10 Worst WCW ‘On A Pole’ Matches
1. Booker T Vs. Jeff Jarrett - Nitro (Oct 2, 2000)
Object atop: a coal miner's glove, a blow-up sex doll, a framed picture of Scott Hall, and the WCW World Heavyweight title.
Top billing must go to this incongruous comedy affair masquerading as a WCW World Heavyweight title bout. Elements of comedy are fine, at that level; The Rock's verbal theatrics throughout his legendarily brutal I Quit match with Mankind at the '99 Royal Rumble added a blackly comic texture to its palette.
But mostly, proper title matches are, or should be, serious business. No concessions should be made to unfunny gags about coal miner's gloves ("Hey, remember when this company was equally dire and less profligate?") and blow-up dolls, two of the four items housed in the four mystery boxes above atop the poles. It was gigantic, unfunny in-joke. The third contained within it a framed picture of Scott Hall, who had departed the company under a cloud of personal issues. Booker T's expression in the header image says the proverbial all: this was ugly, sneering stuff deserving of jaded contempt. The performers treated the title about as seriously as Vince Russo did; after taking an ostensibly devastating piledriver through the announce desk, Jarrett opted to recover by taking a sip of bottled water.
As too often happened - but not quite enough to convince Russo not to book Pole matches every other f*cking week - one of the boxes fell from the pole under the slightest duress. Later in the match, Jarrett didn't require water to recover from the top tier of Booker's arsenal. He simply no-sold it, but that was okay - a comedy guest from the Howard Stern show, Beetlejuice, arrived on the scene to even the odds.
This allowed Booker to reach out and grab the box housing the title - which promptly fell out of it. Ring announcer Dave Penzer had to hand him the gold.