El-P

I think so. A few months later he was on WCW TV bashing WWF.

I remember at the time putting over this promo over HUGE as an example of just how great Hogan was. They thought they were moving past Hogan, and he just turns everything back around himself, and is so strong on the mic that the marks would go, "Yeah... that's right, Hogan is The Man in WCW despite Sting having that belt over there." And quite frankly, they had no reason not to believe him. Add to that fact Sting showing up on TV *without the big gold belt* in the weeks after Superbrawl, looking just like before. Amazingly stupid. And you don't get any big Sting promo or even statement on Nitro that he is the Man now. It's just business as usual, Sting shows up to fight the nWo without his belt. It's shocking to watch how quick the booking degenerated. It seems once they fucked up Starrcade, they just all sense of what they were doing. It's mind-boggling to watch Bischoff being so arrogant, poiting to "Raw fears ratings" signs in the crowd, and then holding the mic for Hogan to do this kind of deleterious promo. They only had one month or two winning the rating war at this point, and they have no idea what is going to hit them. It's fascinating, and sad when you think how hot and fresh this promotion was just two years before.

In 1998, Luger would have sold poorly a bit then put Eddie on the torture rack after just a few minutes. And Schiavone would be talking about the main-event coming up, which would be the biggest match in the history of our sport. Said match would begin 6 minutes before the show ends, and end with a massive run-in of the nWo after some nondescript wrestling. I'm watching some 1998 now, and the gap between 96 and 98 is pretty big. And things are degenerating pretty fast as early as late February.

February 1998 _Booker T puts Martel out with an injured knee. Man, this guy was not only mediocre in the ring but also not safe at all. Two PPV's and two injuries, to the same guy. He stopped doing the Harlem Hangover after giving Martel and Saturn concussions. _I had totally forgotten that Yuji Nagata was working in WCW at the time. Makes for odd matches like Yuji Nagata vs La Parka on Thunder. They totally missed the boat on La Parka, they should have pushed the guy, he was great and the fans could have cared about him easily. _Jericho continues to develop, and he's gold, although his "feud" with Juvy was sad in that Juvy just loses his mask for no reason whatsoever. But it's obvious Jericho was going to be something special. For a few weeks there's this über cool team of Jericho and Guerrero. These guys should have been on top of WCW by the next year or two if Bischoff had a brain. _Goldberg still has no smoke up his nose, but the crowd really gets behind him. They are aware of that fact and instead of putting guys like Mongo with him on PPV, he gets Brad Armstrong so he can look like gold. His match with Regal was really bizarre. I never bought the "Regal shot on Goldberg" story, but it's hard to not notice Regal being quite stiff and looking a bit uncooperative at times. It made for the best Goldberg match though, as squashing Armstrong, Jim Powers or Mark Starr really meant shit. _The revisionnist history wants to tell us that Bret didn't fit in WCW, but god the fact says otherwise, they just didn't do shit with him. After a month and a half they seem to remember that Bret was involved in the Starrcade main event, so we get some ass-half promos about Bret being Hogan's N°1 target. Then Bret is trapped by the new member of the nWo.... Brian Adams. Yeah. And then he gets into a feud with... Curt Hennig, who's a glorified mid-carder.... while Hogan quickly forgets about him. Seriously, they couldn't have handled Bret worse than they did. I got a kick out of Gene saying "We know who that guy was" when Adams show up. TNA 10 years before, anyone ? _I like DDP, but it's obvious he drags Benoit down in the ring. DDP as far as ring work and character clearly peaked in 97. _Superbrawl was a major PPV on paper, but didn't deliver. Way too much Booker T. And three nWo matches that looked bad. Finally we get the Steiner turn, which was way overdue by this time and the match was barely the angle itself. Still, Steiner turning was a good thing. Luger vs Savage again was just a nothing match, the only notable thing was the crowd shitting on babyface Luger, to the point of loudly cheering Liz when she interfered to break the torture rack. And Hogan vs Sting had yet another screwy finish, because god knows Hogan can't job clean. That said, Hogan was the only one working hard, as Sting looks just incredibly lazy, even in the post match celebration. _Amazing promo by Hogan on Nitro after he loses the belt, basically saying Sting is beneath him, that he'll work against Scott Hall (=midcard) while putting the main event focus on himself vs Savage. Way to fuck up one year and a half of build even more after the Starrcade main event fiasco. _I enjoy Disco Inferno and Buff Bagwell way more than I thought I would. _WCW signed Jim Neidhart, British Bulldog and Brian Adams from WCW after the Montreal screwjob, and they get TV and PPV time... Montreal really was a blessing for WWF... _Best random match of the month : Meng vs Barbarian on Nitro, beating the shit out of each others. _Crap, Public Enemy is back...

The last vestige of Hulkamania running wild against evil monsters. It's so stupid it's almost great. The match is horrible of course, but the sheer absurdity of this idea makes it so pro-wrestling and so Hulk Hoganish that it has to be seen at least once. The Ultimate Solution was called the Final Solution at first. Nice idea guys...

Hope you put the 4 Horsemen of Gayness on it (refering to the awesome video of Jim Powers, Renegade, Joe Gomez and Alex Wright in 1996).

Odd that Rick Bogner never did anything of note in the US. He was a decent power wrestler. Better than Jacobs anyway.

2 Cold Scorpio says hello.

Really fun stuff. Raven vs Sandman was an awesome feud, better than Raven vs Dreamer to me.

Iron Sheik ? Bad News ?

Come on. Stevie worked great with Raven because he was the comedic relief to Raven's stoic, dark character. They had a great dynamic *together*. Dreamer got heat because of Raven, not the other way around. Yeah, Dreamer was somewhat over after the feud with Sandman, but it was Dreamer vs Raven that made him (and really, it worked for both, but to me Dreamer was still bland as hell on his own). To me that's the thing with Raven, he makes people he's working with more interesting. Of course Raven is getting heat by himself, having an entourage was part of his act. He was getting booed the hell out of the buildings in WCW, and that wasn't because of Sick Boy, Hammer and Lodi. But Saturn and Kidman beneficiated from his own heat to get noticed by the fans. As far as booking matches with tons of shit, that was the whole point of the character, he was a guy who just wouldn't lose because he had minions willing to save him and get their asses kick for him. And to me it worked so well, Raven dog and poney show (like himself refers to it) got some of the most fun matches in ECW. I had a lot more fun watching these than the overrated Eddie vs Dean series, which was great mechanically but devoid of anything past the pure mechanics. I'm a big Raven fan, and it hasn't changed by rewatching stuff, on the contrary, I thought it hold up extremely well. Chaos, major asskicking and great near-falls never get old to me. The fact he never became a star is the result of bookers being incompetent to get the fact he was over (in WCW) and Vince never liking him at all.

Blame the 80's hairstyle.

Saturn threw him around, worked spots and submission holds, and although Booker was not a good seller at all, at least if was fun to watch. As soon as Booker went back on offense, he was doing his own 5 moves of doom and that was it. Saturn didn't really "carry" Booker, but he was the entertaining part of the match. Saturn was more fun here than he was in ECW though.

I never got all of that. WCW was too subtle for me I guess. That said, there was no reason for Liz to be concerned about Savage after spending the year with Flair and fucking with his money. Oh well. Liz looked great at the time so more TV time for her was good.

Didn't it led to a Outsiders vs Nasty Boys vs Faces of Fear match where Saggs got injured and had to retire ? If the injury never had happened, I do think the Nasties would have had more stuff to do with the whole angle. I'm kinda glad they didn't though (although I'm not saying Saggs getting injured was a good thing). Why was Liz staying with Hogan and the nWo anyway ? I never quite got the whole thing, in one way or another (she spent the previous months fucking with Savage anyway). Then when Savage came back, Hogan "gave" her away to Savage again, and everything is fine and everyone gets together. Nothing made much sense there.

Cena may be the closest thing to Austin, Rock or Hogan the WWE ever had, but Orton as a "superstar" is laughable. Plus this match has happened more time at this point than Hogan vs Flair in WCW by 1999. It's played out to death.

I agree, things should be a bit sloppy and disorganized if it's supposed to be chaotic. That's what has been missing from wrestling in the last decade. Plus the fact that they wouldn't let the Giant talk isn't much of a big deal when you know how long it would be before the Giant would quit the nWo because he got frustrated by Hogan and the Outsiders getting more than him. Tremedous angle to me.

She wasn't that bad I agree. She wasn't that good either. She does porn now. How the mighties have fallen.

Watching WCW from January 1998 : _the Steiner heel turn was actually quite good, as they were very patient with it, having Scott refusing to tag his brothers for no reason and stay in the ring by himself to win matches, and it grows and grows to the point of big frustration for everyone involved. I like the fact that it was about Steiner slowly developping a big ego but still beating the shit out of the nWo, there was no sudden reason out of nowhere. The funny thing is the rather homoerotical aspect of his connection with Buff, both love to show off their biceps to each others. I remember the actual brother vs brother feud was rotten, but the build to the heel turn is quite good. _cool to see Rick Martel with an old-school style getting pushed right away. It was refreshing. _cool to see Marty Jannetty having good matches with everyone, including a very good one with Malenko and two fun ones with Raven. He was a JTTS, but he delivered. Too bad he wasn't pushed into the TV title picture _Booker T's work doesn't hold up at all. The guy is incredibly limited thus far, every match looks the same as far as what he does. And he's sloppy as hell with his kicks, giving Martel a concussion ith his Harlem Hangover. I always thought he was being overrated as a worker, but I wasn't prepared to see him look as mediocre as he was. He can thank Martel and Saturn for giving him good matches. _The world title booking is a huge mess, they seemed embarrassed themselves that they fucked it up at Starrcade. Only interesting thing in the main event picture was Randy Savage being the loose screw of the nWo. His work was intense too, despite being programmed with Luger, who at this point was cruising. _Amazingly random guys showing up like Black Cat from NJ, which gives us Black Cat vs Marty Jannetty on Nitro. Or Steiners & Ray Traylor vs Black Cat, Gedo & Michiyoshi Ohara. Yes. I loved WCW for those. So WAResque. _Louie Spicolli as Scott Hall little suck-up was funny. _Bret Hart was handled so poorly it's mind-blowing. Dull "feud" with Flair, built by dull interviews and Flair attacking Jim Neidhart. Granted, their match was very good, as good as Flair vs Bret would have been in 1998. But then, Bret just goes "Flair, you'll always be the Man", now I'll wait to get into the title picture." yawn. _The British Bulldog looks like complete crap. Oh my God, really terrible. _Chris Jericho is developping his character, whines, bitch, make hypocritical apologies each week, hurt Rey Mysterio Jr. Great stuff. _DDP was getting soft in term of character (compared 96-early97), too much "I'm the people's champion". But man, was he over like crazy. You don't deny being over like that. _Goldberg was getting a streak going, although there's no "Who's next", smoke or count yet. And squashing people like Mark Starr and Jim Powers isn't exactly the most impressive stuff. Still, it was obvious this guy was going to be something already, the people started to notice him and by the end of the month, they pop like crazy for his moves. _Tons of Super Calo, Juvy, Lizmark Jr., Psychosis, Silver King on my TV, which was cool damnit. _Souled Out was a very good PPV in terms of matches. Hall vs Zbyszko sucked, and the Dusty heel turn was useless, and Nash vs Giant ended up by Nash ganso-bombing Giant, but outside of that, really good PPV, much better than anything the WWF could put on at the same time. And a lot of diversity too, which was why these WCW undercards were so fun. A "lucha" match, a brawl (Raven vs Benoit), a classic heel vs injured face match (Jericho vs Rey), a tag match with a twist (Steiners & Ray Traylor vs Bagwell, Norton & Konnan), a face vs face title match (Booker vs Martel), a dream match (Flair vs Bret), a grudge match, angle driven (Lex vs Savage). It felt minor because there was no world title nor US title match, but the work was mostly excellent. _Thunder looked like a bad idea from the get-go, the first two shows really deliver nothing special. Add to that a third hour for the last Nitro of the month, and you get to the point of overexposure, filling the time with matches like Konnan vs Jerry Flynn, Hacksaw Duggan vs Meng, and boring interviews with JJ Dillon, Ray Traylor, and more nWo (always the same, Nash, Hall, and the obligatory boring Hogan promo each week).

I hold judgment until I see the Kai vs Chiggy matches (if I ever do), but from what I've seen, Malenko smokes Kai. Hokuto vs Rumi from late 93 for the All Pacific (I think title) is an excellent match that felt special, especially when you realize it's Rumi here.

I knew someone would brought up those Chiggy matches, which I haven't seen, but on paper it doesn't tell me much, as having an excellent match with Chiggy in her prime is like having an excellent match with Hokuto in her prime, something Rumi Kazama was able to have so...

The very smart move was to have Bischoff take that great bump just a few minutes after they answered clearly that they didn't work for the WWF. That awkward part of the angle was just brushed away by Bischoff getting powerbombed into oblivion. Great stuff.

I have seen very few of Kai in her peak, but she never seemed that good to me. The best american female worker I've seen is Debbie Malenko, by a wide margin.

Best WWE female worker is such a backhanded compliment to begin with. But quite frankly, the infamous Trish vs Mickie WM match was much better than any Alundra Blayze match that wasn't about her getting killed by Bull. And even then, I think Trish vs Mickie was much more interesting as a match. I'm not sure I would call Madusa a *good* worker anyway, never been impressed by her japanese work, and her US stuff isn't exactly stellar despite working with Bull and Hokuto. And Moolah's trainees were all vastly inferior to anyone trained in Japan, Moolah's style really sucks. So, yeah, Trish being the best woman worker in WWE history isn't very far fetched (I don't include the Jumping Bomb Angels, of course, who were outsiders). But it's not like it means much in the grand scheme of things. She worked a style that was good for what it was in the WWE setting. I would have been very curious to see her tour Japan a bit, just to see if she was any better than Cheerleader Melissa or Bionic J (who worked ARSION tours in 2002 or so). I think she would have done ok but would have also been exposed as a much lesser worker than she was pimped to be.

I forgot about the last one, but hey, that's true, that rumour was coming back regularly. Ah, to be 22 again...