El-P

Yeah, the Scott Hall mention was odd. Good Hogan promo otherwise, and the best way to begin this 100th Nitro.

Corrected. And that was one hell of a chokeslam, after Zbyszko dragged Bischoff's ass to the ring. Before that, Savage got a decent little match out of Scotty, who's heel turn is a long time overdue, as the Steiners were dull as fuck by this point, especially with Rick already being really bad. Liz looks great playing human shield like only she can. Good beatdown. I always liked the Outsiders/Savage connection in the nWo.

Agreed about everything that has been said. Flair looks like a complete dumb fuck going for Hennig who is obviously a guy who can't be trusted at all. Flair deserved nothing better but put guys like Syxx over at this point, really. Hennig is fat. Yeah. Thrilling stuff.

That first Jericho title reign was quite the waste. Won on an internet show, lost on Nitro to a guy he had no issue with. Nice match though, and I can't get enough of Wright's dance. It's so obnoxious and ridiculous.

Roger Couderc was mostly a sports broadcaster (although he did a few sports oriented TV games too), who was most famous for being a rugby announcer. He indeed didn't know shit about wrestling, but he was so great on the mic, with that distinctive southern accent and colorful expressions (and tongue-in-cheek humour) that he's awesome to listen to. I know Eddie Carpentier really respected him.

Ross could be absolutely grating at times as early as in WCW (damn, those football references), and became a total parody of himself past the Attitude Era. Could be great at times. Could also be fucking annoying. I think the fact the announcing has been rotten in WWE for so long now kinda makes people romanticize how "great" he was in the early 00's. Anyway. From what I've seen of Memphis (quite a bit), Lance Russel just was the best ever.

Lows : Abyss.

Too bad "the WCW" didn't had "The SummerSlam". Oh, Bret...

So I'm going away for a while and in the meantime Vince Russo has finally killed another promotion ? Fuck me, that's glorious.

Good TV match, with the Outsiders again showing good tag team wrestling work. They really weren't very fancy but their matches always built well to the hot tag, and Hall was especially solid (compared to awful teams like Harlem Heat or over-the-hill Steiners which no-sold everything). Flair did as well as he could at this point and Benoit looked awesome. Really, the designated feud had to be Flair vs Syxx, everything was building toward this. It shoudl have happened, and Flair should have put Syxx over like Savage put DDP over. Anywway...

Konnan was more effective as a spokesman and an angle-only worker than he was in the ring. Yeah, too bad it didn't lead to the luchadors not getting better used. I didn't remember Rey had been hurt in 97 too. He was out every year in WCW with a knee injury, no wonder he's in the shape he is now.

WCW sure did a good job making Raven's signing look like a big deal. Stevie & Raven had a great chemistry together depsite their personnal issues. Gotta love Gene & Dillob's appaled look as soon as Raven begins to recite a poem. Funny stuff.

Flair vs Syxx could have been a super feud for Flair, who was seriously getting dated at this point. And yeah, that shirt, really ? Also, the whole "introducing the next member of the Horsemen" deal was really getting old at this point, especially with a Flair looking like an old parody of himself. Hogan was just on another level (promo, work and drawing power), and in retrospect I don't see what the issue was with not using Flair at the top anymore.

Youre not kidding. Hogan can get unbearable when he's ranting, but this is just focused, serious, and seriously great. It's amazing to me how great Hogan was as a heel at times, considering I really can't stand his babyface character most of the time.

When I started to watch pro-wrestling I was like 13 in 90, and I only had WWF Superstars and no PPV until 92. KNew it was worked from the very beginning, still loved the hell out of it. And when Repo Man showed up on TV, it didn't take me long to recognize Smash, although I had no idea who Barry Darsow was of course. Hell, I had recognized jobber Bob Bradley under the masked Kat gimmick they were doing after Braddy Boone dropped it. It wasn't hard to see Papa Shango's tatoos on Kama, and although I only saw Dustin Rhodes for a few weeks during his first stint, as soon as Goldust opened his outfit to show his flabby white-ass body, everything clicked. Could see the lack of pushes, the shitty workers and the fucked up storylines although I had no notion of what these terms were. I was still what you'd call a total "mark" before I was exposed to any other product than WWF, yet I knew about all those things, without knowing the proper way to express it.

A fake fake Sting. Ok, they're gonna run out of ideas soon but this was a nice touch coming off the PPV. Luger is probably hotter than he's been since 1990.

Konnan finally joigns the nWo. Yawn. Kevin Nash ducking the Giant this early seems to indicate the product will finally begin to drag. And this is a segment where Nash thinks he's funnier than he actually is.

Hennig is fat. Cool promo though. Flair looks like a total idiot here, especially trying to recruit a guy already acting like a traitor and helping the nWo against DDP.

Yeah, I always loved the fact they weren't really good dancers. DDP's wife gets to do her own little project on TV. I wonder if this is the point where Nitro turned the corner into complacency. I totally has fantaisies about Chae & Spike back in the days. There you go. I guess it was a nice way to divert the live crowds. And a bunch of them ended up marrying wrestlers. Not a bad deal in the end I guess.

A casual fan with an access to the Internet and social medias. And since everyone has access to the Internet and social medias, what you're describing is just the casual fan of today, really.

Excellent interview, and Douglas came off really well, as he usually does. The non-wrestling stories were indeed really interesting, although I must admit Douglas describing the worst aspects of Memphis wrestling as a bad Supremes video cracked me up. Can't help but think this guy is really a decent human being.

It definitely makes sense. I think that type of fan still exists. It's just that some of us were there at one point and we're not anymore. It's possible that it's not so much that scene has changed as much as where we are in it has changed. Agreed.

I was hanging out with Mike Lorefice and the Quebrada crew back in 99. We didn't think Shawn Michaels was the greatest of all-time. Both of us thought he was overrated as all hell. We thought Bret wasn't the greatest of all time. He was down on Ric Flair for being dated and formulaic. I thought Takada was awesome, Mike thought he was a bit overrated and not a great shoot-style worker. We loved NJ juniors, which had supporters and critics at TOA (Jewett was very critical of them, including bashing Tiger Mask way before it was fashionable). We both loved LCO, which Schneider down at DVDVR didn't care for at all. I enjoyed garbage wrestling and Onita much more than Mike, although he pimped some stuff that was highly regarded by the DVDVR guys too (Honma, Yamakawa in BJ) in 99/00. Their crew loved GAEA, we weren't much enthousiastic about it. There were a lot of different opinions and taste even back then. Looking at just a few cases about US wrestling is really understating how diverse the opinions were. I was über critical of HHH when he was having a honeymoon with quite of bit of "smart" fans in 00. Etc etc…

About Abyss, I have no word left. Really.

By "modern days" I'm refering to basically the last 15 years.