Sofa K. Amazing Sofa's Number One Pick: Raven Goes Home Bladow, I guess. This one is my baby. I loved 1998 and the early part of 1999. The first year I really started watching wrestling, and I'll be damned if it isn't probably my favorite year ever. I'll be quite frank. I think possibly only the staff of DDTDigest watched as much WCW as I did in 1998 and early '99. You had Chris Jericho, SUPERHEEL. As well as La Parka, and this kind of stuff going on. Raven. This was still in my slightly markish (sorry, Jon) days, when I had discovered this wondrous thing called 'the internet', which revealed, among other things, that (OMG SPOILERS) the outcomes for wrestling were predetermined. As such, there were probably 2 directions my wrestling fandom could have taken me. 1) I could have become snarky, nitpicky, and obsessive about workrate, and immediately start hating on a wrestler if they used a tiny resthold in one of their matches (With the obvious exemption of Benoit.) OR 2) I would have become the kind of fan who, while appreciating a nicely-worked match, also knew how to enjoy myself and have fun while watching wrestling, and to also appreciate the usually goofy, and sometimes highly entertaining aspects of wrestling, including, but not limited to: hangings, HHH dry-humping things, and Goldust writing down his stupid electro-stuttering disease on a cue card. I credit the "Raven Goes Home" segements for not making me choose the dark side. They started out simple. Raven, despondent over the breakup of The Flock, got so depressed that he went home. Kanyon followed him, because there was not a place Raven went that Kanyon did not. Raven had a doting, slightly bizarre mother, and a houseguest in The Sandman. They all ate sammiches together. Chris and Jim played chess a lot while Raven moped. A lot. Together, we learned of Raven's just downright weird obsession with Roddy Piper, and the fact that Tony and Mike's constant assumptions that Raven was a spoiled rich kid were pretty much true. Raven had a sports car for some reason, and towards the end of the segments, Raven finally started to cheer up, and took Kanyon joyriding. With a lot of clever asides to the camera, including using the Bugs Bunny pronunciation of "Moron" ("Maroon"). TNM will probably talk about the "Whadda mark!" line, so I'll leave that for him. They showed these clips for a few weeks, and they just suddenly stopped. According to what I read on DDTDigest at the time, apparently Hogan 'didn't think they were funny' and had them cancelled. I don't like you, Hogan. In a side note, when I asked the former owner of Weekly Visitor, Nik, if she had any ideas for the creation of this list, the only suggestion she gave me was "Weekly Visitor." I've been going over this for almost a month now, and it's really gotten me sentimental about how glad I am a site the likes of Weekly Visitor exists. I'm sure you'll pardon me for putting on the internet equivalent of one of HHH's "I Won Because I Am The Game And I Am The Best Ever" promos, but I really feel strongly about how much I appreciate the work that The Next Mideon, JG, Jon, and Boobermonkeys (and also the retired staffers) do (did). You guys really are great. Even though I'm in exile in foreign lands, I really want to thank you all for contributing so much to a website that I like so much. I'd also like to thank any and all fans we have who sit through our nonsense day in and day out, and probably still scratch their heads at some of the "jokes" that we make around here. We really do appreciate you tolerating our attempts at entertaing you and ourselves. I apologize for getting all weepy-eyed like that when Raven's glowering visage is watching me. And if you sat through that, I'm sure the rest of the guys probably wrote some stuff about Raven that was actually funny. Let's watch.

Boobermonkeys Boobermonkeys' Number One Pick: Stevie & Victoria (in general) I got an email shortly after these mysteriously disappeared from a friend who read that Hogan was the one who axed these segments, saying they were too cheesy. As if there wasn't reason enough to hate Hogan. Sadly, it seems like I read a Raven interview sometime recently where he sad they were horrible. Of course, he wears a dress now and is feuding with Shane Douglas, I guess. Anyhow, you can't find much better tv than Kanyon trying on outfits and modeling them in a mirror. Also, this was Chastity's big springboard to success, and the notoreity led to somebody finding out she did porn. Leave it to WCW to expose her for being the cocksucker that she was. SOME SISTER, SCOTTY.

Jon Jon's Number One Pick: Teddy Hart How much of this list was WCW? Not enough, really. You don't hear it as often anymore, but a few years back, smarks were always whining about missing WCW and how great it was. When one pointed out how shitty those Kevin Nash vs. Goldberg vs. Steiner vs. whoever else feuds were, they always claimed that it was better before that. I'm not quite sure when they were talking about, but WCW is pretty well represented on this list for about 10 years or so. Anyway, when Raven got bored of wrestling and decided to move back to his parents' home, WCW once again showed why any idiot with a pen can become a wrestling writer. I can't remember exactly why he decided to move back home, but I think it involved Saturn breaking up the flock, which required Saturn to wear a dress for a few months. You know, I wonder how Saturn got away without being on this list? I mean, considering that he's only a marginally talented wrestler who was involved in some of the stupidest angles and wore the stupidest hats in pro-wrestling, you'd think he'd be in here in a minute. And he beat the shit out of that one jobber. Hahaha. Anyway, Saturn donned a dress to rescue Kidman and the rest of the flock from Raven, which really hurt everyone but Kidman's career that was "rescued" (Lodi really never did anything else, Reese dissapeared, Riggs either dissapeared or may as well have, and Kanyon went on to fall off a huge cage, single handedly carry WCW on his back with his "Positively Kanyon" gimmick, then dress up like Boy George shortly before being fired by the WWE). This may or may not have caused Raven to quit wrestling and return to his parents house, where Kanyon decided to go find him and convince him to return to the ring. Now, you might be saying to yourself "Jon, what the fuck do I care about Raven going home and watching tv? Why is this the number one bestest thing in wrestling of all time? Did Boss Man drag his dad's corpse around behind the Bluesmobile? Did he keep putting on awesome segments for like a month before Vince McMahon realized it, and then was promptly told to stop? Did he shoot steam out of his head? Did he do a 30 motherfucking foot moonsault and start vomiting all over the ring in tribute to his dead brother?!?!? HUH!?!?!" No, but this segment combines several aspects of the stupidest parts of wrestling, and turned it into a masterpiece of awkwardness. First, somehow, someway, Raven could talk directly to the camera while Kanyon couldn't. The highlight, of course, was Raven looking directly at the camera and calling Kanyon a "maroon," as if the writers KNEW THAT THIS WAS JUST LIKE AN OLD BUGS BUNNY CARTOON!!!! What the FUCK were they thinking?!?! Furthermore, it introduced a new character. Former ECW champion and "hardcore icon" Sandman had been signed by WCW, so why not introduce him as Raven's wacky next door neighbor? NOBODY KNOWS WHO HE IS, RIGHT?!?! Furthermore, "Sandman" is probably copyrighted or something (although I have my doubts), and WCW writers were too busy, you know, coming up with storylines as intriguing as "Scott Hall throws up on Eric Bischoff" to spend more than half a minute coming up with a name for Sandman that actually made sense, so they named this bastard of a character after themselves: Hak. HAK! Leaving letters out shows how hardcore he is!!! He's too busy wrapping himself up in barbed wire and stealing Raven's mail to write the letter "c"!!! Last, but definitely not least, while Raven and Kanyon were sitting around huffing or whatever the hell they did all the time, Kanyon found a picture of Roddy Piper. This was supposed to lead to something, but, being WCW, I guess they forgot to call him. It's not like the angle was below him, as he came back later and trained at fucking Alcatraz for a month or something in preperation for his re-job to Hogan!!!! Eventually, Raven did return. I can't remember why, but I know that he got the hell out of WCW pretty quick. I think he left half of his moveset with him.

The Mysterious JG JG's Number One Pick: Dustin Rhodes needs a friend, so he goes to ARN FUCKING ANDERSON WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU GOLDTARD? Also: everything else the Stud Stable was ever involved with, even the Parker/Sherri wedding. Also: Golddust’s first promo The best thing that ever happened in wrestling was the Raven Goes Home segments? Well... better than Jacqueline winning last year, I suppose. I have a feeling most of these happened on Thunder, which is why I don’t remember them that well. I miss the idea of Thunder... of a TRUE B show, in that it was clearly not as important as Nitro, but it wasn’t as pointless as Worldwide or Saturday Night (both of which I loved, but still.) It was somewhere between Raw and Heat, between Smackdown and Velocity... you could skip it without feeling you’d missed something big, but you could watch it and reasonably hope for something better than recaps of the A show. But the best thing ever isn’t Thunder, it’s those Raven segments. He was still tight with Kanyon, the guy he rejected from the Flock as Mortis for being too masked and not gay enough. The Flock had been disbanded by Hogan for being entertaining (despite Reese and Van Hammer,) and James Vandenburg was fired for... I guess for not having been booked interestingly. He later went to ECW as Sinister Minister, was booked, and didn’t suck. Go fig. So Raven and Kanyon become buddies, with Raven revealing himself to be the spoiled rich kid Tony Schiavone had always insisted he’d been. Boy, Tony sure knew what he was talking about. For you see, it turned out Raven was rich. And he had a Mom. He and Kanyon bought some clothes, with Kanyon staying in character and Raven…not so much. At one point, Raven looked at the camera (WHICH HE KNEW WAS THERE WHILE KANYON DID NOT) and called Kanyon "a mark." It was amongst the nicest, least overtly harmful of the kayfabe-bending Russo... stuff... ever. In the end, we learned that Raven had a bunch of Rowdy Roddy Piper posters in his closet. Had I the energy or time, I would make a humorous tie-in with Sean O’Haire. But... no. Instead, I would like to say that a shot of Raven looking at some posters is not the way to end an angle, and that was the end of the angle. It never actually amounted to anything. And thus it is only the second funniest of my Raven in WCW memories, with the funniest being his promo for The Blues Brothers. Back in the day, on the aforementioned Thunder, wrestlers would plug movies showing that week on TBS. And if there was ever a movie that aired a lot on TBS, it was The Blues Brothers. I don’t think WGNT shows Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as much as TBS shows The Blues Brothers. TNM knows what I’m talkin’ bout, assuming it’s still true. Anyway, Raven... and I’m talking still in the Flock, still a vaguely-evil, pseudo-intellectual guy who could pull of a shirt that quoted Nietzsche, had to plug my all time favorite film The Blues Brothers. So the scary Goth looked right at the camera and sagely said, "The Blues Brothers didn’t play by societies rules..." I don’t know what he said after that because I was laughing too hard. There’s an old Vulcan proverb: "Only Nixon could go to China." Similarly, only Arn Anderson could star in my favorite thing ever. While Boobermonkeys gave you the meat and potatoes (even mentioning the God awful camerawork that nearly blew the whole thing,) I’d like the give you a little background. A little. Maybe a moderate amount. The Horsemen were defunct (for a few minutes between revivals,) so Arn was just kinda chillin’ out being an ornery redneck with a history of breaking body parts off Dusty Rhodes. Meanwhile, Dustin Rhodes was constantly getting his ass kicked. Colonel Parker, beloved of me and known to the rest of the crew mostly as Tennessee Lee (I think the analogy Robert Parker is to Tennessee Lee as Sinister Minister is to James Vandenburg pretty much covers it) really had it in for Dustin for some reason. Maybe Parker just had good taste. Anyway, he brought in Bunkhouse Buck to jump Dustin a lot, and when that feud ran it’s course Terry Funk showed up to kick the crap out of the Natural on a weekly basis. Terry delivered one of my favorite lines ever in explaining his hatred of Dustin: "I hate you, and I hate yer Daddy. I hate yer whole stinkin’ family." At any rate, Dustin wanted someone he could trust to help him, so he went to Arn Anderson. Just... ugh. There was a certain wrestling logic to it... Arn was a sort of aimless face at that point, and Dustin said Dusty could vouch for his toughness. So yeah... less logical alliances have formed in wrestling. But the fact that there was weak wrestling logic that finally got trumped by real logic makes me all warm and squishy inside. It made some sense for Dustin to go to Arn, but it made so much more sense for Arn to DDT the shit out of him. Arn then cut a promo where he said "be careful what you wish for, you may just get it." That was his official "I just went heel" line. He may have said something about Dustin’s pants having been down. I’m the Arn Anderson scholar around here and I don’t remember pants coming up so much. TNM has been reading about Arn Anderson at the Gamefaqs board. Arn definitely got kissed on the bald spot by Bunkhouse Buck, which caused him (Arn) to do a glorious double-take. Included in this pick for the #1 thang ever was all the other cool things that happened with the Stud Stable, like Colonel Parker cutting a promo about BEATING his dog that gave both Dean Malenko and Kane the wrong idea, and filled Michael Cole with righteous rage. Other Stud Stable/Parker highlights included Meng headbutting a camera with rage, the uneasy alliance between the Harlem Heat and Bunkhouse Buck/Dick Slater that was brought about by that insane wedding angle, Buck’s constant title-belt motions, the time Steve Austin dressed as Parker to manage him in that Chicken-Suit match... yeah. But if I talk about that stuff I’ll go on forever, so... go read the last segment of A PREHISTORIC FALL BRAWL REBEAK and see for yourself how wordily I can recount this stuff. That covers the blow-off to the Rhodes/Stable feud. A slam-bang ending. The Raven Goes Home segments could have used one of those. And thus my WV-15X2 contributions end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Beats a girly concert, I guess.

The Next Mideon TNM's Number One Pick: Stevie Night Heat Exclusives Yeah, WGN only airs Ferris, Cubs games, and The Fresh Prince. In truth, Arn probably only said the pants line once or twice, but it was disconcerting enough to be burned into my memory. I really don't remember anything about the "Whadda mark!" line, other than the fact that it actually took place. I'm always a fan of people who make smarky asides to the camera. At least Raven acknowledged it, unlike when David Flair was sexing Torrie Wilson, who doubled as the cameraman. No, I guess Dave was the cameraman. All I know is there are probably some totally hot David Flair sex tapes floating around out there. On the Kidcam. The announcers didn't even acknowledge those vignettes, which made it all the more bizarre. And remember that Nitro that was nothing but Kevin Nash on a dinner date for the first hour? Jesus. While I'm on the subject of random shit, does that Hak action figure up there come complete with a pretzel cart? With a spare wheel? In case it breaks down on the Oregon Trail? Focus, TNM. So Raven's depressed because Kidman discovered talcum powder, and he returns to his bourgeois suburban roots. He has glossy photos of Roddy Piper in his closet, and that's made 100 times more awesome because it was never, ever explained. The Sandman was his gay neighbor who threw Kanyon in the pool or whatever the hell happened that one time. Hak quickly disappeared, only to resurface as a boring guy wrapped in rubber barbed wire. As opposed to a boring homo wrapped in flaming barbed wire. I bet he was undefeated in rubber matches. Then we went clothes shopping for Kanyon, and the cameraman kept trying to sneak a peek at his Most Valuable Privates. Kudos to Mortis for having the modesty to cover himself up and shriek in cartoonish fashion. The moment that sticks out most in my mind happened shortly after the Raven Goes Home segments, I think. Raven's "sister" Chastity turned on him for no reason and allied with their gay neighbor for no reason. Raven laughed off his sibling's betrayal with some off-handed comment about how bad his farts smell. I could have gone my entire life without hearing about the potency of Raven's flatulence. I'm as lowbrow as they come, and even I balk at fart jokes. The very word upsets me. Fart. Brr. And on that note, the second installment of the WV-15 must come to an end. Thanks for joining us in our celebration of Extreme March. No more updates for 11 months! See you in 2005, fans! You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.