It’s September 1999 in “Into the Vault” and we’re looking at WCW Fall Brawl 1999! The almost 7,500 fans in Winston-Salem, NC showed up for another dose of Hulk Hogan defending his WCW World title against Sting!
I’m not gonna lie to you, folks—things are dicey and concerning for WCW. That 7,500 is extremely low as ECW Anarchy Rulz 1999 would draw around 6,000. We’ll have to see if they show was better than most remembered or if the product just deserved the low attendance.
The Best
The opener was a lot of fun! This was a very enjoyable match where the faces were the real focus. Then you had the ICP and Vampiro. At this point, ICP were now cult-level media personalities thanks to appearances on radio and trash TV.
The team of Vampiro and ICP mixed decently enough with the Filthy Animals. I’d say that’s because Vampiro knew his lucha libre, brawling, and risk-taking while ICP could get by on brawling and risk-taking. At any rate, while it hasn’t been an air battle or technical wrestling clinic, it has been entertaining when these two teams face off.
The Cruiserweight title match saw Lenny Lane defend against Kaz Hayashi and it wasn’t bad at all! I’m not saying it was good but this was pretty damn solid. What killed it was Lenny Lane and Lodi’s super-dated gay gimmick.
Lane came off as better than competent here which makes me wonder how much better he could’ve been or how much more he could’ve shown us if it weren’t for the gimmick.
I mean, Prince Iaukea got to show us what he had without an actual gimmick during the early Cruiserweight division. Maybe Lenny Lane started getting some creative direction at the wrong time in WCW?
Originally, this was the first in “The Rest” pile but looking at the rest of the show, this was actually one of the bright points of the show.
The Rest
You know what I liked about this 1999 version of Jimmy Hart’s The First Family? Hugh Morrus and Brian Knobbs fit well in it. I’d say that this is technically a team that could’ve worked a year or two earlier.
Team Dungeon Scraps are taking on the Revolution’s Dean Malenko and Shane Douglas in a match that I can’t really say went too long. It was under 10 minutes but it was 10 minutes that wasn’t used well at all.
WCW could’ve easily found something else for these two teams to do. Also, No DQ was advertised but not really played up in this match. The JERSEY TRIAD shows up during the match but eh…enough of that.
Rick Steiner defending his TV title against Saturn was a hard one to rate. First off, it’s late 1999 and Rick Steiner—who hasn’t had the best 1998 and 1999—is still getting singles gold. Saturn gets in there and tries to make something entertaining and it actual works here and there.
However, you have to sit through a pretty mid-tempo, underwhelming match to get those flashes of “OH! If this had been 1996 or 1997, this would’ve been good!” moments.
I liked the Berlyn gimmick, The Wall impressed me more—debuting the gimmick in ring against late 90s Jim Duggan was kneecapping it right out of the gate. This was not good and it was given the right maximum amount of time. If anything, this really should’ve been shorter with Berlyn soundly beating Duggan.
It’s 1999, we ain’t cheering for Duggan like that on a regular basis anymore.
The Tag Team title match saw Harlem Heat challenge for The West Texas Rednecks’ belts. The Windhams—Barry and Kendall—were solid here as was Harlem Heat. However, you could see that it was Booker T should be involved in something bigger, Barry Windham could still get it done, Kendall isn’t bad at all but he’s no Barry, and the commentary booth is looking really good for Stevie Ray at this point.
Again, we’re all pretty much done with tag team Booker T for now. We’ll revisit in a few years in a different company.
I was going to get into Sid Vicious for a moment but let’s just stick to Chris Benoit’s failed U.S title defense against “The Master and Ruler of the World”. It was pretty damn bad. During his stopover in ECW, Sid didn’t actually pick up anything new but while in WWE before that, he pretty much unlocked his main eventer appeal.
So, back in WCW where the main event has gotten so bulky it’s crept into the U.S title picture, Sid comes in and scoops up the belt in a match that even Benoit couldn’t make decent. You’d think someone was trying to kneecap the Revolution on Fall Brawl 1999 performance-wise.
This DDP vs. Goldberg bout didn’t wow me like their 1998 encounter but I didn’t go in expecting it. When you watch WCW Goldberg in 1998-1999, you notice that he gets better when he’s put in the ring with better workers—but you have to keep that up and give him a little more time to work with each time.
You don’t give him a program with DDP, get something good from it, then move him into something with wrestlers who know how to use their A-days and B-days. Goldberg has to be in there with high performance in-ring guys or you get some inconsistency throughout the year with him.
Anyway, this Goldberg vs. DDP bout was decent enough. We’re at the point where Goldberg is no selling offense and making guys look bad when they put all the effort into trying to beat his ass. On the one hand, it’s funny to see but at the same time, you know it shouldn’t be like this.
So much happened in the main event with the “Hogan’s Gotta Go Committee” coming out to prevent the Hulkster from keeping the belt. This is the point in WCW where it became hard to keep up with who was face and who was heel.
Sometimes you just interpreted a wrestler as heel by association. Following this match, Sting went heel—totally expected. Actually, I’m not certain why so much time was spent on explaining the match when it wasn’t great from an action standpoint. I’d say it was eventful. Stuff happened—lots of interference. It really cheapened Sting’s final WCW World title win in that all the interference was required to keep Hogan looking strong after he lost to Sting.
The man just couldn’t go down to a reasonable amount of chicanery and get pinned. No, Sting and WCW needed the whole Rogues’ Gallery of Main Event Heels to take Hulk Hogan down.
C’mon now.
At least the amount of room they had to groove wasn’t too much at over 12 minutes. That’s the bright point because this could’ve easily been another of WCW’s 20-minute Big Boys-style main events. Instead, it was simply a medley of the Big Boys-style’s classic hits.
WCW Fall Brawl 1999 Verdict: Bronze Medal (4.5/10)
What a slide 1999 has proven to be for WCW. They were on top of it for parts of the decade but they’ve been going through it with this year. Fall Brawl 1999 gets the bronze medal as the show remained consistently subpar following the Cruiserweight bout. The Tag Team title match bump things a tad but then it was right back to the muck.
Our match of the show honors goes to The Filthy Animals vs. Vampiro & the Insane Clown Posse. While Lenny Lane vs. Kaz Hayashi wasn’t going to be a true “The Best” match, I was entertained and intrigued enough by the two of them that I gave their match another watch after the show finished. So, they get runner-up.
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