Mike Reviews WCW — page 5

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!

I thought I might as well get another World War 3 in as November 2018 croaks its last breath, so here it is. I also think it’s important to expose just show bad this show is, because it never seems to get the “credit” it deserves in that regard. (I love how the poster, the thing designed to sell the show to you, shows two guys in a chin lock by the way. That was the most exciting picture they could dig up was it?)

Seeing as I’ve just finished Six of the Best for this event, I decided I’d go back and watch this one as there’s some pretty decent matches on it and the main events of these shows are usually at least somewhat interesting, even if that interest has a somewhat car crash quality to it.

Let’s venture onward and see what we find!