WCW: Latest on the alleged and not so alleged criminal and irresponsible or unlucky behavior department. Scott Steiner plead guilty on 12/7 on charges of felonious aggravated assault and making terroristic threats in the case where he bumped his car into the road worker. The judge accepted his plea this time as he spoke in a low voice with his head down in the court room. He faces a maximum 26 years in prison, but as a first time offender, won't be getting anything of the sort. He had a plea bargain agreement for probation and a $2,676 fine, but the judge didn't like the way Steiner was answering questions and pulled the deal. The judge didn't issue a sentence, turning the case over to state officials to conduct an investigation and determine a sentence

The Giant was arrested after the 12/3 Thunder in Memphis on charges of sexual battery from an incident that allegedly took place the previous night at the local Hilton the wrestlers were staying at. The charges were dropped the next day when other wrestlers came up with an alibi saying they were with him and the police didn't have enough physical evidence. Giant was accused by hotel clerk Minda Klitzner of coming up to her and saying, "Do you know why they call me The Giant?" and she responded, "because you're so tall," and he responded with another reason, allegedly whipped it out and began rubbing on her. She was claiming she was going to file a civil suit after the criminal charges were dropped. Apparently, because of Giant's size, the police were scared to death the next day when they were given word to arrest him, and they sent 24 officers to the Mid South Coliseum to pick him up. Many WCW wrestlers went to the jail to give him moral support, and it appears DDP is taking on the task of convincing him to say with the company

Apparently Scott Hall's latest car wreck was his fourth or fifth in the last year. At one point he wrecked three cars in a month and two within 24 hours. There was a major article by Mike Mooneyham in the Charleston Post Courier on 11/29 after an interview with Dana Hall. The article stated Hall is under contract to WCW for $1.1 million this year and next year, $1.45 million in 2000 and $1.625 million in 2001 but she feels the only way he can save his life is to walk away from the entire wrestling industry

Starrcade up to this point has Goldberg vs. Nash, Flair vs. Bischoff with Dusty Rhodes as ref, presumably Hart vs. Hall for the U.S. title (Hart has a groin injury legit and is supposed to be out of action for about four weeks, which makes Starrcade a touch-and-go proposition), Page vs. Giant, Konnan vs. Jericho for the TV title, Ernest Miller vs. Perry Saturn in a kickboxing match and a cruiserweight title match which originally was planned to be a triangle with Kidman, Juventud Guerrera and Rey Misterio Jr., although that plan could change

Speaking of plans, the idea that Nash wins the title and then hands the belt to Hogan and creates a new NWO with himself, Hall, Hogan and Luger which was reported here as an idea given up on is not a dead idea. While nothing it etched in stone, it still could happen

Sources close to Hogan indicate he's sitting this time out and letting things run their course. Hogan was going to be taking time off this time of year anyway to do a Muppet Movie so this was just a way to garner more publicity

Gordon Nelson, a long-time member of the ring crew dating back to the Crockett days, and a former pro wrestler in the 60s and 70s, suffered a serious stroke while setting up the ring at the Nitro on 11/30 in Chattanooga. As the week went on, he was moved from a hospital in Chattanooga back to Amarillo. It's not life threatening, but he was at press time still paralyzed on the right side of his body. Nelson, originally from Canada, was a heavily respected shooter in his day known for his ability to use a chicken wing as a finisher in real-life skirmishes. He wrestled in California and Texas as Mr. Wrestling under a mask in the early 70s. He married woman wrestler Maria LaVerne and his son is promoter/wrestler Steve Nelson of Amarillo. He and Dory Funk Sr. used to shoot with each other in the Funk kitchen all the time at wrestler parties in the early 70s. After finishing his wrestling career in the 70s, he worked as a referee in Texas and Florida before moving to ring crew first in Florida and later brought up to the Carolinas

12/7 Nitro in Houston opened with a tape of Steiner beating up Wildcat Willie and him doing an interview. I don't know of anyone who gets more of a push and more interview time in the business with catch phrases who gets less reaction to his catch phrases than Steiner. He was out there so long fans were chanting "Goldberg" out of boredom, not out of heat. Page beat Kendall Windham in 2:00 with the diamond cutter. They did a 2:40 long video on one of the Nitro Girls. WAY TOO LONG. WCW feels it needs T&A to compete with WWF, and the Nitro Girls are its T&A, but not when they do video packages talking about where they went to school and praising their dancing teacher. Smiley beat Prince Iaukea in 2:52 with the chicken wing. Misterio Jr. beat Silver King in 3:48 with a springboard bulldog off the top. Misterio Jr. is going to a faster-paced style again in the ring recognizing that's how he got over in the first place. He was given advice to slow it down and work more American, but at his size, he can't get over working the same way everyone else does. Wrath beat Renegade in 3:28 with the melt down. When you see Renegade's physique and remember what it was, you see what really would happen if guys got off steroids. Disco Inferno came out and called out Konnan, acting buddy buddy and saying Nash invited him into the Wolfpac. Konnan looked at him as if he didn't know what was going on. Disco & Chavo Jr. lost to Ray & Horace Hogan when Disco was stuff piledriven in 4:28. Nash did an interview and got booed a lot, saying the Goldberg vs. Bigelow match that had been hyped the entire show would be a three-way dance because he was joining in. Glacier beat Saturn via DQ in 3:32 when Miller kicked Glacier when Saturn moved and Scott Dickinson called for the DQ and raised Glacier's hand. Saturn gave Dickinson a DVD. Match was worse then you'd think. Onoo came out with a neck brace on. Luger beat Emery Hale in 4:06 with the rack. Hale looks to be about 6-6, 295 and worked real hard and has way more charisma than the average rookie, good size, not a great physique but not fat either. He's got a ton of potential although he's a long way right now from being ready. He was so excited out there on Nitro that he stiffed Luger and bloodied his mouth. If he works for three months, he'll probably be better than Luger. Jericho pinned Duncum with a Toyota roll using the ropes as leverage in 5:17. Duncum did a big dive over the top. Another good match between the two. Giant choke slammed Scott Putski in 28 seconds. Malenko & Benoit vs. Raven & Kanyon never took place. Raven was backstage trying to set himself up for programs with DDP & Piper and refused to come out. Kanyon came out and mouthed off to Anderson who pulled out a tire iron and he ran away after taking a few stiff chops and boots from both guys. Flair did an interview which was the only real good thing on the entire show. Flair got a big pop when he mentioned the name Paul Boesch, which is amazing since Boesch died nearly ten years ago. He got bleeped a lot. Actually this was a super interview. They showed the Konnan video again. The video is great but I can't believe they showed it in the third hour. They had a lot of new cuts in it. Konnan beat T via DQ when Ray hit Konnan in the shoulder with a slapjack in 5:11. Ray & T argued after. Finish was very poorly done and a bad idea to begin with considering what they were ending the show with. Konnan was actually cheered a lot more than T, who is from Houston. Steiner vs. Hall never started as B&W attacked Hall. Luger & Konnan made the save but they didn't do so well either, and then Giant showed up. Page cleaned house for the save. Originally Nash was booked into this angle but smartly he didn't want to be used as a set-up for Page to get heat. Schiavone did a retort to Ross' comments last week about Goldberg being an Austin wannabe saying "you wrestling fans and you other wrestling announcers know Goldberg is the toughest man in our sport." WCW should have retorted, but this was pathetic. When Ross knocked Goldberg, whether it was a cheap shot or just business or however you view it, at least every viewer watching had a clear idea of what he said and the point he was trying to make. In typical WCW announcer fashion, they address something with these vague references that almost no viewers watching have any idea what they are talking about. Hart came out for an interview. With no program to talk about, he mainly talked about his cat being happy to see him. He was becoming target practice and told Gene Okerlund that those cups are being aimed at Gene. It was a crack up. The show ended with Goldberg, Nash and Bigelow brawling for 40 seconds before security ran in and did the pull-apart, and about 32,000 bottles and cups were thrown at the ring. This was one of the most perplexing three hours of Nitro ever. How can you put on a show this bad when you have this kind of a live gate

Bischoff wasn't at Thunder or Nitro this past week. He wasn't at Nitro because there was a big awards dinner given to Dr. Harvey Schiller

Savage will have new entrance music produced by Jimmy Hart upon his return

The Booker T vs. Enos match on the 11/30 Nitro was a late replacement for Giant vs. Disciple. Disciple no-showed and the match was canceled

Rick Rude was backstage at the 11/30 Nitro, but with no Curt Hennig, there was no purpose in using him and he left before the show started

Hennig's knee is supposedly not recovering well and he is expected to not be making his December bookings

The plan for Sandman appears to be in the role of a best friend of Raven's while growing up and Raven's mother will send him to WCW to try and get Raven out of his depression, so they'll start off as a tag team

Bret Hart and Eric Bischoff were both interviewed on 12/1 for an NBC Dateline segment that airs on 1/27

Hart this week also filmed an episode of MAD TV

The NWO referee's name is Mark Johnson

At the 12/1 WCW Saturday Night tapings, Silver King joined the LWO after losing to Disco Inferno. In a backstage angle, they asked Super Calo to join, he said no, and they all beat him up. A Japanese wrestler who has been working in Mexico named Taru was first put over Kendall Windham, then they taped another match where Windham went over him because he looked so terrible the first time out. After all these years, Chip Minton got his TV break beating Chris Adams and doing an interview. Minton, who was on the U.S. bobsled racing team in the 1994 and 1998 Olympics (placing fourth in 1998 in Nagano), has been training for wrestling for years but doesn't show much

Stevie Ray refused to do a job for Konnan on the WW3 PPV show

Giant has dropped from 505 down to 470. Stevie Ray has also dropped weight. The WCW Saturday Night main event this coming week is Hall over Ray in a match where the winner was to get a shot at Hart at Starrcade

At the 11/30 Nitro, Bischoff wanted Jericho to sign his new deal on the spot. When Jericho didn't, Bischoff ordered the TV belt taken from him. Jericho was given a win on the 12/7 show because they are building him for a TV title shot on 12/27 and because they've already given up on Duncum as being marketable

It appears that the Steiners each signed for $600,000 per year for three years. Our reports of Sting signing a five-year deal at $1 million per were incorrect. It was actually a four-year deal at significantly more than that figure, maybe along the lines of $6.5 million over the four years. In actuality, after Hogan, Austin and Hart, Sting will probably be the next highest paid wrestler in the business

Bischoff and McMahon were both on CNN's Moneyline with Bill Dobbs on 11/30. According to the story, NBC is negotiating to bring wrestling back to network television

Thunder on 12/3 in Memphis drew a sellout 8,358 paying $144,080. The show drew a healthy 3.69 rating and 5.82 share on the live show and a 1.1 rating and 4.2 share on the replay. Eddie Guerrero vs. Ciclope ended in 2:41 with no finish as Guerrero had him beat and called out the LWO and they offered Ciclope a t-shirt. With these matches that simply have the bell sound (or even no bell sounding and everything just stops wrestling), it was like watching bad WWF. Giant beat Renegade with a choke slam off the middle ropes in 1:00. After the match, Page knocked Giant out of the ring with a chair and Giant backed up from him. Chavo Jr. beat Mike Enos in 4:51 with a Toyota roll. Enos pounded on him after the match. Enos may be the most underrated wrestler in the business. He's a real good worker, but lacks charisma badly. Expect he and Norman Smiley to get minor pushes. Misterio Jr. beat Villano V with a springboard headscissors in 4:40. With Mike Tenay not out there, Tony Schiavone and Lee Marshall didn't know if it was V-IV or V-V. As if the roman numeral on the trunks isn't a dead giveaway, how about the idea that right before their eyes, poor V-IV was carted out and just had neck surgery. Granted, there are a lot of things to remember when doing a broadcast, but somehow you'd think that fact would be something the announcers would know. Wrath pinned Minton in 3:58 with the melt down. Were these guys on different pages of what? Minton looked real bad. Most guys I've seen on local indies with six months of training and no athletic background are better workers than Minton. Benoit & Malenko beat Raven & Kanyon via count out in 9:09. Kanyon worked the entire match with Raven pouting in the corner refusing tags. Kanyon finally tagged him and Raven just walked out. Better than average match with a lame finish. Konnan beat Disco in 5:21 with the Tequila sunrise. Better than average. Finally Scott Steiner beat Hall with the Steiner recliner in 7:20. Despite it being the main event, crowd was dead. NWO ref did the slow counts with after Hall hit a bulldog off the top. Hall finally gave the ref the edge but Steiner beat him up. For the 12/10 show, they had Duncum over Jericho when Jericho got the pin using the ropes but Konnan told the ref, who re-started the match and Duncum won. Saturn beat Glacier via DQ when Onoo interfered. Saturn gave Onoo the DVD after the match. Smiley beat Hayashi with the chicken wing. Misterio Jr. beat Guerrera in a match to determine who got the cruiserweight title shot when the LWO interfered and Kidman made the save. During the post-match brawl, a huge fan got past security and was about to blindside Guerrero but he tripped over the ropes. Guerrero kicked him in the face as hard as he could, leaving a footprint on his head and the rest of the Mexicans swarmed him and he was taken away. This probably will be edited off TV. Said to be in the *** range. Lodi beat Booker T via DQ when Stevie Ray hit Lodi with the slapjack. The two argued after the match since Ray cost his brother an easy win. Benoit beat Kanyon via DQ when Raven hit Benoit with a spray can. Luger & Konnan won a 2-on-3 over Horace Hogan & Ray & Vincent when Hall helped out. In a dark match, Page beat Giant via DQ when Giant choke slammed the ref. Out of seven TV matches on 12/10, six ended due to outside interference and four were DQ's. The reason the TV main was 2-on-3 is it was originally booked as Wolfpac vs. B&W but Nash refused to do the match not wanting to be in a match that on paper would be bad while he needed to build his momentum for Starrcade. Then they put Hall in the match, but he refused because he didn't think it was right for the storyline to team with the Wolfpac, but agreed to do a run-in at the end, which probably did make more sense

WCW has added a house show on 2/26 at the Alamodome in San Antonio

House shows this week saw 12/2 in Nashville drew 5,078 paying $85,133, 12/4 in Tupelo, MS drew 3,424 paying $71,530, 12/5 in Little Rock drew 7,419 paying $140,160 and 12/6 in Shreveport drew 6,067 paying $116,063. Most of those cities were down about 25 percent from WCW's last time in. Merchandise for the week was $454,582 or $7.35 per head. Tupelo show was a mess as they were stalling for Giant to be released from prison. They had Silver King & Lizmark Jr. vs. Ciclope & Damian go 20:00, then Prince Iaukea vs. Lodi go an interminable 20:00 and then do a 30:00 intermission. Because there were so many no-shows already (Raven, Saturn, Alex Wright, Disco), they wound up having Ciclope come out again without his mask as Elvis Gonzalez (Elvis is from Tupelo of course) and job for Chris Adams. They didn't get Giant out in time to do the angle in the Luger-Wrath match to set up the tag, so Giant and Nash had to do a main event single with Nash winning. In Little Rock, Silver King & Lizmark Jr. vs. Damian & Ciclope was reported as being one of the best matches of the year in the promotion. Rest of card wasn't much. Both Little Rock & Shreveport saw Luger vs. Wrath become Luger & Nash beating Wrath & Giant when Luger racked Wrath

WCW Saturday Night on 11/28 drew a 2.9 rating, its best in several years, while 12/5 was back to a more normal 2.2. The 2.9 was probably because it was the first WCW TV show since Hogan announced his retirement on the Leno show

At press time, Nitro 12/14 in Tampa was 630 shy of capacity, Thunder 12/17 in Charlotte was virtually sold out, Starrcade at MCI Center was two dozen shy of sold out with 15,161 paying $536,665. Nitro 12/28 in Baltimore was virtually sold out. The Nassau Coliseum house show at press time was at 9,082 tickets for $315,956, while the Madison Square Garden show two days earlier had sold 14,662 tickets for $408,829 which is 2,000 shy of capacity.