Category: WCW PPV Musings

I debated between watching this show and the 97 version for today’s slot and after a bit of personal reflection, I opted to go with this one and save the 97 show for next month. This had “less” stuff going on compared to that other one and I wanted to watch a Starrcade that wasn’t complete shit for once. And while this might not be great, it was at least good enough… but that’s jumping ahead here.

Continue reading “WCW Starrcade 1996”

Warning: The above image never appears on today’s subject matter, since by this point, the Hollywood Blonds tag team has long since split and went their separate ways.

Another Warning: The above parody turned out to be not an accurate portrayal of old Ric Flair, who nowadays looks like a living skeleton. On the up side, at least he’s still alive and kicking… so good on ya, Ric.

All “kidding” aside, we go back to 1993 where we have Ric Flair putting his career up on the line against Big Van Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. This was a last minute change from the originally-intended main event that would’ve seen Psycho Sid Vicious Justice Guy beat the Mastadon for the title… but then Arn Anderson and a pair of scissors wished Sid the best of luck on all his future (softball) endeavors and we got this match instead.

And for what is essentially a last-minute booking job, they did a rather fine job of building to this main event throughout the show, as cameras showed Ric Flair leaving his house, taking a rather somber limo ride with Mean Gean, and other backstage bits to somewhat give the impression that this could very well be the end of a long career… that wouldn’t come along until a decade and a half later, but I digress. The point is that this is a wonderfully told little backstory that did enough to get you up to speed on the stakes of this show’s main event.

But first… we have the rest of the card to blow through.

And blow we shall…

Or rather, blow the show shall while we witness it fall way the fuck apart.

Continue reading “WCW Starrcade 1993”

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?

Continue reading “WCW Starrcade 1999”

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.

Continue reading “WCW/nWo Starrcade 1998”

The following WCW event took place in November of 1995.

So Halloween Havoc 1995 happened. The Giant (a.k.a. Big Show) made a big splash by defeating Hulk Hogan in his very first match and winning the WCW World title in the process thanks to interference. However, the win came under scrutiny and the title was soon held up. How else to settle the matter than to have SIXTY GUYS compete in a three-ring battle royal for the right to lay claim to the greatest prize of them all?

Even some 21 years after the fact, this idea seems way too far-fetched. Even that one Royal Rumble where they had forty guys in it seemed a bit stretchy for my tastes and then I remember that this was thing for a couple years. (2024 Note: Just wait until they go to Saudi Arabia next year.)

Continue reading “WCW World War 3 (1995)”

WCW Halloween Havoc is instantly my favorite WCW show of 1995 for one reason; it ended the horrible reign of Hulkamania and began a shift towards actually producing something that people would actually want to watch. Imagine that.

Much like most of my WCW PPV viewings these days, this is being shown off the WWE Network. Some bits may or may not be missing, I imagine.

Continue reading “WCW Halloween Havoc 1995”

WCW Halloween Havoc 2000 is the only full show that I have from my original PPV tapings during 2000s… because I used to get all the PPVs and I’d put them on tape and unfortunately, very few of those survived. One of those being Halloween Havoc 2000… Halloween Havoc 2000 was a show taking place during the dying days of WCW. I’m not quite sure if Vince Russo was still writing the shows at this point, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

Anyway, my hopes aren’t high for this show, because my recollections of WCW from this time frame are thankfully few and far between. Because WCW, during its dying days, was hard to watch. It was the classic example of writing that threw shit on the wall and went with what stuck. And it would be a fairly safe bet that my only viewings of WCW around that time were the PPVs that either I or a friend would tape and pass it along to each other to share the torture, as it were. The only time I tuned in to Nitro was when the show was cancelled.

But alas, that’s another story. Onwards to Halloween Havoc.

Continue reading “WCW Halloween Havoc 2000”

WARNING: The following post contains mentions of Chris Benoit. Discretion is advised.

WCW Souled Out 2000 opens with the typical WCW signature video that had opened many WCW programs since mid-1999 and from there, instead of an opening video montage detailing the card for the program, we go straight to the arena shot and pyro, where announcer Tony Schiavone welcomes us to the first WCW Pay-Per-View event of the 21st century. And we begin with about five minutes worth of recaps. This is the sign of a program that has been rewritten (almost literally) at the last second, which might be the norm for WCW, but the reasons here are far more grave than the typical excuse of nobody having a clue as to what the show’s about.

The original card for Souled Out was to feature Bret Hart defending the WCW World Heavyweight title against Sid Vicious and Jeff Jarrett defending the US title against Chris Benoit. Of course, with Bret suffering from a concussion that would end his wrestling career and Jarrett also saddled with injuries that forced him out of action for the short term, WCW was forced at the last second to rebook the top of the card. And that’s how we ended up with the main event of Sid vs. Benoit for the vacant World title.

Going into this viewing, I had not seen the PPV in years; more than likely since its original airing back in 2000. However, one thing I remember was that in the weekend of the show, I’d watch the PPV preview channel and I’d distinctly recall a card that would pop up and announce that Bret Hart would not compete and the main event was going to be Sid vs. Benoit for the World title. Whether that was a WCW thing or a Viewer’s Choice thing, I thought that was a cool bit for them to update the card so that fans would not have false expectations. It is generally a rule of thumb to not mention these things until the show is taking place. So, this forward thinking is actually a surprising gesture. Whether it’d helped or hurt the buyrate… I’m probably the wrong guy to ask about that.

Anyway… on with the show… as it were…

Continue reading “WCW Souled Out 2000 – The Exodus”

So here’s the other WCW PPV show that I still have from the “old” days of VHS to DVD conversions; the 1999 iteration of the Bash At The Beach. My memory of the event is a bit fuzzy; the only thing I recall is that one of the matches took place in a junkyard… well, sounds like a good place for a WCW event in 1999, amirite?

Why am I writing “amirite” now?

Bash At The Beach was known for many things in its short history; it’s the event where Hulk Hogan would beat Ric Flair for the WCW World Title in his first WCW match. It’s the event where Hogan would turn heel and planted the seeds for the birth of the nWo. It’s the event where Vince Russo would cut his scathing promo on Hogan that planted the seeds for a lawsuit. It’s the event where… where a bunch of guy would fight in a junkyard in a hardcore invitation match for a crappy trophy.

Because, sure… why not?

Continue reading “WCW Bash At The Beach 1999”