Thunder Results April 9th, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours+. Location: Tallahassee, Florida. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. A video montage highlighting the Hogan/Savage/Nash tensions precedes the usual opening. The announcers further hype the situation by discussing it as the behind-the-scenes footage from Nitro plays. TOKYO MAGNUM vs. SATURN (w/ the Flock) Saturn totally dominates the youngster from Japan, with a Sunset Flip being the only offense Magnum gets in. Saturn teases the "Rings of Saturn" twice before actually locking it in for the win. After the match he throws out a challenge to Bill Goldberg, which is immediately accepted. Goldberg is jumped by the Flock, but easily fends them all off. Hammer appears out of nowhere and brawls with Saturn (Hammer having ostensibly been dumped from the group this past Monday). Raven is shown watching all this emotionlessly from ringside. YUJI NAGATA vs. PRINCE IAUKEA As usually seems to be the case with a Nagata match, Schiavone and Tenay spend all their time talking about how great he is. Meanwhile in the ring Prince Iaukea is kicking his ass. Nagata gets his share of offense in, but the outcome is never really in doubt. Iaukea wins with the Northern Lights Suplex. Afterwards Chris Jericho comes out and claims that Iaukea is too heavy to be a Cruiserweight, and that he'll bring a scale out later in the show to prove that Iaukea is too heavy to get a title shot. Digging into the video vault-presumably in preparation for his return-they show what happened between Mortis and Raven a few months ago. They then play some more footage from the Hogan/Nash split. A "WCW Motorsports" segment is shown. Raven launches into a lengthy, rambling "what about me?" speech in the ring. The crowd chants for Diamond Dallas Page and does their best to try and boo him out of the ring: including one fan running up and pulling Raven out of the ring by his hair. Security quickly takes the guy down. Raven has to finish his speech with a broken microphone. Tony Schiavone interviews Buff Bagwell, who announces a match between he and Lex Luger will take place on Nitro next Monday. KONAN (w/ Vincent) vs. CHRIS BENOIT Benoit has very little trouble putting Konan away with the Crippler Crossface (even though Vincent tries some ineffectual interference). During the match Schiavone announces during that Benoit's match against Booker T. at Spring Stampede will have no time limit. CURT HENNIG (w/ Rick Rude) vs. "HACKSAW" JIM DUGGAN Easily a candidate for worst match of the year. Duggan is all bluster and "hi-yooo!"-not even really bothering to wrestle. Rude eventually makes his way from the announcer's desk to the ring, where-in a badly botched spot-Duggan allows himself to be handcuffed to the top rope. Rude and Hennig lay in a beating until Davey Boy Smith and Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart can make the save. The Bulldog shows little sign of his knee injury (though he doesn't do all that much which would have shown it). GLACIER vs. LEX LUGER Why should we expect anything but the standard Luger match? After absorbing (x) amount of punishment, Luger comes back and applies the Torture Rack for the win. Buff Bagwell watches the match from the entryway. KIDMAN (w/ Reece) vs. PSYCHOSIS What promised to be the first good match of the night never really gets there. Chris Jericho comes out a few minutes into the match carrying a bathroom scale. The ref, suitably distracted, fails to see two Psychosis pin attempts, as well as La Parka arriving to nail Psychosis with a chair. Kidman hits the "Seven Year Itch" (Shooting Star Press) for the win. Jericho then calls Prince Iaukea out so that he can be weighed. Jericho guesses Iaukea weights about 230 pounds-which would be over the Cruiserweight limit. Iaukea weighs in at 218. Jericho complains that the scale isn't properly calibrated, then smashes it over Iaukea's head. It occurs to me that if Iaukea is 218, then Jericho must be several pounds over the limit to be a legitimate Cruiserweight. SCOTT STEINER (w/ Vincent) vs. DISCO INFERNO I'll just reiterate what I wrote this past Monday: I'm absolutely not going to call Steiner "Big Poppa Pump". Steiner wins easily with the Steiner Recliner. WCW again plays corporate kiss-up by airing the "Lost in Space" theatrical trailer. Unfortunately for them the audio seemed really screwed up, as no music nor sound effects accompanied the trailer. They cut away from the clip about two-thirds the way through it. CHRIS JERICHO vs. BOOKER T. Chris Jericho is now Chris Benoit, and as such he's unable to coax as good a match as Benoit has been able to get out of him in recent weeks. Booker dominates, Jericho gets in a few moves, then Booker again dominates until the finish. Booker goes for a drop-kick off the top, but Jericho pulls the referee in the way. The ref calls for the DQ when he recovers, giving Booker T. the win. Tony Schiavone, in an announcement that was no secret to Internet fans, reveals that Ric Flair-despite massive hype all through the show-isn't in the building tonight. Schiavone cites bad weather, though the real reason is that Flair had a prior commitment and WCW screwed up when they promised him this Thursday. Eric Bischoff and Scott Steiner then come out to badmouth Flair, saying the "real" reason he's not there is because he's old and scared. They play a clip from "Hollywood" Hogan's new "3 Ninjas" movie for no real apparent reason. Arn Anderson then makes a surprise appearance to stand up for Flair. Scott Steiner seems about to take a shot at Arn when Lex Luger comes out. Luger and Steiner go at it. Anderson, meanwhile, distracts Bischoff as Rick Steiner comes out. Rick lays out Bischoff with a vertical suplex. Time killer or new Four Horsemen? You make the call. KEVIN NASH (w/ Konan) vs. RICK STEINER (w/ Ted DiBiase) Nash makes a lengthy series of anti-Hogan statements prior to the match, which pushed the show beyond its usual end time. He also said he and Hogan were at a disadvantage in the "Baseball Bat Match" at Spring Stampede because Piper is the biggest "switch hitter" in the business. (Oof!) Nash lets Rick beat on him for about two minutes until Konan comes in to halt the match via DQ. The rest of the NWO then join in on the post-match beating. Nash powerbombs Steiner, which brings out Doug Dellinger and two security guys. The NWO attack them, keeping them from slapping the cuffs on Nash. Ted DiBiase, who had disappeared, comes out with the Giant in tow. The show ends a full fives minutes over the usual time just as the Giant is stepping over the top rope to confront Nash. Next Monday: Bagwell vs. Luger. Next week: Nothing announced. Comments: I genuinely hate having my first expanded Thunder Recap ruined by such a god-awful show. I don't think a single match made it above the "mediocre" level. The show was also plagued with security problems, technical goofs and a generally annoying feel (made worse by their playing Hogan and Nash clips before and after half the commercials). The first ninety minutes were so bad that I actually went into the last half hour openly hostile in my expectations (something-no matter how strong my feelings about WCW are-I rarely ever do). The fireworks at the end came far to late to make up for the abysmally bad show which lead up to it. There've been too many installments of Thunder now for me to remember them all succinctly and clearly, which is why I can't really declare this the worst Thunder ever. I'm betting it's close, though.