PPV

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Uncensored 1998 has a couple of good matches on it, and also some sucky ones, but I’m hoping the positives will outweigh the negatives and this will end up being a decent show overall. Fingers crossed eh?

The big storyline coming in was dissension within the nWo, as Hollywood Hogan and Randy Savage have fallen out and now the group is splintering as guys pick sides. Sting is also defending the WCW Title against Scott Hall, whilst Kevin Nash will wrestle The Giant in a rematch from Souled Out 1998.

I’ll be watching the opener on WWE Network/Peacock and then I’ll be switching over to the official Pal VHS release from then on, so if there are any inconsistencies then that’s why. Sadly the tracking is all messed up for the opener on the VHS but it clears up when the second match kicks in. I need some Self High Five in my life though, as well as Jericho’s Evenflow knock-off theme, so VHS it is.

You can view the full card by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1641&page=3

Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!

Today we do our monthly review of a show with a bad reputation, as we look at nWo Souled Out 1997. This was WCW’s attempt at establishing the New World Order faction as a viable second brand, with the idea being that they could then run separate WCW and nWo branded events and ostensibly make the WWF the third biggest company in the USA (this was actually their plan).

The event ended up being awful though as, even though the nWo were cool, they were still the bad guys and the WCW fans ultimately wanted to see the WCW guys be booked as competent rather than them being the weekly punching bags they usually were. The show ended up being both a critical and commercial bomb, with the only bonus being they managed to sell out the 5,000 seater arena they booked it in.

Let’s see if time has been kind to this one or whether it’s still as stinky as I remember. If you’d like to see the card for the event you can do so by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1627&page=2

Happy Saturday Everyone!

We’ve got a bit of a hit and miss WCW pay per view this week, as some of the stuff on SuperBrawl VIII is very good and some of it is less so. WCW was coming off a very bad Starrcade and a much better Souled Out here, with the Main Event being a rematch of the awful Starrcade Main Event between Hollywood Hogan and Sting. We’ve also got The Outsiders Vs The Steiner’s and Diamond Dallas Page taking on Chris Benoit.

You can view the card by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1640&page=2

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Back today with another rebooking arc, as we’ll cover the three pay per views that make up Starrcade Season (I just made that name up) of 1997, starting with Halloween Havoc 1997. We’ll see where we end up by the end of the arc and you can judge if things are better, worse or the same after I’ve tinkered.

Some of this card will be kept the same but we’ll play with the running order a bit and also add some new matches whilst removing some outright.

If you’d like to see the original card of Halloween Havoc 1997 you can do so by clicking below;

Card « WCW Halloween Havoc 1997 « Events Database « CAGEMATCH – The Internet Wrestling Database

Happy SuperBrawl Saturday Everyone! I hope all of your collective shirts are too tight on this momentous day!

This week we return to a WCW show I’ve been intending to watch properly for a while now in the form of SuperBrawl VI. It’s probably best known for the Kevin Sullivan Vs Brian Pillman match, but there’s also Ric Flair taking on Randy Savage and that has to be good right?

If you’d like to view the card for the event you can do so by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1617&page=2

Happy Saturday Everyone!

We continue the trend of one match shows this week with WCW Starrcade 1993, as Ric Flair Vs Vader is amazing and the rest of the card is…less so. However, hopefully there’s SOMETHING on the undercard that makes it worthwhile (I think there is to be fair).

If you’d like to see the card, you can do so by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1570&page=2

The SmarK Rant for WCW Halloween Havoc 97 – 10.26.97

Gotta say, the build on Nitro has kinda made me want to revisit this one, main event aside.  Plus I hear there’s a pretty good match on it somewhere.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 99 – 12.19.99

As you might imagine I have blocked this entire period out of my memory and I literally only remember the main event.  So this should be interesting.

AAAAAAAAAH!  SCARY SPIKY LOGO IS COMING AFTER ME!

The SmarK Rant for NWA Starrcade ’86: Night of the Skywalkers

(Hey great, so now I have Covid.  Thank god for sick time at work.  Carrying on with the Starrcades in the meantime.  This was written in 2016.)  

What the hell, let’s do it.  People have been bugging me to do the full version on the WWE Network forever now anyway, and since we’re at that point in the Observer Flashbacks now is as good a time as any.  As a note, I would once again like to compliment the amazing production department of the Network for cleaning up the master and making it look pristine again.  Given what they frequently have to work with, they do an astonishingly great job.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 1995

(I was asked by a reader to hold off on the Starrcade 85 repost until Monday, so we’ll move back to the 90s again with 1995 instead.  “Vox populi” or whatever the hell it is that Elon Musk is saying on Twitter.)

Live from Nashville, TN

Your hosts are Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan & Dusty Rhodes

The SmarK Rant for NWA Starrcade 84 – 11.22.84

True story:  Some guy actually went to the trouble of finding my home number and called my house in 2004 asking me to review this show.  I didn’t have a copy of the tape back then, but now there’s the Network and I’ve been on an old school territorial kick anyway, so the time is right!

Live from Greensboro, NC, drawing 16,000 in the building and a shitload of people on closed circuit.

Your hosts are Gordon Solie & Bob Caudle

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 94 – 12.27.94

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound with these I guess.  Here’s another one I haven’t watched in more than 20 years.  And there’s good reason for that.

Live from Nashville, TN, drawing a sellout of 8200

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 93 – 12.27.93

Been a hot minute since I’ve reviewed this show.  WCW was in a bit of a tumultuous state at this point, to say the least.

Live from Charlotte, NC, drawing 8000 for a legit sellout.

Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & Jesse Ventura

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 1992 – 12.28.92

Tonight!  The 10^th annual Starrcade ’92!  Well, at least they understand the concept of an anniversary.  Oh, also, the graphics in the opening video package have Barry Windham and Brian Pillman mixed up.  Because they apparently look SO MUCH alike.

Live from Atlanta, GA, drawing 8000 people and a 0.5 buyrate.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I felt like watching a couple of matches on this one because I’ve never seen them before, hence the review. The Main Event is an atrocious 3 ring 60 man battle royal, with the winner becoming the WCW Champion.

However, on the under card we’ve got Ric Flair Vs Sting (And even WCW surely couldn’t ruin that one once it gets in the ring) and a match that should excite the Joshi Boyz here on the Blog with Bull Nakano and Akira Hokuto teaming up.

So that’s at least two matches which should be good, which I’ll take, with anything on top of that being a nice bonus. WCW had already started Nitro by this point, but they wouldn’t start clobbering Raw until the Summer of 1996, so the battle was still relatively even at this stage.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 91 – BATTLEBOWL THE LETHAL LOTTERY – 12.29.91

The subtitle sounds like a bunch of Taylor Swift fans fighting over a ticket to her show.

(Reposting this one that I did a couple of years back because apparently y’all forgot about it already!  Redo of Starrcades 91 and 92 likely coming later this week as well.)  

The SmarK Rant for NWA Starrcade 89 FUTURE SHOCK! – 12.13.89

I don’t know why this one is hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles lately but let’s get it redone so you’ll kindly shut the hell up.  Which I mean in the nicest way possible.

The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 90 “Collision Course” – 12.16.90

Don’t have to ask me twice to do old WCW PPVs.

Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!

I’m afraid I’ve lost the Stinker Hat with all the reader requests, so if you want to post some in the comments section I’ll make note of them just so I have something in reserve in case I can’t find the hat again. It’s my Miami Dolphin’s hat too so I hope I find it!

This week’s show is the first pay per view of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara’s disastrous first run in WCW, where they took a company that might still have been salvaged and tanked buy rates to the point of no return. But hey, the ratings ever-so-slightly improved, so that was worth utterly destroying the pay per view business and essentially throwing millions of dollars out of the window wasn’t it.

Halloween Havoc was only partially built up by the Gruesome Twosome, so it ended up doing WCW’s last somewhat decent buy rate and then buy rates plummeted from that point onwards, as Russ-Ara were more interested in wacky skits and crash TV, none of which made fans actually want to buy the pay per views.

This show has a number of bad matches on it, and was a jarring switch to a more WWF/E styled product, which WCW fans didn’t want as they (gasp) LIKED the fact that WCW was actually DIFFERENT from the WWF, as it gave them an ALTERNATIVE to watch instead of WWF-lite. Sadly this was a lesson the Russ-Ara duo would never learn.

Let’s see if this show really is a Stinker or whether time has been kind to it.

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.