cabbageboy

Those that were amused by the Vince Russo thread on here likely read that while Russo's booking in WCW was mostly hideous that I feel there was one angle WCW did in 1999 that was worse than anything Russo ever did. That of course would be the disaster known as the WCW Hummer Angle from 1999, which to me is the single worst angle in the history of wrestling. It was bizarre, incoherent when it didn't need to be, spanned too many months, wasn't really resolved, and generally wrecked WCW's business to the point where they went from a still somewhat viable #2 promotion to a laughingstock. It all began after Kevin Nash defeated DDP for the world title at Slamboree 99, with the aid of Eric Bischoff returning to restart the match (how I don't exactly know since Bisch had zero power in storyline). DDP wasn't ever meant to be a long term main eventer, Hogan was hurt, and Goldberg was filming Universal Soldier 2, so Randy Savage was brought back from injury to feud with Kevin Nash. The feud got off to a fairly amusing start as Nash used a contortionist woman to dump sewage all over Macho on Nitro. So of course Savage must retaliate and he does so with the aid of his alluring female cohorts Gorgeous George, Miss Madness (Molly Holly), and Madusa. They lured Nash into a limo rendezvous (with champagne) and before Nash knew it they bolted and a humvee came crashing into the limo, seemingly either killing Nash or seriously injuring him. Bear in mind this was a week before the Great American Bash PPV, so it seemed odd to do an angle where one of the two main event guys would be seriously injured and thus might not wrestle on the PPV. GAB 99 of course is one of the worst PPVs ever for various reasons, but the main event is what I'll focus on. Nash and Macho had a mediocre match that ended with Sid Vicious returning to WCW and attacking Nash for a DQ. This was actually a pretty interesting surprise as many assumed Sid was simply the hummer driver Macho hired to take out Nash. However....he wasn't. And that was the problem. The angle kept going on and on into July, with Sid clearly NOT being the driver and Savage insisting that he had the real driver under wraps to attack when the time was right. Somehow Sting was involved in this now as well, with Macho alluding to him maybe being the driver and fake Stings showing up all over TV in hummers doing god knows what. This was all head scratching stuff, but at least Savage vowed to reveal the real driver at Bash at the Beach. That main event was an insane tag match with the WCW title on the line, where Sting could actually win the world title from his own tag partner, Nash. As an aside there was a dubious angle with Macho beating Gorgeous George and Nash "rescued" her during all of this. None of this happened of course. No driver was ever revealed at BATB, but instead Savage won the title when George obviously turned on Nash and cost him the match. Sting and Sid didn't factor into much of it and all the red herrings with Sting being the driver went nowhere. Savage's epic win lasted all of one night, as the returning Hulk Hogan beat him on Nitro and went back to the red and yellow soon after. If this angle hadn't gone totally off the tracks by now, it soon would. Nash was now furious at Hogan for being the champ and turned heel, demanding a match with Hogan at Road Wild and even put his career on the line. Savage went on to do a silly feud with Dennis Rodman of all people, even threatening that the hummer driver might be lurking to attack again. Other than that slight mention, the angle was put on the back burner. So of course at the PPV Hogan beat Nash and sent him into retirement (for now) and Savage beat Rodman only to then quit the company immediately after the PPV as the company itself was clearly tanking beyond belief. Instead of just dropping the whole Hummer Angle nonsense, WCW actually went back to it for lack of anything better to do once Bischoff was removed as WCW president. We now have Hogan as champion with Sting challenging him at Fall Brawl, but add in Lex Luger to stir some shit. Luger claimed that he had definite proof that Hogan was in fact the Hummer driver, though the pics with Hogan showed Hulk with a humvee of a different color than the one that ran over Nash. Luger insisted to Sting not to trust Hogan and for once Sting wasn't a moron. At Fall Brawl Sting sorta turned heel and attacked Hogan with a baseball bat, had multiple run ins, and won the title (I say sorta because the crowd cheered all of this, clearly not buying Hogan's face act). Let's back up and survey the carnage. At this point we have Lex Luger accusing Hogan of being the Hummer Driver, when in fact the man who was initially hit by the Hummer (Nash) was now retired in storyline terms and did a heel turn before retiring to boot! Further, the man who hired the job to be done (Savage) had walked out on WCW over disagreements with Hogan and Co. over the booking. Luger himself was never directly tied to any of these events, and Sting was mostly a red herring. After Fall Brawl WCW had a few lame duck weeks before Vince Russo took over the booking. They basically ignored the Hummer angle from this point and Russo dropped it entirely during his initial run. So basically after all this crap the angle was never resolved, never went anywhere, and WCW's ratings had plummetted from a 3.9 or so to a 2.6. In April of 2000 Russo and Bischoff returned after the ill fated Kevin Sullivan booking era and on this initial Nitro outing Hogan was the victim of a Hummer attack, as Eric Bischoff and Billy Kidman ran down the Hulkster to start that feud. It is still debated as to what exactly this all meant. Was it Bischoff all along that was the driver? Was it a silly tribute and nothing more? No one really knows for sure. Let's say Bischoff was the real driver though since no other solution was presented. Why would Bischoff want to run over Nash in the first place? He had just restarted the Slamboree match that helped Nash win the title from Page, so it makes zero sense. This angle along with some other 1999 debacles (Fingerpoke of Doom, No Limit Soldiers, etc.) really sent WCW spiralling into the abyss. But those other angles at least on some level made sense and had some resolution to them. The Hummer Angle was truly the most horrendous, idiotic nightmare of a storyline I have ever seen in pro wrestling. Discuss.

The thing with the Trump angle is this: How and why did Trump only buy Raw? Why would he buy one of three WWE shows and not the other two that are actually decent? Why not just buy out Vince entirely and become the owner of WWE? The troubling aspect is that Vince will now likely end up on SD if he stays on TV at all, and that show has been solid lately. This Orton/HHH feud desperately needs to end. I'll give them till Summerslam where I would think they might have a final HIAC match or something, but after that I never want to see those two guys feud ever again. These guys have feuded on and off for 5 years and have had maybe one above average match (the LMS from Oct. 2007).

Yeah this was a fun approximation of WCW circa 1992. Some solid wrestling, some goofy and bad gimmicks, some guys who had yet to hit their stride. The most amusing part of the show was how blatantly obvious it was that Luger was a lame duck champ. He phones in a taped interview segment instead of being on the show to sign the contract and is rarely mentioned. I didn't start watching wrestling again until a month or so after this show aired, so it was fun to catch up on a few things.

Yeah I noticed that on Raw as well and thought it was really weird. It was like Orton was flat out legit pissed. On the Raw thread I joked that a potential Kennedy/Orton feud would be such a nightmare that it can't possibly happen. Frankly, Kennedy should have been released a long time ago. He was already injury prone but once he was suspended in 2007 and was removed from the whole Vince storyline that should have been it for him. Kennedy always was a one note gimmick, screaming his own name at the top of his lungs.

This Raw tonight now has me terrified of an Orton vs. Kennedy WWE title feud. There's no way they can possibly be serious about that, right? There's only so much that people can endure.

I actually hope Paula comes back. Simon/Kara just have no chemistry. Simon/Paula is amusing in the "Oh just have sex already!" vein, whereas Simon and Kara just seem like two people who don't like each other. Anyway, the right guy won. Kris Allen mostly won by not screwing up and not being annoying. Once this thing got down to the final 4 or so I asked myself which of these people I could actually imagine myself listening to. I can't imagine listening to a Danny Gokey album, and I couldn't stand listening to Lambert's high pitched screaming over 12 tracks. I liked Allison the best, but at least Kris Allen could be a somewhat successful white bread soft rocker like Jason Mraz.

I have tickets for Raw next week too, so I get to endure an hour of Legacy/Orton promos and tedious handicap matches. Right now though? There's just nothing on Raw worth a crap. Vickie is an awful fit as GM on the show since once you take Edge away from her there's no real basis for her being a heel. On SD we understood why she was a heel since Edge is her man, but she's not the sort of ultra evil person to screw everyone over. Second, if you want to bury everything on the undercard then the main event stuff better be off the charts. But this Batista/Legacy stuff? Bleh. Batista is such a blatant lame duck challenger, only being #1 contender due to beating Big Show by countout. Is there anyone who thinks he's going to win the title on Sunday? Further, is there anyone who thinks Orton would beat him clean to get something out of it?

I'll see this today at either the 1:00 or 1:30 showing. But here's a question that needs to be asked: Does it really matter if the Trekkies love this movie? With Nemesis we found out exactly how many total die hards the series has (43 million dollars domestic, 24 million overseas). So it's not like they should be catered to at the expense of a mainstream audience. I actually rented the various Next Generation movies yesterday and watched Generations and Nemesis. Oddly enough I thought Nemesis was easily the stronger of the two. It's hardly some Batman and Robin type movie that should wreck a franchise for years.

Doesn't Sting have a contract that runs until the end of the year? I'd think they would save his final match for BFG. Have they said yet who runs the Mafia if Angle loses the match?

Yeah Nikita vs. Flair was a strange main event for Starrcade but it was due to necessity. Not only is it a curious match but it's a Catch 22, since Koloff had just turned and was US Champ, so they weren't putting the belt on him, yet he just turned and couldn't afford a high profile loss to Flair. And that's why DQ finishes were born. But then they booked a DQ in the main event of the biggest show of the year.... This is going to sound nuts, but am I the only one who actually enjoys the Valiant/Jones angle? I've mentioned in the past on here that Jones was a mediocre manager, but this angle was nowhere near as awful was reputed. But then Valiant has always been more popular in my area (Memphis/USWA) than he was anywhere else. Still, it's harmless midcard antics with a goofy face up against an army, friends betray him and take money, etc.

Yeah, read between the lines. It was a fertility drug where the main reason a man would use it is because he's cycling off the juice. As far as this tainting the Red Sox 2004 and 07 teams, I don't really think so. If Manny had been caught doing this with Boston, then maybe so. But there's no way of 100% knowing that he was doing this stuff while with the Red Sox. As in maybe he hooked up to some BALCO type group in L.A. Besides, how can a Yankees fan be so thrilled about it tainting the Red Sox, when Roger Clemens was likely doing roids for a couple of World Series winners?

I quite liked Allison so it was a groan worthy moment that she was eliminated while Gokey survived. The only thing I can figure is this dude is getting the sympathy love due to his wife dying. He was hideous doing "Dream On" and should have been gone.

Mainly it was just Austin that got hurt due to the Owen piledriver. That was a crazy sit down Tombstone type move though, not a solid and protected UT variety. The stuff that really sucks for wrestlers are moves like German suplexes. In Foley's book he even mentions that he didn't care about taking a bump, but didn't like someone giving him a bump that resulted in him hitting his neck and head hard on the mat.

Thing is, Schiavone was never that great of an announcer...it was just that he was better than the goofy David Crockett and largely just held a mic while the various awesome guys of the 1980s NWA cut promos. Half of the stuff he said was "We'll be right back, fans!" Then after that he worked some with Jim Ross and was adequate enough to not seem horrid.

There's such a thing as too much wrestling from one promotion though, and yet another WWE show would be a bit much. WCW fell into this same sort of trap in terms of having way too many hours of TV, and at its peak WCW had a much bigger roster than WWE today.

I don't think Game 7 tomorrow will be like that Hawks/Celtics series last year. Boston waxed them in all 4 wins in that series, while the Hawks won their 3 games each by less than 10 (9, 5, 3). As far as this current series goes, this may well be the best NBA series I've ever seen. Either that or the 2002 Lakers/Kings series, but that one is marred by the dubious (even outright corrupt) officiating.

The hilarity of the ending to Raw is that Cena was in fact there so that Miz segment was puzzling. There are a couple of conclusions that could be reached: 1. The Miz is such a jobber Cena didn't want to waste his time squashing him. 2. Cena is afraid of The Miz.

I would think that since Show is still in with Vickie he agreed to take out Cena and help out Edge. It doesn't make 100% sense, but it isn't baffling either. Is Batista going to be a placeholder challenger until HHH gets back, or is he going to get the belt from Orton at some point and then they can go with Cena/Batista II? HHH vs. Orton can be a HIAC or whatever on a future PPV and doesn't have to have a title involved.

The Santina stuff was amusing at WM but once the whole Khali angle started...enough of it. Ah well, I didn't see this PPV but the reviews I've read thus far seem to say it was a good PPV. Putting the belt back on Edge makes total sense due to SD needing a title, and it also transitions nicely into a Show/Cena feud. As far as the 6 man...ugh. Putting the title on Orton in a 6 man tag? I thought they might do it given the absurd stips in Orton's favor, but I'm a little surprised HHH did a stretcher job here.

They could just, I dunno, show the full Nitros with the Benoit/Booker matches. I don't get why they do it there and not with a DVD release. Benoit is all over the SummerSlam box set I have, yet WWE cuts him out of stuff on 24/7. I wouldn't go out of my way to throw a Benoit match onto a compilation, but it's lame to edit him off shows when people are paying a subscription to see this stuff in its entirety.

It's my theory that this Punk/Kane match is just an excuse to get CM on the PPV, where he may well cash in the MITB against the LMS winner.

I think Punk might be cashing in at the PPV on Sunday. What better chance could the guy have? Cena and Edge will be having a Last Man Standing match at Backlash and the winner will likely be all but decimated. If they want to go the usual Pearl Harbor route with MITB, then Punk would cash in and easily win. I don't see Punk facing Cena otherwise. At some point the rosters will separate again and Cena would be Raw champ. If Edge wins on Sunday, then Punk would challenge him.

Why did they do that? I was wanting to get to those hideous 1999 era WCW shows. Now it will take years to get to the Fingerpoke of Doom.

Agreed. Jeff reminds me of RVD at this stage, figuring he's won the 1 world title he's ever going to be allowed to win and it might be time to get out while he can. They might refresh his strikes anyway if he left for a while and signed a new deal later.

The big problem that Crank 2 wasn't able to overcome is the entire plot of the first film. When I first heard about a sequel I thought "How in the hell is that even possible?" Apparently a lot of other people felt that way, though I did like the trailers. Even then however the trailers are full of goofy joke stuff with Statham rubbing against people or shocking himself to stay alive. Almost more comedic than hard edged.