2011 Pro Wrestling Thread

You're not a Dungeon of Doom fan?

I'm not sure about workrate (and to be fair, a lot of matches from that era still subscribed to the 2-3 bump formula from the old days), but the NWO had plenty of great matches. Hogan-Goldberg was an incredible atmosphere. Some of the earlier matches, when you had "heroes" like Luger, Giant and Sting trying to finally knock the NWO down a peg, were great.
Where the NWO jumped the shark was when every single core member became invincible. Sean Waltman could've wrestled the Giant and pinned him in 30 seconds. There was a PPV, the first NWO Souled Out, where I think the main event was the Steiners vs. Hall and Nash for the tag belts and every other match was a squash. That's when it became apparent that this thing was out of control.

Back to the '97 Royal Rumble for a minute. One other thing that stood out to me was how far the production values have come. There was no Titantron yet, and the ring entrances looked like a ripoff of WCW Saturday Night.
During the Rumble match, the guys entered with a strobe light at their back and music that sounded like it was being played on a jambox in the third row. You could barely tell who it was until they were halfway to the ring.
Now, those first few notes hit and it blasts you out of the building.
Again, just weird to see that entire moment. It was like one of those "before they were stars" shows, or a sitcom with a great ensemble cast who all went on to bigger and better things.

 

That video of Hall at the show was really sad. Why the hell did they even let him go out there?

 

Just saw the E:60 trailer with Hall. Makes Mickey Roarke's "Randy the Ram" look he married the boss' daughter and became COO/assclown/attention hog years after his prime.

Bischoff's comments were pretty telling in that it shows just how little management cares about the talent once their shelf life has passed. Hall's problems may not have anything to do with wrestling, but it's a good bet that Bischoff was a hell of an enabler when Hall began circling the drain in 1998.

 

On two separate occasions, they made his drinking, no-showing and domestic abuse situations angles, plus there was speculation that they were allowing him to cut promos, and possibly work, while shitfaced.

 

I remember when Hall vomited on Bischoff during a Nitro, maybe 1998 or 1999. Not sure if it was a work because, well, it's Scott Hall.

 

That's what he gets for going under the ladder at WrestleMania X. Doesn't he know that shit jinxes you?

 

I remember that match. He was having it with Luger, and was fucking it up, either on purpose, or not. I wasn't sure if it was a work either. At one point, Luger yelled at him about fucking up his career.

 

I wonder if Hall is pissed that Jeff Hardy is stealing his gimmick?

 

Fairly certain (or as certain as you can be with a Russo-booked product) that it was a work. He did the same thing with Road Warrior Hawk in the WWF.

 

Now that I've read up on that incident, it wasn't Russo-era but it was still a work. Happened to be the same night that Ric Flair returned, and the Nitro before the Halloween Havoc debacle, in which no one who payed for the show saw Page-Goldberg for the WCW title. Good to know.

 

You're almost entirely wrong about the first nWo Souled Out. The main event was Hogan v. Giant and every match was at least 9 minutes long. The Steiners and Eddie Guerrero both went over nWo guys in their matches.

 

You're right ... and not so right.
Looking up the results, the Steiners did indeed win -- and then were stripped of the belts on Nitro because a WCW referee counted the pin.
Guerrero won clean.
And the main event ended in the usual NWO group attack clusterfuck.
So, yeah, it wasn't a PPV full of squashes. But the NWO guys, with the exception of mid-carder Syxx, also came away looking pretty untouchable.