Let’s me just start by saying yes, I do know how terrible ECW December To Dismember was. It was awful. Just plain…well, you saw it. And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge it as the worst pay per view of all time. That said, this article isn’t digging up that corpse. This post is about what used to be the holder of that distinction in my mind.
In January of 2000, WCW was beginning its last full year as promotion and things weren’t looking good. Like “roadkill in the middle of the freeway” not good.
That month, they presented their January pay per view Souled Out, and boy, was it terrible. I actually watched this show by accident. I never watched pay per views back then, but some kind of glitch happened with our cable box that weekend (honest, it really did) and I ended up seeing a pay per view for free. How lucky, I thought. I was wrong. I was very wrong. I thought I was getting a free treat to see a pay per view for free. What I got made me question the entire idea of luck altogether. Because Souled Out 2000 wasn’t a pay per view extravaganza, it was a disaster of epic proportion. How bad was it? Let me count the ways.
The Matches
Let’s start with the fact there were 12 matches on this show. 12! The average ppv at the time was usually 8-9, so 12 was just a little too much to squeeze into such a constrained schedule. But all in all, it wouldn’t have mattered if the matches were that good. They weren’t. Starting with the fact that, being WCW during this time, they had matches that didn’t need to be on ppv. One match saw Tank Abbot vs. Jerry Flynn, which went a minute and a half. On a show (other) people paid to see. Then there was the ridiculous stuff like Oklahoma (yes, that one) defending the Cruiserweight Title against Madusa. I just wrote that sentence and it still doesn’t make any sense to me. But at least it only went 3 minutes. The Mamalukes vs. Ron and Don Harris went almost 10. (shudder) The number of matches is a small gripe when it comes to how ridiculous they were.
Card Subject to (Really) Change
You know that little bit of legalese all pro wrestling posters have at the bottom that says “card subject to change”? WCW did and boy did they stretch that as far as it would go. Going into this event, Jeff Jarrett and Chris Benoit were set to meet in three distinct matches that would challenge each of them in different situations. Jarrett was actually injured from an earlier match with Benoit and was not medically cleared to wrestle at Souled Out. WCW knew about this well ahead of time and promoted the event as Benoit vs. Jarrett anyway because at that point, they were within weeks of setting the place on fire and walking away as the place explodes behind them. The actual Triple Threat Theatre matches did happen, of course, but with other competitors instead because fire. Now, with that backstory out of the way, let’s get into….
The Triple Threat Theater of DOOM
The first match in this series was to be a “Catch as Catch Can” match which, aside from sounding like a term your great grandfather would scratch his head at, had the rule you couldn’t go to the outside (remember that. Instead of Benoit-Jarrett they promoted/lied about, they were replaced with Billy Kidman and Dean Malenko in what promised to be at least a good technical match. That is until Malenko forgot the rules of the match and slid to the outside to compose himself (as a good heel would do)…and immediately lost the match 2 minutes in. Yes, I’m serious. But don’t blame Malenko, he was thrown into this random match, and it being WCW, he probably found out when his music started playing. This would be Malenko’s last match in WCW before jumping from the sinking ship- er, I mean, try new opportunities. Yeah, that’s it.
The second match was Billy Kidman versus Perry Saturn because….pass. This was a Bunkhouse Brawl match, which is your standard hardcore match but has the distinction of being called a Bunkhouse Brawl match. Creativity, yeah! This match was unnecessary and redundant considering there was also the aforementioned Last Man Standing Match between DDP and pre-manwhore Buff Bagwell, the Fourway Hardcore title match, and Funk vs. Nash, which used its fair share of weapons because Terry Funk matches are legally required to have at least one brain-liquefying chairshot. It’s true, look it up. So on top of this, having a Bunkhouse match was admittedly overkill. But it happened anyway. So there’s that.
The third match in this marathon of human endurance (for the audience as well as Kidman) was a Caged Heat match, which was…hell in a cell? Yup, they had ridiculous names for every match imaginable. Not only is Caged Heat the name of a 1970s women in prison b movie (I’m not joking about this one at all), it’s also a fancy name for a hell in a cell knockoff. Billy Kidman was put in this match against The Wall. Why? You’re overthinking it, shut up! And it went as well as you’d think. The Wall won and…it happened. Billy Kidman would go on to win the war by working for WWE and still being alive, so good for him. So because one guy was injured, which WCW knew full well beforehand, three random matches were put together for no other reason than to NOT have 9 matches like NORMAL pay per views. (Could you imagine?) But in all of this, what happened to Chris Benoit? Well…
Card Subject to Change (Again)
You know how WCW loved the “card subject to change” caveat? Well, they proved it twice on the same show. Bret Hart was supposed to defend the WCW Championship against Sid Vicious in the main event, but Bret Hart was seriously injured at Starrcade in December from a Goldberg “the hell with your head” kick. Bret was experiencing severe results from the concussion that would end his career, which WCW knew of beforehand, yet still promoted his match with Sid anyway.
Bret Hart was unable to defend the title that night (or ever again) and the title was held up with the main event being changed to Sid Vicious versus…Chris Benoit. The resulting match was actually decent for being thrown together so quickly, with Benoit finally winning the WCW World Championship after being with the company for 4+ years. Then he vacated the title and quit the company the next night, making the whole thing moot anyway, but you know, WCW.
Top to bottom, Souled Out 2000 was a pay per view that resembled a dumpster fire in a junkyard surrounded by soiled diapers nestled under Bastion Booger’s junk. It was falsely promoted, over packed, and under-performed in every conceivable way, making it the (second) worst pay per view I have ever seen.
So there you have it. Did I miss anything? Was there a pay per view deserving of this scorn that I’m overlooking? If so, let me know in the comments. Or on the street. Wherever, really.
DanFraley.com 
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