Greed 2001: WCW Got Better Just in Time to Disappear

WCW opens its final pay-per-view with two wrestlers who behave as if there will be a next one. Jason Jett had barely arrived from ECW, but the match is structured as a showcase without turning Kwee Wee into furniture. Jett gets the unusual offense, Kwee Wee gets enough control to make the crowd want the comeback, and both men work at a pace that immediately separates Greed from the sludge associated with WCW's worst 2000 cards.

The rough edges are visible. A few transitions are ambitious enough to wobble and Jett is more naturally impressive than emotionally sympathetic. Still, the match keeps producing new ideas instead of repeating one. The closing stretch has credible counters and near falls before Jett wins with the Crash Landing. It is an unexpectedly strong opener and, in retrospect, a little cruel: WCW introduces a fresh act, gives him twelve useful minutes, and disappears before the push can become anything.

The cruiserweight tag final is the best match on Greed because everyone treats a title with no history as if it already matters. Kidman and Mysterio bring instant credibility, Skipper and Romeo bring the need to prove they belong, and the match starts fast without becoming a sequence of disconnected dives. Kidman's isolation gives the action a spine. Rey's hot tag then detonates the pace, and the closing stretch uses four-man chaos without losing track of who is trying to win.

The clean finish matters almost as much as the moves. Romeo catches Mysterio and hits the Last Kiss to make the heel team inaugural champions without a belt shot, manager distraction or referee nap. WCW had spent too much of its final years teaching viewers that every result required a footnote. Here, the company simply lets a new team beat established stars. The belts would barely have time to exist, but this match gives them a convincing first chapter.

This is the first point where Greed loses altitude. Shawn Stasiak is being positioned as the younger act with Stacy Keibler beside him, while Bam Bam Bigelow is the veteran whose credibility should help the push. The layout muddies that purpose. Bigelow controls enough of the match that Stasiak rarely feels like someone climbing past him, and the crowd has little reason to invest in the pauses between the few meaningful exchanges.

Bigelow still moves better than his mileage would suggest and Stasiak does not embarrass himself, but nothing builds. Then Keibler provides hairspray, Stasiak blinds Bigelow and a neckbreaker ends it. The interference protects a veteran who did not need protecting and weakens the wrestler the finish is supposed to elevate. Six minutes are not a large investment, yet the match manages to spend most of them avoiding the clean developmental point sitting directly in front of it.

Lance Storm and Mike Awesome work like an established team facing two babyfaces assembled because the card needed opponents. That is both the match's logic and its ceiling. Storm supplies crisp transitions, Awesome brings the power, and the heels spend long sections controlling one opponent before a hot tag. The formula is recognizable enough to function, but the crowd rarely climbs with it.

There are good individual pieces. Storm's timing is sharp, Awesome's offense has weight, and Morrus' late burst gives the finish some movement. Konnan's selling does not always create the sympathy the structure requires, and a few positioning moments look more mechanical than dramatic. Awesome eventually catches Morrus for the powerbomb while Storm keeps Konnan from saving him. The right team wins decisively and announces a tag-title ambition. As wrestling, though, it is eleven minutes of competent setup searching for urgency.

Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Shane Helms give Greed its best conventional singles title match. Chavo wrestles like the experienced champion who believes he can solve the younger challenger, keeping Helms grounded and cutting off momentum whenever the match threatens to become a highlight reel. Helms answers with speed and persistence rather than immediately overwhelming him, which gives the title change a useful generational shape.

The structure is not perfect. Chavo controls so much of the middle that Helms' comeback feels compressed, and the Jacksonville crowd is quieter than the quality of the execution deserves. The finish repairs some of that. Chavo reaches for Helms' own Vertebreaker, Helms counters, hits the move himself and wins the championship. It is simple, character-driven and decisive. The match does not reach the cruiserweight tag final's level, but it makes a new champion feel earned and gives Greed another example of WCW finally letting a younger wrestler leave with something concrete.

Fifty-four seconds should not produce much of a match score, but the booking deserves to be understood before the number is dismissed. Luger and Bagwell talk. Palumbo and O'Haire arrive. The younger champions attack with urgency, hit their offense and win before the veterans can turn the match into another lesson in surviving upward mobility. As a wrestling contest, there is almost nothing to evaluate. As a statement, it is wonderfully blunt.

That distinction keeps the score modest. There is no sustained structure, selling cycle or closing stretch because the entire match is the closing stretch. Yet the segment is more satisfying than a badly worked twelve-minute match would have been. O'Haire in particular looks like someone WCW intends to keep pushing. The champions retain, the veterans are embarrassed, and the show moves on. For a company famous for making succession complicated, this is a one-minute memo with unusually clear punctuation.

Kanyon is good enough to keep this from collapsing, and The Cat is charismatic enough to keep Jacksonville interested. Their grudge has an easy center: Kanyon targeted Ms. Jones, so Miller wants to hurt him. Early portions use that anger well, with Cat attacking aggressively and Kanyon shifting between inventive offense and heel stalling. There is a perfectly adequate wrestling match available inside the premise.

WCW then starts adding furniture to a room that was already furnished. Kanyon tries a rope-assisted pin, uses his cast, knocks out the referee, menaces Jones, gets kicked by her and finally eats another kick from Cat for the finish. None of the pieces are incomprehensible by themselves; together they make the ending feel administratively busy. Kanyon's execution and Miller's crowd connection keep the bout moving, but ten-plus minutes is too long for this much interference to produce so little escalation. The story survives the machinery rather than benefiting from it.

Booker T returns to championship business and spends most of seven minutes making Rick Steiner's offense look important. That would be fine if the match eventually paid off the imbalance. Instead, Steiner controls, gives Booker limited space, and the crowd waits for a comeback that arrives as a brief interruption rather than a full shift in power. Booker works hard enough to create reactions with the Scissors Kick and Spinaroonie, but the match keeps pulling back toward Steiner.

Then the referee is compromised, Shane Douglas appears with a cast, Steiner is struck, and Booker hits the Book End to win the United States Championship. The result is useful; the route is not. Booker had been a world champion months earlier and did not need an asterisk attached to beating Rick Steiner. The match protects the wrong person, reduces the satisfaction of the title change and wastes one of the easiest booking wins on the card.

The stipulation is juvenile, Ric Flair is wrestling in clothes that look borrowed from a golf-course argument, and none of that matters once Dusty Rhodes tags in. Jacksonville wants Dusty. Flair and Jarrett understand that their job is to make wanting Dusty enjoyable. Dustin handles most of the actual workload, taking the heel control and creating the bridge to his father's entrances, while Jarrett bumps with the enthusiasm of a man being paid by the landing.

Flair and Dusty barely need sequences; posture, elbows and reactions are enough. The match reaches its best level when it stops pretending the stipulation is serious and treats the whole thing like a territory crowd-pleaser dropped into 2001. Dustin eventually catches Flair in a rough-looking inside cradle for the pin, followed by the promised humiliation angle. Technically, this is middle-of-the-road. As live professional wrestling, the crowd participation raises it above the sum of its mechanics.

Scott Steiner and Diamond Dallas Page close WCW pay-per-view history with a main event that feels more alive than the company's business prospects. They brawl immediately, move into the crowd, use weapons and a table without turning the stipulation into a prop warehouse, and return to the ring with enough damage established that the rest of the match can become a fight over survival. DDP's selling gives Steiner's offense scale; Steiner returns enough when Page rallies to keep the challenger credible.

The Diamond Cutter produces the key hope spot before Rick Steiner yanks the referee out. From there, the interference threatens to push the match into familiar WCW excess, but the wrestlers recover it with DDP's bleeding struggle against Scott's submissions. A lead-pipe shot finally leads to the Steiner Recliner and a technical-submission finish. It is not a classic, and Falls Count Anywhere could have been exploited more aggressively, but it is a strong, motivated championship match. WCW's last pay-per-view ends with its champion looking like a monster rather than a punchline.