Thunder Results February 26th, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours. Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. * Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero beat the team of Dean Malenko and Booker T. Guerrero pinned Booker T. following a Frog Splash. * Mike Tenay interviewed Diamond Dallas Page. DDP announced he would be defending the U.S. Title against Chris Benoit in the main event. Raven interrupted the interview and demanded a title match. DDP offered him a title shot for next week's Thunder. * Fit Finlay beat Brad Armstrong, pinning him after a Tombstone Piledriver. * Davey Boy Smith powerslammed Squire David Taylor for the win. * A "WCW Motorsports" segment was shown. * Mike Tenay interviewed Curt Hennig, who bashed both Ric Flair and Bret Hart. * Bill Goldberg squashed Rick Fuller in about a minute. * Yuji Nagata defeated La Parka. Both Sonny Onoo and Disco Inferno tried to interfere, with Disco hitting Onoo on the floor with the Chartbuster. Nagata forced La Parka to submit to the Nagatalock. * Scott Hall surveyed the crowd. * Tony Schiavone announced that next week on Nitro "Hollywood" Hogan would team up with Scott Hall to take on Sting and Randy Savage. * Buff Bagwell, imitating ring announcer Michael Buffer, interviewed Scott Steiner-now dubbed "White Thunder". Steiner badmouthed Lex Luger (the two will meet at the next PPV: Uncensored). Steiner then defeated Marty Jannetty in a quick match. * Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart nearly beat Curt Hennig with a choke/sleeper, but was attacked by the NWO (causing a disqualification). Davey Boy Smith made the save. During the match Scott Steiner chased Lee Marshall away and took over his spot at the desk. He begged his Brother Rick to join the NWO- which was apparently one of the conditions of Scott joining the group (that he'd bring Rick with him). * They played an NWO promo which featured Kevin Nash making fun of the Giant and his neck injury. Schiavone announced that the Giant-against doctor's orders-will wrestle Nash at Uncensored. * A Raven/Kevin Nash match never got on track. The Flock attacked Nash, but he managed to hold them all off, eventually Jackknifing Lodi twice. Nash was again arrested and led away by security. * The Diamond Dallas Page/Chris Benoit main event went to no decision when Raven interfered. Late in the match DDP was busted open and the last few minutes of the match was shot at extreme long distance. * Next Monday: Hogan/Hall vs. Sting/Savage. * Next week: DDP vs. Raven. Comments: Talk about irritating. It was bad enough that the camera pulled back to the next time zone once DDP was cut open, but it also completely gave away the fact that Raven was slowly making his way to the ring to interfere. To top it all off then, the show ended a good five minutes early. Once again "Triangle Match" was pounded into our skulls, yet I'm still skeptical that WCW will do it (since they seem to favor split matches like Booker T./Rick Martel/Saturn at SuperBrawl). Even worse was the poor commentary on the part of the announcers. During one stretch more than a minute of fast paced action went by without any of the announcers calling a single move. They were much too busy drooling over the Hogan/Hall/Sting/Savage match next week-which Schiavone boldly declared will be the greatest match ever in the history of Nitro. During the first match Schiavone announced that WCW has lifted the ban on throwing wrestlers over the top rope (i.e. it will no longer earn a DQ). Tony said this relaxing of the rules came about because of the war between the NWO and WCW. Funny this issue comes up on the heels of the WWF prominently featuring an over-the-top DQ in an NWA Tag Title match. Coincidence? Probably. Actually it's pretty much a blatant attempt by WCW to hamstring the NWO members who hold titles (something which Schiavone as much as admitted). Lee Marshall said Davey Boy Smith broke Steve McMichaels' arm. Schiavone quickly corrected him by revealing that Mongo came into the match with his arm already broke. Mongo just couldn't put the Bulldog over cleanly, could he? Now not only was "screwed" by the referee (Mongo claims he didn't give up), but he was also injured coming into the match. I guess Mongo really is a professional wrestler now. He'll be out of action for a few weeks. Goldberg got almost the loudest reaction of the night. His match, though, was a serious backslide from previous positive efforts. He did a fancy leg takedown, dabbled in a little mat wrestling, three a few punches, no-sold all of Fuller's offense, then speared and Jackhammered him for the win. The Raven/Nash match was a joke (and a poor one at that). First off, Raven said it'd be fought under "Raven's Rules", then added it would be "Battle Royal" style. This apparently meant the entire Flock would be against Nash. Raven then just sat in the corner and did nothing as Nash-puffing and wheezing like an old man-tossed and kicked each man over the top rope. Finally he had Lodi and Jackknifed him. The ref then signaled for the DQ (in a "No DQ" match, mind you). Before anyone made any attempt at all to stop him, Nash picked Lodi up and Jackknifed him again. Schiavone ventured the opinion that this would cost Nash two separate fines, bringing the total tally against him to $355,000. How'd you like to be a fan who paid to get in to see this match and this is what you got? With only a little over two weeks to go until Uncensored, they have really been slamming us with matches for the PPV. Here's the matches already announced (or close to being announced): * "Hollywood" Hogan vs. Randy Savage. Cage Match. * Sting vs. Scott Hall. World Title Match. * The Giant vs. Kevin Nash. * Scott Steiner vs. Lex Luger. * Curt Hennig vs. Bret Hart. * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Chris Benoit vs. Raven. U.S. Title Match(es). * Chris Jericho vs. Dean Malenko. Cruiserweight Title Match. * Booker T. vs. Eddie Guerrero. TV Title Match. We may also see Bryan Adams take on either Jim Neidhart or Davey Boy Smith. Speaking of Uncensored, the promo they've been running for the show is now officially the worst PPV promo I've ever seen-beating out the promo for the "Wild Thing" PPV they did several years ago. Not much of a show this week. A couple of the matches were okay, but a lot of it was squashes and fluff. The first match was probably the best and the show went downhill from there. I just couldn't get into the main event, knowing that Raven would be running in at any moment. The second Raven interrupted DDP in his interview at the top of the show you KNEW there was no way Benoit would win the title tonight. The two worked really stiff in the match, but even they seemed to be just killing time, waiting for Raven to make his appearance. You know what the real problem is? Announcing all these PPV matches with hardly any set-up. They then reverse engineer the hostilities, forcing the wrestlers into situations where the upcoming PPV foes will face each other in tag matches, during interviews, etc. Instead of doing the confrontations without any warning, and then making matches out of them, they instead do it the other way around-making the stuff leading up to the PPV seem like weak excuses to hype and sell the PPV. Example: they announced on Monday that Guerrero would get a shot at Booker T.'s TV belt at the PPV. Tonight we see Guerrero actually pin Booker T., making us all think he's got a chance to win the belt at the PPV (and also set up a level of hostility between the two). The matches end up having little emotional build-up or impact, meaning little more than the average Nitro or Thunder match. Why do they do this? Because there isn't enough time until the next PPV to do it the "right" way. They tried to make a big deal out of the tag match scheduled for Nitro next week, pounding on the fact that WCW and NWO wrestler would be teaming up. Why should this match be any kind of a surprise? First off, Savage has all but left the NWO. They've already announced that he'll face Hogan at the PPV. Why SHOULDN'T Savage want to get his hands on Hogan in a tag team match-no matter who his partner is? Lee Marshall treated it like it was a dangerous situation for Sting to get into. With the animosity already established between Savage and Hogan (the only match for the PPV which they've done a good job in building up), Sting has almost zero reason to fear Savage would turn on him. It's Savage who should fear that Sting would not help him. However, we already know Sting will be facing Hall at the PPV, thus he'd want to get his hands on Hall. AND we already know Sting hates Hogan. There should be no tension whatsoever between Sting and Savage, and any that there is would be artificial to say the least. To even accept the IDEA that Savage might turn on Sting means that this has all been an elaborate ruse to trick Sting into a three-on-one beating. Excuse me, but isn't Sting regularly beat up by the ENTIRE NWO on an almost weekly basis? Why would they have to trick him into a situation when they know full well that they can jump him en masse at any time? What's more, if it was all a plot against Sting, that means the animosity between Hogan and Savage hasn't been real, and that there would in fact be no cage match between them at Uncensored. Does anyone think WCW would scrap the announced main event a week before the PPV (unless it resulted in setting up Hogan/ Sting III in the cage)? That's about the only surprise scenario possible next Monday, and it seems like one with only a very slim chance of happening. On top of all this, does ANYONE think that the match on Nitro will actually amount to anything? How long will it go before the rest of the NWO runs in?