WCW: Heart and Soul

May 9th, 2004

From Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri

Attendance: 42,155

Announce Team: "The Professor" Mike Tenay and Bret "The Hitman" Hart




Joining Tony Schiavone, Don Callis and Maria Kanellis on tonight’s panel are special guests “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Macho Man” Randy Savage

On the Worldwide Live pre-show: The American Outlaws defeated Eric Priest and Masada, Shannon Moore defeated Trevor Rhodes and Samoa Joe defeated Rampage Brown.




The panel welcomed us to the show, and Randy Savage said he’d be scouting for talent for the team he’s putting together.


Steenerico vs. Calgary Bulldogs
I thought this was a solid enough way to open the show, with two rising young teams. Harry was the standout here; he’s come a long way, especially with how young he is. This was Steenerico’s night though; Generico got the duke on Harry for his team.

Savage left the panel after the match and joined Steenerico in the ring. He said he was impressed by them and wanted them to become the first two members of Team Madness, dig it? After a brief conversation, Steen and Generio shook his hand and accepted his offer. Randy looked great here, and hopefully he can help elevate these young guys by association.

Chris Jericho made his official return, walking into the building to a nice pop. He ran into his old friend Lance Storm along the way, and they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Jericho’s gimmick of a cool returning star, a guy who is coming back to his old stomping grounds to reassert himself and look cool while doing it, got a very good response.


Volador Jr. vs. TAKA (©) for the World Cruiserweight Championship
This was supposed to be a nice high spot filled bit of action, but it didn’t go quite as planned. Volador looked like he wasn’t having his best night to begin with, plus he and TAKA seemed to have some miscommunication with their timing. The match was okay, but nothing special. To no one’s surprise, TAKA got the clean win to retain his title.


Christopher Daniels vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (©) for the World Television Championship
This was a pretty good match; the best on the show to this point. The crowd is still getting introduced to Nakamura but the in ring work is there, and with how strong we’re putting him over the reactions should follow soon enough. Daniels did his job here, which was to do THE job and put the new guy over on his way out the door. Nakamura got a nice feather in his cap by cleanly retaining his title against the former Cruiserweight and tag team champion with a running knee strike to the face, and Daniels did the honors and can now go resurrect his Curry Man gimmick in New Japan.

Stacy Keibler took the departed Savage’s place on the panel, and she along with everyone else admitted she was impressed by Nakamura’s meteoric rise so far in WCW.

CM Punk was interviewed backstage by Becky Bayless. He worked without a script as usual and was phenomenal at it as he spoke from the heart about what being the champion meant to him, and told Mortis and Salvation to take their best shot because they were going to have to pry the title from his motionless fingers if they wanted it back.


The Destroyer vs. Bryan Danielson (©) for the United States Heavyweight Championship
This match was fine, and honestly both guys did great, but I didn’t design it to try and be a highlight of the show and it wasn’t. It was a pretty basic big man vs. little man match, with Bryan absorbing a beating but outwrestling his larger opponent en route to a successful title defense.


“Hold your horses there, sunshine.”




The returning Steven Regal came down before Bryan could leave, and after “applauding” his student for how far he’d come and referencing the very real mentoring he’d done a few years back, he gave him a parting message. “I taught you everything you know, Bryan, but it’s only a small sliver of everything that I know! Someday you just might find out!” Regal’s cocky wrestling machine gimmick got a very good reaction.

After Bryan left Regal issued an open challenge for anyone who wanted to come down and get a free wrestling lesson. The challenge was accepted by Chavo Guerrero Jr, who had been left out in the cold after losing a Mayhem qualifying match (well, by being in a three way match and not being involved in the fall anyway.)

Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Steven Regal
This impromptu match was pretty good, with both guys turning in a solid performance. The in-ring action was great, and the fans reacted decently enough. True to his word, Regal outwrestled Chavo and got the clean submission win with the Regal Stretch.

The panel brought on Torrie Wilson to discuss the Great American Bash on June 13th. The promotional campaign for the event features Torrie as the cover girl on the poster—something that clearly annoyed Keibler. (She was the star of this segment, incidentally.)

The Unnatural and Dusty Rhodes argued backstage, with Unnatural accusing Dusty of punishing him for his “previous life” and ensuring that he lost the world title last month by deliberately allowing Goldberg to sneak in and get involved in his title match against CM Punk. As that argument continued, Goldberg appeared out of nowhere and speared Unnatural to the ground! The former champion rolled around clutching at his ribs while Dusty ordered security to escort Goldberg, who still had not been cleared after his “concussion”, out of the building. Goldberg switched to a brute loner gimmick here, and it went okay.

The panel discussed the world title match. Tony and Piper believed Punk would retain, while Callis and Keibler predicted we’d have a new champion in Mortis.


Mortis vs. CM Punk (©) for the World Heavyweight Championship
There was an issue with psychology here, which I kind of expected. It was still a great match though, as both guys are excellent workers that work well together and the crowd was hot for all of the near falls and Punk’s comeback. One of the stories here was that with Enigma gone, Destroyer defeated and Unnatural still licking his wounds from Goldberg’s spear backstage, Mortis had to try and win this on his own. He had a great performance and almost won the title straight up, but Punk had the Flatliner well scouted, avoided it and got the tapout with the Second City Stretch about 22 minutes in.

The panel made their picks for the 30 man Mayhem match, our answer to the Royal Rumble (except eliminations occur by pin, submission and knockout instead of over the top rope.) Tony backed Rey Mysterio Jr, Piper liked the returning Chris Jericho, Callis supported big Sean O’Haire and Keibler naturally said it would be either one of the Jung Dragons.

Various men involved in the main event did rapid fire promos. Among the highlights were Eddie Guerrero, AJ Styles, King Corino, Brian Kendrick, Rey Mysterio Jr, the Deadly Alliance and the returning Chris Jericho.

The 30 Man Mayhem match, with the winner challenging for the World championship at the Great American Bash

Some of the big highlights from this match:

-The match itself had solid in-ring action but the crowd just didn’t stay with it the whole way through. I think part of the problem was that we didn’t have any really hot storylines running throughout this, so there weren’t too many moments of heightened reaction when rivals clashed. This was more about setting the table for the future as opposed to paying off ongoing rivalries, and the match itself suffered for it. We probably would have been better off putting this in the semi main event slot and allowing Punk and Mortis to close.

-Brian Kendrick had a major off night, which was disappointing considering he actually had a fairly significant role to play. Colt Cabana was off of his game too, but he wasn’t doing too much anyway. Funaki’s attempts to engage the crowd as a fun babyface did not go over well at all, but he’s only here short term so it shouldn’t matter too much going forward.

-Chris Jericho and Lance Storm both entered the match early. At times they worked together and at other times they engaged in some friendly technical wrestling competition. Both men had lengthy runs in the match, and Jericho in fact lasted longer than anyone all night before being taken out with a quick roll-up by Brian Kendrick in a bit of a surprise.

-Former world champion Rey Mysterio Jr. looked good in his effort to get back into the title picture. He took on all comers, recording more eliminations than anyone during the course of the match. He was eventually tag teamed by the Dangerous Alliance duo of Sean O’Haire and Shane Douglas en route to being eliminated. Curiously his ally Konnan did not make it over to save him from the pin despite seemingly being in position to do so.

-The Unnatural was still selling the ribs from Goldberg’s spear as he came out, and it led to a shorter stay than would have been expected from him before the opportunistic Eddie Guerrero eliminated him.

-The final four came down to babyfaces Matt Hardy and AJ Styles and the heel duo of King Corino and his protégé Prince Devitt. The heels double teamed and eliminated Hardy before turning their attention to AJ, who had the longest ring time of anyone left (and was second in the entire match behind only Jericho.) AJ fought against the odds despite his fatigue, and eliminated Devitt with the Styles Clash. But he didn’t even have a chance to turn back around before Corino hit him with a low blow (legal in this match with no DQs) and then delivered a piledriver to win the match.

Corino celebrated after the match, but AJ was in no celebrating mood. He angrily attacked Devitt, venting his frustrations on the double team effort he’d had to try and overcome by bouncing the Prince’s head off of the commentary table.









Elsewhere in the wrestling world:
New Japan ran their Wrestling Dontaku PPV. Riki Choshu threw up an absolute stinker of an IWGP title match, a 75 rated defense against Yoshihiro Takayama which was the worst match on the entire main show. He stunk up the ring while Steve Austin was MIA; genius. The silver lining was that the heavyweight title match was only the semi main event. Koji Kanemoto closed out the show with a 97 rated Junior Heavyweight title defense over Jushin Liger in the main event, which tied Yuji Nagata’s win over Dragon Kid for MOTN honors. Thanks largely to those two matches the show was given a 95 overall score, but Inoki needs to get that belt off of Riki Choshu in a hurry.

WWE made no attempt to extend the contracts of Trish, Lita of Jacqueline, but now they’ve brought Ivory back and are going to be using Emi Sakura on a per date arrangement. I have no clue what they’re doing with that women’s division up there.

So you’ll be seeing a major news update with the next post that was entirely AI-generated, but it’s led me down a path that’s going to be changing the way I run this. There really won’t be a huge difference in my presentation, but in-game it’ll be a big change. I will be creating more work for myself (not a HUGE amount, I hope, but there’s at least a little bit for sure.) I’m extremely excited about the possibilities it offers though, so I think it’s worth a try. If it doesn’t work out, it shouldn’t be a big deal to ditch it and go back to business as usual. But if it does work I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for me. Fingers crossed!

I’ll stop rambling about this now, especially since you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. (Well, you might have SOME idea if you’re part of the Nexus Discord…)


Thanks! I'm enjoying what you're doing with the AWA too.


This was more prophetic than you knew!

Great show. Corino Vs. Punk has dream match written all over it going forward. Loved the little tease of a potential Regal and Danielson encounter along with his impromptu match as well. Looking forward to see where things go from here

I'll be posting here for now on because your dynasty was the only thing I look at on GDS.

I'm feeling it now: this is going to be Corino's time. His match with Punk at the Bash should be a great one, but it's time for the King to take his crown.

Also I'm liking the direction with taking over New Japan. Even if you aren't planning on doing any further updates on them than what you previously were, I'm sure you will run it a lot better than the AI, and could run the WWE out of Japan altogether. Just so long as you don't do so well that you chase WCW out of there also!