The Great American Bash 2000: WCW Burned Sting and Torched Its Last Sure Thing

Lieutenant Loco and Disqo are capable of a better match than the five minutes they receive. There are quick counters and enough cruiserweight movement to suggest a useful opener, but the ring is surrounded by the Misfits in Action and Filthy Animals, so the attention keeps drifting away from the two wrestlers who are supposed to matter.

The finish becomes another interference exercise. Juventud Guerrera and Corporal Cajun get involved while the referee is distracted, allowing Loco to retain. The match is too short to become exhausting, but it never establishes a real championship story. The score reflects competent wrestlers trapped inside noisy faction booking.

KroniK have a simple act that the crowd understands immediately, and the Mamalukes can provide enough movement to make the size difference useful. The problem is time. A match that should be a compact showcase stretches past nine minutes while the storyline repeatedly emphasizes Big Vito caring more about the Hardcore Championship than his partner.

Johnny the Bull takes most of the punishment before KroniK finish with the double chokeslam. The result is right and the crowd accepts it, but the structure spends too long delaying an obvious outcome. This would be a functional five-minute television match and becomes a dull pay-per-view segment at nearly twice that length.

Mike Awesome and Diamond Dallas Page are physical enough to make parts of the ambulance match work. Tables, the stretcher and ringside brawling give them clear objects to fight around, and DDP’s comeback creates a brief sense that the stipulation might produce a satisfying finish.

Instead, the match exists to reveal Chris Kanyon’s turn. Kanyon rises from the wheelchair, attacks Page and helps load him into the ambulance despite Awesome having nearly ended his career in the previous storyline. The twist becomes more important than the match and makes the motivation feel backward. The effort is real; the angle overwhelms it.

Booker T works hard enough to keep the match moving, but thirteen minutes with Shawn Stasiak is far more than the program needs. The Boot Camp rules amount to a last-man-standing fight in camouflage, so long stretches become punching, kicking and waiting for counts rather than building a meaningful escalation.

Chuck Palumbo interferes and Booker eventually survives both men before putting Stasiak down for the ten count. The result protects Booker, but the crowd audibly loses interest during the middle. The cable entrance from the rafters creates more discussion than anything in the match, which is a bad sign for a pay-per-view bout.

The match begins with Shane Douglas changing the rules and immediately becomes a bookkeeping exercise. The commentary team struggles to explain whether “best of five” means three table breaks or something else, and the wrestlers spend the bout moving between conveniently positioned furniture rather than building a fight.

The finish makes the confusion worse. Douglas knocks The Wall through a table setup and is declared the winner even though the broadcast’s own table count has been inconsistent. The result is not merely bad wrestling; it is a stipulation whose internal logic cannot survive eight minutes. There is no satisfying way to invest in rules that keep changing.

The Asylum is a tiny circular cage placed inside the ring, immediately restricting what three large wrestlers can do. Scott Steiner, Rick Steiner and Tank Abbott spend most of the short match colliding in a space too cramped for meaningful movement. The structure looks novel and functions like a barrier to wrestling.

The chain spot becomes another logic problem. Rick appears to stop Abbott from using the chain and then helps create the opening for Scott to recover, while commentary tries to explain motivations that are not clear on screen. Scott eventually submits Abbott with the Recliner. Under four minutes somehow feels excessive because almost nothing in the match has room to breathe.

The central problem is established before the bell. Hogan has spent the feud describing Kidman as beneath him, so every minute Kidman fails to hurt Hogan confirms the older star’s argument. Kidman bumps hard and tries to inject speed, but most of his offense is treated as a temporary inconvenience before the familiar Hogan comeback.

Horace Hogan’s special-referee role and Torrie Wilson’s involvement add more turns without improving Kidman’s standing. Hogan eventually uses brass knuckles and wins the title shot. The younger wrestler gets neither the victory nor a performance that forces Hogan to take him seriously. The feud ends with the hierarchy exactly where it began.

Ric Flair gives the card its closest thing to a conventional wrestling story. He sells for David, guides the transitions and makes the family conflict feel personal enough that the crowd can follow it. David remains limited, but the match has a clear emotional structure that many other bouts on the show lack.

Vince Russo interferes, Ric is handcuffed and the Flair children eventually help neutralize the advantage. Ric finishes David with the figure-four. The family run-ins are excessive, yet they belong to the story rather than feeling randomly imported. This is not good enough to rescue the event, but it is the most coherent match on the card.

The stipulation makes normal wrestling almost irrelevant because everyone knows the match can only end near the set where the fire stunt is prepared. Sting and Vampiro brawl through dim lighting while the audience waits for the inevitable climb, which drains suspense from every exchange that happens before it.

The final sequence replaces Sting with a visibly different stunt performer, sets the double on fire and sends him falling from the structure. The image is memorable and the match is terrible. A wrestling feud has been converted into a special-effects demonstration whose danger must be simulated because the planned finish is too extreme for the wrestlers themselves.

Jarrett and Nash spend much of seventeen minutes waiting for the angle everyone expects. Jarrett works the leg, Nash rallies and a parade of Filthy Animals, referees and outside participants repeatedly interrupts the match. The crowd chants for Goldberg because his eventual appearance is more important than anything the champion and challenger are doing.

Goldberg finally arrives and spears Nash, allowing Jarrett to retain. The shock is the entire point, but the reaction does not cooperate: fans continue chanting Goldberg while he embraces Russo and Bischoff. The world-title match becomes background scenery for a turn the audience does not want. As a championship contest, it is an overbooked failure.