Wednesday, November 28, 2018

WCW Uncensored '99



WCW Uncensored 1999 is a show that will live in infamy... except not really.

Anyway, on with the show...


Stevie Ray defeated Vincent (a.k.a. Virgil a.k.a. Lonely Virgirl a.k.a. Mike Jones) in a complete waste of time. Not a promising start.

Kevin Nash defeated some twelve-year old claiming to be Rey Mysterio Jr. in a match that saw Nash sell a couple highspots before eventually ending it all with a powerbomb. Rey Mysterio had "lost" his mask at a previous PPV, but when he pulled it off, it was this kid. And then this kid claiming to be Rey Mysterio Jr. beat Nash in a match on Nitro and then we have this complete waste of time. This kid would continue to use Rey Mysterio's name until WCW closed up shop in 2001... and then the real Rey Mysterio would resurface in WWE a year later. To this day, no one knows what Rey Mysterio was doing in hiding while this kid was running amok in WCW with his stolen identity... or not. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Jerry Flynn (some karate guy) defeated Ernest The Cat Miller and Sonny Onoo... fine, whatever. I don't care. By the way, that's three matches so far where I couldn't give a shit about anybody in said matches. That's pretty fucking sad.

Hardcore Hak (a.k.a. Sandman from ECW, but less extreme) defeated Bam Bam Bigelow and Raven in a three-way hardcore match that makes me wish this was taking place in ECW where they could have gone all out, as it were. Back in 99 when my exposure to ECW was extremely limited, this meant nothing to me and was just another lame hardcore match from a promotion that didn't quite pull off the concept. Nowadays... well, like I said, if this were in ECW, it would've been somewhat better... or at least have a better crowd to make it seem that way.

Maybe I should watch an ECW show next time... but in any event, I must press on.

Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko defeated WCW Tag champs Barry and Curt in a relatively short match to win the titles. Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose.

Perry Saturn (wearing a dress of chains and sporting some odd make-up that probably would've made more sense back in 1999) defeated Chris Jericho in a Dog Collar match. I guess it was alright and again, had this been in 1999, I probably would've been more into it at the time. Nowadays, it's just a perfectly acceptable wrestling match featuring a guy in a dress... ain't got much else to say on the matter.

Booker T defeated WCW World Television champion Scott Steiner to win the title. Two years later, these two would be competing for the World title on the final episode of Nitro with the end result being the same. This was perfectly acceptable wrestling fare with Booker getting another TV title run out of it and I'm fine with that.

Ric Flair defeated WCW World champion Hollywood Hulk Hogan in a supposed First Blood match to win his fourteenth (canonical) World title. On top of that, Flair gets to be WCW President "4 life"... and that didn't last long, either. This was advertised as a First Blood match, where the idea is that whoever bleeds first loses the match, but by the end of the match, both guys were bleeding buckets and it took a tireiron for Flair to score the winning pinfall... which is NOT how you're supposed to win a First Blodd match.

For what it's worth, this is a rematch from Superbrawl whatever last month, where Flair was playing white meat babyface to Hogan's heel and ultimately was stabbed in the back by his son David and Torrie Wilson. In this match, Flair is wrestling as though he were the bad guy, while Hogan is acting more like the Hulk Hogan of the 80s, right down the ear cuffing and playing to the crowd. Even back in the day when I was watching this live, I didn't get the reasoning for this and nothing really came along that me buying into this whole thing.

But in any event, Flair wins the match, another World title added to this legacy, and on top of all that, he's a big ol' heel for the better part of the year. Hogan would suffer a leg injury that would put him out of action for a while before coming back to the ol' red and yellow and putting the whole nWo business to bed once and for... yeah, right. Like that WON'T get revived later down the road. Please.

This Uncensored show... I will be completely and utterly blunt with you all it; it's not that tough a show to sit through. Mind you, there are very few bright spots and calling them as such is fairly generous, but at the very least, the fascination of watching a once prominent wrestling promotion fall apart bit by bit kept me going throughout the near three-hour run time. There was stuff happening; nothing great, but otherwise still fairly compelling material. The main event alone is worth checking out to see how not to do what's best for business.

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