Live from Jacksonville, Florida, your hosts for the evening are Steve McMichael, Eric Bischoff, and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan.
Tonight the fans make the main event. There’s 2 locker-rooms, one for heels and one for faces. You call up, and say who from who you want to face in the main event.
In the Faces Locker-Room: Nasty Boys, Sting, Johnny B. Badd, Mr. JL, Duggan, Alex Wright, and Dave Sullivan. Why even put anyone else here if Dave Sullivan is involved? If you take away the S from Dave’s last name it spells “Blowout”. In the Heels Locker-Room: The Blue Bloods, Flair, Shark, Norton, DDP, and Bubba Rogers.
Bischoff says that Savage has been out of his mind lately due to Lex Luger’s actions at Halloween Havoc.
Cobra vs The Giant © – WCW Heavyweight Championship
Bischoff claims that this isn’t a title match, as things still aren’t clear about how the Giant won it. The bell rings, Giant chokeslams Cobra and pins him. Fine with me!
Cobra is pinned after a chokeslam at .17 | *
We get a clip of Hogan with Macho Man down at Venice Beach, talking about rockin’ the darkside with Macho and taking out the DOD. Beside them is the crazy black guy who rolls around on skates and plays a cheap electric guitar down on the boardwalk. I actually met the guy when I went down to California a few years ago, and he can in fact play just about any song you throw at him. The crazy black guy that is, not Macho Man. Although, Mach’ could probably rock a tune as well…
Taskmaster vs The Renegade
Alright! It’s the super lame version with the face paint, and not the generic one who just wrestles in black and keeps his dignity. Rene starts off strong with some clotheslines, but once he’s distracted by Hart, Taskmaster takes over for the remainder off the match until he finishes the match with one of the lamest finishers ever; a 2nd rope double-stomp. Terrifying.
Renegade is pinned after receiving a double-stomp at 3:40 | DUD
Chris Benoit vs Eddie Guerrero
Benoit was just about as intense as a person could be during the beginning of his WCW run. He attacks Eddie from the jump, and maintains control of the entire match. Try as he might though, he can’t put Eddie down, and it certainly isn’t from lack of trying. He hits him with some of the hardest suplexes & variations of slams that I’ve ever seen. At one point he powerbombs Eddie harder than I’ve ever seen anyone, and would be shocked to find out Guerrero didn’t receive some real damage from it. Amidst all this though, he keeps trying to sneak a win out of Benoit by rolling him up for pins & as well as hitting offensive maneuvers, both that seemingly come out of the blue and are powered by determination and a bit of desperation. In the end he pins Benoit after a crossbody block, however Chris’ feet were under the ropes, but out of sight to the ref. Eddie’s much happier with that decision than Benoit. A good TV match, and something you should hunt down just to simply see the powerbomb Benoit delivers.
Gurrero pins Chris with a crossbody at 6:28 | **1/2
Sting vs Ric Flair
Since this is a decent feud with some real heat, hopefully they give this match more than 4 minutes. Naturally, Sting rushes Flair the minute he steps in the ring, and controls the match until a few mistakes on the outside allow things to turn, and Ric turns it around, setting Sting up for the Figure 4. It isn’t to be as they work their way to the outside of the ring. In a great visual, Sting is laying on the ground and Flair runs about 20 feet toward him with a steel chair in striking position. I love Flair, but he’s not very subtle about his intentions. Also, I don’t care how many times I see it, I never tire of the ‘Flair-get-the-best-of-Sting-all-of-a-sudden-Sting-is-invinceable-and-Flair-begs-off’. This one ends after Sting hits Flair with a superplex and forces him to tap to the Scorpion Deathlock. Afterward he refuses to let it go, and keeps it locked on, despite the persuading off refs and multiple wrestlers. He eventually relents and heads toward the back, only to run back into the ring and slap him in the Deathlock again. Luger then shows up, says something to Sting that prompts him to let go, and then they leave together. Mmm. Could Sting perhaps be joining the stupidest faction in wrestling history? Call the Caliber Hot-Line to find out, only $4.99 a minute, plus I offer wrestling-related phone sex! The match was OK, but nothing special, and not nearly at the level that this angle deserves. It also suffered from the usual complaint in Sting/Flair matches, in which Sting does the same exact babyface comeback multiple times in one match.
Flair taps to the Deathlock at 9:14 | **3/4
The crowd was SUPER bummed when the Dungeon of Doom read “Letters to Penthouse” and Taskmaster acted them out.
Okerlund is in the ring with Hart, The Giant, and Taskmaster. Jimmy says that he put a clause in Hogan’s match contract against The Giant that said if he gets DQ’ed, he loses the belt to The Giant. However, a lawyer for WCW comes in and says that the Championship Community had a meeting, and because of the dubious nature of the DQ, the title is now vacant and being held up for grabs at the 60 man battle royal, World War 3. The DoD are a bit miffed at this revelation.
Next week on Nitro it’s Macho vs Meng, Eddie vs B.Badd, and Sting vs Dean Malenko.
Good show this week. We got two decent matches, The Renegade in all his rockin’ lameness, plus the original Cyber Sunday! What more could you ask for?
Hey Caliber! Great recap as always; however, I see you’re bemoaning the character of Renegade. I realize Rick Wilson was given this character to make money in WCW, but you might not know that he committed suicide and is included in the toll of wrestling deaths alongside Crash Holly, et al. Keep up the good work!
Shoot, I had no idea there were comments kicking around here.
Yeah, I knew Rick had killed himself. I feel sorry that he felt that was the only solution to his problems, but I can’t let it keep me from really disliking the character of Renegade, and that someone like Arn Anderson had to job to him.
“Should the show have been stopped? If so, at what point should it be stopped? Do you stop it right after the accident? Or do you stop it after JR makes his necessary announcement? Or do you stop it at all? Over 18,000 witnessed the event live in KC that evening. The buyrate for the show was a tremendous 1.24. Could you imagine how many refunds and/or lawsuits the WWF would have to endure if they had stopped the show? WCW overran their 3-hour timeslot just 7 months prior to this show and was forced to fork over serious money in refunds alone. I’m sure the WWF knew already it would be dealing with serious negative publicity from this accident. And they did. The negative publicity from having to stop the show on Sunday and possibly completing the remainder of the show in a different town on Tuesday doesn’t make the company look good in my eyes. For the most part the WWF works in a democratic environment within a capitalistic society. The right decision was to keep doing business and handle the publicity at a later time.”
Too bad you didn’t die at Over The Edge! NOBODY would give two squats about a third world cattle breeder like you, you failed abortion!
Caliber, who is this ham’n’egger (Matrixz127 of Youtube)? And who put cat turds on his toast this morning instead of chipped beef?