El-P

First appearance for Siver King ! Yes, this one is a little bit sloppy in spots, and Psychosis didn't cover Ultimo's fuck up well at all, not putting the boots to him or even laughing at his ass like Liger would. The commentary sucked and Tenay looked lost too. Yeah, decent stuff with some fun sequences, but a far cray from the previous week's trio match. Liz trying to Barry Windham's DDP was nice, but where in the hell did she run afterward once the limo stormed off ?

I can't listen to Voodoo Child without thinking about Hogan doing air guitar with the big gold belt. Rodman was a pretty big deal. WCW was packing up the big names.

It does no longer works as what pro-wrestling was in the past. And as an "entertainment product" you put side by side with other fictionnal TV shows, it's really the bottom of the barrel, as the vomit angle showed today. Kayfabe was really hiding the truth. Pro-wrestling was marketed mostly toward the uneducated and then towards the childrens. Pro-wrestling indeed was a hustle as it's been said in the "drawing power" thread. It needed an gullible audience to work like "in the good old days". It's been broken and it will never come back as it was.

What was so expensive in Fandango's "elaborate" entrance already ?

I thought Savage was terrific here, and the unscripted nature of the segment really add to the unpredictability. You feel it's organic. Eric Bischoff was tremendous too in how he reacted, trying a prevent a catastrophy with Savage beating up Dillon too bad, yet capitalizing on the incident anyway after because hell, what can he do now ? Didn't advance the DDP vs Savage feud, but did enforce Savage's aura as a complete madman.

They show a whole lot of DDP beating Marc Mero's ass. The Diamond Cutter's montage is pretty sweet.

Ten years ago ? You're being generous. The format and look has pretty much been the same since 2000 or so (and you could argue 1998 really, the only changes apart from Vince Russo crash TV booking era for 15 months have been cosmetics basically). But yeah, totally agree.

So, don't do two of the things that were hugely significant parts of the last "boom"? Because for better or worse, they were. Were there really ? Take Steve Austin and The Rock off the equation, and all you got is stupid insider references and shitty comedy. And that was basically WCW in 2000.

Stop pimping WWECW to me. I don't want to have to watch it. Stop pimping it to me. Now. (the issue is that there were WWECW matches on regular PPV, weren't there ?)

Anybody knows why Nancy suddenly disappeared from TV after May 26, 1997 ? It was really never mentionned, and Benoit kept on feuding with Sullivan for a while.

Yep, great TV lucha style match, the first one in WCW really, and it goes over really good with the live crowd. Tenay is excellent here while Larry Z hurts the product. THat was stupid of him like it was at times of Dusty and Heenan making fun of stuff they didn't understand. Damian & Hector Garza on my TV. Really cool stuff.

Great angle again. I can't see Sting repelling down and up so suddenly without thinking about Owen Hart, and how badly they screwed up. I mean, when you watch Sting do these ultra-quick drop down every week, how hard was it to get some real security for Owen ? Anyway. Another thing, it's really amazing to think we're in late May and they still are slowling building to Starrcade by milking every confrontation as much as they can yet giving actual satisfactions to the fans on the way like with Bischoff being DDted. They really had the feud of the decade on their hands, and they screwed it up because of Hogan's insecurity. Really odd when you think they he was going all the way in term of stooging and bitching during the build-up.

It's a shame we really never get to see a lot of those three together, because they are so much fun (and so much better than DX in any incarnation). What the core of the nWo should have been, without all the dead bodies around them. I could see the Piper's movies line coming from miles away, but it was classic.

Indeed, the nWo style vignettes aren't the best fit for Savage's promos that have a very specific pace and delivery.

Konnan vs Hugh Morrus. What a feud. Konnan really didn't do much of anything since he dame on board in the Dungeon, after being a flop as a babyface. And yeah, he's thugging it up a notch to much here.

Please expand on this thought. Pro-wrestling needs heat to work. You can't get heat if you're winking at your audience. The fact that HHH was kinda trolling the smarks during the WM build was still a small detail in the grand scheme of things, as the brunt of the feud was a classic evil authority trying to keep the brave babyface down storyline, and there was nothing meta about it. Also, you can't pretend to have a critical or analytical point of view on pro-wrestling through pro-wrestling (like post-modern horror movies do on basic horror movies, or post-modern western movies do on classic western movies etc...) because… well…. pro-wrestling isn't an art. (running to the hills in fear)

Syxx is a great troll. He's in his deep 2-Pac fetish phase too.

Wolfpack get some heat back on Flair. Nice attention to detail as they had the Horsemen banned from the building after McMicheal threw a fit backstage going after Kevin Green who cost him and Jarrett the match against the Steiners. So Flair is getting beat up to continue the feud with the Wolfpack.

In other words, post-modern pro-wrestling really doesn't work.

Drawing power.

Terrific match and great booking. The Wolfpack are awesome here, especially Hall & Syxx, and they totally carry their opposition. Syxx has the time of his life. It's too bad we didn't get more of those six-man involving the Wolfpack, they could have been the second coming of the Freebirds. Sadly, Hall got all fucked up and Syxx would get injured/fired. Great feel-good moment for WCW, along with Piper beating Hogan at Starrcade and Luger winning the title on Nitro. One of the peak of the nWo era in term of work, booking and heat.

Awful match, the only one in an otherwise excellent PPV (the best since Starrcade 96 easily).

As far as living it as it happened, WWF 97 probably. And then as live as it could be since I had to wait for the tapes to get released and buy them from a seller, ARSION 1999.

"What ?" is the worst chant ever. I can live with goofy chants like "It's awesome" and such although it's ridiculous, I actually like post-WM crowds hichtjacking the show (with often hilarious results), but "What ?" is absolutely driving me crazy. In 2014 still ? Really ? Some of the worst crowds ever were he Attitude Era crowds when the sign craze got out of hands, people weren't there to watch the show anymore but to show their signs on TV. Plus I don't even know how you could watch the show in the buildings with all these giant signs everywhere.

Sullvan sure took credit for putting the US title on Dean in 1997 in his Timeline interview. I wonder if the whole Terry Taylor "workrate friendly" booking hasn't been overstated over the years anyway.