WCW Starrcade 1999

Oy, oy, oy… maybe continuing onwards wasn’t such a good idea…

So we jump ahead to 1999 and by this point, WCW was teetering on the edge; their glory days feeling like a fleeting memory. Eric Bischoff, the man who brought WCW to new heights, had been turfed and in his place was a man named Bill Busch, whose first big move was to hire former WWF writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara and have them steer the WCW ship. Seemed like a good idea at the time; the guys responsible for planting the seeds to the WWF’s rise to prominence would surely be able to replicate the same results here.

Well, that didn’t quite happen, now did it?

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WCW/nWo Starrcade 1998

WWE recently announced the return of “Starrcade” as a live event in Greensboro… so why not celebrate the occasion by spending a week revisiting old Starrcade events from the WCW days… because I haven’t seen any of the NWA era shows beyond brief snippets here and full-length matches in compilations there… though, for the sake of fairness, I might look at one of those along the way because that’ll be fun to experience.

Unfortunately, today’s foray into Starrcade revisitation is the show from 1998… the one that some would argue was the first bullet in what would eventually be the downfall of a once prominent wrestling organization… though others would argue that first bullet came the year prior, but we’ll go with this one since the aftermath was slightly more damaging.

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WWF Survivor Series 1997

This PPV took place twenty years ago and apparently features an incident of some importance in the professional wrestling/sports entertainment context. And this trivial event apparently merits a revisit for whatever reason.

I live in Montreal. I was born in dee Montreal. I spend my living years on this planet in dee Montreal. However, I didn’t see this show live, as I didn’t start following WWF until mid-98ish. And because I wasn’t following the product at the time, I was oblivious to the whole Bret Hart fiasco – though I can recall some rumblings about Bret jumping ship, I never gave it much thought. When I did get around to watching this show, it was on VHS thanks to a rental from the local video store and it was mostly due to wanting to watch the rematch between Stone Cold and Owen Hart; the first such match between the two since the Summerslam encounter and the piledriver that almost ended a career.

Even watching the show, the whole controversy eluded me until I eventually saw the Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows documentary on A&E, where the significance of the event became more apparent. Naturally, it’s something that gets discussed and talked about over the years and while some feelings were mended and more things are put out in the open, this is something that has its place in wrestling lore, for better or worse. And as much as we want to trivialize this event, it really did have a hand in planting the seeds to the rise of WWF and the slow, sad decent of Bret Hart’s career.

So here we are; twenty years later and watching this show again for the first time since… well, that one time I rented the VHS tape from the local video store. The WWE Network seems to have the whole show in one piece, so we might as well check it out…

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WWE Hell In A Cell 2017

Oh lookie, another WWE PPV I completely forgot about.

But it’s not my fault. I blame Discovery. Hey, did you know this new starship has spinning saucers? It further lends credence to my theory that this was intended to be a pizza cutter or something, but I digress.

Won’t be long with this one. In fact, I’ve so little to say about this show that didn’t interest me in the slightest that it changed the way I watch PPVs from this point forward.

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WWE No Mercy 2017

Full disclosure: I did not watch No Mercy live on the WWE Network… because Star Trek: Discovery just debuted and new Star Trek will always take top priority over a B-level WWE show. Saving my thoughts for another time, but I thought it was a good start. There were some bits I didn’t care for, but there was enough for me to like that I’d be willing to give this show a follow and that’s as far as I’ll go.

In any event, I watched this over the span of two days; this packed B-show with two high-caliber matches that will end up be pretty disappointing no doubt… let’s get on with it.

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WWE Summerslam 2017

Another year, another Summerslam, another marathon of shit.

As per the case with these things, I don’t watch the pre-show. But apparently, Neville won back the Cruiserweight title he lost on Monday and the Usos won back the Smackdown tag titles they lost to the New Day last month or so. Also, Shawn Michaels found a new job dressing up as some old guy. Other than that, nothing of note happened.

So, let’s begin, shall we?

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WWE Battleground 2017

Where were you on the night of July 23rd, where the 2017 edition of WWE’s Battleground PPV took place?

I’ll tell you where I was… not watching the show. Instead, I was on a road trip to Terrebonne on a nice Sunday aftertoon enjoying the outdoors and spent the evening doing some cleaning and eventually settling down to play a rubbish fighting game on the Xbox for the purpose of gaining future review material. It would only be until later that night that I even remembered that there was a WWE PPV going on that night.

Maybe this wrestling stuff isn’t for me anymore… or maybe I need to look elsewhere… but that’s perhaps a discussion for another time.

So that’s the haphazard reasoning behind the lateness of this musings. Fortunately, this being posted on the WWE Network, I can watch the show at my leisure… and instantly regret doing so. Seriously, there is so many other shows on the On Demand side of things I would rather be watching, but because there’s some sense of “duty” that people seem to think I have, I might as well share my musings on this show…

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WWE Great Balls Of Fire 2017

I will be completely honest with you. I almost forgot about this PPV… because the better part of Sunday was spent at the Montreal Comicon that weekend… my first Con of any kind, actually. A rather surreal experience, but something I wouldn’t mind doing next year when the time came and I got a bunch of good swag that I’ll save for a later time.

But back to WWE’s most recent PPV outing, Great Balls Of Fire.

In the grand tradition of ridiculous PPV names such as Fatal Four-Way, Beware of Dog, and Taboo Tuesday, we have Great Balls Of Fire. Yes, the same as that Jerry Lee Lewis song that everybody knows about. Unfortunately, WWE and Jerry Lee’s lawyer has a bit of a legal spat over copyright infringement, but fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and WWE not only got to keep the name, but they even got the song. Sometimes, I wonder how WWE would’ve coped if they were forced to change the name… maybe give the PPV a better name, but alas, I tell a lie; nothing about this makes me wonder about any of this stuff.

Anyway, despite getting the rights to the song and even going so far as to have a 1950s motif with the graphics and all that, the set itself is the typical lazy WWE arena set-up that we’ve seen a bazillion times before. Seriously, guys, if you’re going to give your PPV a stupid name, you might as well dress the set up to fit the theme or come up with a better name, you lazy hacks.

But let’s get to the PPV.

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WWE Money In The Bank 2017

WWE Money In The Bank 2017 put me to sleep. I’ve said this often in somewhat exaggerated fashion in the past, but this time, there is no hyper hyperbole at work here. This show literally put me to sleep watching it live that I ended up missing the ladder match except for the tail end of it. I’m watching again early morning and this has the same potency as a Triple H promo in terms of curing insomnia. Not even the strong coffee with the high caffeine is getting shit in gear.

Anyway, on with the show… try to stick around for a bit.

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WWE Extreme Rules 2017

Yep, so it’s that night of the year where WWE supposedly goes extreme, but really, the only thing extreme about this show was the massive migraine I suffered after watching it. Said migraine may or may not have anything to do with this show, but more than likely not.

Extreme Rules is slowly becoming the modern day WWE equivalent of the old WCW Uncensored PPV, where it’s supposed to be a night that’s unsanctioned and outside the boundaries of good taste, but is really just an excuse to have a bunch of goofy gimmick matches on the card that couldn’t be deemed worthy of turning into their own individual PPV. And that’s certainly the case here.

Here’s a fun drinking game for you folks in honor of Rip Rogers’ Twitter diatribe; every time someone takes a …………………………….dive, take a shot. Have fun.

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