Hiya! Boy! Nitro isn't afraid to suck! There were a few good things but this was- by-and-large- a big bunch of Ignoring What Makes WCW Good (Guys who can wrestle wrestling) and instead an attempt to match WWF- shitty angle for angle. And not a clean finish that wasn't a squash. Nash the booker made me wait TWO WHOLE WEEKS for me to miss Hulk Hogan. At least Hogan tried to push the focus on himself and didn't care about the other guys in the promotion. Nash seems to think he knows what's good for eveyone and he seems to think screwjobs=RATINGS!! I see that the Nielsen families have proven him wrong. Get Terry Motherfucking Taylor back to booking this shit already. Everybody else on the WCW booking committee is a total idiot.

WHAT WORKED-

- To correct Rob Van Dam, Latino Jesus is the WHOLE F'ING SHOW. Eddy Guerrerro and the Eddy Guerrerro-related angles are the reason that WCW is better than the WWF and the main reason I'm watching WCW these days. They seem to be ceding WCWSN over to Eddy slowly, which would be the best move they could EVER do. Eddy Guerrerro just is SOOOOOOO AWESOME. This little match was the awesomeness of Eddy in a microcosm. How awesome is Eddy, you ask? Let's take inventory as to why Bischoff is offering him more money than what The Rock is making just so that Eddy will stay Atlanta. 1.) Eddy takes Villano V- a great old school rudo who has jobbed to absolutely EVERYBODY in WCW and should garner about as much WCW mark interest as Dusty Wolfe or Eddie Jackie- and Eddy OUT-RUDOS the great Rudo. Eddy takes Villano- who is wrestling TECHNICO (which is about as weird as Super Calo working shootstyle)- and makes Villano look SUDDENLY CREDIBLE by selling offense that Villano hasn't used since the late 70's, I'm thinking. The fact that they were popping for Villano's offense is a credit to Eddy understanding how to work a match, Villano understanding how to work a match and the legit heel heat Eddy generates. The fact that the crowd was on it's feet for a Rito Romero Special by Villano at the end was MIND-BOGGLING. I love the look of surprise on the face of Eddy as he tries to figure out a way to get out of the Romero special after realizing that the crowd is suddenly popping like it's a viable SUBMISSION HOLD. Usually, the applicant will just stop doing it because noone really thinks of the Romero Special as anything other than a funny looking hold. The great thing here is that Villano and Eddy suddenly find themselves in the middle of an Instantly Hot Move and Eddy has to work his way out of it to keep the crowd behind Villano- who now suddenly has to act like he has just put on the Lion Tamer, as opposed to just applying another random lucha hold. I wasn't expecting that little passage of greatness. 2.) Eddy goes TWO STYLES, FULL-BORE all at once. He is as Lucha as Lucha gets for large portions of this and THEN whips out a SWANK Dangerous Backdrop. Sell the armdrag, take it to the mat NJ Junior style, hit the Mid-South Superplex. Eddy is an encyclopedia of wrestling in every way. That's how you instill REAL MOTHERFUCKING WRESTLING into an angle and get the ANGLE and THE WRESTLING over. All in six minutes. Eddy is a genius. And that Villano V Ciclon Ramirez Old School As Spoonie-Gee Tope was FRICKIN GREAT. I was all over this match. This is what ALL of Nitro should be. Fire the losers at the top, they ain't winning the ratings or getting any kind of decent buyrate. Let Eddy run the show. Actually, he IS the show. Hell, I'd watch. YOU'D watch.

-(I'd like to start a new feature tonight in this- YOUR Nitro report. I call it "HOLES IN THE ANGLE I WOULD GIVE A HOOT ABOUT IF THE WRESTLING WASN'T SO GREAT.") HOLES IN THE ANGLE I WOULD GIVE A HOOT ABOUT IF THE WRESTLING WASN'T SO GREAT: Rey and Kidman decide to FINALLY figure out who the better man is (as if we didn't know- it's, of course, Juventud.) so Rey says, "No LWO interference." WHAT?!!? Since when has Rey ever had any control over the LWO and what makes him think it's suddenly gonna kick in now? Maybe Eddy IIISSS booking this and Rey HAS been calling for all the LWO run-ins all along and it's all a conspiracy! I'm kidding. It's WCW. Luckily, WCW isn't afraid to use the flimsiest of premises to let these to go at it for a while, so I could give a shit if Misterio was being controlled by a chip in his head which receives signals from the Tri-Lateral Commission. The great thing about this match is that it shows why Juventud and Eddy are so great right now. Juventud, when working the Possible US Match of the Year according to Dave Meltzer (he missed that Benoit/Raven match I'm guessing) against Kidman, Juventud knew EXACTLY how to draw the crowd into the match and use that to make his highspots get full effect. The fact that Rey is in the EXACT situation and can't generate one-ninth of the heat as our boy Juventud is a telling sign of who the Man of the Cruiserweight Division really is. Kidman and Rey get all panicky in this as they hit highspot after highspot in an attempt to keep the crowd around for the big twist at the end- all of which are hit pretty beautifully except for that moonsault spot that Rey hasn't hit cleanly since that Mascara vs Mascara match versus Mr Condor in 1994 (probably). Kidman is on his game now and Rey seems to be getting back into his game but they haven't conquered the US audience like Eddy and Juventud so this was technically beautiful but not as good from an audience standpoint as any of the Juventud matches. The end sets up the whole underlying premises of the match: in Tampa, the LWO get legit heel heat that NWO doesn't get anymore; Rey and Kidman are about as over as a tagteam can get because suddenly all their highspots are 100% Dixie Dynamite when applied to those LWO bastards (when the adorable face vs face match turns into adorable faces against Eddy's evil horde of bastards, the Southern crowd KNOWS how to react- get into a Wattsian frenzy of rootin' for the good guy because your heels are over as motherfuckers as REAL heels and Eddy IS over as a heel more than ANYONE in WCW (with Bret Hart as a close second)); all this is heading to the 1999 Feud of the Year as Eddy and Juventud are poised to go after Rey and Kidman in a tagteam feud unseen in North America since the Midnight Express, The Fantastics and the Rock and Roll Express walked the earth. I can't frickin wait!

-Norman Smiley and Saturn had a good little match going there for a minute until the wretched ending. Remember the good old days.... March 1998. These two would have fit so perfectly in the Benoit/ Booker T/ Fit Finlay/ Rick Martel TV Title stratus that was the coolest thing in WCW for a while which delivered a slew of good matches. HEY WAIT! Saturn WAS in that! Look what he's been wrangled into NOW! He's feuding with SONNY ONO! And THE CAT! And IT SUCKS! Saturn needs a new agent. Anyway, this had wads of cool things in it which added up to too much wrestling to be denied this side of the Workrate equator- the Half Tequila Sunrise Suplex, the Naked Choke Suplex, the Saturn counter to the Yamada-Malenko-Hasegawa Argentinian Kneebreaker that Smiley whipped out from nowhere. The ending said "Kevin Nash, worst booker alive." Splain that whole thing with the ref and Mike Tenay to me again Schiavonne?

-Jericho was pretty funny but way too long. I loved the Hammer quote. I kinda... liked... Gerardo... in a A-Ha... kinda way with the... AW CRAP! The match might be good is Konnan decides to not totally stink up the entire MCI Center.

-Bret Hart on THE STICK is really great because he has become a forceful orator but, more importantly, he can wrestle like a motherfucker.

-Deep in my heart, I know that there is ALWAYS a possibility that ONE DAY Scott Putski will have some sort of compelling match if in with the proper wrestler at the proper time. Hell, he'd look great with Fit Finlay or Chris Benoit beating the living dogcrap out of him. This idea would be the Late Period Jumbo Tsuruta School of "Beat Them Into A Good Match" philosophy and WCW has the two best ever in North America right now by having the aforementioned. On the other end of the spectrum of Carriers of Guys Who Suck is the guys who can bump enough to make the horrible wrestlers look good. The WWF owns the TRUE king of this style in Cactus Motherf**king Jack- who is so good at carrying terrible choades that a lot of people think that the Undertaker ISN'T a useless sack of shit in the ring. The closest non-luchadore the WCW can muster in the style is Raven- who isn't NEARLY as insane as Cactus but still understands what it takes to achieve Good Match Out Of Poo and WILL go there, if motivated (thus explaining the SUBLIME coolness of the Benoit vs Raven match- when the best purveyors of each philosophy in WCW meet in the ring). I was wondering if Putski could be carried to something by Raven bumping for him- as opposed to the sure (and FAR more satisfying) method of beating El Hijo del Polish Power into flinders. NAAAH! LET'S GET KANYON ON THE STICK! Let's get RAVEN'S MOTHER INVOLVED! This wasn't going to be good matchwise prolly, but they sealed the suck-ass with the Buff's Mom Angle revisted.

-Wrath no-sells a bunch of stuff from Al Green. Meng never got over, Goldberg's mark allure is starting to wane. The eighties are over, ya bunch of losers. Al Green is a fine journeyman heavyweight who deserves better. Wrath sucks.

- Ric Flair has a heart attack and they blow the whole facade of the shoot angle by doing the same thing the WWF did with the equally pathetic Hawk Suicide attempt. WWF- "Hawk's dead and here's Sable's big milkwagons!" WCW- "Flair's dead and here's a little 'taster' of tonight's main event as BamBam and Scott Hall mix it up in the foyer!" The fact that Flair feigning a heart attack may keep the hideousness of Flair vs Bischoff from seeing the light of day doesn't make this work because just because you are preventing a shitty wrestling match from occuring doesn't mean that you've created something good- like Benoit vs Bret Hart at Starrcade. Kevin Nash is worst booker on the face of the earth. And that even includes Ole Anderson and Eric Embry.

-The Giant chokeslammed DDP through SOMETHING. Bischoff took that same bump and it was a lot cooler looking. The last time the Giant's chokeslam was REALLY devastating looking was the AWESOME chokeslam of Luger through that table. The Giant is really fat now. DDP looked ridiculous coming out like that to answer the challenge of Bret Hart, looking like a real cartoon of himself- especially at that camera angle, and it was hilarious to see the Giant choke-slam him like that. Sort of like the old guy with the hook on "Live at the Appollo". HEY! Maybe this did work.

- BOOKER T GETTING.... OVER BIG...TIME ... WITHOUT USELESS BROTHER..... MUST BOOK BOOKER T... BACK INTO.... OBLIVION........

- Gee, with the FAT ASS bump by Hall and the freakin TOPE by Horace, this was better than it had any right to be, but the restholds were too long and the ending was preposterous. Hall doesn't go over HORACE clean? Kevin Nash- a Pinnacle of Shitty Booking For Three Weeks Now.

-The Main Event had perfectly fine wrestling until the mindless run-in and dq by Hall. Nash, who brought the WWF to it's knees when he had Vince's ear, decides to take out the Atlanta-based promotion to complete the set of Wrecked Major Two Wrestling Promotions. Can New Japan and EMLL be in Nash's sites for the next millenium? One can only suspect. The big question is- does WCW have a Stone Cold Steve Austin to bring them back from the Nash brink of impending collapse? I think they do, but all four refuse to re-sign to the sinking ship. Hardtimes spreading just like the flu....

THERE YOU HAVE IT.

DEAN.

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