|
MassRafTer posted:The Jersey Triad was a big step down from the Benoit, Saturn, Malenko, Raven, Kidman and Rey pairings. DDP's heel promos were also horrible. Decent was somewhat relative and someone me desperately wishing they were faces instead.
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 00:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 23:23 |
|
|
Halloween Havoc 98 at least has a good main (that a lot of people didn't see because of the PPV screwup.) Starrcade 98 felt like the turning point for me. Not only do they have the horrible finish with Goldberg losing well before he should've, the whole show was just bad- it feels like that was the point where Bischoff no longer knew how to put on a good wrestling show.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 02:13
|
|
|
Goldberg had to lose at some point, and I don't think Starrcade was necessarily too early, but that was a pretty awful way for it to happen. Nash was a weak choice to even put in the main at Starrcade, let alone winning the title or literally laying down for Hogan a week later. Having Goldberg lose the title without killing his momentum was a challenge, but WCW had just about the worst plan possible for it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 03:19
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:Halloween Havoc 98 at least has a good main (that a lot of people didn't see because of the PPV screwup.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 03:21
|
|
|
There was a compelling, (and crazily simple) story to tell with Goldberg losing the belt. Nash wins the way he did, (with Hall cheating on his behalf). Goldberg is angry, and demands a rematch. Nash, (still a face), goes "whoops, yeah. I didn't mean to win the title like this. Sure." But you can have the NWO putting obstacles in both Nash, and Goldberg's way. Nash gets a few title feuds, Goldberg gets to angrily lay waste to everybody as he chases the belt. You delay the rematch until the crowd is literally salivating for it, and have Goldberg win, (if you want to get fancy have Nash cheat again this time on his own accord and turn heel), to thunderous applause. Simple, easy, and Hogan can even be involved. Either as one of Nash's title contenders, or the final miniboss before the Nash/Goldberg rematch. Hire me Eric.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 03:34
|
|
|
Goldberg didn’t need to lose the belt. He’d barely had any loving feuds! He wins the belt and is IMMEDIATELY sidelined. Road Wild - random midcard battle royale with nWo jobbers. Fall Brawl - doesn’t have a match Halloween Havoc - a good DDP match but barely an actual feud World War III - doesn’t have a match Starrcade - loses to Nash The latter half of 1998 is an immaculate master class of burial by Hogan and Nash. Put the belt on Goldberg so it looks like you’re playing ball, then immediately stop giving him feuds and featuring him. Hogan lost the belt to him and in storyline he didn’t even CARE, he had bigger fish to fry with Malone and Leno. The most heated feud they gave the guy was against Bam Bam on a few Nitros. Imagine if HBK’s back didn’t get hosed, Austin wins the title, and then doesn’t even appear on several subsequent PPVs and fights against D.O.A. while HBK continues main eventing. Austin eventually loses the title to HHH to no fanfare months later. That would never happen because it’s nuts, but it’s pretty much what WCW did.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 03:45
|
|
|
And don't forget, after losing to Nash, he's shunted off to a feud with Luger and later Bret Hart, neither of whom are champion.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 04:02
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:Halloween Havoc 98 at least has a good main (that a lot of people didn't see because of the PPV screwup.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 04:29
|
|
|
I believe fall brawl or ww3 were when Jericho was annoying him and wanted Goldberg to destroy him. But Goldberg had vacation scheduled and also didn’t realize that Jericho wasn’t serous.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 04:41
|
|
|
GAB 99's kind of a cool little snapshot of how far they'd fallen. No mention of goldberg or hogan iirc. DDP lost the nuclear pops he got as babyface. Piper and Flair proceed to put on the most miserable match on the card. I like Piper but he never really figured out how to gracefully enter the old and busted portion of his career. Also Portland was never a workrate town. Let's be real.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 04:46
|
|
|
coconono posted:GAB 99's kind of a cool little snapshot of how far they'd fallen. No mention of goldberg or hogan iirc. DDP lost the nuclear pops he got as babyface. Piper and Flair proceed to put on the most miserable match on the card. I like Piper but he never really figured out how to gracefully enter the old and busted portion of his career. Also Portland was never a workrate town. Let's be real. Yeah even when Horace came out instead of Scott Norton to face Ernest Miller (which they never explained, and Cat just looked confused as hell) I don't think even then that they specified Horace was Hulk's nephew. There was zero mention of Goldberg. The crowd was completely silent by the 2nd match. Also hoooooooly poo poo I forgot how absolutely awful WCW was about pacing. Every single match on that card last night went at least 50% longer than it should have.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 13:07
|
|
|
By the time 99 came around my brain completely checked out on WCW matches. I just couldn't watch the wrestling, it maxed out at 'lame'. I think. I don't know because my brain refuses to remember anything from the matches.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 15:08
|
|
|
DJExile posted:Also hoooooooly poo poo I forgot how absolutely awful WCW was about pacing. Every single match on that card last night went at least 50% longer than it should have.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 15:28
|
|
|
Why the gently caress couldn't WCW have just given me Scott Norton, the shits. DJExile posted:Also hoooooooly poo poo I forgot how absolutely awful WCW was about pacing. Every single match on that card last night went at least 50% longer than it should have. I mean, I actually love it when my wrestling show I am watching makes every match feel like it's going for thirty thousand years and makes me question mortality and the nature of the sport of wrestling, oh and then some idiot in black gear puts on a rest hold. How was Hak vs. Knobbs like the best put together match until Bill DeMott showed up (after the bell which I don't know if that made it worse or better compared to the other run-ins). Remember when Dean Malenko turned on Benoit and Saturn to help the Jersey Duumvirate win the belts and no one acknowledged that that was what happened.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 15:30
|
|
|
I could understand booking longer matches to a certain degree, given that Nitro went to 3 hour shows as of.... I think January 98? but holy poo poo it was like everyone went out there with a priority of stretching for time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 15:39
|
|
|
Nobody had anything of substance on that show aside from Benoit/Saturn vs. DDP/Kanyon, and even then the way the laid out the match they were stretching the cool moves DDP and Kanyon had to their absolute limit when they could have started hot with Benoit doing cool moves into the heat, but at least they all had cool things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 15:41
|
|
|
One of the things about WCW that had kind of slipped my mind was that even their good midcard workers had their matches overbooked into oblivion.karmicknight posted:Why the gently caress couldn't WCW have just given me Scott Norton, the shits.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 15:55
|
|
|
DJExile posted:I could understand booking longer matches to a certain degree, given that Nitro went to 3 hour shows as of.... I think January 98? but holy poo poo it was like everyone went out there with a priority of stretching for time. Nitro started doing 3 hours periodically in late 1997. I went to a taping that December and remember being surprised that it, too, was going to be 3 hours as it had been kinda irregular. I also remember there being no matches during the first hour of that taping.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2020 20:01
|
|
|
The most perplexing thing of turning the third hour into sort of a preshow is that they were unopposed. They had a full hour to put on a few cruiserweight matches, run a few angles to keep people tuned in, maybe start a match people want to see at 8:55pm that's guaranteed to go past Raw's 9pm start time, etc. They just wasted it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 12:48
|
|
|
RC and Moon Pie posted:I also remember there being no matches during the first hour of that taping. Pope Corky the IX posted:The most perplexing thing of turning the third hour into sort of a preshow is that they were unopposed. They had a full hour to put on a few cruiserweight matches, run a few angles to keep people tuned in, maybe start a match people want to see at 8:55pm that's guaranteed to go past Raw's 9pm start time, etc. They just wasted it. This was seriously the most absurd thing. They went through the time and expense of running a third hour and did less than nothing with it. Eric was so loving obsessed with winning the head-to-head ratings that he never bothered to put an entire unopposed hour in prime time to use.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 14:05
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 15:51
|
|
|
Love the pause after the Spinebuster. "Yep, still got it."
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 16:18
|
|
|
I marked so loving hard when Arn pulled that off. Goddamn.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 16:38
|
|
|
Pope Corky the IX posted:The most perplexing thing of turning the third hour into sort of a preshow is that they were unopposed. They had a full hour to put on a few cruiserweight matches, run a few angles to keep people tuned in, maybe start a match people want to see at 8:55pm that's guaranteed to go past Raw's 9pm start time, etc. They just wasted it. In the before times, they were doing 2-hour shows with an immediate replay, so you could watch the first hour of Nitro, switch to Raw, and then flip back to Nitro for the last hour when Raw was done. Switching to 3 hours disrupted that and forced fans to choose, mostly for sheer hubris.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 18:22
|
|
|
IronCladBurrito posted:In the before times, they were doing 2-hour shows with an immediate replay, so you could watch the first hour of Nitro, switch to Raw, and then flip back to Nitro for the last hour when Raw was done. Switching to 3 hours disrupted that and forced fans to choose, mostly for sheer hubris. Well, you don't want people watching your competition and then watching your replay and at the point they went to 3 hours people were watching Nitro live and not Raw anyway.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 18:46
|
|
|
DJExile posted:This was seriously the most absurd thing. They went through the time and expense of running a third hour and did less than nothing with it. Eric was so loving obsessed with winning the head-to-head ratings that he never bothered to put an entire unopposed hour in prime time to use. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what we're talking about.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:52
|
|
|
I think the argument isn't that there was no wrestling in the first hour, but rather no wrestling of consequence. You were more likely to get a Jerry Flynn match than one featuring people you care about. Which I'm not sure is ENTIRELY true. I feel like there was some of that good midcard action in there. But its been over 20 years so I have no idea. And I definitely remember that the first hour almost always ended with a NWO promo into the second hour/start of RAW. The fact that WCW used to have a different set of announcers for the first hour certainly didn't help dissuade the "preshow" idea.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 03:07
|
|
|
I hate to give Vince credit for a single thing but it holds true that Vince NEEDS his wrestling company to succeed, and at the end of the day when his other ventures collapse, he will always fall back and shore it up. It could not be more obvious by mid 98 that Bischoff is checked out and trying to move to Hollywood with his Jason Hervey contacts and letting the whole thing go to poo poo. But no one in Turner understands what’s up, the ratings are okay, just let it roll. But the damage being done in that period is catastrophic.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 03:24
|
|
|
STAC Goat posted:The fact that WCW used to have a different set of announcers for the first hour certainly didn't help dissuade the "preshow" idea. Tato posted:It could not be more obvious by mid 98 that Bischoff is checked out and trying to move to Hollywood with his Jason Hervey contacts and letting the whole thing go to poo poo. But no one in Turner understands what’s up, the ratings are okay, just let it roll. But the damage being done in that period is catastrophic.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 03:55
|
|
|
DJExile posted:This was seriously the most absurd thing. They went through the time and expense of running a third hour and did less than nothing with it. Eric was so loving obsessed with winning the head-to-head ratings that he never bothered to put an entire unopposed hour in prime time to use. This is totally false. They would run major segments with Hogan and other angles in the first hour all the time, and were well aware that 8:50 was a very important segment to keep people from switching over. Tato posted:I hate to give Vince credit for a single thing but it holds true that Vince NEEDS his wrestling company to succeed, and at the end of the day when his other ventures collapse, he will always fall back and shore it up. Bischoff was losing his mind in 1998 because he was so obsessed with ratings and trying to beat the WWF. This is just false. He did so much damage to the product because he kept hot shotting things and making short term decisions to focus on old stars to try to beat the WWF in the short term and ignored business was still strong.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 21:49
|
|
|
STAC Goat posted:I think the argument isn't that there was no wrestling in the first hour, but rather no wrestling of consequence. You were more likely to get a Jerry Flynn match than one featuring people you care about. Depends on your definition of "midcard" - I remember seeing lots of good cruiserweight matches in the first hour, and maybe a TV title bout, but also a lot of Disco Inferno etc.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 22:27
|
|
|
What was in the first hour varied week to week. One week the show might have 3 straight cruiserweight matches. The next week you might get a Mongo match in the first hour. The next week you'd have Luger vs Hennig and DDP defending the US title against Hammer. You'd see Goldberg in the first hour a lot when he was building steam in early 98, and I believe one of the DDP/Sting World title matches started in the first hour to hold the rating into the second. I think the Goldberg/Raven US title match was the same way.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 22:36
|
|
|
The thing that annoyed me the most about the cruiserweight matches back when Nitro was kicking RAW's rear end in the ratings every week was that the announcers would literally spend about 85% of the time talking about the NWO rather than the match itself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 22:48
|
|
|
I think Bischoff legit thought all the Hollywood overtures he was making would help WCW (hell, it was the entire basis of Ready to Rumble, which he was supposed to be in.) Like maybe by '99, when the ratings and gates were collapsing, he might have been thinking of his "next move" but it was probably too late.
Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 18, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 03:35
|
|
|
WSAENOTSOCK posted:Swapping out Larry Zbyszko for Bobby Heenan never really felt like "okay, now the real show begins" to me. It was still Schiavone and Tenay. Yes. Several Observers from the second half of 1998 go into detail about how Bischoff isn't there, how he's in Hollywood trying to make contacts, how he's left Nash in charge of booking and starts not even showing up to tapings some weeks. You could say that maybe he saw the sinking ship on the horizon and was starting to bail once the ratings war got hard, but he was definitely putting a foot out the door. He was obviously hoping to catapult the WCW success into moving upwards in Turner or to another production company, but it didn't work out. By the time he checked back in, stuff was truly hosed. I don't think he would have let Nash destroy things so much if he intended to come back. Tato fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Apr 18, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 03:38
|
|
|
     Nice sweater, Jim       Sting/Vader was a good feud, and was one of the few main event feuds they didn't make Sting look like a complete moron    
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 10:32
|
|
|
I had assumed that Vader was the final boss in that WCW NES game, but he wasn't in the promotion when it came out. Who was he supposed to be?
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 18:28
|
|
|
It was Andre the Giant as Giant Machine. Although why *he* was there is anyone's guess
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 18:33
|
|
|
Tato posted:Yes. Several Observers from the second half of 1998 go into detail about how Bischoff isn't there, how he's in Hollywood trying to make contacts, how he's left Nash in charge of booking and starts not even showing up to tapings some weeks. You could say that maybe he saw the sinking ship on the horizon and was starting to bail once the ratings war got hard, but he was definitely putting a foot out the door. He was obviously hoping to catapult the WCW success into moving upwards in Turner or to another production company, but it didn't work out. By the time he checked back in, stuff was truly hosed. I don't think he would have let Nash destroy things so much if he intended to come back. Better Than You posted:The thing that annoyed me the most about the cruiserweight matches back when Nitro was kicking RAW's rear end in the ratings every week was that the announcers would literally spend about 85% of the time talking about the NWO rather than the match itself. I'd rather have the matches.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 21:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 23:23 |
|
|
The one time the show-opening promo was consistently when Bryan and Shane would just go "hey everybody we have a great show for you tonight. Here are the matches we have planned." and it would be done in five minutes. And they tried to sound excited for the matches that they supposedly booked themselves, which no authority figure ever seems to do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2020 22:02
|
|
