Posts Tagged ‘Starrcade’
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
Hey Scott,
Been reading your board in regards to what everyone blames the death of WCW on, and wanted to connect to the man himself (you) for my thoughts. People like to blame Starcade 97 & the Finger Poke of Doom, and they are right, those things definately killed interest. But isn't just the lousy, arrogent, booking of Nitro the real thing to blame. I mean somewhere in 97 they got very over-confident and began airing never-ending Hogan masturbation promos w/ no real storytelling, just biding their time till Sting vs Hogan. Then in 98 there was some solid (questionable) effort. I mean they took a risk & split up the NWO & began building up Goldberg, with the DDP/Raven feud in the undercard. But then that summer the programming got really bad. The Warrior w/ his magic smoke & mirrors? Jay Leno/NWO Night Cap w/ Bischoff? And then after the poke of doom came the worst of all...The No Limit Soldiers. I mean instead of blaming one stupid incident, shouldn't we just blame it on years of bad TV?
There are a million things you can blame it on. The years of bad TV certainly contributed as much as anything else, but TV is easy to turn around in a few weeks. Killing PPV off? That’s tough to come back from.
Tags: DDP, Fingerpoke of Doom, Goldberg, Hulk Hogan, Nitro, No Limit Soldiers, NWO, Orange Goblin, Raven, Starrcade, Sting, TV, WCW, WCW Sucks
Posted in Rants | 68 Comments »
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Scott, just got done watching WCW Starrcade 97, and here is my question that I thought might make for good blog discussion. I have read several times from several people who pinpoint the "fingerpoke of doom" Nitro as the start of the downfall of WCW. What about Starrcade 97? I know it did a huge buyrate and made tons of money for the company, but it was also a chance for tons of people to see a truly disasterous PPV. All the wrong people went over in terrible matches and then came the main event. How do more people not talk about, or acknowledge how badly Hulk Hogan (or whoever was behind the "fast count" against Sting) screwed over Sting, and therefore WCW???? I mean in one night after a terrible ppv, WCW or Hogan or whoever made Sting, and Bret Hart look like complete and total failures. Do you think that this PPV should be given more credit for starting a downfall of WCW that it gets???
I certainly give Starrcade its fair share of blame for WCW’s downfall!
Tags: Bret Hart, Edge, Fingerpoke of Doom, Hulk Hogan, Nitro, Starrcade, Sting, WCW, WCW Sucks
Posted in Rants | 122 Comments »
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
I'd like to ask how you (if you were in the main event of wrestlemania
or starrcade or whatever) would handle working your match after having
the show completely stolen ala Rock/Hogan or Taker/HBK. Would you just
go along with whatever you guys had planned and try to slowly get the
fans into it or try to add some drama really early into the match?
You can’t really control that sort of thing, so you’ve just gotta do your thing and hope for the best.
Tags: Starrcade, Wrestlemania
Posted in Rants | 79 Comments »
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Here’s a really long and good article from reader, all about getting your push killed through no fault of your own.
Hey Scott, Bill Chase from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada here. Been a fan since I was 4, I'm now 27. Here's something I put together recently, I hope you enjoy.
Lugered, def:
(1) An invented wrestling term, where someone is hyped up so big for a major title win, and then it doesen't happen derailing momentum to epic amounts of failure.
(2) Derived from wrestler, Lex Luger.
(3) Triple H has "Lugered" more people than anyone.
(more...)
Tags: 1994, 2000, Batista, Booker T, Bret Hart, Canada, Chris Jericho, ECW, Edge, Elimination Chamber, Goldberg, HHH, Hulk Hogan, JBL, John Cena, Lex Luger, Lost, Macho Man, Matt Hardy, Monday Night Wars, Nitro, NWA, NWO, Politics, Randy Orton, RAW, Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Rob Van Dam, Royal Rumble, RVD, Shane McMahon, Shawn Michaels, Smackdown, Starrcade, Steve Austin, Sting, Terry Funk, The Rock, TNA, Toronto, TV, Undertaker, WCW, Wrestlemania, WWE, WWF
Posted in Rants | 115 Comments »
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
(Apparently this Bret Hart guy is all the rage right now among the kids, so here’s a repost of the DVD rant from 2004, with some formatting and spelling errors fixed)
The SmarK DVD Rant for Bret Hart: The Best There Is, The Best There Was, and The Best There Ever Will Be.
So here's how this is gonna work -- I've of course been hit by endless requests for this DVD, but didn't get the DVD until recently. I managed to watch the documentary portion previously and posted thoughts to the blog, but everyone wanted rants for the matches included, too, and I didn't really feel like going back to take notes on the documentary portion to do the entire DVD set. So the documentary portion is going to be a guest rant by longtime blog contributor and friend of mine Princess, who covered most of what I would have written about it anyway, and then we'll hit the matches with fresh rants for stuff I haven't done before or haven't done in a long time. For time reasons and for reasons of efficiency, I copied stuff where my opinions haven't changed or where an updated version wasn't going to be different enough to warrant a redo.
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Tags: 1994, 24, Andre the Giant, Attitude, Bob Backlund, Boston Garden, Bret Hart, British Bulldogs, Canada, Dusty Rhodes, DVD, ECW, Edge, Goldberg, Hart Foundation, HHH, House, Intercontinental title, Jeff Jarrett, Lita, Locke, Lost, Midnight Express, Montreal, Mr. Perfect, MSG, Politics, Rants, RAW, Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper, Royal Rumble, Slick, SNME, Starrcade, Steve Austin, Sting, The Rock, The Wrestler, Toronto, Undertaker, Vince McMahon, Vince Russo, WCW, Wrestlemania, Wrestlemania III, WWE, WWF
Posted in Rants | 35 Comments »
Friday, November 20th, 2009
The Summerslam match between Mr. Perfect and Shawn Michaels, while good, is frequently cited as a "should've been better than it was" match because of the people involved. Are there other matches that you think fit this bill?
Conversely, are there matches that have shocked you by being better than you thought it would be because of the people involved? Cena/Umaga and Cena/Khali seem to pop up frequently here.
Thanks
Oh yeah, there’s definitely lots of matches that were built up beforehand in people’s minds as being classics and then didn’t deliver. Some off the top of my head…
- Eddie Guerrero v. Rey Mysterio at WM, where they were basically trying to follow their own Halloween Havoc classic and just psyched themselves out.
- Rick Steiner v. Mike Rotundo from Starrcade 88, which was built up for months with one of the best sympathetic babyface storylines ever, but just couldn’t deliver to the full potential in the ring. Again, it was good and had an awesome finish, but wasn’t able to achieve that classic status it should have had.
- Sting v. Ric Flair at Great American Bash 90. Flair in 1990 was pretty pathetic by his own standards, and in the match that had been built up for months and was supposed to be the grand passing of the torch, they just couldn’t pull off a great match. And Sting was 100 times the worker that he was in 1988 when Flair got a near-***** match out of him at the first Clash, which is why it’s all the more perplexing. I don’t know if it was booking or Sting’s injury or Flair just being off that night, but it always stands out to me as the one that should have been an easy **** classic and yet it got shown up by a midcard Midnights v. Southern Boys match.
Tags: Mr. Perfect, Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Starrcade, Sting, Umaga
Posted in Rants | 35 Comments »
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
The ‘Captain Hindsight’ Retro Review of Halloween Havoc 1998
By red29
This show was played on WWE Classics on Demand this past month and I remember being so excited for this Supercard back in the fall of ’98. The Monday Night Wars were still up for grabs although the tide was certainly turning to the WWF. I had been watching wrestling religiously for a year at this point (started oddly enough with Starrcade ’97 at a friend’s house). I watched this originally from my college dorm room on a live internet stream from WCW.com, using a login/password from some IRCnet chatroom I think. That was pretty big for 1998. The point of this review is to see how this holds up eleven years later using my cynical jaded wrestling eyes. . Actually I’m a pretty positive guy and I WANT to enjoy what I’m watching. Anyway, I rate matches on the typical 5 * scale with your average match weighing in at **1/2. I did not dig up Scott’s original rant on this from the 411 or Pulse archives so anything that sounds familiar is strictly due to osmosis from reading all his stuff for the last eleven years (started on Wrestline.com). Let’s cue up the 24/7 montage…
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Tags: 24, 24/7, Batista, black eye, Bret Hart, Chris Jericho, Cracked, DDP, DVD, Edge, Goldberg, HHH, House, Legends, Locke, Lost, MMA, Monday Night Wars, Nitro, NWO, Raven, RAW, Starrcade, Sting, TV, WCW, WWE, WWF
Posted in Rants | 29 Comments »
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
A couple of months ago I e-mailed you 10 rapid fire questions, and the readers seemed to enjoy it so here's part two.
Again, the premise is 10 quick questions, answer with the first things that come to mind.
here we go!
1. Of all you books, which is YOUR personal favorite to read? (or i should say write)
2. Best Hogan match ever?
3. Demolition or Road Warriors?
4. Midnights or RocknRolls?
5. Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, Raging Bull, Singin in the Rain, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler's List, Vertigo, The Wizard of Oz. These are the American Film Institue top 10 movies all time. Agree with the choices? If not what needs to go and what needs inclusion? (i think 2001 DEFINITLY belongs, thats me though)
6. On the best day's of their lives, whose a better worker Bret or Shawn?
7. Isnt wargames the greatest gimmick match ever?
8. If Terry Funk retired in 89 after the I quit with Flair and never had his ECW stint, would we REALLY consider him a legend nowadays or would he be another old timer we barely recognize like Verne Gagne or Lou Thesz?
9. Favorite Sting-Vader match?
10. Ever seen AJ-Joe-Daniels from Unbreakable 05? If so what you think? Meltzer said its ***** and the best 3 way ever (better than WM20 even)
1. Well that’s hardly a fair question. You can’t make choices like that in a lightning round.
2. Against Warrior at WM6.
3. Demolition. I was never into the Road Warriors.
4. Midnights. I’m more specifically a fan of Ricky Morton when it comes to the RNR.
5. I’d say Godfather part 2 belongs in there, but I haven’t seen them all so it’s not fair to judge the rest.
6. Shawn.
7. Yes. Yes it is.
8. Funk was a former NWA World champion and a huge star long before he became a crazy old man, so yes, we’d still remember him. For his WWF stint in the 80s if nothing else.
9. The one from Starrcade 92.
10. Yes, it’s definitely *****. The three-way at WM didn’t happen and was just a dream (along with Backlash) so I don’t have a point of comparison, but hypothetically if that WM main event DID happen it’s still the best because of the bigger match feel.
Tags: ECW, I Quit, NWA, Starrcade, Sting, Terry Funk, Vader, WWF
Posted in Rants | 68 Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Hey Scott, had a potential article of discussion for the blog. Fantasy booking for the most part is absolutely pointless I know but I often find myself doing it nonetheless, specifically with past wrestling history. I'm willing to bet you've done it yourself on occasion from time to time. I think it'd be of interest to hear your views perhaps on the 5 biggest missed oppurtunities in wrestling booking history. (automatically disqualifying events like Magnum vs Flair at Starrcade 87 etc. due to outside circumstances) Two big ones that come to my mind were Test not winning the WWF title at Survivor Series '99, it should've been him instead of Show, just made sense storyline wise. Sure he was green, but hell just give him that feelgood win and have him drop the strap a week or two later. And my belief as the one angle that absolutely should've happened, the NWO, Hogan, Hall, and Nash debuting in the WWF at Survivor Series 2001 during the WCW vs WWF elimination match towards the end and have them pay homage to BATB 96 by having them clear the ring of say everyone but Rock and Booker as the final two and have Hogan just leg drop Booker and throw Rock over him for the win. Vince would then come out for a group hug with them and just be like "HAHAHA it worked. It took years but it worked" I mean they showed up like 3 months later so why the hell not.
Your thoughts?
I was actually convinced at the time that they were gonna go with Test, but it just would have been SOOOOO stupid to put the belt on him, unless they were having him drop it back to HHH the next night on RAW or something.
As for the NWO thing, their whole signing and debut was very last-minute, desperation stuff from the WWF and in fact they had no idea it was going to be happening back in November, so that scenario would have been impossible. Plus the Alliance thing just needed to be blown off completely and doing a big screwjob finish would have been pretty terrible, I think.
Tags: HHH, NWO, RAW, Starrcade, WCW, WWF
Posted in Rants | 13 Comments »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
The SmarK DVD Rant for The Greatest Stars of the 90s
- Hosted by Tazz. This is similar to the 80s DVD in that it's broken down into a series of mini-biographies on the stars of the decade, but it's one big documentary disc first, followed by a pair of bonus match discs.
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Tags: 1994, 2000, 24, 24/7, Attitude, Bret Hart, CM Punk, D-Generation X, DVD, ECW, Fingerpoke of Doom, Hart Foundation, HHH, House, Hulk Hogan, Intercontinental title, Jim Cornette, John Cena, Lex Luger, Locke, Lost, Magnum TA, MMA, Montreal, MSG, Nitro, NWO, Philly, RAW, Ric Flair, Royal Rumble, Shane McMahon, Shawn Michaels, Smackdown, Starrcade, Steve Austin, Sting, The Rock, TV, Undertaker, Vader, Vince McMahon, WCW, Wrestlemania, WWE, WWF
Posted in Rants | 43 Comments »
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