WCW’s BASH AT THE BEACH

Sunday, July 11th, 1999 from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

    I was busy in Myrtle Beach with the exclusive famly reunion so I couldn’t write the predictions. Did I have fun? Yes, though I wish I had had a bed and a private restroom. I love the ocean though so that aspect was cool, so was golf with little mike and the pteradactyl, whoa! So, Bash at the Beach is over, and on Nitro we learned that once again Hollywood Hogan is the WCW World Heavyweight Champ. Big deal. Give it to someone who hasn’t had it! The last fucking time Macho Man had it the next night he lost it to Hogan. Talk about a walking talking curse. Bash was okay, nothing special, basic WCW ppv. It was better than GAB but worse than Slamboree. The best thing about this years Bash? The Hardcore Junkyard Invitational. You heard me right, and even though in the match no great wreslting moves or hardcore shit happened, it was a sight to see. WWF eat your heart out. Checked are the matches I predicted correctly, underlined are the true winners.

+DISCO INFERNO vs. THE CAT: Even though this match was pretty lame, the stipulation was pretty funny. Whomever loses can’t dance ever again. The Cat won with the help of his red shoe. The Cat is one of the best WCW personalities, I won’t say wrestler, just personality, give him the mike and he makes Chris Jericho look like Sonny Burns (obscure reference; don’t worry you’re not missing anything, trust me). This match was same old, though, but just because The Cat entertains I’ll slap it with a healthy ** rating.

+RICK ‘DOG’ STEINER vs. VAN HAMMER: I bet Stu had a good time laughing. My picks at WW3 three years ago were Dog, Kevin Sullivan, and Macho Man. Dog is the TV champ and Macho the heavyweight champ (Sunday night anyway). Looks like I picked wisely? Where the hell is Sullivan??? Okay, enough ranting. This match was pretty entertaining…surprisingly. Dog ddt’d Hammer on the outside concrete floor after he removed the mat. It looked like it hurt, actually, the whole match looked like both combatants really hated eachother. The best part of the match was the high energy. Short and sweet. Just tell me this: why is this match on a ppv? **1/2

+DEAN MALENKO vs. DAVID FLAIR: Man I’m betting 3 for 3. Not like these matches so far were hard to pick or anything. This match pitted U.S. Champ Davey Flair versus the man of one-thousand positions, I mean holds, the Iceman, Stinko Malenko. I hate both wrestlers. Flair’s camp at least entertains with Asya, Arn, Ric, and the hot assed Torrie. Lame match, though you can’t put down Flair’s camp, what a great bunch. **

+THE WEST TEXAS REDNECKS vs. THE NO LIMIT SOLDIERS: Don’t give me any shit for this matchup. I picked Swoll to win, because whoever gets the pin gets the win, right? It’s a 4 on 4 matchup, but you have to pin each member of the other team. It went down to the wire; Curt Henig verse Rey Mysterio Jr. and my boy, Swoll. Mysterio pinned Henig, but Swoll was categorized as being the co-winner, meaning I fucking have 4 for 4 under my belt you asshole!!! This was a very hard to pick match, though Mysterio, Konnan, and Henig were the obvious favorites. I picked Swoll because he signed a contract for a year or something, they’d better put him in the spotlight! This match was okay, but definitely high energy, until the end because it went on too long and everyone was tired as shit. **

THE HARDCORE JUNKYARD INVITATIONAL (FIT FINLEY): I picked Hak. That was probably the best pick of the bunch. There were around twenty guys beating the shit out of eachother. Who knew that asshole Fit Finley would win? Fire that a-hole, WCW, he fucking blows. Remember last year they acutally gave that prick the TV Title. Every Nitro he’d show up and bore us to death. Give the TV Title to someone with TV personality like…THE CAT! Dogg is okay I s’pose. This match took place (supposedly) 50 miles outside of Ft. Lauderdale in some junkyard. They had a ring of cars in a circle and a few barrels of fire. Oh yeah, and a hellicopter was helping to film. Some of the wrestlers involved were Brian Knobbs, Hugh Morris, The Public Enemy, Mikey Whipwreck, Steven Regal, and a couple of luchadores. This match was insane, crazy, hilarious, wild. No wrestler did any cool move beside hit people with car bumpers, but just the madness made you glued to your chair entertained as all hell and cracking up like a Nebraska dridiot. What a ppv worthy matchup! The internet speculated that it cost around $100,000 to make this matchup happen. Let me tell you it was worth it. Fit Finley got the win after this happened to him: Hak put him in the trunk of a car. Someone in a forklift started pushing the car towards the crusher. Finley jumped out at the last second as the car went into the crusher and blew up as it was smashed. Finley pushed over a barrel filled with fire which caught fire onto a car which exploded. Finley hopped the fence for the Hardcore Trophy. Holy shit I guess you had to so-called “see it to believe it”. ***

+THE TRIAD vs. SATURN & CHRIS BENOIT: I like the Triad (Kanyon, DDP, Bam Bam), but this Saturn/Benoit team just doesn’t work out. Hopefully Harlem Heat will be back because they’re actually a real tag team, and maybe Scotty Steiner will recover from his back injury to see a Steiner Brothers return. Right now the tag team scene is brutal. It’s more or less…The Triad. WCW and the WWF are guilty of putting two singles partners up as tag teams for a limited time stint. It sucks. I want to see a tag team like the Dudley Boys who stick with it for years. This match was excellent, highly energetic, fun, a great ppv match, but I just wish I could see more tag teams in this division, otherwise, what’s the point (remember when Giant and Lex Luger had the belts and one was good, the other bad? What a disaster) ***

+BUFF BAGWELL vs. ‘ROWDY’ RODDY PIPER: This was a boxing match with ten 3-minute rounds reffed by the legendary Mills Lane. This match was entertaining and humorous but truly WCW-calibur lame. The boxing gloves weren’t even real, these fake looking gigantic couldn’t hurt a fly gloves. The match wasn’t even real, obviously fake. Buff’s mom showed up as his Corner Person. Buff got the win after giving Piper the blockbuster from the top rope. What??? Don’t ask. **

SID & THE MAHCO MAN RANDY SAVAGE vs. KEVIN NASH & STING: You may be asking yourself, how could one man get the win if this is a tag team matchup? All that I know is that how could I be so fucking blind? I chose Nash to retain the belt. I had heard that he would be keeping the belt for awhile, notably until World War 3 or Starrcade where he would lose to Hollywood Hogan. Of course I didn’t think anything of the fact that they changed the stipulation of this match to where whoever pinned Nash would receive the title. I shoud’ve known better than to pick Nash, right? I mean, why would they add this stipulation if Nash would end up winning anyway…it doesn’t make sense, does it? Macho Man won. I don’t like that, I liked Macho Man a year ago, when he beat Sting at Spring Stampede for the belt. He was Da Man. Now he sucks. Hogan won the belt from Savage on Nitro. I’d rather have Nash as the champ, but oh well. This match wasn’t main event worthy. WWF has a thing where there ppv’s suck ass until the main event which is so awesome that it makes you think the whole thing was cool. WCW is the opposite. This main event was okay, but not worthy of a $33 main event. **

    Bash at the Beach was basic WCW. It had a few parts that entertained but all in all it wasn’t anything special. The Junkyard Hardcore Invitational was about the only thing that makes this ppv stand out from the others. It was pretty funny stuff. I did a fantastic job at predicting this time around. I failed in the main event category, but that’s good because it surprised me that Macho won. The other match I failed to predict was the Junkyard match. (“Have you ever been in a junkyard match?” Bobby Henan asks Tony Shiavone. “Of course not,” he replies) How could I have picked a winner? There were twenty guys it could have been. So I did correctly predict a decent number of 6 out of 8, which is a 75% and a solid C. That ties my high prediction of WWF’s Backlash. All in all BATB received a rating of 18.5, which is above Spring Stampede’s 18 but lower than Uncensored’s 19.5 Totally BATB recieves a ** rating. The tag team match and the Junkyard match were the highlights. Next month at the annual Sturges, SD based Saturday Night outside ppv, Road Wild, Hogan defends his title against Nash, and Sting faces the menacing Sid. But in a mere 10 days we’ll see who bleeds first at WWF’s Fully Loaded; Austin or Undertaker. Until then.