I’m just gonna call it right now – if this week’s Nitro is as good as it should be,
it’s going to blow RAW out of the water.
To start off the show, we get a Giant interview in the back. Okay, not such a great start. For some reason, the Giant cuts his promos like he’s been smoking nuclear waste. It’s really weird. I guess that’s one of the side effects of falling off a building, though. The American Males make their entrance to face the Blue Bloods in a tag match, which is great because every time I see William Regal in WCW it reminds me of his awful “he’s a man” theme song. Of course, we don’t even get to see Regal, because Harlem Heat beats up the brits before the match starts. For some reason, they immediately puts their belts on the line against the Males. Uh…okay.
WCW TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS
HARLEM HEAT (c) vs. THE AMERICAN MALES
That sort of came out of nowhere, but I guess it’s to enforce that “Nitro is live and that pleb show RAW isn’t!” idea they’ve been shoving down my throat, even though having a live show isn’t really an excuse to constantly have wacky shit going on. This was a big problem (for lack of a better word) with early Nitro. Either way, Harlem Heat start off the match by beating down the Males with mostly filler offense. Booker misses a legdrop and hits a casual scissors kick as a transition move, which almost sends Eric Bischoff into a tangent about kickboxers at ringside. These guys are worse at random tangents than the RAW announcers, and that’s amazing because one of the more notable things that happened on RAW this week was Jerry Lawler going on a tangent about Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah…that’s a problem.
Booker hits a stiff as hell wheel kick to Riggs, which leads to a failed sunset flip. I don’t know why that spot happened considering they just immediately went back to face-in-peril. We get the hot tag spot that has happened in every tag match ever booked, Colonel Parker comes out to carry Sherri away and, while this is happening, the Males just kind of get the cover out of nowhere. Huh. It feels like that ending didn’t really go as planned. But yeah, the American Males win the tag titles. Also, as a completely unrelated note, Nick Patrick (the MVP of SummerSlam 2001) was the ref presiding over this chicanery. Not surprising, I don’t think.
Ric Flair comes out to the ring for an interview with Mean Gene… because conventional come out to the ring and talk promos haven’t been invented yet, I guess. I can assure you that a man like Ric Flair can carry himself without Mean Gene awkwardly standing there with a mic to his face. He complains about Arn Anderson bringing Brian Pillman into the feud, which makes me wonder who the heel is in this feud. Maybe I’m just stupid but I still haven’t been able to tell. It seems like the weird grey morality card is being played here.
PAUL ORNDORFF vs. JOHNNY B. BADD
Paul Orndorff comes out to the ring, which causes all of the commentators to immediately bury his theme music for some reason. We recap the weird existential crisis that happened at Fall Brawl and Hulk Hogan’s motorcycle getting destroyed by the Giant. We have the same problem with the face commentators at ringside that we had on RAW. See, Steve McMichael, being a talentless hack, thinks he needs to constantly refute everything that comes out of Bobby Heenan’s mouth, no matter how innocuous it is. Eric Bischoff, to his credit, tends to stay out of the constant Heenan-bashing, but my god is McMichael an obnoxious twat. It’s kind of a similar problem to WrestleMania 9’s commentary team, which…is not a good thing. Being similar to WrestleMania 9 in any way is not a good thing.
We get a weird spot where Mr. Wonderful yells at the ref which segues into a commercial break. After the break, Orndorff misses a splash by about a mile and gets beat down on the outside. In the meanwhile, the commentary team talks about everything but the match. After that, there’s the mandated weekly “jump over the top rope to the outside” spot, which I’m still convinced is the only high stakes spot the WCW road agents knew. Badd tries to bust out a casual piledriver, which almost leads to a sunset flip, but Orndorff sits on it and gets the pin. We get another recap, this time of Randy Savage getting attacked by the Taskmaster on the beach. Man, WCW had some weird segments.
Apparently this was leading to a Savage interview, which doesn’t surprise me too much since there apparently needed to be roughly 5 pointless interviews per Nitro taping. We recap Fall Brawl, which for some ungodly reason didn’t end this awful Dungeon of Doom feud. For some reason, Savage talks shit about Luger and Hogan, which is kind of odd. Luger comes out to the ring to refute this trash talk, obviously, and we get an incomprehensible screaming match with Savage’s voice being raspier than usual and Lex’s being more obnoxious than usual. Fun to listen to this ain’t. Mean Gene defuses the inevitable fist fight, which really made this segment a buzzkill.
We finally get the earlier hyped recap of Hogan’s bike getting destroyed by the Giant driving a monster truck, which is a lot less impressive looking than it sounds. Also, Giant was totally ready to run down a crowd of like 10 people, which should probably qualify as attempted vehicular manslaughter. Hey, at least they all conveniently got out of the way in time. As a response to this, Hogan bangs on the side of the monster truck’s door like a petulant child, which really is quite hilarious. After that, we get a recap of Giant cracking Hogan’s neck at Fall Brawl and the entrances for our next match.
BRIAN PILLMAN vs. RIC FLAIR
Uh…okay guys, you’re just gonna do this now? Not at the next PPV or anything? Okay, I guess all that setup for this feud was pointless then. The match starts out with some stiff chops and weird spots – pretty much Ric Flair’s bread and butter. We get another jump out to ringside spot, more stiff chops and a catching dropkick. As opposed to the WWF commentators conspicuously ignoring it with the 1-2-3 Kid, the WCW booth is actually blatantly pointing out Brian Pillman’s slow-burn heel turn. Do none of these guys know how subtlety works? Steve McMichael keeps saying “the WCW”, which makes me despise him even more. Pillman throws Flair off the top rope, misses a flying nothing and reverses the figure four in a sort of botched looking sequence.
Man, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all of these Nitro matches look like WWE video game matches. The flow is just so weird. Maybe I’m just not used to it. I digress. The aforementioned figure four reversal was pointless since Flair almost immediately locks it in and gets the win anyways. So yeah, what was shaping up to be a big feud between Flair and Pillman started off with a 5 minute squash match on Nitro. Well done, boys.
To end the show, Flair calls Arn Anderson out for a match on Nitro next week. So yeah, this feud is basically set up to crash and burn now. I don’t know why they’re doing this.
Two amazingly dull shows this week, but Nitro edges out RAW just barely – WARSCORE 1-1.
@PWPRandy