Sin 2001: WCW Had a Good Show Until the Last Hour Happened

This is exactly how late WCW should have opened more pay-per-views. Chavo Guerrero Jr. wrestles like an established champion who knows Shane Helms is talented enough to beat him, so the match builds around counters instead of stunt accumulation. Helms gets opportunities to prove he belongs in a singles title program without Chavo having to become incompetent.

The final stretch is the strength. Helms threatens Nightmare on Helms Street and the Vertebreaker, Chavo keeps escaping, and every reversal feels attached to the finish rather than placed there for applause. Chavo finally catches him with the brainbuster for a clean retention.

The result protects nobody through interference and somehow elevates both men. Helms looks ready for another title chance, while Chavo looks like a champion who survived a serious challenger on merit. The match is not quite an elite cruiserweight classic, but it is comfortably one of WCW's best 2001 pay-per-view matches.

Reno and Big Vito overachieve because they wrestle like the feud matters. The opening exchanges are snug, the pace stays higher than expected and neither man treats the match like disposable midcard filler. Vito supplies most of the emotional urgency, while Reno's Roll of the Dice is protected enough that every attempt creates a real finish tease.

The match is not technically smooth. Several transitions look rough and the offense can be blunt, but the physicality gives those imperfections character rather than exposing them as laziness. Reno eventually counters into the Roll of the Dice and wins decisively.

There is value in a feud ending because one wrestler hits his established finish and gets the pin. Late WCW often complicated that sentence. Here it does not. The result is a good, intense match that earns a better grade than the matchup would suggest on paper.

The Jung Dragons, Jamie Knoble and Evan Karagias wrestle at a speed the rest of the card cannot touch. There is very little traditional tag psychology here; the attraction is movement, counters, dives, head-dropping offense and four young wrestlers trying to prove that WCW's cruiserweight depth still exists.

That approach creates both the ceiling and the flaw. The sequences are exciting, and Knoble in particular looks like a wrestler capable of building a career beyond the division. The match occasionally becomes a parade of moves without enough connective story, and the planned finishing sequence appears to misfire when Yang misses the twisting moonsault.

The recovery is good. Yang traps Knoble in an inside cradle and the Dragons win without the botch becoming the entire memory. For viewers comfortable with high-speed spot-heavy wrestling, this is one of the strongest matches on the event and one of the best examples of WCW's underused younger roster.

Ernest Miller and Mike Sanders understand their limitations and lean into personality. Sanders plays the smug administrator who thinks money and allies solve every problem. Miller uses kicks, crowd interaction and charisma instead of pretending he is suddenly a technical wrestler. Indianapolis is firmly behind The Cat, which gives the match more life than the offense alone could create.

The inevitable run-ins arrive when the Natural Born Thrillers interfere and KroniK answers them. That clutter lowers the score, but the story at least has internal logic: Sanders' hired help is neutralized by a better offer, and his own strategy backfires.

Miller lands the Feliner and wins the commissionership. The office itself has little credibility by this point, yet the crowd enjoys the babyface victory. This is not good wrestling in a vacuum. It is competent character work organized into a short match with a satisfying local payoff.

There is enough talent here for a strong six-man tag, which is why the penalty-box stipulation becomes so frustrating. Lance Storm, Mike Awesome, Elix Skipper, Rey Mysterio Jr., Billy Kidman and Konnan repeatedly build momentum only for special referee Jim Duggan to remove somebody for a rule violation.

The concept is understandable as a hockey-flavored Team Canada gimmick. In execution, the temporary removals rarely create a meaningful numbers story. They mostly interrupt tags, dives and combinations that would have been more entertaining without administrative pauses.

The match still contains good work. Mysterio and Skipper bring speed, Awesome provides power, and Storm remains the most structurally reliable wrestler in the ring. Team Canada wins when Storm forces Kidman to submit to the Maple Leaf after the match has cycled through another round of penalties. The talent keeps this watchable; the stipulation keeps it from becoming good.

The hardcore triple threat is messy by design and sometimes messy by accident. Terry Funk and Crowbar begin as though they are continuing their personal issue, brawling through the building before Meng eventually enters and changes the physics of the match. Once all three are involved, the contrast works: Funk is the veteran survivor, Crowbar is the reckless disciple and Meng is the human wall.

The weapon shots have aged badly, especially the repeated chair blows to the head, and several selling choices make the violence feel less consequential than it should. Still, there are memorable sequences. Meng's top-rope splash is absurd for a man his size, and Funk continues to make chaos feel emotionally coherent.

Meng wins with the Tongan Death Grip, becoming Hardcore Champion immediately before leaving WCW. The match is historically weird and physically committed. It lands in the middle because commitment and quality are not always the same thing.

The right idea is visible underneath the noise. Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash treat Chuck Palumbo and Sean O'Haire as legitimate opponents rather than kids borrowing a pay-per-view slot, and O'Haire's athleticism immediately suggests why WCW wanted to move the belts onto the younger team.

The match functions best before the finish. Nash sells enough to let the challengers gain credibility, Page supplies pace, and Palumbo works as a steady bridge to O'Haire's spectacular offense. Then WCW adds layers. The Natural Born Thrillers distract, Lex Luger appears, Buff Bagwell uses a wrench, and O'Haire finally lands the Seanton Bomb.

The title change is correct. The method makes the new champions look less capable than the preceding ten minutes did. O'Haire and Palumbo still leave with meaningful gold, and the veterans deserve credit for taking them seriously. A clean ending would have pushed this into B-range territory.

The gimmick advertises a chain hanging above the ring, yet much of the match proceeds as if the chain is decoration. General Rection and Shane Douglas wrestle a fairly ordinary singles match, move into the crowd and repeatedly ignore the obvious weapon that is supposed to define the stipulation.

Douglas works the leg and Rection supplies effort, but the structure never convinces the viewer that either man is urgently trying to draw first blood. The finish makes the problem worse. Douglas produces a separate chain from his boot, attacks Rection while the referee is recovering and wins the United States Championship when the blood is finally noticed.

If a hidden chain can end the match, the hanging chain has no practical reason to exist. That is late-WCW stipulation design in miniature: one idea is not enough when three can be stacked together. The title change matters; the match built around it does not.

The crowd wants Goldberg, and that is enough to keep the match alive whenever he is involved. DeWayne Bruce plays the vulnerable partner, Lex Luger and Buff Bagwell work basic heel control, and the no-disqualification label changes less than the title would suggest.

Everything exists to reach the planted-fan finish. Earlier in the show Goldberg signs an autograph for a spectator. Late in the match Luger confronts that same man, Goldberg approaches, and the fan sprays Goldberg with mace. Luger and Bagwell then hit their tandem finish and pin him, activating the storyline that forces Goldberg out of WCW.

The angle is clever in the narrow sense that an earlier detail pays off. The broader decision is disastrous. WCW removes one of its biggest remaining babyfaces while Scott Steiner has already been positioned as eliminating opposition. Goldberg is protected from a clean loss, but the promotion is not protected from losing Goldberg.

The match is impossible to separate from Sid Vicious' injury, but the injury should not be treated as a wrestling botch worth cheap points or jokes. Before it happens, the match is already limited. Scott Steiner and Jeff Jarrett cooperate against Sid, the mystery fourth entrant remains absent, and the action feels more like a Nitro main event waiting for an angle than a pay-per-view championship climax.

Sid attempts a jumping kick from the second rope and suffers a severe leg fracture on the landing. From there, the planned match is over in every meaningful sense. Road Warrior Animal arrives under a mask, strikes Sid, and Steiner pins him so the broadcast can end the contest.

The emergency circumstances explain the abrupt finish. They do not improve the preceding match or the mystery-man payoff. Animal is revealed after a night of hype and cannot possibly provide the surprise level promised. The grade reflects an incomplete, underwhelming main event shaped by a real injury, not condemnation of the injured wrestler.