WCW Thunder - Wednesday, 04/22/98

• Trivia Question: Adrian Adonis was part of the tag team East-West Connection and also the North-South Connection. Who were his partners? (Answer at bottom of the report)
• Well, upping the ante last week, the two most important titles changed hands with Goldberg destroying Raven and Bret Hart doing what seemed to be a heel turn. And the Nitro Girls came out in lingerie. Thus, to keep our collective interest tonight, Goldberg will be defending himself from a knife attack from Invader I, Pope John Paul II will be doing a heel turn, and the Nitro Girls will run out buck naked.
  As for the next Nitro, I'm not even gonna' go there.
• For those of you in the D.C. area, tickets for the 6/1 Nitro at the MCI Center go on sale Friday at 10:00 a.m. Okerlund and the Nitro Girls will be kicking off ticket sales at the MCI Arena from 10:00 a.m. to noon on Friday.

• We are live from Columbia, South Carolina. The crowd is already chanting "Goldberg!".
• Schiavone's talking about Bret Hart stabbing the fans in the back. If it hasn't already occurred to you, there's probably going to be a twist to that story. The most likely being that Bret is just obsessed with beating (specifically) Hogan for the title.
• Here comes Hogan, The Barber, and Easy E. And, if things aren't bad enough, he's got the belt, of course. Me thinks that with the title changing hands constantly to keep the viewers, they won't even bother putting the nameplate on it anymore. The Giant was the last person to actually have his name on the belt. Disciple repaints "nWo" on the belt. The walking, talking Ken doll prattles on, as does Hogan. Whatever. Easy E. actually quotes ratings numbers to prove how great Hogan is. Hogan's losing his voice. If only it was permanent. Hogan says that if anyone puts their hands on Eric Bischoff, they'll have to answer to Hogan and the nWo. Zodiac spraypaints the belt again. Hmmm, I wonder where that will lead? Hogan says he has officially retired the Macho Man.
  
• WCW World Television Champion Booker T defends his belt against Disco Inferno.
  • Tony talks about Elizabeth being hurt, extent unknown.
  • Tony says "Bret Hart literally stabbed us in the back". Tony, like Gorilla Monsoon, has absolute no idea what the word "literally" means.
  • Booker T with the early advantage.
  • Booker T sends Disco Inferno into the post outside the ring.
  • Disco Inferno suckers Booker T with a faked knee injury, hits the piledriver, but Disco Inferno is too busy dancing to make the cover.
  • The Brain claims he never trusted Bret Hart.
  • BIG sidewalk slam by Booker T.
  • Breakdance, Harlem Sidekick...
  • Booker T pins Disco Inferno following a missile dropkick to successfully defend the WCW World Television Championship.
    
• You know, I always thought Bret Hart saying "Nobody knows better than me what it's like to be screwed" was a lead-in for an upcoming feud with Jenna Jameson.
• Nitros on for some weird hours next week and for upcoming weeks, both Nitro and Thunder have weird schedules or are not on at all. Check your local TV schedule for each upcoming show...do not count on the normal times.
• Barbarian vs. Prince Makimaki (Iaukea)
  • Barbarian pretty much squashes the Prince.
  • Barbarian pins Prince following the Kick Of Fear.
    
  • Pretty terrible match with absolutely no reaction from the crowd.
• Vicious & Delicious w/Vincent vs. "The Total Package" Lex Luger and Rick Steiner w/Ted DiBiase
  • Bagwell's arm swinging entrance gets bigger every week.
  • Norton grabs the camera on the way in.
  • Commercial break after the ring entrance. Not a total loss, though, as it includes the ad for WCW Magazine mentioning Arn Anderson's autobiography.
  • Luger flexes his pecs for the camera.
  • Rick vs. Buff to start. Rick with the advantage. Luger's tagged in, Buff gets advantage and tags Norton in.
  • Three clotheslines, and Luger's ready to put the rack on already. Buff interferes.
  • Buff's tagged in and starts putting it to Luger. Buff tags in Norton.
  • Norton with the early advantage, but Luger comes back.
  • Buff and Rick Steiner come in following the hot tags. Steiner cleans house, gets a two count, but Norton breaks it up.
  • Chaos ensues. Rick goes to the top turnbuckle to hit the Steiner Bulldog. Vincent goes to nail Rick with the chair, but Scott Steiner runs out and grabs it away!
  • Well, that reconciliation tease didn't last long, Scott Steiner just grabbed the chair so he could use it himself on his brother.
    
  • The referee didn't see the chair shot, and counts the pinfall.
  • In an odd ending, it looks like a double pinfall with both men having their shoulders down and Buff is talking as he is laying there.
    
  • After some confusion, Mark "Shooter" Curtis raises Scott Norton's hand. So, it's Vicious and Delicious via pinfall.
• This is not good, it looks like Buff is legitimately hurt. A number of EMTs are still in the ring and nothing is really happening. They replay the ugly bump. Buff is concious, but they are keeping him immobilized. They replay the spot where it happened. His head got jammed back on Rick's back on his way down.
  
  They can't move him until the ambulance comes. This is truly frightening. They say it is a cervical injury.
  
• Another commercial break, and they're putting Buff on a stretcher. They replay clips from Nitro. While the replays are going, Tony reports news from the back that Bagwell is able to move his legs, so that's very good news. Sting against Scott Steiner later tonight. Goldberg will defend his title later. Another commercial break.
• We're back, and now replays of Raven beating DDP for the U.S. Title. They show clips from earlier in the match with Horace Boulder actually doing the job of a cameraman.
• Horace vs. Evan Kourageous
  • Yep, he's Horace Boulder, but they are not saying that he is Hulk Hogan's nephew. They say Horace Boulder's background is the same as Raven's. I didn't know Raven had a famous uncle who got him into the business.
  • Crowd chants "boring" about thirty seconds into the match.
  • Match goes on for about a minute and DDP sneaks in and gives Horace Boulder a diamond cutter and Horace wins via DQ.
    
    
  • Evan Kourageous goes to shake DDP's hand and he gets banged, too.
    
    
  • The ref starts giving DDP some lip, and he gets banged.
    
    
  • More good news, Tony says that the doctor said Buff is going to be fine.
  • DDP calls out Raven. Raven comes out, stares, and starts to leave. DDP gives Raven lip about walking out on his sister. Raven gets mad but starts to leave again. DDP gives Raven lip about walking out on his mom when she was crying. Raven pauses and leaves again. DDP says something about Raven walking out on his only friend.
    
    
  • DDP leaves through the crowd.
• Schiavone brings out the Macho Man. Macho Man says he's not "finished"...he's just getting started. Macho says Hogan's scum, Bret's nuclear scum, and he's tired of Bret's whining. Macho says that Bret is overpaid and unproven and a mark for his own publicity. Bret's now number one on Macho's hit list.
  
  
  • You'd think that after that long pause, they'd actually have some wrestling instead of interviews. I really feel sorry for the crowd tonight. They probably think the injury was a work since they couldn't see the replay.
• WCW United States Heavyweight Champion Goldberg defends his title against Mike Enos.
  • Ooh, this is going to be short.
  • Enos attacks before the bell.
  • Goldberg no-sells.
  • Goldberg with a submission hold, Enos reaches the ropes. Big belly-to-belly by Goldberg.
  • Clothesline by Goldberg.
  • Powerslam by Enos. One-count only.
  • Spear. Jackhammer.
  • Goldberg defeats Enos via pinfall.
  • Boy, the crowd is getting ripped off tonight.
    
    
• Sting vs. Big Poppa Pump.
  • This is the last Thunder until May 14^th.
  • The music gets messed up on Scott Steiner's entrance.
  • All right! Scott's got two trophies now!
  • BPP attacks Sting before the bell and gets the early advantage.
  • Sting comes back with a couple of clotheslines and sends BPP to the floor.
  • BPP is thrown into the ring steps.
  • Word from the hospital is that Buff Bagwell is fine and moving around.
  • Low blow by BPP in the ring.
  • BPP with his patented choking the opponent from outside the ring while the opponent is in the tree of woe.
  • Double-underhook suplex by the man with two trophies.
  • Big foot by Sting in BPP's face.
  • Stinger Splash into a Scorpion Deathlock. Konnan runs in and Sting wins via disqualification.
  • You know the drill, the nWo runs in, Rick Steiner runs in and chases BPP back to the dressing room, and Giant makes the save on Sting.
  • Sting takes the mic and gives what supposedly shoots on the bookers and Kevin Nash by starting with "every week it's the same old thing...the bad guys run in". Sting goofs on Nash's goof on Arn Anderson and issues an official challenge for him and Giant to face Nash and Hall for the tag titles at Slamboree.
    
    
    • Tag titles? What are tag titles?
• Wow, that really sucked. For those of us who watched it on TV, just be glad we weren't in the arena.

• Trivia Answer: Jesse "The Body" Ventura in the East-West Connection and Dick Murdoch in the North-South Connection.

I won’t go into the matches too much. I just want to let you know about some of the stuff that happened when the cameras weren’t on.

We arrived at the Carolina Coliseum about 4:00 and went around to the back entrance where we knew all the wrestlers would arrive. The first one we saw was Sick Boy, and he is indeed rather big, much more so then you can appreciate on TV. Over the course of the next two hours we saw Lex Lugar, Hammer, Kidman, and Evan Kourageous. Buff Bagwell arrived in a truck with Georgia plates, from Cobb County (hmm...where’s Ray Traylor?) Giant hung outside for about a half hour talking to the University of South Carolina basketball team and a lady we were later told was his mother. They are from South Carolina. He was very nice and had quite a few laughs, and the guy is truly enormous. Bobby Heenan showed up, and we walked up and said hello, but he didn’t even acknowledge us, walking right past. I’ve heard he’s a bit of a jerk, so that wasn’t surprising. Jim Neidhart showed up in the same truck with Hennig and Rude...hey, aren’t they supposed to be feuding ;-) One of the funniest things of the day was Neidhart getting out of the truck with no shirt on, belly hanging out quite prominently, and and pulling his golf clubs out of the truck, and carrying them into the arena. I gotta know...why? Nick Patrick sat in his truck for about a half hour after arriving smoking cigarettes and napping. Vincent, a full three hours before the show, was already in full nWo costume and moving back and forth quite often between the arena and the trucks. I guess he must have been delivering tonight’s "sponsored by the nWo" commercials ;-)

Doors opened at 6:45, and after picking up a coke and going into the arena, we found our seats. We sat directly across the arena from the announcers. On TV, it was the far side of the arena and left. The first thing I noticed after settling in was that over the house speakers they were playing the Outsider’s Theme from before the nWo...kinda cool, but I bet there weren’t a whole lot of people who recognized it. When they got to the Horsemen music, the crowd went crazy- this is definitely Horseman country down here. Loud boos for the nWo music. They cycled all the theme music for about 45 minutes before David Penzer did his thing. With the house lights still up, the Thunder set wasn’t all that impressive...it even looked like some of the metal was rusted. Of course, when the show started, it looked great.

Signs:

"Flair is My Deadbeat Dad"
"Be Fair to Flair"

Both of these were confiscated.

Sign of the night:

"Goldberg Fears a De-Push"- no kidding

It was in this arena last August that we were guests at the Arn Anderson retirement.

There were no dark matches.

I don’t know if it was audible or not on TV, but 5 times I counted the fans started, "We Want Flair" chants, two of them quite loud. One guy got in an aisle when it was kinda quiet and started, "We Want Flair" and was stopped by one of Dillinger’s goons. I guess they really don’t want Flair’s name mentioned at all ever.

There was a guy walking the rows with the absolute best Hogan outfit I’ve ever seen. People across the arena were turning to check him out. He had it down to the nWo weightlifting belt and black gloves. Pretty impressive actually...I wonder if he had the guts to walk out in public with that outfit on?

After Hogan’s interview, he crotch chopped the crowd a few times and gave the Universal Sign for Up Your’s. I must say, I’m a big nWo fan, but I really hate Hogan, which means the joke’s on me because he’s doing a great job of drawing heel heat. Bischoff did his circling fists act to several fans and they were gone.

The best wrestling match by far was Booker T vs Disco Inferno. Lots of action...Booker T could be a main-eventer if he had any microphone skills. And you gotta love Disco. I saw the disco ball hanging from the rafters early on and was hoping he’d wrestle.

Bagwell’s injury looked like a total work for the first few minutes because the only one’s out there were Vincent and Norton, and there was a camera in the middle of it. I was figuring that it was some sort of the beginnings of a Steiner face turn where he injured Buff with the chair. After a few minutes, we saw Buff wasn’t moving and others were coming out, and it became obvious that something was wrong. The crowd was really quiet. About 15 minutes after the match, with Buff still laid out on the mat, some jerks took the opportunity in the quiet to start, "nah nah nah nah...hey hey hey...goodbye" The entire Flock turned and stared those idiots down, and they didn’t start it again. During the break, matches from Monday’s Nitro were shown. As Buff was taken out on the stretcher, chants of, "Buff...Buff...Buff..." were quite loud and it was nice to see. Kinda makes up for those other scumbags.

Page got the second biggest pop of the night after banging Kourageous, Boulder and the referee and his semi-shoot interview was great. The crowd reacted exactly like they were supposed to - like when a schoolyard bully says something about someone’s mother and everyone watching goes, "ooohhhhh" and waits for a response.

Kidman kept jumping the rail during commercials and goofing off with the cameramen and Penzer, not even really doing anything to keep the crowd interested. This can’t be very good for those impressionable souls who are trying to fight the urge to get personally involved at ringside.

Savage was on fire...great to see the Macho Man coming back after languishing in Hogan’s shadow for all those years. I have a newfound respect for Macho after watching him work those last two matches at Spring Stampede and Nitro. I’ve had knee surgery twice, and trust me when I say after hurting a knee, it hurts like hell. He could have (and truth be told, probably should have) just had knee surgery and take his time off to recover and rehabilitate, and hope he doesn’t suffer the same fate as Syxx. Instead, he’s given us two of his best matches ever. And Schiavione says nobody in the nWo has a soul.

Of course, the loudest pop of the night went to Goldberg. Easily a third of the signs in the house were about him. What he did or what he knows about Bischoff I don’t know, but he is getting the best push in recent memory. I was wondering what Mean Mike Enos has done to get this match, but then I realized I hadn’t seen him among the long line of jobbers Goldberg’s beaten. Oh, well..I guess he’s good for WCW, and his popularity in wrestling overall is second only to SCSA.

The utterly forgettable main event of Sting vs Big Poppa Pump was saved by Sting’s interview afterward. Finally, after 18 months or so, we see the Old Sting sense of humor coming back...his comments on Nash were great (did anything ever expect to hear him use the "Too Sweet" line?). After the show went off the air, Sting kept talking for a minute, and did, "something I can’t do on TV, but I can do it now", proceeding to crotch chop the entire crowd about 30 times, jumping up and down like a pogo stick. With that, the show ended.

Not really a bad show, but it really lost any momentum it had when Buff got hurt. There were no dark matches before or after the show, and between matches the best we got was Buff doing, "When you’re with the nWo, you’re with the nWo 4-Life". The shirt stand was out of the nWo shirt I wanted, which sucked too. Other then that, Wildcat Willie and Penzer just didn’t cut it. I left wondering which matches or interviews got cut out during the injury. I saw Hennig, Rude, and Neidhart before and they didn’t make it out. Also, no Nash or Bret Hart, two people I really expected to see after this past Nitro, as well as no Luchadores, no Jericho and no Piper. I can’t say I’m disappointed, because anytime I can see the WCW is good, but the show could definitely have been better.

That’s it for now. I’ll send in another report on the House Show in Louisville, KY on May 24th. Till then, see ya!