by ero guro vidal (aka todd) » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:52 pm
Pris, I tried that last year. It's like having ADHD. So many angles are playing out and dying without resolution at such an alarming rate. I remember getting hard into WCW again in late '99 because I was an 11 year old smark with internet and tracked things like Russo and Ferrara jumping ship. I was also a die-hard Bret fan, and it looked like they were really going with him. I even marked out for the nWo 2000 formation (even though it was incredibly ill-conceived and yet another attempt to revive a decidedly dead stable/brand which had become synonymous with the start of the company's decline at that point).
Returning back to that time was p perplexing. I mean, late '99 alone was such a shit show. Nash gives up the book. Hogan comes back and goes face with a return to the yellow and red. But, they don't have a good heel for him to work with, and he's not around long enough to do a sustained nostalgia run. The top heel is Sting in a turn no one wanted and that he's later admitted he had no interest in doing. Hogan/Sting doesn't do much business. Sid is brought in again as Goldberg returns and the start of the build for the program is p dece - Goldberg is the killer and Sid is the big hoss tearing through dudes and being positioned as the one guy big enough and bad enough to put Goldberg down. But, they do it for the U.S. Title and the feud falls apart quickly when Russo takes the book.
Bret comes back in the late fall with even more sympathy and goodwill than he had post-Montreal (he'd taken time off following Owen's death) and this time - unlike in '97 - WCW decides to parlay that into a main-event babyface push. Hogan's already out with that bullshit laydown finish with Sting and the title being put up. That was so dumb, but it lead to a Deadly Games-like tournament for Mayhem coming off that rad Bret/Benoit tribute match on Nitro. Bret goes all the way and got the title in Canada. But, like, they were so rudderless with Russo. He benched Hogan (I mean, Meltzer wrote that Hogan's return to red and yellow was getting some spikes in ratings for his segments, and that prolly couldn't have sustained itself for a good six months or so - not at the top, but near the top before channeling that into making another guy). He made Lex and Sting a heel duo. Jarrett quickly became a near-the-top guy (a place that didn't feel natural for him, as he's a good worker and a dece promo but was never a top guy). A bunch of stables were created to feud with each other: The Revolution (which was basically the Radicalz plus Shane Douglas - all the workrate guys), the Filthy Animals. Jericho leaves. The amount of Mexican and Japanese talent on the undercard dissipates.
Bret vs. Goldberg going into Starrcade actually felt like a mid-90s WWF feud. It was face vs. face. They build it with in a simple manner. Bret - in the midst of his triumphant return and a victory run - wins the belt in the Mayhem tournament. Goldberg is the killer who was done wrong and botched horribly, but they're attempting to rebuild. They're arguably the biggest faces at that time. Goldberg and Bret respect each other. Goldberg challenges him for the belt at Starrcade. They play up a friendly rivalry. The two win the tag belts together briefly. It was one of the few rivalries that wasn't immediately destroyed by overbooking and bullshit. But, then they inexplicably dislike each other to the point that the match at Starrcade has to be no-DQ, which is just a creative license for Russo to book this to be hot garbage with tons of run ins and ref bumps. And then there's a fuck finish leading to Bret's turn (and it's also where Bret gets the first of his series of concussions in the next few weeks that ends his career).
I was legit hyped for Goldberg/Bret as a kid. WCW was so fixated on replicating WWE's product at the time, and they needed to be something different. They couldn't beat them and regain ground being an imitation. Leaning into being a more streamlined, sports-driven product might have worked, and I feel like Bret and Goldberg as a simple program could have been the start. Two faces looking to prove who's better. Two guys with good stories going into it (Bret's feel good return run and Goldberg's redemption arc which included dispatching Sid decisively, taking the US Title and returning to the top). It also plays off the start of an angle between them from earlier in that year (Goldberg spearing Bret, only to find he has a metal plate under his jersey). If there was competent booking, you go with Goldberg (because, really, if you rehab him, he's still the biggest star at that point), and you take that time to create some challengers. You use Sting, Luger, Page as strong upper card guys who give the rub and can go in-and-out of the main, but mostly start helping build the next guys (something they should have done/been looking at back in '96; nWo should have always been a terminal angle with the upshot being that they're finally done away with by whoever's going to be your next big babyface for the coming five years). They didn't have a clear standout younger guy to really make at the time. But, like, Russo getting ousted the first time (well, he was going to be made one of a booking commitee with equal power, which didn't accord with him so he took a walk) lead to Kevin Sullivan as top booker, and he inherited a shit storm: shit angles from Russo, the two top guys they'd built around for the last two months getting injured (Goldberg and Bret), and no viable guys to plug in those spots with any momentum. In an effort to assuage criticism that he'd freeze out Benoit and the Revolution crew and to try and convince them to resign, he puts a rocket on Benoit, and makes Sid/Benoit the primary guys. Benoit gets the belt, but Eddie, Benoit, Dean and Saturn are still out, which leaves a huge hole in their midcard. So Sid becomes the defacto top face (despite being a heel) with a turn out of nowhere. He's paired against Nash and then Jarrett. WCW basically becomes WWF circa 1995 sans Bret and Shawn. Admittedly Sullivan kinda stabilizes the show and it becomes more coherent, but it's not particularly good and they go up against WWF at its hottest with Sid as your top fucking face.
I stopped watching WCW again after the Radicalz left b/c what was there? I jumped back in for the New Blood shit but left again. Like, when I think of WCW in late '99, I see, like, Brian Knobs and Fit Finley in camo, Normal Smiley as cruiserweight champ, Juvi smashing Jushin Liger with a dang tequila bottle, the Harris Brothers all over my t.v. and Goldberg smashing his arm through a limo.