Shitty Raw? How about a Thunder from January 2000?
WCW Thunder 1/19/00
TLDR: Random Thunder from January 2000 is the best Raw in 3 years.
Police are guarding the door where the decision is being made on the WCW Championship. The nWo arrive in the limo. WCW really replaced Bret Hart with the Harris Brothers. I enjoy the Thunder set so much more than Nitro's.
David Flair/Crowbar vs The Mamalukes. Tag Team Title match. Champs enter first. Disco on color. FOUR MAN COMMENTARY TEAM! Surely David's push was a rib on Ric. Tenay bugs everyone trying to get to the bottom of what "Mameluke" means. Tony should know because of his last name, but he doesn't have a clue. Scott Hudson knows Marmaduke the dog and marmalade, but never heard of Mamaluke. They ask Disco. Disco says they are Full Blooded Italians and don't call themselves that. These leads Tony to say "So a Mamaluke is like uh, like uh, I might get bleeped on this, like a half breed?" He wasn't bleeped on that. Vito looks like Conor O'Brien with cancer. Crowbar goes for a tope when all 3 guys are half way down the aisle. Naturally, he completely misses all 3, but they all fall down anyway. "This is a mess". Disco was right. I don't know what the fuck is going on. Each guy seems to think they are in a different match. Crowbar is shoved into David's crowbar, Vito hits the spinning DDT, and NEW TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS. Well, fuck. I hate Vito about as much as David Flair.
Show run down. Berlyn vs The Wall. "We've seen the heat building for weeks and weeks." Berlyn hasn't been on Nitro or Thunder all month. He wasn't even out for the state of the union address. The Wall has been on a last minute PPV match and a Sid squash. DDP vs Kanyon. Nice.
TO THE BACK. Nash isn't allowed in the room with the championship committee. Kim and DDP arrive. New champs are interviewed. Disco says he's the manager of champions. "You can't even manage a store."
Janitor Jim Duggan is continuing the Revolution storyline, I think. But now it is with Mr. Perfect instead of Saturn/Malenko. Perfect doesn't like that Duggan is a janitor I guess. Jim Duggan vs Curt Hennig. HOOOOOOOO. I would have like to see this in 1989, not IN 2012!. Ref bump leads to Perfect trying to use the 2x4, but Duggan gets a hold of it. Then Hennig shoves Mickie Jay in the way of the board. No contest. Actually, it just ended. There was no decision announced. It just stopped.
TO THE BACK. The nWo are trying to use a guy to hack into the meeting they aren't allowed in.
3 COUNT!!! "Is this by popular demand, or is this some kind of a rib." Tenay and Tony get into another spat over music. "We should relabel this 'The reason we'll never win a Cable Ace award." Tenay then name drops The Clash, REM, and Smashing Pumpkins as CDs he'll go to in the car. All Tony was trying to say is that he has 3 teenagers and they like that kind of stuff, so he has to listen to it. Not that he likes it or that wrestling fans like it. Tenay is really being a dick about this. Norman in Taekwondo gear pops in behind them doing the big wiggle. Awesome. He takes out all three men. SMILEY SLAM! He just beat up three of the toughest and most feared wrestlers in WCW. He'll fight anybody. Oh fuck. Tank Abbott?! Tank pls. Poor Norman. One punch KO.
TO THE BACK. Nash is still trying to figure out what's going on. I think Major Guns is the yak with them tonight, but the picture quality is pretty shitty.
Lash LeRoux vs Hypnosis vs Chavo. DA JUICE IS ON DA LOOSE! Tings are getting juicey. The vets fight for a while and then decide to start double teaming on Lash. Awesome fly swatter from Chavo to Hypnosis. Super stiff gourdbuster to Chavo. I don't even know why Lash is in this match. He hasn't had a single offensive move. Oh wait, now he has. No way he wins this match. He's so outclassed. And I don't think Lash was bad or anything, but he's not close to a Chavo/Psychosis level. Chavo hits the tornado DDT, but Psychosis hits the leg drop on Chavo before he can make the pin. Decent little match. DA JUICE wasn't on color, though.
TO THE BACK. Kidman is making his way to the arena.
A terrible Artist vignette plays. It's him doing terrible random noises for his vocal track to his next song.
The Artist vs Kidman. Well, this seems like a bad idea on paper. You're in the middle of trying to push Kidman as a legit star, not just a cruiser. You're also trying to put over the Artist gimmick. So this is going to fuck up the momentum of whoever loses. The Artist is both a Prince and Goldust rip off. Torrie Wilson comes out looking BANGIN'. Fuck. Torrie pulls TAFKAPI (which Scott Hudson says like a word...you know. Tafkapi,) off the apron, Kidman hits the short powerbomb for the win. He and Torrie are back together.
TO THE BACK. The Red Rooster is ready to make an announcement on the WCW Championship.
I love that Terry Taylor was still rocking the feathered mullet in 2000. The decision is as follows: A new champion will be crowned next week on Nitro. Kevin Nash will be allowed to choose a participant to face SID. This brings Nash and his bros out. "WHAT KIND OF A MAN ARE YOU?!?!" I'm not gonna lie, I dig the fuck out of Nash as commissioner. He's so hammy. Sid now has to beat JJ before he can get a title shot. "The bigger the slapnuts, the harder they fall." I think Jeff said that Sid has large testicles. Nash, naturally, picks himself as the opponent for Sid on Nitro.
TO THE BACK. Nash makes the main event for tonight. Big T/Booker vs Lex/Liz vs Sid. What the fuck? That can't be right. That's the most random WCW match ever. It's perfect. Feuding tag partners, romance angle, men vs women, and a handicap match all wrapped into one. Russo came 3 times while making that match.
Berlyn vs The Wall. TEAR DOWN THIS WALL! Will the Germans ever not be heels? Has there been even one German face in the US in the past 60 years? I get it from the 40s to maybe the 80s, but after the Berlyn Wall (Oh, now I get it) came down, you'd think it'd be ok for a German face. Alex Wright as a pseudo Neo-Nazi is silly. The only thing difference is that he went from listening to techno to Rammstein. Does that really make one a heel? ONE super loud guy starts an Alex Wright chant all by himself and because the crowd is so dead, he's the only thing you can hear. The same guy starts a boring chant right after. There must be a mic right next to this wiener. I can hear his running commentary from the crowd on this match. Holy shit, Alex Wright with a huge crossbody from the top to the floor. Alex Wright was a big fucking dude. He's almost as big as The Wall. Botchamania calls as Alex tried to jump up to the top and just fell backwards while still holding on to the ropes. Poor dude. Even the crowd didn't give him much shit for it, because they felt bad. Announcement: If Sid loses to Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash will automatically win the world title. The Wall won with a random big boot.
TO THE BACK. DDP is doing yoga while Kim reads a book. Why do women seem to read so much? And why are the books they read always so shitty?
Cruiserweight Champion Oklahoma has an annoucement to make. I kind of get a kick out of Ferrera booking himself to win the Cruiser title, while Russo booked himself to win the WCW Championship. I think that shows their relationship in a nutshell. He's vacating the title. Shocker. Another title vacated. The US and World titles were vacated at least twice from November to mid January. So why not vacate another one. This brings Madusa out. Her implants were gross. So was her fucking moose knuckle. Christ. It looks like she has a home plate in her hot pants. What the fuck. She says she's going to start a women's divison. SHERRI MARTEL attacks her from behind. And Miss Hancock comes out. Oh, this is a match now. Sherri looks way hotter than Madusa. I was just thinking now that Eddie and Benoit were gone that the count of dead people would have dropped off. And then Sherri pops up and Liz is booked in the main event. Madusa wins and storms to the back. I don't remember Sherri returning to WCW at all.
TO THE BACK. Nash is stressed out and needs a massage.
Jerry Flynn vs Fit Finlay. This could be fun. Someone is going to get hit really hard. Jerry is the one to get hit really hard. Buzzkill is wandering around in the crowd. I remember that random 3 minute Finlay matches on Thunder usually being the highlight in 1999 when I went through them. Knobs has made his way down. He attacks Flynn on the floor. I feel like that pairing was another WCW rib, since Knob's recklessness was what caused Finlay's leg injury. An accidental cane shot gives Flynn the win. Finlay should have beat Knob's ass for that, but doesn't.
TO THE BACK. Kim is walking around. Kanyon and Clarence Mason are walking around with the ladies.
Champag ne Kanyon vs DDP. This should be fun. The Champag ne gimmick is all about Kanyon's ego being out of control after being the stunt guy for Ready to Rumble. The light skinned black girl with him is super hot. She looks familiar. LOL Kanyon shits on DDP's rip off music. That's hilarious to me since everyone's music was a rip off in WCW. DDP was hiding on the top rope while Kim's boobs distracted Kanyon. Another LOL for that. Also, another to the dead toll. And if you count in all the dead careers, this show is a graveyard. Fameasser on the steps. Clarence Mason had to be the dumbest and most usless ex-WWF guy ever. Running Diamond Cutter. VARIATIONS!!! Man, Kim was stunning. Like hard to concentrate stunning.
TO THE BACK. Sid even tapes his wrists with INTENSITY. Lex and Big T are colluding. WHAT KIND OF MAN ARE THEY?!?!?! from Steiner. That must be some inside joke, since Nash, Jarrett, and Steiner have said it tonight. A commercial played with the guitar player from Chappelle's Show.
Sid vs Titties vs Lex/Liz. Ahmed and Sid start it out. 1995 represent. Oh, wait. This is actually Sid/Lex vs The Ts. That makes a little more sense, but that isn't what Nash said and that isn't what the announcers reiterated. I'm kind of saddened by this. Lex won't tag in. Sid and Book make sure Lex gets tagged in. Ahmed taking a chokeslam looked like Khali getting chokeslammed. Lex makes a knocked out (from Big T's slapjack) Booker tap to the Torture Rack to end the show.
The dead count for this show: Kanyon, Liz, Sherri, Mr. Perfect, The Wall. Dead career count for this show: Everyone but Nash and Booker.
TLDR: Random Thunder from January 2000 is the best Raw in 3 years.