Shark
Hank Scorpio
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Posts: 7,045
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Post by Shark on Mar 1, 2019 20:22:04 GMT -5
So I decided to start watching WWE and WCW from the year 2000. All Raw, Smackdown, Nitro, Thunder, and the PPVs and see how they truly compared. All went great for Raw and Nitro, but I hit a snag. Thunder from 2000 isn't on the Network yet and I can't find it online anywhere, at least not the whole year. I really want to do this so should I just stay the course and ignore Thunder or should I also skip Smackdown just to keep it fair?
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mattyy
Unicron
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Post by mattyy on Mar 1, 2019 21:03:13 GMT -5
You're going to miss a lot of storyline development by skipping both. Thunder less than SmackDown, but both are still integral parts to the show as a whole.
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
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Post by Shark on Mar 1, 2019 21:09:07 GMT -5
So far I'll at least keep watching Smackdown too. Just hope the rest of Thunder gets added soon too.
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lucas_lee
Hank Scorpio
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Post by lucas_lee on Mar 1, 2019 23:21:40 GMT -5
Thunder was so bad around this time yohre really not missing much
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2019 3:39:45 GMT -5
I did this journey about a year or 2 ago thru my own collection as back in 2000 I gave up watching wcw around fall brawl it was hard to get through as the sullivan thunder’s are horrendous and then when Russo & Bischoff take over april to june maybe early july have stuff going on after that it feels way less important so unless you really need to see the lava lamp lounge,Straight Shootin Stevie Ray on commentary or Woman hating Mike Tenay you ain’t missing much.By September when they start taping Nitro & Thunder on the same night those thunder’s are lazy and sad with only about 30% of the nitro crowd left there was some really cool cruiserweight stuff infront of like 12 people who thought they were at the library.
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auph10imitated
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Post by auph10imitated on Mar 5, 2019 12:11:39 GMT -5
I think Thunder in 2000 was probably more intregal to storylines than 1998-1999 ever was. Thunder in 1998/1999 had a few nWo segments but was also often just random matches, it was pretty much WCW's version of Heat.
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Mar 5, 2019 13:57:28 GMT -5
But if you skip Thunder, you miss the legendary title win of one D. Arquette.
From his own tag team partner.
Who's thrilled.
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Post by cabbageboy on Mar 5, 2019 14:10:34 GMT -5
Was there any explanation as to why Arquette turned on DDP at Slamboree during the triple cage match? Oh wait...Russo. As someone who did most of this at the time I will say you are a brave one for attempting to watch all of WCW in 2000. I think what you'll notice is how radically different it all is. The first few months of the year once Sullivan takes over are very, very boring. Really dumbed down, slower paced, etc. Then Russo and Bischoff come back and the shows do get more exciting and bizarre to the point of hilarity. Then Russo flamed out again, Bischoff walked out, and the shows in late 2000 actually weren't half bad. All of it bombed horribly and killed the company.
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
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Post by Shark on Mar 5, 2019 18:35:31 GMT -5
I have very scant memories of WCW in 2000, so I really want to watch these shows especially because I know just how bad those shows were supposed to be. I want to see just how bad.
I should probably at least update my progress. I'm on the post Royal Rumble Monday. WCW has been terrible. The NWO is still running strong and is doing the exact same thing they've always been doing. Terry Funk was named the new commissioner, but loses the job to Kevin Nash 2 weeks later so that was pointless. David Flair and Crowbar are a major focus on the show and they are really really bad. The matches suck. The lone bright spot is Screamin' Norman Smiley.
WWE is honestly not super great. A lot of angles don't make a lot of sense, matches are so short they can't amount to anything, there are so many disqualifications. However, it is exponentially better than WCW. Raw and Smackdown are at least really fun. Nitro is just a slog and Souled Out is one of the worst shows I've ever seen.
Side note, they've established that Edge is going to marry Val Venis' sister and they've started doing this angle where women are just finding Edge irresistible and he's not exactly spurning their advances and it's a tad awkward to watch given Edge's history and let's say poor track record with fidelity.
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
The world's only Samurai Ninja Pirate
Posts: 7,045
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Post by Shark on Mar 6, 2019 22:26:03 GMT -5
Nitro is such a slog right now. Watching the 1/31 show and I'm thinking that I'm nearing the end of the show because it feels like I've been watching it for 2 hours. I look at the time bar and there's 51 minutes left. I'm just so DEVASTATED right now.
Both shows now are doing the heel group runs the show thing with the NWO and DX and it feels like it works in WWE, but it feels like it doesn't make sense in WCW. It's hard to explain why. My best guess is it's Stephanie McMahon. At least DX has someone who partially owns the company calling the shots.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2019 23:37:50 GMT -5
I think Thunder in 2000 was probably more intregal to storylines than 1998-1999 ever was. Thunder in 1998/1999 had a few nWo segments but was also often just random matches, it was pretty much WCW's version of Heat. Pretty much but to me the biggest Thunder ever felt was its 1st 5 or 6 months when it debuted in 98 it has all the stars,Big main events and major storyline advancement took place and all this was brought up on nitro the next monday.Plus it had an overrun due to its then live nature and it was followed by Movies for guys who like movies and me being a dude who enjoyed partaking in film it was a 1-2 punch for the ages. In 99 it to me became The Chimp Channel preshow. In 2000 so much of what happened was largely meaningless because it was rarely mentioned on nitro and so many times angles took place that were completely ignored and never mentioned again minus the arquette title win.The last half of 2000 was pretty lifeless although it was amusing when thunder became the home of the weekly “shoot” sitdown interview where they talked about how fake wrestling was and how the writer can’t force them to do jobs they won’t lose they fight people for real.HHH would have fit in real well then. My favorite thunder moment from 2000 was in the fall Stevie Ray was relatively new to announcing and was trying to put over wcw and was racking his brain thinking of a big number to tell the fans at home how many people were watching this show and this exchange took place: Stevie:Fans we got about 500 people watching this show right now! Tony:Fans I apologize Stevie just misspoke he meant to say 500 MILLON people are watching! Also someone in wwe creative was a huge fan of fall 2000 thunder as the current Alexa Bliss gimmick of being a horny talk show host who constantly gets interrupted is a direct ripoff of Mike Awesome who did the exact same thing.
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
The world's only Samurai Ninja Pirate
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Post by Shark on Mar 8, 2019 18:05:27 GMT -5
Just got to the Radicals arriving in WWE. Boy did they hammer that name into you from the start. First night was awesome. They come in, kick all the ass, look like bad asses. Then Smackdown comes and they all lose. I get that Eddie's injury screwed things up, but this was still terrible.
Also, did not realize that the Raw they showed up was also the night the APA officially began their protection gimmick. The Radicals beat up the Mean Street Posse, the Posse run away and stumble upon Bradshaw and Faarooq and before they get beat up again, they offer the APA money to protect them, and Bradshaw clearly likes the sound of it and a legendary gimmick was born.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2019 20:43:18 GMT -5
It's amazing how David Arquette is having a better wrestling career as a washed up actor on the indies than he was as a somewhat relevant actor who was WCW World Champion.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Mar 9, 2019 2:00:58 GMT -5
It's amazing how David Arquette is having a better wrestling career as a washed up actor on the indies than he was as a somewhat relevant actor who was WCW World Champion. Guessing it helps he was never comfortable with the WCW title idea and was talked into it, whereas the indies stuff he would have much more control over.
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
The world's only Samurai Ninja Pirate
Posts: 7,045
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Post by Shark on Mar 9, 2019 2:54:16 GMT -5
The February 7, 2000 Nitro is infuriating on several levels. Below are my live notes.
1. The show opens with 3 Count. 2. Scott Steiner cuts a promo going off on Ric Flair and says that when Flair came out on TV the week before, everyone changed the channel to Raw to watch Austin. Austin had been off TV for like 3 months at this point. 3. Jarrett cuts a promo where he repeats himself about 4 times. 4. Mark Madden is on commentary. 5. Clarence Mason is there doing the stupid angle between Booker T and Stevie Ray over the Harlem Heat rights. 6. Oklahoma is back and is in charge of the women's division and he makes several disgusting remarks about being there when they get their physicals done. 7. Ric Flair arrives with 3 women, the implication being he had sex with them all in the limo. 8. David Flair vs. Terry Funk. It's just as awful as you'd imagine. 9. I still have 40 minutes left of this show. 10. I am glad I'm not watching Thunder now. If I had to watch 2 WCW shows, I'd slit my wrists. 11. Flair shows up, walks around a little backstage, then leaves. He doesn't go in front of the crowd or even cut a promo. 12. Jesus, the Kiss Demon. Interesting, God of Thunder is kept in for the Network version. Kiss must've made some kind of big deal with WCW for this. 13. 10 minutes left and they are still doing segments instead of the Sid Scott Hall main event. 14. 5 minutes left and they are finally getting to the main event. 15. Jarrett helps Hall beat up Sid, but then knocks out Hall after he tries to win the title. Sid wins the show show ends like 10 seconds later.
This is such a bad bad bad show. It actually makes Raw and Smackdown look significantly better than they really are.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Mar 9, 2019 3:34:57 GMT -5
The February 7, 2000 Nitro is infuriating on several levels. Below are my live notes. 2. Scott Steiner cuts a promo going off on Ric Flair and says that when Flair came out on TV the week before, everyone changed the channel to Raw to watch Austin. Austin had been off TV for like 3 months at this point. Isn't this the promo that Scott Steiner went completely off script to do, and got suspended from WCW with paid leave as a result?
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
The world's only Samurai Ninja Pirate
Posts: 7,045
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Post by Shark on Mar 9, 2019 3:41:19 GMT -5
The February 7, 2000 Nitro is infuriating on several levels. Below are my live notes. 2. Scott Steiner cuts a promo going off on Ric Flair and says that when Flair came out on TV the week before, everyone changed the channel to Raw to watch Austin. Austin had been off TV for like 3 months at this point. Isn't this the promo that Scott Steiner went completely off script to do, and got suspended from WCW with paid leave as a result? Probably. I think that happened to him a few times that year.
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Post by somsta on Mar 9, 2019 4:48:38 GMT -5
The February 7, 2000 Nitro is infuriating on several levels. Below are my live notes. 2. Scott Steiner cuts a promo going off on Ric Flair and says that when Flair came out on TV the week before, everyone changed the channel to Raw to watch Austin. Austin had been off TV for like 3 months at this point. Isn't this the promo that Scott Steiner went completely off script to do, and got suspended from WCW with paid leave as a result? Yes it was.
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Post by Milkman Norm on Mar 9, 2019 10:24:05 GMT -5
I"m watching WWE 2000 and it's awesome. It's also interesting in retrospect how I can see some of the ways they were slowly moving away from the Russo style of crash TV booking and re teaching the audience to pay attention to matches. I just watched the Dog Show delayed Raw where Kane beat HHH & Big Show to get his match with X-Pac at No Way Out.
On the other hand I have 0 interest in watching the awful last year of WCW. I know some people find schadenfreude in it but I do not. I still wish the promotion existed.
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Shark
Hank Scorpio
The world's only Samurai Ninja Pirate
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Post by Shark on Mar 9, 2019 20:01:25 GMT -5
So I might just chronicle this journey from now on.
February 7, 2000 Raw -Mick Foley was an amazing promo. I forgot how great he was on the mic. The promo he cuts challenging Triple H to Hell in the Cell is just spectacular. Gives you goosebumps. -Not sure if anyone has talked about it, but does make more sense for the Radicals to turn heel. All 4 guys are arguably better as heels and them turning on Cactus makes sense because he waded them into an uphill fight and them taking Hunter's offer makes sense. Smackdown could have been done better, but the end result worked out I think. -Kurt Angle is an amazing asshole. He Angle Slams a pregnant Mae Young and then celebrates like he won the gold medal. Mae flashes an EMT backstage. Funny, but he should have fainted. Would have been a funnier reaction. -APA vs the Hollys. They fight back to a bar that is just for some reason in the arena. Faarooq sucks beer straight from the tap. -Rock does an interview in the stairwell. I wish they did more interviews like this now. -Dudleys are amazing heels. They feel radically different from Edge & Christian and the Hardys who feel the exact same. -Godfather's ladies flash their panties to the camera. JR gets in a good line saying it was thankfully a winter month otherwise they may not have worn any. -Lot of cheap finishes on this show. Everything is wild and chaotic and is fun, but the lack of proper match finishes hurt. -Main event. Radicals, Triple H, and X-Pac vs. Foley, Rock, Rikishi, and Too Cool. Crowd is losing their minds the entire time. -The crowd blows up with any tag the faces make. -Kane returns to one of the loudest pops I've ever heard in my life.
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