Thunder Results March 26th, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours. Location: Norfolk, Virginia. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. * The show opened with Eric Bischoff in the control truck chewing out the production crew for trying to air a piece of video which he didn't approve of. Bischoff was forcibly removed from the truck by WCW security chief Doug Dellinger. The video clip aired, consisting of the footage from Nitro where "Hollywood" Hogan stopped Kevin Nash from attacking Roddy Piper, then the two squabbling. * A planned match between Eddy Guerrero and Chris Benoit was scrapped when Guerrero forced his nephew Chavo to take his place. Benoit went on to defeat Chavo with the Crippler Crossface. Eric Bischoff and "Ravishing" Rick Rude took over the announcing booth during the match. * Eric Bischoff and "Hollywood" Hogan came to the ring to deliver comments. Hogan denied any tension amongst the NWO members, accusing WCW of stirring up trouble. Kevin Nash then came out and accused Hogan of not only "pulling strings", but of holding Nash, Scott Hall and Syxx back from the spotlight. Hogan offered that the two of them could join up for a tag team match later in the show, as a sign of trust. Nash, rather sarcastically, accepted the challenge. * Prince Iaukea defeated La Parka rather quickly with a Northern Lights Suplex. * Lex Luger, in an interview with Tony Schiavone, said he and Sting have taken up "Hollywood" Hogan's challenge, and will face Hogan and Nash in the main event. * Chris Jericho beat Disco Inferno with the Lion Tamer. Jericho added Disco Inferno's headband to his "trophy" collection. * Bill Goldberg beat Jerry Flynn in a longer than usual, hard fought match. * Psychosis managed to overcome interference by the Flock and defeat Billy Kidman. Kidman confirmed that Lodi had injured his ankle in the match against Psychosis on Monday. * Diamond Dallas Page gave an interview. In hit he made a thinly veiled reference to Jake "the Snake" Roberts, adding further fuel to the fire regarding the rumor of Roberts making an appearance soon in WCW. * A "WCW Motorsports" segment aired. * A match between Davey Boy Smith and Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart against Curt Hennig and Brian Adams went to no decision. The match was thrown out after all four left the ring to brawl up the walkway. * Saturn scored a countout win over Diamond Dallas Page when Page abandoned their match to chase Raven out of the ring area. * Eddy Guerrero suffered a loss against Booker T. Eddy had managed to hit Booker with a foreign object (which he subsequently threw out to his nephew Chavo), but only scored a two count on the pin attempt. Chavo then, instead of hiding the foreign object, threw it back in to Eddy in full view of the referee. The ref called for the bell, DQ'ing Eddy because of "interference". Eddy then browbeat Chavo into hitting Booker, as well as kicking him while he was down. Chris Benoit ran out and chased both Guerrero's out of the ring. * Rick Steiner beat Scott Norton. Scott Steiner tried to assist Norton, but his interference backfired. Rick was able to use a foreign object thrown into the ring by Scott (meant for Norton) to score the pin. * Lex Luger and Sting earned a win over "Hollywood" Hogan and Kevin Nash by DQ when Randy Savage ran in, attacking Sting from behind. The rest of the NWO came in as well. Major tensions were teased between Hogan and Nash (who had accidentally kicked Hogan in the face during the match) and the show ended with the two each muttering about the actions of the other. * Next Monday: Nothing announced. * Next week: Nothing announced. Comments: The opening segment really shows how ill-defined the Bischoff "on-camera" character is. Despite his claim that he's the "Executive Vice President" (I though he was "President", by the way), he's unable to exert any influence over the production crew. Yet just minutes later he and Rude are able to kick the announcers from their desk. Why wasn't he escorted away by security in THAT instance? If he doesn't have total control, yet has some kind of decision making powers, then those powers, as they pertain to his on-screen persona, lie somewhere in between. Why is it so hard for WCW to spend just five minutes and explain exactly what Bischoff can and can't do? It's unfair to the fans to keep thrusting in a our faces a character who can, when the mood hits him, do anything he wants in terms of significant storyline alteration. I'm not talking real life here, I only mean in terms of what we see on TV. Bischoff has, in the past, stripped people of their titles, changed matches, kicked people out of the arena, etc. A few on-camera angles have established that Bischoff's powers have been "reduced", but reduced from what? If his character used to be "all powerful", then how far below "all powerful" is he now? This total lack of storyline development seems to have two purposes. First off it allows Bischoff to pull a "deus ex machina" maneuver whenever he feels it's necessary (usually for the sake of generating an out of the blue surprise). Secondly, it fairly clearly shows that Bischoff is more concerned with getting his smug mug on camera than he is with portraying a realistic, well defined character. Both of these go towards describing the man himself and his motivations, rather than the character he plays on TV. His TV character is just a typical whiny, annoying, jerk of a heel wrestling manager. This again shows the differences, in the ever ongoing comparison, between he and Vince McMahon. McMahon-for better or worse-is a storyteller who was brought up in the traditions of the business. Bischoff, on the other hand, is a bean counter who rose to the top and uses that position to place himself in the spotlight in the middle of the story-forcing the other performers to stumble their way around him. As long as he gets his pretty face on camera, and his boys bring in the high ratings, complaints like this will shed off his back like water shedding of that steel-plated haircut of his. As far as this week's show, it was a middle-of-the-road affair, featuring a lot of solid wrestling action which was all overshadowed by the NWO angle and impending main event. Here's something to mull over, by the way: Hogan makes a "surprise" challenge match involving he and Nash against whoever accepts. Luger and Sting accept, giving the show its "new" main event. Question ... what was the main event supposed to be before Hogan made the challenge? Did WCW really book a huge arena, schedule two hours of live TV time and sell 10,000 to 15,000 tickets-all without have a quality match scheduled as the main event? Did WCW somehow KNOW that Hogan-or somebody amongst those top ranked stars-would conveniently fill up the main event slot with a surprise challenge match? (This observation, by the way, isn't just aimed at WCW. The WWF would have been screwed this week if events hadn't unfolded so that Steve Austin had to face Rocky Maivia in the RAW main event. This type of thing happens all too often these days: almost weekly in the case of Nitro.) Credit where credit is due: Goldberg wrestled a much better match this time out, showing more than just a glimpse of that talent that is apparently there, but which WCW is afraid to let the man display. It appears that he and Flynn really put some effort into this prior to the match itself, and it's matches like this which Goldberg needs to make him more than just all "flash" and no "substance". Goldberg's gone too far too fast to win me over with just one match, but this did serve to allay some of my fears that WCW is just interested in turning him into another Lex Luger or Ultimate Warrior. WCW seems to be trying to capitalize on the real life tensions between Hogan and Nash to help establish some intrigue for the main event at Spring Stampede. The current rumor mill is buzzing over the possibility of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper turning on the Giant at the PPV and announcing his allegiance to the NWO. (Some groundwork for this may have been laid on Monday when Hogan stopped Nash from attacking Piper with the baseball bat-or at least, that may be what WCW wants us to think.) The public display of tensions between Hogan and Nash COULD be an effort to throw up a red herring to get the fans looking the other way, making a Piper turn all that much more surprising if and when it did happen. On the other hand, it's also just as possible that WCW is planting this Piper heel turn scenario in our minds merely to add suspense to the PPV. This is all essentially the same thing they did with Hogan and Savage, and despite open hostilities being displayed by the two, they are both still members of the NWO. WCW gets the fans expecting either a Hogan/Nash split, or a Piper heel turn. They then "surprise" everyone by doing neither. The buyrate for the PPV ends up being huge, but the fans wind up skunked because nothing of substance took place. Sound familiar? It should, because it's what's happened in about the last dozen or so WCW PPV's.