Monday, January 16, 2006

WCW Greed

1) Jason Jett vs. Kwee Wee – 4
2) Rey Mysterio Jr. & Billy Kidman vs. Elix Skipper & Kid Romeo - 7
3) Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Shawn Stasiak - 4
4) Lance Storm & Mike Awesome vs. Hugh Morrus & Konnan – 4
5) Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Shane Helms – 6
6) Sean O’Haire & Chuck Palumbo vs. Lex Luger & Buff Bagwell - 1
7) Chris Kanyon vs. The Cat - 5
8) Rick Steiner vs. Booker T – 4
9) Ric Flair & Jeff Jarrett vs. Dusty Rhodes & Dustin Rhodes - 5
10) Diamond Dallas Page vs. Scott Steiner – 6

While nothing notable happened on this show it pretty much blew their previous pay-per-view blunders right out of the water. The opener, which was apparently added at the very last minute, wasn’t anything special but was still a pretty solid match. The match of the night had to be the Cruiserweight Tag Team Title match. All four guys put on an incredible match that managed to revive the cruiserweight division that Vince Russo had destroyed with his bare hands during his tenure. Stasiak vs. Bigelow was a nothing match that didn’t have much of a story going into it besides Stasiak thinking that Bigelow was ugly (gotta love those creative geniuses in WCW). You could tell that Bigelow was getting up there in years. Storm and Awesome made the tag match tolerable but that’s just because I’ve never been a fan of either Hugh Morrus or Konnan. Closing out the first half of the show was another solid cruiserweight match which featured Helms upsetting Chavo for the belt.

Let me stop here for a moment and talk about the team of Palumbo and O’Haire. These two were probably the best homegrown tag team that WCW ever put together. They had power, speed, and amazing agility for men of their size. Let me put it this way, O’Haire is 6’7” and does a better swanton than Jeff Hardy ever dreamed of. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a 6’7” guy leave his feet for an offensive maneuver … brother. Now that I’ve finished building these guys up, they pretty much beat the holy living crap out of Luger and Bagwell. Honestly, that doesn’t amaze me because after the dawn of the new millennium, both guys were pretty much worthless. Wait, Bagwell has been worthless since about 1997. Never mind about that then. You wanna know the sad part? Luger’s promo before the match was about twice as long as the actual match itself.

The next three bouts featured some decent wrestling and not much else as Kanyon and Booker manage to eek good performances out of The Cat and Rick Steiner, both of whom were, and still are, largely untalented grapplers. The tag match that featured Flair and Jarrett vs. Dusty & Dustin Rhodes was only there so they could say that they did Flair vs. Rhodes on pay-per-view. The main event was actually a pleasant surprise and not a complete waste of time like I had feared. DDP has a quality outing and manages to get some mobility out of Scott Steiner who is so big at this point, he probably can’t bend over to wipe his ass.

As much as I’ve ragged on some of the wrestlers on this card, to be fair it wasn’t terrible and is probably one of the top ten best pay-per-views that WCW ever did. It featured high quality cruiserweight action, a pretty good undercard, and of course some ring legends such as Flair, Rhodes, and Bigelow. The only thing I have left to say is that if you want to see this, then good luck finding a copy because they are extremely hard to come by. Lastly, let me leave you with a trivia question. Who were the four individuals to appear on WCW’s first pay-per-view show (Starrcade 1987) and WCW’s last pay-per-view show?

No comments: