Joseph and Colette Discuss WarGames 1994
Joseph and Colette have a less than casual disagreement about one of Colette's favorite matches.
Once again, Joseph and I encounter the age old question: does blood automatically make a wrestling match better? It does seem antithetical to the spirit of WarGames for eight men to enter a steel cage and leave without any of them needing stitches, but 1994 is a sanitized era and, to me, the emotional weight is such that blood, while nice, isn't necessary.
This is the 80th match we've covered on BIG EGG, and with the exception of Hayabusa/Onita and Moxley/Jacobs, we've never been this far apart in our opinions. Will Joseph successfully talk me into changing my view and sentencing one of my all-time favorite matches to the Hunter Zone, or do I pay back the innocence he offered in taking on WCW Month and pay him back in scorn in saying "to hell with you, Joseph Montecillo," vaulting it to the top? Find out by becoming a paid subscriber to BIG EGG!
Colette Arrand
BIG EGG & ELSEWHERE
- MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST: I reviewed the episode of WCW Monday Nitro where Lex Luger wins the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Not only is that match the new #1, it's the project's first **** match.
- THE PATRON SAINTS OF SICK SONS OF BITCHES: Did you hear about the podcast I started with Orchid Cugini? Probably! We're on episode five now. That episode is about Megumi Kudo. Listen to it wherever you get podcasts!
NEXT WEEK ON THE EGG!
One of the major features that distinguished WCW moving into the Monday Night War era was the presence of innovative, cutting edge cruiserweights and luchadores on the roster. The night that Hogan drops the leg is also the night we get Rey Mysterio and Psychosis going wild at Bash at the Beach '96!
Colette Arrand
Joseph, I had a feeling that you and I were not going to see eye to eye on this match, and I know that *** & 1/2 is technically good, but reading your piece on WarGames ‘94 made me flinch, as if Arn Anderson were throwing a fake out punch as the prelude to a DDT. What’s wild is that in our respective essays, we identify a lot of the same spots, but come away feeling completely differently about them. I tried as hard as I could to distance myself from my nostalgia for the match — a nostalgia that isn’t even that old, as I think the first time I saw it was from a Dailymotion rip from when I was in college — and while that was never going to be a successful endeavor I’m still kind of at a loss! This is definitional WCW to me, maybe a little less than the sum of its parts, but a high watermark of the promotion juuuuust as this kind of wrestling was about to be rendered out of fashion by a bigger, dumber dinosaur. I know WCW represents a fair number of blind spots for you, but was this your first time dipping in on 1994? If so, I can definitely see why this wasn’t the beacon of light that it is for me in a year where Starrcade is headlined by Hogan and Beefcake.
Colette Arrand
Joseph Montecillo
It's funny you ask that but I have in fact seen some 1994 WCW previously, but in very, very tiny amounts. The most I've seen from this era was the final hurrah of the Flair/Steamboat pairing from earlier in the year, maybe before Hogan even enters the company and so those matches feel a little more to me like the last of the JCP in WCW before it works its way towards the nWo era. It's super weird coming to this match as I did because I want people to know that I really was looking forward to it! As I tried to make clear in the piece, I watched a lot of stuff from your specific recommendations to get a better feel for the build, of course The View Never Changes was a key part of that, so it's a shame I came away from the match a little more down than I was expected. It's by no means bad, but even getting stuck at merely "good" feels tough when I'm basically talking about your Aftersun.
Joseph Montecillo