In my mind the biggest problem with Russo is he always had the “the audience will buy anything we sell them” mindset. I think it’s something he learned from McMahon that he never grew out of.
Russo had a lot of interesting ideas, but unfortunately he never seemed to think them through to the end or wasn’t open to constructive criticism. Many of them in WCW looked as though they needed more time in the metaphorical oven. At WWF McMahon and his people seemed to smooth out the rough edges more often than not. Although that’s just me.
@@HarbingerOfBattle That’s because his ideas in WWF had several filters. At various times: Vince, Patterson, JR, Bruce, Cornette and for the top tier guys, probably the talent themselves. Early 1999WWF, company is financially thriving, ratings are great….VinnyRu isnt going to have final say over what The Rock says.
You'd think that Zane would be close to finally finishing up WCW in 2000 with this PPV, but in reality he's only just now reached the halfway point! He still has Souled Out (January), Great American Bash (June), Fall Brawl (September), & the trio of Millennium Final, Mayhem, & Starrcade (November & December). Truly, we've only just begun to see the totality of madness that is WCW in 2000.
Most of them aren't nearly as bad as people think. Aside from Mayhem and the second half of Bash at the Beach none of them are unwatchable in my opinion...
For a period of time, a personal home computer was considered a luxury item due to the fact that were pretty expensive when they were first made available to the general public.
We had a PC in my parent's house since 96ish (had a C64 before that but no internet access) I was 11 at the time and one of the few in my friend group with a PC and internet. Definitely a very different time.
@HuwhyteMan same. Nothing too crazy. The internet was brand new and email was just being marketed as the future. How silly that concept turned out to be
Well when u think about it u are kinda right Sega also died a similar dead Backstage Politics and bitterness and in the same year man 01 was truly a awful year for a ton of companies
Yep now the dude for over 22 Years has been Training the New Crop of Stars that have came into the WWE and left them since 2001 were all Trained by Screamin Norman Smiley as he is 1 of WWE's Head Trainers/Coaches still after all these years! Also side not he has been shown on WWE NXT on USA a few times in pull aparts!
Hot take about Mike Awesome. Any ECW Mark who is mad at him over him leaving because of Paul Heyman not paying him, or any ECW talent who feels he 'betrayed' them because of this.. and yes, this means Tommy Dreamer, Joey Styles, and any other sycophant who got robbed of paychecks, can eat a dewgong without the 'ewg'. If you're not getting paid, you walk. End of story. Anyone who 'toughs it out' for the company is a damn stooge. I wish he coulda kept the ECW Belt until he was paid. Fuck any boss not paying their employees what they're owed.
Not a hot take, perfectly reasonable. ECW had such a weird cult-like vibe and was so romanticized, that unfair practices like these got extremely overlooked.
The New Blood/Millionaires Club thing wasn't a bad concept, but yeah, it's not organic. If they'd have had something where the Natural Born Thrillers start airing these grievances and escalate a bit, then have Flair and Lugar retaliate big time, and then let the New Blood crystallize around that, it would have made sense and you could have created a story where it makes sense for guys like Hogan and Sting to set aside differences and form the Millionaires Club as a sort of self-preservation act and have them be the heels. Wouldn't have taken more than a 2 months to make this all play out, but they didn't want to wait that long, I guess.
Why would the Millionaires Club (all the guys the fans were paying money to see) be the heels? It makes no sense. The Natural Born Thrillers were a bunch of unproven rookies who hadn't even been in WCW for a cup of coffee at that point. So again, why would the audience ever side with them? Their grievances weren't valid.
@@quentinkaasa47 The Millionaires' Club would be the heels for a few reasons: 1) The point of such an angle is to elevate your stars of the future, and so you want the fans cheering them. 2) It's a lot harder to do believable heel-to-face turns than the other way around. 3) It's actually harder to be a good heel longer-term, so let the experienced guys do it. 4) It's a lot easier to get behind underdogs, and how can you really look at the Millionaires' Club as underdogs? I went back and checked timelines, and most of the Thrillers, you are correct about. Many of them were around for at least a year before that, but rarely on air (and even then usually only on WCW Saturday Night). The Filthy Animals would have been a better choice, with Eddie, Mysterio, Juventud, Kidman, and Konnan.
that was one issue with the millionaire club. Rich guys holding younger talent down if you didn't know the wrestlers you think the be the heel faction. They redo the club in tna but name it the main event mafia which work better. The other issue is that hulk was right visual i don't see him losing to kidman in a match. Particular since it means hulk would have to sell for him and hulk hogan never sells for someone a good foot shorter than him. See brett hart vs hogan (never happen). hulk vs shawn micheals, so on when he call to wrestle someone smaller than him he always tries to avoid being the one being pin. They should had kept the wall as the main focus of the fued with kidman helping him. Having wall work the bodyguard stuff for kidman. as zane explain the new blood was also way to big of a faction and let face it of both your bosses hated your guts they would fire you. Russo and Birch should had been opposet side where they have equal say so they protect their wrestlers a proper faction war.
@@wheelzwheelzington the brilliant thing about the MEM is that they were a perfect blend of the nWo (outsiders taking over the company) and the Millionaire's Club (old-head former world champions). But Russo gotta Russo and that thing slumped with no end game in sight.
What really gets me is that the whole New Blood vs. Millionaire's Club angle wasn't a bad idea at all and fit in perfectly with the times. A lot of professional sports in the late '90s were undergoing this big generational shift that we hadn't seen before or since, so the young guns vs established veterans dynamic would have been a great way to start over, had they actually handled it properly instead of going "hey let's stick it to those marks on the internet, HEH".
Wrestling With Wregret- I still can't get enough of what Brian Zane says around 32:33-32:38 when it comes to 'The Diamond Cutter'. That "Shoulders back, chest out." line never gets old...
Mancow is so beloved in Chicago he's left a trail of destruction in his wake with the various radio stations he's been on, so the CM Punk comparison is pretty spot on.
@@Venemofthe888January 1999, because I heard somewhere that Foley winning his first WWF championship and the Finger Poke of Doom happened on the same week and if I'm remembering it correctly, Foley won his first WWF championship on the first week of January.
I wish Mike Awesome had won the United States Championship tournament. And since they wanted to retire the TV Title, I wish they had just unified it with the U.S. belt, like in the same way WWE did with the Intercontinental and European titles.
Especially for the redub in place of Ravishing Rick Rude's most famous World Wrestling Federation theme from '88-'90 "Simply Ravishing" What a bunch of Sweathogs! (And not the good ones from Welcome Back Kotter)
WCW went down FAST as soon as they did this whole "reset era".... I know that when I saw this in 2000, my 17 year old self just thought: "Damn, this is stupid" and I still think that to this day.
Actually WCW went down HARD during the NWO 2000 era. By late Feb 2000, The Nwo was basically the Harris Bros, and ratings had dropped from over 3s to 2.5s, 2.1 and even a 1.8 on the first April Nitro. They picked up a little during the NB era but by June it was down again.
@@lukelee7967 yeah the story of Marty Janetty is messed up. But don’t feel too bad about Tammy. A lot of wrestlers said she wasn’t really the “best” person to deal with behind the scenes.
When I was younger, I had a VHS tape of this. I’ve been watching wrestling all my life. But I would for some reason, keep coming back to this Spring Stampede 2000. I loved this show, even though looking back I can see why people didn’t and because of who was booking and running the show.
WWE/WWF was bad since day 1 and is a burning pile of shit today. One match of WCW was better than all of WWE with HHH winning with a sledgehammer, McMahon impregnating his daughter, boring Kane and Undertaker with their 50 hour matches and super slow speed etc etc
I was always a WWF guy. I worked 2nd shift at the time so I would record Raw and watch the last hour or so of Nitro, then watch Raw later that night. I remember seeing the last hour and a half of the Great Reset episode and thinking, "What the hell are they doing??". I still don't understand what they were thinking. 🤷♂️
Or the OG ECW where every match was more so Extreme rulz til they went to TNN IN LATE 1999-EARLY 2001 as then there was Dq's n Count Outs but before that in ECW there were more so No Rulz!
That big t "grunt" is an absolute treasure. I have a fantastic/nostalgic time with your ppv reviews. Your production is super warm. Thank you kindly good sir. Cant wait for more
I was 10 years old when this happened. I remember the reset and New Blood storyline feeling really jarring to me. I was aware of wrestling being scripted because of a show that revealed wrestling secrets had aired and all of this made me wonder why these decisions were made. It felt like a reboot of the NWO storyline except there was no buildup and the rosters for both factions were massive from the beginning. It made no sense to me that all of a sudden the wrestlers I liked would be split into two factions for no reason. My favorite wrestler was Sting. I liked DDP, Buff Bagwell, Booker T, and many of the cruiserweights. There were also heels I loved to hate like Scott steiner. I think the problem is that many of these wrestlers didn't really fit in with the factions and really had no reason to be a part of them. Trying to include everyone and everything into a storyline that felt so forced left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a huge mess that really felt like they were throwing everything at the wall and hoping something would stick. We watched WCW all the way to the end, but it go to the point where I really just watched it for the matches my favorite wrestlers were in and I ignored the story.
The idea of stripping the titles never made sense to me. All of the titles besides the world title belonged to the New Blood. So during that segment, Russo and Bischoff stripped all of their own guys...then later gave title shots to the Millionaires Club guys...who they hated. Moreover, the idea was that the old, washed up guys were holding on to their spots instead of giving way for the New Blood, but they were the babyfaces and the New Blood were the heels. Yet the crowd loved the Millionaires Club as all of the stars were in that group.
I had to laugh around 16:30-16:38 when you hear somebody making up their own music in the background as Brian Zane's talking about Ernest "The Cat" Miller's brief appearance at this event. Funny stuff...
0:04 apropros of nothing and unrelated to wrestling, Zane's channel theme always makes me want to start grinding and winding. It's so dancey and vibey. Should let it play out for 10-15 seconds.
WCW Spring Stampede 2000 really should of had a Hulk Hogan/Sid Vicious match and use the story of unfinished business from 1992 in the World Wrestling Federation. 16:47 Bigelow is a Jam Up Guy, 19:22 Booker T Chinlock
Sid shouldn't have suddenly turned heel again in the first place. He was actually over with the fans and made for a good replacement for Goldberg while Bill was still out of action.
That sid turn on hogan. I was in the crowd at that nitro. It was in Gainesville FL at UF campus. I remember this episode and watch it on the wwe network well now peacock. But to see my young self again in your clip on youtube is crazy.
Is it just me, or was that "Frank-screamer" by Daphne was f'n awesome! Seriously, it looked absolutely amazing and was perfectly timed. I don't know how to describe it, but most of the time people usually turn to the side (like a head scissors take-down instead of an actual hurricanara or Frankensteiner) and when it lands it doesn't really have that impact like it did here. Also the way she was able to complete the move before her upper body touched the ground really gave made the move look that more impressive and gave it that much more impact. The way she did it almost looked like it was something out of a wrestling video game in a kind of surreal way.
It looked fine in general, but it suffered from feeling like a knockoff of WWF changing from box letters to the scratch logo and came out almost simultaneously with the company going to crap so is synonymous with their failure.
I think it would have been better to have Russo supporting the New Blood while Bischoff (who was real life friends with several of them) supported The Millionaire's Club, basically still playing his sycophant role from the nWo. While the idea of the New Blood and Millionaire's Club factions to start off was fine, there needed to be people who weren't part of either. Such as the guys you mentioned (Funk and Knobbs). Probably also Sting. Of all the people to feud with Hogan, Kidman was one of the lesser options. Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, or Booker T would have been much better. Also, and I'm far from the first person to say it, making The New Blood the heels in the feud was counterproductive.
It was a good ideal. Problem was they tried to include everyone who was on the roster. Should of started with a portion of the roster and began having wrestlers choose sides each week.
I had high hopes for wcw at this time but think it would have been so much better if the Millionaires Club would have been heels and The New Blood would have been the faces, they should have had Vince Russo saying the New Blood deserves the opportunity and Eric Bischoff leading the Millionaires Club saying These established veterans are the only ones that make money. Tna did something similar with the Main Event Mafia and that worked out fine.
12556 people is not very many in an arena that seats 20000 for hockey and basketball and 23500 for concerts. Summerslam 1994 had an attendance of 23300, granted that was an attendance record for pro wrestling. However, half capacity is by no means packed
Am I the only one who's surprised that Brian Zane didn't use an impression (or a reference) of the late Al Green (aka Not So Quite Taz) on 11:55 ? "Because it doesn't matter to me if you're some karate!"
Man, the difference in overall quality from Spring Stampede 99 to 2000 is crazy. And you can’t really blame the roster - the level of talent is still very high. Russo thought he struck gold with his well-received WWF tournaments (King of the ring 97, 98, survivor series:deadly games) but the same can’t really be said about this tournament. If I remember correctly, the Mayhem tournament was better. But I might be looking back with rose-tinted Too-Cool goggles
@@stfi7566 That would be an unbelievably lame way of “finishing the story”. He doesn’t want a world title, he wants the WWE Championship, the title his father never could get. Giving him a new random lesser title just because they fucked up the Mania finish is the definition of consolation prize.
In my mind the biggest problem with Russo is he always had the “the audience will buy anything we sell them” mindset. I think it’s something he learned from McMahon that he never grew out of.
Russo had a lot of interesting ideas, but unfortunately he never seemed to think them through to the end or wasn’t open to constructive criticism. Many of them in WCW looked as though they needed more time in the metaphorical oven. At WWF McMahon and his people seemed to smooth out the rough edges more often than not. Although that’s just me.
Russo thought the audience was dumber than he was. They weren't.
@@HarbingerOfBattle That’s because his ideas in WWF had several filters. At various times: Vince, Patterson, JR, Bruce, Cornette and for the top tier guys, probably the talent themselves. Early 1999WWF, company is financially thriving, ratings are great….VinnyRu isnt going to have final say over what The Rock says.
@@HarbingerOfBattle That's my thoughts too, Vince and Co were able to distill the gold from the dirt Russo came up with.
I will say this for this time, I could really believe Billy Kidman could beat hulk Hogan
You'd think that Zane would be close to finally finishing up WCW in 2000 with this PPV, but in reality he's only just now reached the halfway point! He still has Souled Out (January), Great American Bash (June), Fall Brawl (September), & the trio of Millennium Final, Mayhem, & Starrcade (November & December). Truly, we've only just begun to see the totality of madness that is WCW in 2000.
I don't know if he'll be able to do Millennium Final, 'cause that particular show is very hard to find.
@@SuperNitroZ64 I was a huge fan back around this time and I’ve never heard of Millenium Final.
@@zlinedavid it was a Germany-only PPV
Most of them aren't nearly as bad as people think. Aside from Mayhem and the second half of Bash at the Beach none of them are unwatchable in my opinion...
But why would he want to give himself wrastle grade depression?
That DDP impression is very good. "Shoulders back, chest out, diamond cutter" just makes me smile every time I hear it.
The planets align, Terry Taylor, Terry Funk and Terry Bollea in the same place at the same time. Awesome.
Piper: "Terry..."
Hogan: "Don't Terry me, brother!"
They were only missing Terry Gordy and Terri Runnels. Terry Garvin would have made it, but he died 2 years before this.
Yeah, Mike was there as well
Missed a chance to form a stable called "PLANETERRY".
@@VesperitisThat joke is, dare I say it, terry-fic. 😅
Looking back on things DDP was betrayed by people he trusted almost as much as Sting. Only difference is Page didn’t have RoboCop in his corner
Jake the snake and buff Bagwell are alive still because of him.
I love Brian saying “ if you had the internet...”
Ahh, the early 2000s, when not everyone even had a computer yet. Simpler times.
For a period of time, a personal home computer was considered a luxury item due to the fact that were pretty expensive when they were first made available to the general public.
@@geoffreyfranklin5890 I know. I was alive then too.
I had the Internet, but never used it. I would only start in 2009
We had a PC in my parent's house since 96ish (had a C64 before that but no internet access) I was 11 at the time and one of the few in my friend group with a PC and internet. Definitely a very different time.
@HuwhyteMan same. Nothing too crazy. The internet was brand new and email was just being marketed as the future. How silly that concept turned out to be
Is that single shot the only time we had Terry Funk, Terry Taylor and Terry Bollea all appear together in the same segment?
if only Terri Runnels wasn't on the opposing company.. lol
I remember being so excited for the roster reset.. "Vince will fix WCW!" What a mark...
Raven: What a Mark! 😏
He didn't fix it the first time. The hell made you think he'd fix it the 2nd time? Raven was right!
The real beginning of the downfall of wcw. Was the finger poke of doom. Was that Russos idea? Or was he still at wwf
@@makaveli4205no that was bishoff, Russo was still in the WWF
William Man-Man is how I will always refer to Billy Kidman now.
The Reboot episode of WCW Nitro aka one of Vacant’s greatest accomplishments in wrestling.
Having every championship in one company vacant won every championship in every company at least once
This is what we call the "Dreamcast Era" of WCW.
Well when u think about it u are kinda right Sega also died a similar dead Backstage Politics and bitterness and in the same year man 01 was truly a awful year for a ton of companies
I like that. Haha
Hey now, don't do the Dreamcast dirty like that, lol.
@@SpanishFly120 don't start that with me I bought, owned, and played the hell out of my Dreamcast from 2000-PS2.
More like Atari jaguar era…
Idk why but Norman Smiley was always one of my favorite wrestlers. That hardcore gimmick is a classic.
Yep now the dude for over 22 Years has been Training the New Crop of Stars that have came into the WWE and left them since 2001 were all Trained by Screamin Norman Smiley as he is 1 of WWE's Head Trainers/Coaches still after all these years! Also side not he has been shown on WWE NXT on USA a few times in pull aparts!
@@SchofieldAJ best WCW hardcore champion
Hot take about Mike Awesome.
Any ECW Mark who is mad at him over him leaving because of Paul Heyman not paying him, or any ECW talent who feels he 'betrayed' them because of this.. and yes, this means Tommy Dreamer, Joey Styles, and any other sycophant who got robbed of paychecks, can eat a dewgong without the 'ewg'.
If you're not getting paid, you walk. End of story. Anyone who 'toughs it out' for the company is a damn stooge. I wish he coulda kept the ECW Belt until he was paid. Fuck any boss not paying their employees what they're owed.
My favorite Mike Awesome match was against Masato Tanaka in ecw.
@@makaveli4205 I liked sabu vs rvd and of course the new jack catalogs.
Eat a seal?
@@rayburnett9361 RVD vs Jerry Lynn
Not a hot take, perfectly reasonable. ECW had such a weird cult-like vibe and was so romanticized, that unfair practices like these got extremely overlooked.
"Hit my terrible network dub", love what came after lol.
Wish I knew that song lol
The New Blood/Millionaires Club thing wasn't a bad concept, but yeah, it's not organic. If they'd have had something where the Natural Born Thrillers start airing these grievances and escalate a bit, then have Flair and Lugar retaliate big time, and then let the New Blood crystallize around that, it would have made sense and you could have created a story where it makes sense for guys like Hogan and Sting to set aside differences and form the Millionaires Club as a sort of self-preservation act and have them be the heels. Wouldn't have taken more than a 2 months to make this all play out, but they didn't want to wait that long, I guess.
If you think about it, the “right” version of the Millionaire’s Club was the Main Event Mafia in TNA.
Why would the Millionaires Club (all the guys the fans were paying money to see) be the heels? It makes no sense.
The Natural Born Thrillers were a bunch of unproven rookies who hadn't even been in WCW for a cup of coffee at that point. So again, why would the audience ever side with them? Their grievances weren't valid.
@@quentinkaasa47 The Millionaires' Club would be the heels for a few reasons:
1) The point of such an angle is to elevate your stars of the future, and so you want the fans cheering them.
2) It's a lot harder to do believable heel-to-face turns than the other way around.
3) It's actually harder to be a good heel longer-term, so let the experienced guys do it.
4) It's a lot easier to get behind underdogs, and how can you really look at the Millionaires' Club as underdogs?
I went back and checked timelines, and most of the Thrillers, you are correct about. Many of them were around for at least a year before that, but rarely on air (and even then usually only on WCW Saturday Night). The Filthy Animals would have been a better choice, with Eddie, Mysterio, Juventud, Kidman, and Konnan.
that was one issue with the millionaire club. Rich guys holding younger talent down if you didn't know the wrestlers you think the be the heel faction. They redo the club in tna but name it the main event mafia which work better. The other issue is that hulk was right visual i don't see him losing to kidman in a match. Particular since it means hulk would have to sell for him and hulk hogan never sells for someone a good foot shorter than him. See brett hart vs hogan (never happen). hulk vs shawn micheals, so on when he call to wrestle someone smaller than him he always tries to avoid being the one being pin.
They should had kept the wall as the main focus of the fued with kidman helping him. Having wall work the bodyguard stuff for kidman. as zane explain the new blood was also way to big of a faction and let face it of both your bosses hated your guts they would fire you. Russo and Birch should had been opposet side where they have equal say so they protect their wrestlers a proper faction war.
@@wheelzwheelzington the brilliant thing about the MEM is that they were a perfect blend of the nWo (outsiders taking over the company) and the Millionaire's Club (old-head former world champions). But Russo gotta Russo and that thing slumped with no end game in sight.
“Referee is lightly touched and looses control of his central nervous system.”
Isn’t that what happens with most referees?
Sort of. With Tim White, he needed to be lightly touched by one of the Godfather’s “ladies” and he’d lose control of his central nervous system.
What really gets me is that the whole New Blood vs. Millionaire's Club angle wasn't a bad idea at all and fit in perfectly with the times. A lot of professional sports in the late '90s were undergoing this big generational shift that we hadn't seen before or since, so the young guns vs established veterans dynamic would have been a great way to start over, had they actually handled it properly instead of going "hey let's stick it to those marks on the internet, HEH".
Wrestling With Wregret- I still can't get enough of what Brian Zane says around 32:33-32:38 when it comes to 'The Diamond Cutter'.
That "Shoulders back, chest out." line never gets old...
Russo's over reliance on swerves and shock can be summed up with a quote from The Incredibles.With everyone super, no one will be.
He put the final nail in the WCW coffin.
“I had no idea Hell was so close”
“Yeah that’s why you should call before you dig”
😆
That's only for zombies and only if Adam West is involved.
@@PaleHorseShabuShabu “let me get this straight: let’s do a Batman movie but NOT CALL ADAM WEST”
Mancow is so beloved in Chicago he's left a trail of destruction in his wake with the various radio stations he's been on, so the CM Punk comparison is pretty spot on.
One step closer to having WCW 2000 PPV's fully covered
When was the finger poke of doom? That was the start of wcw downfall.
@@makaveli4205 December 1998 I think
@@Venemofthe888January 1999, because I heard somewhere that Foley winning his first WWF championship and the Finger Poke of Doom happened on the same week and if I'm remembering it correctly, Foley won his first WWF championship on the first week of January.
@@heyyoitsmebrian Nash ended the streak at Starrcade 98 in December. Fingerpoke was the first Nitro of Jan 99.
I wish Mike Awesome had won the United States Championship tournament. And since they wanted to retire the TV Title, I wish they had just unified it with the U.S. belt, like in the same way WWE did with the Intercontinental and European titles.
Ya he got stuck with some shitty gimmicks in WCW. He was bad ass in ECW wrestling RIP.
They shouldn't have retired the TV title
@@EssexAggiegrad2011they shouldn’t have done a lot of things!
All these wishes, so little time
@@makaveli4205 amazing how Russo fucked that up and more than likely contributed to his death unfortunately
The deadpan "it isn't." at 10:13 had me rolling lol
Bischoff using an insider reference on Sid that 95% of the audience didn't get on the reboot Nitro will always be the funniest thing.
22:00 that still shot of Hogan and the cops is amazing.
The show could’ve gotten REALLY dark
HIT MY TERRIBLE NETWORK DUB
🤣
Especially for the redub in place of Ravishing Rick Rude's most famous World Wrestling Federation theme from '88-'90 "Simply Ravishing"
What a bunch of Sweathogs! (And not the good ones from Welcome Back Kotter)
WCW went down FAST as soon as they did this whole "reset era".... I know that when I saw this in 2000, my 17 year old self just thought: "Damn, this is stupid" and I still think that to this day.
Actually WCW went down HARD during the NWO 2000 era. By late Feb 2000, The Nwo was basically the Harris Bros, and ratings had dropped from over 3s to 2.5s, 2.1 and even a 1.8 on the first April Nitro. They picked up a little during the NB era but by June it was down again.
This video is ironic that it’s from WCW 2000 because Dark Side of the Ring is coming back with an episode about WCW Bash at The Beach 2000😂
Also Marty Jannety, so we'll get at least 44 minutes of "WTF, no guy!"
@@lukelee7967 I’m excited for that and also Candido and Tammy as well. I can’t wait to hear what stories people have on Tammy specifically😂
@@FaysalIsGoated I actually think those stories are going to make me very sad
@@lukelee7967 yeah the story of Marty Janetty is messed up. But don’t feel too bad about Tammy. A lot of wrestlers said she wasn’t really the “best” person to deal with behind the scenes.
For real?!!!!
The “suplexes” and “clotheslines” bit had me rolling. Scott Steiner definitely talks like that.
That a capella version of The Cat's theme you did had me snorting. Good work.
I’ve rewinded that part like 5x’s already 😭😭😭😭😭
When it started I legit thought I was somehow on a Discord call and someone just logged in
Vacant: thanks russo for the championships
One comment per thread
When I was younger, I had a VHS tape of this. I’ve been watching wrestling all my life. But I would for some reason, keep coming back to this Spring Stampede 2000. I loved this show, even though looking back I can see why people didn’t and because of who was booking and running the show.
This is the second or third time I’ve heard Brian call someone a “jam up guy”. Wrestling Bios has made this a new wrestling lingo 😂
Much love to wrestling bios the best wrestling RUclips channel
It's been wrestling lingo
That last year and half or so of WCW is truly some of the most fascinating television we will ever see. What an amazing train wreck.
WWE/WWF was bad since day 1 and is a burning pile of shit today. One match of WCW was better than all of WWE with HHH winning with a sledgehammer, McMahon impregnating his daughter, boring Kane and Undertaker with their 50 hour matches and super slow speed etc etc
I love me some vampiro. Doesn’t get enough love as a great worker. Had a totally unique look and entrance was cool
I was always a WWF guy. I worked 2nd shift at the time so I would record Raw and watch the last hour or so of Nitro, then watch Raw later that night. I remember seeing the last hour and a half of the Great Reset episode and thinking, "What the hell are they doing??". I still don't understand what they were thinking. 🤷♂️
1:00 Are BACK! And working TOGETHER!
Johnny the bull setting up and turning around on the turnbuckle is some straight up Mayhem mechanics
"Referee is lightly touched and temporarily loses control of his central nervous system" is the most pro wrestling sentence
The WCW PPV reviews are always the best
Great Scott Steiner impression lol
I have to say I love Brian's rendition of the awful WWE network dubbed theme for Ernest Miller. It’s terrific.
“The referee is lightly touched and loses control of his central nervous system”. Lol I think that’s a genetic condition that all referees have.
"The referee is basically there to count to three."
Kinda like AEW refs.
Or the OG ECW where every match was more so Extreme rulz til they went to TNN IN LATE 1999-EARLY 2001 as then there was Dq's n Count Outs but before that in ECW there were more so No Rulz!
That big t "grunt" is an absolute treasure. I have a fantastic/nostalgic time with your ppv reviews. Your production is super warm. Thank you kindly good sir. Cant wait for more
I hope you keep the impressions coming. Very skilled indeed!
Appreciate the love Z Man! Been having a tough year.
“Spring Stampede… in the gorge… *Saba Simba’s down there!”*
“And Turd.”
“The Bischoffice”
😂
2000 and he's already the leader of the gray crew.
@@bigjohnsbreakfastlog5819 MarkyD123 shoutout!!!!🤘
I was 10 years old when this happened. I remember the reset and New Blood storyline feeling really jarring to me. I was aware of wrestling being scripted because of a show that revealed wrestling secrets had aired and all of this made me wonder why these decisions were made. It felt like a reboot of the NWO storyline except there was no buildup and the rosters for both factions were massive from the beginning. It made no sense to me that all of a sudden the wrestlers I liked would be split into two factions for no reason. My favorite wrestler was Sting. I liked DDP, Buff Bagwell, Booker T, and many of the cruiserweights. There were also heels I loved to hate like Scott steiner. I think the problem is that many of these wrestlers didn't really fit in with the factions and really had no reason to be a part of them. Trying to include everyone and everything into a storyline that felt so forced left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a huge mess that really felt like they were throwing everything at the wall and hoping something would stick. We watched WCW all the way to the end, but it go to the point where I really just watched it for the matches my favorite wrestlers were in and I ignored the story.
The idea of stripping the titles never made sense to me. All of the titles besides the world title belonged to the New Blood. So during that segment, Russo and Bischoff stripped all of their own guys...then later gave title shots to the Millionaires Club guys...who they hated.
Moreover, the idea was that the old, washed up guys were holding on to their spots instead of giving way for the New Blood, but they were the babyfaces and the New Blood were the heels. Yet the crowd loved the Millionaires Club as all of the stars were in that group.
I had to laugh around 16:30-16:38 when you hear somebody making up their own music in the background as Brian Zane's talking about Ernest "The Cat" Miller's brief appearance at this event.
Funny stuff...
I love these old WWE, WCW, and ECW PPV reviews!
1996 when nwo started to like 2002 were the most popular years in wrestling history
WWF!
WCW 2000 is just a gift Brian keeps on giving to us
0:04 apropros of nothing and unrelated to wrestling, Zane's channel theme always makes me want to start grinding and winding. It's so dancey and vibey. Should let it play out for 10-15 seconds.
WCW Spring Stampede 2000 really should of had a Hulk Hogan/Sid Vicious match and use the story of unfinished business from 1992 in the World Wrestling Federation.
16:47 Bigelow is a Jam Up Guy, 19:22 Booker T Chinlock
their wm match was a flop
wcw fans might not have seen wm8
Sid shouldn't have suddenly turned heel again in the first place. He was actually over with the fans and made for a good replacement for Goldberg while Bill was still out of action.
Psycho Sid was awesome. He was a heel that was really popular. Kind of like stone cold.
Suplexes and clothes lines. Is probably one of my top 10 favorite bites from this entire channel Zane. I sat it at least once a day.
Havent seen a W3 video in my feed for a while. Its good to be back. This is the only way i can enjoy wrestling...not into the new stuff
This PPV is one of my guilty pleasure shows
Booker vs Sting never disappoint. Props to them, for holding this show together.
Literally 2 of the only NOT embarrassing things about this Shitshow.
I used to watch this on VHS all the time
That sid turn on hogan. I was in the crowd at that nitro. It was in Gainesville FL at UF campus. I remember this episode and watch it on the wwe network well now peacock. But to see my young self again in your clip on youtube is crazy.
Why do I not remember Candito and Tammy in WCW?! I was watching every week!
This happens to me with lots of people in wcw, ecw and wwe
William Man-man...the Bischoffice...the classic Hogan impression. Lmao.
Nowhere to go but down. How fitting....
Is it just me, or was that "Frank-screamer" by Daphne was f'n awesome! Seriously, it looked absolutely amazing and was perfectly timed. I don't know how to describe it, but most of the time people usually turn to the side (like a head scissors take-down instead of an actual hurricanara or Frankensteiner) and when it lands it doesn't really have that impact like it did here.
Also the way she was able to complete the move before her upper body touched the ground really gave made the move look that more impressive and gave it that much more impact. The way she did it almost looked like it was something out of a wrestling video game in a kind of surreal way.
"Ron or Don"
It was Vito. 😂
Great video as always, but that cracked me up. 🙂
Terry Funk walked by when Terry Taylor and Hulk Hogan (Terry Bolea) were in a situation because he thought some sort of Terry contest was going on.
Hey Brian, keep them 2000 videos coming! Brings back great memories of middle school!
Instant thumbs up for NOR-MEN SMI-LAY! opening the show.
@30:10 EVERYONE AROUND ME JUST ASK WHAT WAS SO FUNNY. "SUPLEXES AND CLOSELINES!!!"
That WCW Y2K logo was too good for this world, they even gave it chrome horns for this one, the mad mans!
Sorry, dude. I understand your nostalgia but the WCW Y2K logo sucks.
@@freakfoxvevo7915 i know you are sorry, for being wrong
It looked fine in general, but it suffered from feeling like a knockoff of WWF changing from box letters to the scratch logo and came out almost simultaneously with the company going to crap so is synonymous with their failure.
You have to do a review/retrospective of the Russo/Bischoff era in WCW 2000! If anything deserves a hard look its that point in wrestling history!
Funny seeing Booker and Dustin together knowing they’re gonna be funny as shit as a tag team in WWE about two or three years later.
I think it would have been better to have Russo supporting the New Blood while Bischoff (who was real life friends with several of them) supported The Millionaire's Club, basically still playing his sycophant role from the nWo.
While the idea of the New Blood and Millionaire's Club factions to start off was fine, there needed to be people who weren't part of either. Such as the guys you mentioned (Funk and Knobbs). Probably also Sting.
Of all the people to feud with Hogan, Kidman was one of the lesser options. Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, or Booker T would have been much better.
Also, and I'm far from the first person to say it, making The New Blood the heels in the feud was counterproductive.
It was a good ideal. Problem was they tried to include everyone who was on the roster. Should of started with a portion of the roster and began having wrestlers choose sides each week.
AGREED
That Smiley/Funk matches were hilarious.
I had high hopes for wcw at this time but think it would have been so much better if the Millionaires Club would have been heels and The New Blood would have been the faces, they should have had Vince Russo saying the New Blood deserves the opportunity and Eric Bischoff leading the Millionaires Club saying These established veterans are the only ones that make money. Tna did something similar with the Main Event Mafia and that worked out fine.
Brian getting increasingly more fed up as the show goes on.
I dipped on WCW after 1999 so thank you for making these videos 🙏🏼 btw hearing you the diamond cutter will never get old lol.
Same
"Spring Stampede, bro? Nah bro that's just too old fashioned for me bro! We're gonna call this one Spring Swervepede, bro!"
-Vinny Ru and Ed Ferrara
NB man Nick Bockwinkel must’ve been really confused why his initials were being spray painted on wrestlers 🤣
Man how many comments do you need?
Am I the only one who used to find Flairs hair so hilarious back then? It was such a puffy, fluffy, big white mess! 😂
A flying something? Excellent!
“The old dive to the barricade cutoff. A guaranteed miss everytime”
I can’t with your commentary on some of these Brian 😂😂😂
Thanks for the review Brian ❤
The Cat music scared the shit out of me, I thought somebody was being weird in my break room at work
When Hulk Hogan got arrested, Terry Taylor and Terry funk watched Terry bollea get taken away. If only Terri Runnels was there.
And Terry Gordy.
@@zlinedavid dammit!! Lol
@@zlinedavid and Terri Gold
12556 people is not very many in an arena that seats 20000 for hockey and basketball and 23500 for concerts.
Summerslam 1994 had an attendance of 23300, granted that was an attendance record for pro wrestling. However, half capacity is by no means packed
Am I the only one who's surprised that Brian Zane didn't use an impression (or a reference) of the late Al Green (aka Not So Quite Taz) on 11:55 ?
"Because it doesn't matter to me if you're some karate!"
Vacant putting in a hell of a performance in WCW 2000, guaranteed Hall of Fame inductee for 2024?
Oh God lol. I was there
Wow, I was huge into wrestling at the time and I have absolutely zero memory of Sunny in WCW.
It's the Harris twins! "Blech" lol
21:54 Pundertaker worthy pun there Mr Zane "Hogan finally kicks down the door to the Bischoff-ice." Brilliant.
Shoulders back, chest out!
Man, the difference in overall quality from Spring Stampede 99 to 2000 is crazy. And you can’t really blame the roster - the level of talent is still very high.
Russo thought he struck gold with his well-received WWF tournaments (King of the ring 97, 98, survivor series:deadly games) but the same can’t really be said about this tournament. If I remember correctly, the Mayhem tournament was better. But I might be looking back with rose-tinted Too-Cool goggles
"Well-received WWF tournaments?" Need I bring up the Brawl-For-All?
Love to see an appearance for Turd
The diamond cutter call was my fav. Bravo 👏
Unlike cody you actually finished the story
(Solo Sikoa lurks from behind…)
Still can't see him as a face. Cody has a face you just want to slap the smarm off
@@stfi7566
That would be an unbelievably lame way of “finishing the story”. He doesn’t want a world title, he wants the WWE Championship, the title his father never could get.
Giving him a new random lesser title just because they fucked up the Mania finish is the definition of consolation prize.
Congrats Brian on covering all the WCW Spring Stampede PPV’S