Wednesday, February 20, 2019

WCW Greed: The Last Ever WCW Pay-Per-View


An old picture of Dr. Ashen facepalming is the perfect way to describe WCW's last-ever Pay-Per-View offering.

This is it, ladies and gentlemen. This is where it all ended for World Championship Wrestling. A week later, WCW would air its final episode of Monday Nitro and become a distant memory... aside from its name being associated with an offshoot stable for a lame "invasion" angle on WWF television.




Jason Jett defeated Kwee Wee in a pretty decent little opener. Kwee Wee is perhaps better known to me as that guy who did the Hogan impersonations in those WWA shows and I believe he even had a stint in TNA at one point. Don't know much about this Jett kid, but hey, this was a fun match. No complaints here.

Elix Skipper & Kid Romeo defeated Billy Kidman and some kid they're claiming is Rey Mysterio to win the inaugural Cruiserweight Tag Team championships... because that's precisely what we need in our final hours; more worthless championships. And worthless is the key word here; Kidman and Rey would win the titles on the final Nitro and no mention was ever mentioned of those titles in WWF programming. On the bright side, however, this was a highly entertaining match.

Shawn Stasiak defeated Bam Bam Bigelow in a shit match. They'd have another match on the last Nitro, which could be summed up as... "meh."

Lance Storm & Mike Awesome defeated Hugh Morrus & Konnan in a relatively uninteresting match. You know what poor Lance Storm needs in his Team Canada stable that's going to be a distant memory in a week or so? MORE CANADIANS. Instead, he gets Mike Awesome; the guy he had a "Canadian Rules" match with months prior. Fortunately, Storm's leap to WWF/E will wield him a Canadian/Un-American stable in the future... but for now, he's having boring matches with future WWE trainer Bill DeMott.

Shane Helms defeated WCW Cruiserweight Champion Chavo Guerrero Jr. to win the title in a pretty good match that told a classic story of the young up-and-comer being overwhelmed by the veteran champion before overcoming the odds and defeating said champion to secure his legitimacy or something to that extent. I was really into this one for a bit and it was fun.

WCW World Tag Team Champions Chuck Palumbo & Sean O'Haire defeated Buff Bagwell & Lex Luger to retain the titles in a ridiculously short match that barely lasted a minute. You know what? I'm not going to complain. If this spares me from another horrible Luger/Bagwell match, then I'm all for it.

Ernest Miller defeated Kanyon with an assist from Miller's assistant or something. Boring match. Nuff said.

Booker T defeated U.S. champion Rick Steiner to win the title in another shit match that saw Booker get two moves in for roughly eight minutes of non-action. Rick is seemingly impervious to pain; no selling the few bits of offense Booker gets in and is even able to shrug off a cheap shot from Shane Douglas' cast. An absolutely wretched match that never needs to be seen or witnessed by anyone but those on death row. He would then go on to win the World title from brother Scott on the final Nitro... sorry if I spoiled the show for anybody.

Dustin Rhodes & Dusty Rhodes defeated Jeff Jarrett & Ric Flair in a passable match that saw Flair eventually bail and Jarrett eat a Dusty stinkface after the match... because that's exactly what WCW needed to survive was more of Dusty's ass. This was a thing that happened, but the crowd was into it at least and that made for a more entertaining match than anything.

WCW World Heavyweight Champion Scott Steiner defeated Diamond Dallas Page with an assist from Rick Steiner in a Falls Count Anywhere Match to retain the title. Steiner would go on to lose the title to Booker T on the last Nitro. For what ended up being the final WCW PPV main event ever, this was alright. There's a moment where they ripped off the Austin bleeding shot with DDP in the one move that I thought was pretty hokey, but other than that, yeah, this was a good fight between two big WCW stars. This made me both excited for the next encounter between these two and sad that there are no more WCW PPVs to look forward to.

You know, for a final hurrah of WCW, this wasn't such a bad show. I was dreading the worst going into this one considering how much the previous two shows left something of a sour taste in my mouth, but Greed actually felt like something decent. Yeah, the cruiserweight matches were the best part of the show by a considerable margin and everything else sort of meandered along the way before the main event picked things up again, but compared to a lot of WCW's PPV output in its final years, this was actually really nice.

Shame it got me looking forward to more WCW programming that was never going to happen, but hey, at least they went out on a good note.

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