Loss

Last few minutes. Spicolli is a bloody mess. Dreamer gets the win, but Spicolli attacks him after the match then gives Beulah McGillicutty a death valley driver. The ring fills with people.

Great performance from the FBI, who make all of the Eliminators' corny offense look as good as it possibly can. They also keep the heat at a fever pitch here with the stalling and heeling. I didn't expect to see a traditional FIP tag in ECW, but that's what we got here. The Eliminators don't look bad, but pretty much everything that works about this match is a credit to Tracy Smothers and Little Guido (and Tommy Rich, who is quite the heat-seeking second). Much better than I expected it to be, and worth seeking out.

Morton fits in like a glove in FMW and even gets to work FIP in this one. He puts on a really terrific performance and I think he could have worked as a long-term guy in this promotion. Gannosuke gouges him with a stick and he bleeds like crazy to build to a hot tag. He even teaches Ricky Fuji (who is remarkably like babyface Chris Jericho) how to do a Fargo strut later in the match! Aside from the stick gouging, this is worked as a pretty straight up six-man tag, or at least as straight up as FMW's version of that can be. Hayabusa and Gannosuke are clearly in the top rivalry in FMW and their interactions seem special. Really classic finishing sequence too. Great match, the best from FMW so far I think, aside from maybe Kudo/Kandori.

I thought Hogan had bad punches until wrestlers just completely gave up on trying to throw them and started throwing forearms instead. Now I miss Hogan punches. This sucks because the forearm trading that takes place in slugfests is usually no sold. This is in my mind one of the worst things about the wrestling style now. Only Regal and Finlay should be allowed to throw forearms. Everyone else should be banned.

Why are we talking about golf and tennis?

Frequent changes in leadership, and I don't think all of the people in charge through the years saw Starrcade as THE big show of the year. It would be worth looking back sometime to see if Starrcade had a noticeably higher or lower buyrate than other shows from 1988-1996. Crockett treated it as the number one show of the year, but I'm not sure WCW did.

Yes! I had the exact same reaction at the time. It's interesting that so far this year, this is really the only Nitro that had the NWO just going crazy laying everyone out without getting anything in return at all. Clearly they got the balance wrong at a certain point, but as of May 1997, WCW was still more competitive than I remembered them being.

Eric Bischoff is out to interview Sting to see where he was last week when Hogan called him out. This was suspect to begin with, announcers, you should have known this would be a ruse. The NWO Sting comes out to "A Man Called Sting" and stooges for Bischoff. They sort of play off of Sting's years and years of failure to become a megastar here, especially compared to Hogan. The real Sting shows up and lays waste to the impostor while Bischoff takes off through the crowd.

The interview is pretty quickly cut off by the NWO via satellite in black and white. Syxx trolling Flair is so awesome. I'm telling you, Flair should have embraced that. Nash announces the match at Slamboree will now be no DQ and no countout. Considering how they paid this off, this match was built up very, very well.

Savage is off crutches. He spins last week's events as DDP attacking him from behind. Very short.

Another famous segment. Bret asks the Hart Foundation to leave the ring because he has something to take care of on his own. He asks Shawn Michaels to come out. He ends up ranting at Shawn for several minutes while Shawn stands there like an idiot until the show just goes off the air. Bret gets some good lines in and you can tell he's particularly seething here. Shawn ended the segment by superkicking Bret to shut him up as planned, but it happened after the show went off the air. After the show, Shawn found out what happened and was furious. He was convinced that Bret took liberties to embarrass him on purpose. In fairness to Shawn, Bret apparently talked far longer than planned and started talking about the pay difference between the two, but then again, Bret was only responding to Shawn's previous points in that extended shoot interview the previous month. Anyway, this led to a few interesting things happening in coming weeks that we'll get into soon. Watching this, I can sort of understand why Shawn was mad about this one, even though he sort of brought it on himself.

YOUNG DAKOTA. Continuing the same as the previous segment. They mention that he hasn't talked to Dusty in two years and that deep down, he just wants his father's approval.

PG-13 are on their way out of the territory, so the LOD squash them. But PG-13 pleaded with the Roadies to let them make it as entertaining as possible and the LOD obliged, so we get some really funny stuff here, especially the ninja act from JC Ice sealing his fate with Road Warrior Hawk. Letting Hawk no-sell a piledriver is a pretty funny inside joke too. Perhaps the most entertaining squash match of all time.

Austin has no excuses for what happened last night, but promises that sooner or later he'll be the champion. He still has Bret's crutch and tells him to wheel his ass to the ring if he has the guts to take it. He calls Bret Judas. Austin: "Have you ever seen a snake in person?" Vince: "I'd prefer not to comment on that." Austin: "That's because you're a chicken." Anyway, his point is that he wants to chop the head off the snake and go after Bret, but decides he wants to have a little fun. Instead of starting with the snake's head, he's going to start with the snake's ass -- Brian Pillman. He talks about how he carried Pillman for years and years in the bush leagues. Austin is a star and is just fantastic in every segment he's in.

Bret is still in the wheelchair cutting heel promos. I never want this to end. Bret points out that he's not the bad guy, the fans are. Bret says Austin is full of "warmed over Texas cliches with barnyard overtones", which cracks me up. He tells Undertaker not to get too comfortable with the title and wants to close with a surprise, but gets so upset at fan heckling that he stops short of telling everyone what it is. Bret is The Man … again.

Last few minutes. The Hart Foundation purchased five ringside tickets "from a scalper", as "this event has been sold out for weeks" according to Jim Ross. I'm amused at the low blow stuff involving the referee. The last few minutes of this are pretty GREAT. Screwy finish, as Pillman rings the bell after Austin gets a stunner. Austin doesn't cover because he thinks he's won, which distracts him long enough for Undertaker to tombstone and pin. The Harts immediately rush the ring and attack Undertaker, so Austin dumps Bret out of his wheelchair then clears the ring with his crutch. Austin leaves by laying Undertaker out with a stunner. They really did as much as possible to keep Austin strong in losing here. I want to see this match in full now based on the finishing stuff.

I can't believe I'm watching this match in a WWF ring. Some cool stuff here, but this is the antithesis of a WWF match, so the fans and Lawler don't really have any idea what to do with it. This match did not need Jerry Lawler doing color commentary burying it the whole time, but I suspect Lawler was a Vince surrogate to bury UFC. I don't think the crowd understood what they were going for, but they slowly got into it as this went on, showing me that with some effort, they could have possibly gotten into this style. But they should have done more to get these submissions over going into the PPV -- naming them and talking about which ones were most effective -- so the crowd had a clue. The Shamrock personality profile and in-ring brawl with the two was a great start, but not enough hype for something like this on its own. Overall, I think this was an effective but not-as-effective-as-possible way to debut Shamrock and a good match, and I don't think anyone in the WWF at the time could have worked a match like this with him except Vader.

Last-minute hype for Austin vs Undertaker. Austin says if Undertaker is sending him to hell, he isn't going alone, which causes the lights to flicker in the arena. Undertaker responds via Titantron.

Last few minutes. Rude is doing commentary with Joey Styles. Candido attacks Mahoney from behind. Bam Bam Bigelow runs in to supposedly make the save but ends up blindsiding Mahoney. The Triple Threat is born. This segment felt a little rushed.

Wolfie D even brought the Nation of Domination gimmick to IWA Mid South! That's dedication. Wolfie's heeling on this crowd and Ricky Morton at the beginning of this is a master's class, even if IWA Mid South looks even more low rent and sleazy than ECW because of all the swearing and profane crowd chants. (Well, I guess it was.) Morton shows that he still has a great babyface promo in him before the match as well. It took a while for this match to get going, but when it did, it was pretty decent. Morton is indeed kind of a has been at this point, but he can also work just about as well as he ever did. And this is a good opponent for him. The sad part is that fans wanted something edgier, so Morton pulling out all of his old tricks to really get a crowd going just doesn't get the reaction it used to get. JC Ice runs out with a chain for the finish, but Morton intercepts and hits Morton with it and pins him. PG-13 and Doug Gilbert immediately jump him after the match before being run off by Ian Rotten and a couple of other guys. Not sure if that led to a follow-up match or not, but I hope it did. I like Morton's promo closing things out. It's the downside of the way wrestling changed. There just wasn't a place on a big stage for small, old-style Southern babyfaces anymore. Ian Rotten makes a point of putting over Morton working FMW and they announce a PG-13 vs Morton and Dave Tyler Morton Jericho on a future show.

The announcers mentioned during the Hogan interview that the NWO injured Luger on a recent trip to Japan. The match was scheduled to be Harlem Heat vs Lex Luger & The Giant, but Luger is nowhere to be found. The Giant brings DDP out as his replacement. Savage taunts DDP on the way to the ring, which allows Hogan to attack him from behind and attack him with a crutch. Savage grabs Kimberly by the hair and the whole NWO is swarming DDP, The Giant and Harlem Heat. Nash bends the crutch on Giant's neck in a cool visual. Flair, Piper and Greene finally run out but it does no good and the numbers catch up to them. Nash even puts Piper in the sleeper while Syxx keeps Flair in the figure four, which is a cool little detail knowing how Slamboree is laid out. Quite the spirited beatdown.

Hulk Hogan returns from wherever he has been while Bischoff fawns over his posing. The crowd is on Hogan's case in a major way chanting for Sting. Hogan calls out Sting, saying if he'll come out now, he'll treat him like yesterday's garbage. No Sting and Hogan gloats. The build to Starrcade is in full swing, and the announcers also make the point that Hogan avoided talking about Luger. Love the short-term/long-term thing they were doing in the title picture at this point.

Rey does this unique entrance where he crawls on the entrance ramp then shoots spiderwebs out of his hands. This time around, Syxx is wrestling in street clothes, and both Hall and Nash are in Syxx's corner. Hall talked about how much Terry Taylor hated this recently because he thought it gave away the finish that they would get involved. Hall's argument was that the fans don't know when it will come and don't know how it will come. I love how this plays off of the previous match, as Rey takes the fight to Syxx and even gets in a shot on Nash. But Hall gets him from behind with the Razor's Edge and Syxx finishes him off with the buzzkill. JJ Dillon is out to stop this, saying if Syxx doesn't break the hold, he'll reverse the decision. Bischoff immediately follows JJ in tow and the NWO stand around Syxx while he keeps the hold on Rey. The Wolfpac tell JJ he isn't pulling the same crap he pulled for McMahon. Great segment, even if it did make JJ look completely ineffective as an authority figure.

Right after Austin pins Davey Boy, the Hart Foundation is in to attack him. It looks like Owen is attacking Austin with the WWF title belt for some unknown reason. The LOD are out again to even the sides and then Furnas and LaFon come out. The announcers assume they are out to help the Harts, but then they start fighting each other. Finally, Shawn is out to brawl with everyone. Then, the ring goes dark and the Undertaker bong goes off. The lights are back on and he's in the ring fighting the Hart Foundation too. Austin picks up the belt and Undertaker takes exception. He lays it down between them and says let's get it on, and a big brawl breaks out. Pretty action packed segment. I liked this chaos quite a bit.