WCW Slamboree 1999 5/9/1999

Written by: Arnold Furious

What constantly amazes me about WCW is the fact they had one of the greatest rosters ever seen in wrestling, comparable to the WWF’s just after Vince’s mad talent raids in the mid 80’s. Big names and hungry young guys everywhere you looked. Looking through their roster they had marketable star names just waiting to happen. Chris Benoit was potentially the biggest star in all of wrestling in 1997. True he couldn’t cut a promo but he cut a passable promo. Bret Hart’s promos were only passable until he turned heel in 1997 and then they got really good. He held four world titles before that. Plus Benoit had Arn Anderson as a manager, pretty much, and was having routinely great matches with everyone. But he wasn’t the only guy they could have pushed all the way. Chris Jericho was GOLD on the mic and a star without any effort from WCW so obviously they refused to push him to the point where he got pissed off and left for the WWF. Where he promptly became a huge star without any effort from the WWF. Raven, albeit heavily dependent on drugs at the time, was potentially a huge star. His mic skills were incredible to the point where his promos were better than most WCW guys matches. All of these guys were driven out of WCW. Their potential for being bigger than the WWF was there but the main event guys were all so concerned with protecting their spots (Hogan, Nash, even guys like Luger who had no pull) that no one co-operated with anyone else. And if you did co-operate you ended up getting turned into a joke. Everyone had allies and almost no one wanted to job. The inmates were running the asylum to such a ridiculous degree that when the Misfits in Action came about under Vince Russo’s reign of terror Van Hammer, a guy who was a jobber to all intents and purposes and had been for five years, didn’t want the rank “Private” for his character Private Stash and demanded to be upgraded to Major. It was a joke Hammer. A JOKE. Like you. That kind of shows how bad WCW was. Back to Slamboree and having given DDP a title run for his hard work over the previous 3 years at Spring Stampede, head booker Kevin Nash (who jobbed clean to Goldberg at the previous show – keep taking one for the team, Kev) decided to put himself into a complicated feud where…fuck it, skip to the end…Nash gets the title shot. Quite how Nash is the number one contender after losing convincingly to Goldberg the previous month is down to this being WCW. Probably the only surprise is Nash not booking himself over Goldberg to keep himself strong for a title run.

We’re in St Louis, Missouri. In a building they sold out 6 months earlier WCW had to give away 7000 tickets in order to get 13,000 people in there and make the crowd look respectable even though the building was still only half full. Hosts are Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay and Bobby Heenan.

Sidenote – the nWo was to all intents and purposes dead now. As a result the booking was about to get very messy. No one could remember who hated who, merely what faction they’d been a part of. Flair, without an nWo to take his anger out on, ending up opposing Roddy Piper. Goldberg in lieu of a title shot ended up being in there with Sting. A somewhat lost Scott Steiner had a falling out with Buff Bagwell. Curt Hennig was turfed out of the group. Scott Hall was off TV injured. It seemed that the nWo was gone. No big money “nWo must disband if they lose” match. Nothing. Just quietly disappear with a whimper ending 3 years of main event booking overnight. WCW was a company booking itself completely into the ground by this point. Fans had lost all faith in the product and the WWF was killing them in the ratings. It seemed simple. All WCW needed to do was find a match that the fans wanted to see, which by this point would probably involve one of the hard working undercard guys get a massive push and the world title, and work towards making that match happen on PPV where they could sell it and make money. So this show ends up with DDP-Nash, Goldberg-Sting and Flair-Piper. As a fan, albeit by this point not a practising one, none of those matches interested me.

Tag titles – Kidman/Rey Mysterio Jr (c) v Chris Benoit/Dean Malenko v Raven/Saturn
Speaking of hard working undercard guys, here’s most of them jerking the curtain. Way to go WCW. Rey Rey and Kidman were feuding over the cruiserweight title and happened to win the tag belts. Saturn and Kidman (former Flock members) team up on the Horsemen but that doesn’t last with Saturn turning on Kidman with a clothesline. BELLY TO BELLY OVER THE ROPES TO THE FLOOR! Good Lord! Malenko hits a leaping calf kick for 2. Dropkick/German Suplex from the Horsemen for 2. Rey comes in with a double dropkick. Benoit pummels him but Rey counters into a rana. Slingshot legdrop on Benoit for 2. Benoit/Kidman with a double front suplex on Raven but Benoit chops Kidman down and empties his nose on him. Rydien bomb though from Kidman but he misses with a splash off the ropes. CRIPPLER CROSSFACE! Raven saves. Front suplex/frog splash from Raven/Saturn for 2. Malenko saves there. Rey comes in with his awesome flip up moonsault press for 2. Benoit with a snap suplex on Raven and the FLYING WOLVERINE! Saturn saves. Horsemen clear the ring out and work on Saturn. Benoit clubs Saturn down while Malenko prevents interference. Double suplex on Saturn. Rey gets in so they double flapjack him. Note – this crowd SUCKS. I mean totally stinks and is making no noise at all. Kidman in with a clothesline on Benoit and he looks to pick off Saturn but Saturn superkicks him. Springboard clothesline to the floor from Saturn! With him hurt Benoit drags him in for a Northern Lights for 2. ROLLING GERMANS! That gets 2. Malenko in looking for a Texas Cloverleaf but Saturn rolls him up for 2. Malenko takes Kidman down with a Farewell and a powerbomb on him gets 2. Benoit in to snap suplex Saturn for 2. DRAGON SUPLEX on Kidman and Rey saves at 2. Kidman hits a step dropkick on Malenko. Saturn with a Russian legsweep on Benoit. Raven gets a tag for the first time in ages and hits the ROLLING VERTICALS on Benoit for 2. Raven tags out again (check out that workrate!) and Rey finds his way in to rana Saturn for 2. Saturn hip toss slams Benoit and Kidman takes Benoit over with a clothesline. Diving rana on Saturn from Rey and the fliers are taking over. Raven is in the corner in his pose so Rey hits a Broncobuster him. Kidman throws Rey up – FLIP UP SUPER RANA on Benoit…for 2. They go for one on Saturn, BLOCKED INTO A SUPERBOMB! Then he foolishly tries to powerbomb Kidman but of course YOU CAN’T POWERBOMB KIDMAN. Faceplant gets 2. Swinging bulldog on Saturn as well. Arn Anderson does a run in to SPINEBUSTER Saturn. Texas Cloverleaf is attempted but Kidman is up. Someone dressed as Sting knocks him off though (I HATE these stupid Sting angles WCW had). EVEN FLOW DDT on Kidman. Saturn doesn’t give up in the Cloverleaf so the referee counts the pin instead with Raven going over Kidman. BUUUUT who the hell was legal? Match time was 17.26. Rating is ****. Great entertainment and just constant action throughout. I dropped 1/4* for the dumbass Sting angle but otherwise FUN. Incidentally the masked man was…KANYON.

Sidenote – these guys were all having great matches against each other. Kind of reminiscent of the Smackdown Six in 2002. In fact two of these men were in the Smackdown Six (Benoit & Rey). Obviously WCW pushed none of them any higher with the exception of Chris Benoit who won the world title 24 hours before quitting in early 2000.

Stevie Ray w/Horace Hogan/Vincent v Konnan
When I said the nWo was dead I forgot about the nWo B Team. Easy to do. They were all very forgettable guys. This has no business being on a PPV. The B Team is getting a small push and looking to take out nWo Originals. In particular Nash. So logically they get booked against Konnan who wasn’t an nWo Original and was never in the Black & White. Konnan’s lack of upward advancement, something I personally don’t care about, has now killed off his heat as well. Good work WCW! Even when you get lucky you fuck it up. This match is rubbish but that’s what you’d expect. The other jobbers beat Konnan down while the referee has a chat with Stevie just so we can have a convoluted drawn segment that everyone hates just to really pep this match up. The referee distraction there was appalling although Horace’s failure to even attempt being sneaky didn’t help matters. Stevie with a chinlock. BORING! Another chinlock. Stevie Ray is one of those unique wrestlers who actually got worse as he got more experienced. Every other wrestler, ever, has improved over time. Not Stevie! Even his covers look like shit. If it had been my call as soon as Harlem Heat split and they pushed Booker I’d have fired Stevie. That goes for pretty much the entire nWo B Team who are all useless. Konnan with a fucking ugly X-Factor. Vincent tries to jump in there but gets knocked off the apron and Horace trips Konnan up. Rey Mysterio runs out here to help and Horace completely fucks up a mistimed clothesline on Vincent. Horace never under any circumstances should have become a wrestler. He has zero timing, limited skill and no personality. The timing is what bothers me here. So Rey goes up top and Stevie stands there staring at him. What the fuck are you doing? He goes to pick Rey up and gets rolled up by Konnan for the pin at 6.09. –**1/2. Oh bravo WCW. Well done. That was a stupendously awful match. I’d have fired everyone. Including Rey. Then re-hired him under a mask with a different name so no one could kill his heat again.

Brian Knobbs v Bam Bam Bigelow
Knobbs? How in the fuck does Knobbs have a job? He’s only ever been a draw in the Nasty Boys. He’s never been a singles wrestler. He has a job for precisely ONE reason. He’s buddies with Hulk Hogan. That’s it. It’s not what you know. Bigelow has just about survived beyond his initial push thanks to hardcore matches. Not that WCW has a hardcore title. Compare this if you will to Raven/Bigelow/Hak a few months previous or even Bigelow/Hak last month where they worked out nice spots and put the intensity behind it all. Here Knobbs just picks up one piece of crap after another and hits Bigelow in the head with it. This is almost a defining match in how you don’t do hardcore. Any fucking idiot, like Knobbs, can pick something up and smack someone in the head with it. Try as he might Bigelow can’t do anything with him. The other announcers tell Tenay to shut up so they can hear the plunder shots hit. Words fail me. The fact Tenay can’t work out when to shut up and the fact they don’t want the only announcer who knows what he’s doing to talk. It’s brilliant. Every match has fresh reasons for me to hate this company with a passion! The wrestlers fall to the floor where they brawl a bit. Incidentally I like how dark it is in the upper decks in the arena. Yanno, so you can’t see 10,000 empty seats. Hahaha, WCW sucks. This match just keeps going. One punch or kick or plunder shot follows another. It all sucks. Bigelow keeps pulling out bits of crap to bash Knobbs with but its one straightforward head shot after another. It’s like playing Dynasty Warriors. There’s that level of repetition. Without the death. More plunder. Both guys smash into the laundry cart that all the plunder came out here in. Plunder shots even get boring for these guys so they brawl up the aisle to the merchandise stand. That fans can’t get to. They just want to totally rip off ECW don’t they? They fall through the curtain to the “backstage” area. FUCK ME, look at all those empty seats they curtained off! The referee quickly shuts that off. Up goes Knobbs to the “balcony” and drops an elbow on Bigelow down below. Bigelow actually fell off the table during the move so Bigelow throws Knobbs through the table instead for the pin at 11.29. Think Knobbs was supposed to just hit the table with that dive? ¼*. I’ll give them a tiny bit of respect for effort. Otherwise this sucked ass. The vast majority of the crowd couldn’t even see the pin so boo the finish even though the babyface won.

TV title – Booker T (c) v Rick Steiner
If this is WCW’s idea of pushing Booker I’m not buying. Neither is the crowd. Keep in mind Steiner is useless by this point and has been ever since Scott dumped his ass over a year before. Logically the idea of the push is that Booker beats Rick to prove he can beat has-beens of that quality. BUT WCW wants to reunite the Steiners and therefore want Rick strong. Shouldn’t have booked him to look like a fucking moron for the previous year then really. Now Booker has to pay for it. To make matters worse Rick doesn’t feel like making Booker look good in the process (remember what I said at the top about everyone protecting their spot – well Rick thought his spot was higher than Booker’s, time has shown him to be wrong) and doesn’t really sell anything. Keep in mind they want him heel by the end of the night. Asshole. No concept of how to make money. Hey, I’m all for not pushing a guy if he’s not ready but this is BOOKER T. Yeah, he’s not the greatest worker in the world but he’s another guy who should be a star regardless. Rick doesn’t think so. But then Rick isn’t a promoter. Or even intelligent. So he stalls to kill time and make Booker look even worse. Booker is feeling generous so makes life easy for Rick by chinlocking him for a while. Rick comes back with a Hot Shot. The announcers snipe at each other and it’s abundantly clear that the other two think Tony Schiavone is an idiot who makes them look worse. So naturally WCW kept Schiavone there until the very last day of the promotion. I know I’ve complained about that before but during 1999 it became very clear that he shouldn’t have been there anymore. Crowd has lost the will to live here. I mean; total death via Rick Steiner offence. They don’t even want to do that stupid barking thing anymore. Booker comes back with a suplex. What happened to the crowd? It’s like a tomb. Obviously Rick goes to the chinlock. I hate you. Rick fucks something or other up so Booker just nails him in between the eyes with a forearm. Nice. Axe kick and the spinneroonie. Crowd boos. Should have turned Booker not Rick. Spinebuster (“sidewalk slam!” – Tony). Missile dropkick. Scott Steiner is out here, which gives Rick time to hit the Steinerline for 2. The Steiner collide and Rick takes a sidekick for 2. Heel collision AND a move and not a pin. Scott trips Booker up and Rick hits the shitty bulldog for the shitty pin at 11.07. DUD. Terrible match complete with dumb booking designed to get the Steiners back together…as heels. Just when they’d finally pulled the trigger on Scotty as a singles star. Make sense of that one! Rick really made Booker look like shit here. If I cared, I’d be annoyed.

CLIPS – Randy Savage challenging Ric Flair. He wants to put his girlfriend against “Flair’s girl” Charles Robinson. If Gorgeous George (Savage’s girlfriend) wins he’s reinstated. The thing that cracks me up about all this is that the Maestro (WCW jobber) purchased the rights to be called Gorgeous George from the original George. He took the gimmick to WCW who wanted to give it to Lanny Poffo, Savage’s brother, who they’d just signed for $150,000. When Savage showed an interest in bringing his new girlfriend on TV with him they simply gave her the name and didn’t debut Poffo at all. Ever. So they paid out $150,000 for no reason. A drop in the ocean compared to what Bischoff was paying for rock bands to play Nitro for no return during 1999 and the eventual $15M loss was attributable to a lot of different things but WCW really were pissing money away for no good reason.

BACKSTAGE Rick Steiner complains about Scott interfering in his match for no reason. He wishes Buff Bagwell, who’s turned on him twice in the last year, good luck. Because now Buff is a babyface so all the other babyfaces like him regardless. Rick has a perfectly legitimate reason to take out Buff but this being WCW we get all this crap instead.

Charles Robinson w/Ric Flair/Asya v Gorgeous George w/Randy Savage/Madusa/Miss Madness ‘99
Asya is Christie Wolf. When Flair went nuts and got sent an insane asylum (how’d he get out you ask? Well, Arn bailed him out. Yeah, apparently you can just bail people out of the nuthouse these days. Everywhere needs money) he was assigned a jacked up nurse called Double D (after Double A no doubt). On his return to the wrestling world he brought the nurse with him as a valet. Because she was big she got the nickname Asya as a play on words with WWF’s Chyna. Because yanno, Asia is bigger than China. Which she isn’t. Even. She does look like Madusa on steroids though. Charles Robinson helped Flair win the title via biased officiating and ended up getting the nickname “Little Naitch”. They’ve made him up to look more like Flair especially for this show. Savage has a huge contingent of women for some reason. Madusa trained George for this match. Miss Madness is Molly Holly showing that WCW was pretty clueless when it came to using women effectively. Flair gets the mic to a round of loud boo’s. Oh WCW, you’ve finally booked Flair completely into the ground. He tells Madusa he’s always wanted her to ride Space Mountain. He’s leaving George to Little Naitch. Robinson tells her she’s going to give up to the Figure Four and then give up to him. They should have made this a 6 person tag. It still would have sucked but it would have sucked in a more logical fashion. Crowd pops huge for Savage cutting a promo. In fact George is the only one who shouldn’t be in there. But of course putting Flair in this match wouldn’t allow him to battle Roddy Piper in the marquee bout between the two later on. Little Naitch borrows all of Flair’s comedy stall tactics. No one cares. George with an arm ringer, Robinson reverses it. This looks like a training session for two people who’ve never wrestled. Only there are 13,000 people watching it. George with a full nelson into a snapmare and that pops the crowd. Flair jumps up onto the apron to complain and George runs Robinson into him just to make Flair look like a total idiot. Flair threatens violence so in comes Savage for a stand off and a match the crowd actually want to see. So we can’t have that happen. Crowd is bored and absent mindedly chanting for stuff. I think I heard a “Hogan” chant in there. Charles with a chair but Miss Madness takes it off him so Robinson bumps her and slams her on the floor. This is enough distraction for Savage to get around that side. The ref shoves Robinson over. The only upside of this so far was Madusa bending over. Robinson chokes George on the ropes. Yawn. Ok, this has gone on long enough now. It’s clear they can’t do anything now lets get to the finish. Robinson with a weak chop. George retorts with her own weak chops. Someone should have taught her how to girly chop. Hey, Robinson breaks out the Flair corner bump and goes up top. George throws him off. That was good. I like that. Flair front bump! George gets 2. Robinson is saving this here. Although George looks very motivated she can’t really do anything. Asya grabs her and leglocks over the apron but Madusa runs around and kicks her. Mmmm, upskirt. George has a bad knee though so Robinson hooks a leglock. George kicks him off. Back to the leglock. George kicks him off again. Shinbreaker! George just bounces off on that. Looked great. Figure Four! Robinson is going full on Flair with his facials. Savage encourages George to turn it over and she does so. Flair runs in behind the ref’s back to stop that but Savage is in too. Savage goes low on Robinson, slams him and sets up George for the Savage Elbow at 10.37. ½*. Silly match but they really tried hard and had fun, which is one up on half the locker room. The finish with Flair/Savage was really convoluted but the whole match is a joke anyway so I can let that slide. Team Madness celebrate.

US title – Scott Steiner (c) v Buff Bagwell
Steiner comes out to the Wolfpac music. Buff jumps him before he even has the belt off and pounds away. Ref grabs the belt allowing Scott the chance to go low. Who the fuck wanted BUFF to turn babyface? Scott has some fine words for a ringside fan; “you can suck me”. Scott stops off to pose. “You ain’t shit” – another fan gets a mouthful from Scott. This guy spends 90% of his time jawing with the fans. Easy day at the office for Buff. He just lies around taking abuse while Scott argues with 13,000 people one at a time. Buff comes back with a shitty hang up on the ropes while Scott is; guess what, jawing with the fans. He spies another one he doesn’t like; “you piece of shit, c’mon boy”. Buff lies around some more. The sad thing is Bubba Ray Dudley did this so much better than Scott because he was actually quick witted whereas Steiner just shouted abuse randomly. Tiger Driver gets 2. He stopped sitting out with that years ago. He just lets go now. White Thunder belly to belly. Steiner bails for a chair; “kiss my ass, bitch”. Another fan gets love. Steiner swings with the chair but Buff ducks it and clotheslines it into his face. Isn’t that a DQ? Lenient officiating there. Buff with the comeback. Dropkick, atomic drop etc. Scott drags the ref in the way so he gets bumped. That’s also a DQ btw. Buff grabs the chair and in comes Rick to tell him he has a plan. That plan appears to be turning heel on him with a chair shot. Buff, for all the times he turned on Rick, should have known better. Scott with the Recliner and its over at 7.11. -**.

WCW Presidency – Ric Flair w/Arn Anderson/Asya v Roddy Piper
This is despite Flair winning the Presidency for life just two months ago. The clips of Flair in the madhouse show exactly almost blow by blow how they managed to destroy Flair as a draw. Leaving them with Goldberg alone. Again, tonight’s title match is DDP v Nash. And because of all this I have to watch Roddy Piper wrestle again. I have nothing against Piper being in short comedy matches because he has great personality but WCW made him think he was an actual wrestler again. Bad move. Flair doesn’t like the referee so he replaces him with Little Naitch. Yeah, referee Johnny Boone is fired. He threatens to fire Piper too. He already did, that’s why they’re having this match. Piper with some stiff chops. Better to be stiff than sloppy. Robinson gives Piper shit for it. Piper with more chops. Boxing stuff follows and Flair front bumps. Outside and they chop away at each other. Flair begs off. Piper with the eye poke, which misses by 3 inches. By Piper’s standards that’s pretty good. Flair goes low and tells the referee that Piper was choking him. HAHAHA. HEEEL! Piper gets thrown out to Arn who lays in the punches. Little Naitch knows his job and gives Arn an eternity to hit illegal strikes while ‘backing Flair up’. Next he goes to talk to Arn about something or other while Asya comes in for the low blow. Little Naitch = heel referee extraordinaire. Pin gets 2. Normal cadence on the count from Robinson. Kind of a shock. Considering his count against Hogan. Flair goes to the eyes but Piper backdrops him. Flair is pinned but Robinson won’t count to three. Flair is pinned off a backdrop? Piper with more chops. Flair gets caught talking on camera. Flair corner bump. Piper follows and beats up Flair outside. Technically this match hasn’t been the atrocity it could have been. Piper with a shoulderblock and they both stay down for too long. I spoke too soon. Flair is up first – Figure Four. Why doesn’t Robinson just ring the bell? Or quick count him down? He doesn’t. Piper turns it over so Flair throws him out to Arn again but this time he lays Arn out. Piper goes for a sunset flip causing Flair to full moon for a while. Backslide but Arn has the referee to complain about Piper punching him. And again on an inside cradle. Flair goes up but gets thrown off. Figure Four from Piper. As if Flair’s career hadn’t been killed enough. Flair quits but Robinson won’t ring it. Arn walks in and kneedrops Piper but Piper puts him in a sleeper. Flair breaks that with a really weak forearm. Sleeper for Flair. Asya in so Piper turns his attentions to her. LIPLOCK! Sleeper! She looked like she preferred the kiss, which is saying something. Piper punks the referee out but Flair nails Piper with the brass knucks for the pin at 12.08. 12 minutes? Sheesh. ½*. At least entertaining for the most part. The booking at the end was ridiculous.

POST MATCH out comes Eric Bischoff who lost the Presidency six months beforehand to Flair. Yes, just what we wanted to see. A Bischoff face turn. He overturns the outcome and pronounces Piper the winner and new WCW President. Under what authority? Piper goes as far as to hug Bischoff despite him orchestrating a year’s worth of beatdowns on him. Naturally even WCW figured all this out the next night and pointed out that Bischoff has no power. So Flair was still President. Why run this whole thing? It makes me want to puke. The next night no one could actually figure out who had what powers in WCW. Who was the President (storylines say Flair) and what Piper’s role was (Commissioner, although that wasn’t made clear at all) and what Bischoff’s role in all this was (Um, “powerful executive”, not sure which one). The fans couldn’t follow it. Hell, the writers couldn’t follow it.

Goldberg v Sting
Sting had a title reign of about an hour earlier in the month before losing it back to DDP in a 4-way. Goldberg manages to fuck up a powerslam to kick this off. Nice one. So they re-do that spot. Crowd boos. Sting looks to have injured his shoulder already. Sting ducks a big boot and hits a dropkick. Hey, whaddayanno? Sting is more over. And I thought they’d killed him as a draw over the previous 18 months. Sting tries for a hip toss but Goldberg counters into a slam and a cross armbreaker. Sting’s moveset seems to have dried up a bit though. That’s Attitude for you I guess. He aims for Goldberg’s braced up knee. Sting fucks up a Boston crab but Goldberg powers out anyway. Are these guys trying to kill their own careers out there? Or is it just that they’ve seen Hogan dog his way through the past three years and get huge reactions for terrible matches and thought “hey, let’s get us some of that action”? Goldberg with a neckbreaker for 2. He misses in the corner. Crowd seems pro-Sting. He hits a diving clothesline. Stinger Splash. Make that two. Make that three but Goldberg catches and slams him on the last. It was supposed to be a spear, which would have looked awesome but it sucked. Bret Hart walks out here and nails Goldberg in the head with a chair to a big pop and the DQ at 8.07. This is right after he did the metal chest plate angle in Canada. The idea being that it sets up a match when he’s back from surgery but he ended up taking longer off after Owen Hart died. ¼* for the match.

POST MATCH the Steiners run out here and attack Sting and Goldberg. If you think this is leading to a tag match, forget it. It’s leading to Sting v Rick Steiner in a match where Sting loses after being attacked by dogs. I don’t need to explain why because this is WCW.

Sidenote – to be fair to WCW it looks like the attendance is more than I’ve been complaining about. Wikipedia says it was 20,000 so I guess it was 13,000 paid then 7,000 papered. That’s still a lot of papered seats and a lot of empty ones.

WCW title – Diamond Dallas Page (c) v Kevin Nash
Nash, like Steiner, still has the Wolfpac music but the group really doesn’t run together anymore. Even less so after tonight. Randy Savage has been helping Page win the title (twice). But Savage is a babyface and Page, in this angle, has been the heel because the fans are popping Nash because he’s been putting himself over all the damn time. The idea is Nash wants revenge for Hogan’s knee injury last month. Hogan, who is at the very least smart, decided to bail on the company to heal up his injuries as it slowly went down the toilet. Politics had completely screwed with the main event scene. The crowd were cheering the heel because he was being booked like a face and booed the face because he was being booked like a heel. Say, why not go for another one of those patented double turns that everyone enjoys so much? I think the main problem is no one knew who was supposed to be face or heel anymore. DDP was only allowed into the main event club because he lived next door to Eric Bischoff. This is an ugly brawl to start. DDP brings the fire and Nash keeps overpowering. DDP goes low and then exposes a turnbuckle. He tells the ref about it before grabbing a mic to bash Nash in the head for 2. The buckle backfires on DDP as Nash drags him face first into it. “Both men down” helpfully shouts Nick Patrick before beginning his impartial count. WCW has to be the only company to run THREE heel referee angles in 2 years. DDP fires up and clotheslines Nash to the floor. Crowd boo DDP and Tony agrees with them. Diamond Cutter on the floor! Page tries to pin him on the floor. “Falls count anywhere” says Page. Oh they do not. That’s such a lie. Page, wasting energy, picks up the remains of Nash and throws him back into the ring before pinning using the ropes for 2. Page with a few elbow drops. This match has completely gone. Nash is just lying around. FEEL THE WORKRATE! While DDP tries for lame cheap heat seeing as the crowd don’t want to cheer him anymore. DDP wraps Nash’s leg around the ring post a few times. Nash then drags him into the post. Nash still isn’t up. He’s now been lying on his back for four whole minutes. FEEL THE WORKRATE! DDP yells at him to get up. Yeah! C’mon you lazy fuck. A fight in the crowd grabs the interest of the fans just as Nash mounts his comeback. Nash with the Snake Eyes on the exposed buckle. That’s been enough to win matches in the past. Not world titles usually though. Big boot. Nash hasn’t sold the knee at all but that’s a minor quibble compared to how fucking lazy he’s been out there. Powerbomb but Savage, a babyface remember, runs in for the DQ at 13.01. Belt shot for Nash. How can they bury Savage like this? He was over huge. Why side with DDP? Out comes Eric fucking Bischoff. Savage points and shouts at him. Bischoff tells Patrick that we must have a winner. This match continues until someone wins. Of course Bischoff has no power so that result (the DQ) should stand. But Nash kinda liked looking at himself in the mirror with the gold around his waist so, yanno, we won’t be reversing that decision. Oh yeah, it hasn’t finished yet. My bad. Page hits a few clotheslines for near falls. Sleeper but Nash elbows out and gets his own sleeper. Fans are already pelting the ring with crap. Gotta love WCW. DDP jawbreakers out for 2. Page bails for a chair but manages a really lame bouncing self shot off the ropes. Nash covers…for 2. Oh, it’s lame. It’s all so lame. Nash gets the chair but DDP goes low for 2. Page gets the chair again but Nash boots it back into his face. Nash looks about ready for another powerbomb. That gets the job done at 18.21. *1/4. Goddamnit this company sucked in 1999. Another hot shot of the title belt from another guy that didn’t draw. So we’re back where we were before the Fingerpoke of Doom angle. Nash is the champion but half the crowd don’t trust him thanks to the Fingerpoke of Doom. And they can’t even do that clean thanks to Savage’s interference. Of course this leads to a fucking Savage main event even though he can barely walk without fucking up. Luckily I don’t have that show (Great American Bash) on tape. I’ll be back with Fall Brawl. Trust me; you’re not missing anything from the summer.

Final Thoughts: One great match and everything else sucks. Just when you think WCW has turned the corner they put on a show like this. Which is why everyone stopped caring, stopped watching and stopped buying the PPV’s. The next PPV incidentally has some of the most wonderfully nonsensical booking on it, ever. Like Flair going over Piper to ensure he claims the Presidency after Bagwell ran in and caused the DQ and then both the old guys beat him up. Oh boy. Then they put the belt on Savage at Bash at the Beach. Then the belt went back to Hogan. Sigh. 1999 was truly the summer o’ crap from WCW. They spent the whole time changing world champion and having terrible matches. The crowd got sufficiently pissed off that by the end of it all Bischoff was out of a job and the company dropped $15M. It seemed like every show was a new low. Hogan & Nash had a retirement match at Road Wild that dropped into negative stars on most people’s scorecard. On the same show WCW made a point of bringing back its worst performer, ever, in Dennis Rodman. At least it was never boring in WCW. There was always something going on.