This match on the WCW New Blood Rising pay-per-view in August 2000 was a triple threat to determine the number one contender for the WCW world title, featuring Goldberg, Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner. Everything about that should tell you that this was a hoss-fight - a stiff brawl with big power moves and huge men hitting each other like runaway trains. Nooope. Instead, what we got was a car crash: almost a literal one, given that we were told beforehand that Goldberg had been in a motorcycle accident. Throughout the event, the announcers (Mark Madden, Scott Hudson and Tony Schiavone, whose job was to help the storylines get over for the audience at home by ramping up kayfabe and maintaining poker faces at all times) would refer to events taking place as not part of the match or a shoot, using insider terms: apparently a great many things were occurring that werent part of the storyline, and were actual, non-kayfabled, real life events. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x48phv_new-blood-rising-2000-steiner-vs-na_sport Vince Russo, desperate for ratings, relevance and respect, had decided to make every other angle heading into the PPV a worked shoot. You know, to keep us Internet fans on the edge of our seats, wondering if we were seeing live something that the dirtsheets would be clucking over for months to come: the new Montreal Screwjob, or whatever. So many things going off script on one pay-per-view: WCWs terrible, terrible worked shoot storylines made the company out to be even more incompetent and haphazard than it actually was. Of course, all of this realness had precisely the opposite effect to the one intended. The reaction of the fans to all of this 'legit shooting' was a long, sustained eyeroll and snorting noise, a bit like this. When the triple threat finally arrived, Schiavone, Madden and Hudson had spent the preceding couple of hours insinuating that Goldberg wasnt showing up because hed been told to do the job for Kevin Nash again. Naturally, his music played a couple of times (because everyone knows that playing a wrestlers theme tune summons them like goblins from the Outer Dark) but at first he didnt appear. When Goldberg did show up, the match was underway. He then took part in a little back and forth action, before refusing to go up for Nashs powerbomb and leaving the ring, stalking off to the back again and dropping the f-bomb on Russo in a heated exchange as they passed each other on the ramp. Back in the ring, Nash was shown to be dumbfounded, trying to give the laboured impression that Goldberg had just gone into business for himself and screwed the booked finish. Incredibly, the announcers then began debating whether Nash and Steiner would now have to improvise a finish to the match, and then congratulating Steiner for doing the job and allowing Nash to get the booked win. No one knows what Russo was thinking whether he genuinely thought that viewers would believe that a shoot was actually occurring. The fans in attendance, deprived of that ridiculous commentary throughout New Blood Rising, must have been incredibly confused. Heres a little pro wrestling primer for you, Russo: no ones going to believe that a shoot is occurring if your commentary team keep talking about the matches like theyre smart marks running a Youtube show.
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