Mid-Week Report

By Bill

(Picture created and sent in by Hastings)

Trivia Question: When Barry O was introduced as hailing from "Las Vegas, Nevada", he would intimidate the ring announcer into making a slightly modified announcement. What way it? (answer at the end of the report)
The mailbag:
- Jordan S. writes:
  I was at Toys 'R Us on Saturday shopping for a birthday present. While browsing the model car aisle, I noticed some very peculiar items next to the larger cars. Hot Wheels (well, Racing Champions) WCW Nitro-Streetrods!
  There were half a dozen different wrestlers and different cars. The ones that were at my store were:
  - Booker T w/ what seemed to be a '76 Buick Skylark
  - Diamond Dallas Page w/ an unidentified sedan
  - Scott Norton w/ an nWo Super Bee
  - Public Enemy(?!) w/ a Ford Ranger of some type, lowrider, of course
  - Rey Misterio, Jr. w/ a '50 Mercury
  - Chris Jericho w/ a '57 Chevy
    and...
  - Glacier (Of all people) w/ a Lead Sled (1949 Mercury)!
  I picked up Jericho, Misterio and Glacier (but only for the Lead Sled, I swear!). What seemed really odd to me is the Public Enemy Low Rider. The copyright date is 1998, and I haven't seem them for a while.
  Each of the cars has the logo of a different PPV, for what reason, I don't know. Perhaps this signifies their greatest WCW achievement match.
  Oh well, at least they didn't have Chip Minton in his NASCAR...
- Josh T. from Clemson, SC, writes:
  Why is WCW calling Torrie Wilson "Sam" and "Samantha" on their web page? Worse yet, some parts of their web page call her Sam, while others call her Torrie. The link that says "Samantha Photo Gallery" leads to a page titled, you guessed it, "Torrie Wilson Photo Gallery." What a bunch of f***-ups. Pardon my language, but it infuriates me that they waste our time with nWo segments in crappy black and white and Konnan's rap videos. You would think with all the free time they're creating for themselves, they could at least get one simple story line straight.
- Barry P., curator of The Lodi Page, asks:
  Did you notice Konnan's camouflage on Monday? It's not working, cause I can still see him.
- Kirk in Union City has been digging around in the Files Of Forgotten Angles:
  Did someone in the legal community decide that the attempted poisoning of Ric Flair was not a serious enough event to warrant further investigation, or is Bischoff actually in Europe fleeing prosecution, not visiting his daughter as they would have us believe?!
- From Joe in MD about Nitro:
  Besides the fact that the near falls in the Rey/Kidman match occurred practically simultaneously with the match on RAW (coincidence, but I saw it with picture in picture) the best part of Monday night was when Tony said "Where else but Nitro can you see three ex-world champs and one current world champ in the ring for a tag match?" A couple channels over I was watching Stone Cold, Paul Wight, The Rock, and Mick Foley. I think that counts.
- Evan H. from the University of Florida has a correction:
  On the Nitro last night Tony mangled the name of the Student Union here at University of Florida.
  He attempted to pronounce the "Reitz Union." He used a long "e" sound when it should be a long "i" sound, pronounced "rights."
  You'd think with all the words he's been missing lately they'd let The Brain do more talking. Go figure.
  An interesting side note here is that some fifteen years year, when I was going to RPI, the WWF regularly had shows at the RPI Fieldhouse. During a promo when Ken Resnick was working for the WWF, he referred to RPI as "RPI University". Ugh. Actually, RPI is a university rather than a college, but it was still an incorrect name.
  But, all was made right again when "Leaping" Lanny Poffo read a poem about RPI hockey at the card before his match. :-)
- Brian M. from Lexington, KY, sends in the following arena report from Monday night:
  When my friends and I got to the Firstar Center we grabbed our seats and watched the place fill up. We were on pretty high up on the side with the camera, but in that place every seat was decent. We could see the entrance very well. Before Penzer came out the crew people were setting up the pyro and finishing the lights. Ralphus was down on the floor near the side of the entrance shooting the breeze with some of the other road crew. It was funny when one crew member did the Ralphus finger shake at him, and he put the guy in a headlock.
  After that Penzer intro'ed the announcing crew, and they all took their bows. My friend booed Zbyszko and yelled "Larry fears Bruno!" Then there were the first two matches and that really funny Disco Karaoke thing. Most of the night's interview spots were projected for the arena to see. (granted they didn't always play the sound, but...whatever) From where we were we could see the announcers' booth well, too. Most of the night, The Brain and the others stood up while calling the matches, but I don't know why.
  Then came the Flair interview and the crowd was putting off some pretty big heel heat for Flair and his escort service. Did anyone else catch Gene say "On the HEELS of last night..." ?
  The third match with Rey-Dogg vs Kidman was probably the best of the night in the arena. It was fast-paced and had good spots even through the commercial break. One weird thing I noticed, and since you are a Spice fan you may find this interesting, was that Spice came out from the back during this match and stood off to the side near the announcers booth to watch this match. Every time Kidman pulled off a smooth move she clapped, and cheered. Make of that what you will.
  Then came all the "Hogan made me in charge!" stuff, and we were bored. The funny thing about that Stevie Ray bit is that what they don't know is that Hollywood told me that I was the man. He gave me the go-ahead, and now I am the new leader of nWo Black-and-White. (won't that surprise Virgil?)
  I went and bought a Monday Night Jericho shirt just as the new tag champs came out to a mixed reaction. When I came back, I noticed that both tag teams had some good tag-style wrestling going on, at least there were some decent tag combos. My friend Chris was weeping for joy at the sight of Benoit with a belt.
  After the Buff/Steiner thing Big Poppa Pump, Scott Steroids dropped Buff out of the recliner and left. What you didn't see was Buff stand up and get a mic and mimic Steroid's bit about the fans sucking. Buff looks at the crowd, and says "I don't know about you, but I think the nWo SUCKS!!!" He tosses his nWo do-rag and leaves.
  Then there was the nWo b/w fight, and Disco vs Mr. Mexico himself. And then I freaked out for Jericho and Booker T who are two of my favorite WCW youngbloods. They rock. This match is the kind of thing I would love to see in five years for the world title. This match was a little slow, but I still think these guys rule. Do you think that Jericho hurt his ribs with all those chains at Uncensored? A trainer walked him out after the match.
  Then, lastly and leastly, the best bookers in history (sarcasm) faced off against Ric Flair and Goldberg. I think the show went off as Flair fled, but Goldberg and Nash stayed around to face off after the show went off. Hogan tried to help, and got beat down for his troubles. That's pretty much it.
- I got rid of my Brushes With Greatness feature some time ago, but I got two this wek that are worth posting. The first is from Ben H. from Farmington, MN:
  Bret "The Hit Man" Hart signed autographs yesterday to celebrate the opening of the newest "Big K" K-Mart in Burnsville, Minnesota. The line stretched from luggage to shoes to mens to boys and finally to the girls department. He rarely looked up from his signings except if someone requested a picture. I waited over an hour. With only five minutes left to sign (just when I got to the head of the line), the store manager told everyone he would sign for an additional ten minutes, then he had a plane to catch. Hart did do his best to get everything signed, but there were about 500 people still in line when I left. I wanted to console him about his move to WCW and his recent bouts with Will Sasso, but didn't get the chance. When my wife's camera malfunctioned, he laughed and told me to just come back in line when it was working again. The 25-years-old-and-up bracket (which I represent) made up about 3% of the crowd. Of those remaining, I doubt few would remember when Hart and "The Anvil" grabbed the WWF belts for the first time back in the 1980s. All and all, he came off as a good guy, who though bored after 2 hours of "Do you like Hulk Hogan?" questions, was still pretty receptive to the fans.
  From heavyweight champion to a guy signing autographs at K-Mart.
  On the table around him were the Red and Black nWo shirts. Does he even know what angle he's wrestling for anymore?
- And, from Dean:
  I have written to you only once before, about a brush, but this one's good and you might be curious about it. My name's Dean Flores, I'm 30 years old and I work at Carraba's Restaurant, the best Italian grill in Florida, while I finish my degree in Physical Therapy. This one's in Tampa, Florida, home of many wrestlers. As I was leaving the other night, guess who walks out of the restaurant but Eddie Guerrero. I was surprised because I didn't know how his condition was after the accident. He looked a little skinny, and when I saw him, I said, "Get better, Eddie." That stopped him in his tracks, since he figures everyone who's not connected to the Internet (marks...am I stereotyping?!?) thinks he's either on vacation or making a movie.
  But anyway, he was VERY cool and humble. I'm Puerto Rican, so of course I spoke to him in spanish, and told him that he had a lot of fans in the Tampa area, myself included. He states that he'll be back in a couple of months, and that he still is recuperating from the internal injuries. He said it was his faith in God that moved him along. I also met his mom, who's the nicest lady I ever met. He gave me a hug and thanked me for wishing him well, told me "Te cuidas mi hermano" (take care my brother) and left.
  Pretty cool guy, huh? Just figured you'd be interested to hear how's he doing.
  It's great to hear that Eddie's doing well, and I have to second Dean's opinion of Eddie. When I went to Halloween Havoc a year ago, I was walking through the MGM Grand and I realized I was walking beside Eddie Guerrero. I told him that when he wrestled in Fairfax, VA a month earlier, his match brought the house down (which was true). He smiled, put his arm around me, and said "Yep, they love to hate me". He shook my hand and he both continued on our respective ways. Definitely a cool guy.
So, a number of people have pointed out Kevin Nash's official site to me. It's pretty well done, and they've actually given DDT Digest a link.
However, the flavor of the site is a little weird, you know? I don't see anything on the site that a fan couldn't put together and it just seems like an unofficial site trying to be an official site, especially with all the "shoot" commentary about make-believe angles and backstage politics. And, if you look up the owner of the domain name, Kevin Nash himself supposedly owns it. I've never seen an official website that's actually owned by the person it's for. Plus, you would think that if it was official, the official WCW site would be linking to it.
Does anyone know if it's legitimate?
[Update: Since initially posting this, I've gotten a number of e-mails confirming that it looks to be legit for two reasons. First, it is linked from the Superstars section of the WCW home page. Second, it was plugged on WCWSN.]
I saw Erik Watts wrestle on WCWSN. I found it kind of funny that while the announcers talked about him being a second-generation wrestler, they made absolutely no reference to his previous stint in WCW. I really can't figure out why, since even though he really sucked as a wrestler back then, he did rack up a lot of wins and beat some major players.
Well, I find it odd.
I don't normally comment on the "backstage politics" because it doesn't generally fit in with what I write about. Plus, I wouldn't want some self-proclaimed expert writing on the Web about the politics where I work.
However, even WCW itself has been very upfront about the power that Kevin Nash is wielding backstage. I'm thinking, "whatever". However, as a demonstration of the power Nash seems to be wielding, let's talk about Al Green.
Sometime ago, Al Green appeared out of nowhere as the "number-one contender" and got a shot at Goldberg when he was World Champion. Of course Green got spanked, but it was really weird to have this guy come out of nowhere and get a high-profile match.
Then, you've got Al Green beating Glacier and getting another win this past weekend. You may be wondering who this guy is. Well, in an incredible 'coincidence', he was Kevin Nash's tag team partner when Nash first broke into the business as one of the Master Blasters.
A reader, Chris Johnson, suggested this week that the "Mrs. Robinson" trying to seduce David Flair is going to be linked up with referee Charles Robinson, who is in Ric Flair's back pocked. I pooh-poohed it, but now Rick at Wrestlemaniacs is putting that forth as a possible theory as well.
I still don't think so, however. But, then again, I'm still out on a limb claiming that the Bret Hart double-cross at the Survivor Series was a work.
I watched the first half of Nitro this week, and it was definitely better than last week, but that's not saying much.
I must admit that I actually laughed out loud twice. The first time was when they played the doctored version of Konnan's music video.
The second one was when, over AOL IM, Wade explained to me what a Dutch Oven is.
I picked up my copy of the 1999 PWI Almanac. As always, it's a good book. If you are a wonk for stats, dates, etc. it is a must-have.
For those of you in the Eden, NC area, Arn will be doing an autograph session on Thursday, March 25^th. See his official home page for more details.
By a freak coincidence of scheduling, I may actually be near Eden, NC that day. So, if you see some stupid mark with a flattop standing in line for an autograph on his plastic Arn Anderson figure, that'll be me.
As is now the tradition, there's a new poll on the main page.
See you tomorrow night for Thunder!
Trivia Answer: "The fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada"

Mid-Week Report

By Bill

Back to DDT Digest