Thunder Results (01/08/98) January 8th, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Three Hours+. Location: Daytona Beach, Florida. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. * Show started with Nitro highlights. * Chris Adams defeated Randy "Macho Man" Savage. Lex Luger ran to the ring and knocked out Savage with a steel chair, allowing Adams to cover for the pin. (See below.) * Eric Bischoff and "Hollywood" Hogan delivered a speech in the ring. * J.J. Dillon reversed the decision of the above match, giving Savage the win via DQ due to Luger's interference. Lex Luger came out and said he and the other WCW stars were going to start retaliating against all the things the NWO has done to them. * Rick Martel beat Louie Spicolli with the Quebec Crab. * They showed footage from Starrcade of the Giant beating up Scott Hall. * Tenzan defeated Ohara, pinning him after a headbutt off the top. Tenzan is a member of the NWO in Japan. Ohara was accompanied to the ring by Sonny Onoo. * Nitro clips were shown highlighting the Ric Flair/Bret Hart confrontation. * Ric Flair beat Chris Jericho with the Figure Four. Jericho once again snapped after the match. * The Giant pinned Meng after a chokeslam. * Bill Goldberg pinned Steve "Mongo" McMichael following the Jackhammer. * The Steiner Brothers beat Buff Bagwell and Konan. Scott Steiner pinned Konan in a situation where they again teased some tension between he and his brother Rick. It was later announced that Scott was fined $5000 for hitting the referee during the match. * The Eric Bischoff/Larry Zbyszko match from Starrcade was played in its entirety. * Mike Tenay interviewed Larry Zbyszko. * Ray Traylor pinned Scott Hall. Zbyszko came to ringside to distract Hall, allowing Traylor to get the pin. * Juventud Guerrera beat Ultimo Dragon to win the WCW Cruiserweight Title. Guerrera pinned Dragon following a 450 degree splash off the top. * Mike Tenay interviewed Bret Hart. Ric Flair came out and the tense encounter from the 1/5 Nitro was essentially repeated. WCW announced that Hart and Flair would face off at the Souled Out PPV. * Lex Luger defeated Scott Norton with the Torture Rack. Buff Bagwell and Randy Savage both unsuccessfully tried to interfere. * They showed the "fast count" and the closing minutes of the Hogan/Sting match at Starrcade, as well as the post-match celebration. Then after a commercial they showed what happened after the 12/29/97 Nitro went off the air. In short: after Randy Anderson was knocked out, Nick Patrick came to the ring. Sting grabbed Patrick. Hogan rolled Sting up and Patrick made a legitimate three count. Sting knocked out Patrick, then put Hogan in the Scorpion Deathlock. Anderson recovered and stopped the match, giving Sting the win. J.J. Dillon came to the ring to confirm the decision, but was knocked out by Eric Bischoff. A huge WCW/NWO brawl broke out. * J.J. Dillon, after asking Hogan and Sting to come to the ring, stripped Sting of the World Heavyweight Title and declared it vacant. Sting threw the belt down, pointed his baseball bat at Dillon and told him "You got no guts!" He then told Hogan "You ... you're a dead man!" * Diamond Dallas Page beat Kevin Nash via DQ when "Hollywood" Hogan interfered. The Giant then came to the ring and he and Nash just started to trade blows as the show ended. Next week: Nothing announced. Comments: Yes, just "Thunder". Not "WCW Thunder", or "Thursday Thunder" ... just "Thunder". The show opens with fancy thunderstorm graphics mixed with shots of WCW and NWO wrestlers. Then the "Thunder" logo, with no other accompanying logos or titles. All throughout the show it is simply called "Thunder". (A bit pretentious perhaps, but it's meant to convey the notion that this show belongs neither to WCW nor the NWO solely.) The opening is nice, albeit a bit on the simple side. From that point on, the show looks virtually identical to Nitro in the way it's presented, the way they go to and come back from commercials, run "promotional consideration" spots, NWO ads, even the way the cameras are positioned and moved. Fancy lighting and fireworks are toned down compared to Nitro, though no less elaborate. The ring entryway is a large fake stone wall with an opening in the middle, which splits apart to show a swirling green laser. The wrestlers pass through the opening, walk down a very short angled ramp, then make the long walk to the ring, which has an apron which continues the stone wall motif. The camera sweeps and angles used to show the wrestlers coming through the entryway are very similar to that used on the WCW Saturday Night set (and in a few shots you could see the stage hands manually pulling the two doors apart). The announcers sit at a bare desk at a distance from the ring: very similar to their PPV set-up. Overall the look is okay, but done so as to seem as much like Nitro as possible. The only thing missing was the Nitro Girls. I've thought long and hard and made the decision that I just can't write a lengthy review of the show every week a la the "Monday Night Recap". With Nitro and RAW to already report on, along with the very real possibility that Nitro may permanently expand to three hours, I just don't think I have it in me to do any kind of a lengthy recap of Thunder every week. I've instead decided to do results in the same manner as I do PPV results, merely listing the winners of each match, how they won, interviews and other significant occurrences. Personal comments may or may not be added at the end depending on what happened on the show. I was really bored through most of this show. Ultimo/Guerrera was okay, but that's about it. All the Starrcade footage hurt the flow of the show. In my opinion a fairly lackluster debut, though the situation involving Sting near the end at least made it memorable. The Flair/Jericho match is already being widely overrated by fans across the Internet. It was okay-that's all. The Flair/Hart interview was again good, but it was essentially exactly the same as the one on Monday (though done a bit better). Was the three count fast? Only barely. Put it this way: if it were Sting making the cover, not one person would have noticed or complained.