Great American Bash - Sunday, June 11, 2000

The Great American Bash - Baltimore Arena - Baltimore, MD - June 11, 2000

By Mike from Syracuse


J.S.D. from Frederick, MD sends the following arena report:

Just got back from ye olde WCW event. Things started out on the wrong foot when the event staff wasn't ready on time. The entire crowd wound up crammed onto the entrance ramps for about 45 minutes before they finally let us in at around 7:15.

We all got settled. Our seats were off to the left of whatever they call the new WCW version of the Titantron. We couldn't see the screen, but it gave us a nice view of the backstage area (and funny stuff like Ric Flair buddy-buddying with R&B security mid-show).

I assume the standard DDT Digest crew will do their usual job running a play-by-play of the basic PPV events. Here are a few "others" for you:

The WCW "warm-up" guy was some DJ that does a wrestling report on one of our local radio stations. He was booed like crazy for no apparent reason (I've never heard his show, but it can't be that good based on crowd reaction). The WCW announcer that was out with him almost got fried when the pyro in the ring went off right in front of him by accident.

The show progressed. There were a few production flubs throughout. I don't know if they showed on the broadcast at all.

Biggest pops:
Flair, Hogan, Nash, Steiner, Goldberg (pre-turn)

Biggest heat
Russo, Jarrett, Goldberg (post-turn) folks really didn't seem to care about the other heels. Even when Kanyon turned, people were luke-warm.

One last thing I feel like mentioning is the way that WCW talent seems almost incapable of playing to the fans. Throughout the whole show, only Scott Steiner and Vampiro bothered to recognize the crowd at all after the broadcast switched to backstage interviews. Vampiro played to our rather sparse section of the crowd for a full five minutes while he waited to get off the scaffold. He gave the old "point and yell" at folks that gave him heat and gave little bows to the ladies. Then he tossed his shirt to the crowd (he missed, but the thought counts). Steiner made a point to go down and shake some hands, even going back to high-five some kids. It took him all of a minute, but it kept the crowd up until the broadcast returned. Other than that, we were DEAD right after every other match because all of the talent just slouched off without so much as a nod to us. It's little stuff like what Steiner and Vampiro did that makes the difference between a WCW show and a WWF show. With the WWF, you feel like the wrestlers actually care that they're in front of a live audience. And the energy that comes back to them shows that. Just another sign that WCW still has its priorities out of whack, I suppose.


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