We are halfway through the final weekend of summer! Spend it hanging out with us talking wrestling, football (!), baseball and whatever else is on your mind. Anyone got something fun going on today? Cookout? Live event?
Also, be back here tonight around 8:45 PM for our weekly Live Watch! You can still vote in the poll here!
So most of the act at the 90s concert played just their three top songs or whatever… but TLC legit played a full show. Like 14 songs or so, mix of some new stuff and every single one of their top hits. Good stuff.
Coolio seemed drunk off his ass but Gangsta’s Paradise live with an actual band backing him up was pretty cool, especially the dude ripping the sax the whole time.
Was return of the Mack played?
No Mark Morrison wasn’t there. Montell killed This Is How We Do It though.
nice!
Would have been something if the sax player busted out Baker Street.
I was hoping for that or Smooth Operator.
Any colt fans in here? I want to know if they think Luck will start week 1.
Not a Colts fan but it sounds very, very unlikely he will be ready that soon. I have seen week 5/6 mentioned. I think that is a big reason they traded for Brissett.
Yeah I stayed away from any colts in fantasy this year. I’m glad they aren’t rushing Luck back though, if he’s their future.
I did draft Luck as a backup on my PTBN team just as a flier.
I liked my draft in that league, but yahoo didn’t.
FSU QB Deondre Francois is out for the season.
Who’s in for the live watch? We will start around 8:45
I should be good to go!
Yo!
Dilly dilly
I’m game, what is it?
9/14/98 Nitro (Flair’s return)
Cool, TV episodes can be more fun than full events.
2h 26m so it’s gonna be as long as one anyway lol
5 minutes good for everyone?
Yessir
Yah
Paused on the wide shot of the Bi-Lo Center crowd
Same
Yep
1 minute
Off we go…
DO IT!
Sup Whisper!
Nitro girls, baybee!
I dug them, helped differentiate for sure.
Oh shit this also has the Sting/Goldberg match!
Nice to put in some WCW…rarely have it in my network watchin’.
Yea cool to get a Nitro in the rotation
And now WCW begins the strong build to Goldberg/DDP at Halloween Havoc….oh right they never did builds that didn’t involve nWo.
BUT DON’T YOU KNOW Page only got pushed because he was Bischoff’s neighbor and/or they wife swapped :/
Business casual Tony and casual Friday Larry
Tony would blame his wife for dressing him
I tell you what, seeing that video Flair posted on his Twitter made me smile. He looks a little rough obviously, but he’s still here with us WOOOOO!
It’ll give Ric appearing later here a little more oomph.
No doubt. Good timing.
Tenay jogging backwards in his polo is a scene.
That window won’t answer you Tenay.
When did they finally dump Vader from the intro, like mid 96?
The Cat baby!
I loved Cat just cleaning house on a bunch of guys with his slow motion karate. So good.
Big Ernest Miller mark over here
All hail The Ayaollah! He will humble that Randy The Ram!
“We never get an interview.”
Sale getting smacked!
I like to imagine Vince made fun of Alex Wright’s dance during a booking meet in ’98.
I have a feeling Vince did the Alex Wright dance in booking meetings
Any time I see Alex Wright I think back to hanging out nights with friends when I was 18-19 playing WCW/nWo Revenge and laughing our asses off at using Wright and just doing his dance taunt over and over.
Great game
1960s flower child Van Hammer is … interesting…
Precursor to Major (promoted from Private) Stash
Oh Christ Van Hammer had this gimmick as early as ’98?
All this music is doing is making me wish I was seeing some Hollywood Blondes dammitt!
I was always jealous of Alex Wright’s hair.
“It’s a PPV match, but it’s a freebie!”
Yeah that’s why you guys could never make as much money as you should have.
Sounds familiar…
Those bright ass lime tights most ’98 moment of the night so far.
Wright going with the Baylor men’s basketball trunks and knee pads
WWE is where everyone wrestles kinda the same formula match, but WCW had no flow and many matches that were disjointed. Somewhere in the middle their has to be a balance.
100% agreed
It’s an imperfect formula but it’s still at least a formula.
That does produce great matches from time to time.
Cat looks naked under there.
Even at its peak, Nitro had sloppy show production.
They always felt a little cheaper than WWF.
And apparently if you were there, you could barely hear the music in the arena for anyone.
Everything felt rushed and haphazard.
There walks a broken shell of a man.
Kane and Big Show had nothing on inconsistency of character like 1998 Bret Hart
Bret shooting there about Hogan lol
Skinny Legs Piper
Bret was part of Team Hollywood (with Stevie Ray lol) in WarGames despite not “officially” being a member of the nWo and this is the second of two fake face turns after going heel back in April.
Piper still looked good here
Bret looks so sad.
Yeah he was miserable pretty much the whole time he was there.
Never felt right.
I know he hated playing the kind of bullshit stereotypical cheap shot artist heel WCW made him play, but honestly he was was really good at it. Maybe there’s a degree of art imitating life in the character work… but if I detach from the real-life drama around Bret’s grievances, I find I rather get a kick out of WCW heel Bret.
Bring up the baloney sandwiches!
Only one slice!
Doesn’t matter I was hungry!
Raven/Saturn at FallBrawl is legit one of the best “pure” WCW matches.
Raven in WCW was great.
So was Saturn! I was a HUGE mark for him after breaking from the Flock.
Yah who would have thought both would go to WCW and do so great.
Windham with generic theme #382.
Kendall’s got Dean Ambrose beat. Jeans AND Cowboy boots!
And JBL’s upper body
I’ve delayed refilling my drink because 1998 Saturn is wrestling. I’ll never quit you, WCW.
The days of pimping the Encore the next night..so 90s.
I was waiting for him to say “Catch the encore On Demand” lol.
Hell of a trifecta Scott and I have going here. Nitro, 11/86 MSG house show and Yankee game.
Kendall needs a belt for his jeans
And some stitching.
Referee Brian Hildebrand/Mark Curtis is so fun to watch in SMW.
I’m a mark for refs selling the moves
I love how he bounces for high spots
I hated him at the time, so so much.
Do something with yourself Scotty Riggs! Go to ECW and job to Rob Van Dam!
You used to be an American Male!
…. and a friend of Dan McGinn’s
Welp
Teaming with Bagwell was the bigger accomplishment
Be a star! Don’t be a bully!
I saw Sick Boy work a dark match at Raw in 2000
Is Sick Boy done in WCW after this?
I think he starts in OVW in early 99
He was so hyped up as a future star in WWE it was insane.
If only he could have sought justice for his deceased sister.
Take a moment to remember, Wrath got over huge until he was jobbed to Nash to build him up to beating Goldberg.
That all worked out well right?
I wonder what his true ceiling could have been… or was he destined to be fed but it was to the wrong person?
I will say, being a young mostly mark at the time, I was pretty unfazed by that. It just felt like a big match between two massively over guys, not the “political hit” the IWC made it out to be. I was still into Wrath after the loss and feel like they could have easily salvaged him. Another case where the follow-up (or lack thereof) was worse than the initial misdeed.
Hogan, Beefcake, Liz and Bischoff. What a crew!
I am marking out
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a859f2816c8cd95d082fa46cd3a33f2dcbc5c108a0a4601778184b6ffef87cb.jpg
The A List.
I remember where I was the night this episode aired, over at a friends place, flipping between RAW and Nitro. Just started my second year of college.
Just started 6th grade on my end.
Hogan’s overacting, fuck.
So funny.
Oh…this is when Warrior abducted Beefcake.
Knowing what Warrior did to Santanin his comic, I pray for poor Brother Bruti.
Hogan before the break there made me laugh.
WAAARIORRRR!
Kidman with the beta Ambrose ring gear
Um didn’t they just one minute ago say the match was Juvy vs. Kaz Hayashi?
Not that I’m complaining
Kidman has also rapid detoxed
Charles Robinson has not aged in 20 years.
When did Juvy start the Juice stuff.
I feel like that was a Russo special, or shortly before
This match is getting a lot of time.
3 hour show for ya
Tenay mentioned Hayashi was on the format sheet.
They announced the match earlier in the show and seconds before Kidman walked out lol
WCW, everybody!
Never thought I’d be simultaneously watching a Juvi/Kidman and Hercules/Pedro match
Very different ends of the spectrum.
What’s up guys? Did the Nitro after Fall Brawl 1998 win the vote?
I want a Kidman/Juventud playlist on the Network
The inverted suplex needs to be done more.
Raw had a loaded lineup on this night too. Austin and Shamrock, Rock/Kane, Taker and Mankind, Triple H and Owen.
Triple H had that injured knee right?
He was not to far off from being out
Tremendous match and major showing for Kidman on a big stage that had a lot of eyes on it.
Donut Dillinger appearance
Eddie’s mullet is absurd
People still spelling Ric with a K. Sigh.
In Greenville, come the fuck on
Oh man this is leading to Eddy’s worked shoot promo on Bischoff/beginning of the LWO
I think this was the last time Nitro won the ratings war.
Bulldog looks so bloated here… this is the night after he fooked his back up right?
At the PPV yes.
Jump in, Jay. We’re at the hour and ten minute mark
On Warrior’s fooking trap door.
His knees were fooked too, months before this
Um wasn’t Bulldog crippled last night on Warrior’s trap door?
Guess he is trying to gut through it.
Probably loaded up on Oxycodone
Bulldog is doing many things here that a man with a fooked back and fooked knees should not be doing.
You can tell Bulldog is hurting for sure.
Pretty cool too have JJ as part of this big Horsemen night.
I think Eddie Money is sitting near the Red Sox dugout.
Oh my fucking lord was a that a tease for the Rick Steiner/Chucky feud??
That’s what I was thinking.
I definitely do not remember that being more than one-off segment like the week before Havoc.
What the hell was that laughing bit with the lights?
Fuck, the wheels really came off in late 98.
Watch parties for Nitro. Imagine that today for Raw.
So awesome, What a time.
Jim Neidhart has experience with Warrior, he knows ti get the fuck outta Dodge.
I hate this Hogan hat.
The more coherant Warrior’s promos got, the less sense they made.
Warrior in jeans with Beefcake in doggy style position sure is something.
“Now Hogan, you will listen to my detailed analysis of Atlas Shrugged, and why it is a beacon of light for us to all follow!”
STAHLIN!
That smoke was pretty cool though
This is wicked stupid, but man was the build to Havoc insanely hot. Not just Warrior/Hogan, but DDP/Goldberg, a ton more (which we’ll get to later).
And that’s to say nothing of the Horsemen reunion. What a time to be alive.
1998, man.
Silver King looks like somebody shrunk Alberto El Patron in the wash.
I am such a fan of WCW Big Poppa Pump and Buff as his prison bitch.
He got hot fast… the push everyone had been waiting for since 1991.
Let’s book a Nitro party, guys!
I’m down!
Wow this show has kind of flown by…already at the third hour.
This is more of a slog then some current day RAWs.
Gone by quick for me
It just has no structure, a lot of Nitros feel like that.
A three hour test pattern is more interesting than current day RAWs. I will take the ambitious failures and unstructured chaos here over that every time.
It occurs to me how crazy it was at the time that the Horsemen angle played out entirely on
the weekly shows. Like just watching PPVs from this period, you’d never
know it was a major storyline. No PPV advancement until the actual Flair/Bischoff match at Starrcade. In retrospect, it’s in keeping with Bischoff’s philosophy that WCW should be a television product. Sort of encapsulates one their biggest problems – the tension between running a program with massive old-school appeal in the heavily Nielsen-oriented environment.
Giant vs Meng? I am intrigued.
Meng still kicks his ass in real life.
This is what I lke to see, two big guys smacking the hell out of one another.
Hoss warfare!
Potatoes on the menu
Giant looks way out of shape here… he looks great when he hits WWF so he must start busting his ass soon
That and he got lipo.
Oh shit I don’t think I knew that.
Criminally short.
I wouldn’t hve wanted that to go too long, but maybe 8 minutes instead of 3.
Watching Fall Brawl 1997 last night and Henning turning to the nWo only after 3 weeks in the Horsemen is a head scratcher.
It goes back longer than that, it was really well built.
Is this the drinking stuff with Hall here?
Fuck… is this where Hall “blows chunks” ?
Here comes drunk Scott Hall.
Oh right…this was during Scott “Alka” Hall. Great.
Oh I hated that Hall drinking angle.
Jesus
The worst part, Scott was playing ‘stumbling drunk’ when you know in real life he was a sleepy eyed pass out drunk.
Wel the worst part was the entire thing, but that’s just what I noticed.
Why do that when they knew he had issues?
Because WCW.
Pretty much
Because WCW was a clusterfuck of management.
And people wonder why it folded.
Vince may micro manage to death but at least WWE has some fucking structure at its core.
One reason they are still around.
HHH taking over after Vince dies is going to be something. The micromanaging is gonna be the first to go, you’d think. That and Dunn getting pink slipped.
Dunn for sure
Road Dogg your new lead director!
That’s wrestling
I forgot how ridiculously over the whole Wolfpac era was.
The first nWo shirt I bought.
I actually like the Wolfpac. I have a red and black shirt.
Everyone wishes they could be as hip as nWo Wolfpac Lex Luger
Got a poll for next week ready to get posted as soon as we are done with this show.
As in bad taste as this is, Hall is showing how good he is by playing drunk. That blown hammerlock was actually well done.
WCW was doing “It’s a shoot Bro!” a full year before Russo showed up.
Oh god here it comes
This is terrible on multiple levels.
Shitty
If this was an HBO drama set in any other setting it would work. But it cannot work in wrestling.
Especially since the fans are laughing at the dude.
That was cream of mushroom soup by Hall’s account w/ Sean Oliver
I actually think Hall is giving a great performance, its just absolutely wrong for this format.
Couldn’t agree more
And poor taste since ya know…
Yeah, though actors have mined personal struggles before to give great performances. It’s just the intimacy and setting of wrestling that makes his performance tonally wrong.
Right, and he was in the middle of it, not rehabbed. It just wasn’t the right forum, like you said.
A sober Scott Hall could have possibly parlayed his success in wrestling into a decent career as a character actor I think.
Too much art imitating life and vice-versa. Credit to Hall’s performance, it actually leads to a shockingly decent match against Nash at Havoc.
And the fans are treating it like a joke instead of a drama.
Yeah that didn’t help
Go from shit to fucking gold!
Scott pulled it off no doubt but just in poor taste.
Horseman theme 1.0. Both were fucking epic.
Great trivia question there: which infamous segment preceded the Horseman reunion.
lol
Contrary to what I said earlier about WCW only caring about the weekly TV… they at least had the good sense to run this in Greenville.
Never mind that Hall shit…here comes Mongo!
Mongo only pawn in Horsemen life.
Would have been cool if they could have gotten Sid to show up here.
Or Ole
Not with Arn there lol
When was Malenko a Horseman before this?
He wasn’t, this was more or less his induction.
OK that’s what I thought.
No. He more or less got the ball rolling by nagging Arn to reunite the Horsemen, going back to August.
OK that’s right, I remember that now.
I think it actually started when Arn made a “cameo” in a Malenko/Jericho match by holding up Jericho when he tried to flee backstage.
This is Benoit’s first appearance since wrapping up the Best of 7 with Booker. He worked a couple tags with Mongo against Harlem Heat in July, then vanished for reasons I never quite understood.
This was like a life preserver for Mongo.
Easy call that this is the last great Horseman moment right? Decent stuff after this but nothing comes close?
Crazy to think Malenko was fueding with Jericho for six months and then abrupt turn, I wanna be a Horseman!
This was pretty much the last Horsemen moment and are done by early 99 i think.
Number 3 or 4 on great Arn moments- RIC FLAIR! GET ON DOWN HERE!!
This is great.
As great as this is, I still kinda wish Flair would have jumped to WWF in summer 1998 to be Vince’s Corporate champ to challenge Austin.
Was he rumored to?
It was talked about A LOT online.
Wow i forgot that
Was just thinking the same thing. Would have been awesome and he would have been treated very well.
“Austin! You come out here chugging that swill beer! A real champion only drinks the finest champagne! WOOOOO!!”
Only thought is he probably gets cheered for a bit.
A few fatboy and redneck comments combined with Austin’s overness and he’d get the boos. He knew how to do it.
Honestly it may have helped WCW in some ways too.
Goosebumps over here.
Flair and Arn hugs. The best hugs.
Best Nitro moment?
YES
Probably my favorite
No emotion Benoit in the background is creepy as fuck.
Ric Goddamn Flair!
The man bit his tongue. So Flair managed to bleed for this promo, and that is apropos.
I like how Bischoff is in his casual clothes after Hall puked on his NWO gear. Nice detail there.
Say it with me everyone- FIRE ME!?! I’M ALREADY FIRED!!
Oh my God that was gold.
For once Tony is right. This was the greatest moment in the history of television.
Should it have closed the show?
Surprised it didn’t
Probably.
Nah, I like that they now have time to talk about it, etc.
True.
Plus the ratings are logically going to trail the segment that actually earns them. People calling each other and saying to flip channels and whatnot.
Think that segment is what you show somebody that’s never heard of Flair if they ask you who he is.
I show him the post Rumble promo first.
I got that DDP shirt in early ’99.
It was sort of not a good idea to wear to school after Columbine.
The DDP faux theme is one of the better cover jobs WWE does for changing music.
I automatically think of that one more than his original thanks to my WCW rewatching.
It sounds close enough and it doesn’t stick out like an overdub.
Yeah I don’t hate it. I think they did that for one of the video games? But it’s fine.
How much did Buffer get per appearance. I heard 30,000 once.
We dove into that on an episode of Letters From Center Stage, I forget where we landed.
That’s where I recall hearing it I believe.
I haven’t noticed to many of the WCW Themes being dubbed except Page and Jericho
Reven too I bet. Those were the teifecta of WCW themes that ripped off grunge songs.
Jarrett too
Sting’s when he used Seek & Destroy
Oh yeah
Ugh 1998 Sting and Lobster Sting at that
I remember hating when Sting joined the Wolfpac so closely after spending 18 months stalking and hating the NWO. I am curious to watch it play out again on my chrono watch.
Me too, that was fucking bullshit. It’s still goddamn Nash (and at the time, Hall and Hennig and Rude). There’s no “good” version of the nWo!
Right, it was stupid. Lex and Sting should have never joined, it destroyed so much of what they built in 96 and 97.
Sting’s entire 1998 just sucks. He went from this brooding anti-hero loner to immediately paling around with Luger again whilst still wearing the Crow gimmick. Zero transition.
I thought about dressing as Crow Sting one year for Halloween and never breaking character the whole time just staring at random people and pointing with the bat.
Goldberg coming out with cops gives his entrances such a big boxing match feel.
I always liked Buffer’s intros.
If you don’t count Goldberg beating Sting in 99, Goldberg held World titles in WWE more times than in WCW.
You talking about Halloween Havoc 1999?
Yep.
What a mess that was
This is already the most anyone has gotten over on Goldberg
That was a real good sequence.
Really good chemistry between these two, and that’s saying a lot for Wolfpac Sting
No Jericho on this Nitro *sad face*
Hogan and his old woman sleeping cap.
Looked like such a goof.
Thank goodness for Bret “Hitman” Clarke!
Bret/Sting should’ve been great, but… sigh.
Boy did I hate Bret’s booking in WCW
Fun time yet again guys!
No doubt. Thanks to everyone for keeping the dream alive with a WCW show!
What’s the next live watch?
Greeny should be posting the poll in mere moments…
It’s up now, Jay.
Here’s next week’s poll!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/PTBLiveChats/permalink/1828784437149981/
Fall Brawl 95 on the stream right now… tail end of the awesome opener!
Holy shit, UCLA was down 44-10 and won