Thunder Results

February 19th, 1998.
Live/Taped: Live.
Length: Two Hours+.
Location: Birmingham, Alabama.
Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall.

 * Nitro highlights opened the show.

 * They showed a pretaped segment featuring Mike Tenay interviewing Chris
   Jericho outside in front of the arena. The interview is interrupted as
   suddenly the NWO rushed by. Off in the distance they attacked Randy
   Savage, who had been talking to Lex Luger. Luger was left laying on the
   ground, while Savage was carried off by his NWO teammates.

 * Bill Goldberg beat Fit Finley.

 * Psychosis defeated Chavo Guerrero, Jr., pinning him after a legdrop off
   the top turnbuckle.

 * "Hollywood" Hogan and Eric Bischoff delivered comments about Savage,
   Sting and referee Nick Patrick.

 * Booker T. pinned Scotty Riggs as the Flock looked on.

 * Mike Tenay attempted to interview Lex Luger, who was receiving medical
   attention, but only succeeded in being kicked out of the first aid area
   by the WCW trainer.

 * Juventud Guerrera beat Billy Kidman (despite the attempted interference
   by Lodi), pinning him after a 450 Degree Splash. After the match he was
   attacked by Chris Jericho, who pulled Guerrera's mask off. Fortunately
   for Guerrera he had a second one on underneath. A drop-kick from Guerrera
   sent Jericho packing.

 * A "WCW Motorsports" segment was shown.

 * Scott Hall, Dusty Rhodes and Kevin Nash came to the ring. Hall did his
   survey. Nash badmouthed the Giant. Afterwards he and Nash lost a quick
   match to the team of Wayne Bloom and Mike Enos (formerly the "Destruction
   Crew" and "Beverly Brothers") when Nash was DQ'ed for performing a
   powerbomb. Nash was once again fined and arrested by security and led
   away from the ring in handcuffs. (Nash was/will also be fined because he
   hit the referee.)

 * Rick Rude, Curt Hennig and Bryan Adams hit the ring. Hennig and Rude
   made disparaging comments about Bret "Hitman" Hart. This brought out
   Davey Boy Smith and Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart. A lengthy brawl ensued.

 * Mike Tenay interviewed the Steiner Brothers.

 * La Parka beat Super Calo. Disco Inferno interfered, but ended up
   costing Calo the match and suffered a chairshot from La Parka.

 * Chris Jericho defeated Dean Malenko with the Lion Tamer.

 * Diamond Dallas Page and Chris Benoit defeated Eddie Raven and Saturn.
   Benoit forced Saturn to submit to the Crippler Crossface.

 * The NWO came to the ring with the limp body of Randy Savage (who had a
   Sting mask placed on his face). Hogan said Savage had decided to leave
   Sting to Hogan at SuperBrawl. Sting ran in and fought with the NWO. He
   was nearly overpowered, but Lex Luger (with ribs taped) ran in to make
   the save.

 * Next Monday: Nothing announced.

 * Next week: Nothing announced.

Comments:

An all-around great installment of Thunder! Nearly every match on the card
was very good, with the DDP/Benoit match being the best tag team match I've
seen in ages. Only the Outsiders match really stood out as being bad, and
that was at least kept short.

The Goldberg match was an improvement over other recent matches of his.
This is the way I've been saying he needs to develop. He needs to spend
more time in the ring, working on his moves and taking the offense of his
opponents. He still didn't do a very good job of selling moves, but at
least he didn't look completely lost like he did against Regal. This match
was two or three times as long as his usual and the fans still popped as
big as ever for the win, even though Goldberg didn't look quite as
"invincible" as usual. Hopefully WCW will take this to heart and allow him
to continue to wrestle in longer and more realistic matches.

The broader focus on the cruiserweights instead of Raven's Flock made for a
faster paced, more interesting show. Even though the show actually ran more
than ten minutes over it still didn't seem as long as recent boring
additions of Thunder.

I've got to tell you ... the stuff they're doing with Savage is more
interesting to me than everything they did to build up to Hogan/Sting at
Starrcade. Savage has 1000 times more motivation to go after Hogan than
Sting ever did. It's hard to believe Hogan is actually facing Sting and not
Savage at SuperBrawl with the way things have lead up to it. Looks like
Hogan will be getting the belt after all at the PPV (though they could do
this feud without the title being involved).

I'm still not sold on SuperBrawl being all that great a PPV, but I'm more
interested than ever in what's to come after it.

This was easily the best Thunder yet, in my opinion, and was clearly a
better show than Nitro this week.