Thunder Results May 21st, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours+. Location: Cleveland, Ohio. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. The show opens with footage of the Giant's confrontation with Sting on Monday. The Giant then comes to the ring for an interview with Tony Schiavone. In short order Lex Luger comes out and challenges the Giant to a match. He slaps the Giant, then inexplicably walks off as several Mexican luchadores run in to get beat up by the Giant. ERNEST MILLER vs. YUJI NAGATA (w/ Sonny Onoo) Nagata dominates, but Miller rallies and wins with one good leg, scoring the pin after a spinning kick off the turnbuckles. After the match they show a short clip of Randy Savage confronting Roddy Piper. This was annoyingly pointless since the confrontation led to Piper revealing that he'd reversed the decision in Savage's match against Bret Hart at Slamboree. Hart then came out, followed by Hogan and the main event for the next PPV was set up. All that's significant, but they cut off the clip here prior to Piper making his "big" announcement, which assures that we'll have to sit through a number of additional little clips from this sequence tonight to get the whole story. Chris Jericho comes to the ring and demands to see J.J. Dillon regarding his title loss at Slamboree. Dillon doesn't show, because he's not in the building, which--as Schiavone points out--Jericho knows. CHRIS JERICHO vs. SUPER CALO Jericho wins in seconds with the Lion Tamer. In a lengthy video segment they lay out the story of how Raven spurned Mortis' desire to join the Flock, and how it's been Mortis (without his mask) all these weeks who has been running in to attack him and the rest of the Flock. Raven, back to live "action", comes to the ring with his shock troops. "What about me?" he whines. Saturn comes out and says he's not a member of the Flock and never was, but is Raven's friend and that he'll no longer take orders from him. Raven apologizes to him. He then calls Mortis out. Someone who looks sort of, but not really like Mortis comes halfway out to the ring. Raven sends his bodyguards after him, at which point the real Mortis hops the rail and attacks Raven from behind. Mortis escapes through the crowd as the Flock members stomp around frustrated in the ring. Schiavone comes off as a real boob during this by sputtering "If that was Mortis, then who is this ... and if this is Mortis, who was that?!" As feared, the next five seconds of the Piper/Savage segment plays. It's going to be a long night. JIM "THE ANVIL" NEIDHART vs. FIT FINLEY Quick win for Finley, who scores the pin after the Tombstone Piledriver. Tony Schiavone announces that Booker T. is the number one contender to the TV Title and will get the next match against Fit Finley. This angers Chris Benoit, who comes out demanding to see whoever on the "Championship Committee" made the final decision. For one terrifying moment I expect to see Kevin Sullivan come out, but Booker T. comes out instead. After exchanging a few words Benoit stalks off, but then turns and nails Booker as soon as his back is turned. He leaves him laying on the ground. Stevie Ray then pops up out of nowhere and taunts his brother to get up and be a man. It'll sure be sad if a heel turn is all WCW could think to do with Benoit. It's not like he has any credibility now: turning heel probably won't give him any more. The footage of Scott Hall coming out to join "Hollywood" Hogan on Nitro is shown. I'm getting the feeling that all these clips are being shown because none of these guys will be on the show tonight. We'll see. "HACKSAW" JIM DUGGAN vs. BRIAN ADAMS (w/ Vincent) This awful match is thankfully cut short when Adams hits the ref, drawing the DQ. Post-match fighting over Duggan's 2X4 reminds us why he should never be on the TV in the first place these days. Five more seconds of the Piper/Savage/Hart footage airs. Doesn't WCW realize that when you do things in this manner you lose all the intensity, emotion and impact the segment may have had in the first place? The "Evil Knight Rupert" makes a second appearance, handing out t-shirts for the new "Quest For Camelot" cartoon. Of course the promo follows. Remember when Thunder was a WRESTLING show? HAMMER vs. SATURN Raven helps Saturn get the win. I missed just exactly how, though. Saturn didn't seem to happy out Raven lending him help. "Ravishing" Rick Rude comes out and introduces Curt Hennig as the "U.S. Champion". Rude says he's pretty much on his own side when it comes to the two battling factions of the NWO. Hennig then calls Bill Goldberg out. After a few seconds Hennig then changes the challenge to take place at the next PPV. Schiavone points out (like in the above Jericho segment) that Bill Goldberg isn't even there and they know it (though the crowd apparently doesn't). Hennig was supposed to lose to Goldberg at Slamboree, so I guess we can all figure out where this one's heading. JUVENTUD GUERRERA vs. HORACE BOULDER Boulder actually needs help from Reese to beat Guerrera. The one giant applies a chokeslam, while the other follows it up with a clothesline. Juvi may "never surrender", but he also never wins in matches with opponents who weight more than 120 pounds. The next five seconds of tonight's prolonged drama plays. The show most of the entire segment involving Savage, Piper, Hart and Hogan from this past Monday. What was the point of all the little clips if they were just going to show them again--all together--at this point in the show? This is just one of those minor details which makes WCW's TV shows so damn frustrating and difficult to watch. Randy Savage and Elizabeth come to the ring. Savage complains about Piper not apologizing to him, then warns that after the two of them beat Hart and Hogan, he'll take care of Piper as well. Chavo Jr. and Eddie Guerrero are interviewed along with Eddie's mother. Eddie's mom says something in Spanish. Eddie translates it to be comments about how she's disappointed with Chavo. Everyone agrees that Eddie's lying. CHAVO GUERRERO, JR. (w/ Eddie Guerrero) vs. DEAN MALENKO Chavo is anxious to get the match so that he can win and get out of his "agreement" with Eddie. During the match Eddie interferes to help Malenko, thus keeping Chavo from winning. Malenko wins with the Texas Cloverleaf. After the match Chavo shoves Eddie down.

THE GIANT vs. LEX LUGER The Giant has both Tag Title belts. A few minutes into the match a fan tries to run in. (WCW has no one to blame but themselves for this type of stuff.) Moments later someone dressed as Sting wearing an NWO shirt enters and the match is thrown out. Luger clotheslines "Sting" out of the ring. (I guess WCW's strategy now is to go back to 1996 for their angles.) The show ends, having run over its usual time by a few minutes. Next Monday: Nitro returns to its regular time and length. Next week: Thunder is on Wednesday. Comments: Over the last month or so of preemptions and blow-off shows Thunder has lost all its "must see" status. Its poor production values, lack of style and identity, lack of major stars and talent and insistence on running massive amounts of old footage has helped the show to lose not only many of its casual viewers, but WCW's core of faithful viewers as well. The show only earned a 3.1 rating last week, which is its lowest rating ever. Not bad given the competition it faced, but it still shows that they've managed to lose as much as a quarter of their regular viewers over the last six weeks. Given how bad and pointless tonight's show was, there's not really anything else to say.