Konnan's Battletoads Body | WCW Monday Nitro 6/21/99
The No Limit Soldiers are in full effect in this, the death-rattle era of WCW. A new top 10 MASTERLIST match. A new one at the very bottom! And Nitro Xtra from 1998!
WCW 1999 is largely uncharted territory for me. Once my favorite wrestler Kevin Nash unmasked my other favorite wrestler Rey Mysterio Jr, 11-year-old Colette gave the fuck up on the great sport of professional wrestling for awhile, and by most indications it doesn’t seem like I missed much.
I’d call this a transitional era, but the thing that killed WCW more than any single boneheaded decision was that the company was nothing but transitional eras. It was Ted Turner’s baby and a problem foisted into the lap of Turner executives, so nobody heading WCW creative really had a chance to run the thing long enough for anything to feel intentional or consequential. Eric Bischoff was one of the few exceptions to this rule, and I cannot imagine the strain his combined successes and failures have placed on his brain. He’s a grilling enthusiast now, a man who owns several specialty grills and has opinions on things like airflow and heat source, and imo that’s the sort of thing a man gets into after they’ve seen some shit.
Here he is at the end of his rope. The nWo elite angle is in shambles, everybody is injured except the freshly uninjured Booker T and Eddie Guerrero, we’re trying a Buff Bagwell face run, and Sid Vicious is back. I love Sid, but you knew business was bad for WCW or WWF if he was on a run. This week offers one top 10 match and a new match at the bottom of the WCW MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST, which is now long enough to have its own page.
Colette Arrand
I’m a little late this week, so as a bonus I’ve also picked up the episode of WCW Nitro Extra from 11/24/98. If I didn’t do it now I was gonna forget it. I will not lie to you, I wish I had forgotten it. If you called the show “one hour of wrestling excitement,” the only part that wouldn’t be a lie would be the “one hour” bit.
NEXT WEEK: The 288-sided die was not kind, as we’re deep in WCW 2000, a company that was seemingly desperate to die. It’s episode 261 of WCW Monday Nitro, the 9/18/00 edition coming to you LIVE from the, uh, Dom Cardillo Arena in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. I think it’s cool that they ran in Kitchener, for the record — I have family from Kitchener — but they’ve fallen quite a long way from when Bret Hart was getting them in the Air Canada Centre. There are eight matches on this nitro, including Rey Mysterio and Tygress vs. the Natural Born Thrillers, Shane Douglas and Torrie Wilson vs. Kwee Wee and Paisley, a 2:30 Sting vs. Booker T match, and a Vince Russo match. I am in hell. Mega hell. Super hell.