WCW Thursday Thunder - Thursday, 09/24/98
By Bill
Horseman Style!
- Trivia Question: Many people remember that Larry Zbyszko was the last AWA World Heavyweight Champion before the promotion folded. (In fact, he was stripped of the title right before the promotion folded when he left for WCW.) Who were the AWA World Tag Team Champions when the promotion folded?
- The mailbag:
- From Phil S., the honorary DDT Digest Medical Advisor:
Greetings...just a message from your Friendly Neighborhood Medicine Man.
Last night's Nitro proved interesting early, with that botched move by Kanyon and Raven that left one of the Villano's with a few more bends in the back than before. I haven't seen the injury report yet on the sheets, but in my educated opinion (with help from an educated roommate, who's also a second year
student) it looks like he may have been lucky and just broke a few ribs with that move. Perhaps damage to his xiphoid (that little pointy thing at the bottom of your sternum), or as an extreme, damage to his stomach or intestine being poked by the xiphoid, but most likely just the ribs.
We were amazed at how stupid the trainers for WCW can be. As the guy was laying there on the mat, the trainer came down and began feeling the back of his neck. You should've heard the two of us screaming "NO!!!!!" when he did that...if he did indeed break his neck, that would just have served
to push bone fragments into the spinal cord. That trainer was so bad, you would have thought it was a staged injury unless you had actually seen the blown spot a minute earlier. We also can't believe that they would make him walk back to the locker room if there was even the slightest suspicion of a neck injury (which there was), but word from the back and Uncle Eric was probably to hurry up and get him out of the ring since RAW was starting up at about the same time.
Kudos also must go out to Raven, who wisely broke character by stopping the match and keeping the Villano still until help arrived (however poor it was). Boos go to the other Villano, who cared so much about his brother that he risked further injuring him by carrying on the fight after the move, even though Raven and Kanyon were tending to the injured guy.
- BrFo hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota (home of the Andersons) checks in with the following note from Nitro:
I was wondering if anybody else
caught that glimpse of the Warrior walking in front of Hogan and the nWo when they went backstage? If you taped Nitro go back and watch! Didn't you think it was odd that Hogan was just standing there instead of going straight back to the dressing room? Then when he does go into the back, just as the camera follows him you can see Warrior just ahead of him, and then quickly stepping away to the left to hide. Hilarious! It's even funnier when you consider how weak the Hogan/Warrior stuff we're supposed to see is.
- I should definitely be at the Fairfax, VA house show this Saturday, along with Wade and some other people. Look for Wade's report and some digital photos from the show to be posted on Sunday evening.
- Early on Wednesday, I read on one of the sheets about Jerry Lawler supposedly putting Jim Carrey in the hospital during the filming of the final scene of the Andy Kaufman biography. Puh-leeaze!! Doesn't anyone else find it more than a little ironic that the injury happened during the final scene. Gee, it sure is convenient that the movie is in the can since Lawler and Kaufman can't work together anymore, isn't it? And, wow, how convenient that this gives the movie free publicity. Even the Washington Post picked up the story.
If you ask me...what a bunch of marks! ;-)
- We start with a black-and-white montage of Ric Flair's return on last week's Nitro.
- We are live from The Scope in Norfolk, Virginia.
- Tony says Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen are in the hiz-ouse. Goldberg will be wrestling Kanyon tonight. As the crowd is chanting "We want Flair", Heenan says they are chanting for Goldberg. (Uh, Bobby, the Goldberg chant stopped two minutes ago.)
- "The Dog-Faced Gremlin" Rick Steiner vs. "The Laughing Man" Hugh Morrus w/"The Mouth Of The South" Jimmy Hart
- Hugh Morrus is sporting a new haircut, a flattop. He looks a lot like Ray Traylor now. Whatever happened to Traylor, by the way? He hasn't been seen since he got squashed by Goldberg.
- After one slam from Rick Steiner, Jimmy Hart takes his first bump of the evening from a Steiner punch.
- That leads to Morrus getting clotheslined out of the ring, and Steiner going after Hart again.
- Morrus attacks from behind, gets a short advantage, but misses a big elbow from the top turnbuckle.
- That leads to the Steiner Bulldog from the top turnbuckle and Rick Steiner scoring the pin.
- For some unknown reason, Rick Steiner floors one of the security guards on the way back to the locker room.
- Replay of the Warrior and Hogan from Nitro. Bah!
- Ernest Miller vs. Nick Dinsmore
- With a talent pool as deep as WCW's, we get...Ernest Miller vs. Nick Dinsmore.
- According to the announcers, Bischoff is in Japan tonight.
- Ernest Miller does his bit allowing Nick Dinsmore to bail out. Dinsmore does not take Miller up on his offer and he attacks Miller before the bell.
- Dinsmore almost gets the pin with a bridge suplex.
- Miller immediately comes back and begins squashing Dinsmore.
- Miller keeps showing three fingers to signify his three world karate championships.
- Other than a two-count after a sunset flip, Dinsmore manages no further offense.
- Miller gets the pin following a round kick.
- Wow! We're only 25 minutes into the show, and we've seen two matches already!
- Saturn vs. Psychosis
- Psychosis plays the heel on the way out. That certainly limits his possible opponents.
- The announcers are positively fawning over Saturn.
- Psychosis and Saturn trade the advantage in the early going.
- Saturn gets a cross-armbreaker but Psychosis makes it to the ropes.
- Psychosis reverses a tilt-a-whirl into a big clothesline.
- Saturn comes back and goes to work on Psychosis.
- Here comes Lodi with a "Saturn Ruined My Life!" sign.
- Lee Marshall comments how a lot of people in Norfolk understand what it was like for Saturn to be an Army Ranger. Lying Lee obviously doesn't know that people in Norfolk probably don't know how to be an Army Ranger, since it's a Navy town.
- Saturn goes after Lodi outside the ring, and Psychosis nails Saturn with a suicide dive. Lodi retreats to the locker room.
- Back in the ring, Psychosis nails a missile dropkick to Saturn's back.
- The advantage continues to get traded, and eventually they go outside the ring. Psychosis misses the guillotine legdrop on the floor.
- Tony misnames a suplex by Saturn as a "fallaway slam".
- Saturn hits a frog splash, and gets the pin even though it seems that Psychosis powered out at the last moment.
- Tony Schiavone brings out "Das Wunderweiner" Alex Wright for an interview.
- Alex grabs the mic and starts talking in German. Alex realizes his mistake and switches to English and tells Tony to scram.
- Alex calls Tony "an overweight, out of shape, loser"! HAH!!!
- Alex runs down every mid-carder in WCW.
- Alex then walks off.
- Heenan: "I don't think he likes you, Tony".
- Another great Four Horsemen montage.
- The Barbarian w/Jimmy Hart vs. Fit Finley
- About five seconds into the match, everyone is distracted by Scott Hall coming out of the locker room "drunk" with a drink (complete with slice of orange), making his way to the announcers' table.
- Scott's actually polite to the announcers.
- Back in the ring...ahhh, who cares.
- Scott says he's got a lot of bosses, and Big Kev ain't one of them. Scott says he's mean when he drinks, and he drinks all the time.
- Seemingly, off camera, Scott Hall pukes on the announcers' table and leaves. Lee Marshall says he needs a new microphone screen.
- Barbarian with an overhead press gutbuster.
- Finley gets the advantage back.
- Finley goes after Hart, Barbarian goes to attack, but Finley steps out of the way and Hart gets clobbered.
- Tombstone piledriver by Finley and Finley gets the three-count.
- A really funny commercial for the Monday Night Jericho t-shirt. You've got to see it...it will lost a lot in the translation.
- Promo for the upcoming Page/Goldberg match at Halloween Havoc. Wow, four weeks before a pay-per-view and they're actually promoting matches to get people excited about it! What a novel idea!
- Tony brings Diamond Dallas Page to the ring for an interview.
- Page makes his entrance through the crowd.
- Say, were those DDP's hands painted on Sable a couple of months ago? ;-)
- Page says there's no hatred involved...just passion, pride and competition.
- Page says it's about chasing a dream and beating a phenom.
- Page says the bookmakers are calling Goldberg the odds-on favorite. Page likes that.
- "Maybe you are unbeatable, and maybe you're not. And maybe you'll...feel...the...BANG!"
- Replay of Villano IV getting hurt on Monday Night. The good news is that there's only minor neck damage, and Villano IV may be wrestling again in a week. Amazing!!!
- Villano V vs. Raven
- Raven does a monologue before the match, saying he's going to hurt Villano V. Obviously, Raven doesn't speak Spanish, pronouncing the "L"s in the Villano's name.
- Villano with the early offense, but Raven comes back.
- Raven goes for a chair but Villano V prevents him from using it.
- Villano V with a short flurry of offense, but Raven eventually sets up the chair and drop-toeholds Villano V into it.
- Evenflow...and Raven gets the pin.
- Another Warrior and Hogan replay. Man, does that whole thing ever blow chunks.
- Disco Inferno vs. Chavo Guerrero, Jr. w/Pepe
- Someone in the crowd has their own Pepe.
- Chavo with the early offense, waving Pepe around.
- Disco manages some brief offense, but Chavo stays in control.
- Mike Tenay announces Scott Norton won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, Japan's version of the World Title.
- Mike Tenay obviously misses the total irony of referring to a country having their own version of the World Title.
- Commercial break.
- Regarding the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, Tenay notes that Norton is one of only three Americans to ever hold the title, and one of the others is Hollywood Hogan. That, of course, makes it obvious that the third one is an employee of another wrestling company. It is, in fact, Vader, who has won it three times.
- Rhetorical question: Would the nWo in their limo be termed "Heels on Wheels"?
- Chavo hits a nice springboard bulldog.
- Disco with the spinning neckbreaker.
- Advantage trades again, and out of nowhere, Disco hits the piledriver and gets the pin.
- Juventud comes to the ring and hands the referee a slip of paper. Nick Patrick comes out with a scale and says that Disco Inferno's weigh-in slip was doctored.
- Disco has to weigh-in again and he checks in at 231.
- In anger, Disco slams Juventud's head into the stairs.
- As a result of the false weigh-in, Chavo wins the match by default or disqualification since this was a match to determine the number-one cruiserweight contender.
- Norman Smiley vs. "Das Wunderjahnsen" Alex Wright
- Bobby Heenan says he has a friend named Norman who works in a hotel in Utah...Norman the Mormon Doorman.
- Nice try, Brain, but I remember hearing that joke on the original Bob Newhart Show twenty years ago.
- Alex offers Smiley a handshake before the match, and uses the opportunity to Pearl Harbor Smiley.
- Norman Smiley puts on an amateur wrestling clinic.
- Alex returns the favor. Someone in the crowd starts chanting "Boring".
- Smiley tries to get the crowd fired up, to no avail.
- Heenan notes that European wrestlers usually don't wear kneepads, and then doesn't follow up with anything. He's toasted.
- Smiley's got a mad wedgie.
- The amateur-style wrestling continues, and couple of standing switches, and Wright hits the Rude Awakening and gets the pin.
- Stevie Ray comes out to put down some smack.
- Stevie Ray says that the fans can scream all they want for the Four Horsemen, but Eric Bischoff just called him and said they can't come out. Hmmmm, looks like Stevie Ray will be the first recipient of a Horsemen beating.
- Dillinger tells the Horsemen they can't come out, and then purposely turns his back so they can walk right past him.
- The Horsemen, sans Arn, come out and Stevie Ray retreats to the back.
- As Stevie Ray goes behind the curtain, he comes tumbling back out, followed by Arn with a tire iron.
- The Horsemen go to the ring. Flair: "Whoo!"
- Arn: "Unless there's 15,000 people in this town missing a thumb, this is Horsemen Country."
- Arn: "Last week was a free day, you only get one."
- That's a reference to the speech given by Ole Anderson the day that Ole turned his back on his partner Thunderbolt Patterson to join up with Arn.
- Arn: "Starting tonight, we're going to take our company back. Regardless of what you may think, WCW belongs to the Four Horsemen."
- Arn: "We're going to start tonight, one town at a time. Norfolk now belongs to us!"
- Malenko thanks Arn for the opportunity to become a Horseman. Malenko says he will not let the Four Horsemen down.
- Benoit says Bischoff should change the first part of his last name (ha!), and that he (Benoit) may not be Flair, but he's still an E-ticket. (HAH!)
- For those of you who might not catch the reference, at Disneyworld they used to (I think this is past tense) sell tickets for all the attractions that you used once you were in the park. Unlike many parks today, it was not a pay-one-price to get in type of thing. Just getting in to Disneyworld didn't get you on any of the rides.
The tickets would range in class from A-tickets to E-tickets. A family pack might have, say, 15 of each class of ticket. The A-tickets were for the really crappy attractions, and the better the attraction was, the higher class of ticket it would need. The really great rides, like Space Mountain, would require an E-ticket. So, Benoit was saying that even though he might not be Space Mountain, he is still Space Mountain quality.
- Mongo offers to go to Bischoff's house in the middle of the night, kick down the door, and beat him up in front of his family.
- Flair does his thing, says Liz is tied up at the hotel, and says tonight "Dean Malenko will be able to prove himself the man of 1,000 positions...I mean holds."
- That ruled!
- WCW World Heavyweight Champion Bill Goldberg vs. Kanyon
- Goldberg's entrance music cuts off Kanyon's monologue before the match.
- Raven goes to the announcer booth to whine about how crappy his childhood was and how Goldberg gets special treatment.
- Goldberg comes to the ring, and Kanyon continues: "Who's better than Kanyon?"
- With that: Spear, jackhammer, pin.
- Time of the match, less than ten seconds.
- Er, that's it.
- Trivia Answer: D.J. Peterson and The Trooper (Del Wilkes/The Patriot)
