Mike Reviews WCW — page 4

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Last week I reviewed WCW Halloween Havoc 2000, which is a pretty awful show, so I decided to review a Halloween Havoc show that has the capacity to be a bit more fun in the form of the 1991 offering. The Main Event on this one is Lex Luger Vs Ron Simmons, but we’ve also got some interesting matches on the undercard, including Terry Taylor and Bobby Eaton going at it during Bobby’s brief babyface singles run.

Greetings Friends!

Another Nitro review today, as we cover one of Lex Luger’s greatest moments.

WCW was riding high during the summer of 1997, with the New World Order storyline continuing to be a hot hand for them, with a big Hollywood Hogan Vs Sting match still on the horizon for when they decided to pull the trigger on it.

It wasn’t just Sting gunning for Hogan though, as Lex Luger had been looking for a Title shot with The Woodster for most of the summer and he was due to finally get it on a 3 hour special of Nitro (Nitro hadn’t made the permanent move to 3 hours yet).

Interestingly this show was due to take place at The Palace of Auburn Hills, which was the site of one of Luger’s most infamous “chokes”, where he had failed to win the WWF Title from Yokozuna but still celebrated like he had, thus looking like a chump in the process.

Would he be able to shed the “choker” label for one night? Let’s watch on and find out!

Hey Yo!

I decided to review this episode of because we’re a few days away from it being 23 years since Goldberg won the WCW Title (Spoiler) so why not go back and watch the entire show? This was a big night for WCW in the ratings, as hot shotting a Hogan Vs Goldberg match for the Title ended up ensuring Nitro won the ratings battle for the night quite easily. Of course, they’d also given away a sure fire money match that might have potentially destroyed their previous biggest buy rate, but if they’d held it off till a pay per view then Eric Bischoff couldn’t proudly declare that he won a single night of the ratings war, and that just wouldn’t do would it?

Hello You

The Summer of 96 reviews continue, as we look at WCW’s most memorable effort of that Summer in the form of Bash at the Beach 1996. If I were Scott I’d now make a joke that the show was so memorable because it had Joe Gomez on it, but sadly Scott has beaten me to that veritable goldmine so I’ll have to just persevere with posting obscure references to British comedy shows.

Anyway, the real reason this show is so well known is because it featured a gigantic SWERVE in the Main Event that helped turn WCW around from being in a distant second place to the WWF all the way to being the top dog in American Wrestling.

Kevin Nash and Scott Hall decided to leave the WWF and take up Eric Bischoff’s offer of some cushy WCW deals. Rather than just bring them in like they were new guys though, Bischoff instead decided that no one would buy that because Nash and Hall had been such prominent members of the WWF’s upper-card for the past couple of years.

Thus, rather than ignoring all of that WWF backstory, WCW decided to just acknowledge that these two guys were big stars in the WWF and now they’d come to WCW to try and have their run of the place. This allowed WCW to present Nash and Hall almost as an invading force, which combined with the fact they started kicking some monumental arse got them instantly over as a dangerous Heel threat.

Bash at the Beach was to be their first official in-ring match in WCW since returning, and they had an ace up their sleeve in the form of a mystery third man that they promised they would reveal at the show itself. As a result of the (frankly excellent) storytelling going on each week on Nitro, WCW had a lot of interest going into The Bash. The question was, would they deliver a mystery third man worth talking about?

Let’s watch on and find out!

Hello You!

I haven’t watched this one in a while and I’ve always enjoyed it, so I decided to make it the show I review this week. I’m actually watching the UK version of the Turner Home Entertainment official VHS result for this one as opposed to the WWE Network version.

The main reasons I’m watching this version of the show are that it’s shorter, it doesn’t dub out some of the music (meaning we get “The Chase” for the Midnight Express’ entrance) and (at the time of writing this) the WWE has done a pretty lousy job with the move over to Peacock so, even though we still get the full version of the Network over here in the UK, the whole situation has left me with a bit of a sour taste so I’ve been on a bit of a physical media kick as a result.

Plus, I finally got a replacement remote for my VCR, so reviewing just became a lot more convenient as I don’t have to keep getting up to pause/rewind the tape on the actual VCR itself. There’s also that additional nostalgia factor of sitting down and watching a tape on a real VCR that takes me back to watching my wrestling tapes as a kid that I kind of like. I obviously won’t be swearing off The Network forever or anything, but right now I’m enjoying a bit of a blast from the past.

This show took place in the May of 1990, with current top babyface Sting out on the shelf with a knee injury due to a botched spot where he tried to climb a cage to get at The Horsemen. As a result of not really having any challengers for World Champ Ric Flair, Lex Luger was turned back babyface to feud with him. Of course this presented some additional issues for WCW, because Flair had given Sting his word that he’d be getting the belt from him once he was healthy, which meant Luger wouldn’t be getting it in this feud. Luger had failed multiple times in the past to defeat Flair for the Title though, so yet another failure wasn’t exactly going to do wonders for his “choker” image.

For this show they did at least give Luger a bit of an out by having him sell a leg injury, with the story being that he shouldn’t really be competing in the match but he was going to do it anyway because he was so gosh darn brave. You’d think that a stoppage finish where Luger’s leg went out and the referee ended it rather than Luger having to quit himself would be the most likely ending to the match seeing as it would be a way for him to lose without looking weak due to the match being in a cage, but WCW had other ideas (Oh my DID they!).

WCW had also been saddled with having to bring in RoboCop onto the show as RoboCop 2 was due to hit cinemas. Thus they had to pretend that RoboCop was an actual real super cop and not just some dude in a costume, which was overly silly even for something like wrestling. They couldn’t even get Peter Weller in to do it either, so it really is just a random bloke in the costume!

Hello You!

I was a bit rough on ol’ WCW a couple of weeks back in a Stinker Review, so I thought I’d redress the balance a bit and review one of their notable good shows in the form of Spring Stampede 99. WCW actually had a relatively solid start to 99 pay per view wise, with Souled Out, SuperBrawl IX and Uncensored all featuring some good wrestling, even if some of the booking was pretty head scratching.

For instance, WCW decided to close Uncensored with Ric Flair winning the World Title and the Presidency of the company (something most of the fans would likely be cool with) but also had him go heel in the process. This was mostly down to Flair himself pushing hard for the heel turn as he felt he did his best work that way, but it was still an odd way to take the storyline, especially as Flair had been so beloved since his return in the autumn of 98 and having a babyface authority figure was a nice change of pace after yonks of having a heel one in the form of Eric Bischoff.

Thus not only did Flair go heel but so did his Horsemen cohorts of Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and Arn Anderson, which certainly improved the tag division at least but also kind of felt weird too as they’d just done a big babyface quest for the belts and finally won them at Uncensored, only to now go heel. This did lead to a feud between The Horsemen and Raven/Saturn though, which led to a series of great matches and got even better once Rey Mysterio Jr and Kidman were added to the mix.

Flair’s first pay per view Title defence was to be at Spring Stampede, as he’d defend the belt in a four way against freshly face turned Hogan as well as Sting and Diamond Dallas Page. Meanwhile, the big feud on the under card was Goldberg trying to avenge his Starrcade loss to Kevin Nash, which was at least a story the fans could get their teeth into. Combined with what looked to be a solid under card from a wrestling perspective, Spring Stampede promised to be a really good show, but could WCW deliver on the night?

Let’s watch on and find out!

Hello You!

Last week we had a look at an episode of WWF Monday Night Raw from March 1997, so this week why don’t we have a look at the other show in town to see what WCW was up to during this period? I’ve actually watched this show quite a bit as I had it on bootleg DVD in the pre-Network days (Getting WCW pay per views in the UK was a nightmare for a long period as the official releases were super hard to track down. Thankfully Extreme Central UK in Manchester had this one for sale) and thus used to dip into it quite a bit.

WCW was easily atop the American Wrestling Mountain in 97 owing to the hot New World Order storyline, fantastic wrestling in the mid-card and the fact the WWF kept bungling any real attempt at a fight back. Of course eventually the New World Order would outstay their welcome, the great wrestlers in the mid-card would never get out of the mid-card and the WWF would stumble across the hottest feud in wrestling with Stone Cold Vs Mr. McMahon, but until then WCW was the undisputed king of Yank Grappling.

Uncensored was traditionally the WCW show where they threw stuff at the wall to see what would stick, with the “non-sanctioned” motif allowing them to book some slightly more out there matches than they would on other events (Such as the cage match debacle from the 1996 event). In keeping with that theme, the Main Event of this show is a big battle royal where WCW takes on both the nWo and The Horsemen. Originally The Horsemen team was supposed to be Roddy Piper and a slew of random guys, but that died a death in the ratings so Piper just recruited The Horsemen instead.

There isn’t really much in the way of big marquee bouts besides that one, with Rey Mysterio Jr actually finding himself in the Semi-Main, which was super rare back during this time period. However, if memory serves there are a couple of really good bouts on the under card and there’s a BIG angle to close out the show, so there should be plenty for us to get our teeth into!

Hello You!

It’s another Stinker review next week, so as is usually the case I’ve decided to watch a show I actually like this week because I sometimes deserve nice things too!

WCW was still a distant second to the WWF when this show took place, but they had a few things going for them that might have led to a concerted revival in their fortunes. Firstly, Bill Watts’ reign of terror had finally come to an end after his big mouth had written a racist cheque that Turner wasn’t prepared to cash, so they would be permitted to present a more modern product again. Secondly, Ric Flair was returning to WCW after a stint in the WWF, which would hopefully give the company a much needed shot in the arm. Thirdly, British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith had climbed aboard the WCW ship after being booted out of the WWF for a supposed drug failure, meaning that WCW could grab themselves a stronger foothold in Europe, which had become a lucrative territory for the WWF in recent years.

Of course, the new management brought with them a slew of additional issues and it took Flair stepping up and bailing the company out at Starrcade later that year for WCW to see out 1993 in one piece, which led to them bringing in Hulk Hogan to the company in 1994. However, for their first pay per view effort of 1993, WCW more than delivered.

The Main Event for this show is a strap match between Vader and Sting (Set up by Sting visiting Vader in his White Castle of Fear. No, I’m not kidding) along with The Great Muta flying in to defend the NWA Title against Barry Windham. In addition to that we’ve got The Heavenly Bodies and Rock ‘n’ Roll Express paying WCW a visit from Smokey Mountain Wrestling in one of the last deals that Watts brokered before his run came to an end.

So without further ado, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I decided that, seeing as I’ve got a Stinker Review looming on the 30th of January, I’d review two shows I actually like this week and next week just to redress the balance in the universe. Thus this week I’m doing this show and next week I’ll be doing WWF Royal Rumble 2002, so look out for that one next Saturday!

This was a show from the tail end of WCW’s Era of dominance in the western wrestling market, as we were less than a month removed from Hollywood Hogan making poor Sting look like an absolute chump in the Main Event of the biggest show the company would ever present.

That show had ended with Sting “winning” the WCW Title, but a good old fashioned Dusty Finish™ saw the belt held up, with that situation supposedly meant to be settled on this show. Ah yes, I’m sure we can all rely on WCW to deliver on a promise can’t we?

Souled Out had originally been designed as an nWo event, where the WCW guys would show up and get battered. However, that show had been a disaster, so this year it’s just a regularly co-branded pay per view event.

The big draw for the show was the first big pay per view bout between Bret Hart and Ric Flair. The two had of course met for the WWF Title numerous times during Flair’s brief WWF stint, but those had mostly been on non-televised events and they’d never met in a pay per view setting. There was also a match scheduled between Randy Savage and Lex Luger, but COME ON, everyone was here for Hart Vs Flair, with Kevin Nash and Giant having the most hyped match on the under card.

Hello You!

We have finally reached the end of Mike Reviews Main Events, with NWA/WCW Starrcade being how I’m set to bow out. I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read these ever since I started doing them earlier in the year. It’s kind of amazing that we’ve reached the end, and I have to say I’m a little bit relieved as it looked like a daunting prospect at first.

Starrcade was traditionally WCW’s biggest event of the year (Although you wouldn’t think that considering how they booked it sometimes) and in the earlier days especially it produced some of the best matches in the company’s history.

Originally held in the Carolina’s and Georgia (Two strongholds for Jim Crockett Promotions) WCW eventually took Starrcade on the road starting in 1987, with the 87 event being the catalyst for Vince McMahon to create the Survivor Series out of pure spite. The latter events in places like Nashville and Washington never really lived up to the great ones in Greensboro and Atlanta, but Starrcade still remained a focal point of the WCW promotion, even into the nWo era of the company.

This week we’ll be covering 1995 to 2000

Hello You!

We have finally reached the end of Mike Reviews Main Events, with NWA/WCW Starrcade being how I’m set to bow out. I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read these ever since I started doing them earlier in the year. It’s kind of amazing that we’ve reached the end, and I have to say I’m a little bit relieved as it looked like a daunting prospect at first.

Starrcade was traditionally WCW’s biggest event of the year (Although you wouldn’t think that considering how they booked it sometimes) and in the earlier days especially it produced some of the best matches in the company’s history.

Originally held in the Carolina’s and Georgia (Two strongholds for Jim Crockett Promotions) WCW eventually took Starrcade on the road starting in 1987, with the 87 event being the catalyst for Vince McMahon to create the Survivor Series out of pure spite. The latter events in places like Nashville and Washington never really lived up to the great ones in Greensboro and Atlanta, but Starrcade still remained a focal point of the WCW promotion, even into the nWo era of the company.

This week we’ll be covering 1989 to 1994

Hello You!

We have finally reached the end of Mike Reviews Main Events, with NWA/WCW Starrcade being how I’m set to bow out. I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read these ever since I started doing them earlier in the year. It’s kind of amazing that we’ve reached the end, and I have to say I’m a little bit relieved as it looked like a daunting prospect at first.

Starrcade was traditionally WCW’s biggest event of the year (Although you wouldn’t think that considering how they booked it sometimes) and in the earlier days especially it produced some of the best matches in the company’s history.

Originally held in the Carolina’s and Georgia (Two strongholds for Jim Crockett Promotions) WCW eventually took Starrcade on the road starting in 1987, with the 87 event being the catalyst for Vince McMahon to create the Survivor Series out of pure spite. The latter events in places like Nashville and Washington never really lived up to the great ones in Greensboro and Atlanta, but Starrcade still remained a focal point of the WCW promotion, even into the nWo era of the company.

This week we’ll be covering 1983 to 1988

Hello You!

Urgh, Road Wild

I have never really enjoyed this event, even though the visual of them setting up a ring in the middle of a biker rally always looked cool. The atmosphere on the shows was inconsistent to say the least and some of the work was below standard as the wrestlers just wanted to get in and get out without drunken bikers throwing rocks at them.

I’m not overly optimistic at the thought of watching these, but who knows, maybe some of them will have gotten better with age?

Let’s tentatively watch some chuffing wrestling

(This one has been pending for nearly a week, which was before everything kicked off on the UK wrestling scene. Obviously I stand with the victims, some of whom I actually know personally, and remain horrified by every new story that comes out)

Hello You!

We’ve got Summer Slam on the horizon and that one is probably going to take over a month to get covered, so I’m doing a bumper edition review for all of the Beach Blast and Bash at the Beach shows.

Bash at the Beach is notable for the frankly ridiculous amount of tag matches that it has in Main Event slots. Indeed, all but three of the Main Events here are tag bouts. I’d like to say that this would be a good review for fans of tag wrestling as a result, but when you see some of these tag team combinations you might choose to disagree.

For the first two years of its existence this event was called Beach Blast, which is a name I prefer actually, but they went with a new name in 1994 and it stuck for the rest of company’s lifetime.

Let’s all grab our inflatables and suntan lotion as we head to the sand and sea for some wrestling action!

Hello You!

Let’s close out Great American Bash. Sadly I don’t expect the overall match quality to be as good in this one as it was in Part One, mainly because we’re now moving into the Bischoff Era, where WCW’s trademark essentially became hot under cards with Main Events that couldn’t live up to what came before them.

The Bash actually took a break from 1992 to 1995, so there are no 93 and 94 Bash events. I’m not sure why they decided to get rid of it, especially as it had traditionally been such a big event for the company prior to it getting side-lined.

Anyway, less chatter, more chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Time for some more Main Event reviews, as we look at WCW’s Great American Bash Event. For simplicities sake, I’m just going to count the official pay per view events, as otherwise we’d be here for a long time due to The Bash being a big tour prior to it becoming an official pay per view. I’m also not going to cover WWE’s version of the event, because I never really enjoyed those ones and I’m not really that eager to relive them.

Anyway, there’s chuffing wrestling, so we should watch it!

Hello You!

More Main Events this week, as we look at one of WCW’s B shows in the form of Slamboree. Slamboree was never really an event treated with much gravitas by WCW and the show didn’t have a particular personality to it outside of its first three years. During those first three events WCW would use the show as an opportunity to induct people into its Hall of Fame and also have the odd legends bout here and there. The shows always felt a tad more laid back than other events in the WCW calendar, but the HOF and legends matches at least gave them something unique to hang their hat on. Once those legends matches were gone, Slamboree quickly became “just a show”, and it was often an event you could choose to miss during the hot period of 96 to 98.

Still, from my memory at least a couple of these matches are good, so that’s something to look forward to at least!

That’s enough chatter from me though. Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Thanks to all who read my ambitious attempt to review Every WrestleMania Main Event. Seeing as crowdless shows just can’t entice me, I’ve decided to go back to the retro well to find some stuff to review. I’ll still keep my reviews of ECW Hardcore TV from 2000 ticking away, but I’ll also try to keep up these Main Event reviews every weekend as well.

Today we’re looking at the event that was traditionally WCW’s April offering (If you ignore the two years when they didn’t have it for whatever reason) in the form of Spring Stampede. I decided to pick this one as there are only five Spring Stampede Main Events, so I can easily stick them all in to one article. I’ll probably attempt this with Backlash at some stage as well, though I’ll need to break that one up into smaller bitesize chunks as there’s been quite a few more Backlash events than there has been Spring Stampede one’s.

Anyway, I hope you’re all keeping safe and this provides a bit of a distraction from the pandemic.

Right, that’s enough chatter, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Back again with some NWA/WCW stuff (I’m not exactly sure what Turner’s company was called at this time and Wikipedia isn’t especially that helpful either as it lists both groups as hosting the event. The box art for the VHS release says WCW, but that might have been added in after the fact). Seeing as we’re creeping ever closer to December I decided I’d have a look at a show that I’ve never seen in full before with Starrcade 1989.

I remember watching the Turner Home Video cut of the show many moons back, but that featured a lot of clipped matches so that they could trim it down to fit onto the tape. However, thanks to the miracle of the WWE Network, I can now watch the near 3 hour show in its entirety.

Whether that’s a good idea or not is yet to be seen, as this Starrcade fell into the dreaded category of “concept show” (Which is something that happened quite a lot with Starrcade actually now I think about it. It’s strange how they did that so often with their biggest gala event instead of just promoting some big matches that fans cared about and then delivering them) with the concept being Round Robin tournaments for both the singles and tag divisions.

Of course the tag section is immediately weakened by not having The Midnight Express in it, with Jim Cornette relegated to commentary of all things, but the singles tournament features four genuine stars in the form of Ric Flair, Lex Luger, Sting and The Great Muta. It’s hard to think that having those four guys all working with one another couldn’t produce at least a couple of good matches.

I actually did this the old fashioned way by watching the show with an actual notepad and pencil before going away and typing it up later. Of course hand writing stuff takes a bit longer than typing so if I miss something pertinent it might be because I was busy scribbling something down, so apologies in advance if that should it happen.

I hope everyone has had a pleasant holiday season. Sadly for me, severe asthma and a gnarly cold saw me taking a brief trip to the hospital due to breathing difficulties. Thankfully they didn’t have to keep me in overnight and sent me on my way with a new inhaler and some steroids (No, I haven’t leant any of them out to Jon Jones)

Unfortunately I’m still suffering with a terrible wheezy chest and a mother grabber of a cough, which is pretty much stopping me from sleeping, so I’ve been spending most of my nights watching WWE Network until I pass out from exhaustion. I decided to start work on Six of the Best for the WCW Souled Out pay per view (Spoiler; 1998’s event will feature heavily) and whilst skimming the 2000 show I decided to recap it.

For those unaware, WCW was in the midst of one of its many periods of dysfunction in January 2000. Head writer Vince Russo had been writing some pretty horrible television and pay per view buy rates were crashing, so then WCW head honcho Bill Busch decided to make Russo part of a committee instead. Russo wasn’t having that however, so decided to go home. Meanwhile, Bret Hart and Jeff Jarrett both dropped out of the show due to concussions, so a large chunk of the card had to be rewritten on the fly, which led to a WCW Title match between Sid Vicious and Chris Benoit hastily being put together.

Another issue loomed on the horizon however, as the man scheduled to replace Russo was Kevin Sullivan, a man who was hated by Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Shane Douglas, Billy Kidman, Rey Mysterio Jr and Konnan. Indeed, he was hated so much by this crew that they actively threatened to quit the company if he acquired the role. This was mostly due to them thinking he’d held them all down during his previous stint as booker. Despite all of this, WCW still booked Benoit in the main event of this show, even though he was liable to leave at any moment. Now that’s some classic WCWing if I ever saw it!

Could WCW still find a way to put on an enjoyable pay per view event despite all of this madness? Let’s read on and find out!