WCW Worldwide - Introduction
- The first show I ever recapped was WCW Worldwide. Everything is WCW's
fault - that's still a valid mantra.
- WCW Worldwide was at one time a WCW tool to push storylines, but had
long sense stopped being one when I started recapping it in 1997.
- While I was recapping, it experience more changes. One big change of
format and a lot of little ones.
- Before 9/98: Worldwide is taped every four months at the in Florida.
Each day over about a week, they fill the seats with (hopefully
non-wrestling) vacationing people, and *treat* them to a couple dozen
non-competitive matches, mostly filled with guys who were in mid-card
or lower positions . The fans jobs were to cheer when asked and
hopefully not fall asleep. The first few tapings, they instructed
people when to cheer and when to boo. All these matches would be
tapped and reassembled to air each week, with newer (but a week behind
the live shows) commentary to hype recent action. They'd also tape
short interviews to hype upcoming house shows and PPVs.
- The good part about this format is that occasionally a really
good match would slip through and be worth all the other pointless
stuff.
- Also, you'd learn jobbers finishers quiet well.
- Because of the delay between taping and airing, things like
face/heel status or hold/not holding belts would not be accurate
on the show and they'd have to try to cover it up.
- They'd never do a good job of it, of course.
- The best match I saw in this format (that I can remember off the
top of my head) was the Rey Mysterio Jr. vs
Ultimo Dragon match
- There was a Rick Fuller vs Lizmark Jr. match that sticks in
my head, just because it worked out and it could only happen
on Worldwide.
- After 9/98, they changed around the format to fit in a lot more
recaps
- The first half of the show was dedicated to recapping footage
from the major shows, with the announcers introducing from
announce desk.
- Week and half old footage, still - they never could get
Worldwide on the same timeline as the live shows and I never quite
figured out why.
- The WWF manages to do it but then WCW couldn't manage to do
a lot of things the WWF had no problem with.
- The last half of it was matches still left in the vault from the
Florida tapings.
- Eventually those ran out, so they used extra matches from WCW
Saturday Night.
- And eventually WCWSN got cancelled, so they just made the whole
hour recaps.
- Worldwide was my first show recapping, so there's that. And
they'd did have cool stuff happen occasionally - Mighty Molly
(Holly or whatever name she's using if I haven't updated this
lately) getting her first big win and (more or less a job) was definitely
one of them - so there's that. And the cool matches.
- But when I look back at now, there's so much frustration - about
what WCW did do but should not have, about what WCW could have
done and choose not to - that the fun I had is overwhelemed. And
this is six months after the last show.
- I did like it, I did have hope, and there were parts that were
really fun (the whole Re-Enforcers run) and I remember wishing
it'd go on when it didn't anymore, but there's a lot of disappointment
in there too.
- And a lot of typos - I didn't get spell checking in my HTML
program till way too late.
- It is a cool way to look back and see how much I've changed
and all that was left behind.
- Anyway, if you're wondering about the formatting, it's DDT
Digest style.
- They're the only I know who use this bullet point format
- It's always made sense to me, though it does look a little weird
compared to everything else.
- It does avoid the long no break paragraph that the usual way
runs into, every so often.