Thunder Results July 2nd, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours+. Location: Columbus, Georgia. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. The show opens with a Rodman/Malone promo. Malone's appearance on Nitro this past Monday is recapped by the announcers. Chris Jericho hits the ring for comments. After bashing the local crowd he says Dean Malenko gave Ultimo Dragon a concussion, and therefore he needs to find himself a new opponent for the PPV. Out comes a midget dressed as Rey Mysterio, Jr. Jericho says this match will blow away all us "Internet geeks and sheet readers". CHRIS JERICHO vs. "REY MYSTERIO, JR." In a farce of a match, Jericho knocks the midget unconscious, then rolls him over onto himself, allowing the midget to get the pin. Jericho says this makes "Mysterio" the number one contender, who will get the title shot at the PPV. Not hard to see where this one's going. The Giant comes out (sans cigarette, but now sporting shades, which are cooler and don't cause cancer). He trash talks about Goldberg and Kevin Greene, then challenges Lex Luger to a match. Am I the only one who thinks WCW is all over the map on most of their angles? Why is it everyone is involved in two scenarios at any given time? The Giant vs. Luger *and* the upcoming PPV match ... Hogan vs. DDP *and* the big Goldberg match ... Raven vs. Kanyon *and* Saturn ... Jericho vs. Malenko *and* Ultimo Dragon, and now Mysterio ... Booker T. vs. Bret Hart *and* Stevie Ray ... I could go on. This lack of focus certainly hasn't helped matters over the last month. STEVIE RAY vs. DOC DEAN Squash. Kept short, so I won't complain. Afterwards Chavo Guerrero comes out, before Stevie can leave the ring. Chavo is riding his toy horse Pepe, and begins asking Stevie questions about his family problems, comparing them to his own. Why Stevie just stands there and listens I have no idea. Finally Chavo puts his hands on Stevie once to often and Stevie drops him. I thought Chavo's insanity was supposed to be fun to watch? This was just plain dumb. Alex Wright and Disco Inferno come to the ring. The announcers sputter that it's supposed to be the Public Enemy facing the British Bulldog and Jim Neidhart. The P.E. come out and faster than you can yell "aaarrrrrggghhh!" a dancing contest breaks out. Then the shoving starts and Disco and Wright are sent packing from the ring. A commercial follows, probably so that the fans watching at home can throw up without missing anything. PUBLIC ENEMY vs. DAVEY BOY SMITH/JIM "THE ANVIL" NEIDHART A poor match which I frankly paid little attention to. Alex Wright and Disco Inferno come back out and interfere. The match is thrown out, with the announcers actually bothering to debate as to who should be DQ'ed and why. The whole "three-way" phenomenon surfaces here again. It's as if WCWis trying to build up to a card comprised of nothing other than Triangle Matches. This isn't entirely an isolated phenomenon either, as the WWF seems to have their share of such situations lately. J.J. Dillon, who the announcers have been talking about since the top of the show regarding a major announcement, finally shows up. In short, he confirms that "Hollywood" Hogan will be defending the World Title against Goldberg on Monday. And the match will be televised. I guess their embarrassing ratings loss to RAW this week was really the final straw. This announcement sparks a non-stop round of discussions and hype from the announcers. The entire remainder of the show will play out virtually devoid of any meaningful match commentary. Back and forth they speculate as to what it will mean if Goldberg wins the Title, or how big Hogan's ego will get if he breaks Goldberg's winning streak. Strangely enough it never occurs to them that these scenarios are actually the least likely to come to pass. Clearly a DQ caused by the rest of the NWO is the likeliest possibility, due in no part to this being done by the NWO on an almost weekly basis over the last two years. Frankly, it's pretty stupid to not just assume up front that the NWO will interfere, preventing Hogan from losing his title. WCW has already shown that Goldberg is immune to losing because of interference, as he's been able to shrug off and overcome numerous past instances out outside interference. I'll be pretty damn surprised if the Giant or Curt Hennig doesn't whack Goldberg with a chair, giving him the win, saving his streak, and saving Hogan's title. I must admit I am intrigued, though, to see how bad the match between the two will really be. What else can we expect when one of the worst wrestlers on the planet locks up with one of the greenest and most careless? A Raven video is played. Raven says he's a humanitarian for taking in the Flock members, including Scotty Riggs, who can only see out of one eye. Pardon me? Wasn't it Raven who put out Riggs' eye in the first place? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the humor and irony there was intentional. SATURN vs. KIDMAN A pretty good match from these two--the only one of the night. Lots of back and forth action between the two, covering well the fact that Kidman really shouldn't stand a chance here against the much larger Saturn, who goes on to win with the Death Valley Driver. It's almost sad to see these guys knock themselves out when it's clear WCW doesn't really appreciate their talents. After the match Saturn challenges Raven to a match to "settle the feud" at the PPV. Yeah, right. They replay the clip from last week of the cameraman eavesdropping on Arn Anderson and Chris Benoit. It pisses me off when WCW just replays old clips to "further" an angle. What this all boils down to is Benoit is trying to convince Arn to let him reform the Horsemen, with Arn serving as manager. It's hard to say whether or not this will happen, and how and who it will involve, but frankly it's something I DON'T want to see. Even if they had Ric Flair to use, the Horsemen was an idea that died around 1990. No matter what they did or who they used, it would still never equal those glory days of the Horsemen, nor would it equal that which they represented. Simply put, the Horsemen were a stable of wrestlers who surrounded Ric Flair when he was the World Champion. Flair used them to keep his Title. They in turn dominated the rest of the NWA, capturing many of the other Titles. They were the driving force of the NWA, and the top focus of the company. When they fell from that prominent position the Horsemen became little more than a name. Trying to redo the Horsemen now is just a sad attempt to cash in on the nostalgia of the original group, just like the whole NWA and Midnight Express revivals in the WWF. We're only 18 months from the new millennium and WCW is looking to 1986 for answers to their problems. Accompanying the above Benoit clip is a pretaped interview with Steve "Mongo" McMichael. They also show clips of Mike Ditka talking about Mongo, which I believe WCW originally used about two years ago. Mongo as much as dares Arn Anderson to come back and lead the Horsemen to their past greatness. It's pretty clear by now that WCW is going to do this without Flair. They replay a clip from last week of the Giant chokeslamming Lex Luger. This has something to do with tonight's main event, though it seems to me that Luger should have challenged the Giant, not vice versa. Of course I'm not a booker, just a disgruntled fan. BRIAN ADAMS (w/ Vincent) vs. BOBBY BLAZE Almost a squash, though Blaze gets in a couple of ineffectual moves. I guess this meaningless win is supposed to make Adams feel better for all those times the Wolfpac has kicked his ass.Raven comes out and accepts Saturn's challenge. BOOKER T. vs. FIT FINLEY Finley attacks Booker before the bell. He dominates for most of the match. There's then a few minutes of even back-and-forth until Booker nails the missile drop-kick for the win. Schiavone interviews Booker after the match, only to have Stevie Ray interrupt with his "whatchoo doin' sucka?" line. Chavo Guerrero comes to the ring with a large cardboard box. On it is written "Acme Eddie Trap". Chavo sets it up in the ring, propped up with a stick with a string attached. Under the box he places a plate with a burrito on it. Chavo hides down beside the ring, waiting for the bait to attract Eddie Guerrero. Eddie comes out, sets off the trap, then kicks Chavo's ass when Chavo checks under the box. Eddie, who now is apparently the one going loco, gives Chavo a Brainbuster down on the floor after pulling away the mat. He then rolls Chavo in the ring and, producing a pair of scissors from nowhere, cuts a chunk of Chavo's hair. And with that a "Hair vs. Hair" match seems quite likely at the PPV. I've rarely been so ashamed to be a wrestling fan as I was watching this segment. They replay J.J. Dillon's momentous announcement. KANYON vs. KONNAN Kanyon gets a lot of buzz for being "innovative". Here he just looked sloppy, doing variations of existing moves in new but less than aesthetic ways. An example was a Fireman's Carry into a fallaway slam which looked just plain ugly. Neither sold much of anything, recovering from every move after a few seconds. All the moves and sequences of moves looked either unconnected or overly choreographed. Konnan clearly ran out of gas keeping up with Konnan. The Flock eventually comes out and while everyone is distracted Raven comes in and DDT's Kanyon. Konnan slaps on the Tequila Sunrise and gets the win. The Flock then beats on Kanyon. Konnan, after surveying the situation, tries to make the save. He gets beaten as well, which causes Lex Luger to run out, sending the Flock fleeing. Boring match. Luger stays in the ring and calls out the Giant. LEX LUGER vs. THE GIANT Standard Luger match: the Giant does all the beating, Luger rallies back. The NWO run in before Luger can win, drawing a DQ decision. Konnan comes out, as does the Flock, though they attack the NWO instead of the Wolfpac. At nearly fifteen minutes past the usual finish time this ending wasn't worth the wait. The PPV promo which started the show closes it out. Next Monday: Goldberg vs. Hogan. Next week: Thunder is on Wednesday. Comments: I just don't have the energy this week. Let's save it all for this week's Nitro and Thunder. In an aside of sorts, I just saw the replay of DDP's appearance on "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. I thought he came across great. Just thought I'd mention that.