WCW Monday Nitro, Des Moines, IA
Request via Ko-fi. This is something I’d completely forgotten about until I put it on. Jim Duggan had been diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 1998, but was able to return in 1999, promising to have more impact in the next few years than he had in the 20 before. This was, you know, not going to happen; Duggan’s last flirtation with anything near the top of the card had come in ’94, really, but he was a good guy for WCW to have on its roster to work the weekend shows, get a studio crowd fired up, and occasionally pop in on Nitro or whatever as a credible name for someone to face, for instance when he would to his best to sandbag a young Giant’s chokeslam but Tall Paul said, “Nah, big man, you’re gonna go up here.”
Goldberg is in the middle of a truly ill-advised heel turn that nobody wanted or bought into. Duggan came back again at the top of this show and asked to face Goldberg to keep Goldberg from getting a bye into some stupid ass thing or other that this chaotic disaster of a company had put together; I don’t rightly recall and I’m not bothering to look it up because it doesn’t matter, WCW has been dead for just about 21 years now.
Pre-match, Duggan is seen backstage with his crying wife, telling her not to worry, go kiss the girls and tell them he loves them, and walking off shouting, “I can beat him! I can beat him! I can beat him!” The Hacksaw wants to be back in the mix.
Before Goldberg’s entrance, The Cat comes out and reminds Duggan there is no interference allowed. He was the WCW commissioner or President or whatever. Big Ernest bangs the 2×4 from ringside, which Tony tries to take objection to, but, like, why? It’s a weapon. Mark Madden screeches and squeals and tries to figure out emotion. He fails, as he always would.
They’re trying really hard to push “Soldberg” as a new insulting nickname the fans have for Goldberg. There’s also this great sign which explains to you what an equals sign is:
The big lads, obviously, are throwing big ol’ soupbones immediately. There is nothing pretty about what they’re doing here, they are just straight up brawling, and it’s the most real energy that Duggan has shown in years, just taking it to Goldberg as much as he can. What’s he gonna do otherwise, out-finesse him?
Tony Schiavone deeply overestimates how much time has passed when he says, “the first two or three minutes of this thing.” Realistically, Tony may have just hoped that two or three minutes had gone by, not because this specifically is bad (it’s not), but because he wanted the show to end.
Then comes the desperation Heel Move, where Goldberg punches Duggan in his lone remaining kidney. Schiavone and Madden trying extremely hard to get this over.
The crowd are into this, more or less, in part because it’s Des Moines which wasn’t a regular major TV stop for anyone, and in part because whatever else you can say, people loved Jim Duggan. They truly did.
Goldberg is also getting a half-decent heel reaction here. Duggan does catch him with the big … scoop slam, then wants to set for the three-point stance, but it’s time wasted, and he turns around to a Goldberg spear. Hudson, Madden, and Schiavone are going absolutely insane over how Mickey Jay should stop the match because clearly that spear has devastated Duggan’s remaining kidney. This is part of what Russo’s influence — and the return of a half-interested Bischoff with him at this point did not help, either — brought, and it’s something Russo has never understood and will completely refuse to understand until he’s dead. The commentators are going so over the top that it makes what could be a legitimately good, emotional story seem like a fucking joke.
Post-match, Goldberg goes super desperate by repeatedly punching Duggan in his one kidney. “No! No! Please, no! He’s going to end the man’s life!” Russo WCW featured a lot of people talking about how they were going to kill someone or how someone was being killed. And of course they have Duggan bite the pill and “have internal bleeding.” Stretcher out. Duggan’s crying wife runs down to the ring. It’s a black day in WCW, apparently.
After a break, Duggan is loaded into an ambulance and Kevin Nash says, “This shit’s going to stop, man.” He was right. This shit would stop in about nine months.
This is a thing that could be really good if it weren’t for the Russo-ness of it all, particularly the commentary direction. Duggan did a great job selling it with his facial expressions and stuff, Goldberg was suitably ruthless, and you can imagine a Jim Ross or a motivated/interested Tony Schiavone calling this really well, flanked by a color commentator who wasn’t just shrieking and screaming. Jerry Lawler gets a lot of flak as a commentator for acting like a bozo, and yeah, he generally did, it is still pro wrestling, but in “serious moments” that called for it, Lawler could switch it off and be good. Even Bobby Heenan, who was by trade an over the top WWF style exaggeration commentator, could do that. Mark Madden might have been able to, I’m sure Scott Hudson could have, but that wasn’t what WCW asked of its commentators. They needed to be loud, they needed to be overblown. There is a line with that sort of thing that Russo never understood, because Russo does not understand wrestling at all, because Russo does not like wrestling, and either never did or by the time he was in a position of power, never could again.
I didn’t hate this, I just had a lot of reaction to it. With moderately different presentation, this is really good and a classic TV angle. Instead, they goofballed it into something you’d forget in 20 minutes.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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