This is gonna hurt. There is WAAAY too much on the worked side for most people's tastes and with Schneider's Thunder review (which I'm pretty much in agreement with, except he forgot the Kaos match which worked) I feel like we should branch off and start www.DEAN.com and I can get my weekly WCWshill check. Hell, I gotta callem like I see them and there was a lot of good stuff on Nitro tonight despite itself.

Norman Smiley is SO deeply becoming the Slightly Poorman's Dean Malenko with his match psychology. The thing about Malenko is that he'll have a fifteen match with a REAL long boring part in the middle where everything is totally static but Malenko will KNOW that the finish that he's worked out in his head will be so hot that everyone will forget the five minute head scissors they fell asleep during. I can only think of ONE time when it didn't work (vs Regal circa 1997 on Nitro) so it's a formula that works. The thing with Smiley is that his boring middle section of the match are longer and more boring and his endings aren't as tricked out and freaky as Malenko when he's on. This was one of Smiley's better efforts- primarily because Saturn has enough cool moves to make the ending flurry make up for the big wad of nothing between the beginning and the end. Saturn takes a stand for sexually harassed workers everywhere when Smiley crosses the line between fellow employees working in a professional atmosphere and fellow employee caressing Perry's money-maker and trying to simulate Hot Man-On-Man ACTION! En Lieu of a discreet notification of the Time-Warner Human Resources' "Not Here, Not Ever" sexual harassment hotline, Saturn instead kills the fuck out of Smiley with the Anita Hill Driver 99.

Hey! Goldberg and Norton had a good little approximation of Kensuke Sasaki vs Road Warrior Hawk except Norton sold more than Hawk ever did and Goldberg is EXACTLY what Choshu was hoping that Sasaki would develop into- a big powerful guy with some cool offensive moves that a decent worker could carry to a good match. Kensuke Sasaki instead developed into Kensuke Sasaki so welcome to New Japan's horrible, secret, personal hell. Hell, Norton isn't good and hasn't been good since he decided to cop Goldberg's persona over in Japan, but for whatever reason, this was still pretty good just because it was stiff as hell and they only totally fucked one entire section on the floor. Goldberg fights his urge to suck until the very end, where he disregards the ass-beating he's been selling to go the finish. It's Goldberg, not Misawa, and it's Scott Norton, not Tsuruta, and this was better than should have ever been so welcome to the sunny side of the ledger, Fatnecks. Don't get all happy. Cuz you ain't stayin long. Hershel Walker- former New Jersey General and unknowing architect of three of the most spectacular Dallas Cowboy teams ever (Ah, those eternally pathetic Vikings. MIKE LYNN BABY!) was in the ring so that sealed it as a working match in my Staubach-loving heart.

I REALLY had no problem with the ladder match. Bam Bam bumped like a KING; he has had such a quiet resurgence the last year and half and these are the kind of match- here and in ECW- that got him back into my good graces (but hell, I thought his match against the truly hideous Shane Douglas was a minor miracle match). I wanna see the other fat loads in WCW take one-tenth of the bumps he's taken in that timespan. Hall took enough bumps that you didn't hate his fat, drunk, lazy ass for a little while. I liked that the spots weren't as contrived as most ladder matches and I dug the diving headbutt, the belly-to-back and the AWA elbow by hall off the ladder. Who lit a fire under the heavyweights tonight? I guess Bam Bam won.

Speaking of stiff, Finlay and Taylor try to drag stuff out of the First Family Of Fear and succeed to enough of a degree to get a foot in the door. Taylor kicks the motherfucker in by hitting the SWANK Steve Kiern and Tiger Conway Jr Mid-Atlantic Wrestling circa 1976-esque Standing Flying Head-scissors. I FREAKED OUT AND PARTIED! Finlay beats the shit out of the Barbarian and the Barbarian takes it like a man. Meng actually sold in this match for some reason and only looked like a total lummox for 80% of the match. The First Family do two of their three moves (no double Yakuza Kick this time round) and -HEY!- I'm digging the new tag team scene. The First Family are a very pale imitation of my polynesian sangre- the SST- but it was enough for the masters called Finlay and Taylor to make a little chicken salad there, Spunky.

After giving the funniest interview in the history of Canada, wrestling and recorded sound, Bret Hart shows that he is fucking GREAT wrestler even when limping through a match with Booker T- the world's most carryable heavyweight. This starts with Bret doing a Lawler level stall but kicks off with a level of stiffness the King never touched. I dunno, I just love the Booker T vs the Canadians Continuing Saga because Booker T + Canadian= Quality free wrestling. Of the four Canadians who have carried Booker T to his best matches, you have two schools of thought: Benoit and Jericho's Raise Him To A International Level School, and the Martel and Hart He's A Good Cog In A Basic US Pro-Style Match Which I Know Backwards And Forwards school. I mean, Hart has a totally different match with Booker T than Benoit- though I could watch eight Hart/Booker T matches just as easily. Whereas Benoit used Booker T's athletic ability to work high-grade Japanese suplex and submission spots to take Booker T's game to a realm he could never have dreamt of before, Hart opts to go the Strength Of The Opponent route and plays off Booker T's comfort zone of US Pro Style wrestling- thus explaining the TWO Figure Four heat segments. Bret made Booker T getting his knee crushed look great and then he made Booker T's (psychologically non-existent) comeback look great. I just like the fact that Booker T is the CONDUIT to the Great Canadian Wrestlers Comparisons. New Japan and WAR is the difference, because Benoit and Jericho have mutated from the Stu Hart training to think with a totally different head than their Calgary and Montreal predecessors. And in the end, Booker T gets to be involved in some real great matches. This was choice.

What does Chris Benoit think about? I wonder if a moment of clarity hit him when he realized that three years ago he sold Shinjiro Ohtani's first superSWANK Springboard DDT right on his head like a MAN on the way to not even winning the first WCW Cruiserweight tournament and that MUST have raced through his world-weary and Turner-rich brain as tonight he sold a Hulk Hogan Springboard backrake. Schneider was on the phone and I was saying, "AWWWWW MAN! THIS IS GONNA RULE! Benoit is gonna SELL A BACKRAKE!" AND ONE MOVE IN WITH HOGAN- VIOLA~! Benoit shows why he is worth the half mil a year by wrestling for SIX and making a match which featured Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Hulk Hogan and Steve Mongo McMichael ACTUALLY WORTH WATCHING. Benoit starts off with the only fireworks of the match as does the beautiful diving headbutt after he beats the hell out the totally useless Scott Steiner and gives him the Crippler Snot Rocket- HEY! BLOW A BOOGER FOR ME! Steiner shows how much he sucks by getting outworked by- God, this motherfucker should just retire- HULK HOGAN AND KEVIN NASH!?!?!?!? When Hulk Hogan matches you're suplex variations (because even !!!!!HHHHEEEE!!!! knows that Benoit is the best in the world thus there is NOTHING you can't do with him) and- after actually getting in the ring with Chris Motherfucking Benoit- all you can muster is a BEARHUG and half-assed, sloppy released belly-to-belly- then all I can say is "Homepiece, you gotta take that weak shit home, Ravaged-Testicles Boy." Benoit assumes the Ricky Morton, Robert Gibson, Sweet Stan, Tommy Rogers, Kikuchi, Great Sasuke and Ricky Steamboat role-ALL AT ONCE. He made three of the shittiest wrestlers on earth look good, made himself look good and saved us from undue amounts of a fired up Mongo being a house afire, so we, the US wrestling veiwing public, salute you and thank you for letting us watch TNT past 10:30. Again.
EPILOGUE: The ending was really big and neat just for Hogan getting decked by Villano V. Ciclope was sitting on the top turnbuckle- an unrequited Deadly Bump wilting like a hothouse flower. Welcome to end of truly weird Nitro.

There were a lot of skits. One had Bischoff selling stuff not particularly well in fast forward and the other had Curt Hennig getting beaten up in fast forward. The down side of this is that Hennig is a real lazy suck-ass these days, but he was the third best worker in the NWO behind Horace and Vincent and he was one of the few bright prospects to wrestle Malenko or Benoit in the Horseman/NWO feud. On the upside, Vincent still seems to have free reign to counter Nwo Wolfpack with his much, much, much cooler splinter group- nWo Devastation Incorporated.

THERE YOU HAVE IT.

DEAN RASMUSSEN.

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