I've been watching through WCW's 1998 broadcasts, and digging in specifically to some of the smaller programs (worldwide, pro, and saturday night.)
I've talked before about how watching Nitro and Thunder from 98, especially if you're watching them back to back, makes it more and more apparent how much WCW was coming apart at the seems.
(This is a short thread)
The two big flagship WCW shows rarely had a clean finish in the first 3 months of 1998 unless it was a Goldberg squash match. Like, per episode we're talkin 1 - 2 decent matches in 2 - 3 hours.
In my memory, I mostly watched Nitro and Thunder when I was a kid, but there are very few moments from these episodes that I remember seeing, even though this was peek wrestling years for me.
I remember the big storylines. I remember some of the pay-per-views (mostly we watched 'em on VHS recorded by one of my dad's coworkers) but I'm only remembering one episode of nitro out of 4. (Thunder has fared a little better. I'm remembered a lot more of those, but still fewer than I would expect so far into 1998.)
My best explanation is that I'm still in the school year, and possibly also in soccer season (I don't remember when we played soccer, honestly, I assume it was spring?) so I wouldn't have been around much on Mondays.
Thursday's would have been a lot easier.
But now that I've added the mid-card shows, I'm feeling a lot more at home.
I don't remember sitting down on Saturdays to watch wrestling. I didn't really think I'd seen a lot of Saturday Night.
But I was clearly wrong. I must have watched this stuff religiously, because I remember a lot of these matches Viscerally.
I'm tempted to go back and watch all the mid card shows for 96 and 97, although I know I wouldn't have seen any of those except for a very little bit of Saturday Night as a kid.
But sometime towards the end of 97, I clearly added Saturday Night to my routine.
But anyway, watching WCW Saturday Night is super refreshing in light of having watched so much Nitro and Thunder lately.
These matches are classic southern style wrestling. The competitors are mostly mid-card and rookie talent. Nearly everyone in the ring is a good performer, or is paired with an absolute Veteran.
It's just much better wrestling, with a much smaller focus on the overarching storylines. (Not none, just less.) And, frankly, it's also better announcing.
There aren't as many big names on an episode of Saturday Night (it's the show where the big names went to rot) but they pull in at least a few main eventers for the main event.
Anyway, I've only been able to find some really mediocre VHS rips of this era of Saturday Night.
I don't know if anything else exists, even, but if it does I've been unable to hunt it down so far.
Considering that I would have mostly watched this in OTA terrestrial broadcast, I don't mind the low quality so much.
LMAO, Scott Steiner can't cut a fucking promo.
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