…continued from page three
The Monday night wars segment is a complete hit piece on the era (some of it justified but not all of it). They say the title changed hands frequently (true) and featured many dubious champions (and show clips of Jeff Jarrett, Sid Vicious, Vince Russo, DDP, and David Arquette) but what is insane is that while they are talking about "dubious champions" they show Goldberg, Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, and Sting as well and talk about how the championship barely managed to survive. Now it’s on to the WWE era. Booker T and DDP got more time than Goldberg did. Insane.
The invasion never happened either (I’d like to write that one out of history too). Chris Jericho one day just became the undisputed champion.
They explain the split of the belts in this way: WWE created two brands- Raw and Smackdown. Brock Lesnar (yes, mentioned and shown briefly) took the WWE title to SmackDown and Eric Bischoff awarded Triple H the World title on Raw. Then we get the next seven years summed up, no kidding, by this: "The next seven years featured many world champions." They show clips of Edge, Randy Orton, and Chris Jericho.
There is a fairly significant segment on Rey Mysterio’s time as world champion. Even though he was booked like a total loser he gets more face time than Bill Goldberg, Vader, and Sting combined. Of course John Cena gets a couple minutes.
Over all there is a LOT of history glossed over but what can you do when summing up over 100 years in one hour? There is some revisionist history but most of it is writing WCW out of history (who can blame them really?). Overall, the biography segment gets a B+ from me. Had it been 30 minutes longer and not been so ridiculous about the WCW era it might have gotten an A. It was better than expected but lots of gaffs. Still, largely it was better than I figured it would be.
Besides the documentary section the following matches are included (I have not watched them yet):
Disk 1:
Pat O’Connor vs. Buddy Rogers (1961) (I’ve never seen it before)
Gene Kiniski vs. Dory Funk, Jr. (1969)
Jack Brisco vs. Terry Funk (1975)
Harley Race vs. Dusty Rhodes (1979)
Ric Flair vs. Magnum T.A. (1985 not a title change from AWA Superclash. No idea why it’s on here)
Ric Flair vs. Sting (1990)
Disk 2:
Ric Flair vs. Scott Steiner (1991 also not a title change)
Lex Luger vs. Barry Windham (1991 the famous "We want Flair" match)
Vader vs. Ron Simmons (1992)
Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair (1994)
Vader vs. Ricky Steamboat (1993 not a title change)
Sting vs. Hulk Hogan (1998 where Hogan got the title back, they didn’t include the Starrcade screwed up finish match)
Hulk Hogan vs Bill Goldberg (1998)
Jeff Jarrett vs. Booker T (2000)
The Rock vs. Chris Jericho (2001)
Disk 3:
Triple H vs. Rob Van Dam (2002- Van Dam is never mentioned in the documentary)
Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels (2004)
Kurt Angle vs. The Undertaker (2006)
Rey Mysterio vs. Randy Orton (2006)
Batista vs. Undertaker vs. Edge (2007)
John Cena vs. Chris Jericho (2008)
Jeff Hardy vs. Edge (2009)
