El-P

As much as I don't care for the Worldwide taping, their outside set with the whole New York street decorum was awesome, and they had some pretty great entrance, like DDP in fancy cars with Kim on his side. I'm always a big fan of glamour in wrestling, so I dig this quite a bit. And talking about glamour, I disagree, I think Flair + valet is just a natural pairing. It's visually right and it's in the character to show off having a beautiful woman at his side. The best visuals in Flair's career was the short period in 1996 when he would come out with both Liz and Woman. Made for an awesome entrance.

Well, I'm just entering the era of Flair/Sherri soon, so we'll see if I end up feeling that way. I thought she was just fine with Shane Douglas in ECW, and he certainly wasn't a cartoon character.

With the Volunteer Slam III, it's obvious the promotion is sliding way down. Not much in term of matches, Thrillseekers vs Well Dunn wasn't good, Savage vs Bedlam sucked, Jake vs DWB didn't deliver. The DIrty White Girl angle was okay I guess, but it's still a poor rehash of the Liz stuff, which was a lot more intense with one single slap.

I know Jake is an internet darling at this point, and I admit he's got great psych antics, but he just never delivers much in the ring. To me he peaked in Mid-South, had some fun matches early in WWF; but quickly he became an angle oriented worker. Great on promos and angle, not so good in matches. Once again it's a snail pace match that doesn't build, Roberts really gets by with smokes and mirrors, and although he's a great evil character, there's a sense of lazyness in his work. The Dirty White Girl stuff looked like a poor rehash of the Liz stuff. I really like Jake, but I have to recognize the fact he just doesn't deliver most of the time in a match setting. He needed to be a manager who worked on occasion at this point, not a main event wrestler.

I couldn't care less about Bruiser Bedlam. Yet another gimmick match ? Yawn. Cornette's booking really begin to show his limitation in the long haul.

Yet another excellent evil promo by Jake.

Yes, Jake's Psychology is outstanding. Yes, his antics are very fun. But at some point, I'm sorry but I want a match to get going, which just isn't the case. Jake was great at all small things, but my issue with him is that he was doing *only* small things. At some point I find the match dull to watch because it's just a bunch of small things which would be amazing in a big match setting with great work. Also, I miss Dutch a lot here. Not that Caudle and Thathcer together are bad, but something is clearly missing. I saw the flash spot coming from miles away. Good little match with fun antics, but that's it. Yes Loss, I call you crazy on that one.

I always liked Flair with a woman at his side. Felt right to me. Be it Woman, Fifi, Sherri, Liz. And since I'm a Sherri fan, I'm glad she got to be with Flair for a while, although her best stuff ever was next to Savage. Actually, the first plan was to pair her with Kevin & Dave Sullivan and feud with Missy Hyatt and the Nasties. When Missy was fired, the plans were scrapped.

I tend to agree with Dylan. At some point, we' just have to look at the cold facts. Would have String be a bigger star if he had jumped in WWF and took the Warrior's place ? Maybe. Did he get some really bad stuff to work with ? Yes he did. But it's not like he's the only big babyface who had been fed shit feud to work with. And it's not he only had shit feud either. _He won the belt from Flair in a bad situation, as it had been delayed because of the knee injury, but the reality is Luger drew much better with Flair and had better matches to boot then. People remember the Black Scorpion angle as being terrible, and it was, but the first Clash with Sting vs Black Scorpion (not Flair, Al Perez I think), actually did an excellent rating, although he did had Flair vs Luger second to the top, and they did look like much bigger deal than the Stinger. _Halloween Havoc had Sting vs Sid, which on paper looked like a big deal, but really wasn't (Sid is interestingly enough another one of these guys who look like a much bigger star than they actually were). _Then Starrcade flopped with the big blow-off feud, and before too long Flair had the belt back because the Sting experiment didn't work, and he was back at upper card big babyface working against guys like Nikita. _The next big feud for Sting was against Rick Rude, who was supposedly a hot WWF transfuge and a credible main-event player. The fact is, Rude vs Sting didn't draw either (none of the Dangerous Alliance did really and we can't blame this for being shitty wrestling), and Sting getting the belt from Luger didn't last because Watts had another idea in mind. _When it came time for Sting vs Jake Roberts, another hot WWF transfuge, Watts build of Halloween Havoc actually worked well and it is probably the best Sting on top drawing card (despite being a quite shitty PPV infact). _Then the failed Ron Simmons experiment ends and the big main-event feud goes to Vader vs Sting. Say what you want about the stupid mini-movies, you can't blame that for keeping them from drawing, it was Sting the big babyface of WCW vs Vader the incredible monster champ. Then they threw Sid into the mix again, along with the Bulldog who was again a rather hot WWF transfuge, coming off main eventing the biggest outdoor Stadium show in years (in his home country, yes, but still). None of that drew well. _In early 1994, Sting gets put back in the mix by Flair, gets the Gold Belt from Luger and then a unification match with Flair. That's where I am thus far in my WCW watch, and when you look at the facts, yes Sting got some back luck and bad booking, but he was programmed against Flair, Rick Rude, Jake Roberts, Vader in big feuds on top. At some point, excuses don't cut it. When you don't draw well, you don't draw well. The more I watch it unveil in context, the more Sting looks like more the Mascot of WCW rather than the Franchise to be honest.

Actually, the final round was not taped on the same set of tapings, which is why Flair doesn't have the same haircut. Super fun series of match. Flair adapting to Regal is great so watch.

Anyone ever came across this ?

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not a sports fan to begin with, and I'm French, so the only football names I know are the ones who have been involved in pro-wrestling. I'm not saying Sullivan should be in, but that Bischoff should not be given too much credit either for the nWo years. He stole the idea from NJ and UWF-I, he had a vision for Nitro and agressive tactics, he did some good, but really Sullivan deserves a lot of credit for actually booking the promotion and playing with all the huge egos and Hogan's creative control. Bischoff's ideas in 1994 sucked. The Worldwide tapings, the piped in crowd reactions during promos on Saturday Nights. Ugly stuff. The negatives badly outweight the positives in Bischoff's resume. But I give him credit for being a part and some of the reason why WCW finally got off the ground, for a little while. Doesn't make him HOF material to me though.

Agreed. Eric did way too much harm for whatever positive he brought. Plus let's not forget about Kevin Sullivan, he's as much if not more responsible for convincing Hogan to turn heel, and he's the one booking the most successful years of Nitro.

Bret was a better worker, not even close. Bret was a bigger draw, not even close : basically, Sting flopped on top at every turn, and his only "major" drawing period was the nWo days when he actually wasn't working in the ring nor on house-show, and like John demonstrated most of the drawing power of that era comes down to Hogan, Eric, Hall & Nash anyway. Bret coming back on top after the disastrous Diesel reign of terror is the one who turned things around in early 96 working with Taker, Bret working with Austin is what put Stone Cold on another level and pushed him to the doors of superstardom. Bret was always a big factor for WWF both in Canada and in Europe, and it got bigger in 1997 with the whole anti-american angle. As far as influence goes, I don't see how Sting howlering before hitting his spot his different from Hogan adressing the crowd before dropping the leg or Lawler dropping the strap to signal a comeback. Ultimate Warrior was hitting his chest too, does that make it influential ? No, I don't see any correlation between Sting and the way Rock or Jericho did their spots, really.

Multiple ? He popped up elsewhere too ?

Well, I appreciate the effort they made to make the gimmick mean something instead of a simple name and outfit change. Well produced and to me it worked. Traylor was a big man, it shows here in the middle of this bunch of guardian angels.

Flair is pretty great here, it's obvious he couldn't wait to get into his big program with Hogan. I don't see the "crack in the armor" argument here. Flair has been hyper before, and Hogan showing up allows Flair to get back into full heel mode for the first time since he left WWF.

Much better than the Slamboree match, which was already very good. Excellent matwork and counters, real smooth work on both parts. Zbyszko has been such an underrated worker for the longest time it's not even funny, probbaly another case of Meltz not liking his work and Skeith paroting him. It's also one of the first time Regal has showed his real mean streak, he's particulary stiff here, foreshadowing some of his matches in the future with you know who. Gotta give credit to Bill Dundee too, who had a tremendous timing with his interventions. Great match. The only minor issue I have with this match is that it's a TV title match that doesn't end in ten minutes nor even TV time remaining, which kinda negates the entire concept of this championship. But anyway, one of the best, if not the best, TV match of the year thus far.

Hotline scam. Routine Hogan promo I never could stand, brutha. blah...

Great creepy, evil promo by Jake. I guess he wasn't so hot in the ring, as he was already disapointing in WCW in 1992, but he could sell a match on talking alone. Should have become a great manager.

Cornette is great, but I couldn't care less about Bedlam. Which makes this not as good as Cactus & Barbie.

Jake cuts a really good Snake promo. DWB cuts a racist, jingoist, borderline homophobic promo, which kinda sucks for a babyface.

Well, I will actually watch WCW Prime from 1995. In 1994 I'm all about Saturday Night, Worldwide and Main Event. And I need a life.

Ok, thanks. I think it comes down to false exceptations. In all objectivity, 1994 has been much better than mid-1993 obviously (that year only got better with the Starrcade build). But since I remembered a streak of excellent/great PPV's, I was under the assumption that the TV would be that great product with tons of good matches and cool angles every week, and this just isn't the case. That's pretty much it. The PPV's have been excellent, but very poorly built, it's obvious everything tends toward the arrival of Hogan. Things are getting better in term of good matches with April/May, but it's clearly not the Dangerous Alliance redux era I was excepting it to be. Plus I have to work through the transition from Ventura to Heenan, and it doesn't help. As funny as Heenan can be in spots, he's still not in the same category as Ventura in that role, and at times is already really bad and annoying, being only interested in comedy. Add to that Dutch Mantell leaving SMW and I'm in the middle of a horrible period where probably my two favourite color guys ever are gone. Yikes.

Which one is that ? By whom ? Doesn't ring a bell here. Talking about promos, both Dusty Rhodes and Terry Funk did two great promos at Slamboree too. No "crackbutt Tennesse" great, but nothing seems to be.