WCW Monday Nitro - Monday 02/09/98

By Chan and Charlie

Carlos A. sends in the following arena report:

Some background info...the floor sold out in around 30 seconds and the Don Haskins Center arena seats sold out in around 3-4 days. Capacity is 12,000-ish but with the WCW stuff it was trimmed down I think to no more than 10,000 tops. I showed up around 3:30 and we got ourselves situated. Looking around I saw Kevin Nash in the back talking to one of the promoters and DAMM if he is not big. Then Bill Goldberg came out in warmups and of all things laid out on the ring. Real weird. They were working on the net that the nWo used, spraypainting it still. Eh, its a odd gimmick but what the hell.

4:30, doors open; people start to stream in. 5:30 the announcer guy (tuxedo and all that) comes in and does the "WCW has a few rules speil" blah, blah, blah. "Hey you can get on TV with a sign, you don't happen to have any of those?" A cheap ploy to get everyone to show their signs. We got most of the poorer tasting signs when people got to their seats and people were real nice about giving up some of their signs.

So ~5:45 they announce they have a match just for us (i.e. dark match). Chavo Guerrero Sr. vs Gentleman Criss Adams. And, as the saying goes, you do not lose in your hometown. Sigh, Chavo Sr. did not look good. Hell most of the wrestlers did not look "fit", a little on the skin fold side, but he who has not sinned shall cast the first stone, eh?

Nitro Girls come out after a horrible event with Wildcat Willie. God almighty, Wildcat Willie, what the hell is that? Anyway, the new Nitro Girl gets introduced and ah, the miracles of science that have alowed such georgeous women to be born in our lifetime is something wonderful...... ah...........

The rest is from memory so bear with me:

Eddie got a HUGE pop the entire night, people were chanting his name most of the night until his match with Jericho. You know, the two of them make a good tag-team. I know I am asking too much BUT I would like to see them together more often. The bit when eddie fell to the ground and hitting the cameraman did not look like a work. I was 2 feet away from it when it happened and it did not sound pretty let alone look nice. Oh, and one of my idols Dean Malenko wrestled. That ruled, too bad he was the whipping boy for most of the match.

Konnan vs Jobber #1: Man, the people in my section were just going off screaming everything. Back when Konnan was a Luchador in the Azteca wrestling promotion, he laid a strong groundwork of followers. They were in force tonight. Some nice moves but eh? It was not great.

Goldberg vs Lord Regal: Did I mention that Goldberg is a BIG MF? Damm that was a big boy. It was not a squash since by definition squashes take less than 60 seconds from start to finish. Goldberg and Regal went through I think all of Goldbergs moves but it was nice to watch from what I caught.

Glacier vs ?: Anyway...

Air Juvi vs Jobber #2: Juvi got a huge pop, even more when he talked to Jericho in Spanish. And Jericho knowing 10 languages (what? French Canadian, Canadian English, American english, Spanish and Navajo Sign Language?) and being a what was it a bad vato? Translated for the linguistically challenged. I like the set up. Juvi made some nice moves.

Macho Man vs Hollywood Hogan: When savage kissed the barrier from the jump or what ever he was trying to do, it was another one of those ooooh that sounded just as bad as it looked thing. The chair hits were nice and loud also. A young girl in the second row in one of my sections convinced a cameraman to give her Hogan's t-shirt. She made the comment that it smelled like BenGay.

Mr. ECW sellout Spicolli vs Jobber #3, we had been saving seats for "talent" all night long and we knew it was going to be for Raven and his lackeys, we just did not know when they were going to show up. So most of my attention was taken up when the nest and et al showed up. Lodi gave us problems by holding up those signs, so most of the time I was holding people back while they were yelling various insults at him. When Booker T bitchslapped him that was nice.

Saturn vs Ultimo Dragon; cool match, Ultimo did that head stand on the top turnbluckle.

Some were along here one of the matches ended early, oh ya', Goldberg beat Regal with a two count. The ref hit the mat 2 times (or I only heard 2 slaps)

Sting does look like a really bad ballet dancer with that stupid one piece thing he is wearing.

La Parka rocks with that chair. I do not recall when he came in but still it rocked.

Wrath? With James Vandenburg on the run in with Mongo. Eh, what ever...

The Jumbotron did not really work. We would see things I assume were put in just before we went live, like things from last week's Nitro or Thunder. We would see Tenay and the Gang occasionally but more often than not there would be no sound. Bobby the Brain Heenan got a huge "WEASLE" chant when he came in, that was cool.

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