WCW Road Wild ‘98

1. Meng vs. Barbarian – 4
2. Disco Inferno and Alex Wright vs. Public Enemy – Street Fight – 3
3. Raven vs. Kanyon vs. Saturn – No DQ – 6
4. Psychosis vs. Rey Mystero, Jr. – 7
5. Chavo Guerrero, Jr. vs. Stevie Ray – 1
6. Rick Stiener vs. Scott Stiener – 0
7. Bryan Adams vs. Steve “Mongo” McMichael – 2
8. Juventud Guerrera vs. Chris Jericho – 7
9. Wolfpac vs. nWo White vs. Goldberg – Battle Royal – 3
10. Diamond Dallas Page and Jay Leno vs. Hollywood Hogan and Erich Bischoff – 5

Meng and Barbarian brought the brute force bludgeoning I’d hoped for. My only qualm was that Meng looked pretty gassed during the last few minutes. They did a sickening belly-to-belly suplerplex that led me to cream my jeans. The brawl between Disco and Wright versus Public Enemy was unconvincing and unbelievable. They had a plethora of tame weapons, like aluminum cookie sheets and garbage cans. When Disco sells pain, you know who spent too much time in drama classes. I wonder if they buried Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge in their ridiculous hockey jerseys. Rocco jumped off this giant lighting rig and put Disco through a stack of three tables – while an entertaining visual, it kind of had its impact killed, seeing as how it wasn’t even the finish of the match.

Raven, Kanyon, and Saturn brought the beatings and the bumps. This match had a quick pace, and kept me interested throughout. It was kind of like the equivalent of the match I would have had, was I playing with these guys’ action figure counterparts. I mean that as a compliment, as, they were pretty much doing the types of things I would have dreamt up. Psychosis and Rey had a really excellent match; the build and psychology was way more prevalent than the typical lucha spotfest. Rey mad a dramatic comeback that I totally bought, plus, he squashed Psychosis’ face with his ass on a spot to the outside, and, he hit the move he now calls the “West Coast Pop” and it’s never looked better. Chavo and Stevie’s match was equivalent to a game of tag on an elementary school playground. Then, the Stiener versus Stiener match being unceremoniously cancelled insulted us. I thought this was especially lame, seeing as how it was boldly advertised on the back of the video’s package.

Mongo looked worse than ever, which, coupled with Adams’ ridiculous facials, made this one a real challenge to sit through. I only tossed it a few pity points, because there were a couple stiff shots. I applaud Jericho and Juventud for having the best match of the night. All of their stuff looked great, the highlight being Juventud’s absolutely inane springboard dive from the ring, over the stage, and about ten-foot out onto Jericho in a gravel pit. Jericho was also in top-form, playing the cocky character he was born to be.

The battle royal was just an absolute mess. Here, you had all of the highest paid guys in the company, going out there and just collecting a paycheck for giving about 10% of their abilities and effort. All of the usual suspects were involved, including Luger, The Giant, Nash, and Hall; as well as guys who usually are at least nominally decent, like Sting and Konnan. Curt Henning looked the best, which isn’t saying much, in this vehicle to further cement Goldberg as unstoppable. The main event was a big celebrity ploy to attract media attention, and actually worked a bit as an actual match, too. DDP was the workhorse, Leno looked like he’d been hitting Panera Bread religiously, Bischoff was all about the high kicks, and Hogan hung in there, albeit looked like a sun burnt turd, as he’d spent way too much time artificially tanning.