Terry Funk Punches Nazis | WCW Monday Nitro 2/21/00
Unfortunately that means that Terry Funk is wrestling the Harris Brothers.
Kevin Sullivan's brief run as the head of WCW's booking committee in the year 2000 was bad, y'all. When I reviewed the Spring Breakout episode a couple of weeks ago, I complained a lot about how often commentary paused to talk about whether or not the company could be saved by Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo, the two geniuses of our time, but dipping back into the Sullivan run, I fucking get it. This shit stinks, man.
In fairness to Sullivan, he was in a bad spot. Vince Russo managed to burn WCW to the ground during his short run as the head of creative, then booked himself into a corner with a relaunched nWo stable that featured Bret Hart and Jeff Jarrett, both of whom entered the year injured — Hart to the extent that his career was effectively over. When Russo left over his call to hotshot the WCW Championship to Tank Abbott leading to WCW deciding that maybe he needed to be in a booking committee, Sullivan and his cohort inherited a mess, and had no idea how long they were going to remain in charge. Instead of pushing things, they tried their best to maintain course on Russo's plan ... and in the end all of it got hard rebooted.
Colette Arrand
What's striking about this era of Nitro — really everything I've seen from mid-99 to the end — is how fucking ugly it is. WCW's production was ahead of the curve when Nitro debuted, and remained the leader of the pack for years, but once they started chasing the WWF's habit of pre-taping segments that told the main action of the show, they fell off quickly. I don't know where to mark that, but it either happened during Nash's run or during the Hogan/Warrior feud, and it only got worse, to the point that Nitro is just a bunch of shit smash cut together in such a way that it loosely resembled an episode of Raw. This made everything look cheap, and the way seemingly every match was booked in an effort to support 2-4 additional storylines did not help. You think the nWo interfering in every match is bad? Well, you sweet summer child, what about a match where Booker T is supposed to wrestle one guy, then another guy says "that match got switched to me but I don't want to wrestle" so instead it becomes a handicap match, and oh yeah he's just Booker now and the dudes who made that happen to him are gonna do something about it, and also the nWo is "unleashed" tonight which means the two worst dipshits to don the colors are gonna get involved.
It's Kevin Sullivan's show, and he should have done something different, but boy does Vince Russo's philosophy suck. "All of the midcard guys have something going on," some might say. "He's trying to get as many people as possible on the show." When one of those people is Ed Ferrara dressed up as Jim Ross, fuck that. This show was awful, maybe the worst full episode of Nitro I've seen yet. It can't get much worse, can it?
Colette Arrand
Up Next: The 288-sided die has decided that it is my lot in life to watch a six minute Disco Inferno vs. The Cat match that goes to a no contest, as both men seek to prove who the better dancing wrestler is. It's 6/28/1999, Episode #197 of WCW Monday Nitro, and Kevin Nash is going to defend the goddamn WCW Championship against David Flair in a lumberjack match. Also, Benoit/Saturn vs. Finlay/Regal, and DDP/Kanyon vs. Bagwell/Malenko. One of those has got to rock. Please.