It's been 14 years since the last-ever WCW PPV, "Greed," on March 18, 2001. At the same time that Nitro and Thunder were canceled by AOL/Time Warner, WCW presented a middling PPV centered on the old classic of Flair vs. Rhodes and a main event of Scott Steiner vs. Dallas Page for the WCW World Title.

Now, 14 years later, WWE is carrying out their version of The End of WCW. The story is centered on Sting debuting in WWE to seek justice against Triple H, whose character believes Sting just wants to take down his empire as revenge for WWE "winning the war" against WCW.

WCW Greed PPV Report
March 18, 2001
Jacksonville, Fla.
Report by Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

PWTorch VIP members can read Torch Newsletter #646 in the 2001 Torch Back-Issues covering what was happening in WCW at the time. Not a VIP Member? CLICK HERE to Go VIP.

Tony Schiavone & Scott Hudson introduced the show and announced that the WCW Title match would be "Falls Count Anywhere."

(1) Jason Jett pinned Kwee Wee at 12:16. Strong highspot match that offered well-executed moves, innovative if not sometimes spectacular offense by Jett, solid selling for this style match, and overall good pacing. The biggest compliment is that the crowd didn't care at the beginning of the match but was passionately into it halfway through and stayed that way until the end. The drawback for the match is the two wrestlers didn't have great charisma or presence. Jeff won with a Crash Landing. (***3/4)

(2) Elix Skipper & Kid Romeo pinned Rey Mysterio Jr. & Kidman when Romeo pinned Rey Jr. at 13:48. Despite Rey Jr. and Kidman's experience, this was a bit more herky-jerky than the opener, but the overall execution of the moves was probably better. Either way, it was a really fun early-card highspot fest. Romeo caught Rey Jr. in mid-air and drove him to the mat head-first with the Last Kiss for the win. Later Skipper & Romeo celebrated in an intentionally "Ambiguously Gay Duo" moment as they strapped the tag belts on each other from behind. (***3/4)

(3) Shawn Stasiak (w/Stacy Keibler, a/k/a Miss Hancock) pinned Bam Bam Bigelow at 6:10. Not good. Ended when Stacy threw Stasiak perfume which he sprayed at Bigelow's face. He then hit a neckbreaker and scored the pin. Stasiak's new ring entrance was sharp by WCW standards. (3/4*)

(4) Lance Storm & Mike Awesome beat Hugh Morrus & Konnan when Awesome pinned Morrus at 11:45. Awesome missed several spots badly, Konnan's timing was off, and Storm and Morrus didn't do enough to make up for it. In the end, Storm blocked Morrus's No Laughing Matter; Awesome then gave Morrus a running Awesome Bomb for the pin. (3/4*)

(5) Sugar Shane Helms pinned Chavo Guerrero Jr. at 13:55 to capture the WCW Cruiserweight Title. They built slowly - perhaps too slowly - and never quite paid off with enough hot action at the end. An entertaining match with some nice near falls at the end, but a disappointment. Helms finished Chavo with the Vertibreaker. (***)

(6) Sean O'Haire & Chuck Palumbo beat Totally Buffed (Lex Luger & Buff Bagwell) at 0:52. Buff and Lex did smarmy mic work before the match. Palumbo set up Buff and Lex for successive Seanton Bombs and scored quick three counts with a double pin. Buff sold the move for several minutes and had to be helped from the ring. (NR)

(7) The Cat (w/Miss Jones) pinned Kanyon at 11:21. Forgettable match. In the end, Miss Jones kicked Kanyon, then Cat hit a solid looking Feliner for the pin. As Cat and Jones danced, Kanyon ran in and gave Cat the Feliner. Smooth made the save. (*3/4)

(8) Booker T pinned Rick Steiner at 7:23. Steiner fit two boring chinlocks into a lethargic seven minute match. Shane Douglas hit Steiner with his cast. Booker gave a stunned Steiner a Book End for the win. (1/2*)

(9) Dusty & Dustin Rhodes beat Ric Flair & Jeff Jarrett when Dustin pinned Flair at 9:57. Flair wore street clothes and dress shoes. The crowd ate up the spots with Dusty's bionic elbows on Flair and Jarrett. In the end, both heels went for simultaneous figure-fours on the Rhodes', but the Rhodes' kicked Flair and Jarrett into each other. Dustin then gave Flair a sloppy roll-up. After the match Dusty shoved his ass in Jarrett's face as per the match stips, although it should have been Flair. (**1/4)

(10) Scott Steiner defeated Dallas Page at 14:17. At 11:00 Page had Steiner pinned after a Diamond Cutter, but Rick Steiner interfered. Steiner won with his third Recliner attempt as a very bloody Page passed out. It was an otherwise decent stand-up brawl with some hokey planted fan spots with Steiner. (**3/4)

***

Greed PPV Roundtable Reviews

- Wade Keller, Torch editor (6.5)

The opening two matches were exciting and entertaining from start to finish. The next two were bad. The Cruiserweight Title match was a disappointment, but a good match nonetheless. The tag title match was fun to watch, although I was looking forward to counting exactly how many flat-back bumps Lex Luger bothered to take, and whether he used three or four different offensive moves during the match. The Cat vs. Kanyon was certainly watchable, but the psychology was a mess.

Kanyon had Cat down for a near fall after a flurry of offense, then went to a chinlock. That made no sense. If you have someone almost beat, go for the jugular, don't choose to rest at that moment. With Cat, though, the options are limited.

Rick Steiner is so undeserving of a major role in a wrestling company now, and his PPV match showed why once again. Two chinlocks in seven minutes? He's just phoning it in and wears an expression on his face that says, "I'm getting paid either way."

The Dusty & Dustin vs. Flair & Jarrett match was fun. Flair and Jarrett did a good job showing ass figuratively for the Rhodes. Dusty literally showed ass later. The storyline with Dusty eating a bunch of burritos throughout the night in anticipation of using the fart strategy to win the match was cute, but it was a letdown when he didn't actually use flatulence as an offensive weapon during the match. The match deserved a campy spot like that. It was extremely fitting to have Flair vs. Dusty on what is the last WCW PPV under Turner/Time Warner ownership (and perhaps the last PPV ever) considering their feud has been such a big part of WCW throughout the last 20 years.

The main event was a good effort. Page always works hard and usually effectively so. The spots with the kid with the crutches and the two fans on opposite sides of the aisle with the exact same obscure foreign object to hand to Page were campy, and the "Falls Count Anywhere" stip was just an excuse to cover for Steiner's ailing back. Still, they managed to squeeze a decent match out of the situation. Page's bloodied pass-out finish bordered on melodramatic, but only because it's Page. It was fitting symbolism, too, for WCW which in essence has bled so much red the past couple of years, it's about to pass away, too.

- Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist (0.5)

What a disappointment.

I mean, here's this promotion whose entire endless history is pockmarked with one unprofessional incident after another and it's their last night. For those of us who followed them year after year, show after show, P.N. News after Shockmaster, Evad Sullivan after Butcher, Nash after Russo, WCW owed us some self-indulgent humiliating nonsense to remember them by.

Where was the bitter rant from the overpaid has-been millionaire? Where was the goodbye speech by the people's champion DDMe, thanking all the people who made him the great star he is today, plus his wife, Jake the Snake, Dusty, his fans, and most of all the man who made our sport what it is today - Vincent McMahon. Why didn't one of the Steiners jump in the crowd and beat up that Booker T fan? Why weren't either Tony Schiavone or Scott Hudson drunk out of their minds? Where was the twelve letter magic word the censor "accidentally" lets by? Where was the "fitness model" without her top? Where was the wrestler without his trunks?

The one night everybody should have acted up, these clowns have to act professionally enough to make another boring show. The young guys were good in the first hour. The veterans were awful. The highlight, for the fourth straight decade, was Dusty Rhodes versus Ric Flair.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

- Jason Powell, now of Prowrestling.net (6.0)

As good and bad as one could expect from a lame duck show that was written by a man who is still optimistically catering to the group he believes will end up buying the company. To WCW's credit, the majority of the first two hours of the show looked like anything but the company's final PPV. Younger wrestlers were featured (and in some cases had their new personas forwarded), new cruiserweight tag champs were crowned, and the heavyweight tag champs absolutely squashed Lex Luger & Buff Bagwell. How fitting that WCW was completely shot by the time they finally got around to pushing the younger wrestlers that were featured during the first half of the show.

The show's final hour was terrible and was yet another classic example of why WCW is in the position it is. Ric Flair's return to the ring could have been a money-drawing event. But not only was the match not hyped around Flair's return, it booked as a comedy match that had campy Ed Ferrara's fingerprints all over it. It's sad that Ferrara was so washed up by the time he came to WCW that he now has to resort to borrowing storylines from his predecessors in the WWF. Dusty eating burritos? At least Schiavone seemed to enjoy the humor.

Notes: The Shawn and Stacy show? If this is a good example of what the Fusient era would have brought, good riddance... If WCW really wanted to kick off the pay-per-view with a bang they should have dished out the extra $500 it would have taken to bring in Kid Kash to work against Jason Jett (EZ Money). After all, Kwee Wee spent a lot of his time trying to mimic several of the moves used by Kash and Jett when the two worked against each other in ECW... The highlight of the show was clearly O'Haire & Palumbo squashing the bitch twins, Totally Buffed. Now if someone could just explain why WCW chose to renew Bagwell's contract... Which is more fitting: The fact that WCW is so poorly managed that it didn't even bother to promote its final pay-per-view as such, or the fact that Eric Bischoff, Vince Russo, and many of the brand names who put the company into this position were at home collecting paychecks instead of appearing at the show?

- Pat McNeill, Torch columnist (6.0)

Best Match was Animals vs. Romeo & Skipper. Worst match was Cat vs. Kanyon. Here's a little hint for those of you in our readership who aspire to run a national wrestling promotion. If your lead babyface is running around quoting Elton John lyrics, that's probably not a good sign for your company's long term health.

It was great to see a whole WCW pay-per-view filled with guys busting their asses. The bad news was that the guys were busting their asses in the hopes of getting a good match to put on the tapes they're sending up to Jim Ross. The opening 35 minutes or so was as solid as anything on WCW television for the past year. Kwee Wee showed some real fire, while poor Jason Jett has to feel like the Rain God from the Douglas Adams books (or Pariah from Crisis on Infinite Earths, if you're Bruce Mitchell). The opener had some incredible spots, but suffered from the Too Many Finishing Moves problem that you seem to get whenever Johnny Ace is around. Ditto with the Cruiserweight Tag thingy, which gets an easy four stars from this corner.

It's hard to pick apart this show. Cat vs. Kanyon was a clustermess that should never be attempted again. The Team Canada versus Two Guys in a Pizza Place match was pretty disappointing. The Buff Cam skits and the Dusty Rhodes All You Can Eat Burrito Buffet sketches were reminders of just how the hell WCW burned through $65 million last year to get themselves into this terrible mess. And the Booker T vs. Woof Woof match was bowling shoe ugly, with a hideous finish tacked on just so Bischoff's hunting buddy could avoid doing a clean job to the Real Number One Face in the promotion.

But for the most part, this was well done. Any time you squash Luger and Bagwell for a good cause, my heart sings with joy. Shane and Chavo had a damn good match. Having Dusty Rhodes make his return to the ring in Florida was an excellent choice, as the fans popped for the first in-ring faceoff between Dusty and Slick Ric like they popped for nothing else on the card. Dusty and Ric are no longer great wrestlers, but they are still excellent workers who gave the crowd exactly what they wanted.

If WCW is truly done at the end of the month, they went out on the right note. Page and Steiner's match wasn't spectacular, but it showcased the strength of both men, and it was booked just about right. Given how awful some of WCW's pay-per-views have been over the last couple of years, they should be proud of how this one went down.

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