WCW Championship Standings:
World Heavyweight: Vacated on November 6th when The Giant was stripped of it
United States: According to wikipedia, Kensuke Sasaki won the title at a New Japan house show, on November 13th, 1995. The day of this show. However, he’s on this show, without the title. Sting, who was the champ, also appears without the title. So, I’m not too sure what the deal is. Perhaps this Nitro was taped and they just said it was live. Or Memorex.
TV: Johnny B. Badd [defeated DDP at Halloween Havoc 1995]
Tag-Team: Harlem Heat [defeated The American Males on September 27th, 1995]
Steve McMichael, Eric Bischoff, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan
We get ourselves a promo from Hulk Hogan, and…wow. I mean, wow. He’s sitting next to a fake tombstone, dressed like a S&M gimp, brandishing a broadsword and talking about Macho Man cutting off heads. This was so weird it was bordering on a sexual assault.
Meng w/ Kevin Sullivan vs “Macho Man” Randy Savage
Macho is on the darkside now too, apparently. As he’s being introduced from the “darkside of Venice Beach”. Is that near Muscle Beach? He’s dressed in his nWo attire for this one. While his music plays, Meng looks to the entrance, but Macho comes in through the crowd & attacks him from behind. Things go well for a while until a distraction from The Taskmaster allows Meng the opportunity to turn things in his favor. He rips Macho’s shirt in half-way down the middle so he can chop his bare chest, leaving Macho to run around with a shirt on that says “MAC HO”, which probably should have been his rap name when he dropped Be A Man. I dig it. Meng eventually misses a top-rope head-butt, allowing the MAC HO to drop the elbow. It’s alright for what it is, but these DoD matches are absolute death, to be honest. It’s been 2 months already, and I’m BEGGING for a different main event story line.
Meng is put down with the MAC HO elbow at 4:52 | *1/2
The Dungeon comes down to ringside, and Luger does his best to break Macho’s arm.
Kensuki Sasaki vs Chris Benoit
First thing I notice is Chris has a giant star on his ass like Starman from NES Pro-Wrestling. Match doesn’t go for long, which is a shame, because what we get is solid & hard hitting. It all ends when Benoit hits Sasaki with 3 German suplexes and finally a full-nelson pinning suplex. At the end of the match, Bischoff makes an off hand comment about how Benoit is the newest member of the Horsemen. When the hell did that happen? It sure seems like for awhile, WCW Saturday Night was the show to watch in order to keep up.
Benoit wins with a full-nelson suplex at 2:39 | **
Johnny B. Badd © vs Eddie Guerrero – TV Championship Match
They start off doing a bit of great ECW-style chain wrestling, which includes a sweet twilt-a-whirl backbreaker by Johnny. Afterwards it’s a barrage of exchanging pin attempts and high-flying moves that nobody was seeing on Monday nights. Eventually they get so frustrated with the fact they can’t pin one another that they say screw it and just start throwing fists, being pulled apart by the ref and throwing him aside to keep going at it. Unfortunately the match reaches it’s 10 minute time limit, but my stop-watch says 9. Perhaps they’re counting entrances. I never mind a time-limit draw here and there, sure as hell beats a DQ. This was a damn fine match, while not the first Crusierweight match in WCW, which belongs to Pillman/Liger, this was the first one on Nitro.
Match ends in a 10 minute time limit draw at 9:00 | ***1/4
Mean Gene is in the ring to interview The Giant, Tasky, and Jimmy Hart. It’s about damn time that Jimmy is a heel again, because he was tailor made to piss people off. He’s a hell of a lot more entertaining as a jerk. Basically, screw Hulkamania, Giant’s gonna win the strap at WW3.
Dean Malenko vs Sting
OK, I had no idea Dean was so short. I honestly thought he wouldn’t get much in edge wise here, but he’s more than holding his own, getting out of the Scorpion Deathlock as well as putting the hurt on Sting’s leg. He continues to get his licks in, avoiding the Stinger-Splash and then hitting him with a missile dropkick. He goes for the Texas Cloverleaf, but Sting grabs him for a small package and the win. Not bad. If they’d been given 10 minutes, they could have had a hell of a match, but this was decent. Malenko was able to look solid out there and only lose because Sting was desperate.
Sting puts Malenko in a small package for the pin at 5:06 | **
Sting cuts an interview with Gene-O afterward, talking about Hogan and their match coming up at Nitro next week. He isn’t happy with Hogan’s trash talking, and was gonna let it slide at first. However, Hulkster kept it going, so Sting is now looking forward to seeing him next week. With that, we’re out till next week.
Between Hulkster in the gimp gear, Macho Man just being there, and Johnny & Eddie having the match of the night, we got ourselves a damn good show that was a lot of fun to watch. Although I will freely admit that I’m salivating at the thought of getting past the era where the Dungeon of Doom dominated the main event. SULLIVAN!
