Spring Stampede 2000: A Live Ctrl+Alt+Del Exercise

In early spring 2000, the WWF was pretty much getting its act together. Though the Attitude was still there from the past couple years, much of its over-the-top controversy that got them over them hump against WCW was gone. In its place were storylines that made more logical sense and better in-ring action. They were coming off a good, but not great Wrestlemania that had a result that shocked everyone: Triple H, the top heel and WWF Champion, won the main event match. He was the first WWF Champion to successfully defend since his friend Kevin “Diesel” Nash did so at Wrestlemania XI, and the first heel to win the main event match of the signature show (sorry, Yokozuna, you don’t count). Though they were not doing the record numbers in ratings from the previous year, they were firmly entrenched as the top wrestling promotion in North America.

WCW in spring 2000: not so much. Six months earlier in a major coup, WCW brought in Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara to turn the company around. This was following the firing of Eric Bischoff, the man overseeing the rise and subsequent fall of WCW. The Russo-Ferrara regime ruffled many feathers in WCW, and after just three months, they were sent away in favor of a booking committee headed by Kevin Sullivan. That proved to be the final straw for a number of wrestlers, notably Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, and Eddie Guerrero. Not even putting the world title on Benoit could sooth the situation, and the quartet left for the WWF. Inexplicably, the Sullivan booking committee left WCW in a worse condition than Russo and Ferrara, and after just three months, both Russo and Bischoff were called back to fix a broken WCW. Their solution: blow it up following their annual Spring Break show and start over on April 10. On that night, everyone holding a championship at the time were stripped of it and had to win it back in a match or a tournament. The night also set the course of WCW over the spring and early summer: two warring factions, one, a group of established veterans known as the “Millionaires Club”; the other, a group of talent pushed aside for said veterans in the “New Blood”.

Less than a week later, we get the first PPV of this angle and of the Russo-Bischoff era, Spring Stampede. Eminating from the United Center in Chicago, the night mainly served as a purpose to crown all new champions. There were fourteen matches on the card, five more than Wrestlemania 2000 which took place two weeks earlier (and ran a few minutes longer than Spring Stampede). Ten of the matches were tournament matches to crown tag team and United States champions (seven of the fourteen matches involve the US title alone), while the world title match main event was a final from the tournament that took place during that week. The cruiserweight and hardcore titles were one-off matches to determine a new champion. And for some reason, Mancow wrestled. Yeah.

So, is it bad? Let’s find out.

From Unchained Entertainment: 

Spring Stampede is by FAR the best WCW PPV of 2000 thus far. It still has a lot of flaws though. 

I guess that’s high praise considering what came before it.

Arnold Furious of 411mania, what say you? 

Surprisingly refreshing after a dearth of horrible bottom feeding PPV’s. Of course compared to good shows this still isn’t up to much.

Okay, it’s… it’s promising. Scott Keith?

Still, the show was entertaining enough for a thumbs in the middle, but that’s under the “throw enough shit at the wall and eventually something sticks” theory of booking, and I can’t foresee them maintaining that frenetic pace for long without the fans getting tired of it. Well, better this than Sullivan or Nash, I guess.

KB’s Wrestling Reviews: 

D. If you’re a fan of tournaments, RUN out and find a copy of this show because it’s all your fantasies come true. Otherwise, it’s three hours of sloppy brawling in place of wrestling and a total of maybe two watchable matches out of 13. This was a nothing show and shows the problems of rebooting the freaking company six days before a PPV. Not a fan of this at all as the company was on the verge of its final downward spiral due to Russo booking the company so far into the ground it couldn’t see the light of day. Bad show due to the booking being WAY too overdone.

DDT Digest:

Wow! I hope I'm not exaggerating too much (as I've been known to do), but since I've been covering WCW pay-per-views for Bill, this was by far the best. There was not a stinker match in the bunch. Even the ones that had the potential to suck, like the Funk-Smiley and the match were great. Even the Mancow-Jimmy Hart match was well done and pretty funny. Mike Awesome was simply incredible in his WCW debut. Hogan actually did something I liked. Tammy Sytch showed up. Tony Schiavone said "bulls-t." Overall, the show was fast-paced, as were the matches, and I haven't seen the "Millionaires' Club" work their butt off like this in a long time. The thing that fired me up most is that it looks like they're setting up Booker for a huge run. The only weird thing was the whole Vampiro/Sting thing. It was interesting, but weird. This one will be hard to follow up tomorrow night. One thing's for sure, I wanna see Nitro tomorrow night, and that's the first time I can honestly say that in a long time.

Wow. We’re all over the place with this one. Guess I gotta see the carnage for myself. Can a wrestling company start over and put together a decent PPV in a single week? Can I say nice things about said PPV? Answer later.

Side nugget: this was WCW's second world title tournament in less than a year. They had one (32-man tournament...well, more like 31 men and a woman... or something... six months earlier.)