With all the crap I took for bashing the WWF last week while singing the praises of WCW, I decided to do a little experiment. I used to always tape Raw and flip to Nitro on commercials. Tonight I set my system up so I could just hit record on the VCR and as I flipped channels, it would just keep recording what I flipped to. (as opposed to just taping Raw) This way I can show you exactly when I flipped channels. That along with some mental notes and honest to God opinions is what this post is made of.

I turned on Nitro just in time to see Kevin Nash chasing “the” Hummer like that retarded kid who always misses the school bus. My first thought is that WCW does angles about driving Hummers, while the WWF does angles about giving hummers. That pretty much sums up the differences between the two.

Next they parade Master P and his army or whatever they are and they play a song that was meant to be sinister (minor chords give that feel) but his posse (is that still a word?) are going “do do do, do do dooo” in this faggy falsetto voice. It was hilarious. My wife walked into the room during this and stated, and I quote, “What the hell is this”. To which I reply, “WCW”. I get a “WCW sucks” and she leaves the room to watch some lifetime movie or something. I begin surfing though channels as WCW has gone to commercial. I get stuck on some movie with two little girls playing poker. The loser has to jump in the lake naked. She does then they steal her clothes. At this point I flip back to Nitro. Commercials, I wonder if I missed anything. I catch a few moments of the Antiques Roadshow. Back to Nitro. It’s now 20 after 8 and Psychosis enters…ugh. I wait just in case someone even remotely interesting is facing him. HA! Its Kidman. I grab a sponge and a bucket of water to clean the one patio chair that has weird stains on it, figuring I can see Nitro through the sliding glass door. I quickly get caught up in the cleaning of the chair. I don’t know what was on it but it stained the chair seriously. Oh well. I glance at the TV just in time to see Sid kicking the hell out of everyone. Good. The Nash accuses Sting of driving the Hummer, which ironically is not a sexual metaphor in this case. I quickly rinse the chair and reattach the legs and get back inside to see most of the Flair/Piper thing. For some reason it strikes me as terribly funny…and it was. Great, Sid vs Sting in the main event. Around here I see the sign of the night: “Goldberg fears Hitler”

After recapping last weeks great 4 on 4 match, Lenny Lane comes out doing an incredible Chris Jericho impersonation. I thought it was Jericho at first! Superb. Billy Gunn does a generic HBK, with the strut and the gum chewing, and now Lenny does a Jericho. Hey, if your gimmick sucks, steal someone else’s. Lovely, he’s facing Haku. I go into the bedroom to see what the wife is doing. She ends up the victim of a vicious side suplex administered by me onto the bed. Brutal stuff. WCW would have done twice the rating by showing it instead. I get back in time to see Lodi manhandle Lenny. Again, in this case it’s not a euphemism for sex. 45 minutes into the evening and all WCW has done is made me get off the couch.

Back to the show with the Nitro Girls and more Hummer speculation. I’m speculating on whether Spice would give me a hummer. (Ok, enough of the hummer jokes) They show Sting popping out of the Hummer from last week’s show. You know, if he threw Steiner through the side of a trailer on Raw, it’d be cool as shit. On Nitro it looks silly. Channel surfing. Ohhhh. Spinal Tap is on TV Land. Heh heh, “And when the rock and roll nightmare’s gone, I jump about with my pajamas on” That’s good songwriting. Spinal Tap rules!

Back just in time to see Master P and his soldiers in the ring while some white guy in an afro wig sings “Happy Birthday”. This, my friends, is a television milestone. Curt Hennig tries to give this other guy a hat. Suddenly he’s talking with a southern accent. Great, now Hennig is doing the Double J gimmick. Doesn’t anybody do their own thing anymore. At least they’re recycling. The Black Panther Party proceeds to beat up Hennig with a cake. Read that last paragraph again. This was the only thing on TNT right then.

Uh oh, 9 o’clock. RAW! “Blah blah blah…IN YOUR EYE!” Does anyone know the words there?

You can like the faggy entrance music of Mr. Ass or the Big Show all you want. My money is on HHH’s music. It destroys. He challenges the Taker right off. Taker enters. We know it isn’t going to happen. Wouldn’t it be cool if it did? Start the show with HHH vs the Undertaker for the title. That’s how you start a show! Vince comes out and throws names around to get the crowd wound up like he does every week. (Note to all future Raw audiences: When Vince enters at the opening of the show, be totally silent. Then Raw won’t start with a 20 minute interview every fucking week) Vince wonks for a while and I turn it to Nitro just in time to hear Heenan say, “I like the new Eddie Guererro” Click. Vince wonks for a bit longer, Austin comes out in all his lame glory. Would anyone reading this be caught dead in those Levi jean shorts and the fanny pack thingy he wears around his waist? I see people dressed like that and kick their asses for fun. This goes on for a while and HBK comes up on the Brood’s elevator thing and basically runs down tonight’s card and they go to a commercial. One point of interest, the word “book” (as in to book a match) was said four times during this segment. This will make sense later in this post.

I flip to Nitro just in time to see Ernie the Cat having a seizure. Oh, he’s supposedly dancing. He’s facing Prince Ickydinky, who they still refer to as a former TV champion. Get over it. He’ll never hold another WCW title. Back to Raw. Shamrock vs Test. This is the equivalent of Ernie the Cat vs Prince Stinkypinky on WCW. What, you ask? The same caliber? Well yeah, when you only have 9 guys on your roster as the WWF does, this is about as low as it gets. I guess it wasn’t quite sucky enough though because no they’re bringing Jeff Jarrett out. Don’t piss him off, Mr. McGee, you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. (how many of you got that reference?) Yes! The suckfest is complete! Steve Blackman has entered the arena. Jarrett wins and its finally over. Never before has 4 minutes seemed like such a long time. You know the one thing that bugs me about WWF fans? They way they cheer when someone is simply shown on the Titantron. “WOOOOO! It’s a picture of the Rock! WOOOOOO!” Idiots.

Back to Nitro. A commercial ends and they cut back to Cannon…err, Kanyon entering the ring. I’d rather see the fat guy from that 70’s cop show to be honest. He’s going to face Booker T. I flip back to USA and sit through the commercial until Raw returns. Rocky “I’ve worn out my welcome” Maivia is going to go against Edge. I thought Edge broke his head or something at the Raw tapings? Whatever. No interest here. Time killer match. I go into the kitchen for some food and find half of my sub from Subway. I piss. I get a drink. I’m back on the couch in time to see a man in a gorilla suit…who?…oh, it’s Mark Henry. He’s doing a slam match with Mable…Who?…oh, it’s Viscera now. Lovely while I’m trying to eat, I have to stare at the centerfold from this month’s issue of black flab on my TV. I’m actually surprised to see Viscera win. I’m less surprised to see Mark Henry fall directly on his head. Learn to wrestle, fatboy.

They cut to Beaver Cleavage in the back for an interview. HA! The internet was wrong. He lives….DOH! Way to kill a gimmick on the air! Keep this in mind with the previous fact that “book” was mentioned four times in the first segment. I will get to this later in the post.

Back to Nitro. Still Cannon and Booker. Back to Commercials.

If I see the promo for the South Park movie one more time, I will kill…

HBK enters as “ref”. That means Bossman vs Austin. I go outside to have a cigarette. When I return I catch the exact moment Austin wins the match. I’m a little disapointed. Now there’s not a lot of drama for KOTR. At least before we thought there was a chance someone may interfere and cost Austin the match. Austin grabs a beer. I quickly flip to WCW to see what I’m missing. This is exactly how this moment of my life went:

I see flabby ass Flair standing there as the announcers say, “…spends, I would say, more time in the gym than almost anyone” Click.

Now granted they probably weren’t talking about Flair, but that was an image that could scar for life. I opted to save myself and watch Austin drink beer. Raw goes to a commercial. I go back to Nitro and catch Flair/Piper vs Bagwell/Malenko in the middle…and here’s my assessment as to why WCW can’t steal viewers from WWF: You can’t start watching their matches in the middle. Most WCW matches are “classic” style matches. Each match tells a little story in itself. A build up, a middle and an ending. Like from what I saw Buff was having his ass handed to him for quite a while then finally he got the “hot tag” (which is the insider term for the tag that brings the fresh guy in to clean house, you know what I mean) to Malenko. Problem was I didn’t see the build up to this moment and it meant shit to me. The WWF on the other hand tends to do more “spot oriented” matches, meaning it’s a series of unrelated moves that are high excitement. This way when WCW goes to commercial and their viewers flip to Raw, they’re immediately drawn in and next thing they know they’ve watched 20 minutes of RAW. Trust me on this one, Bischoff needs to read that last paragraph.

Anyway back to the shows. Val Venis comes out and takes the microphone. He simply states, “Pritchard, send them out” This marks the sixth time on Raw tonight that “behind the scenes” things were said. (Tom Pritchard is a booker for WWF. Most likely a guy who handles the backstage. Getting guys in place and so forth) Now is where you have to remember the word “book” or “booking” being used and the Beaver interview…You know how ECW sells tapes of their shows with clever subtitles. The WWF needs to do that with this Raw. They could call it: “The night kayfabe was broken” Long way to go for that one, but it made a point.

Droz and Prince Albert come out and are handcuffed to the ring. My immediate thought and I swear I would have yelled this if I had been in the crowd was, “OH MY GOD, HE’S GOING TO PIERCE HIS ASS!” It would have been a great line to yell at a live show. Venis then “tatoos” Albert’s ass. If I wanted to see a fat, hairy ass I would have spied on my grandma in the shower. Yuck!

I flip back to TNT. Commercials. Commercial everywhere!

Eventually I end up on Raw with DX music playing. I’m slightly saddened to think of how DX was once THE, cutting edge of the WWF and now it’s just Road Dogg and X-Pac. I sob a bit. Kane’s music plays so I flip back to Nitro. Still nothing. Ever think of cutting back to 2 hours, Eric? Consider it. Your show would benefit greatly. 8 to 10 pm. Take the 8 to 9 hour and kick ass, it’s all yours. Compete from 9 to 10 and give Vince 10 to 11. If you do it right, you may just win the overlap. Then what’s Vince to do? The Kane/DX vs Mr. Ass/Acolytes match ended all wrong. It’d been 1000 times better if the “good guys” had won and then argued over which two were actually new champs with X-Pac caught in the middle. Does he go with Kane, who he had a successful run as champs. Or does he go with fellow DX member Dogg? That would’ve been great!

I turn back to WCW and see a little bald girl in camouflage…oh, it’s Rey Mysterio. Nevermind. I thought the make a wish foundation had giving a little girl a chance to work a Nitro match. Damn!

What exactly did I miss? What the hell is “GTV”? Why is Al Snow picking his nose? ARRRGGHHH! How come everyone who leaves ECW but keeps their gimmicks ends up incredibly lame?

Why is Paul Wight dumping water on his head? Is this considered cool? Next time I go to the bar, I’m going to walk in pouring bottled water on my head, the chicks will be all over me.

Next up is Big Show vs Hardcore Holly. I don’t know why but I keep Raw on. (Well I do know why, tag title match on Nitro) I’m torn on the finish to this one. Was that cool or not? On the plus side the Big Show pushed a car onto Bob Holly. On the minus side, come on! He pushed a car onto Bob Holly. I could go either way on this one.

I sit through commercial again, doing my best to avoid the tag title match on Nitro, and am greeted with the McMahon’s vs the Stooges. Luckily its short lived. Unluckily the Mean Street Posse comes out. Yipee! They have a new guy. I hate these lame asses…and I’m right so don’t argue! I do love the old Hogan “real american” music. When I was like 12, I had a friend who lived right behind me. He had a tap of WWF songs and this was on it. We’d take turns entering “the arena” actually his bedroom, and play to the imaginary crowd to this song. Then we’d have gay sex…I mean wrestle…I mean do our homework…I mean, oh forget it!

Ok, ten minutes to go and it comes down to which screw job ending I choose. Sid vs Sting or HHH vs Taker? I end up flipping quite frequently back and forth. Nitro ends very early so I close my evening with Raw. Great, a Rock run-in. This is the only prelude to KOTR tonight. The WWF did a horrible job hyping the PPV this time. But wait! What’s this? Something’s lowering from the ceiling! It’s a big bull head! I can’t believe the WWF took the chance of killing this big wooden homage to the Rock! What if a cable had broke and this thing fell some 50 odd feet to the arena floor? It could’ve cracked in half! The WWF just doesn’t learn, do they?

Oh well, I feel dumber for watching wrestling tonight…

Gonchar
I got employee of the month already, lets get this post into the “best of”