WCW — page 4

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 03.09.90

It’s Wednesday night and I have no Dynamite and I’m very discombobulated by it. Enough that I’m using the word “discombobulated”.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 09.30.96

Live from Cleveland, OH

Your hosts are Tony & Larry, and we actually make it through the opening credits and fireworks without the feed dying, so that’s a big improvement as of late.  However, they’ve seemingly turned the streaming quality down about 15 notches to allow that.  But it’s a start.

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 03.02.90

It’s the show after WrestleWar 90! With a new look and everything!

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 02.23.90

My collection of this show appears to be missing the 02.16 episode for some reason.  I can only assume the hour was too POWERFUL.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 09.23.96

Live from somewhere, which turns out to be Birmingham, AL.

Your hosts are Tony & Larry

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 02.09.90

Taped from Cobb Country, GA

Your hosts are Jim Ross & Gordon Solie, since apparently Jim Cornette has lived up to his promise and quit the show after last week.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 09.16.96

Hopefully there’s not too much Hogan on this show so it doesn’t have to get awkward.  God help us if he’s interacting with Booker T.

Live from Asheville, NC

Your hosts are Tony & Larry

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 02.02.90

Your hosts are Jim Ross & Jim Cornette

Sadly the edit cuts off the location of the show this week, although Cornette still thinks it sucks.  Later we discover that it’s Greenville, SC.

The Booker T-Chris Benoit Best-of-Eight Series

DISCLAIMER: This article represents my point of view about a series of wrestling matches by two performers with tremendous ability in the ring. The article’s angle judges the art rather than the artist. I understand if you cannot separate the two, but I hope you will enjoy my critique nonetheless.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I’ve been meaning to give this show a full watch for a while now as it’s got some interesting matches on it and this event was always a big staple of WCW’s summer pay per view offerings, so let’s give it a watch.

The big storyline coming in was Goldberg had just won the WCW Title six days before this event by defeating Hollywood Hogan on Nitro, with DDP and Karl Malone helping out, so now Hogan is looking for revenge on those two with the assistance of Dennis Rodman.

The Malone/Rodman involvement got WCW a lot of publicity as the two were on opposite ends of the NBA Finals that year, and the buy rate for this event ended up being way higher than usual for a big WCW show, so it ended up being a success even if the match perhaps didn’t deliver.

But we’ll get there.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 09.09.96

Live from somewhere, which turns out to be Columbus, GA.  Well I don’t blame them, then.

Your hosts are Tony & Larry.

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 01.26.90

Man I love doing this show.

Taped from Johnson City, TN

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 09.02.96

(Hey, blog otters.  I actually got surprise last-minute tickets to see the Lumineers here in Saskatoon last night, so I was unable to review NXT or really anything else because I’m old and enjoy going to bed at a reasonable hour.  It was a GREAT show, by the way, which is weird because you wouldn’t think the “two guys and a piano” aesthetic of their music would translate to a rock show, but it sure did.  Anyway, Nitro was once again unopposed on this date, so it’s just the one repost this time.)  

Live from somewhere!  Turns out to be Chattanooga, TN

Your hosts are Tony & Larry.

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 01.19.90

To be honest I’m still tinkering with Monday nights for reviews.  My current thought process is a rotating odds and ends schedule, so I can cycle through stuff like GLOW and Lucha Underground and these old WCW shows, and maybe cycle Dark Elevation back in now and then, and hopefully not get sick of doing any of them right away.  I dunno, it’s a work in progress.  I still do need a break from Dark though.  I do want to keep trying to do Observer Flashbacks on non-PPV Sunday nights though, so that’s my immediate goal.  We’re also going to eventually come to the point when I run out of RAW and Nitro reviews to repost and have to start up those again, but that’s not until we get to late 1997 and we’re still a ways away from there yet.  But I do think about these things.

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 01.12.90

Look, I know wrestling Twitter is all ablaze with wild speculation about the Coliseum Video rants and everything happening behind the scenes, but I have to insist that everyone stop e-mailing about it!  My legal team is just putting the final touches on an agreement and then we can put all the rumors to rest once and for all.  I mean, granted there was a bit of a minor setback and everything is like 20% under control, but I just want to stress that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, because this is AMERICA.  Oh, wait, I guess it’s not.  OK, maybe 15% then.  Still solid odds for Russian roulette.

This week on the Power Hour:  TRIPLE MAIN EVENT.

The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 01.05.90

After I did that episode of Main Event last time, people told me Power Hour is where the action is.  Well luckily I’ve got those too.

Also, I know I’ve been doing the Coliseum Videos on Tuesday nights and I was wanting to go back and do stuff like the “Tag Team Champions” video to continue on, but there’s been some legal entanglements regarding the website sale and content I didn’t realize until recently.  I should hopefully have it worked out by next week. Regardless, I need something quick to watch tonight because I’ve got tickets to John Fogerty, which is one of my bucket list concerts.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 08.26.96

This week was a pre-emption for RAW, so Nitro is unopposed.

From Palmetto, FL.  Really, THAT city warranted a mention?  It’s only a 1500 seat building, too.

Your hosts are Tony & Larry.

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

I did an episode of Thunder last week and realised that the following weeks show was uploaded to a certain video streaming website, which meant it would have the real music and what have you seeing as it was the original airing from 2000 as opposed to the edited and dubbed one on the WWE Network, so I decided to give it a watch as some of the matches sounded interesting.

Let’s see if those matches are indeed interesting or if this show is an utter disaster like Thunder usually was during this timeframe.

The SmarK Rant for NWA Main Event – 02.11.90

I think we can all agree we’re literally never getting the missing parts of WCW’s history filled in on the WWE Network, so it’s time to just go to other sources, which I can assure you with 100% confidence are totally legal and above reproach, and review whatever I want.  So I’m skipping forward from 1989 a bit, onto a period completely unrepresented aside from the big shows, 1990!

For reference, we pick things up just after Clash X, which saw Sting get injured and screw up the whole year’s worth of plans.

Taped from Cobb County, GA

Your hosts are Jim Ross & Michael Hayes, and maybe Missy?  She does the intros with JR and Michael Hayes does the color commentary for the matches, which I think is for the best.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

It’s been 22 years to the day since this infamous event took place, so I decided to set the way back machine to the summer of 2000 and give it a review. The big storylines coming into this one were a newly Heel turned Goldberg taking on Kevin Nash for Scott Hall’s contract, whilst Jeff Jarrett defended the World Title against Hollywood Hogan.

The latter match ended up being quite newsworthy…