Thunder Results July 8th, 1998. Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours+. Location: Birmingham, Alabama. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Lee Marshall. Still photos of World Champion Goldberg are shown. More stills are shown as the announcers hype the show. They then play a pretaped interview with J.J. Dillon, who announces that the Bash at the Beach PPV card has been changed.  Curt Hennig has issued a challenge to Goldberg for a title shot on Sunday. Dillon says Goldberg accepts, so that match is on. The previously planned tag team match involving those two will now be a singles match between Kevin Greene and the Giant. Dillon also announces that the status of Goldberg's U.S. Title is being discussed by the Championship Committee and that an announcement will be made sometime in the near future. Tonight's main event will feature Hennig facing Diamond Dallas Page. More stills from Goldberg's title win are shown. Tony Schiavone then interviews Curt Hennig. Hennig says that since his title shot this Sunday takes precedence, there's no way he's facing DDP tonight. He says he's going to win the title back for the NWO and "Hollywood" Hogan. Rick Rude is supposedly off somewhere with the NWO's lawyers working on getting Hennig excused from the match tonight. SHIMA NABUNAGA/TOKYO MAGNUM vs. PUBLIC ENEMY They're finally spelling "Tokyo" right. A few minutes of generic tag team action leads to the P.E. putting Nabunaga through two stacked tables at ringside. The pin follows. Tokyo Magnum tries to dance to the P.E.'s theme music, but they beat him up. They are, in turn, jumped by Alex Wright and Disco Inferno. When Magnum tries to dance for them they also beat him up. This whole angle is just so ... gay. Bash at the Beach promo #1: clips from news and sports shows mentioning Rodman and Malone's involvement in the PPV. ERNEST "THE CAT" MILLER vs. VILLANO IV Are they televising dark matches now? Villano dominates the early parts of this one with some really weak looking offense. The match eventually leads up to a switch between Villano IV and his identical partner Villano V. It doesn't work, though, as Miller is able to land a flying kick off the turnbuckles and get the pin. Schiavone interviews Eddie Guerrero. Eddie accepts Chavo Guerrero's challenge for a "Hair vs. Hair" match at the PPV. Early in the interview he congratulates Bill Goldberg on his big title win. Later he tells Chavo that he's going to shave him bald because "nobody likes bald people!" You do the math on that one. Schiavone interviews DDP. Same-old, same-old: "JACKED!" this and "BANG!" that. JUDO SUWA vs. JUVENTUD GUERRERA A good match for the two or three minutes it lasts. Kidman of the Flock comes out, at which point Guerrera gets the quick win with the Juvi Driver. The Flock members then jump him, holding him down as Kidman delivers the Seven/Shooting-Year/Star-Itch/Press. What is the Flock's interest in Guerrera? I realize he's "run afoul" of them in the past, but seriously, what is their fascination with this four foot tall Mexican? BatB promo #2: Chavo vs. Eddie. BatB promo #3: Hogan/Rodzilla/Malone/DDP. Schiavone interviews Steve "Mongo" McMichael. During the interview they show a clip of an old Arn Anderson interview from the 1995 Fall Brawl PPV. Mongo claims that Arn is the equal of Ric Flair, and the driving force behind the Four Horsemen. Mongo again pleads for Arn to consider reforming the Horsemen. Thunder Ringside Release: "Something About Mary." BatB promo #4: the entire Hogan/Rodzilla/Malone/DDP saga. STEVIE RAY vs. KONNAN Ugly, though thankfully short match. Stevie Ray is DQ'ed when he hits Konnan with a chair. Booker T. comes out to prevent any further chair shots. The two brothers banter back-and-forth about who has changed and how. BatB promo #5: Booker T. vs. Bret Hart. Curt Hennig is shown in the back on the phone with Rick Rude trying to weasel his way out of the match with DDP tonight. Rude is supposed to fax him some kind of legal release which will get him pulled from the match. RAVEN/HORACE (w/ Lodi) vs. SATURN/KANYON Fast paced and chaotic match which I, speaking just for myself, wasn't interested in. The action was non-stop, spilling in and out of the ring. Nobody sold anything for more than five seconds until the end. Saturn pulls a table out from under the ring. (Note: if you saw Nitro on Monday you saw Saturn have loads of trouble pulling the table out then, because the legs hooked on something underneath the ring. Here the table was placed bottom-facing-up, so that problem wasn't repeated.) He lays Raven on it, intending to send him through it with an elbowdrop off the top turnbuckle. As he's perched on the top Lodi throws a white powder in his eyes. At the same time Horace whacks Kanyon with a stop sign, pulls Raven off the table, then sets Kanyon in his place. Saturn, blinded by the powder, misses the switch and comes off anyway, nailing his partner. Again the table doesn't break as it should--only one set of legs give out. Kanyon is rolled into the ring and Raven scores the pin. I've said this often before and I'll say it one last time: this whole feud I don't care about involves a jobber I don't care about who unmasked in a way I didn't care about; a mid-carder I don't care about who did a face turn I didn't care about; battling another mid-carder who I don't care about who leads a stable I don't care about--the feud coming about due to circumstances they've never explained logically, thus I've never bothered to care. I don't care how "extreme" they try to make these matches, they're never going to hook me at any emotional level deeper than "look ... he hit him with a stop sign ... again." BatB promo #6: Raven vs. Saturn. Wasn't this supposed to be a "Triangle Match" also involving Kanyon? STEVE MCMICHAEL vs. RICK FULLER I said the Stevie Ray/Konnan match above was ugly? No, THIS match was ugly. Mongo, whose gut is getting as big as Soldier Field in Chicago, looks like a sack of rocks when he moves in the ring. Fuller displays all the skills of a young Terry Bollea. Mongo gets the quick win with the Tombstone Piledriver. BatB promo #7: same as promo #1 above. They highlight what happened between Chris Jericho and Dean Malenko on Monday. The match between the two scheduled for the PPV has been scrapped because Malenko has been suspended. Jericho comes out and promises the fans he will be at the PPV anyway, even though there's no match scheduled for him. There's one small point about all this that makes no sense. Dillon told the two on Monday that if either man touched the other they would be suspended and the match canceled. Why didn't Jericho just hit Malenko? Why go to all the trouble of baiting Malenko into getting suspended? Answer: so Jericho can be set up with a "surprise" opponent when he shows up at the PPV--most likely Rey Mysterio, Jr. Dillon's threat of suspension should have been made solely to Malenko. Then the whole angle makes sense. CHRIS JERICHO vs. ULTIMO DRAGON Finally a decent match. A great match, actually. The two pull out a lot of great moves, with each finding new ways to escape from moves that should be familiar to each other given the numerous times they've fought. Jericho pulls out a great, almost upset finish when he turns a huracanrana attempt into the Lion Tamer--this after both men escaped from the other's finishers at least once each. After the match Jericho roughs up the referee, which earns him a fine according to Mike Tenay (who had replaced Lee Marshall at about the halfway mark of the show). Schiavone interviews Kevin Greene. BatB promo #8: same as promo #3 above. BatB promo #9: in-depth look at Dennis Rodman. DIAMOND DALLAS PAGE vs. CURT HENNIG (w/ Vincent) No match. Halfway to the ring some guy runs out and hands Hennig a piece of paper. This is apparently that release Rick Rude was supposed to fax him. Hennig makes the ring announcer read it. It states that (through no reasons specifically outlined) Hennig doesn't have to wrestle. Vincent then jumps DDP. Hennig joins in, gets a kick in the gut for his troubles, and watches from the mat as DDP takes out Vincent with a Diamond Cutter. Hennig then stands at ringside looking confused as Goldberg's music starts playing. Fireworks go off as Tony Schiavone yells "we're outta time!" BatB promo #10: same as promo #4 above. Next Monday: Hogan vs. Goldberg. The Encore. Next week: Thunder returns to Thursday and will be a special edition. Details should be announced next Monday on Nitro. Comments: I'm not sure how to judge this show. They did offer one very good match which I credit them for. Other than that, though, this one stank. The whole thing was a two hour infomercial for the upcoming PPV. They did well outlining the whole card for the PPV, so in that respect it did it's job. Still, this wasn't a show I enjoyed watching for the most part, and--one match aside--it was one I could have easily missed and not regretted one bit. At some point in the show they announced that next week on Nitro we'll be seeing the Goldberg/Hogan match again in its entirety. Hey, it was good, but it wasn't THAT good! I almost laughed when they showed only still photos tonight instead of actual footage. Who are they kidding? Probably twice as many people saw that match than saw this show here tonight. Thunder will be preempted by the "Goodwill Games" on TBS coming up in two weeks. Therefore next week's show is supposed be some kind of special. Rumors are that it will be a "Best Of" clip show, either running three hours in length with a replay, or an entire six hours in length! The WCW tour schedule on their website lists next Thursday's card in Oakland, CA as being on TBS, so we'll see. My gut feeling following Monday was that Goldberg was going to lose the title back to Hogan next Monday in a rematch. Now I'm not so sure. I now see them holding off on the rematch until the Road Wild PPV in August. That way Goldberg gets to rack up a few title defenses along the way, making his title win not seem like a fluke. Hogan only has to spend four or five weeks without the belt, and it's probably safe to assume that winning it back, and breaking Goldberg's streak, is Hogan's "reward" for dropping the title to him in the first place. Make it a screwy finish involving the Giant and/or Hennig and Goldberg gets to save some face in the course of the loss. WCW can then resume their long charted course of big money PPV matches between Hogan, Kevin Nash and Bret Hart. It was chic for WWF critics to trash them this week for not delivering their announced main event on RAW. I hope those same critics are fair and trash WCW here also. In defense of WCW I would point out that they actually ran an angle explaining why the match didn't happen. I'd also point out that the WWF did the same, explaining the Undertaker's "absence" by him being dressed as Kane. (The only loose thread they left was "where was Kane?", which they may or may not address next week.) The Goldberg tease was a bit much, though, and I can imagine the holy hell that would have been raised had the WWF done the same with Steve Austin at the end of RAW, teasing his arrival with his theme music, then cutting away before he came out. (Austin would obviously have had to have been absent from the announcer's desk in such a scenario.) Of course this was only Thunder, which we all know is not as important as Nitro, so I won't mind if the critics cut it some slack. Most of them probably weren't even watching anyway, if Thunder's ratings last week are any judge.