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Mankind explains why he's not letting Dude Love fight his own battles. This was a well-built-up feud. There is still a shred of old-school, progressive storytelling underneath all the desperation shock value.

I do love the Lowell Auditorium--a nice intimate and different-looking venue. Another boring DX segment as these promos are becoming as formulaic as a Popeye cartoon. Slaughter actually ends up saving the segment if only because DX playing off of him is generally pretty reliably amusing. Triple H makes sure to try to kill off any heat the NAO got last week, because reasons or something. God knows we'll see plenty more of *that* for the next two decades. Then he shifts gears to Owen Hart and goes to the old late-'90s "You're gay, so perform oral sex on me" tack of idiot dudebros everywhere. The dissension at the end is the first fresh thing out of these two guys in two months.

A multi-man cage match with weapons strewn about--this is every late '90s e-fed gimmick match ever. With six guys all in the ring in about 5 minutes, they may as well have just started the match with everyone right off the (barbed wire) bat, because the build-up to the entrances doesn't mean anything and no dramatic momentum shifts. And Onita is almost unrecognizable--not only is he dressed like Bret Hart but he's lost a lot of weight and grown out his hair. He really doesn't look good here but he does take Hayabusa's finish like a pro, at least. It occurs to me that I think this is only the second job I've seen Onita do on these Yearbooks--I can only remember the Tenryu match. All these complaints aside, this is pretty fun, with a really good performance by the babyfaces. Onita is turned on by his partners afterward and his alignment is set back to where it probably should always be.

Misirlou is replaced by what sounds like a Stevie Ray Vaughan Christmas tune this week. We couldn't afford to send anyone to Rock Center this year, so here's past footage of the bWo, Dudleys, and Public Enemy instead. The FBI are having way too much fun, as the Big Don is a little confused over what language he's supposed to be wishing us Merry Christmas in. Guido closes us out with a big pinfall win over Santa Claus.

Not a major match in the rivalry but a fun Main Event...er, main event. I was honestly surprised the show was still on the air at this point--I can't imagine it'll last long past Thunder's debut.

Awesome stuff, though I suspect we got all of the real meat of the match. I watch this and want to weep for what the WWF did with these guys. An MPro/WCW alliance would be drool-worthy. MPro was going through some severe financial troubles at this point, but they've offered us some fresh match-ups after all the multi-man tags from '96.

"We've been talking for two seconds, I'm already BORED." --Darrell Hammond-as-Chris Matthews on one of SNL's Hardball sketches. Possibly the most underwhelming debut in wrestling history. Every single thing about this segment is off--Dillon and Bischoff have *no* chemistry and while I'm a Mean Gene defender, he talks all over everyone all throughout this. The negotiating over the guest ref just isn't that interesting no matter who they go with because you know this match is going to be filled with gaga bullshit no matter what. And then Bret comes down to horrible entrance music with no fanfare and says nothing. As much as I've complained about the lack of creativity in WCW lately, it's only just now that it feels conceivable that the wheels could actually come flying off this promotion.

Definitely one of the Nitro matches of the year. We're going 3 hours tonight so these guys get to fill some time, and holy shit do they make the most of this. Some hard-hitting bombs to go with the graceful high-flying and some cool saves and near-falls that you didn't always see in these WCW-ized lucha bouts. It's longer than a usual Nitro match, but not quite long enough to be as epic in scope as the high-end Michinoku Pro stuff, but the action we do get is very comparable.

At least there's some attempt at genuine heat here rather than DX amusing themselves, though there's that, too. The South Park t-shirts are a pretty brilliant way of setting the Outlaws apart and really one of the hipper things the WWF has ever done. Michaels seems to be pondering the Outlaws' work as they leave and Raw goes off the air, a development that would sort of be put on hold for a few months.

I'll grant that, "Anything can happen in the WWF" applies more than ever now, as opposed to 1994 or so when that phrase was being beaten into the ground. This is Vince Being Vince, but I'm not so sure Modern Vince and Modern Stephanie maybe shouldn't be chained to a chair and forced to watch this Clockwork Orange-style, as Vince extolls the virtues of live television and extemporaneousness.

Notice how throughout the night they took time to explain how and why a camera crew got to Austin on the bridge. An iconic moment for sure and a pretty funny segment all around, from Austin's promo to Rock's realization that that's *his* pager that Austin chucked into the water.

Show me the Carfax, WWF!

Owen looks like a badass motherfucker, moreso than he ever did before, and is as over as a babyface as he ever was in *any* setting or would be again. This crowd was just begging for him to lay Vince out. And all the "this is real life" talk sounds about 9 million times more genuine than when any number of Russo shooty-shoot promos or hackneyed Roman Reigns promos used that line. I get that they probably didn't want two outcast antiheroes in black in the main event scene, but I think there was room for it if they had any inclination to push Owen as anything other than a sacrificial lamb for Triple H.

Seeing the Rock start to coalesce into his more familiar form, week by week, is almost more fun than watching the rise of Stone Cold and the birth of the McMahon feud, since even at this point a lot of people were still skeptical of him. A few of the catchphrases are forming, the People's Eyebrow is now here, and he has some great bug-eyed responses to both the crowd chants and Austin's trash talk.

Getting entrance music in "clean" form was quite the ordeal for a long time. That would change, starting about now.

This gimmick always sounded funnier when described on message boards (I had mostly tuned out of ECW in real time at this point and would stay that way until the TNN days) than in actual execution. It was definitely something of its specific time and place, when Snow was seen as a superstar-who-never-was.

Who was the blonde chick after we saw Beulah and Francine? This was still less disturbing than naked Bluedust or Meanie as Harley Quinn.

Sting pretending to be the dummy was a cute enough reveal, but I dunno...this company sure feels creatively bankrupt (as opposed to the WWF which is the exact opposite extreme). I get that they were going for a "more of the same" feel by design to set up Sting's return, but Hogan rambled for too long for too little of a payoff--the "fake Sting is actually the real Sting" card has been played too many times itself. Sting fending off the entire NWO while unable to free himself from his rappelling gear is awkward to say the least, but it's impossible to complain about *that* now.

Flair even sort of second-guesses himself on that Steiners-Outsiders match. Maybe he was at least paying attention to that Giant interview. Already we're starting hype for Flair vs. Bret. I can understand the logic behind that match-up as Bret's first in WCW, but I dunno...I think you need to go all-in and run Bret vs. Sting as soon as you can and go for the jugular against the WWF. There's time to build and then there's time to strike--by waiting and not really building up Bret as the uncrowned champion, all those legit dream matches never really happened.

Good enough promo from Nash, but why is the heel talking about coming back from a knee injury and issuing a challenge to the babyface? Giant responds and sounds like Shawn Michaels with the amount of downers he seems to have in his system. Nash points out that Giant is one-dimensional and only has the Chokeslam, so Giant's response is that he's bringing...the CHOKESLAM. What a rebuttal. Okerlund trenchantly points out that this will be WCW vs. the NWO. I'm pretty sure this segment didn't accomplish anything than a straight-up match announcement wouldn't have.

WrestleMania is essentially set right here, as Austin announces his intentions to go after the WWF title. And the post-WrestleMania scene is essentially set here as well, as Vince is continuing to lose control of Steve Austin. The IC title is buried a little bit here, yes, but at least Austin has solid and clear goals going forward.

The laughs are more at the WCW's bureaucratic, left-hand-not-knowing-what-the-right-is-doing expense, at least for me.

History is made as Mero drops the "jobber" word on wrestling television. Then he outs Sal Sincere as Tom Brandi in a "stupid gimmick." Ross gets in one of the Zingers of the Year in response to that--"Yeah, and I'm a baaaad man." Mero then brings out his "property"--Sable in a potato sack. Sable reveals a bikini instead of disrobing Mero, and I'm sorry, but I still don't get it with her. She's in great shape but I don't see her as being overly attractive. Mero chases Sable to the back and gets counted out--this was the *second* straight match on this show to end in this fashion, a countout as soon as the match starts (Vader chased Goldust to the back after he flashed him, resulting in a countout win for Jeff Jarrett). Wrestling has taken a complete and total back seat to everything else--part of it due to a depleted and injured roster, part of it due to the Russo influence, part of it due to desperation. "Only referee in the country that takes 30 seconds to count to 10"--Chad is right, Ross has absolutely no fucks left to give at this point. I could rip on JR for being unprofessional as I have in the past, but I find it hard to blame him. There's nothing overly wrong with this segment in particular, but these shows as a whole give off a late-'80s World Class or 2000s WCW vibe more than they do a company about to start its most profitable run ever.

HHH still hasn't gotten any better as a promo and his line about the missile being asleep and Sarge's wife dreaming ends up making no sense. Shawn recites a pretty rote promo but I've always cracked up at him referring to himself as "thrice" WWF Champion. Then a horrifyingly drawn-out analogy about Owen Hart being a nugget, the less said the better even though it's not going to go away. Eventually the Headbangers come out for a match and pay for flipping over the poker table. This goes on and on until Owen finally breaks it up. The best things about these DX segments that I'm going to have cling to are JR's reactions. Between DX, Goldust, Mero, and even the Jackyl's ramblings, this was a golden age for classic Jim Ross Disgust. "The WWF has champions it can really be proud of!"

Prichard's JR impersonation seems to be slipping back into Brother Love at points.