jayden

enjoyed the show, i liked most of it and thought the nWo/sting segment was given the time it deserved. only thing i didn't like was sting talking. through this period a huge part of the sting character was his silence. his indifference, never knowing what he was going to do, which side he was on, where he was coming from, and then beginning to tear through the nWo. not that i think you should just mirror what happened in real life, but some things i think they just got right and would be silly to change, and that was one of them. have sting talking like that, saying the things you did in the promo and you just have a guy wearing black and white and looking like eric draven for no reason. something wcw found out later on when they tried to mess around with the sting character too much. he can't be the same old sting, just in a different costume, it just doesn't work.

other than that, liked the show. Can't wait to see Shamrock, liking Piper/Hogan, thought the Dungeon destroying Arn's car was cool and exactly the sort of angle they'd have gone with back then so all in all I thought the show was good and helped build some current storylines well.

enjoyed the two smaller shows. on Saturday Night it was good to see Sasaki on the show, and getting a win. I liked Onoo's run there bringing in the Japanese guys so good to see you're doing something there.

I didn't like Public Enemy getting a win though, especially over the Faces of Fear. Largely because Public Enemy were about as talented as my Mum, something which was quickly found out as soon as they left ECW and the booking of Heyman. Meng and the Barbarian were dominating monsters in that period, and played the characters really well. they'd got pretty over and put on much better matches then than people gave them credit for so to see them getting beat by Public Enemy wasn't something I enjoyed at all.

On Main Event I loved seeing Devon Storm on the show, getting a win, rising in over, and hopefully getting a small push because he's been one of my favourite workers outside the WWE over the past couple of years.

Seeing wins for Malenko and Regal on both of those shows was great too. They were both big parts of WCW back then so I was glad not to see them lose to Disco or Duggan.

unlike paulbd i am a huge fan of wcw in this period, probably more than anything else. i liked nitro. the debut of ken shamrock and how you might use him has me interested. I'm glad to see you haven't bailed on the DDP push yet, as he was red hot at this point and it's definitely something they were getting right in real life. I like the way you've used the Outsiders, and got across their egomaniacal superiority complex in your writing with the "WCW has no competition for us, we aint defending the belts" slant. also glad to see that you haven't just dumped some of the less talented characters statistically. a lot of people do when they do wcw diaries. lots of people ignore lex luger too, but his push at this time in real life was believable and it worked, he was pushed really well and got really over through late 96/97.

can't really think of anything bad with that nitro. i did think looking at the preview that it was missing a big nitro main event, but the addition of hogan, giant made up for that. oh, yeah i remembered, one tiny little thing i wasn't so keen on with show,

The Giant- Eric Bischoff you sound awfully confident

i just couldn't help but think of the giant saying that in a kinda posh english accent when i saw the word awfully in there.

but that's just me being picky coz i couldn't find anything else i didn't like with it.

really liking this diary. I'm happy that you've carried on the current storylines at a time when WCW was putting out some great tv. Personally I agree with Saturday Night being a more condensed shortened show because that really signifies how important (or unimportant) it was in terms of WCW's tv output at the time. It was a small show, so I'm glad you're writing it as one.

Just a few comments about the Souled Out PPV, which as a standalone PPV I thought would have been good, but as Souled Out I felt was lacking some of the things which made it such an atmospheric and entertaining PPV. Souled Out, first time round, was purely an nWo PPV. It was an integral and interesting part of the nWo angle. Having Schiavone announcing on it was disappointing for me. It didn't happen in real life, and I feel shouldn't have done in this. Bischoff and Schiavone's on screen characters hated each other at this point and Schiavone would have been too scared to get anywhere near the announce position in this one. They had Bischoff and Dibiase announcing in real life, obviously with a huge nWo bias, which I felt was right for the PPV. The other thing was the video clips right at the beginning of the show. Again, as it was a purely nWo PPV, a faction that based a lot of what it did around propaganda and hero worship for Hogan, showing Hogan running away from the Giant was something they just wouldn't have shown. On a regular PPV, great way to build the match, but on the nWo PPV I didn't like it. Also Souled Out was hugely atmospheric, everything had an nWo feel. It was quite unique. I did however like that you stuck with Nick Patrick (as the only nWo referee and a hated heel at the time) as the guy to referee every match. There were little touches that I felt were missing though. Like the WCW stars not having entrance music, the the PA system blurting out things like "loser" when Scotty Riggs came out.

I do really like the way this diary is written though, and as I said, if this was any other PPV I Would have loved it.

As for where to go with the nWo angle, as I'm sure you know, it just needs to not be dragged out and rehashed in the way that WCW did. Have it end, and have it end significantly, then let it lie. You could even do something that WCW would never have had the balls to do (perhaps rightly so, perhaps not) and that would have been to have nWo actually win the war and complete the hostile takeover, changing the brand to nWo completely. After all, while some would argue it would have lost the history and name brand value that the WCW tag bought with it, the reality is that WCW's history was almost non existent, with it only really having existed for a few years, and the WCW name itself never carried as much weight as WWF's.

anyway, like I said, really really enjoying this one so keep up the good work