WCW PPV Musings – Page 2

WCW Spring Stampede 1994

So back in March, WWE started up a WCW Youtube channel and they’re in the process of uploading all the old WCW shows and some of the key matches. Yes, you can watch old Nitros, old Thunders, and even old PPVs in their entirety… for free. What a world we live in… and so we’re diving into that magical bag of goodness and checking out the 1994 edition of WCW Spring Stampede, featuring the main event of Ric Flair defending his WCW World title against Ricky Steamboat in what I believe was their last-ever encounter.

It’ll be a surprise for most of you to know that in all the years I’ve been doing this PPV musings on this blog, I’ve only ever touched one Spring Stampede event and that was the last one in 2000. It’s also entirely possible that I might have another Stampede or two on VHS somewhere, so maybe we’ll give those a look one of these days if I can find them, but otherwise, it gives me an excuse to dive back into vintage WCW big boys playing with each other professional wrestling from 1994… by which I mean, early-1994, before Hulk Hogan came along and everything started to be built around his orange ass.

Let’s get on with this, shall we? I’m genuinely excited…

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WCW Battlebowl 1993

For some reason, I felt like watch WCW Battlebowl 1993 – a show that I have on DVD-R because I had recorded off the WWE Network back when it was a channel on TV in Canada. I never got around to watching this one and it sort of languished in the archives until recently… and so here we are.

Anyway, WCW Battlebowl was a thing that they did one time and never did again. The idea of Battlebowl had existed previously in prior Starrcade PPVs, but this was the first and only time that WCW had expanded the idea into its own PPV. And there’s a good reason for that.

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WCW Mayhem 2000

Before anyone asks, the black void in the banner isn’t a mistake. It’s intentional and sort of expresses my feelings on this show… but regardless… yeah, this is it… the last WCW 2000 PPV that I’ve yet to watch… and then it’s over.

No, I’m not watching any Nitros. I’m not watching any Thunders. Fuck off with that noise. This is the last word on WCW 2000.

For context, this would’ve been shortly after Vince Russo was turfed from creative and we’re left with a booking crew that’s mostly cruising along until the eventual demise of WCW.

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WCW Great American Bash 2000

Last count, I only have this one WCW show left to go from the year 2000… and well, if the banner doesn’t give clear indication as to what I think about this show, then I don’t know what to tell you.

For the record, this is not the PPV headlined by WCW World Heavyweight Champion David Arquette – that is the Slamboree PPV from the month prior and I’ve written my thoughts on that show a long ass time ago. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t totally hate that show. I do, however, hate this show.

It says so on the banner… so it must be true.

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WCW Spring Stampede 2000

In light of the fact that there was a Who Killed WCW documentary series – yes, another one – I figured that it would only be appropriate that I revisit that lovely period of World Championship Wrestling in the year 2000. Specifically, the first PPV of the Bischoff/Russo reboot era… which took place a week after said era began on Nitro where they stripped everyone of all the titles and divided the roster between the Millionaire Club of old guys and the New Blood group of young guys… and of course, hilarity ensues as a result.

For the sake of prosperity, I went back and re-read all my old musings on the WCW 2000 shows that took place prior to this. I then went ahead and RE-WATCHED the aforementioned shows. Hell, I even went back and sampled a few Nitros… what I witnessed was fucking horrible and I never want to watch that shit again.

With that in mind… is this new collaboration between Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff the shot in the arm that WCW needed? Well, of course not, we wouldn’t be talking about Who Killed WCW TWO FUCKING DECADES LATER if it did… so right now, my only concern would be whether this tried to usher in that new era of WCW that was promised… or was it just the same old shit with a new coat of paint?

Well, let’s find it’s the same old shite. There, the bandage is off. Let’s get this over with.

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WCW Halloween Havoc 1996

Halloween Havoc was World Championship Wrestling’s signature October PPV event before the name was adopted into a special episode of NXT that would play around this time. I’ve only dabbled in a few of these PPVs and never did bother to make these a tradition on the blog… and a few have wondered why that’s never the case. Well, the plain and simple answer is that none of these Halloween Havoc shows were actually any good and even some of the better shows were simply a matter of being “less bad” than the usual stock. Sure, there was some good stuff – usually on the first half of the card – but the bad stuff was generally very bad and offset the few highlights on these shows.

With that having been said, since I’ve been on the WCW 1996 PPV kick during the summer, I might as well cover that year’s Halloween Havoc PPV, which I have never seen. Fall Brawl closed out with a significant push forward in the nWo saga, with Sting out of the picture and the nWo running roughshod. Our main event for the show is Hogan vs. Savage.

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WCW Fall Brawl 1996

(Yeah, we’re shuffling the Musings a bit here. Today and tomorrow gets one and next week gets none. Things will be back to normal here in a couple weeks, promise.)

Yeah, we’re going back to the WCW 1996 PPV well… mostly because I want to do a musings on that year’s Halloween Havoc. To the best of my recollection, this was the first WCW PPV I actually watched back in the day… and yeah, that was a thing.

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WCW Road Wild 1997

Another year. Another Sturgis show. Yippee. This show was following the 100th episode of Monday Nitro, which saw Lex Luger defeat Hollywood Hulk Hogan for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and all his friends came out to celebrate with him on the accomplishment of actually winning a world title over a hated heel and not over a countout win.

So now let’s see how WWE WCW fucks all that up because of course they would…

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WCW Hog Wild 1996

Easy E decided to hold a free wrestling show in Sturgis during one of their biker rallies. Apparently, it went over so well that he’d make it an annual thing until the end of his presidential tenure. Sadly, the event that would replace it in 2000, New Blood Rising, is a largely awful show known for featuring Lance Storm’s best match ever.

So, yes, the first event was called Hog Wild, but that name didn’t stick for the other annual shows due to copyright concerns and thus was changed to Road Wild. I’ve already mused on the 98 and 99 editions of the event, but never touched on these early shows. Let’s fix that, shall we?

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WCW Bash At The Beach 1996

“Whose side is he on?” The immortals words of one Bobby “The Brain” Heenan were uttered (and consequently scrubbed from subsequent WWE Network airings of this event as I recall) should have cast doubt as to whether the man coming down the ring would be the man who would fend off these callous Outsiders from up there or be the much-vaunted third man that had been teased weeks prior. That faint warning was quickly dismissed because there’s no way it could be.

But for those truly in the know, who else could it have been?

Before we get to that pivotal moment in wrestling history, we have the Bash At The Beach undercard, which is about as business as usual as you can get given a night that nobody figured would have big ramifications for the business going forward. Let’s get that out of the way so that we can get to the good stuff.

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