Thunder Results

January 15th, 1998.
Live/Taped: Live.
Length: Two Hours+.
Location: Lakeland, Florida.
Hosted By: Mike Tenay, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall.

 * The show kicked off with a number of highlight clips from Nitro.

 * Tony Schiavone interviewed the Giant, who said he was eager to face
   Kevin Nash at Souled Out. The Giant then took a pro-Nash sign away from
   Lodi, who had been circling the ring. A chokeslam followed and the rest
   of Raven's Flock ran in (minus Raven), but they were held off by the
   Giant. Kevin Nash then came in and got into the Giant's face. The Giant
   just walked away, even though Nash threw a cup of coffee in his face.

 * More Nitro Highlights were shown. Post-Nitro footage showed Randy Savage
   slapping Kevin Nash.

 * The Steiner Brother and Ray Traylor beat Gedo, Ohara and Black Cat in a
   six-man match. Scott Steiner selfishly took the win, pinning Gedo after
   the Steiner Screwdriver (again ignoring his brother Rick, who was waiting
   on the top turnbuckle to do their usual finisher). Scott then slapped
   the ref (further teasing his heel turn). During the match they announced
   that Ric Flair had been fined $5000 for hitting the ref this past Monday.

 * Ernest Miller defeated Yuji Nagata, pinning him after a spinning kick
   off the top turnbuckle. Sonny Onoo trued to interfere unsuccessfully on
   Nagata's behalf.

 * Schiavone interviewed J.J. Dillon, who planned to announce that Diamond
   Dallas Page wouldn't be able to wrestle due to a mugging he suffered
   after Nitro. (This was apparently to cover for the fact that Page had cut
   his leg when he came out to help Luger during the Nitro broadcast.) DDP
   came out and offered to sign a waiver absolving WCW of any responsibility
   in case he was to be injured in the main event.

 * Scott Hall and Louie Spicolli came to the ring for a match, but it
   never took place. Hall began asking Spicolli who he had come to Thunder
   to see (similar to his "survey", which he also did). Spicolli started
   gushing about the NWO and how great they were. Larry Zbyszko came out to
   urge Spicolli on. Spicolli instead helped Hall attack Zbyszko, but Larry
   was able to outsmart the two, eventually sending both to the arena floor.

 * Chris Jericho beat Eddie Guerrero, reversing a huracanrana attempt into
   his Lion Tamer finisher. Jericho earned a Cruiserweight titleshot at
   Souled Out.

 * They replayed the confrontation between Ric Flair, Jim "the Anvil"
   Neidhart and Bret Hart from Nitro. It was during this that the show
   started suffering from massive technical difficulties. Apparently a storm
   local to the arena kept interfering with the satellite transmission. The
   picture broke up repeatedly, and they often had to cut to a secondary,
   mono audio feed (which didn't always match the video).

 * Bill Goldberg was scheduled to wrestle Chavo Guerrero, but Disco Inferno
   came out instead. Guerrero belittled Disco, which caused Disco to knock
   him out with the Chartbuster. Bill Goldberg then came out and beat up
   Disco. (This entire segment went unseen, as the transmission difficulties
   forced WCW to show a still photo of the crowd as all this was going on.
   Only the muffled audio made it possible for viewers to tell what was
   going on.)

 * Even more Nitro clips were shown.

 * Eric Bischoff and "Hollywood" Hogan came to the ring to deliver
   interviews. Jokes and comments using the phrase "1.5 million" seemed to
   confirm that Hogan has indeed re-signed with WCW. Hogan said a federal
   judge had ruled that he had clearly pinned Sting at Starrcade, and that
   the WCW Title was rightfully his. Hogan demanded that J.J. Dillon give
   him back the belt next week on Nitro.

 * Rey Mysterio, Jr. beat Juventud Guerrera to win the WCW Cruiserweight
   Title. Mysterio avoided Guerrera's 450 Splash and nailed the standing
   huracanrana roll-up for the win.

 * Lex Luger beat Randy Savage and Kevin Nash via DQ when "Hollywood" Hogan
   interfered. Luger insisted that DDP not wrestle because of his injury,
   making it a handicap match. Hogan attacked DDP outside the ring. Hogan
   later caused the match to end when he ran in the ring. Luger put him and
   Nash both in the Torture Rack. Savage again tried to hit Nash, but hit 
   Luger instead.  The Giant came out to help Luger, chokeslamming Hogan.
   The rest of the NWO came out, followed by Sting. The NWO retreated as the
   show ended.

Next week: Nothing announced.

Comments:

It's not WCW's fault that the technical difficulties occurred, but they 
nonetheless made the second half of the show nearly unwatchable. The late 
night replay was the same, only adding a "technical difficulties" logo at 
the bottom of the screen.

Far too many Nitro highlights were shown. I'd guess maybe 10 to 15 minutes 
of the show was eaten up by Nitro footage. Probably more, as the first half 
hour came and went and the Steiner Brothers match was the only in-ring 
action which took place.

The Miller/Nagata match was just plain awful. Tenay announced during the 
match that WCW may start a "Martial Arts Division", and that this was a 
test match. They said standard wrestling rules would be used, which makes 
the idea of a "Martial Arts Division" fairly pointless.

You had to be nearly blind not to see that Spicolli was wearing an NWO 
t-shirt inside out, completely giving away what was about to happen. It was 
never said whether or not Spicolli is now an official NWO member.

Tenay proved how un-hip he is by calling Hogan's theme music "Voodoo Chili". 
It's "Voodoo Chile", Mike. Like "child".

Both cruiserweight matches, as expected, were good.

Overall a less than stellar show-even without the technical difficulties. 
Only the title change and the stuff at the end made this more notable than 
the average WCW Saturday Night.