Let's talk wrasslin'

[The Grayfox]

That must've taken quite a bit of work, screen grabbing and writing it all out. It's cool though. I'm really enjoying watching these old Nitros. It's really starting to ramp up now with Hall & Nash there, Rey Mysterio debuting, Malenko and Guerrero having great matches. It's really, really hard to top this stuff. Right now, I'm watching a match between the Blue Bloods and Public Enemy. I said it before, but Steve Regal is a fucking gem. His wrestling, character work, facial expressions, everything is spot on.

When reading through your post about Scott Steiner having the long black hair and being clean shaven, it was something I noticed too. He looked a lot more laid back, almost friendly that way but the stories people tell paint a much different picture. I think him and Rick were so strong and tough, nobody could really stop their antics.

 

[DE4life]

Lol yeah, the blogs were fun to write but majorly time consuming. An average episode in that time period is about 1 hour 20m - 1 hour 30m, due to the adverts being cut out. I have to watch pretty much the whole episode plus regular pauses for screencaps, writing down thoughts, checking sites like DDT Digest for additional info, etc. Ends up taking 3 or 4 hours at least, which is why I only ever managed 2 or 3 a year max. It's too much time for something I was never planning to promote anywhere, that I was just doing to amuse a small group of people. It gave me new appreciation for some wrestlers though - and a realisation that I really dislike others. Duggan, Public Enemy, etc. I also realised what an absolute shit stirrer Mean Gene was, lmao.

Have to say I'm definitely going to miss the Network when it goes. I'll quite often flick the Network on whilst I'm working and put some classic wrestling on. It's perfect background TV and there's such a massive library available. I can go from mid-90s WCW to a random Raw or Smackdown to Wrestlemania to a classic WCW PPV, maybe an ECW PPV if I'm feeling adventurous. Then there's the stuff like Mid-South, WCCW, documentaries, etc. I have some good memories of working from home in the conversatory with our dog who passed away a few months ago laying beside me, almost always with a random Nitro show on. She probably knew Schiavone, Heenan, Zybszko and Tenay's voices as well as she knew ours not to mention Mean Gene and Hogan. I dunno how Netflix will incorporate the Network but I hope they'll preserve the OG Network's legacy, as losing all of this would be really sad. I've downloaded all of the important WCW stuff, but that doesn't replace being able to switch between so much awesome content. Yes the UI is garbage, but I can deal with it these days.

All of the stuff I've read about the Steiners in WCW paints them as braindead bullies. Not too dissimilar to their wrestling characters, tbh, although Rick with his 'dog faced gremlin' persona came across as a harmless simpleton for the most part until around 1999 when he moved away from that character into something more serious (and boring). Their promos during the mid-90s Nitros are admittedly pretty hilarious, just due to the absolute insanity. The Steiners and the Dungeon of Doom were both ridiculously out there when it comes to interviews. In a very entertaining way, though.

 

[The Grayfox]

Mean Gene was kind of an asshole. Like most things in wrestling when I was a kid, I just never really noticed. But he definitely comes across as a real jerk sometimes. There's also definitely some casual racism from him and Heenan during these years. I get it, times were different. Sometimes I'll find myself cringing a bit when they say something though. Schiavone and Tenay are pretty much as I remember them at least.

I really wish WWE would reconsider and just keep their network in-house. Obviously it's about making money and now that I think about it, I'm betting the network was created to sell off to major networks at some point. They don't care about how difficult or annoying it is to access their content as long as they get paid. Is it confirmed that Netflix will be taking over the network at this point? For us over here, anything is an upgrade from Peacock, but for everyone else? Not so much. Peacock butchered it. There's a lot of content there, but a lot is missing or chopped up. I hate that they added commercial fade-outs to everything, even if you're on a premium plan, like I am. You don't see the commercials, but a PPV will just fade out and come back for reasons. Having a membership to private wrestling trackers is handy for making sure anything not on there that I want, I can just download.

The Steiners, namely Scott, are really bad at promos. I had forgotten that even back then Scott tripped over his words and said stupid things all the time. I remembered it as mainly a Big Poppa Pump thing. Nope. He was always really bad. A lot of guys were really bad actually. I skip a lot of promos just because I find so many of them downright aggravating to listen to. The 80's screaming, brother, brother, brother, let me tell you something... fuck's sake. And Hogan isn't the only one. While guys like Savage and Sullivan are much better promos, during this era, it's a lot of the same stuff over and over.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah I definitely noticed Mean Gene being a dick a lot more as an adult than as a kid. The way he stirs things up during interviews and implies things that weren't even said is actually quite hilarious, When his contract expired for a couple of months around September - November 1996 I actually missed him, as Tenay was much more straightforward and boring. The racism and homophobia is definitely more noticeable nowadays. During Regal's brief feud with Sting it's regularly implied by both Sting and Mean Gene that Regal is gay, and that's something to make fun of. It's a bit disconcerting but I suppose you just have to try and factor in the time period. Zbyszko is really bad for this as well - mainly casual racism (particularly in regards to the Mexican and Japanese wrestlers) and outright sexism when it comes to women. Schiavone generally slaps Larry down for his sexist remarks, but occasionally goes along with it as well.

I think it's been confirmed that in the UK at least the Network will be moving over to Netflix. It still remains to be seen in what form it migrates (particularly with the classic content) but there's no problems in terms of contracts with other entities. It's a different proposition in the States where various entities have contracts with different shows. Peacock still has some kind of agreement going until 2026, and from what I read Smackdown and NXT may not be on Netflix initially. Once the initial contracts run their course I assume Netflix will absorb everything, but for now the situation in the US seems to be a lot trickier than in the rest of the world.

You know I actually find the bad promos in mid-90s WCW kind of endearing. Like, a lot of them are so bad that they're actually entertaining. I'd certainly take these promos over the robotic, scripted stuff WWE was doing during the PG-era. Sullivan is an interesting one as he was good at promos for a time (or at least, a certain type of promo), but once the nWo came onto the scene he started to struggle. His promos were often incoherent and without focus. He also starts bringing topics like the legal situation into promos which would go over most casual fans' heads. Once the DoD's cheesy schtick became outdated he didn't really seem to know how to conduct himself - possibly because campy promos had basically been his bread and butter since the 80s. I just don't think he was able to adapt to a more realistic style, and probably retired from the ring at the right time.

One of my favourite promo segments around this time is when the DoD are in the ring being interviewed, and Konnan starts talking about Sullivan being a gang leader who has waged gang wars from coast to coast, lmao. Sullivan is looking at Konnan like "what?" as Konnan hypes the Taskmaster up as some kind of hardcore gangster. Sullivan standing there dressed like a combination of the karate kid and your average joe wearing a Nitro shirt and some jeans just makes it even funnier.



It's from the 09/09/1996 Nitro, for whenever you get to that one. It's a brilliant segment just for how ridiculous it is.

 

[DE4life]

Oh, I also picked up the AEW Fight Forever game for the PS5 earlier today. Reviews for it aren't great, but it was £8 from the local second hand shop, so I figured why not. For a PS5 game that's pretty damn cheap, even if the game isn't great.

 

[The Grayfox]

Man, Konnan in the DoD is some of the most cringe shit in wrestling history. He needed to be in a Mexican gang stable or something. Constantly trying to explain that other members were gangsters was so dumb. Much like the moment you explained. Sullivan's look there is top notch though -- those frayed sleeves.

I'm very familiar with the Regal/Sting stuff as I watched that very recently. It was definitely unsettling. Sting would really lean into Regal being 'prissy' and outright say how bad it was. I try to remember that this was 25-30 years ago, but I also think, what if I was gay? I'm a young kid, watching this and my hero Sting is basically saying it's bad to be gay. Even back then they should have known better. That stuff didn't age well at all.

Some of the bad promos I'm fine with, but the Hogan stuff is an automatic skip. I can't handle it. He just drones on and on and on. I remember Kevin Nash saying later on that they had to reign him in, because in his words, "Hogan wasn't hip." He talked about how they're trying to be cool and Hogan is cutting his 80's promo and being anything but cool. While Bischoff struggles to hold the mic up to his mouth for 10+ minutes lol.

I played Fight Forever when it first came out and it was a pass for me. I loved old school wrestling games. I grew up playing WCW/nWo World Tour/Revenge, Wrestlemania 2000, No Mercy, etc. and I loved them at the time. After having played the Yukes and now 2K stuff, it's hard for me to go back to that old style. But even past that, Fight Forever lacks customization and that's what ultimately kills it for me. The 2K series definitely has it's issues, but I do find it to be much more accessible and customizable. If I want old school, I'll generally go with Fire Pro, which is still quite excellent. All of that being said, for that price, it's definitely a steal. I'd probably pick it up for that price to play with a friend or something, which I feel like that kind of game benefits from. Playing it solo was rough.

On an unrelated note, the word is that Donald Trump will be on The Undertaker's podcast very soon. I've known forever that Taker is a Trumper, even having donated to his campaign several times. No surprise there. If you've ever seen the picture of Taker wearing the shirt with SS bolts on it, none of this is shocking. What I do find particularly annoying is that he's always said his podcast is a "no politics" zone, presumably because he knows there's more people that don't agree with his politics than ones who do. But he just can't pass up interviewing Trump apparently. I'm sure it will be like every other podcast Trump goes on: he'll make ridiculous claims and lie the whole time and the podcast host(s) will laugh at his stupid jokes and crude comments, stroking his ego, kissing his ass, etc. Except this time, the host will be The Undertaker. Sometimes I wish he never broke kayfabe and just rode off into the sunset. That character will always be kind of marred to me, knowing what a piece of shit he is personally.

 

[DE4life]

I can remember watching an interview with Sullivan where he admitted putting Konnan in the DoD was a mistake and he wasn't right for the group. Goes without saying he was a much better fit in the nWo, Wolfpac and Filthy Animals. I didn't realise until reading the Observer rewinds on SC how big of a deal Konnan was in Mexico. Almost Hogan levels of popularity. Yet WWE gave him the stupid Max Moon gimmick, and WCW shoved him in the Dungeon. He got over to a degree as part of the nWo and was very much over in the Wolfpac, but was never more than a midcarder at any point. I guess his size worked against him in the US to some extent.

When I watched the Sting/Regal feud I was a bit baffled by the homophobic stuff. It's not like Regal was Adrian Adonis or Goldust. I assume it was just posh = gay or British = gay? I don't know, but it was certainly unnecessary.

I didn't have an N64 as a kid, just a PlayStation (and Genesis), so I never played the classic N64 wrestling games. I had WCW Vs the World which was... okay, but slow. It was basically a reskinned Virtual Pro Wrestling, which was a Japanese game originally. At the time I had zero idea who all the foreign wrestlers were, but I would have appreciated that more as an adult. Although renamed, the game included Jushin Liger, Akira Maeda, Muta, Hayabusa, Taka Michinoku, The Great Sasuke, Stan Hansen, Hiroshi Hase, Sabu, Shinya Hashimoto, Bruiser Brody, Kawada, Mil Mascaras, Terry Funk, Ken Shamrock, Keiji Muto, Jumbo Tsuruta, Road Warrior Hawk, Onita, Tenryu, Kobashi, Giant Baba, Karl Gotch, Dr Death, Inoki, Bas Rutten, Dynamite Kid, Super Delfin, Misawa and a few others. Basically a dream roster if you were into Japanese wrestling at the time.

I spent a lot of time playing WCW Nitro and later Thunder, which is unfortunate as both games suck. I also played a ton of WWF Attitude which was, again, okay without being great. As I hadn't played the N64 games I guess it was a case of ignorance is bliss. I didn't realise what I'd missed out on until many years later. I got WCW Mayhem and thought it was shit. Barely played that one. I never got Backstage Assault, and thank goodness for that, as by all accounts it is awful. I think I may have picked it up from a second hand shop some years ago for £1 or maybe even less, just to say I had it.

Things did pick up hugely when the PS1 got the Smackdown games, which were genuinely great and I played them a lot. The PS2 Smackdown games were also excellent, so it worked out in the end I guess.

The last WWE games I picked up were 13 and 15. I actually quite liked 13, especially the ability to have your own music and titantrons on the 360. That was very cool. Didn't play much of 15 though. Fight Forever I'll probably only play a little bit of, but as you say, for £8 it's a steal and I'm not sure it'll be much cheaper than that for some time.

As for Undertaker and Trump, yeah, can't say it surprises me. When watching classic stuff I can separate the character and the man, but it's certainly disappointing that IRL he's such a dick. Not really a surprise though when you think about childish stuff like "BSK" and wrestler's court, as well as being Vince's right hand man for decades. The signs were all there that outside of the character he was a questionable person. Kane is arguably even worse, as he actually had a reputation as one of the smarter wrestlers and a good guy... but as it turns out, no, not really.

 

[DE4life]

I see the Motor City Machine Guns debuted on Smackdown. I'm happy for them - it's taken a long time but it's good to see them on the big stage. Hope they have a decent run there.

 

[The Grayfox]

Man, you've played some of the worst of the worst of wrestling video games lol. WCW was notorious for bad games. I played most of them as well. WCW vs. The World was the precursor to WCW vs. nWo World Tour. I love that Virtual Pro Wrestling engine, I just don't think it works terribly well for a modern game. I think most people look at No Mercy as the ultimate game in that style, but I honestly had a lot more fun with WCW/nWo Revenge because I was such a huge WCW fan. But Nitro, Thunder, Backstage Assault and Mayhem were brutal. I think I liked Nitro best of the four, but it was pretty rough. I went back and checked out Attitude and Warzone on an emulator... holy shit those games don't hold up. Same with the ECW games, which use that same engine. Very, very clunky. I like the 2K games, a bit more realistic.

I've reached the point in Nitro when Sullivan introduces his jeans/ripped shirt/cowboy boots look. It's a doozy. As good as a lot of this stuff was, some of the booking decisions really made no sense. This episode opened with an 8-man tag of the DoD vs. High Voltage and Rough N Ready. Why is a babyface team tagging with a heel team? I imagine this was a Sullivan idea. And then after they lose, the heel team attacks the babyfaces. Just weird, senseless booking.

I hope the MCMG have a good run but I don't have high hopes. The tag division in WWE is still suffering. I don't think it's ever going to get fixed. If it was, they would've done it when they introduced new tag belts and they didn't do it then.

 

[DE4life]

I can remember on Nitro they used to air adverts for some competition which included receiving a copy of WCW Vs the World. I wanted it so badly, haha. I thought I was going to get it for Christmas that year (would have been 1997) but instead my parents got me Final Fantasy 7. I was pretty much like WTF, as I had no idea what Final Fantasy was at that point in time and had never played JRPGs. As it turns out, great call by them as the OG FF7 remains my favourite game of all-time and massively influenced my preferences in literature and media. I got WCW Vs the World shortly afterwards - probably for my birthday which is a month after Christmas and... yeah, did not have the same impact, lol.

You know, it's funny but I always felt like something about WCW Vs the World was off. I couldn't place it as a kid, but it just didn't feel right. Obviously I had no way of knowing back then that it was just a reskinned VPW. I just didn't get why the gameplay was so slow, why the game modes were so weird, why the ring didn't look correct and the set as a whole didn't look like Nitro at all. The other problem was that the game came out very late in the UK. VPW was released in September 1996 in Japan, came out March 1997 in the US, but didn't come out in the UK until December 1997. So, the game was already well over a year old by that point and out of date by around a year as well.

By contrast, WCW Nitro at least felt like a WCW game. It had the set, the nitro music, more up to date characters, and no weird game modes (although the modes it did have were incredibly basic). As a kid in 1998, which was pre-internet for me, the videos included in WCW Nitro were really cool. They had a long credits sequence which I watched countless times, just showing highlights of WCW from 1997. Every time you finished the normal mode it would also show you a video package for the character you selected. I can't say I enjoyed the gameplay that much, but it was worth getting through it just to see the videos for each of the wrestlers.



Even today I still like watching this video. I think it's really well put together (although I don't think that YouTube video has the music and video totally in sync, which is annoying. I watched the video so many times as a kid that I can still tell that it's not quite right, lol).

I genuinely did enjoy playing Attitude when it came out - I can remember appreciating the customisation options and the wrestlers actually having entrances. The gameplay definitely doesn't hold up today though. Still pretty slow, and the button combination thing was just tedious. I know button combinations were a thing at the time in most fighting games, but man, having to remember combinations - or pause to look at a menu for moves - kinda sucked.

Smackdown was the first wrestling game I played where I was like, yeah, this is great. The graphics for the time were very good, the design was on point, there were a lot of match types, I think there was a season mode, lots of customisation and most importantly the gameplay was fun. Much faster than anything that had come before it, more arcade-like than simulation but, as a kid at least, I found that to be a lot more entertaining. The PlayStation never looked back after that, insofar as wrestling games were concerned, but man, those first few years were rough. From 1995-2000 it was slim pickings. WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game was the only game that really did the arcade-style correctly, but wasn't really a proper wrestling game, whilst the others were either slower simulation-leaning games (WCW Vs the World, War Zone, Attitude, Mayhem, ECW's game) or just shit for gameplay (Nitro, Thunder, Backstage Assault). Some were both.

It's crazy how rapidly things evolved on the PS2 though. Compare Smackdown: Just Bring It to the Smackdown Vs Raw games and it's like, wow, genuinely looks like a generational upgrade even though it's using the same hardware. Here Comes The Pain is probably the GOAT from that series (maybe of all time), but yeah, we had it good during that period.

 

[The Grayfox]

Man, HCTP is such a great game. I put hours and hours into that one and never got tired of it. It was so much fun. I remember the street area where you could climb up a helicopter ladder and dive off of it onto your opponents lol -- just ridiculous shit like that. They had endless gauntlet matches that kept me busy for quite some time. It remains one of my absolute favorite games of all time. I feel like the newer games are more simulation-based. They maintain a bit of an arcade feel, but not much.

Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game is another one I played a lot of as a kid. It was stupid, but fun. Razor Ramon's arms turning into actual razors, the Undertaker hitting you with a literal tombstone. I've actually played it recently and that one somehow holds up. At least for a few minutes. I liked playing games like Attitude and Warzone when they first came out, they just didn't age well. Like you said, memorizing combos was fucking annoying. It's why I always sucked at games like Tekken and Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat and the list goes on. I enjoyed playing them as a kid but I never wanted to learn the combos. It seemed like too much work. Plus, I liked variety. I didn't want to play the same character over and over and over. As soon as you switch characters, you've got another giant list of combos to learn. Seemed like too much work as a kid.

The Smackdown series changed everything for me. I still have all of them going all the way back to the original on PS1. I got a PS2 for Christmas one year and my parents got me GTA3 and Smackdown: Just Bring It. I don't know if I've ever been so happy in my life lol. Just Bring It was a really good game as well. I spent my entire winter break creating wrestlers and having a giant roster to choose from. Back then you could go on GameFAQs or caws.ws and follow formulas to create realistic looking wrestlers. Nowadays you can literally just upload a picture of their face and then map the model to match it. Kids have it so much better today.

Watching the evolution of wrestling games was really crazy. I played NES wrestling games. Playing Wrestling Challenge on NES to playing WWE2K24 today? It's pretty mindblowing. As you said though, even the evolution from JBI to SVR was pretty impressive.

 

[DE4life]

I'd definitely agree HCTP is the peak of the series, and I think it's a commonly held view amongst many. It perfected the arcade-style of play and added enough realism to make it more engrossing than previous iterations. I still like the SvR games but the increasing emphasis on simulation and mini-games was definitely not something I felt added to the experience. From memory I found it really annoying and it put me off buying those games going forward. The newer games just don't work for me (brother). Graphically they are amazing, but the entrances are the peak for me on newer games, which isn't ideal. I will say I did play quite a lot of WWE '13 though - it was mainly the crazy amount of customisation options that did it for me, alongside being able to download all sorts of arenas and characters from the community section. I haven't played it in years as I haven't had my 360 hooked up in a really long time, but I had fun with it for a while.

Fighting games were never really my jam either, to be honest. I played all of the big ones, but the only fighting game I played regularly was Tekken 2. I doubt I was ever much good at it, but it was one of the first games I got on the PS1, so, I played it a lot. It didn't make me want to buy and play other fighting games, though. I kind of wish I did enjoy them more, as I think they're quite cool, but alas I similarly didn't have the patience to spend hours learning button combos amongst other increasingly complex gameplay mechanics.

I never had WM: The Arcade Game, but I've seen reviews on YouTube (I think WrestlingBios did one which was pretty good) and it looks like a cool concept for the time period. Considering how other wrestling games were being handled at the time, something a little different was probably for the best. It definitely looks like it would be the most fun game to play on the PS1 until the original Smackdown came out. I think I have all of them too - up until SvR 2007, at least. Not entirely sure after that. Man, GTA3, that was a mindblowing experience. I spent countless hours on that - not even really progressing the story, just causing mayhem, lol. I'd played the original GTA and it was fun, but GTA3 was something else. It felt huge. I've played GTA V more (mainly in VR), but yeah, GTA3 was awesome. I probably also had Just Bring It at the same time and was cycling between them, haha. Good times. PS2 was a beast of a console. PS4 is probably my favourite of all time (mostly due to VR, alongside Persona 5 and having the ability to play the remastered versions of FF7 and FF8 with massive quality of life improvements).

As a kid I had a Master System rather than a NES, and never had any wrestling games for it. Similarly, I had a Genesis (Mega Drive over here), but also no wrestling games. I didn't start watching wrestling in earnest until early 1996 WCW, by which point I had a PS1, but my first wrestling game was WCW Vs the World in, I assume, January 1998. Even with that being the case, the evolution from the likes of WCW Vs the World, Attitude and War Zone to Smackdown HCTP in the space of just 5 years or so is pretty amazing.

 

[The Grayfox]

You can play a rom of WM: The Arcade Game and have fun for a few minutes but it probably isn't worth it. GTA3 was an unbelievable jump from the first couple of games, which I did like as well. I spent many, many hours just exploring in GTA3 and being blown away by it. Unfortunately for the first time, I'm not terribly excited for a GTA game. Vice City is one of my least favorite games in the series -- which is definitely an unpopular opinion, and I'm not excited about going back to that setting. I was really hoping for a brand new city. They just keep going back to the same ones. I was almost sure they'd go outside of the U.S. this time since they haven't done it since London in the original, but alas, no dice. I'm sure I'll still play it, but I'm certainly not looking forward to it as much as usual.

Watching an episode of Nitro and noticing how sloppy of a worker Juventud Guerrera was. The other night I watched the episode you were talking about where Mean Gene was interviewing him and the crowd completely turned on him. "I am the best wrestler Mexican!" made me laugh. lol fucking brutal.

Speaking of crowds turning, is the build up to Glacier's debut the weirdest/most painful fucking thing? They show vignettes for months and months and then he debuts on some random episode of WCW Pro that nobody watched? What the hell was that?

This is the night when "Sting" joined the nWo. Watching it back now, I can't believe I fell for this as a kid. lol

 

[DE4life]

What's frustrating about GTA3 is that, somehow, every port of it sucks and is riddled with bugs. I read somewhere is that it's because the game's code itself is pretty haphazard, and they used a ton of shortcuts to get it to function on the PS2. Take it off that console though and you run into a myriad of problems, which most of the ports have. Same for many of the PS2 GTA games apparently. I have something like five PS2's, lmao, so it's not like I couldn't play it on one of those if I wanted to... but I think sometimes the memories are better left alone. I actually didn't play another GTA until GTA V, mainly because I pretty much stopped gaming between 2004-2013. Real life, going out, getting my first job, girls, studying, etc. The usual story for a pre-2010s teen/young adult. I did play plenty of Football Manager, because that's just my jam and always will be, but that was about it. After the PS2 the next console I picked up was a 360, in 2013, and I got GTA V for that. I guess we'll see how the new one is, whenever it's released, but yeah it would have been cool to expand outside the US. and the same old locations.

That Mean Gene/Juvi promo is absolute gold. The funny thing is, Juvi was over during the match and the crowd were enjoying it - then they decided to interview a guy who can barely speak English. After the interview the crowd were booing. I don't know what they were thinking. You can hear the disdain in Gene's voice by the end, but I thought that was pretty unprofessional. Juvi just looks lost and confused. He does very briefly break into some fluent English when mentioning the nWo, weirdly, but then back to broken sentences. "I am the best wrestler Mexican!" is great though. Poor Juvi. I don't think he had many if any interview segments for some time after that.

The Glacier build up is indeed really bizarre. I remember going through it on the Tumblr thing and it starts off with dates, then the dates disappear, then the coming soon disappears. The hype video is always the same and it gets old fast. Then after all that they debut him on WCW Pro, WTF. Everything about it is just really cringe in retrospect, and probably was at the time too. The segment with his backstory is even funnier, in terms of just being ridiculous and stupid. Glacier was never going to work in an era where the nWo and more reality-based characters were becoming standard. He might have fit into a pre-nWo landscape, but he was wildly out of place by the time he debuted. His feud with Wrath and Mortis is so weird, mainly because it's so out of place compared to everything else on Nitro. It's from an era that, by that point in time, was already very much passé. It was basically always doomed to failure, but I think Bischoff felt like he had to at least try anyway as they'd spent so much on Glacier. I remember reading his entrance alone cost $400k. I mean, fuck, that's more than a lot of WCW wrestlers were making in a year.

When rewatching Sting "betraying" WCW I also found it ridiculous that anyone could seriously believe it, but then, maybe on smaller, less clear CRT TVs it wasn't so obvious that the guy jumping Luger was blatantly not Sting. I don't know. The fact that they then confirmed afterwards that Sting was in Japan at the time was peak idiocy. Like, you're telling me his supposed best friend Lex Luger and head of WCW, Eric Bischoff, didn't know that he was in fucking Japan? Come on. Why even mention that. Even Sting's promo afterwards where he says he purposefully ghosted everyone afterwards to see the reaction was hilariously baffling. Sting could literally have contacted people immediately to say "yo, you guys know I was in Japan when all this happened, right?" but chose not to, on purpose - therefore actually making him genuinely suspicious. Everyone in this angle comes across as looking like a total moron, Sting included. It's just really bizarre watching it in hindsight.

 

[The Grayfox]

I've been with my wife since I was 19 and luckily she's pretty into gaming as well, so that's probably the only reason I was able to continue gaming the way I did. I've never tried playing any of the ports for GTA3, but I have played a few of the San Andreas ones -- which will always be my favorite GTA game I think. A lot of that is probably nostalgia, but I remember absolutely loving that game. It was so much fun and the world was huge for a PS2 game. I don't remember those ports having issues, but I could have been overlooking them because of my love for it. It's crazy to me that GTA V came out in 2013. I can't believe it's still going as strong as it is. It is an excellent game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've gone back to play it again and for whatever reason I never finish it. It's a great game to mod though. Adding real cars into it is really fun.

Every time I think of Juvi yelling "I am the best wrestler Mexican!", I chuckle to myself. It's fucking hilarious. They must have known his English was that poor. Why would you do that to the guy? I guess it's just another questionable decision made in 1996 -- of which there were plenty. I'm looking forward to getting to 1997 because that is a gem of a year for WCW. I don't know if the blame rests on Kevin Sullivan or not, but that whole Sting angle is full of poor decision-making. I don't remember feeling that way at the time, but watching it back now, the questions you just asked about it are legit and they apparently had no answers for them.

Somebody really loved Mortal Kombat in WCW and Glacier was born. I really, really liked Mortis though. Did you know Kanyon wrestled in WWE as Mortis a few times? I didn't, or if I did, I had forgotten. I recently watched a clip of it. Same character but he wore purple instead of green. Kanyon was an unbelievable talent. What a tragic ending for such a great and entertaining wrestler. Wrath didn't really cut it as a Mortal Kombat character but when he transitioned into the quiet bad ass character, he was really making headway with it. If you believe what he says, it was Kevin Nash who squashed that gimmick. I can't really be sure because Bryan Clark seems to hold a grudge against the entire Kliq. Anyone who goes on a winning streak and then eventually has to lose always blames somebody and doesn't seem to realize that just being undefeated forever is not going to work. It's the Goldberg story. Bryan Clark and Brian Adams as Kronik did really get over after that though. Their extremely short WWE run was confusing, especially considering Brian Adams was one of the Undertaker's best friends.

I'm watching Fall Brawl 1996 now. They were really forcing this Scott Norton/Ice Train feud and the crowd just did not give a shit. At all. I don't know if I've ever seen such a non-reaction as when poor Ice Train came out. Jesus.

 

[DE4life]

GTA V has certainly had some incredible longevity. I never came close to finishing the story nor did I even get very far into it. I played it for a little while after getting the 360, then didn't really touch it for many years until the VR mod came out for it in... 2021? Something like that. Spent a ton of time playing it in VR, easily one of the most impressive experiences I've ever had, even though the mod itself is unofficial and can be janky at times. Absolutely no need to do anything storywise when I'm playing it in VR, just being in that world and causing mayhem is more than enough, haha.

1997 is definitely the year for WCW, in terms of them firing on all cylinders and not having too many stupid booking decisions. It starts to get wonky towards the end and begins going downhill rapidly as 1998 progresses, but 1997 is, for me, their peak year as a company overall. I give them a pass on the beginning of the Sting angle, as it ultimately got them to where they needed to be with his character, and nobody really seemed to care about the gaping plot holes in 1996. I guess it's easier to be critical in hindsight, especially when watching shows one after the other, rather than week to week. Overall it's still a good story, even if in retrospect the logic at the beginning is pretty flimsy. I mean, ultimately a lot of the early nWo logic is kind of silly. A handful of guys against the entire WCW locker room shouldn't have been a problem. Once the nWo became a legitimate force with many members, it was a different proposition, so again I suppose it's a case of they got there in the end, even if the beginnings are questionable.

The whole Mortal Kombat thing was just a case of very late timing. MK was already past being a majorly hot topic in 1996, let alone 1997. Keep in mind MK II came out in 1993, and that was probably the peak of its popularity. They were a little late to the party with that one, which is strange when you consider for much of that time they did have their finger on the pulse of American culture. Mortis was indeed a cool character and I have seen the WWE matches with purple Mortis - a shame they didn't run with it properly, but maybe they felt that character just didn't fit into the ruthless aggression landscape. Glacier, Wrath, Mortis, Ernest Miller and Vandenburg/Sinister Minister were kind of in their own bubble during 1997, totally separate from everything else happening.

I've actually recently been reading the 2001 Observer Rewinds and the Kronik stuff was covered. Basically, nobody in WWE wanted Kronik to come in, but it was essentially done as a favour to Undertaker due to his friendship with Brian Adams. The fact they came in and were immediately put into a high-level feud with Taker and Kane was even more galling for a locker room that was already unsettled, due to the amount of WCW/ECW talent that had been absorbed once those companies went out of business. Kronik had little room for error and their infamous match against Taker and Kane at Unforgiven 2001 was enough for WWE management to write them off. They were told they'd be sent to developmental (OVW or HWA) and Bryan Clark reportedly quit on the spot, as he considered it an insult - although he later disputed that in an interview so who knows. Brian Adams agreed to go to developmental but washed out eventually. The WCW guys had zero room for fucking up, and both Kronik members already had a reputation for being poor workers in WCW, so it was never likely to end well for them, regardless of Undertaker's support for Adams.

You know, I actually came to appreciate Ice Train during my rewatches. Norton is just Norton - not interested in selling but nowhere near enough charisma to be at the top of the card, so not much use on the roster. I feel like Train had some charisma and potential, but WCW never got behind him, so... he just ended up going nowhere. One of many who could never get past a certain point because the opportunity just wasn't there.

As far as Nash beating Wrath in WCW... it was definitely unnecessary, but Wrath probably had a ceiling regardless. Wrath was essentially getting over in the mid-card, but was then fed to Nash to supposedly help build Nash for the Goldberg match. Problem is Nash didn't really need that win, as he had enough credibility as a threat to Goldberg anyway. All it achieved was destroying Wrath's momentum and killing a character that had been getting over. Just one of many pointless booking decisions the company made during 1998.

 

[The Grayfox]

The stuff with Wrath is interesting. He comes off as kind of an arrogant asshole, and I can absolutely see Nash taking that and being like "fuck it, he wants to be an asshole? I'm gonna squash him." Scott Hall talked about stuff like that over the years. If somebody had a real problem losing, the idea was "beat him every fucking night until he learns to lose." So I can definitely see Nash 'punishing' Wrath for his attitude. Bryan Clark is sort of a strange human being with an overinflated ego. Brian Adams seemed to be the more popular of the two, having many friends in the business who sang his praises, including Taker and Randy Savage. I'm just surprised with Taker having the stroke he had that Kronik didn't last longer. During his Hall of Fame speech, Taker clearly got emotional remembering Adams.

I have no problem with Ice Train. In fact, I liked him watching as a kid. He just never really got over. They tried to repackage him at one point as MI Smooth and that didn't work either. The Norton stuff was baffling to me though. Instead of putting Ice Train with a vet to get him over, they put him with Norton who really wasn't a good worker at all. I think the only reason Scott Norton was even there was because he was friends with Eric Bischoff. I've watched interviews with him, and he comes across as a nice and honest guy, but as a wrestler... there was just nothing there. Him being an nWo member always makes me laugh. The peak of that was Vicious and Delicious I guess?

Then again, at one point the nWo was loaded with guys who shouldn't have been in it. Even somebody like Curt Hennig who I love as a performer didn't fit. I genuinely think he should've been the fourth horseman. Hall and Nash's original idea of it being a "hip" stable was right on I think. But it got really watered down. Putting any ex-WWE talent into it killed it. Big Bubba, Mike Rotunda, Virgil, those guys just didn't make it feel cool.

 

[DE4life]

I haven't really heard anything from Bryan Clark to know what he's like personally, and it's difficult to trust anything the Kliq guys say. All I can say for sure is that Clark was over at the time and Nash's unnecessary squash of him totally wiped out that momentum. Reminds me a bit of the Wardlow situation in AEW, albeit AEW just let Wardlow's momentum peter out, rather than intentionally bury him. I think with Adams and WWE it was just a case of him not being very good, and competition during that period for spots was fierce. WWE was also on a sharp business downturn at the time, and couldn't afford to cater to the whims of wrestlers' friendships - even for someone as influential as Taker. Adams was never going to draw on his own and was a poor worker, so he had very little going for him.

I had totally forgotten about MI Smooth. In fairness to Train nobody was getting over at that time in WCW, so I don't think he stood a chance regardless of the gimmick they gave him. I actually thought Norton suited the role of an nWo heavy/goon perfectly fine. He had an intimidating appearance and a rough looking wrestling style. No charisma or mic skills to speak of, but as a background character who posed a threat he was passable enough. There's only so far you can go with a character like that though, and once the nWo angle began its slow, painful death he was literally just there, doing nothing of note. He was pretty popular in Japan for a while though, so I guess he has that to hang his hat on.

As far as the nWo is concerned - Hogan, Hall, Nash and X-Pac were all solid founder members. DiBiase always felt a bit out of place and was ultimately replaced by Bischoff, whose persona definitely fit into the dynamic better. Giant always felt like a bad fit because they already had Nash in the group playing the role of the big man - there wasn't a need for two of them, and Giant was always better on the WCW side fighting against the nWo. Vincent as an annoying lackey I was okay with, as it's a common trope that you can get some mileage out of, particularly when you need a guy to take a beating without making the others look weak.

Savage I'm so-so on. I think his character did fit the group, but they rushed him into it a bit too early. It devalued him somewhat because Hogan was the main guy, and it made Savage look like a sidekick. I would have been all for Savage joining the group later and then causing fractures with his unstable personality - basically the story they went with in 1998 that led to the split between the B&W and Wolfpac. I think there was some mileage in Savage being Sting's unpredictable ally as the lone wolf for a while at the beginning of 1997, but they had Savage join the nWo before that could ever really develop. With that said, the Savage/DDP stuff was obviously great and made Dallas, so I can't call it a bad booking decision in hindsight.

Bagwell fit into the group like a glove and it definitely enhanced his career, so no issue there. Norton, again, I felt played the role of a low-key enforcer pretty well, so I let that pass. Konnan also seemed to fit into the group pretty well, so no problems there. Big Bubba and Wallstreet, yeah, pointless additions but at least they were kicked out/forced out of the group fairly quickly.

Basically, if the nWo had gone through 1997 as:

Hogan
Hall
Nash
Syxx
Savage
Bischoff
Vincent
Bagwell
Konnan
Norton

I think that's quite fine. In Hogan, Hall, Nash, and Savage you have the star power and all are former popular WWF wrestlers, so it fits into that initial 'invasion' story. Syxx was a worker who could carry matches and had the right personality for the group, so no problem. Vincent playing the role of lackey who can take a beating from the babyfaces works OK. Bischoff as the mouthpiece who wields some corporate power helps make sense of the nWo being able to behave in the way they did on WCW's shows. Bagwell as the young, cocky upstart has a role in the group. Konnan was also quite fresh at the time and could help draw in the hispanic audience, getting the nWo involved in some of the cruiserweight stuff (not much, but still). Norton meanwhile I could take or leave, but in an enforcer type role, he was believeable enough.

DiBiase was really just a placeholder in 1996 until the Bischoff reveal, at which point his role in the group instantly became redundant. Giant I would not have put into the nWo, for reasons described above. Wallstreet and Big Bubba were just making up numbers and had no place in the group. Hennig had the personality to be in the nWo, but just got lost in the shuffle. Rude basically the same. NWO Sting should have been gone for good as soon as the real Sting came out and obliterated him after Fall Brawl. The Nick Patrick, nWo referee stuff was bungled from the start and didn't add anything positive.

So yeah, overall I'd call it a mixed bag. Carefully expanding the nWo was okay, as long as you can give each member a purpose for being in the group. I'd say it was in 1998 when the likes of Brian Adams, Stevie Ray and Ed Leslie came along that the concept became majorly watered down. For the nWo to be a strong force it couldn't just be a handful of wrestlers, as it wouldn't have made sense from a numbers perspective. They needed goons like Bagwell, Norton, Konnan and Vincent to give them some padding and presence as a gang of sorts. All gangs have the people at the top, the people in the middle and the people at the bottom. That's fine.

For what it's worth, they did wash out the members who didn't really fit (Wallstreet, Bubba, Giant, DiBiase) pretty quick and I'd say the nWo of 1997 was overall put together fairly well to tell the stories they wanted to tell. I see 1998 as the year where they really devalued the group, primarily in the B&W camp.

 

[The Grayfox]

I guess I always went along with Nash and Hall's narrative that they wanted the nWo to be "cool." And when I watched it as it was happening, the only people in the nWo that I thought of as cool were Nash, Hall, Syxx, Bagwell and then later Scott Steiner. Although Randy Savage is a top 5 of all time for me, he was just getting up in there in age, and like Hogan, it just really came across as disingenuous. But to be fair, when I watch it now, the only ones I think of as "cool" are Hall (who is arguably the coolest wrestler of all time...) and Syxx, for different reasons. Nash, although not as old as Hogan and Savage, when I'm watching it now, I cringe at his Tupac and Fugees references. Nash yelling "thug life, baby!" into the camera is some cringe shit. If I look at it more objectively as a straight forward heel stable vs basically what DX did properly (the cool thing), Norton fits fine. But knowing that the original vision was supposed to appeal to younger fans and be "hip", watching it now... eh, I don't feel like it delivered in that sense.

You can watch some shoot interviews with Bryan Clark on the Tube. Nash's explanation for it is here:



I'm getting close to when Bischoff joins the nWo and I'm really not looking forward to him standing in the ring holding a mic for Hogan for 20 minutes every single Nitro.

 

[DE4life]

Bischoff holding the mic for Hogan for 20 minutes is basically the next 2 years or so unfortunately it's amazing how it's basically just the same promo repeated ad nauseam. At least with the old Hulk Hogan gimmick the promos were colourful and wacky, even if they were still basically the same thing being said with slightly different words. Hollywood Hogan literally says the same thing over and over again "nWoites", "the man who made/built wrestling", "they worship the ground I walk on", etc, etc. It gets old really fucking fast. I guess people back then just kinda dealt with it to see the rest of the show, which was usually decent enough.

Honestly, when you really look at Hollywood Hogan as a character overall, he was kind of the shits. Boring promo, awful wrestler, always at the top of the card hogging the world title (unless it suited him not to have it). Sabotaged the biggest match in WCW history because Sting didn't have a tan or whatever. Continued being the centre of attention long after his peak as a heel. I think he was brutally exposed when the nWo split out, as nWo Hollywood always felt incredibly stale and uncool. The truth is Hogan was always stale and uncool, he just had a supporting cast of far more interesting characters (Nash, Hall, Syxx, Savage) to offset it in the early nWo days, alongside the cruiserweights and guys like Benoit, Flair, Jericho, Booker T, etc carrying the load for the bulk of the show.

Hogan was pivotal to the initial success of the nWo, no doubt about that. His heel turn was the spark that lit the fire, but he wasn't keeping those flames burning afterwards. Quite the opposite.

As an aside, I got an email saying the WWE Network officially ends here on Jan 1st. Sad times. As shit as the UX is, I'm going to miss being able to put on whatever random WCW/WWE show I feel like watching at my convenience. There's no suggestion Netflix will have the historical stuff, which sucks if true. It's all I ever used the Network for. I've downloaded all of the WCW PPVs from 1994 - 1999 (partial 1999, up to Uncensored). I have all of the Nitros up until early 1999, will probably grab a bunch of the Thunders until late-ish 1998 as well. Got most of the important Clash shows. Not going to bother with any WWE stuff, as I imagine the majority of this will be available to torrent in the future anyway if Netflix don't upload any of it.