I think I probably hate scaffold matches even more than Jim Cornette. And considering he tore his ACL and fractured a bone or two in one of his scaffold matches, that’s saying something. But I find them so…well, dumb. You climb up on a scaffold and the only way to win is by throwing your opponent off. There can be no real wrestling on the scaffold, and even a fist fight isn’t going to amount to much as until the final blow of the match, you’re doing everything you can to not fall off the stupid thing. Dangerous and boring doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time, but leave it to WCW to try try again and give us the Pittsburgh Plunge Scaffold Match at Fall Brawl 2000.
Let us meet the participants, shall we? First would be our heroic duo of Billy Kidman and Madusa. Now you may be asking why they have such looks on their faces. This would be due to our backstage interviewer telling them they are “about to be competing against one of the most dangerous events in WCW history.” Yep, they aren’t battling anyone, they are apparently fighting against an event. I watched this whole show more than once and I know the feeling of fighting an event. Still, I don’t think that’s what she meant to say. Poor Pamela, she wasn’t the best interviewer.
But she was a very underrated piece of eye candy in the latter days of WCW’s existence. So she had that going for her.
It turns out Kidman and Madusa were actually going to be facing Shane Douglas and Torrie Wilson. I know a lot of folks don’t care for Shane and think he’s overrated, but I always kinda dug the whole Franchise schtick. Just me? And besides, how can anyone hate a guy who tells us that all four of them are about to go into battle on top of a CONTRAPTION? This match almost deserves ***** right off the bat just for Shane pulling that word out of the mothballs!
So all four of them get up on said contraption and it slowly begins to lift off the ground. Just to make sure we all know how dangerous this is, Mark Madden makes a bunch of jokes about how Madusa’s boobs are sagging and need a lift. Really, I’m not making this up. You can hear Tony Schiavone getting so ticked (“I’d like to try to sell this match!!!”) it sounded like he was going to punch Madden in the face.
At this point Torrie is like, man, this totally sucks. And this was after she successfully campaigned backstage to not take the fall. Mad props to her for getting that to go in her favor, but girl, c’mon – surely you could have used that momentum and gotten them to just cancel this idiotic thing altogether, right?
So the match starts and it’s a bunch of very boring, very basic punchy kicky stuff with a handful of actual moves thrown in here and there. I will say this – I don’t hate the fact that the scaffold is about half the width of a wrestling ring itself as it at least allowed these poor folks to do something up there. Contrast that with the old Crockett scaffolds that were like 18″ wide and I dare say it’s actually an improvement.
But I mean that’s not saying a lot as you still can’t really do much. Here poor Madusa does her best to beat on Shane and it doesn’t look so much like he’s selling being afraid of falling of as much as me at two in the morning struggling to go to sleep. I’m sure you’ve been there.
But these poor guys and gals…I mean, they’re trying. You can tell they are at least attempting to make it interesting. We get a power slam and then Douglas tries a piledriver but as we all know, YOU CAN’T PILEDRIVE KIDMAN! (Yes yes, I know that old nugget was “You can’t powerbomb Kidman” but work with me here.)
At this point we are told that you can apparently win the match either by throwing your opponent off the scaffold or…by climbing down a ladder? Uh ok. So Madusa tries to climb down the ladder but despite having no one anywhere near her she is unable to do so I guess due to the shaking of the structure due to the wrestling moves being performed?
Douglas takes control over Kidman and sees Madusa scampering to get down, so he follows her down and gives her the lightest toe taps to the head you ever did see. She responds by climbing up the ladder and giving him a shot to the nads. I mean, it’s wrestling in the year 2000, we’d get that like every thirty seconds.
But the Franchise is able to bounce back from battered balls and give Ducey one more toe tap which causes her to fall directly onto a strategically placed crash pad. Like I don’t want anyone to get hurt, I am all for safety…but if you are doing to do one of these matches, couldn’t you at least shoot it in such a way it doesn’t look like she’s just dropping into her bed?
Back up Shane goes and Torrie sneaks behind for …you guessed it…ANOTHER BALL SHOT. I told you – every thirty seconds! Shane then tosses Kidman off and young Billy goes splat on the ground. At least that looked a bit more devastating.
But this being WCW, we immediately get a replay from an angle where we can see it’s yet another fluffy crash pad!
I’d say how much I hate this company, but if I did so I’d have to completely ignore the opening of this PPV where they promoted the violence to come in the form of STOP MOTION ACTION FIGURES. Oh WCW…how can I ever stay mad at you?