El-P

They did get Yuji Yasuraoka on the first try though. Yuji Yasuraoka on PPV. WCW was amazing.

"Lance Storm ? Sounds like a weatherman from Omaha." Bobby Heenan. Slamboree 97.

Dam, the HEAT. WCW was so hot at this point, and hot with *good* stuff. It's a real pleasure to go through this stuff. Savage looks like he's gonna explode after DDP's line about washing Hogan's car. Gotta love that Schiavone said "How many times did we thought that ?". And this time the beatdown is stopped by the Giant wearing a Luger T-shirt. Hot angle. Loved it.

Hot opening match involving tons of cool matwork and submissions. A little rough on the edge at times but damn Regal was great here, as was Dragon as soon as he got into kicking the shit out of our favourite Englishman. Yeah, this match is exactly why WCW was so fun, because guys with different style could express themselves and didn't get molded into a in-house style. The crowd is totally on Regal's side at the end, which is kinda odd since this match was supposed to turn Ultimo babyface. Excellent stuff.

Sure, he put himself over to some degrees, but he sure sounded a lot less of a douche than most "good ol' rassters" telling good ol' stories about drugging rats and fucking them and shitting in the bags of other people. And I find interesting to get the point of view of the management, for once. I never cared one bit for Nova as a worker (maybe he improved in WWE, haven't seen his work here), but a lot of what he said I found to be reasonnable and pretty balanced. He doesn't sugar coat what he found repulsive, like the way Kanyon was treated and abandonned by so-called friends after he came out or how Chris Benoit was a violent alcoholic who bullied people along JBL.

What's his kind ?

Okay, so can we say that the Warrior sucked and had a shitty personnality again now ?

Shane Douglas wants to open a new company ? Mmmkay. The interview could be quite interesting though.

Wait, really ? The son of Meng got a Mexican gimmick named Camacho ? Holy shit.

Do I need to point out again how embarrassing and stupid it looked to have two guys from Quebec pretending to be actual frenchmen from France calling themselves La Resistance as heels during the anti-french campaigns in the mid 00's ? It was so asinine on every level. Mind you, they have one French guy doing jobs on NXT and they call him Sylvester Lefort. Yeah. In the 30's maybe that would have been a decent pro-wrestler name in Paris. Sylvester Lefort ? Really ? Don't they know *anything* about what's going on outside of America ? Fuck, I would have this guy do a Eurotrash club hopper (yeah, him too), playing the total keke from Southern France (which he's from, wouldn't be hard for him) character and have him come out to Daft fucking Punk songs. David Guetta songs. (yeah, fits the character better).

Yep. And yep. But Feinstein doesn't have much to do since Nova goes on and on and goes into details by himself, so it's good. Now that I've seen this, the guy would be perfect for a Timeline.

For people interested in WWE in the 00's, the Nova shoot is pretty interesting. Lots of stuff about the mentality of the company, OVW, bullying… Totally buries Bruce Pritchard and Michael Hayes (and Roadkill), but sounds pretty fair overall. Came off like a regular dude (says that word a lot) with his head on his shoulders and as a sane and healthy human being.

I wanna see Lana do a Eurotrash club hopper gimmick with Alex Wright dance moves. This is so corny and dated, maybe that's why I find it amusing too. But yeah, they need to drop the political stuff.

Indeed. Either that or a hot DDP vs Savage segment. Anticlimatic to say the least.

The nWo is totally carrying this build-up, as I'm really tired of Piper at this point, Flair is not that good, and Kevin Green with these two just doesn't make much sense considering his history with Flair. He should have faced Mongo at the PPV.

Always loved Liz's nWo outfits. Sexy but classy.

Exactly this. Everything about him screams WWE 00's.

Because if the world needs something, it's another Cornette shoot interview about Vince Russo. I love Corny and no doubt he'll probably tell some good stories, but come on...

Yes, but this has nothing to do with them being "artists" or not. This has everything to do with them wanting to do their job really well. Wanting to have the best match possible because the fans have paid their money to see you doesn't mean you're an artist, it means you're a real pro who takes great pride in its task. And it's great.

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. Agreed. Although JJ Dillon showing up as an inept authority figure just doesn't feel right to me, I'm afraid shit is gonna happen sooner than later. But this is a great beatdown, with a lot of attention to small details like it's been said.

It also made Rey look stupid as he did not even bother to think about any backup after what happened a few weeks earlier. Indeed. And really, JJ Dillon has looked like a complete fool since he debuted. I'm not sure but it may be the point where the balance of power actually got all screwed up, by giving a totally inept WCW authority figure who wasn't needed since the babyface heat was all on Sting/Luger/Giant/DDP as an offensive unit. Otherwise, this is a terrific squash, Rey Mysterio countering the bronco buster for what I think is the very first time (a defensive spot Rey would himself fall victime of a lot in the future), Nash bumping outside, and a huge Razor's Edge to kill Rey. Why does no one comes out to defend him ? He has no friends ? Syxx trolling JJ was indeed awesome, Waltman was on fire and it's a shame he got injured and fired because I enjoy heel Syxx a whole lot more than babyface X-Pac.

Slow build. Bischoff is sporting a goatee now, the Steve Austin influence maybe. WCW was so hot at this point they could allow themselves to not use Hogan all the time, they had confidence in building toward the big feud at the end of the year without rushing anything. But 7 months may be a tad bit long.

I didn't realized Flair didn't want to work with Syxx. If anything, it shows how selfish and out of date he was too at this point. Good line about Syxx though. What the fuck was Piper doing, he looked like he was senile. "Tradition bites" kinda sucked.

One hour Nitro, so no time for an in-ring segment. This little vignette does the job.

Scott Hall was back the previous week already. Cool to see the Wolfpack together. Them and Hogan should have been the nWo.