WCW Worldwide 01/22/00

WCW Worldwide 01/22/00 – The One After Souled Out

Previously on WCW Worldwide…

Recorded 01/19/00
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA
Show Me Center
Attendance: 1,218

We start with Bobby Heenan arguing with the makeup lady who is struggling to keep it together. A producer tells Heenan that Tony told him to show up “if he wants to get paid.”

We cut to the set as Tony is by himself but with a loaded desk of props after the lads complained about having nothing last week. Maybe Bobby meant Tony.

Tony promises to talk about Souled Out next week. What? Tony says that Terry Funk may not be Commissioner by the time you’re watching this. How the hell did WCW produce this show and why was it a week behind on everything?

Nitro starts with Terry joining up with Arn Anderson, Larry Zbyszko and Paul Orndorff to form The Old Age Outlaws. I can’t tell if Funk ad-libbed that or Russo felt the need to remind people of the successful WWF gimmicks he contributed to. Anyway, they cut out the bit where the crowd laughed at the name.

Funk talks about Jarrett being in Triple Threat Theatre on the PPV so Funk is putting him in three matches tonight. Again, this aired after Souled Out so we already know Jeff is kaput because of this. This segment is chopped to hell but it’s for the best as Funk rambled like my Nana talking about the last episode of Emmerdale.

Jarrett’s first foe is George ‘The Animal’ Steele who gets a giant pop as he eats a turnbuckle pad. Jeff hits him with a guitar so Arn spinebusters Jeff, and Special Guest Referee Chris Benoit fast-counts him. Why do all that for that?

Jarrett faces Tito Santana, with Orndorff delivering a sweet piledriver to assist Tito with the same finish as above.

And then Jarrett takes a splash off the top of the cage from 56 year old Snuka, and Air Canada from healthy & sane Benoit.

Jimmy Snuka & Chris Benoit dive off the cage
byu/whitetrashlucha inSquaredCircle

A reminder that the heel in that match didn’t murder anyone.

Crowd was really into these legends appearing but I have no idea how this helped anyone. I know Funk is feuding with the nWo, but beating Jarrett three times on Nitro to get him ready for three matches on PPV doesn’t make sense to me, especially as U.S. champ.

Anyway he’s currently dead after that splash/headbutt combo:

Things were compounded when Jeff Jarrett contacted the company on Friday saying he also had a concussion, stemming from taking the splash off the cage from Jimmy Snuka the previous Monday (Jarrett also wrestled the day after the concussion, working a tag team match on Thunder), and had water on the brain and wouldn’t be able to wrestle in his scheduled three matches against Chris Benoit.

Tony and Heenan bicker (thankfully back to having chemistry) about Bobby not showing up to work. Basing an episode around one of the stars not appearing on the week of Souled Out is brave. Heenan isn’t happy with being supplied a Wile E. Coyote cup but slurps from it to annoy Tony.

Tony is drinking from a THQ cup, which is funny as they haven’t worked with WCW in over a year and they’re currently selling WWF Wrestlemania 2000. Electronic Arts are the ones making WCW Mayhem.

This amazing attention to detail is why WCW will never leave our hearts.

On Nitro, Bret Hart and Kevin Nash were arguing about being booked to wrestle each other by Funk. They do it anyway and it doesn’t matter as Arn hits Nash with a steel pipe, Sid kicks a chair into Bret’s head (oh no) before dropping him with a Powerbomb (oh no) and ‘pinning’ him in a no-contest. So on Thunder, a miserable Bret announces he’s left the nWo because of Nash. Nash vows to murder Bret, so the nWo burn his tights in a bin while torturing him backstage throughout the whole episode.

Bret ends up in the ring against the nWo with Anderson throwing a bucket of water on Bret to show he’s faking his bruises… but they don’t wash off, so when Bret attacks Arn the crowd cheer because it looks like Arn is being a dick for no reason.

Bret thankfully removes his shirt to show he is still in nWo so the crowd start booing him because he was pretending to be tortured so he could lure The Old Age Outlaws into a trap that they didn’t fall for. Tenay calls them “the New Age Outlaws” as everyone brawls.

We move onto something non-nWo: DDP beefing with Buff Bagwell.

Mean Gene interviewed Kimberley Page at her home about whether or not she slept with someone who wasn’t DDP. Kimberley is grand in her role as being less than honest and declining to 100% say if she did or didn’t really helped this dumb feud work for the brief time it lasted because DDP was VERY believable in his actions when Kimberley was acting like this, telling people to mind their own business while playing with her hair. Easily the best actress in the company.

Bret Hart tells kids not to wrestle at home. Bret and his brothers were wrestling Terrible Ted when they were kids, shut up hypocrite. I read your book.

Trailer for Scream 3 airs, making David Arquette look like a big deal. Yeah, give it a few months.

Tony reads WCW Magazine and criticizes Bobby’s article. “Who invented the PC? Don’t ask DDP or Kimberley Page, they’re struggling to turn it on.” That’s pretty good actually. Tony no-sells it.

Bobby pulls the magazine away and starts to hype “WW…WCW” with Tony making fun of his slip. “I’ll tell you in a minute!”

Chuck Palumbo vs. Rick Cornell

The future Reno! And uh the current Chuck wearing leopard print tights like he’s Rio, Lord Of The Jungle.

The Natural Born Thrillers implode, right here on Worldwide. Rick sticks to the basics and looks half the size as we’d see him later on. Chuck’s leap frog is crazy high, as is his dropkick. J.R. probably loved this dude. Mike Tenay promises Tony he’ll bring him a Mike Tenay mug. Meanwhile Chuck dropkicks Reno in the mug and off the top rope. Rick gets the advantage as he walks into the ring anyway as crowd are non-existent for this. Decent Double Underhook takes us to break.

Wait, a commercial break during a Worldwide match? I thought they were using it to cut something horrible out of the match but Reno is still on offence when we come back. His offence is not convincing or interesting. Chuck just about manages a “modified” hip toss so these guys start slugging it out before Rick delivers a release Fisherman’s Suplex. Not seen many of them, did he not know he had to hold on? Rick’s top rope fist bump misses by a mile allowing Chuck to land a maaaaaassive shoulderblock off the top to win at 6:46.

Winner: Chuck Palumbo (Nothing, long-ass match but the last minute was nice.)

Bobby laments having a dopey cup instead of dignity. Tony promises he’ll have a proper mug next week as well as knowing what happened during Souled Out.

Once they read the results, Bobby will need to fill that fucker up with Everclear to make it through the episode.

Turns: Scott Steiner to nWo, David Flair turning on Arn Anderson.

Title Changes: Vacant Tag Titles won by David Flair & Crowbar.

Men On Women Violence: nWo 2000 kidnapping Daffney, Stevie vs. Midnight.

A correction regarding WCW Saturday Night this past week and the card. They actually do voice-overs of the show either on Friday nights or Saturday mornings, or on alternate weeks, on Friday mornings. The 1/15 show had the voice-overs done on the morning of 1/14. While WCW management was aware at that point that Hart wasn’t going to be on the show (and in fact, we had pretty well confirmed it the previous day on Wrestling Observer Live), because of lack of communication, production wasn’t aware of it nor was anyone involved in doing the show, since, I guess, the world champion and PPV headliner not being on the PPV show that the TV show is directly hyping just isn’t a very important bit of high priority news these days in WCW. The company at the time of the voice-overs was also not yet aware of Jarrett not being able to do the show. By the time the taping was over, they were aware of Hart’s injury but not Jarrett’s. There was talk of revoicing certain segments to reflect that, to announce Hart not being there and leave the main event and Sid’s opponent in doubt, which was an accurate reflection of how things were at that moment. In just about his final decision, it came to Russo, who decided against doing the revoicing of the segments to announce Hart not being there, deciding it would be enough to make the announcement on the internet and doing the pre-game show live. It was yet another example of Russo booking for a minute portion of his audience

While WCW was honest to the hardcore fans on the web, the same can’t be said toward the masses. WCW Saturday Night has the voice-overs taped late Friday. On the show that aired on 1/15, they were still advertising and heavily pushing the original card, with Hart vs. Vicious and the three Benoit vs. Jarrett matches, despite the company having knowledge none of those matches would be taking place.

Overall: This feels like a mistake.

I’ve been Maffew