The Paragon of Virtue/Eddy Guerrerro vs Chavo Jr/Dean Malenko match was the match of the week- in a walk. It's good to know that Eddy in El Paso is akin to Flair in Charlotte (as opposed to something as anemic as Shane Douglas in Pittsburgh). Eddy may have found a person to partially fill the Love Machine role with Jericho if Jericho continues to be the biggest heat machine in WCW and can keep the marks hating his guts. They were FANTABULOUS as the super hardcore rudos in this. This match was the best Rock n Roll Express style I've ever seen in perhaps forever, simply because Dean Malenko is fifty times better in the ring than Ricky Morton (who I still love) ever was. Malenko gets the Arn/Benoit/Malenko pop of No Bullshit- which is an eternal staple in all former NWA territories. Chavo was quite the effervescent technico as he and Eddy whomped each other real good. Eddy was on fire, Jericho was SO over-the-top, Chavo hit mid-level his spots (HEY! Tope con hilo again already!) being sufficiently indignant about his crazy uncle, and Malenko kept the whole match together. They gave it enough time to tell a couple of stories (Dean hates Eddy hates Dean, Chavo despises Eddy doesn't respect Chavo Jr, Eddy coming home, Jericho and Eddy's lose affiliation), it was stiff as hell, and Jericho and Eddy were state of the art dickish. Golly. I give it a million billion stars.

ALLRIGHT! El Dandy de-Meltzered his hair! WHIP ASS! El Dandy vs Juventud Guerrera was a-okay just because El Dandy took the KING-SIZED bump over to ringpost to the floor in a bump that I give a half Silver King and Juventud did all sorts of freaked out roll-ups- given it was halfspeed but still all freaked out.. He and Juvie had the totally mid-sized lucha match because- Hey!- El Dandy was the high-flying wildman of his day, but this is a long time since then and Juvie was nice to him and slowed it down for the old bastard. El Dandy looked like the rudo who had spent a REAL long time in trios matches and still looks a little out of it in these singles matches- but he's old school Lucha Rudo so I love him. Juventud ruled the fargin earth and then my role-model came out and spoke of Dexy's Midnight Runners and rusted-out 68 El Caminos (Oh holy fuck, I was dying at that point) and all. Juventud RULES. Jericho RULES. RULES.

Saturn is not very smooth but his offense is cool enough that Ultimo Dragon- possibly the best wrestler in WCW depending on how Eddy and Benoit are feeling- can make the match make sense. UD sets up Saturn's high spots and picks his own spots sparsely to get himself over, being a pro and all. This was another in the continuing trend on Nitro and Thunder of having a good, solid, if not overly spectacular match to anchor down the middle of the show. This went to the mat, to the air, broke down to striking- a whole lot of good parts that worked a lot of the times. The ending was pretty neat, but it's time for Ultimo to start putting some wins together already.

The Disco Inferno vs Yuji Nagata had too many cool suplexes and way too much LaParka for me not to like it. They need to do something with Yuji again. He's too cool to be stagnating like he has the last couple of months in the States. DI once again impresses me by taking an ass-kicking like a man. The inexplicable LaParka run-in was neat but how about putting him over Hugh Morris instead, you hammerheads.

I've gone insane. I'VE GONE INSANE! Hogan vs Savage was pretty great. Savage killed himself and Hogan sold and it was good and all. I'VE GONE INSANE!

NO DUGGAN! NO GIANT! NO NEIDHART! WOO-HOO!

The finish of the Steiners match was clean as a sheet as Scott Halls proves that he will put everybody over since his fat useless buddy, Nash, ain't gonna do it. The rest of the match was a Rock and Roll Express match that didn't transcend the genre at all. A totally uninspired match when compared to the Eddy/Jericho vs Malenko/Chavo match. The finish was clean though, which was a shock.

MONGO vs GLACIER!?!? Jiminy crickets! The really great thing is that they had the whole <<""HIGHLIGHTS"">> package of this white-hot Davey Boy Smith/Mongo feud (Mongo fumbles outside the ring trying to do a Fit Finlay elbow on the apron! Bulldog does the best Powerslam EVER! YES! Oh wait...) to precede this so you can imagine who stoked I was for this. Glacier, Glacier, Glacier. I was so excited about the upcoming feud with Chris Adams but they killed all the heat with this match. Mortis makes an inexplicable run-in. Mongo on the Mic! RASMUSSEN on the remote!

The Regal/Goldberg match was neat enough to work but too sloppy and clunky in actual execution for me to say, "Hey, this was good." Regal basically tries a lot of stuff that Goldberg can't do yet and then proceeds to potato the hell out of the rookie, which I GOTTA love. Quite an ugly match, but the stiffness of Regal's work always gets him over with me, and the fact that he made a match out it when nobody else seems able to pull it off says quite a bit for his Lordship, though the whole sucked. This would be a good fued for Goldberg to learn how to wrestle an actual match- because Regal is the master and the actual level of stiffness could be pretty choice if Regal taught Goldberg a few things, though they should take it to the houseshow circuit before showing this pair up on TV again.

It would have been much better if Booker T and Raven had an ACTUAL MATCH. This was just an excuse to get Booker T's spinerooni (as Big Jim's wife calls it. Now she has to read MY column.:)) on TV without spending the time to have an actual match. And where was Martel for the save?

What was that Luger inexplicable non-match with Savage? And what was the inexplicable Sting run-in well before the end of the show? A new ending for once was good, I guess. HEY! IT'S A MOTHER FARKING NET! A NET! THAT'S GENIUS! Boy! I'm psyched about that Savage/Luger match now! AND Hogan is gonna wrestle STING! AGAIN! KICK ASS! I'm glad they did this angle here. At this point. In the show. And all. Yep.....boy...a net... Maybe next week a Tiger Trap in the parking lot. THAT WOULD RULE! Maybe Chinese Finger cuffs! WHIP ASS! Oh yeah, baby.... A net. Yep.

The Louie Spicolli match really sucked. Spicolli is becoming the new Jeff Jarrett of WCW- a crappy wrestler who some people were fooled into thinking could work at one point (okay, both of these choads had me fooled at one point) but who takes up the push that someone forty times better doesn't get. Example: Spicoli gets a push for his shitty matches. Psicosis wrestles fucking circles around his big fat ass and gets no push.

Louie Spiccolli the announcer is as useless as Honky Tonk Man the announcer. And, YO! when you commended Tony for calling a fisherman's suplex, it was a Northern Lights Suplex, ya Mo-RON.

Actually this is all real nit-picky. WCW has been about as good as it's ever been this last two months (as long as you don't include the PPV before last.)

THERE YOU HAVE IT.

DEAN!

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