for it. It's probably the best I've seen from Dreamer and for the decade, probably the same for Lawler. They brawl through the crowd and cut a hell of a pace, when I was expecting more of a long stall job with Lawler cutting a promo for most of the match. Even this late, Lawler was still The King, bleeding, taking big bumps and working the crowd like a pro. Dreamer's selling was also excellent and he had really good babyface fire. I loved all the lights out crap, with Jake's appearance shocking the hell out of me. I think this is my favorite ECW match ever and people are going to think I'm crazy for how high I rate this, but it's an intense brawl that pays off months of heat building on Lawler that kept me engaged. It's hard to watch this and find many flaws.

"The following contest is set for one fall. Your referee is bald." -- Such a great Joel Gertner line The lighting for this is more like Starrcade '89 than an ECW event. It's dark and feels a lot different than a usual ECW event. Jenna Jameson is at ringside with Gertner and the Dudleys, and seeing PG-13 work off of Jenna Jameson is everything you'd imagine it to be. Great old style tag team spots, including the always fun arm wringer thing and a great hot tag stretch. The crowd isn't as hot for this as they usually are ECW stuff, but I think part of that is the building acoustics and ECW production. Nice to see a traditional tag match in ECW, and it's the first time we've seen PG-13 work babyface all year. Very good match.

Lawler says all the WWF superstars are with him in spirit, including The Undertaker, Bret Hart and Steve Austin, who have all wished him well tonight. I'm sure that's 100% true.

This felt a lot more like a New Japan multi-man match than a typical Michinoku Pro one. Really, really great. By this point in the feud, there's a lot of hate to go with the highspots. I liked the aggression behind the submission eliminations, to accompany the always world class action. Teoh and Hoshikawa have a great stretch at the end and Nakajima even shoves a mic in Hoshikawa's face to make him say I Quit while he's locked in the figure four. This is possibly the best MPro match I've seen in 1996-1997, although I do want to watch the '96 ones again.

I've never seen Haseman before, but he's a machine! The guy just works like a total killer and is a blast to watch. This wasn't quite as good as the RINGS so far this year, but it was still a very good matwork spotfest. Naruse wins with a pretty nasty looking KO in a hard fought match.

Ok. I think the bigger issue is that Davey Richards is a legit lunatic.

JJ asks Sting to come out. He has an NWO match for him and a brand new contract! It takes him forever to get to the ring and Gene does a fine job of filling time. I refuse to believe JJ's office was flooded with telegrams in 1997. JJ offers Sting a match with Syxx and Sting rips up the contract. Poor JJ thought that would be sufficient. In an awesome moment, the crowd starts chanting Hogan's name, but JJ still has to sell not quite knowing.

Schizophrenic WCW crowds crack me up -- booing these guys like crazy while chanting along with their catchphrases and wearing NWO t-shirts.

These two went all out and produced a near-PPV quality TV main event. All the insane asylum bumps you'd expect from these two and very effective in turning Shawn heel. We see the birth of DX here, long before it's called that of course, as HHH and Chyna come out to attack Mankind and Rick Rude hits Foley with a chair to secure the win for Shawn. Really, really good match. Undertaker comes out to confront Shawn as the show goes off the air. Then Paul Bearer interrupts that on the Titantron to tell Undertaker the time is coming near. Kane is coming to make the Undertaker burn in hell! Lots of stuff shaping up in this segment.

"The lump in your throat won't be emotion, it will be your liver." -- Foley loves that line, but I do too.

Last few minutes. Chainz has Faarooq covered after a ref bump. Rocky Maivia comes in and helps Faarooq win and the heel turn that made him a megastar officially begins.

Feature on Bret and the positive newspaper headlines he has received in Canada since winning the title. Fans in Toronto who get a chance to talk to the camera are ecstatic. This is all scored to "Oh Canada". Awesome! "It's not the American Wrestling Federation. It's the World Wrestling Federation."

There's Evil Colette at ringside as a Dude Love groupie, only without her bargaining table present. Dude talks about the future of the tag titles and is asked who might win when Shawn Michaels and Mankind lock up. Dude calls Shawn a would-be hippy before Shawn interrupts the fun to call the Dude an idiot, and he responds by quoting "I Am The Walrus". Gotta love it.

Shawn is immediately hated, which I love. Funny how that works. He's upset about finding out about this match with Mankind on Superstars instead of Vince having the common decency to call him. A "Shawn is gay" chant starts and Shawn tells the fans to ask their mamas and sisters how gay Shawn is. Shawn talks about being on the WWF's new private hitlist as a result of Sgt. Slaughter being appointed commissioner, which just makes Vince roll his eyes at ringside. Slaughter is finally out to talk to Shawn and Shawn mocks him the entire time, which is pretty funny. I love how loathsome Shawn is here, and he's pretty much just being himself. Shawn promises he has an insurance policy that we'll see tonight.

Tenzan earned this shot as a result of his win over Hashimoto during the G-1. For some reason, I thought this was the final. Good match, but not more than that. I liked the deliberate pacing and stiffness of this, but I'm not sure Tenzan got enough offense to put him over as a real threat. Either that or the crowd didn't buy him having a shot here. It's hard to say. Solid match, but I think it could have been better.

One of the better ECW matches, on par with the best FMW stuff. These guys didn't hold back one bit. Give Alfonso credit for taking a few shots too. Lots of spots I've never seen in a barbed wire match before, like Funk crotching Sabu on the top "rope" and wire cutters being brought into the mix to free them up to do more stuff -- both in terms of highspots and in terms of building drama around the wire cutting. I could do without the Van Dam interference because he just seems there to get himself over, while Alfonso is taking shots to get over the match. So much drama and violence. Gory as hell and I don't want all of my wrestling to be like this, but I don't mind it every once in a while. Sabu wins the ECW title. They embraced this gimmick for all its worth, to the point that this may be the best match of its kind.

Last few minutes. The NWO run-ins commence and again, Luger fights them off. Sting shows up but it's obviously a fake. He hits Luger in the back with a baseball bat and Hogan regains the title. Pretty sure it's Scott Hall. The announcers are so stupid thinking it was the real guy. I miss the long announcer reflection after main events that used to happen on WCW pay-per-views. Tony's despondence over the NWO getting back in power when it finally seemed like they were turning things around is great. We get a clip of the NWO celebration and they repaint the belt. That's a powerful pay-per-view conclusion.

Funk cuts a heel promo on the people of Florida, saying the Haitians and crackers are loathsome. He namedrops Dusty Rhodes for running him out of the state.

Great, on-location promo from Taz. He ain't mad at Candido, but he's going to take him out.

Joel Gertner is such a douche. I love it. Bubba Ray just begs the Dudleys to come get the belts since they're so heavy going through airports. Bubba Ray really does seem like a life of the party kinda guy.

This was a wild match. Kong and Kyoko make an excellent team, and it's fun to see someone dish out the same aggression toward the LCO that they usually dished out to everyone else. Aja unloading a FIRE EXTINGUISHER on everyone at ringside was hilarious. It shocked the crowd so much that they weren't quite sure to respond and really made this match seem like something that had gotten way out of control. I don't really know yet how I'll rate this at the end of the month. I need some distance from it. But they really do like they're wrestling in purgatory and that they all just desperately want to get this over with, but the other team is just too good to beat. I've never seen a match quite like this.

Considering her prevalence in past yearbooks, it's so weird that Manami Toyota is making her first appearance of the year on August 9. This didn't really do much for me. There's nothing wrong with the match, but I didn't find anything about it all that special. Maybe it was special by the standards of 1997 AJW. I've learned to deal with a lot of Toyota idiosyncrasies just for the sake of getting past them, but they are hard to ignore here. There's a real been there done that feel to everything she does by 1997, and she seems like someone who needs a new look or working style or finishing move … something. She's very stale. I'll give her credit for taking all of that stiff offense from Ito to her abdomen though. Ito strikes me as someone who probably isn't easy to work with because a lot of her moves require so much from her opponent.

Agreed with Dylan that this is much better than the Douglas match. They gave a big show effort on this small, untaped show. They have some matches in 1993-1994 I like better, but this was a good brawl with Funk selling beautifully for Sabu's crazy high flying offense and chairshots. I don't think it's a controversial point to call Funk Sabu's best opponent. RVD attacks Funk after the match while "Desperado" plays, which is a funny visual seeing this massacre to this ballad. The ring fills with trash, which is absolutely the in thing to do in 1997 if you're a wrestling fan.

I always thought this match was in some ways the peak of the Nitro era. At this point, they set a record high rating on the 100th episode with Hogan dropping the title to the guy whose debut was what made Nitro must-watch TV for wrestling fans. Hogan put on an excellent performance in this match and the crowd came unglued when he submitted to the torture rack when Luger won the title. Say what you want about what happened in WCW after this. The PPV became a moot point. Luger was just going to be Tommy Rich. Hogan doing jobs when Sting was waiting at the end of the year may not have been the best idea either. But for one night, they did everything right. Great post-match celebration too, especially in taking the NWO paint off of the belt. I can't think of any title change that could happen now that would have this shared babyface camaraderie, but that's what happens when you let a top heel run with the ball for a year. One of the better Nitro moments.