The Monday Nitro Workrate Report
A weekly look at what did and didn't work on Monday Nitro by Dean Rasmussen
Monday, April 12th, 1999
What Worked
This will sound amazingly whiny when compared to what was on RAW
wrestlingwise and compared to what passes for wrestling in the big two
in general, BUT Kidman (and everybody) going over Psicosis was getting
old a year ago- so you can imagine how old it is at this juncture. What
saves Kidman's bacon in this was the fact that he OUTBUMPED FUCKING
PSICOSIS which I can't remember ever happening anywhere. This match was
a good Nitro match though it was too short and I now realize how whiny
it is to get upset that Billy Kid Flash Kidman went over Psicosis. I
dunno. I'm baffled. I thought that Rey and Kidman were gonna do a
three-way with Raven/Saturn and the Horsemen. I DIDN'T know that were
also gonna be the only focus of the Cruiserweight division still. I
dunno. Push Psicosis already, you nimrods. You have a GIANT roster of
great Cruiserweights. FUCKING USE THEM.
Hey! Flair vs Sting worked because it saves you, the viewer, the three
bucks of renting Capital Combat- The Great American Bash, because this
was the same match in almost every detail- even the no-selling that made
me hate Sting to begin with. WOW! WRESTLING HAS NO EFFECT ON HIM!
Flair should be putting over BUFF~! or Booker T at this point instead of
propping up the corpse of Sting since they ruined Sting forever last
December. The match was classic Flair as he bumped like a freak to make
the Stinker look like he was almost lifelike. Tonight was NWA like a
Motherfucker. For good and bad.
Hugh Morris is his least repulsive when going headlong through a
couple of tables- and it's all on the way putting over my personal
favorite big man, Bamm Bamm Bigelow- so HUZZAH! Even if did pretty much
suck...
My tape gave out before the end of the DDP vs Steiner match but it was
looking pretty good from what I saw. Every time I want to thoroughly
hate DDP, he goes and bumps his way back to my good list. He was all
high-flying and shit. How did it end?
Why do I get the feeling that the KING of referrees- Charles Robinson
will die for my pleasure in the Sports Entertaining Anti-DEAN match:
Evil Ref vs Tubular Boobular Valet? Robinson will fearlessly rip his own
head off and throw it into the audience and I find him pleasing in that
fact, so hope springs eternal for this otherwise doomed wad of schlock.
This PPV is gonna be SO not as cool as Spring Stampede at this rate, so
someone tape this for me. As for Macho's childbride George: it seems
that Tony Schiavonne thinks of her quite lovingly in his quiet moments
of self-contemplation feuled with bouts of punching the munchkin, if his
endless creepy comments were any indication. Why did this work again?
OH! The Charles Robinson worship and the midnight choker joke! WORKED!
WORKED! WORKED! WOo-HoOO! Oh and Evil Flair is allll good.
What Didn't Work
The Rey Misterio vs Juventud match was looking fucking DELUXE for a
minute there until some sort of time restraints (more time for Raktman
and DJ Whatshisface? more time for Gentlemen Chris Adams to join the
multitude to come out and call DDP a big pussy and challenge him to a
title match tonight?) or something caused it to go on home at the fivish
minute mark. The Differing set of mirror sequences and the Puroresu
matwork hinted to at the beginning of the match were neato vestiges of
the classic mid-nineties feud that they had in AAA. Anyway, the main
problem is that the Cruiserweight division is quite smartly booked
cleanly throughout for the most part these days and the whip ass
Horseman vs Raven/Saturn vs Kidman/Misterio is Bill Wattsian in its hard
Southerness and in it's actually successful approximation of Mid-South
booking that Heyman has been trying to get right for five years now.
The fact that they are attempting to incorporate Misterio and Kidman
into every aspect of the undercard is smart on one hand (they rule and
they are over as motherfuckers in most places) and amazingly stupid on
the other (why just push these two in two different divisions when you
have Psicosis, Kaz Hayashi, Chavo Jr in the back and FRICKIN JUVENTUD
GUERRERA IN THE RING?!?) I dunno. The smart move would have been to
put the belt on Juventud since the crowd response of Rey the Face vs
Kidman the Face at the STAMPEDE was about as lukewarm as it has always
been for these two against each other. The problem is that you can't
book them both ways. The BIG angle they are in is against Raven and
Benoit and that will take precedence in the mind of grappling on-looker
and THAT angle has Kidman and Misterio as the pure faces, Raven/Saturn
as more tweener faces and the Horsemen as the fabulous ass-stomping
heels. When they try to get the crowd to get into Rey vs Kidman, what
you have is Ricky Steamboat vs Sting- and you know how well traditional
face vs face matches go over in traditional frameworks like this one.
They don't see them in the cool context of the Cruiserweight division-
where the belt has actually gathered enough power to be an be-all
end-all to most feuds and matches (where the down of face and heel
structure is broken down in a COOL way). They see Rey and Kidman as tag
team partners wrestling each other which sucks to most wrestling fans.
There is no hate in the context of the frame of angles they are in and
the Old-School Southern Booking of the three-way demands hatred or there
is no interest. Instead they get a half-assed Cruiserweight response
for the most two over people in the division. This would have been a
good opportunity to turn Juventud full heel and have him feud with
everybody else, including Rey and Kidman- because Juventud can work the
straight nouveau tweener vs tweener structure of the Cruiserweight
matches AND is also KING at the traditional Face/heel structure. It's a
good compromise and still keeps the belt strong and keeps Rey and Kidman
in the Cruiserweight scene- just booked a bit weird. Instead we get the
Horsemen run-in to settle nothing but extend the tag feud. So it's all
that and the fact that Misterio went to his finisher after five minutes.
King Pussy booking. So there.
Goldberg did a neat Pump-handle Suplexy thing and the rolling kneebar
into a heel hook-like shooty thing against the quite savable Kenny
Kaos. Whatever. Hey! Nikita II! The GOOD ones SELL. You didn't even
sell the litle fella's finisher, you shithead. It's too bad you
couldn't no-sell blocking while you were a Falcon, you'd a had more than
two sacks in your whole stinkin football career.
Booker T almost carried Rick The Anvil Steiner to a watchable match,
but by the end, the behemoth suck of Steiner overtook the goodness of
Booker T to the point that Booker T bumping like a freak could not erase
the fecal stench of Steiner's inability to even run the fucking ropes
and to take very low-level bumps competently. How Steiner and Ed Leslie
could wrestle so long and not learn a fucking thing or get any better
amazes me. Howzabout you?
The Master Blasters look to TAKE APART those doofy luchadores and- for
once in my god-forsaken life- I was glad that Nash showed up and gently
beat everybody up so I didn't have to see these two choades no-sell to
two guys who are four thousand times the wrestlers they will ever be.
HEY! FUCK THE WCW! AWRIGHT!
THERE YOU HAVE IT.
DEAN RASMUSSEN.
http://mh106.infi.net/~dhracr/death.htm
