A lot of people love WCW from 1996-1997, when the nWo storyline crested, or even 1998 WCW, with the rise of Goldberg and that unforgettable night in the Georgia Dome where he finally beat Hogan for the title. These periods are all well & good, but WCW in 1999 is a completely different kind of entertainment.
1999 was the first sign that WCW had hit an iceberg; WCW made a profit of something like $80 million in 1998, but by 1999, Eric Bischoff began to lose his mind and was increasingly absent from the day-to-day operations. Kevin Nash was booking at this point, and by the end of the year, the company would post a loss of $15 million - nothing compared to the $60m loss to come in 2000, but an asnishing turnaround nonetheless. Shows like this shine a light on how, exactly, this ended up happening.
(Here's a copy of Scott Keith's rant on the show, for more sensible star ratings than can be provided here.)
WCW Great American Bash 1999
We begin with a white limo pulling up backstage, and lo and behold, it’s the No Limit Soldiers! In Camo! For the uninitiated, yes, that is Master P's rap posse, on a wrestling pay per view. I told you WCW was losing money.
Hennig greets Master P and claims that he’s “true to the game” and loves Master P's music more than anyone in the world. Hennig then crushes the CD that Master P gives him, prompting the No Limit Soldiers to start hooting at him angrily. They actually yell something that sounds like "HOOT" over and over again.
We then get a video package for the Savage-Nash main event, which consists of the following:
- Savage putting lipstick on Nash
- A mystery man attempting to fill Savage’s limo with cement via the sunroof
- Savage, wearing a hot pink fur coat, declaring “the party starts right now!” as he brings a bucketful of some sort of muddy goop with him, about which he declares “that’s FERMENTED, YEEEEAH!”
- Savage heading to the ring and as Nash declares “you want some of me? Put down the bucket”. Savage delivers the immortal line “YOU’RE a STOO-pid PER-SEEE-INNNN”. Only the Macho Man could turn “person” into a three-syllable word.
- A contortionist emerging from a duffel bag behind the Macho Man to dump the bucket of fermented shit/goop on HIS head rather than Nash’s. Hilarious!
- Nash getting in his limo with an escort of 3 ladies, who close the door and call him a "sucker" as Macho rolls down the partition window revealing himself to be the driver. Mach then asks “you like being a smartass? WANNA GO FOR A RIDE????” before driving ten feet, getting out and running, and then yelling “GET IM!” as a white jeep/hummer slams into the side of the limo. Later, they probably set some piles of money on fire.
And with that, welcome to the Great American Bash! We are LIVE from the Baltimore Arena in Baltimore, MD, with an announced crowd of 11,672! It's June 16, 1999, and Schiavone, Tenay, & Heenan are your hosts. Tony immediately and excitedly claims that MASTER P IS IN THE HOUSE! Heenan tells us that Savage may win the title if he feels like it, but then again, he’s wrestling Kevin Nash.
We now go to what Tony calls “a very special look at the Great American Bash”, which is just a video package running down the card. It includes the phrase “Hak vs. Brian Knobs - “those two wacky hardcore guys!” ".
The video package rundown is a nice addition for home video, but for the live show, anyone who's watching it already bought the PPV presumably. The show rundown goes RIGHT into the video package for the Hak vs. Knobs match, with no transition at all. One second they're talking about the main event and after that its back to hardcore highlights.
Knobs in the video, responding to Jimmy Hart's offer of membership in the First Family: “Brian Knobs is as NASTY AS HE WANTS TO BE, and I’m gonna have to think about it.”
Kendo Stick Match
Hardcore Hak (w/ Chastity) vs. Brian Knobs (w/ Jimmy Hart)
Knobs’ music seems to be a soundalike of both Metallica’s “Ain’t My Bitch” and “My Sharona”
Tenay refers to Knobs as having been “hardcore before hardcore was cool”. Good try, but you're competing against the things coming out of Heenan's mouth for "nonsensical statement of the night", so you're gonna have to up your game, Mikey.
Tony says that in honor of the red white and blue, people should “be a patriot and have a hardcore match”. THERE we go! That's some Heenan-level nonsense talk!
Knobs takes the mic and says that today is Mrs. Nasty’s birthday, so he’s promised to destroy Hak for her. Hak is the Sandman by the way, with a shitty name that's probably an inside joke at his expense. Knobs challenges him to see “who’s really hardcore” by “getting rid of these sissy kendo sticks and all these silly toys”. He wants to get rid of the Kendo Sticks. In a Kendo Stick Match. He prefers taped fists or something. Tony says that Hak is “breaming” (sic) with confidence.
Someone actually brought a “Hak” sign to the arena?
Jimmy Hart is clad in a fantastic, if outdated, airbrushed Faces of Fear jacket.
Hak surveys the audience to see if he should comply with the weapons ban, but Knobs pearl harbors him with a trash can. Tony: “It was a swerve! We’ve had the first swerve of the night!”
Sandman is just wearing a generic tshirt, Knobs’s is the Nasty Boys shirt but just says “NASTY” as there is no Sags here. There's an actual “lets go Hak” chant once this match gets going.
Kendo stick shot to the face gets Sandman the pin at 5 and a half minutes, but Hugh Morrus immediately jumps him along with Hart and Knobs. *, not a good match but the crowd seemed willing to participate.
Backstage, Piper is walking by and getting ready for the “return bout” vs. Flair. Buff thanks him for the match vs. Disco and then claims to have Piper's back tonight. Piper tells him to take the ball and “run like Emmitt Smith”, then says “kids. Love kids. Love 'em for breakfast…” as he walks off.
Mikey Whipwreck vs. Van Hammer
The announcers are jabbering on about a box of chocolates or something. Heenan claims that Whipwreck's shinguards are “kneepads to protect his (shoe)laces”. This match wasn’t even mentioned in the huge rundown of the show.
Tenay brings up the “who drove the Hummer?” conundrum, Nash apparently thinks it was Scott Hall. Nick Patrick is your ref, with some Magnum TA hair action going.
They claim that BILLY RIPKEN may be in attendance. Not Cal Ripken, but Cal Ripken's drunken brother.
Van Hammer sets up the ring steps near the railing, climbs them and drops Whipwreck on the rail. Strange spot.
Whipwreck hits a body splash off the turnbuckle that could best be described as a Headhumper
Van Hammer hits the Cobra Clutch slam thing for the pin at about 8 AND A HALF MINUTES, geez, that was long for what was essentially a squash. ½*
Buff Bagwell vs. Disco Inferno
The camera shows two blondes in the crowd so hot and well dressed that they must be plants, lo and behold Disco hugs one on the way in.
Tony: “as we go into the net millennium....Buff Bagwell is gonna lead WCW and pro wrestling”
Buff is the clear favorite as they both mug for the crowd, who start a “Disco Sucks” chant.
Lotta stalling in this, Tony fills time by giving a special hello to all of the recent high school grads watching the program!
The Macarena Piledriver - a piledriver in which the Macarena is performed- gets reversed. Tony uses the phrase “Man Alive!”. He may have put on some weight ans started calling himself Don West after WCW went under.
Buff Blockbuster wins it for Bagwell at just shy of ten minutes, felt like twenty and not in the good way. ¾*
Rey Mysterio Jr. & Konnan vs. Curt Hennig & Bobby Duncum Jr.
This gets a very, um, entertaining video package, featuring:
- Hennig asking what was up with that K-Dong and his rap music, since he cant stand that rap music
- Konnan taking offense and attacking Hennig
- Hennig allying with Bobby Duncum Jr. and vowing to sing country music
- Konnan and Rey - in mid 90s Astros jerseys - saying that “we can settle this on a ranch…” Hennig: “ill slap that smile right off your face”
- Rey and Konnan attacking during a country song wearing matching orange prison uniforms for some reason
- Ends with a shot of Hennig yelling “RAP IS A BUNCHA CRAP”
Theres a live DJ now? His name is DJ RAN; he dedicates something to the “PPV” and attempts to find the rowdiest section, as well as Orioles fans, which just draws boos. He’s wearing an O’s jersey, introduces Master P and the No Limit Soldiers and exhorts the crowd to put their hands up several times. The Soldiers take their seats as the DJ continues screaming stuff like “check it out….you know how we do….master P and the no limit soldiers…ringside!” then throws it to his man, David Penzer.
Two notable signs here as Hennig and Duncum come out to "Rap is Crap" - seven people holding up one letter each of “HENNIG!”, and then one reading “Konnan Fears Soap”. During the entrances, we get this exchange from the announcers:
Tony: “here they come as a team, feeling that their kind of music - that being country and western - is better than rap”
Tenay: “I think I would go for rap!”
Heenan: “I've always liked marching music….like Desi Arnaz and Babalu with the conga drums….think about that for a while”
Tony describes the faces as “two men who can, as DJ Ran would say, get all up in ya area”
We see a large black woman with a “l’il rey’s got the hookup $$” sign. A nearby sign reads “I HATE THIS SIGN”.
Konnan’s usual shpeil gets a mixed reaction, then Rey, who’s wearing some sort of cylinder on his head, takes the mic and says “Much love and respect to all my No Limit Soldiers, HOOOTY HOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Oh it’s a gas mask that hes wearing. Why? And why are both good guys wearing overalls?
Hennig comes out and makes monkey noises at Master P. Really. After Master P's interference, we hear from an excited Schiavone: "CURT HENNIG STARTED THIS, BRAIN! HE BROKE THE MAN’S CD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PROGRAM!"
Hennig utilizes various incarnations of sitting on Mysterios head, then does the Rick Rude thing and points to the sky. The crowd is cool with all the casual racism, but somehow THIS draws boos.
This match has quite a few points where it looks like nobody really knows what to do. Windham is out to attack Konnan wearing street clothes and YELLOW WORK GLOVES, this draws out Swoll from the crowd, the biggest of the No Limit Soldiers and the one who was on WCW's payroll for a reported six figures. He headbutts Duncum and Rey pins him at about 10 and a half minutes, a brawl almost breaks out after the bell between the two factions and the crowd seems much more into that. No Limit Soldiers victoriously sprint to the back as the Rednecks continue attacking Rey and Konnan, which just seems off. Hennig and Rey in the same ring sounds cool but this wasn’t much. *½, and your Match of the Night to this point.
Announcers continue to talk up Swoll, who's played in the CFL and the NFL (Broncos) and is allegedly known in the bodybuilding world. Tony then weirdly throws us to video highlights of the previous match. There's general booing in the background, not sure if it's for a reason or just because this card blows.
Heenan claims that Savage is backstage thinking to himself that " “within the hour - within the TWO hours” I can become heavyweight champion” (sic'd all over)
Scott Norton vs. Ernest “The Cat” Miller (w/ Sonny Onoo)
Norton is indeed your face, out to nWo Hollywood music, oh but wait, its Horace Hogan!?! He’s displeased about being hit upside the head with a crowbar. He says he’s sure there's nothing the crowd would like more than to see him kick the crap out of the Kat. The crowd is not so sure about that. Horace says “you couldn’t even beat your own self up if you know what I mean” and charges, and we somehow get a match that’s WORSE than advertised.
Horace Hogan vs. Ernest “The Cat” Miller (w/ Sonny Onoo)
Wow, this sucks. The primary highlight is a kid at ringside in a tye-dyed nWo shirt petting Horace like a dog. Tony says “still, and we cant explain it to you, fans, no Scott Norton”.
The Cat wins at about 5 and a half super long minutes with a kick using a ruby slipper that Sonny Onoo slips on him. Really. Such a waste of my life to watch this. ZERO stars, it's tough to get worse than this....
Ric Flair (w/ Asya & Arn Anderson) vs. Roddy Piper
But they'll try!
This is for the WCW Presidency; Piper I think is supposed to be the face but the crowd seems to prefer Flair, as we're in HAWSMEN COUNTRY dagnabbit.
Video package: Piper promises ten reasons why Flair shouldn’t even run a gas station, brings up his personal finances, Flair attacks, Piper vows to bring two partners to something and says “I’m gonna call them ‘phantom’ and ‘menace’”. Is that a Star Wars reference?? Aha, it's Benoit and Malenko! Malenko claims Flair walked away from the Horsemen, Flair says without him there are no Horsemen. I thought the Horsemen were done after Fall Brawl 97, I guess not?
Arn tries to patch up the dispute but to no avail, as “it comes to this” as Tony says, "this" being a match that doesn't involve the Horsemen at all. Flair is the incumbent Prez here.
Asya is clearly their copycat Chyna, which I was surprised to see actually predates Russo. The announcers are questioning Flair’s mental state for unclear reasons. Tenay claims that this is “the most important match that Flair has been involved in as far as OUR future”. Sure.
Sign: “HI! DAD” (sic?) has to be the Sign Of The Night.
Piper is introduced as “WCW’s Troubleshooting Commissioner”. They have a Commissioner and a President? Why not a Director of Authority as well?
Sign: "Piper for President”, but with a Four Horsemen hand signal drawn on instead of a 4. I am confused. Tenay notes the “stipulation” - “if Piper wins, Buff Bagwell has a chance to prove himself”. Those are high stakes, right there
Potential Sign of the Night competition here, as we now have one reading "BRING BACK MR. BOB BACKLUND”, who to my knowledge was not in WCW.
Piper throws some really bad jabs, and we get some really unnecessary Ric Flair ass shots. This is the kind of match where if you were watching with other people in the room, they would laugh at you because of how fake it looks. Flair nails Piper with brass knuckles, then just decides to sit down instead of covering him.
Eventually, down comes Buff to clock the interfering Arn Anderson, then Buff attacks Flair and gives him the win by DQ at 8 minutes. ½*, oh hell, make it ¼* since NOTHING made sense. Huge letdown here given the names involved. Piper nails Bagwell and they fight each other? Now Arn spinebusters Bagwell for a big pop. Flair and Anderson hold Bagwell as Piper lashes him. What the holy hell was the idea behind this? The whole match was some sort of trap for Bagwell???
DJ Ran gets the crowd to say Hell Yeah for nash, which prompts Tony to ask “how come he can cuss and we can't?”
WCW TV Title
No DQ, Falls Count Anywhere
Sting vs. Rick Steiner ©
Ah, the failed late-90s Rick Steiner singles push, a sad moment in history for everyone who loves to attend wrestling events and bark at the air.
The video package involves Sting and Steiner fighting near some sort of tractor/monster truck and then with athletic tape in a cage. Apparently the genesis of this feud was Steiner’s exhortation of “you want some, come get some”. I should note that Schiavone introduced the video package by saying “this match has a very special stipulation that we’d like to tell you about, take a look!” and it made no mention of said stipulation.
Wait, this is a non title match? Tony: “you see him holding up that belt, he is not going to be defending that belt here tonight, this is very much of a grudge match, although that was not labeled on this match….we go back to David penzer once again!” (sic) (what?)
Tony attributes the fighting outside the ring to the “new attitude” of the “more dangerous than ever“ Steiner, “he would never do something like this months ago…..he enjoys in ring confrontation” sure its that, not the FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE STIPULATION
About 9 minutes of this was perfectly acceptable, maybe even would’ve broken the elusive ** barrier that’s eluded this show so far. And then……
Well.....
They brawl to the back (look for the insane lady in the crowd who really swats at Steiner), to the WCW.com table with Mark Madden and Chris Jericho (one of his last PPV appearances for WCW?) and then backstage, where Tank Abbott chokes Sting with some rope or something and then Scott Steiner sics two Dobermans on Sting. Really. He has dogs attack Sting. Then a rottweiler! Security sprints over as they take the cameras off of Sting, they say. At 11 and a half minutes the ref rings the bell, both Steiners are in the ring. Scotty says “my understanding of this match was falls count anywhere”, somehow this results in Rick being declared the winner??
Scott’s ultimately persuasive argument for his brother's victory was to look at the ref and say “1,2,3.....hnah?” What the hell? I dunno, lets say ¾* for that, can't really go any higher because of how little sense the finish makes. It's a shocker that Rick’s “if you don’t like me, bite me” catchphrase never got over, HNAH?
The postmatch promo sees Scott declare “WCW SUCKS!” I wholeheartedly agree at this point.
Rick: "Who's the shittiest town in America? Baltimore!"
WCW Tag Team Championship
Chris Benoit & Saturn © vs. DDP & Kanyon (w/ Bam Bam Bigelow)
The build for this is a TOTALLY natural segment where Bam Bam is sitting on something and halfheartedly says “you also told me to get a partner, well GUESS WHAT” and DDP, on cue, hits both champs ever so slightly with a 2x4. They claim this is a live attack??? This segues right to a video package, nonsensical by any reasonable standard but tonight's.
The video package shows:
- DDP and Bigelow dumping Raven into a dumpster
- DDP and Bigelow then winning the tag belts
- Flair, in front of an AWESOME melding of the WCW logo and the Presidential seal that has to be seen to be believed, teaming up with Benoit for a shot at the belts, turning on him, Saturn coming in as the replacement, winning the belts, then Kanyon attacks Saturn as the Triad is formed
Tony: “fans I do wanna give you an update, we do wanna assure you that Sting was pulled away from those dogs”. For some reason the announcers are trying to stick Bigelow with the nickname “Triple B”.
This would probably have been better if it were a lot shorter. Malenko eventually comes out to revive Saturn, distracts the ref, then DDP and good old Triple B hit a combination Greetings From Asbury Park & Diamond Cutter (or as Tony calls it, a “double diamond cutter”) on Benoit, then roll Kanyon on top for the pin and belts at 18:30. **½, and only that high because Benoit and Kanyon were both awesome here. Match of the night, by a wide stretch.
And now, your Main Event!
WCW Championship
Kevin Nash © vs. Macho Man Randy Savage (w/ Gorgeous George, Madusa & Miss Madness 99)
Video package:
Macho Man demands a title shot vs. Nash from Piper and a grey-haired Bischoff, gets it apparently, then just puts lipstick on Nash instead of winning the title. Macho then declares, on Nitro I guess, that “June the Thirteenth CAN BE TONIGHT, come on out Big Sexy!” and a Nash impersonator comes out in a dress and Wolfpac shirt - and, um, the title belt? We then see some women hitting each other as Savage vows to “push him back in the closet where he needs to stay”.
Nash then dumps raw sewage into Macho’s limo while hes in there with the girls, then we see the rest of what we saw before, including a second replay of YOURE a STOOpid PERR-SEEE-INNNN, all the way through the Hummer crash.
Buffer does intros, calling Nash and Savage the greatest big man and most dangerous man in wrestling, respectively. The revamped Macho Man is out to a heavy metal song that starts with a girl cooing “what up, Mach?” and him responding with OOOOOH YEAAAAH. Buffer's awkward intro: “It's Madness time! It's Macho time! Its Macho Man Randyyyyyyy Savage!”
Nash comes out to the Wolfpac theme and some very sad pyro, those aren't even sparklers. A sign says the following: “ “Nash” lets do it “wolfpac” style”. Why are there quotes around "Nash"? Buffer claims Nash has fractured ribs and a bad knee and is known for his “ignore-the-pain courage”. Also, I'm sure, for his "no-show-the-PPV resolve".
Nash has asked for the ban on Savage’s top-rope elbow drop to be overturned? Why was that banned? A nice quote from Tony that summarizes the nonsense: “Sewage was involved, the lady in the duffel bag…..the use of the lipstick, the horrible crash of the limousine….”
Savage looks quite washed up here. Nash kicks out of a bad elbow drop, powerbombs Savage, the ladies attack Nash but the ref doesn’t seem to care at all, SID then comes down and hits Nash in the face with a big boot to make his WCW return and give Nash the win by DQ at almost 7 and a half minutes. Match was nothing, just a lot of kicking and punching. ½*
The announcers then speculate that it was Sid behind the wheel, Tenay notes that this makes sense and Tony adds “it seems to, but sometimes you can throw logic out the window.” Okay then! Sid helps Macho Man out as Buffer announces that the prone Nash is the winner and STILL champion. We close with a shot of Nash’s face and then a Bash at the Beach ad with people outside during the summer, until a storm cloud (the WCW logo) darkens the horizon and forces them to watch some crazy shit that makes no sense. That's where we'll pick up next time!
Overall: This is just a fascinating period in WCW for me. It's very, very clear in retrospect that they're in trouble; from firsthand experience, I can assure you that the WWF had clearly won the war at this point. Austin had just beaten The Rock at Wrestlemania, and every wrestling fan I knew was completely into that and had ceased paying attention to WCW altogether.
Watching this show now, the key difference between it and 2000 WCW is that the infrastructure of a thriving company was all there. The buildings are all still standing, everyone is still going through the motions, oblivious to the way that this is guaranteed to end. Everyone at a high level here is cashing a paycheck & pretending that everything's okay. As an exercise in mass delusion & indifference, and for the mind-blowing financial inefficiencies that would sink ANY company, this show is fascinating to watch.
As a wrestling show, not so much. Due to the existence of Heroes of Wrestling, this show lost out on Worst PPV of the Year honors in 1999. It's close, though, and still holds up as one of the worst shows of all time. In a strange twist, Hollywood Video bought up pretty much every copy of this that was ever put out; it's insanely bad enough to merit buying for $1 on clearance at your local Hollywood Video, provided that your local Hollywood Video has not yet gone the way of WCW.
TCR Rating: 1
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