Wednesday 17 June 2015

This and That: WCW Road Wild 1999 Review


I want to ride my bicycle; I want to ride my bike


Some of the stuff I subject myself to on the WWE Network. Ever since I got the Network, I’ve been gradually working my way through the Pay Per View libraries filling in the blanks in my “watched shows” archives.

This has been filled mostly with watching old WCW shows. Living in the UK as I do, it has never been particularly difficult to pick up WWF/E and ECW PPV’s on DVD or VHS. This is because both companies have enjoyed extensive releases since the 2000’s (WWE’s through Free Mantle and Silvervision UK, whereas Laser Light Digital released every ECW PPV in the UK as well as some of the more notorious arena shows and some Hardcore TV Compilations)

WCW on the other hand, never had as widespread a release of their shows. During the big wrestling boom of the late 90’s-early 00’s, WCW merely released the following shows

Uncensored 99
Spring Stampede 99
Bash at the Beach 99
Starrcade 99
And then every Pay Per View of 2000 up until Great American Bash of that year

So as you can see, WCW’s penetration into the UK during probably one of the most lucrative periods of wrestling history was less than impressive, with even ECW’s tape library eclipsing their output. There are some limited PAL versions of the other WCW shows during that time, and I’ve managed to acquire a few, but they are disgustingly rare and always heavily overpriced.

Thusly, tape trading and bootlegs were really the only way to build any sizeable WCW collection if you lived in Merry Old Blighty. What’s amazing about this is that, outside of the USA and Germany, the UK was by far WCW’s biggest market, and yet they made no real attempt to monetize that fan support with consistent video releases. I’d even go as far to say that WCW was bigger in the UK than it was even in Canada (a noted WWE Stronghold) but even with this being the case, they never bothered to pull their fingers out.

It’s reasons like that why WWE Network is a chuffing God-send, as I can finally watch all the shows I missed during WCW’s final days, as well as a lot of the prime stuff from the 80’s and 90’s that never saw widespread release over here.

But then I watch a show like Road Wild 99 and think that maybe the fact WCW didn’t release it in the UK was to actually do us all a favour. That may be somewhat harsh on a show that is at least an inoffensive waste of a couple of hours as opposed to a genuinely offensive bowl of festering rancid wrestling porridge.

The show suffers in the sense that it feels less like a major Pay Per View Event and more like a house show that they decided to film. Quite a lot of the wrestlers appear to be on cruise control and very rarely get out of second gear.

It strikes me very much as a show that if you’d been in the audience live to witness it, you probably would have had a good time. This is also likely to do with the fact that admittance to all the Road Wild shows was free. Basically, WCW put a ring in a field in Sturgis, South Dakota and bikers pulled up to sit in the sun, rev their engines and watch some wrestling.

Again, this works great as an idea for a house show or maybe as an annual Nitro TV Event, but for a full priced Pay Per View it really doesn’t work. When you hand over your PPV money, you expect to get a PPV calibre show in return. When WWE holds Wrestlemania in outside venues, it still demands the wrestlers perform to their fullest. WCW seemed happy to just let some of the boys go out and do the bare minimum to please the live crowd, with no real thought to the paying audience at home.

The live crowd itself, a source of controversy during previous Road Wild events, is actually a very receptive one for this show. In the past, the bikers had been known to boo the babyfaces and get impatient when any actual wrestling took place. A good example would be the Chris Benoit Vs Dean Malenko match from the 96 event. Both men had an excellently worked and fluid technical wrestling bout which the bikers booed and heckled.

Thankfully, that doesn’t really happen on this show. Pretty much all of the babyfaces get cheered, including ethnic stars Rey Mysterio and Harlem Heat (Not always a guarantee at past shows with a predominantly white, right-wing crowd of bikers in attendance) and the crowd dig the work rate based Benoit Vs DDP match.

Watching it now after nearly 16 years have passed, the show is enjoyable enough for what it is. Very few of the matches are anything you could consider particularly good, but the live crowd is in to most of the show and it makes the event itself an easy enough watch. Had I paid full whack for it back in 1999 though, I would not have been pleased.

Again, I think the Sturgis setting could have worked for a Nitro, in the same way the Spring Break format used to work, but as a Pay Per View set-up it just didn’t work at all. PPV Events should have been the most lucrative shows a wrestling company ran in those days. They were the shows where a company showcased their big matches and drew their biggest crowds.

However, with a zero gate and a roster very much on house show mode, the Road Wild shows never lived up to the traditional PPV calibre that wrestling fans expected in the 90’s. For this reason, the show is hard to recommend.

If you have the Network and a couple of hours to kill, this show should be able to entertain you somewhat. However, I wouldn’t recommend actually buying a physical copy of it or anything. As part of your 9.99 a month though, there are worse uses of your time



Match recaps and scoring

Rey Mysterio Jnr, Kidman and Eddie Guerrero defeated Vampiro and The Insane Clown Posse(Accompanied by Raven) in 12:22 when Kidman pinned Shaggy 2 Dope following a Shooting Star Press

Rating: **1/2

Thoughts: enjoyable enough opener. Everyone in the match was taking it seriously, but the ICP are really nothing more than keen amateurs and it showed here. Thankfully, they were put in there with three very good wrestlers and the result was a decent match.




Harlem Heat defeated Bam Bam Bigelow and Chris Kanyon in 13:06 to win the WCW Tag Team Titles when Booker T hit Bigelow with a Missile Dropkick

Rating: *

Thoughts: Kanyon is a good heel and he wound the bikers up enough that they were happy to cheer for The Heat. This was standard formula tag match and the fans were into it. Sadly, the work was very sloppy from both Bigelow and Stevie Ray. Kanyon hit some nice moves and did his best to draw heat for being a despicable heel, but the match never really got out of first gear. They didn’t lose the crowd at least




Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko and Shane Douglas defeated Curt Henning, Bobby Duncam Jnr and Barry Windham (Accompanied by Kendal Windham) in 11:00 when Saturn pinned Duncum Jnr with the Death Valley Driver

Rating: *1/2

Thoughts: Both Douglas and Hennig’s groups had potential to get somewhere in WCW and both groups were squandered not too soon after this. Douglas, Malenko, Saturn and Benoit were known as “The Revolution” and their gimmick was essentially that they were mid carders who were sick of being held down by the establishment and they were going to force their way up the card.

There’d been something in the works for this since about 1997 I believe. At the time, talk was going on about having a new group set up of Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Malenko and William Regal and dubbing them “The Apocalypse”. They would essentially be a Four Horsemen splinter group created and led by Benoit, who would leave the Horsemen due to a falling out with Ric Flair. The fall out would have been related to Flair making Jeff Jarrett a Horsemen against Benoit’s wishes.

For whatever reason, this storyline never paid off. It was probably a combination of Guerrero getting injured and Jarrett completely flopping as a Horsemen. I’m guessing The Apocalypse were due to be heels, but considering that Jarrett was a sucky Horsemen, the worry may have been that the fans would have actually agreed with The Apocalypse and rooted for them, hence the angle being dropped.

You can actually see the seeds for this angle being laid at Spring Stampede 97 in the Benoit Vs Malenko match from that show.

Anyway, considering WCW had just brought in Douglas, they decided to add him to the already existing trio of Saturn, Malenko and Benoit as a mouthpiece, and thus The Revolution was born. I remember digging the group back in my younger days and WCW worked very hard to quickly beat any enthusiasm out of me by booking them as a bunch of buffoons who couldn’t even beat Jimmy Hart’s First Family, a group which consisted such high calibre stars as Hugh Morrus, Brian Knobbs and Jerry Flynn.

Hennig’s faux Country Band known as “The West Texas Rednecks” had been formed earlier in the summer to act as foils for Konnan and Rey Mysterio, who were doing a rapping gimmick at the time. The Rednecks were supposed to be heels and wrote a song called “Rap is Crap” extolling the virtues of country music over rap music.

The problem was that WCW was based primarily in the south and their main audience was mostly lower income white trash. Seriously, watch a WCW show sometime; it’s a pretty rough crowd (Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course). Thusly, when it came to a feud between Rap and Country, most of the fans chose The Rednecks.

Rather than doing something sensible, like say moving The Rednecks away from the rap guys and turning them face on another heel group, WCW persevered and kept them heel before eventually splitting them up all together.

Anyway, that’s a sizeable tangent for what was a very forgettable match. Not actively bad, just dull.



Buff Bagwell defeated The Cat (Accompanied by Sonny Onoo) in 7:20 with a roll up following botched interference from Sonny Onoo

Rating: *

Thoughts: House show special this one. Tonnes of stalling, little actual wrestling and a sloppy roll up finish. Buff could not have looked less enthused to be there. If “The Death of WCW” book is to be believed, Cat and Buff got into a real fight over this match either before or after the show. It could be that someone took liberties in the match leading to a skirmish or it could be that the guys had a fight prior to the match itself and the resulting match was after a booking compromise was reached. Either way, that’s probably the only actual interesting or intriguing thing about this one. The crowd at least reacted to the finish and popped for Buff’s win, so every cloud etc.




Chris Benoit defeated Diamond Dallas Page in 12:08 with a Diving Headbutt to retain the WCW United States Championship

Rating: ***1/4

Thoughts: Finally, two wrestlers treated the show like it was an actual Pay Per View or something and put forth a good effort. Crowd was thankfully behind Benoit and Page did a good job riling them up over the course of the match. The only complaint I’d have would be that Benoit sold perhaps a bit too much at times, but then again he was going over clean, so I suppose it wasn’t too bad that Page took most of the match.

The finishing sequence itself was quite interesting, as Page’s stablemates Kanyon and Bigelow came down for interference. The Revolution were shown backstage watching the match on a monitor, with Douglas clearly telling the other two that Benoit didn’t need their help. This indeed proved to be true, as Benoit managed to overcome all three men singlehandedly to pick up the win.

It was nice to see Benoit being treated as a legitimate threat to three guys all bigger than him. He came out of this match looking like a genuine star, so credit to Page for putting him over. Sadly, WCW would flush away any momentum Benoit gained here by having him get jobbed out at the next PPV to Sid Vicious, but at least on this show he was allowed to get a convincing and satisfying clean win.




Sid Vicious defeated Sting in 10:40 with a Choke Slam

Rating: *

Thoughts: And back to the house show efforts we go, as Sting and Sid pretty much phoned this one in. Fans were at least in to Sting, but the match pretty much died once Sid took over and put Sting in his dazzling array of rest holds. Lowlight of the match was Sid taking a Superplex, only to get right back up and set himself up in the corner for the Stinger Splash. It wasn’t like he sold the move and organically fed up to the turnbuckle either. He literally took the move, got up and just walked into the corner. Sting then hit two Stinger Splashes but Sid caught him with the Choke Slam on the third one and got the anticlimactic three count. It’s like they said “Sod it, that’ll do, let’s take it home and leave early to beat the Saturday traffic”




Goldberg defeated Rick Steiner in 5:35 with The Jackhammer

Rating: ½*

Thoughts: Goldberg sold for about 5 minutes before hitting the Spear and Jackhammer to win. You could tell that Goldberg and Steiner were mates in real life, because Goldberg normally didn’t sell for people this much, especially for a guy who was quite low down the pecking order in Steiner. Steiner actually took Goldberg’s knee brace off and started hitting him with it at will. The ref didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with this. Basically a waste of Goldberg to be honest.




Randy Savage defeated Dennis Rodman in 11:28 of a No DQ match when he punched him with a chain around his fist

Rating: ½*

Thoughts: This was mainly the reason I watched this show in all honesty. It’s got quite an infamous reputation and I remember WCW Worldwide (the only access I had to WCW in the 90’s and 00’s due to not having Satellite or Cable TV) hyping it quite heavily at the time and being a bit bummed that I never got to watch it.

Rodman, a noted crazy weirdo, was seemingly a natural fit to feud with Savage, a mad aging psycho, and the feud began as a result of Rodman trying it on with Savage’s then ball and chain, Gorgeous George. She makes an appearance right at the end to give Rodman a terrible looking low blow and pass Savage the match winning chain.

My abiding memory of Gorgeous George is WCW doing an angle where it was suggested Savage was hitting her, even going so far as to put black makeup over her eye to suggest he’d given her a shiner. Thusly she chose to valet Kevin Nash in the resulting blow off match, only to swerve everyone and give him a low blow.

The problem was that the low blow looked so bad and made so little contact that Nash didn’t clock that she had done it and thusly didn’t sell it. This meant she had to perform the spot again! This one looked like it at least had some semblance of contact. Enough for them to take the match home anyway. I think that was Bash at the Beach 99

So yeah, Rodman was rude to Macho Man’s woman, Macho got annoyed and it was #InstaFeud!

The match itself is an absolute mess, with no less than about 5 ref bumps and meandering brawls throughout the makeshift “arena”. The spot that gives the match its notoriety is that while the two brawl behind the staging area, Savage chucks Rodman into a porta potty and then knocks the thing over. When he goes to get Rodman out, excrement and whizz pours its way out of the potty, in a good metaphor for the company as a whole at that point.

So yeah, the match is crap, quite literally in fact. I couldn’t really even enjoy it as silly celebrity match, because it wasn’t even any good at doing that. Absolute dreck




Hulk Hogan defeated Kevin Nash in 12:18 with The Big Leg Drop to retain the WCW Title and force Nash into “retirement” as part of a pre-match stipulation

Rating: **

Thoughts: Your typical Hogan formula match really.

Hogan shines and poses

Big heel cuts him off with something

Hogan sells

Heel hit’s his finish, which Hogan decides to no sell

Hulk Up!

Three punches

Big Boot

Leg Drop

Three count

Posing

Show end

Whether you’ll enjoy this match or not is based solely on whether you enjoy that formula. I happen to like a basic Hogan formula match, so I didn’t really have any problems with it. It wasn’t really a particularly good Hogan match and it was weird seeing “Cool” Kevin Nash do all the cheesy 80’s heel selling, but it worked for what it was.

It didn’t really feel like a match that required a big “Loser Leaves Town” stipulation to be honest, and it wasn’t worked like those kinds of matches are. There was no real tension. You never got the feel either man was fighting to retain his career. It was just a basic match. Neither guy did anything particularly bad, the crowd reacted where and when they were supposed to and the show ended with Hogan top of the pile again.

Hogan had only just gone back to Red and Yellow a week prior to this match, but that gimmick looked really out of place in 1999. Of course, Hogan would successfully bring it back in the WWE in the 00’s but the world was a different time at that point. Nostalgia was beginning to be embraced rather than sneered at, and Hogan made good use of that. People actually liked seeing the Red and Yellow again, as it gave them a warm call back to their youth.

1999 though was the time of anti-authority and anti-social babyfaces causing mayhem and being vulgar. Hulk Hogan’s posing and 24 Inch Pythons wasn’t really going to cut it at that point and his title reign ended up being a flop.

Thanks for reading

Peace Out

No comments:

Post a Comment