The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 12.16.96
Live from Pensacola, FL
HOUR #1!
Your hosts are Tony & Larry…hold on, it’s actually Eric Bischoff & Ted Dibiase, who kick them out of the announce position to start the show.
Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!
We’ve got an infamously awful show for you this time, in the form of WCW Fall Brawl 1998, a show Main Evented by a monstrous War Games match that almost saw Eric Bischoff called to The Hague to face formal charges. The rest of the show isn’t up to much either, with quite a few bad matches and WCW’s favourite trope; the bait and switch.
Howver, I’ll be doing my level best to give Fall Brawl 1998 a fair chance though. Who knows, maybe it isn’t quite as uniformly terrible as people say? There are a couple of matches on here that look like that might be close to being watchable, and there is at least one fantastic bout on the undercard that I’m looking forward to seeing.
If you’d like to view the full card for Fall Brawl 1998 then you can click the link below;
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
Back with another Video Game review, as we build on the review of WCW Vs nWo World Tour last week by taking a look at the games sequel. A one line review for WCW/nWo Revenge would mostly be, “It’s the first game but better”, but I go into a bit more detail below. I also go on a bit of a rant about WCW itself at one stage, as you do I guess. You can find more stuff like this over at Gaming Respawn if you like it when I witter about Video Games.
The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 12.09.96
(HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: As we hit 1997, I actually don’t have the first 5 episodes of Nitro done as standalone episodes, only as a part of the “Monday Night War” show on WWE 24/7. So we’ll be getting some fresh rants of those once we get there again and you have that to look forward to.)
Live from Charlotte, NC, drawing 6400.
Your hosts are Tony and Larry.
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
I hope you’re enjoying these Video Game reviews. More can be found over at Gaming Respawn, as well as articles on non-wrestling games as well. This week we’ll have a look at WCW vs nWo: World Tour. I’ve actually written a bit more on top of what was originally there for this one, as I thought the original version ended quite abruptly without me talking much about the single player experience, so you get the directors cut this week I guess!
The SmarK Rant for WCW Worldwide – 01.16.93
Taped from Dothan, AL
Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & Jesse Ventura
The SmarK Rant for Clash of the Champions III – 09.07.88
“Fall Brawl”
Live from Albany, GA, drawing 3700 during a period when things were a tad uncertain for Jim Crockett, to say the least.
Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!
We return to WCW for this week’s Stinker Review, as we look at the last pay per view the company held before bringing back Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff in order to reboot things again. WCW was in a pretty lousy holding pattern at the time, with Kevin Sullivan and Kevin Nash handling most of the booking and putting on crummy shows. Uncensored 2000 was already fighting an uphill battle by having to go up against WrestleMania 2000 during one of the WWF’s all-time hot streaks, but WCW practically threw the towel in with this event.
The Main Event of Uncensored 2000 was supposedly Jeff Jarrett challenging Sid for the World Title, although we’ll see how that turns out. Elsewhere we’ve got Ric Flair taking on Hulk Hogan in a strap match, as well as Lex Luger battling Sting in a lumberjack match where everyone has a cast on their arm. In something like 1997 you might have drawn quite a bit of money with a line-up like that, but by 2000 WCW was ice cold and the show was lucky to scrape a 0.13 buy rate.
I actually owned the VHS of Uncensored 2000 back in the day, as it was one of the rare occasions that my mother actively encouraged me to buy a wrestling tape as there was some sort of offer on at Woolworths and she thought it was silly not to take advantage of it. She’s a bit odd like that. I remember thinking the show was pretty awful back in the day, but maybe it’s aged well?
You can view the card for Uncensored 2000 by clicking below;
The SmarK Rant for WCW Worldwide – 01.09.93
BREAKING NEWS! Big Van Vader has defeated Ron Simmons to regain the WCW World title on December 30!
Time for the 1992 YEAR IN REVIEW.
The SmarK Rant for Clash of the Champions II
“Miami Mayhem” – Original airdate 06.08.88
The recent email about Clash 20 made me think that maybe I should do like Saturday Night’s Main Event and go through a full redo of the specials so everything is fully up to date. Obviously I’ve done the first one a million times already, so let’s kick it off with #2. I reviewed this show many, many years ago and don’t remember anything about it, which makes it my favorite kind of redo.
The SmarK Rant for WCW Worldwide – 01.02.93
Let’s give Memphis a rest for a bit and get back into some WCW.
Taped from Louisville, KY
Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & Jesse Ventura
Happy Saturday Everyone!
We’ve got some Bill Watts Era WCW for you all today with Beach Blast 1992. Bill Watts’ stint running WCW is controversial due to him banning moves off the top rope and forcing the wrestlers to fight outside the ring with no mats to fall on, as well as an absolute gutting of the company’s production values.
However, as Beach Blast 1992 shows, WCW could still put on some fun matches during this time period, even if Watts seemed intent on kneecapping some of the more exciting wrestlers in order to push the kind of wrestling that he personally preferred.
This show has Rick Rude against Ricky Steamboat and Cactus Jack against Sting, so we’ve got two matches that are almost certain to be good before we even start. Let’s see how the rest of Beach Blast 1992 holds up.
You can view the card by clicking below;
Live from Daytona Beach, FL
Airdate: July 9, 2000
Attendance: 6,572 (4,447 paid)
Hosted by Tony Schiavone, Scott Hudson, & Mark Madden
Who’s the World champion? Does Russo have ANYTHING to say about it? It’s the rematch of the main event from Starrcade ’98! How will Goldberg fare? Can Kronic capture the World tag team titles? Grab your favorite refreshment and dig in some Daytona madness!
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
We’ve got another review of Thunder for you this week, as we take a look at Thunder #12. The reason I picked this episode was that it was apparently the most successful Thunder ever when it came to television ratings, with it drawing a 4.4 overall. Just imagine if a wrestling show got a rating that high today? It’d be front page news!
I think the big reason Thunder #12 drew such a good TV rating was because it had Hollywood Hogan in the Main Event, which I don’t think happened a lot around this time as Hogan was more a Nitro and pay per view guy, so him rocking up to work on a Thunder was actually kind of a big deal. Some of the undercard matches look like they might be fun as well, but that depends on how much time they get and how into the show the crowd are.
You can view the card for the event by clicking below;
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
We’ll stick with the random TV reviews theme we’ve had recently, by looking at an episode of WCW Saturday Night from 1994, which is has a 4 Star Main Event according to David Meltzer of the Wrestling Observations Newspaper. Okay, consider me intrigued!
You can view the card for the event by clicking below;
The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 11.25.96
Live from Salisbury, MD.
Your hosts are Tony & Larry
Happy Saturday Everyone!
I reviewed WWF In Your House 16 last week and decided to review some WCW this week. I went to CageMatch.net to find some highly rated shows and I noticed that this Nitro is very well regarded. So, let’s have a look at Nitro #43 and see how good it is. It’s happening the night after Bash at the Beach 1996 I believe.
You can view the card by clicking below;
Happy Saturday Everyone!
We reviewed a honking WCW show last week so let’s redress the balance by reviewing a better one with Bash at the Beach 1994. This is the event best known for being Hulk Hogan’s WCW pay per view debut against Ric Flair, but we’ve also got the likes of Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Vader and Steven Regal on the undercard, so there should be some good wrestling to enjoy.
You can view the card for the event by clicking below;
Let’s review Bash at the Beach 1994!
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
I decided to review this episode of Thunder from February 1999 as the Main Event intrigued me and apparently Juventud Guerrera has a ***+ match on the undercard according to Big Davey Meltz, which isn’t bad for an episode of Thunder.
You can view the card by clicking below;
Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!
We’ve got another Stinker Review for you today in the form of Great American Bash 1999. For those who aren’t familiar; a Stinker Review is a monthly feature where I look at a show with a bad reputation and decide if it’s deserving of the scorn it gets.
This is a show I actually watched quite a bit in my younger days as I had bootleg VHS copy of it. Even in my youth I thought Great American Bash 1999 was awful, but let’s see if time has been kind to it.
The big storyline coming in is that Randy Savage is even more psychotic than ever and is coming for Kevin Nash’s WCW World Title. On the under card we’ve got Ric Flair and Roddy Piper fighting over control of WCW whilst Sting is trying to win the World TV Title from Rick Steiner.
You can view the full card by clicking below;
Let’s review WCW Great American Bash 1999!
