The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 05.13.96
Desperation time, as I’m trying the PS3 to find SOMETHING that will play the Network properly. Aside from stuttering at the beginning and two “Cannot play this video” errors before it would load, it appears to be functional tonight. NJPW World 1, WWE Network 0 thus far, though.
Live from Nashville, TN. Lex Luger is CAMPED OUT in the building so that he doesn’t miss his title shot tonight!
Your hosts are Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan & Mongo.
The Steiner Brothers v. The Public Enemy
The Steiners quickly clean house and chase TPE out of the ring. Back in, Rick beats on Grunge with a powerslam and elbowdrop for two, and Scott tosses him with an overhead suplex for two. They fight on the floor and Rock accidentally hits Grunge, but finally gets it together and takes over on Rick. Scott comes in and the Enemy double-teams him as well, with Rock hitting a flying headbutt for two. They team up with the Rougeau senton for two, but Rock misses a flying senton and it’s hot tag Rick. Belly to belly puts Rock on the floor as Bischoff announces that Nitro will go to TWO HOURS starting May 27. Man, they better have one hell of an angle planned to kick that off. Frankensteiner finishes Rock at 6:55. This was decent. **
Chris Benoit v. Dave Taylor
Bischoff hypes up DDP’s return due to a mysterious benefactor, who was obviously supposed to be Ted Dibiase before they came up with the nWo role for him instead. Taylor tries to grab a toehold, and Benoit drops him with an enzuigiri. Taylor comes back with forearms and boots Benoit down, but Benoit catapults him into the turnbuckles. Taylor gets a fallaway slam for two, but misses a crossbody while Mongo leaves the broadcast position to find Macho Man. Benoit finishes with a dragon suplex at 4:16. This was a bit of a style clash to say the least, with Taylor trying to do some kind of a strong style stiff match and Benoit doing a mat-based wrestling match. *
Meanwhile, Savage is barred from the building and unable to penetrate Doug Dellinger’s wall of security. Mongo butts in and lets Savage know that he’ll deal with the situation himself.
BLOOD RUNS COLD. Dave’s running theory at the time was that it would be the Outsiders, but this week in the Observer he amends it to a “team of ninjas” which will feature Bryan Clark. Getting closer.
Ric Flair v. VK Wallstreet
This is a weird combination. Wallstreet controls on the mat and they exchange chops in the corner, which results in Flair bailing to the floor. Back in, Wallstreet works the leg as we take a break. Really, you expect people to stay tuned through two minutes of commercials for MIKE ROTUNDO? As a babyface? Back with Wallstreet slugging away on the floor and seeming to be shockingly motivated here for some reason. Back in, he backdrops Flair into the samoan drop for two. I was kind of hoping he’d bust out the old airplane spin there. Flair would be all over that. Wallstreet with a sunset flip for two. Backslide for two. He clotheslines Flair to the floor, but charges and accidentally knees the post instead of Flair. You know, if he was wearing kneepads, he’d be fine. But he’s not and he looks weird without them, so fuck him. Figure-four finishes at 7:51. Well, Rotunda was sure game for a fight this week. **3/4
Meanwhile, Flair gives his victory speech from his table (which apparently follows him from show to show now) and he’s sick of hearing about Mongo and his wife. He’s the REAL quarterback!
WCW World title: The Giant v. Lex Luger
Aaaaaaaaaand now the Network starts acting up again. Just let me finish this damn show! Luger tries to overpower him, but walks into a clothesline and gets shoved to the floor. Back in, Giant pounds away in the corner, but Luger comes back with the STAINLESS STEEL FOREARM OF…oh, never mind, Giant no-sells it. Back to the floor and Giant tosses him back in again like the proverbial sack of garbage while Flair enjoys his expensive dinner with Savage’s money. Luger keeps slugging away and finally knocks Giant to the floor, but Giant is so annoyed by this that he chokeslams Lex through Flair’s table for the DQ at 4:13. So I guess that’s another babyface turn for Lex? I gotta say, the storylines for this show have been going off the rails in the past couple of months, to say the least. DUD
The Pulse
Nice chokeslam to finish the show and the Flair-Rotundo match was surprisingly decent, but there’s not much else here this week.
R.I.P. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine
ReplyDeleteI'm more and more convinced that the biggest thing ruined weekly wrestling TV was the expansion to two, then three hours.
ReplyDeleteIm serious, watch the network on your phone or iPad/kindle if you have one- with headphones on; its the tits
ReplyDeleteThe rosters eventually got so big that two hours was a necessity. Three hours is just flat-out overkill, however.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Two hours should have been the ceiling. And no "Thunder" or "SmackDown" to further oversaturate things.
ReplyDeleteI watch the Network on a laptop and haven't had any major issues with any shows, old or new.
ReplyDeleteSo when Hall and Nash were prepping to enter WCW, was some sort of an Invasion angle the consensus theory at the time?
ReplyDeleteThis is about where I started to lose interest in watching the old Nitros.
ReplyDeleteNo, there was a wide variety of theories and guesses about how they would be used. The biggest fear is that WCW would bungle things with Hall and Nash somehow ("It's Nash as the newest member of the Dungeon of Doom, the new Yeti!"). WCW's track record wasn't too good with being handed a good thing, and they had earned little faith about getting it right.
ReplyDeleteCertainly few people, even if they had guessed right about an invasion angle, would have expected it to go as well as it did (at least short-term).
Yeah, by looking at WCW's output from around that time, I wouldn't have expected them to do anything proper with Hall and Nash. It's funny thinking of Nash as a Dungeon of Doom member considering Oz would've fit right in with those jobber creatures.
ReplyDeleteNash as Yeti's long lost brother.
ReplyDeleteOh my god. I'm a damn fool. I never even thought of the DiBiase connection before with DDP!
ReplyDeleteEspecially when they still had another 2 hours of Saturday Night and another hour of WorldWide. No matter how big your roster is, having 6-8 hours of booking to do every week + PPV's is madness.
ReplyDeleteGive them this: Luger and the announcers sold that table bump as though Lex were dead. Watching it again, as an effective blowoff to the "two-faced Luger" storyline I was stunned by how effective the angle was.
ReplyDeleteSurprised Benoit and Taylor couldn't find a beat. Goes to show there's no magic formula to account for chemistry between wrestlers.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want Poochie as my brother.
ReplyDeleteUnless Slamboree has already happened - then the two faced luger wasn't totally dead yet
ReplyDeleteMene Gene died?
ReplyDeleteMost reports I read at the time was Diamond Studd returns.
ReplyDeleteI'm crying now that Oz didn't return - except when one night in 1998 - Nash screamed into a mic - I feel like Oz.
ReplyDeleteOr how about the time Nash destroyed the masked tag team known as The Master Blasters. Oh that Jevin Nash.
Nope, different guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACpNVD5GMUw
ReplyDeleteNo Network problems for me, I watched the Bret Hart Dungeon Collection earlier then some of Superbrawl III and it was totally find.
ReplyDeleteIt's me! It's me! It's Ted DiBi!
ReplyDeleteI don't think it was mentioned on Nitro, but the other WCW shows had segments where a college student filmed footage of DDP after he lost his money in February. They did several of these, and the last one showed him getting into a limo with an unidentified woman. I assume it supposed to be Kimberly, as this was after Johnny B. Badd left.
ReplyDeleteNetwork's working great on PS4.
ReplyDeleteThis show is about a week prior to Slamboree.
ReplyDeleteDo you have trouble stretching old footage to full screen on the iPad?
ReplyDeleteIn their defense, like you said, they had half the planet under contract. I think *I* main evented Worldwide one week.
ReplyDeleteI always wondered why he wasn't involved in the Dave Attell relaunch of the Gong Show. Turns out diabetes took both his legs.
ReplyDelete:( Dance on, Gene. Godspeed.
(Without using the google, name Gene's song.)
Never seen always sunny in Philadelphia before. That opening scene was the most horribly/awesomely awkward first 2 minutes I ever seen
ReplyDeleteI think the latter is the most important point. it doesn't seem unlikely that three hours of Nitro would have worked with their gigantic roster. but having all those shows was just too much.
ReplyDeleteAlso, As someone who was one at the time, I find calling wrestlers "Punk" and "Grunge" is the lamest shit ever
ReplyDeleteWhat episode?
ReplyDeleteThe very first. The Gang gets a little bit racist
ReplyDeleteI'm still working my way through..currently on season 4..personally didn't like season 1, season 2 is awesome tho
ReplyDeleteI would say it gets about 100,000,000 times more horrible/awesomely awkward as the series goes on
ReplyDeleteSeason 1 sucks a bag of dicks.
ReplyDeleteSeason 1 was solid, but they were still finding their feet with it. Once they added Danny DeVito it really started to take off.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting a lot of Deja Vu on mine. We'll be watching for a while then suddenly it'll jump back a few minutes, then suddenly catch up with where it should be.
ReplyDeleteYou beat Maxx, I think it was about **1/4.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest advantage Nitro had was it could throw a world title match on tv like it was nothing. They've already had about 20 title matches to air. Diesel, Bret and Shawn probably had a combined 2 at this point; however, I don't remember any of them.
ReplyDeleteIt gets a LOT more horrible and awesomely awkward. But that first episode is a perfect intro. That said, you will soon discover Charlie is the greatest character on any TV show, ever.
ReplyDeleteYeah, WCW had the talent. And Thunder was pretty good for a while. Problem was they should've booked it as the 'up and coming' show for mid-card feuds.
ReplyDeleteThese recaps keep on being awesome, and I can't commend you enough for giving Meng/Barby their due. The rating for their match here is spot on!
ReplyDeleteNetwork hasn't worked correctly for new 2 months now. They refuse to listen
ReplyDeleteNeeds more Hogan
ReplyDelete"Bischoff hypes up DDP’s return due to a mysterious benefactor, who was
ReplyDeleteobviously supposed to be Ted Dibiase before they came up with the nWo
role for him instead."
Actually, they probably could have done both with Dibiase's reason for helping DDP being early recruitment for the nWo. Pretend they planned ahead that far! Hydra would have. :)
Frank is such a perfect fit it's hard to imagine the show without him. EVERYTHING just went insane with him aboard.
ReplyDeleteWhich is funny, because of how hardcore and EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEME ECW appeared at the time. PWI also treated these guys like they were these insane renegades. I thought they must have been AWESOME. Then I actually saw them wrestle.
ReplyDeleteThe Jersey Shore episode with the montage set to "Vacation" by The Go-Gos is epic. My favorite episode.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and WCW's roster could support 2 hours easily with various styles- Cruisers, Tag Teams, Brawls, etc. One of my favourite parts of WCW was the weird stuff in the undercard where you'd see a pretty-boy German dancer fighting a Samoan Savage or something.
ReplyDeleteNetwork has been running perfect on Apple TV.
ReplyDeleteMaybe try another DNS service. I used to unblockUS and had no end of issue with them to the point they cut my connection speed in half. I went to Getflix and have had zero issue for nearly a year. They offer a two week trial for free. At least maybe try another service to eliminate if unblockUS is at fault or not.
Charlie drinking actual sun tan lotion and Dee/Dennis high as shit involved with those criminals are God-tier moments.
ReplyDeleteDecember 89 Flair and Rotunda had a good world title match on NWA Pro, bit of a lost classic
ReplyDeleteepisode where Devito decides to become a pro wrestler called The Garbage Man "I'll come out, and I'll eat garbage!"
ReplyDeleteI was afraid I imagined those. I feel better knowing they really happened.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I absolutely thought it was Kimberly.
"That's not magical! That's not love! That's two homeless guys banging!"
ReplyDeleteAnd his 'magical' night.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, it is any lamer than "Hawk" or "Animal," really?
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty cruel of life, taking the legs of someone who was a "dancing machine." Not cool.
ReplyDeleteJust like Bonny Heenan getting throat cancer.
ReplyDeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteI watched the first two.
ReplyDeleteThe went for abortion jokes in their SECOND episode.
10/10 great show.
It gets better. And more offensive.
ReplyDeleteGun Fever? Charlie Has Cancer? Charlie Got Molested? These are not bag of dick sucking episodes Macklin
ReplyDeleteThe debut of Davey Boy Smith, the return of "Nature Boy" Ric Flair, and Vader-Sting all in one show? Oh yeah!
ReplyDeleteI don't actually even need the DNS for the Network now and just keep it for Netflix and Hulu at this point.
ReplyDeleteHey, it was Maxx. I did the best I could.
ReplyDeleteIt's cool, I think C F-B gave you match of the night.
ReplyDeleteI dislike pretty much all of Season 1. It felt like they just put on a blindfold and threw darts at controversial topics they could do an episode about in order to be edgy.
ReplyDeleteRacism! Abortion! Child molestation!
Okay, Charlie Got Molested was good.
Hydra never plans ahead. It's why they are a piss poor terror group not fit to lick Cobra's collective boots.
ReplyDeleteHell, in the comics, Hydra could not even plan ahead enough to see that their infiltration of SHIELD was part of a ploy by an LMD version of Nick Fury to infiltrate Hydra for fuck's sake......
ReplyDeleteI'd watched the show since the beginning but I know a lot of people are OK with skipping straight to season two to start.
ReplyDeleteSeason one has several episodes (with the molestation episode being the high point of season one) that need to be watched for continuity reasons as far as setting up running gags for the rest the series but the characters have not yet found themselves. In particular, Charlie is relatively normal if not pathetic in season one, Dee is pretty much the voice of reason as opposed to being just as degenerate as the rest of the cast, Dennis is not a full-on sociopath/serial killer fetishist, and Mac is not the modern day version of Ted Baxter, super-fraud.
Yeah, the Jersey Shore episode is an all time classic, especially with the teasing of Charlie/The Waitress and the way the episode slowly but surely has Dennis and Dee's childhood nostalgia fundamentally crushed by reality. The scene in the ER is one of my all time Sunny monologues.....
ReplyDeleteI've read that the entire Waitress subplot (and the later one where Charlie seduces and dumps a wealthy girl who was in love with him just to make the Waitress jealous) was the writers basically trying to shut up people who kept wanting the two to get together.
ReplyDeleteCharlie Got Molested is the high point of the first season.
ReplyDeleteYeah the last of those sketches had a woman wearing an evening gown glove beckoning DDP into her limo with only her gloved hand shown on video. And IIRC they eventually flat out said it was Kimberly, a year later when she was brought back on screen
ReplyDeleteNo sir
ReplyDeleteI have a kindle fire and no issues
ReplyDeletePretty much.
ReplyDeleteIt's awesome that Frank joining the group is when things go to shit for everyone. They all degenerate each year because of this insane rich guy who funds all their stupid schemes.
How old are you boy?
ReplyDelete