Wrestlemania 3
Date: March 29, 1987
Location: Pontiac Silverdome, Pontiac (Detroit), Michigan
Attendance: 93,173
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura
America The Beautiful: Aretha Franklin

Now we hit the big time. This is the first time when Wrestlemania was built up as the mega event and also it’s the first time we get a few Mania traditions. For one thing, it’s the first time we get the huge main event. While the tag match and Hogan/Bundy were big matches, to say they were nothing compared to Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant is the understatement of the century.

It was also the first time we had a Mania that featured a really big midcard match in the form of what might be the greatest wrestling match of all time. There was far more backstory to these matches this time which is always a good thing as it causes far less filler. It can easily be argued that this right here is the true birth of Wrestlemania as we know it.

Can-Am Connection vs. Bob Orton/Don Muraco

That being said, let’s get to the first contest! Shockingly enough, it’s kind of a filler, but at the same time it really doesn’t feel like one. We have the short lived tag team known as the Can-Am Connection (Tom “Z-Man” Zenk and Rick Martel) against Bob Orton and Don Muraco, managed by Mr. Fuji. Now the CAC was an interesting team. They were kind of the Rockers before the Rockers.

Both were young, in shape, handsome, and fast paced workers. They were in line to be the face challengers to the Hart Foundation but Zenk left after a strange argument that we’re still unclear on and Martel was paired up with Tito Santana to form one of my all time favorite tag teams in Strike Force, who went on to beat the Harts for the belts.

But anyway onto the match. Yet again, about as basic a tag match as you can get with speed against power and that’s a combination that rarely fails. This is tag team wrestling 101 and it’s done about as well as you could ask for in a situation like this.

CAC plays the role of the young kids that aren’t that experienced against two veterans getting their first shot on the big stage to perfection. Orton gets his arm worked on and completely no sells it less than a minute later which just made me shake my head. This match boarders on a squash as the CAC are really never in trouble at all and win with a cross body on Muraco.

Rating: B+. The lack of selling by Orton and the absolute dominance by the CAC keep this from being a great match but for a warm up match for Wrestlemania that was designed to get the crowd into the show, this was done perfectly. I think I voted for this as best Mania opener ever, which I still think isn’t a stretch.

Hercules vs. Billy Jack Haynes

Next up we have Hercules against Billy Jack Haynes in a battle of the full nelsons. Simple story here: two powerhouses that both use the full nelson. A few weeks prior to this, Haynes had offered to let Hercules put the hold on him to see if he could break it. Hercules, a heel, attacked him and knocked him out with the hold, leading to this match at Mania.

The match starts off pretty fast with some hard hitting shots. Hercules takes over and all this seems to be about is getting the full nelson on the other. It’s really just a brawl which is fine as they keep it relatively short here. It’s always fun to see two big strong guys hammering on each other. Hercules has the pin and pulls him up which leads to the comeback.

Hercules gets the hold on first but it’s not on full which lets Haynes get up. Haynes eventually gets his nelson on but Hercules launches both of them to the floor where Haynes gets the hold again but we get a double count out. Haynes chases Heenan and Hercules blasts Haynes with the chain and Haynes is busted open really deep sending blood everywhere.

Rating: C-. Decent match between two brawlers that was given the right amount of time. It wasn’t supposed to be a classic and it wasn’t. This match was all about a single hold and that’s what ended the match. Went as well as it could have so it gets a decent grade.

King Kong Bundy/Lord Littlebrook/Little Tokyo vs. Hillbilly Jim/Little Beaver/Haiti Kid

There’s little story to this if any and why midget wrestlers are involved is beyond me. Bob Uecker is on commentary which is good as he’s fairly funny for someone that has no wrestling experience. The rules are simple here: big vs. big and small vs. small.

This match if nothing else proves that Bundy against Hogan was thrown together because there was nothing left. He goes from main eventing Wrestlemania to this? WOW. This is pretty short with the midgets doing most of the work. I get the idea here is that they’re supposed to be professionals and interesting but how can you argue that they’re anything but a novelty?

They go back and forth with Uecker giving some funny commentary. I’m not a fan of these kind of matches at all. They fill time here which isn’t saying much until Bundy is tagged in. Hillbilly gets beaten down by him and then Bundy slams and elbows one of the midgets causing a DQ. Hillbilly carries him to the back in what is a far cry from Superman carrying Supergirl but I’ll take what I can get I guess.

Rating: F. Seriously, what were they thinking here? This match managed to get a few minutes on the biggest show of all time. I guess you could call this the final remnant of the old days when midget matches were popular, but I’m still not getting the point of this. Nothing match and a total filler if there ever was one. And again, how did Bundy fall so far in a year?

Elizabeth Promo. This doesn’t happen as Macho comes in and says he’ll answer any questions the interviewer has. The interview never happens as Macho sends Liz away.

Junkyard Dog vs. Harley Race

Limited story here. Race was the King of the WWF at the time and on a SNME he had faced the JYD. JYD had said he wouldn’t bow to anyone and after Race had knocked him down he tried to force JYD’s head down to bow. The loser here has to bow to the winner. Race stalls like the true old school master that he is. Heenan gets involved and there goes Dog after him.

Naturally this fails him completely but since Dog has a very hard head most of Race’s shots have little to no effect. Race goes for a headbutt on the floor and Dog moves so Race rams his face into the floor. That can’t be nice at all. Gorilla and Jesse argue about managers which is always entertaining. You could tell there was a lot of respect between them.

Abdominal stretch goes on and Gorilla of course complains about it. Did he ever not complain about that hold? Race goes for a headbutt and nearly knocks himself unconscious in the process. Nice job there champ. On all fours now, which Gorilla says is Dog’s favorite position. Heenan gets up on the apron and allows Race to recover and catch a belly to belly to win it.

Rating: D+. Nothing special at all here as it was another four minute match. The right guy won though as Race was far better as far as wrestling talent went but it was surprising to see a guy like Dog, who was very popular, losing like this mostly clean. This was fine I guess.

Post match Dog bows but then pops Race with the chair and steals the crown and robe like a true jerk.

We hear from Hulk Hogan in one of the best cocaine induced promos ever. Seriously, if anyone believes that these Hogan promos aren’t drug induced then they’re far beyond what I can help. Hulk apparently thinks today is a big deal.

Rougeau Brothers vs. The Dream Team

Before we get a really weird promo from Johnny V and Dino Bravo on the Rougeaus. Johnny V is nuts but I like him. On with the match. The Dream Team is Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake if you were wondering. The key to this match is the Dream Team arguing for the entire match for no good reason.

Brutus tried to break up a sleeper but hit Valentine by mistake. Rougeaus hit their finisher but Bravo comes in, hits one of them and puts Valentine on Rougeau. The other three then leave Brutus in the ring, signaling the start of his face turn that lasted until 1994.

Rating: D+. Didn’t do much as it was more for the angle than the match obviously. Not a bad match at all, but nothing mind blowing. This was another way too quick match that I couldn’t get into due to simply being too short. Also the Dream Team is worthy of a major blowoff like this? Really? Pretty weak little match but technically pretty ok.

Adrian Adonis vs. Roddy Piper

Now we get to another of the famous matches here in Roddy Piper’s retirement match which has become a running joke in wrestling. The idea is that Piper went down with an injury and when he came back, Adonis had taken over Piper’s Pit and turned it into the Flower Shop.

They beat on each other for awhile until Piper thought he was an actor because of They Live so he decided to retire. Since then he’s wrestled on and off for over 20 years. A key to this match is both men use the sleeper hold as their finisher. The loser is going to get a haircut apparently.

Adrian is in his most famous gimmick here so Piper, being the MAN’S MAN that he is, hated him. There was a lot more homophobia in wrestling back then, at least in kayfabe. Well not really as any character like that is treated oddly. Those ring carts are still sweet stuff. Adonis says he’ll win. Piper busts out a belt and wipes out Adrian with it before taking a few shots of his own.

Hart gets involved a few times as this is little more than a comedy match for the most part. He finally gets something right though as he pulls Piper’s leg to give Adonis the advantage. Piper gets sent into the table and it’s all Adonis here. Back in the ring now with Piper saying bring it on.

Jimmy sprays perfume in Piper’s eyes and Adrian gets Good Night Irene, his sleeper finisher, and Piper goes down fast. He drops twice but Adrian lets go before the third drop, thinking he’s won. Brutus Beefcake runs down to wake Piper up (Adrian had accidentally cut Beefcake’s hair recently so it makes sense) and Piper gets his own sleeper to end this.

Rating: C+. It’s a standard Piper match which is always fun. This was just a comedy match but at the end of the day piper’s career was never about what he did in the ring so how can I really complain here? This was no classic or anything but it was fine and the fans cheered a lot because of it. PIper didn’t wrestle again for over two years so Piper lived up to his word for a good while at least.

Post match Beefcake cuts Adonis’ hair. A fan runs in as he leaves.

Hart Foundation/Danny Davis vs. Tito Santana/British Bulldogs

This match is pretty much all backstory. Danny Davis used to be a referee but he would cheat for the heels. He cheated Tito out of the IC Title and gave it to Macho Man and cheated the Bulldogs out of the tag titles and handed them to the Harts. He was banned “for life plus ten years”, which lasted about a year or so and he was back again as a referee. The idea here is that he’s completely inept at wrestling and all of his opponents want to kill him and Jimmy Hart, including the Bulldogs’ bulldog Matilda.

Davis will run in and kick someone maybe twice and then bail, more or less making this a 3 on 2 handicap. Hearing the commentators sing Bret’s praises is nothing but amazing as his singles push wasn’t coming for at least another year and a half and his real singles push was almost 3 years away. The kid really had talent and you can see it here.

Before the match Jesse went down to ringside to be introduced to the crowd so we have Gorilla, Bob Uecker and the host of Entertainment Tonight so the commentary is just bad right now. Uecker has some good one liners but the woman is just mindblowingly annoying. Davis misses a splash letting Tito get tagged in and he nearly kills Davis. The faces alternate with just beating the living tar out of him including a tombstone from Davey which was just odd to see for some reason.

The ending of the match was just awful though. Davis gets the stripes beaten off of him taking all three of the faces’ finishers with the last being the powerslam. Bret breaks up the pin, and less than 10 seconds after getting powerslammed, Davis gets the megaphone tossed to him and drills Davey with it for the pin.

Rating: C. The ending was just horrible to me as Davis, a referee, no sells a tombstone, the forearm and the powerslam? With guys like the Bulldogs, Santana and Hart in there, this should have been great. At best it was ok and the ending lost that for them.

Heenan and Andre do a promo here with Andre looking absolutely creepy by not moving an inch. Weirdest part of this interview: Heenan is at least 4 inches taller than Okerlund.

Butch Reed vs. Koko B. Ware

Remember how I said there was less filler on this show? This is some of that filler. There’s no reason at all here for this match other than to let Reed get a squash here and then the post match attack. The best part of the pre match stuff is a shot of Jesse and Gorilla in the broadcast booth which is at least a few hundred feet away from the ring with Jesse showing off his Wrestlemania 3 t-shirt.

As he shows it off he starts showing off his bicep and the way he talks about it is just funny. Anyway, on with this waste of time. If there has ever been a match of a weird combination this is it. Koko is the epitome of a jobber. What did he ever win in his whole career? Reed on the other hand is a great example of someone that had it all but never could put it together. He was even lined up to be a member of the Horsemen.

He had the look, the name, the power, everything you could want but he never could put it all together and I’ve never been sure why. Anyway, this is a pretty bland match as Reed reverses a bad cross body and uses the tights to win. After the match Slick beats up Koko with the cane until Tito runs out and beats up Slick for some reason and rips up his suit.

Rating: N/A. This match was a bad squash. It had no point and the match was just boring. Easily the worst match on the show.

Savage rants about how he’s going to end this tonight.

Steamboat says the Dragon is going to scorch Savage’s back.

Intercontinental Title: Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat

I think I now know why the previous match was in the place it was. There’s nothing I can really say about this match that hasn’t already been said. In case you don’t know the backstory, here it is. About 3 months before Savage had been defending the title against Steamboat and during the match had put Steamboat’s throat over the guard rail, went up top and landed a double axe handle, driving him throat first into the rail.

Steamboat had a crushed larynx and allegedly his career was over. Savage had a match on Superstars and Steamboat’s music hit and the crowd went insane. Epic staredown ensues and the match was made for Mania. Between then and Mania, George Steele kidnaps Liz to continue their year long feud so Steele was in Steamboat’s corner.

Savage can’t keep up with him to start and Steamboat dominates with armdrags and then a big old choke. Steamboat works the arm and Savage is in trouble early. Savage throws him to the floor though and now it’s Ricky in trouble. Very nice back and forth stuff to start. Savage goes for the throat which is the part of Steamboat that he hurt earlier so there’s your reasoning.

They keep going back and forth with Steamboat hammering away to get Savage caught in the ropes. They’re moving rather fast out there and Dragon keeps throwing out that armdrag. Ton of near falls in a row for both guys. Dragon Skins the Cat but gets knocked back to the floor. Savage hits a knee to the back of Steamboat to send him over the table and into the crowd.

Jesse yells at Gorilla for saying Steele helping Steamboat back in is cheating and calls Gorilla out of being hypocritical when another heel manager helped his guy back in early. Double axe to the back of the head of Steamboat on the floor and the count is on. Gorilla wants Savage disqualified for some weird clothesline thing. That was odd.

Savage gets a gutwrench suplex for two. Here comes Steamboat again though and he sends Savage over the top with a beautiful bump to the floor. He jumps OVER the referee to hit a big chop on Savage for two. They crank it up again for more near falls all over the place. Savage eats post on a slingshot and that only gets two. He manages to grab Steamboat and send him into the post shoulder first.

And there goes the referee. Savage gets the elbow but there’s no referee for the count. Randy goes out to get his trust bell but Steele shoves him off the top and his head cracks into the bell. Both guys are down though. Savage picks him up and in the famous ending, Steamboat rolls through into a small package for the pin and the title to blow the roof off the place.

Rating: A+. As I said before, likely the greatest match of all time. Nothing but an A+ the whole way with these two beating the living heck out of each other and never slowing down a bit. Apparently all of these spots were planned out months in advance in Savage’s house in Florida which worked very well as there are zero bad spots here that I can think of. Excellent match and something everyone should see at least once if not more than once.

Jake Roberts vs. The Honky Tonk Man

This all started on Jake’s interview segment the Snake Pit where Honky hit him with a real guitar. See today, the guitars Jeff Jarrett uses are fake. They’re made to explode the way they do. The one Honky used was a real one and didn’t break.

Some of the material legitimately got stuck in Jake’s neck and allegedly that’s what got him addicted to alcohol and drugs to alleviate the pain. Believe that if you want to. Anyway, that more or less started Jake’s face turn and for God knows what reason, rocker Alice Cooper is in Jake’s corner. Also factor in that Jimmy Hart is deathly afraid of snakes.

There’s really not much here. It’s about 7 minutes long so it gets some time but Honky really hadn’t established the character that made him legendary yet, so this isn’t what you’d expect. It’s a very slow paced match that was I think designed to give the people a breather after the IC Title match. They go back and forth for awhile but Jake goes for the DDT and Jimmy grabs his foot. Honky rolls him up and grabs the rope for the pin. After the match, Jake and Alice torment Jimmy with the snake to end things.

Rating: C. It’s nothing special and is little more than a breather for the fans between the two mega matches. This was allegedly a double turn according to some people but that is just stupid as both guys already were in their more famous roles. This was a pretty ok match but dude, they’re following Savage vs. Steamboat. Like anyone cares about what happened here.

We get Gene Okerlund to announce the world attendance record of 93,173. No matter what you think of the show, that’s freaking amazing. This also gets you the beginning of the long running joke with Jesse and Gorilla of Jesse wondering whether or not he and Gorilla are counted in that.

Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff vs. Killer Bees

More or less the same review of the previous match but in tag team version. This is another filler to bridge the gap between the two big matches. As Volkoff is singing, Jim Duggan runs out with the 2×4 and stops the song. This is a really dull match with the Bees using fast moves against both big guys but eventually getting caught.

Duggan is on the floor playing cheerleader throughout the whole thing. Duggan starts chasing Volkoff for some reason while Sheik has one of the Bees in the camel clutch. They go into the ring and Duggan looks at Sheik and for no reason at all, blasts him over the back with the board. Even the commentators are at a loss for why he hit him. It just made absolutely no sense at all.

Rating: D. This match was boring and the ending made less sense than an Iron Sheik promo. Again this was just filler and a way to get the crowd all fired up for that whole biggest match of all time thing coming after it. There was very little thought in this one as the buildup was weak on Superstars. All that being said though as I said in the previous rating, dude they’re right before Hogan vs. Andre.

World Title: Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant

This match has been called the biggest match in the history of professional wrestling and that very well may be true. It was the first true super main event in Wrestlemania history. Here’s the story: Hogan and Andre used to be friends and even tag partners. They celebrated together when Hogan won the belt over 3 years ago. Hogan ran in to save Andre a few times from being beaten up by Bundy and Studd.

Fast forward a year and Hogan is being given a trophy for being World Champion for three years. Andre is given a slightly smaller trophy for not losing a match in 15 years. He looks at the trophies and just walks away. A few weeks later, they have a face to face interview on Piper’s Pit. Andre tilts Hogan’s head up at him and says “Look at me when I’m talking to you. I’m here for one reason: to challenge you for a world championship match at Wrestlemania.”

Hogan is stunned and says he can’t do it. Andre grabs Hogan’s shirt and the cross he wears and rips them off, stunning Hogan. Piper asks him if he’ll fight him and Hogan screams YES!!! You really have to understand how big this was at the time. Andre was like Taker as far as mystique goes, but 10x moreso. This would be like Hulk Hogan coming back today and challenging John Cena to a match.

Hogan cuts one of the most famous promos of his career before the match, saying that the world is going to fall at his feet after the match. Hogan always had that little hint at implying he was God in his promos but never flat out said it.

Andre comes out and the booing is mindblowing. In something that I find funny, he waves to the fans on the way down to ringside. Jesse gives the tale of the tape, which is all of Andre and Hogan’s measurements, showing that as big as Hogan is, Andre is so much bigger. Bob Uecker is the guest announcer and after introducing Andre, says three simple words: and, his opponent. After that, the fans just lose it. Hogan’s music hits and nothing else matters at all.

Gorilla puts it best by saying “The roof of the Silverdome is about to explode here!” In a great camera shot, you get a wide angle shot of the arena with the spotlight on Hogan which really shows how this whole show has been building to this one moment. Hogan gets in the ring and it’s on. I won’t go into detail here either as I’m sure you’ve all seen this at one time or another. Every word of commentary is famous here as I can almost quote the whole match to you.

Within 15 seconds, Hogan goes for a slam and we nearly get a pin. That is a point that is used for over a year as Hogan might not have gotten his shoulder up in time. The way the camera is set up you really can’t tell if he did or not. This was something that a lot of people, Hulk included, were worried about going into this match. See, today in wrestling, no one would ever change the ending to a match. In this case, Andre had agreed to lose.

The problem that Hogan had was if he did a single thing during the match to offend Andre, Andre would pin him and there wasn’t a thing Hogan could do if Andre chose to do that. That’s how big and strong Andre truly was. There wasn’t a man in wrestling that could legitimately beat him in a real fight at the time.

He easily could have turned it into a shoot and annihilated Hogan. That’s where the controversy came from: when Andre landed on Hogan, Hogan literally couldn’t kick out. Andre shifted his weight at the last second and Hogan got a shoulder up just in time, but it was so close that it looked like the match lasted 15 seconds.

The in ring work here is really pretty bad, but no one cared. This match was all about the meaning of what was going on and the truly epic nature of the match. No one really knew who was going to win here and it was a legitimate possibility that Hogan would lose. Andre more or less beats the living tar out of Hogan the whole match until the very end. Hogan gets some shots in here and there that do some damage and Andre is clearly worn out at the end of it.

The crowd is almost stunned that Hogan is being dominated. They brawl on the floor for a bit and then head back into the ring. Andre misses a boot and Hogan clotheslines him, knocking him down. The fans go insane at the sight of this. Hulk Hulks Up and he has the crowd in the palm of his hand at this point. In what might be the most mous scene in the history of wrestling, Hogan slams Andre in a completely unplanned spot.

Even the commentators are in awe at this point as Hogan drops the leg and wins the match. Andre was so bit at the time that Hogan ripped his ab muscles to pieces slamming him and was out for a few months. The music plays and Heenan and Andre get into the cart that takes them to the back as Heenan has his head in his hands, wondering what just happened. Hogan poses as we close the show with the fans absolutely going nuts.

Rating: A. The match itself is pretty bad but the historical significance is second to absolutely nothing. Now I’ve seen a lot of people (including his majesty Mr. Meltzer) say this was a horrible match and all that jazz. In short: SCREW YOU ALL. Get the sticks out of your head and have some fun for once. If you don’t get chills watching the staredown and the slam, then go watch something else.

You have Hogan and Andre who can barely move at all. What are they supposed to do out there? The entire idea here was to have a major showdown and that’s exactly what they did. THis match was epic, still is epic and will always be epic. Anyone that says this wasn’t a great match that did exactly what it was supposed to do is a fool, and i don’t care who I have to argue this with.

Overall Rating: B+. I went back and forth between B+ and A- here. This is the first truly historic Wrestlemania and the first to truly be the spectacle that is has become today. Easily the two biggest matches are the singles title matches that are still incredibly famous today. There’s far less filler than before and the matches have much more solid stories to them.

This show is more famous for its historical aspect than the in ring stuff and that’s just fine. It’s not the best Mania of all time, but it’s up there. Definite recommendation to see this if you never have, or if you just haven’t watched it in awhile, if nothing else just for the history lesson

Clash of the Champions
Date: March 27, 1988
Location: Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
Attendance: 6,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Jim Ross

There’s quite a bit to say here. This show likely should have been called Crockett’s Revenge. Twice Vince had sabotaged Crockett’s attempt at a PPV debut. First he put on a show called Survivor Series on the same night as Starrcade 87, which was their version of Mania. He had told the PPV companies that if they didn’t show his show, they wouldn’t get Mania 4. The last PPV had been Mania 3, so this terrified the PPV guys. All but like 3 went with Vince. Crockett tried again in January with an awful show called Bunkhouse Stampede which focused on a battle royal. Vince put on a free show about a battle royal and called it the Royal Rumble.

So now it’s late March, which means Wrestlemania time. In fact, this is Wrestlemania night. So Crockett, the nice guy that he is, puts on this: a free show of PPV quality. The main event is Ric Flair vs. a former Horseman (bet a lot of you didn’t know that) who won a title shot and dared to ask Flair for it. He’s incredibly athletic, young, strong and popular. His name is Sting. This show is universally considered his coming out party as he went from a local guy in the UWF to a solid guy in Crockett, to a national star immediately after this match. In short, without this match, Sting means nothing to wrestling. Let’s get to it.

The opening video runs down the show in an incredibly laid back tone. The announcer is talking about revenge etc and sounds like he’s ordering dinner. Keep in mind this was on TBS (a cable channel) so there will be commercials.

Tony is kind of rocking a mustache.

TV Title: Mike Rotunda vs. Jimmy Garvin

Rotunda is in the Varsity Club here, which is based on the idea of them all being college athletes. Therefore, this is under college rules. There are three five minute periods and only a one count is needed. Teddy “I still have hair here” Long is referee. Rotunda (IRS later on) is kind of like Swagger-Lite. Garvin is nowhere near as good as Rotunda is on the mat so he’s the underdog here by a long stretch.

We see a LOT of the fans. We know they’re there dudes. There’s a lot of feeling out here with both guys doing basic stuff, which is the idea of the match so I can’t complain about it. The audio on this tape is horrible so I’ll have to do my best on it but I apologize if I miss something. The weird thing is that there’s basic pro stuff here which is almost completely against the idea. Rotunda goes insane on him and almost gets him as we go to the bell to end the first round.

There’s a 30 second rest period. Mike jumps him almost immediately and we get a slam, likely the most high impact move so far. We then have a slam off the top for a change of pace. Kevin Sullivan, Rotunda’s stable mate goes after Precious, Garvin’s wife. That allows a rollup on Garvin to end it. Rick Steiner, the other member of the Varsity Club, comes down and they beat up Garvin but he saves Precious in the end. This was part of a WEIRD angle where Sullivan tried to “get” Precious and had some kind of papers to make that happen. We never found out what they were and the angle never was finished, but dang it was out there.

Rating: D+. This is a hard one to grade as it was just so different from the traditional match, but this was really just a small piece in the epic feud between Garvin and the Varsity Club. This would dominate the midcard for most of a year as the Varsity Club was incredibly successful. Had the Horsemen not been the greatest stable ever and not been around at that time, it would be very interesting to see just how far these guys could have gone. They were that good. Anyway, this was just to have more Precious vs. Sullivan and Garvin vs. Rotunda so they could be introduced to the audience. No harm there.

Dr. Death talks about Dusty and Magnum who have been having some problems with heels lately. He wants the winner of Sting vs. Flair. I’d pay to see either of those matches.

Ad for the Four Horsemen Vitamins. Take that Flintstones!

US Tag Titles: Midnight Express vs. Fantastics

The heels are the champions and if you don’t know who the heels are then you fail. It’s Eaton and Stan here for the historically challenged. The Fantastics jump them to start and it is on quick. We go immediately to the floor as this is a huge feud and has been for months. This was the golden era of tag wrestling and these two along with the Rock N Roll Express led the charge.

It’s still just a wild brawl with chairs and tables all over the place. Keep in mind this is 1988 so this stuff is incredibly extreme at the time, at least to the masses. Ross is panicking over all this stuff. This was when he was relatively young and got even more excited than he would later on. It was a regular tag situation for about 9 seconds before we hit the brawling again. Lane’s karate was always cool. The heels beat on Rogers for awhile in textbook fashion. They should be able to anyway since they were half of the guys that made up the modern tag formula.

He gets thrown to the floor and Eaton hits a bulldog on a table. This is an incredibly brutal match. Rogers is pretty much dead at this point and can barely stand but he keeps going. He makes a tag but the referee doesn’t see it. Fulton is like FORGET THAT and throws the referee out. The Rocket Launcher (Assisted top rope splash, the finisher of the Fantastics and later stolen by the Midnights) ends it. And then the original referee says no as it’s a DQ due to Fulton throwing the referee. Say it with me: DUSTY FINISH. The heels and Cornette beat the heck out of Rogers afterwards.

Rating: B+. Very entertaining match here, but too short for my taste. This got about ten minutes and after a three minute brawl, seven minutes just feels too short. You give this another five minutes or so and it goes way up, possibly to near A+ levels. They never stop moving here and it’s just flat out entertaining. Very, very good match. The Fantastics would get the belts about a month later.

Ken Osmond, the guy that played Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver, is here and talks to Cornette. Comedy ensues.

Gary Hart and Al Perez issue a challenge to Dusty Rhodes for the US Title.

We get the top ten seeds for the Crockett Cup. We’ll have to do that someday.

10. Ivan Koloff/Dick Murdoch
9. Sting/Ron Garvin
8. Varsity Club
7. Fantastics
6. Barry Windham/Lex Luger
5. Powers of Pain
4. Midnight Express
3. Road Warriors
2. Nikita Koloff/Dusty Rhodes
1. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard

Shockingly, Dusty would win the cup. Yeah imagine that: the booker and US Champion gets another trophy for himself.

Road Warriors/Dusty Rhodes vs. Powers of Pain/Ivan Koloff

There’s barbed wire between the ropes and Animal has a mask on his face because of an injury. Animal had been doing bench presses and the heels jumped him, hurting his face. The fans are one sided to say the least. The one thing they haven’t told us is how the guys get in the ring now that there is barbed wire set up around the ropes. Ah the crawl under. Well that was anticlimactic.

Animal is in a hockey mask due to face injuries. A grand total of nothing is going on here. No one is going near the barbed wire and it’s a bunch of punching and people doing their normal stuff. Hawk goes up for a punch from the top to really mix things up a bit. Tony points out how tired everyone is which is true and is quite sad really. Animal gets a powerslam on Warlord for two and then Barbarian misses a headbutt on Animal, hitting Warlord which lets Hawk get the pin. The heels beat down Animal after the match until Dusty makes the save. Well who else was going to do it?

Rating: D. Boring stuff here but just three and a half minutes or so. This feud never really went anywhere but it’s not like there was any substance to it anyway. At least this was short so that’s really all that matters. Dusty was just worthless in the ring at this point so he gave himself the US Title anyway.

There’s a new NWA show coming up and it meant nothing.

Nikita Koloff, in a suit, says he’s a new Russian and says he’s against drugs now. What the heck am I watching? He yells about Kevin Sullivan and says he’s going to win the world title.

Tag Titles: Barry Windham/Lex Luger vs. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard

Luger is still fairly green here so I wouldn’t expect much out of him here. Blanchard is in the Rack in less than a minute so you can tell this is going to be a fun one. The champions have made three tags less than two minutes in. Windham comes in as the crowd is red hot here. In a dumb camera move Windham hits a big powerslam and covers but at two we jump to a shot of Dillon for no apparent reason.

Windham puts Blanchard to sleep on the floor. This is an incredibly fast paced match. Anderson gets the DDT and this is going too fast for me to type. The spinebuster hits Windham before it has a name. Windham hits a gutwrench suplex on Blanchard and both are down, marking the first time in the whole match where nothing is going on. Not bad for six minutes in.

Slingshot Suplex gets two on Windham and Blanchard is STUNNED. We’re waiting on the hot tag to Luger and there it is. The Package cleans house and Tony is losing his mind off of this. Dillon gets a chair for Arn but Luger reverses to send Anderson into it for the pin and the titles. The crowd ERUPTS over this as the Horsemen finally lost the belts, which was something people had been begging for since the day they won them, an agonizing six months ago. JR’s completely over the top announcing just makes it all the sweeter.

Rating: A-. This match is just shy of ten minutes and at most there are 30 seconds where something isn’t happening. I don’t even remember the cruiserweights going this fast during the Nitro shows. The idea here was do something completely different here which they did: no one went this fast at this time, at least no one major and it worked. I know it sounds really basic and it is but the fans HATED the Horsemen and were dying to see them lose the belts.

They had made a habit out of cheating or winning by DQ so many times that the fans were furious at them, so to see someone actually get the win, especially Luger who was kicked out like six weeks ago, was just a massive orgasm moment for everyone. And then Windham turned on Luger in a legit shock to join the Horsemen and make them into the unit that is considered the A-Team of the Horsemen if you can imagine that.

There are judges for the main event. There MUST be a winner. Remember that. The judges are Sandy Scott (former wrestler), Patty Mullin (Penthouse Pet), Ken Osmond (Leave it to Beaver) and Jason Hearvey (Wonder Years). Yeah I’m sure this isn’t going to go badly at all. There are four judges. No one saw a problem with this at all.

NWA World Title: Sting vs. Ric Flair

Sting is BRAND new at this point so this should be little more than a glorified squash. Flair’s entrance is nothing short of epic. Dillon, Flair’s manager, is in a cage at ringside. This would be like Evan Bourne getting a title shot. Ok maybe not that low but somewhere between him and Kingston. This is a legendary match but not for the in ring stuff. There we go.

We start with a lot of basic stuff as you would expect. You can get away with a lot of stuff like this with a long time limit like they have to work with. We hear about Flair’s strength which is definitely not something you hear about on a regular basis. Sting dominates early so Flair bails like a good heel. There’s a lot of arm work going on in there which is a basic tactic that works well enough. Sting busts out a flying headscissors which isn’t something you see every day from him. We’re five minutes in and nothing of note has happened.

Tony tells us that if the match ends early we have some standby matches ready, one of which is Shane Douglas vs. Larry Zbyszko for the Western States Title. A title match is a standby match. Does that just sound odd to anyone else? Now of course those matches were never going to happen, but still it makes the belt sound even weaker than it already was. Sting STILL has that headlock on. Well there’s something going on at least….kind of.

Sting’s chest is bleeding from Flair’s chops. There’s headlock #4. Again thought hey have a lot of time left in this. The idea here makes sense though as Sting is young and nervous so he found something that works and he’s sticking with it. He’s trying to get a bunch of little victories where he can, such as a headlock like this. He’s won that battle so he can go from there. That’s probably looking into it too much but I love Sting so I’ll grasp at straws, especially when they come close to making sense.

He uses the headlock one more time as this is starting to get boring with nothing else going on. We look at the Penthouse Pet and Ross says she’s likely used to seeing action. Well ok then JR. We hit ten minutes and it’s the same situation as it was at five minutes past. Sting’s offense is shall we say limited. He hooks a bearhug which is a weird move for a face to use the majority of the time.

Well to be fair though the Scorpion works on the back so there’s a thought there. Fifteen minutes in and Sting has him on the mat in a bearhug which isn’t something you see every day but it works at least. Sting lets him go and is all fired up. The jumping elbow of course misses to get us back to even. Flair hasn’t controlled at all in fifteen minutes so far. And of course that changes just after I type that.

He works on Sting’s back for some reason instead of the legs, but I guess it could be because it slows Sting down. We’re twenty minutes in now as I think we’re speeding up the clock here. Either that or this is a rather uninteresting match. It’s not terrible or anything but there isn’t much going on here. Sting Hulks Up and the crowd wakes up with him. Ross loses his mind over this as I don’t think we’ve had any commercials in this match.

Sting goes for a Stinger’s Splash against the post and just guess how that goes for him. You would think a face would learn over time but apparently not. Flair goes to the wrist but Sting nips up in a cool move. He gets the Scorpion but Flair is in the ropes almost immediately as we have 20 minutes to go. Flair fakes Sting out of his shoes and puts him on the floor again. That looked great.

The idea here is that Flair can’t put Sting away as he just keeps coming back but Sting can’t finish Flair since all he has is the Scorpion. Ah and now we go for Sting’s knees. Now that’s more like it. The judges look at something completely different, showing how brilliant of an idea this was. We’re down to fifteen left. Figure Four goes on and Sting is in real trouble as it’s in the middle of the ring.

After being in it for like a minute and a half Sting turns it over to a very shocked reaction. Both guys have bad knees now so of course Sting is able to do a delayed vertical suplex on a 240lb man. We go abdominal stretch of all things over thirty minutes into a match. Well this is old school so that’s fine I guess. Ten minutes to go. Even after thirty five minutes Flair can’t get the top rope whatever. You have to call it that since there’s almost no way to know what it would be.

Sting hooks a Figure Four on Flair but since he’s not Jay Lethal it doesn’t work. They’re doing a lot of basic stuff here but extending it out to kill time. It’s working though so it’s not so bad. Nature Boy tries to get disqualified and that gets him nowhere. The fans are way into it now as things have cranked up a lot. Sting throws Flair over the judges’ table in a good looking spot.

We have five minutes left and Flair is reeling. You can see the ending coming a mile away but it’s still good stuff. Four minutes left and Sting no sells an atomic drop, apparently having balls of steel. The Splash misses though and Sting crashes to the floor. Three minutes left and they slow things down. Two minutes left and Sting gets a two count off a sunset flip.

I love how Sting no sells chops. He’s all like BRING IT ON BLONDIE as we hit one minute. The Splash hits and he gets the Scorpion with thirty seconds left. Just like Shawn in the Iron Man match, Flair doesn’t give up in the same hold. The time limit expires so we’re going to go to the judges. Sting controlled longer and likely did win the match if you go on a scoring system.

After a break for the judges to tally their scores, we get the results. The Penthouse chick says Flair. Some guy that hasn’t been mentioned at all yet says Sting. Hervey says Sting. Leave it to Beaver dude says Flair. The wrestler says it’s a draw, so Flair keeps the belt.

Rating: B. Well it’s long and solid but far from a classic. This was meant to do one thing though and that was get Sting over. To say that worked is an understatement. This is the definition of a match where even though he lost the guy got elevated a lot. This match flies by and is definitely worth checking out. Flair vs. Sting is a match that was always at least worth watching and this was one of their better ones. Coupling that as something historic and it’s easily recommended.

Overall Rating: B+. This is definitely a more fun show than Mania was. Everything has a purpose and it’s only about two hours long. With a great tag match and a very solid main event, how can you go wrong? The Mania numbers were higher than Mania 3 though so it’s not like this made a huge difference. Crockett was in trouble though as soon after this he was more or less broke and sold to Turner. Anyway though this was a great show and well worth checking out.

Wrestlemania 2
Date: April 7, 1986
Location: Nassau Coliseum-New York, Rosemont Horizon-Chicago, Illinois, Sports Arena-Los Angeles, California
Attendance: 40,085 combined for all three venues
Commentators: New York – Vince McMahon, Susan St. James. Chicago – Gorilla Monsoon, Gene Okerlund, Cathy Lee Crosby, Ernie Ladd. Los Angeles – Jesse Ventura, Alfred Hayes, Elvira
America The Beautiful: Ray Charles

This show is the classic what the heck were thinking moment from the WWF. They had made Wrestlemania the year before and they hit it so far out of the park that by the time it was Wrestlemania 2 the ball hadn’t come down yet. This was a problem though. Since the inaugural show had been such a success, Vince felt they had to do something to top it. This was his idea: what if we did Wrestlemania from 3 different places??? Think about that for a minute. How weird would that be?

Not to mention, Vince had another idea: let’s put it on a Monday! Again, just awkward sounding. The format used was three locations, each with an undercard and then a featured match, which were a boxing match, a battle royal, and the true main event, Hulk Hogan against King Kong Bundy in a steel cage.

The idea was odd on paper and worse in reality as it felt like watching three shows instead of one. There’s no rhythm and because it was in three locations, announcers were a rare commodity. Due to this, Vince’s last idea was to put a real commentator together with celebrities to do the commentary. What followed might be the biggest mess in company history.

Paul Orndorff vs. Don Muraco

We begin the show in New York City with Paul Orndorff against Don Muraco. Why are they fighting? I don’t have a freaking clue but they are so here we go. As they begin we hear comments from both and neither have anything to say of meaning.

Orndorff is easily the face here so if he never accomplished anything else in his career, the face turn between Manias one and two was effective. As was predicted, the celebrity commentator is atrocious, with such gems like “I think he’s winning!” Orndorff controls the early part of the match but Muraco breaks it up with some power. They roll outside and we get a double count out as the crowd clearly can be heard chanting bull.

Rating: D+. Fine for what it was, but the fans got it right with their chants. This is the opening match to Wrestlemania? Seriously? That’s the best they could come up with? This feud more or less never went anywhere at all as Orndorff was about to get the biggest push of his career by far, resulting in him making about $20,000 a week for awhile. This was just an odd choice for an opening match but then again this was an odd choice for a show so I guess it fits.

Intercontinental Title: George Steele vs. Randy Savage

Next up the intercontinental title is on the line as Randy Savage defends against George Steele. This is a match that I can’t find a standalone version of so I can’t put this one in here. However, this was another chapter in the over year long feud between these two. Savage had been allegedly mistreating Liz and Steele had developed a crush on her. That led to, what else, Savage being jealous and a 15 month feud began.

Mega stall from Savage to start as he seems afraid of Steele. Savage runs again and finally on the third time Steele goes after him. They finally lock up and Steele beats Savage up for a while with power moves and biting but Steele keeps going to talk to Liz. This was a weird period for Savage as they knew they had a gem with him but they didn’t know what to do with him. Yeah he was the IC champion, but where did they go with him from there?

This was all they had until the next year when he and Steamboat stole the show and Savage was launched into the main event. For some reason Savage has a bouquet of flowers that he and Steele try to beat each other up with. After ripping apart a turnbuckle and eating the stuffing (not making that up) Steele gets slammed and elbowed, but he kicks out?

Yes, George Steele is the first man to kick out of the elbow, and he pops up, beats on Savage some more and then gets rolled up and Savage uses the ropes to pin him. Steele eats more stuffing.

Rating: C-. This was a comedy match I think with wrestling mixed in. Savage is the highlight here as he sells like crazy for Steele and it helps a lot. These two had this freaky chemistry that no one has ever been able to really figure out. They would feud on and off for the next year before FINALLY ending it with the return of Ricky Steamboat for that whole greatest match of all time thing he and Savage would have next year.

Jake Roberts vs. George Wells

We follow up that strange match with another somewhat strange match as Jake Roberts, still a rookie here, takes on some guy named George Wells. This match is little more than a glorified squash. Wells dominates early but doesn’t go for a pin when he has the chance. Jake recovers and DDTs him to win the match. Afterwards he unleashes Damien who causes Wells to look like he’s foaming at the mouth.

Rating: D+. Talk about a weird choice to have on Wrestlemania. Jake was brand new at this point so they needed someone to make him look good and they pick….George Wells? There was a squash on Mania for the first two years and both times they were the least interesting match on the card. I don’t get the selection here for the most part and it’s pretty bad all things considered.

Boxing Match: Mr. T vs. Roddy Piper

We now move onto the main event of the New York portion of the show: a boxing match with Roddy Piper and Mr. T. This was built up on SNME about 2 months before hand with Mr. T. beating Piper’s friend Bob Orton in a boxing match before being beaten down by both of them. That came on from what started over a year ago in the main event of the first Wrestlemania, so this truly was a showdown that had been built up for ages.

Factor in that T had been the World Boxing Champion in Rocky 3 just a few years ago and was on a top rated TV show where he was a tough guy. Both men have famous trainers in their corners to make it look more legit.  For no apparent reason Joan Rivers does the ring announcing.  This is ten three minute rounds.  She introduces Orton as the Ace Comedy Bob Orvin.  Nice job of handling the reading thing honey.

They actually got Smoking Joe Frazier to be in T’s corner.  One of the biggest stars in Hollywood has in his corner a former world heavyweight champion who had three of the best boxing matches in history with Muhammad Ali.  He also has a midget.  Well of course he does.  They treat this like a real boxing match.  Oh dear.

T goes for the ribs which doesn’t work all that well for him.  Piper hits him on the break which is illegal of course.  There has been no mention of judges or anything like that so I guess this is destined to not go the distance.  The referee has broken them up about four times now.  I think these are three minute rounds.  For the most part these punches aren’t landing at all but they sell them anyway of course.

It’s not so much boxing but rather glorified grappling with the occasional punch thrown.  The fans are more or less dead if you didn’t guess that.  After the first round nothing has really happened.  Piper has a bunch of grease on his face for the second round which is keeping the punches from T from being effective.

This is painfully boring if I didn’t make that clear so far.  Piper knocks the heck out of T with some big roundhouses and finally drops him to huge cheers because something HAPPENED for a change.  The knockdown gets a count of 8.  Piper keeps pounding on him as round two ends.  They brawl a bit during the break and Orton throws water at T.

Piper does the Ali Shuffle to start the third round.  T gets him into the corner and pounds away with more or less open hand shots to the head and Piper is in trouble.  That gets a count of 7.  T gets a huge punch that I think hit so of course Piper is knocked to the floor.  He gets up at 9 and then holds onto T for the last 25 seconds of the fight.

They just trade big bombs to start the fourth round.  And then he punches the referee and slams T for the DQ about a minute into the fourth round.  It’s a bit brawl and T of course gets the win.  Was there a reason for both that ending and also having Piper dominate a round like that?  This was awful.

Rating: F. On WRESTLEmania they had a long boxing match.  This was just boring beyond belief and the boxing looked awful.  They tried to make this seem legit and it failed on more than all levels.  T was never seen again and Piper turned face relatively soon after taking time off for knee surgery.  Boring match and awful beyond belief.

Chicago

Women’s Title: Fabulous Moolah vs. Velvet McIntyre

We start with the Women’s Title on the line as Moolah defends against Velvet McIntyre. This match is just weird. Moolah dominates, Velvet comes back and then misses a splash allowing Moolah to pin her. It screams botched finish to me as even the announcers seem surprised.

Rating: N/A. Just was nothing at all and might have gone a minute. Little to rate here so I won’t even try to.

Nikolai Volkoff vs. Corporal Kirschner

Now we have a flag match with Nikolai Volkoff against the forgotten Corporal Kirschner. Yeah I don’t remember him either. The winner gets to have their flag waved. Other than that it’s a standard one on one match. As usual, Nikolai sings the Russian National Anthem before the match starts. Nikolai dominates early on, ramming Kirschner into the post twice and busting him open. I kid you not, Kirschner lands 7 right hands, catches Freddy Blassie’s cane and hits Nikolai with it to win the match.

Rating: D-. This was supposed to be a brawl but it was a bad match. 7 punches and a cane shot? Give me a break. Kirschner is apparently one of the most legit tough guys in the history of the business and got thrown out of most major companies for being too rough. Based on this and his match at the Wrestling Classic I’d assume it’s due to a high level of suck but that’s just me. This was just barely long enough to warrant a rating and it wasn’t any good at all.

Battle Royal

Now we get the most famous match from this show: a 20 man battle royal with ten pro football players and 10 wrestlers. This is going to go GREAT. Since most of you won’t know half the people in this I’m not going to list them all until the end. The big names are a still rookie Bret Hart, Andre the Giant, Big John Studd and Bruno Sammartino. For the most part this is a run of the mill battle royal.

It’s little more than a bunch of punching and kicking against the ropes as we get down to the big names. Oddly enough the celebrity commentator is the only one that gets anything right. Gorilla says stuff like Studd has this guy in the corner when they’re almost in the middle of the ring, or Ernie Ladd who was a wrestler saying no one wants Andre when he’s beating someone up. Amazing.

The only really famous thing in this match is a football player named William the Refrigerator Perry getting eliminated by Studd but then offering a handshake and eliminating him. The Iron Sheik eliminates Hillbilly Jim just as he would in the gimmick battle royal 15 years later at WM 17. The final four are the Hart Foundation, a football player and Andre. Do I need to really give the details on this? Andre beats up the Harts to win the match after launching Bret out in a press slam.

Rating: B. It’s a bunch of football players and 80s wrestlers with a few great workers. Nothing special, but considering what they had to work with this is just fine. The football stuff didn’t lead anywhere which is kind of surprising as they set up a Fridge vs. Studd thing that never happened at all that I know of. This was just ok and at least the right guy won it. Andre would of course be in the biggest match of all time the next year.

Tag Titles: British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team

Now we have what is likely the best match of the whole show. It’s a classic 80s tag match with the British Bulldogs, and Ozzy Osbourne in their corner for God alone knows why to face the tag team champions of the Dream Team Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine. You can tell they’re serious here as this has a sixty minute time limit.

The ring looks small here for some reason.  Gorilla asks why Ozzy is there too which means he’s confused like I am.  There are two referees here which I doubt will mean anything for the most part.  Smith vs. Valentine to get up.  The ring is all loud here still.

The Bulldogs were so fast with those tags and this is no exception at all.  Valentine won’t tag out for no apparent reason.  He counters a backdrop though and here’s Beefcake.  Small package by Dynamite get two.  Fisherman’s suplex by Davey gets two.  I guess he’s not perfect.  After Davey gets beaten on for a bit Dynamite comes in and slugs it out with Valentine.

The champions cheat a bit and they still can’t take over.  I never got the appeal of the Dream Team but to be fair it might be that Brutus was just awful at this point.  Valentine gets a Piledriver on Dynamite but falls forward so it kind of looks like a tombstone but with Dynamite’s stomach facing out.  That was kind of cool looking.

Bulldogs clear the ring as things speed up a bit.  Davey gets the powerslam for two as it wasn’t a finisher but just a signature move at the time.  The champions work over Davey as momentum changes hands a lot here tonight.  They work over the arm, including with a shoulderbreaker from Valentine.

However he shows his idiocy by pulling Davey up at two.  Nice job you lunkhead.  And there’s the idiocy coming through as for no apparent reason Dynamite gets on the middle rope and Davey rams Valentine’s head into Kid’s for the knockout shot and falls on Valentine for the pin and the titles.  That ending came from NOWHERE and Dynamite is out cold from the shot which is kind of amusing for some reason.  That’s Albano’s 16^th title win as a manager.  Hokey smoke.

Rating: B-. Fun stuff but the ending was just so freaking random.  I don’t get the ending as it was like they looked at the clock and realized they had no time left and were like oh crap we need to finish this.  The Bulldogs were a good team and were a huge step up from the Dream Team.  They would lose them to the Harts in about 8-9 months so the tag division was starting to roll at this point.

Los Angeles

Ricky Steamboat vs. Hercules Hernandez

We move to the final and by far the worst of the three locations as we’re now in LA, beginning with Ricky Steamboat against Hercules Hernandez. This was supposed to be Bret vs. Ricky in the big showdown match for Mania. I’m not sure what the showdown would be for since for all intents and purposes they had no feud that I know of but a little face on face action never hurt anyone, even though Bret wasn’t a face at the time so scratch that line.

They start off kind of fast but not fast enough for anything to mean much. This was a different era so matches like these were really commonplace. There’s no feud or anything here and Hercules is just a big power guy that had been given a fairly decent push so he’s getting to fight one of the best guys in the company at one of the biggest shows of the year.

There is almost nothing to say here though as I’ve been watching for a few minutes and nothing has happened at all. Well at least nothing worth talking about that is. Hercules goes for the backbreaker as this is before the Full Nelson made him the original Chris Masters. Relatively standard Steamboat match which means it’s at least passable. Herc is the big powerhouse that beats the tar out of Ricky, makes one mistake and the Dragon makes his comeback. The flying body press ends things as always.

Rating: C-. And that’s almost all for Steamboat. I liked Hercules for some reason but for the life of me I don’t get the point in having him be considered a better prospect than Bret was. This was the epitome of a throwaway match with nothing special at all going on in it and nothing of note to talk about really. I sat there for minutes at a time with nothing of note so I apologize for the most history based match here.

Adrian Adonis vs. Uncle Elmer

Now for the odd match of the night, we have Adrian Adonis, playing a controversial gay gimmick at the time, against Uncle Elmer, a fat hillbilly character. The crowd chants a certain homosexual slur at Adonis to start the match which he prances around the ring to.

This match is slow and mostly painful as the smaller man in the match weighs about 350lbs. When he’s your agile guy, you know this isn’t going anywhere. Elmer punches him and literally falls off his feet from it. Quite sad actually. Adonis has his dress, yes dress ripped off and it’s just hideous. Elmer beats on him some more but misses a leg drop. Adonis hits a top rope headbutt and gets the pin.

Rating: N/A. I never got the appeal of either of these characters and thankfully Elmer wasn’t around much longer. Naturally he got a tape mainly about him and his family because that’s the way the 80s went.

Junkyard Dog/Tito Santana vs. The Funks

In the next to last match of the night, we have the Funks against JYD and Tito Santana. This is another filler match that had no point at all other than two faces against a heel team. This is a much slower paced match as they do more old school stuff in there. Terry vs. Tito starts us off so we’re certainly getting things started off on the right foot here.

You have three guys that belong in the Hall of Fame and JYD who is in there because he was popular in the 80s making him a LEGEND. I still don’t like him but he’s more bearable than some people I can’t stand. This is definitely a different style than most are used to. I’d like a bit more explanation as to why they’re fighting but I think It’s 1986 is about as close as we’re going to get. Tito dominates for the most part here, hammering away on both Funks. He was completely awesome at this point if you didn’t get that.

Off to the Dog now and we get some boxing. A Texas man lost a fight to a dog. Don’t bother going back to Amarillo I guess Terry. Someone please explain the appeal to me of the Dog as I just don’t get it at all and never have. Dory plays Ricky Morton which just sounds wrong and gets beaten on in the corner for a bit. The forearm gets two as I guess Tito didn’t have it perfected yet.

Control shifts over to the crazy men and they beat down Tito for awhile as he’s really playing Ricky Morton. That still sounds wrong. After a few minutes of basic offense from the Funks JYD comes back in and everything goes nuts. Terry is thrown to the floor where there are no mats. He might have legitimately hurt his knee or ankle there and I’m not surprised at all. With the referee not looking, Terry clocks the Dog with the Megaphone (Jimmy was managing them which I forgot to mention) and the heels steal one.

Rating: B-. Pretty fun match here with the Funks being all evil and the thrown together face team doing whatever they could to get the win. Granted that didn’t happen but at least they tried. This was a better match than I remember it being and while it’s still mainly formula stuff it worked rather well. I liked it and granted three of the guys being all time greats helps a bit.

WWF World Title: Hulk Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy

This is a cage match and the only one in Mania history if you don’t count the Cell match at Mania 15 which most people don’t. The story behind this is Bundy jumped Hogan at a SNME and hurt his ribs, which hadn’t healed yet. Hogan wrestled against doctor’s orders with tape all over his ribs. Simple but effective but kind of too simple as this was more or less thrown together about a month ago.

This is a very not surprising match with Bundy going for the ribs and Hogan having to fight through the pain. It’s solid because it’s Hogan doing what he does best but the total and complete lack of drama or anyone really caring for the most part is hurting it. Also having Jesse as lead announcer is a very odd choice.

Bundy rips the tape off of Hogan’s ribs like a good heel and Hogan messes up as always by trying to pick Bundy up and of course he can’t do it. There’s nothing special going on here at all but it’s working for the most part. Ah there’s the Hulk Up. Very surprisingly we get a power slam here and not the traditional slam. Maybe his ribs really were hurt. He ties up Bundy and goes over the top to retain and end the show.

Rating: B-. It’s Hogan against a monster heel not named Andre. What are you expecting here? This was his bread and butter and the fans popped for the end (only) so I guess you can call this a success. I’m a sucker for Hogan matches in the 80s so I’d say there’s probably some bias in the rating but who cares? Fairly solid match but nothing unique about it at all other than the cage aspect.

Overall rating: C+. While certainly better in the ring than the first Mania and including some storylines this time, the three venues thing is just a mess. There’s really only two or three very good matches here and I’d call maybe the tag title match Mania worthy. Other than that there’s a lot of filler and it’s more or less 1-2 big matches per location with the rest being all filler.

This show suffers from trying to do something that had never been done before, and while they did indeed do that the overlooked one major point: the new thing they did wasn’t a good idea. It’s really not that good of a show overall. Watch the highlights if you want to, but don’t waste three hours watching it from start to end.

NXT
Date: March 8, 2011
Location: Toyota Center, Houston, Texas
Commentators: Todd Grisham, William Regal

This is the debut of Season Five of NXT.  There has been no cast or Pros or anything like that announced yet.  All we know is that Maryse is going to be the host which was revealed/announced earlier today.  The rumor for this season was that it would be Legends with their children for this season which could be good for the older fans.  If that’s not the case I’ll edit this out.  Let’s get to it.

As the show opens you see the word “Redemption” everywhere.  Oh I have a bad feeling about this.

William Regal is now a commentator.

Striker and Maryse are now the hosts.  She introduces the Rookies.

Darren Young.  Oh dang it I was afraid of this.

Conor O’Brian

Lucky Cannon (with a big feathery robe)

Byron Saxton

Jacob Novak

Titus O’Neal

That’s it.  I have to watch these guys AGAIN?  The winner of this gets to be on NXT Season 6.  What the heck?  There’s no immunity but rather redemption points which make no sense but sounds like exactly the same thing.  Here are the Pros.

Darren Young gets Chavo Guerrero.  Chavo says Darren is good in the ring but he needs to be more aggressive.  Guerrero wants Young to get noticed.

O’Brian gets Vladimir Kozlov.  This isn’t going to go well.  He says some stuff no one can understand.

Lucky Cannon has Tyson Kidd.  What the heck are they thinking here?  Has Kidd actually won a match in the last two months?  Cannon, who is the reigning FCW Champion and a heel now, needs to be meaner.

Saxton gets Yoshi freaking Tatsu, who is in a suit.  Grisham points out the international flavor of this season.  Tatsu says Saxton needs to relax.

Novak the Worthless gets JTG.  Oh I give up.

Titus O’Neil gets Hornswoggle.  I didn’t listen to his promo/speech as I was writing up my resignation.

Novak vs. Young is up next.

Darren Young vs. Jacob Novak

Young has a haircut at least now.  They head to the floor which might have been an accident.  We hit the ropes a few times and Young gets a forearm to take him down.   Regal is a natural on commentary.  Novak with a clothesline in the corner for two so we hit the chinlock.  Young fights back which gets him nowhere for the most part as Novak hits yet another clothesline to take over.  Young hits that spinning full nelson slam to end this at 3:30.

Rating: D+. This was dull again.  Neither of these guys has anything that makes me want to watch them and I feel like I’m watching some weak indy match.  Novak continues to redefine what it means to be worthless.  Young is decent enough but again he’s not someone I would ever stop to watch.

Yoshi talks to Maryse in the back, saying she’ll be a great host.  He has something to tell her but Saxton comes up and says he’d love to talk strategy with his Pro.  She leaves and Tatsu says Saxton’s timing is no good.

Raw ReBound, which recaps the previous week’s show as Rock pretends to be a rapper.  Now we get part of Cena’s “Knockout” last night which was nowhere near his one from two weeks ago.  I still like Cena’s stuff better than Rock’s in this feud.  The aspect about Rock being in the arena once is really all the ammo Cena needs.  We also get Miz’s run in to end the show which was better than anything else in the last segment.  Thankfully this is actually a recap and not just reairing the whole thing.

Conor O’Brian talks about hiding behind a persona last season.  He talks about being poor growing up.  Why does it seem that every wrestler went through torture growing up?

There’s a Boot Camp Obstacle Course up next.

More on the Chaperone.  If I ever want to end myself it’ll be with a marathon of Legendary, Knucklehead and Chaperone.

Snooki is coming to Raw.  Dang it all.  WWE you continue to tick me off.

We do a Boot Camp Obstacle Course and first off my jaw drops at Maryse in camouflage.  I’m not a fan of her but good freaking grief she looks great here.

Titus goes first.  The course is jumping a wall, going under a net on the ground kind of thing, a balance beam, weaving through some polls and picking up a bag to carry across the finish line.  Titus gets 29.8.

Novak shatters it with 24 seconds.  There’s nothing to say here for the most part.

Saxton gets a time of 26.5.

Lucky Cannon in the pink tights, stops to say he won’t be a circus monkey this season because it’s all about him.

Conor is 5^th and gets a time of 27.1.  He stumbled at the beginning which hurt him a lot.

Young goes last and is FLYING.  He wins it with a time of 23 seconds, good for 3 Redemption Points which I’m not sure I understand.  Granted that might be because I thought they were different than Immunity Points.

We reair the majority of the Cole/JBL/Austin thing because these guys can’t have matches right?  Cole on commentary here is still absolutely awesome.  This eats up 8 minutes.

HHH will be on Smackdown.  Also Christian vs. Alberto.

Saxton says he’ll take less for granted because it’s his last chance.

Lucky Cannon vs. Titus O’Neil

After about a minute of jokes about the robe we’re ready to go.  Titus hammers him away in the corner but gets sent outside for his efforts.  And there goes the feed.  Hey tonight isn’t a total loss!  Ah there it is and Cannon has a chinlock.  Regal says Finlay is the best ever from his part of the world.  Cannon is a total heel here but the name is going to hold him back.  Titus gets a belly to back to escape from a headlock.  Titus uses his power but gets taken down.  Horny distracts Tyson and assists Titus to hit a Sky High (D’Lo’s old finisher) powerbomb to end this at 2:57.  Too short to grade but nothing of note.  This ends the show.

Overall Rating: C-. This was just like any other episode of this show, as in nothing special at all.  I have more or less zero desire to watch this season as the biggest named pro is Chavo, the best guy in the group is I guess Young, there’s the stupid Redemption thing and this is to get on the next season of NXT rather than an actual prize, meaning someone will be on three seasons of the show by the end of next season.  It’s going to be a long Spring.

Results

Darren Young b. Jacob Novak – Release Full Nelson Slam

Darren Young won the Boot Camp Obstacle Course

Titus O’Neil b. Lucky Cannon – Sitout Powerbomb

Wrestlemania 1
Date: March 31, 1985
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York
Attendance: 19,121
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura
National Anthem: Gene Okerlund

And so it begins. Wrestlemania is here. In what was perhaps the greatest cross promotional strategy of all time, the WWF teamed up with MTV to promote the biggest wrestling show of all time in what was called the Rock N Wrestling Connection. This idea was nothing short of genius and it truly got the war going with the NWA. Spearheaded by the feud between Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper, this show was all about fanfare. While little happened as far as historical significance, this show goes down in history as being great simply because of what it meant in history. Never before had mainstream celebrities been mixed with wrestling on such a vast scale. Obviously the results were great and Wrestlemania was born.

Tito Santana vs. The Executioner

Anyway, let’s get going with the show. To begin with, in the first match in the history of Wrestlemania, we see Tito Santana vs. The Executioner, portrayed by Buddy “Blow Away” Rose. Before the match we get a pre-recorded interview (which I believe all of them are tonight) from the Executioner saying that he’s going after Santana’s leg which was already injured. The match is pretty much what you would expect for an 80s WWF match. Very standard stuff that’s by no means bad, but not really great either. Tito is at his best here against a random heel, and he wins in standard fashion with a forearm and the figure four.

Rating: C. Considering it’s the first ever match at the biggest show that would ever exist, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s certainly not bad, but doesn’t really set a good first foot forward for Wrestlemania if that makes sense. This is more famous for simply being the first match in the history of the biggest wrestling series ever, but it wasn’t anything special at all.

King Kong Bundy vs. Special Delivery Jones

The next match is I believe still the shortest in Wrestlemania history as King Kong Bundy faces Special Delivery Jones. More prerecorded comments with Bundy saying he’s mad about something or other. In less than 25 seconds, Bundy hits a pair of splashes to pin Jones. This match was the epitome of a squash match. No rating of course.

“Maniac” Matt Borne says this is his chance to beat one of the best wrestlers in the world. Steamboat is too nice of a guy which will be his downfall.

Steamboat says this is a big test for him. Wow he must have a bad memory if this is his biggest challenge.

Matt Borne vs. Ricky Steamboat

Now we get onto a solid match with the always dependable Ricky Steamboat vs. Matt Borne, who is far more famous as heel Doink. Jesse is ROCKING that pink tuxedo. Not a lot of people can get away with that big Jesse is making it work for me. What was up with the five bells after everyone’s name? Steamboat is in the basic white tights which is odd to see indeed.

Feeling out process to start. Why can’t it ever be a feeling up process? Steamboat chops away and we get a chinlock seconds in. That’s not something you see everyday. I miss hearing Jesse call Gorilla Gino. A long atomic drop has Borne in trouble but he gets one of his own to avoid us hitting squash territory.

Ok perhaps you should forget the lack of a squash here as it’s almost all Steamboat here. At least the right guy is doing the squashing. Borne gets a suplex for two as even Gorilla says this isn’t going to work. He throws left handed punches and Gorilla concludes that he is in fact left handed.

We’re getting a lot of suplexes in this. Swinging neckbreaker by the Dragon gets no cover. A knee drop gets two. Steamboat speeds things up all of a sudden and there’s the flying cross body and I think you know what that means as this is 1985. Yep it’s over.

Rating: C-. Glorified squash match here with nothing special happening at all for the most part. Steamboat is always fun to see and this was no exception here. He would get a bit higher on the card in coming years before getting his lone world title in 1989. Borne would bounce around various companies before dancing with bear cubs in WCW and becoming a clown in WWF. Nice way to see different career paths.

David Sammartino vs. Brutus Beefcake

Now we go on to what was little more than a reason to have the managers brawl at ringside, we have David Sammartino against Brutus Beefcake. Davide is accompanied by his father and Johnny Valiant for Beefcake. Big stall to start which is filled in by Gorilla talking about how great the crowd is, and for the time it really was. Finally we get going and Jesse cracks me up by saying that a loss for either man here could set their careers back 2 years.

That’s nothing but priceless. Anyway, we have a nice little wrestling sequence to start with Beefcake stalling again after sliding to the floor. We’re almost 5 minutes in and nothing at all of interest has happened yet. They’re trying to do a technical match and it’s just failure. I’m quite bored as I watch this match and it’s not getting any better.

I feel like I’m watching a house show match, but not the good kind. I feel like I’m watching a house show match that makes jobbers look good. Even the commentators sound bored here, yet for some reason the crowd is into this. FINALLY we get the managers involved and it’s a huge brawl for the double DQ.

Rating: D-. I was so bored I almost fell asleep. Absolutely nothing at all of note and it was just done to get Bruno on the show. David had a lot to live up to and for the most part he never came close which is the case for the vast majority of the kids of major stars. If nothing else look at David Flair. This was a very bad match though as Beefcake was the top guy in the ring which sums up things rather well.

JYD says he’ll win.

Valentine says he’ll win.

IC Title: Junkyard Dog vs. Greg Valentine

No intro for Valentine as he’s just in the ring. That was far more common back then. It’s hard to imagine that the title is less than six years old at this point. Another One Bites The Dust by Queen brings Dog to the ring. I prefer Grab Them Cakes but that’s just me.

Valentine was awesome at this point and Gorilla says he might be the best IC Champion of all time at this point and I can’t really put up that much of an argument against that. He would lose the title to Santana soon after this who would lose it to Savage before Mania II. Dog is more or less the challenger of the month at this point and was very popular as well. Why he was popular is beyond me as he tends to be annoying but what do I know?

Naturally the Dog dominates to start with punches and headbutts. Valentine misses a punch and Dog gets on all fours with the heabutts. That’s about the biggest offensive move he’s going to have so I wouldn’t expect much more than that from him. We hear about Jimmy Hart’s stable which has Jim Neidhart but no Bret. It’s so weird to hear about Neidhart being a singles guy.

Valentine goes for the leg. He used the Figure Four as his finisher at this point which apparently he has patented. Did he file for the paperwork for it? Does he get royalties whenever Flair uses it? Dang no wonder he’s broke. Jesse says Valentine has no bones about this. I love bad puns.

Figure Four is kicked off which is the traditional counter of course. They slug it out and surprisingly enough Dog loses. Ok never mind he doesn’t but he was for a few seconds there. Jesse says a Dog headbutt would drop an oak tree. No see you make the tree watch one of his matches and it’ll fall asleep. That is how you drop an oak tree if JYD has to be involved.

Dog goes after Jimmy but Valentine accidentally pops his own manager. Here comes the Dog with his variety pack of punches and headbutts. Valentine cheats to get the pin with his feet on the ropes and apparently gets away with it. Tito runs out to tell the referee what happened so the match is restarted. Why can’t more people do that if they can get away with it? Valentine takes a walk anyway just because he can I guess. No title change thank goodness.

Rating: D+. Pretty boring match here with Valentine dominating for the most part. It went by rather fast though which helped a good bit. I can’t stand the Dog but Valentine is pretty good. This of course set up more of Valentine vs. Santana which helps a lot as at least we got a good feud and eventual title change out of it in a solid cage match between them.

On a side note, the old IC Title looks far better than the one they would replace it with. It’s kind of like the NWA US Title which I’ve always been a fan of. Decent match but really just a placeholder for the most part. Granted though they had no idea what they were doing here so it’s ok I guess.

Next up we have a match that I’ve always kind of liked. For the WWF Tag Team Titles, Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik against the US Express of Mika Rotunda and Barry Windham, who at the show came out to a song called Real American. Upon further review, this match is still pretty good and likely the best match of the night so far.

There’s not much to it but there doesn’t need to be. It’s America vs. foreigners, which is a formula that absolutely never fails. Rotunda plays a great face in peril here as he tries to out wrestle the monsters on the other team. There’s not a lot to this match but what they have is just fine. Big hot tag to Windham who cleans house, which leads to a big brawl. Blassie hands Sheik his cane which is smashed over Windham for a pinfall and a title change.

Rating: B-. Not much here, but what they had was at least passable. It was the standard U.S. versus the evil heels which is a formula that’s hard to mess up if anyone in the match knows what they’re doing, and these people knew. The titles would change back just a few weeks later so this was to do nothing more than get a title change on the card to make it seem historic. Keep in mind that this was still in the era when title reigns were usually longer so this meant a lot more.

Body Slam Match: Andre the Giant vs. Big John Studd

It is now time for the first of two famous matches from this card as Andre the Giant faces off with Big John Studd in a $15,000 vs. retirement match. Studd had put out a challenge saying that no one could body slam him, and no one could. Then a man named Andre took him up on the challenge, and this right here is the result of that challenge. Andre controls early on but eventually Studd evens things out.

The crowd is off the hook for this match behind Andre to say the least. This is really just a lot of bearhugs and big punches/forearms for about ten minutes but the crowd eats it up. Andre just goes off on the knee and then slams Studd like it’s nothing at all. He gets the money and throws the money to the crowd, prompting Heenan to steal it and run off.

Rating: D+. The wrestling was awful, but the crowd was going crazy the whole time. Classic example of a match where the crowd played a key factor. Andre was getting to the point here where he couldn’t do much. These giant vs. giant matchups were rarely good but this worked as the whole idea was to just have Andre FINALLY end the “you can’t slam me” angle which he had done about a dozen times on house shows but this was the official one.

Women’s Title: Wendi Richter vs. Lelani Kai

In the penultimate match of the night, we get the first of the Rock N Wrestling matches with the Women’s Title on the line with Wendi Richter against Lelani Kai for the Women’s Title. At the time, Richter was the second biggest face in the company, often main eventing house shows when Hogan was elsewhere. Cyndi Lauper being in her corner didn’t hurt her at all as Lauper got into this.

In a scene that for some reason is now famous, Lauper and Richter run down the aisle in the back of the arena as the crowd is going crazy over this. For one of the only times ever in wrestling, the celebrity manager clearly wants to be doing this. This match is standard back and forth stuff with the young Richter clearly being the one that’s going to win or MSG might have been burned down. Finally Richter reverses a cross body to get the pin and the title as the fans are going insane.

Rating: B. This match was billed as half of the double main event. Think about that for just a bit. The Women’s Title match, main eventing Wrestlemania. If that doesn’t tell you how big Lauper and Richter were, nothing will. I never really got the appeal of Richter but at this time she was main eventing the B-level house shows over the IC Title or Tag Titles. Imagine going to a show today where the main event had Michelle McCool in it.

Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. vs. Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff

And now for the main event, we have Mr. T and Hulk Hogan against Piper and Orndorff with Muhammad Ali himself as the guest referee. Why this wasn’t Hogan against Piper one on one is beyond me. As usual, Piper has a live bagpipes band which is always cool. The fans aren’t really booing much because they know what’s coming. Real American was already taken so instead we hear Eye of the Tiger, or at least I think we do.

The eruption is so loud I’m not sure what I’m hearing. Your other referee is Pat Patterson. If you’ve seen one Hogan match you’ve seen them all for the most part and this is no exception. Hogan embarrasses his opponents to start and then gets beaten down with some cheating. Double teams throughout the match on both Hogan and T until finally we get the brawl we’ve all waited for. Bob Orton and Jimmy Snuka are the seconds here and they both get involved.

Finally Orton comes off with the cast to his Hogan but catches Orndorff instead as Hogan pins him. This prompts Piper to leave him in the ring, which led to Orndorff’s face turn. Hogan and T pose as we go off the air.

Rating: B. Basic tag match, but why was this a tag? It just made little sense and there was no drama to it at all. Hogan didn’t even win with the legdrop. Fun little match, but not for the main event of Mania. For the life of me I will never get why this wasn’t Hogan vs. Piper for the title, perhaps with Piper even defending and dropping it to Hogan. Very odd choice indeed but it worked very well for what it was supposed to be.

Overall rating: C-. This show clearly isn’t famous for the wrestling as there’s only 2-3 good matches on the card. What this show is famous for is the idea of a supercard in the biggest arena there was in the biggest city there was with celebrities, national coverage, and a huge main event. The idea was amazing but no one knew what they had here and it shows. For its time this was mind blowing. Now it’s just average at best. Watch it for the last three matches and skip the others.

So what do you think? Am I right or am I crazier than George Steele? Let me know and let’s hear your take.

Monday Night Raw
Date: March 7, 2011
Location: American Airlines Center, Dallas, Texas
Attendance: 16,744
Commentators: Michael Cole, Josh Matthews

After last week’s wrestling light show tonight we’re supposed to get Cena’s response to Rock which he says will be a final knockout.  With Mania more or less set all we have to do for the most part is finish the build to it.  There are four Raws left before then and hopefully they’re better than last week’s.  Austin is here tonight too which should help some.  Let’s get to it.

We open with a clip from last week of HHH talking about how his only remaining challenge is the Streak and ending it.

In the arena Taker comes to the ring complete with Johnny Cash music.  He talks about how people have been talking about how the Streak ends this year due to Father Time.  Or maybe it’s due to the Game, the King of Kings, Triple H.  Taker says that only one can be the Last Outlaw.  He shows us a highlight reel of the last two Mania matches, showing what happens to people that try to end his Streak.  The match at Mania is no holds barred apparently, and at Wrestlemania, HHH will Rest in Peace.

After telling us about Austin being here tonight we see Orton fighting off someone in the back.  It’s Otunga and Orton is double teamed by Otunga and Ryan.  Punk comes up and says McGillicutty is on the shelf.  Punk gets in his face and slams his head into what looks like a metal wall or cabinet.  GTS to Orton and Punk tells the two guys to take him to the ring as we go to a break.

Back with Nexus beating on Orton and then Otunga saying he’s ready for his match.  Randy says ring the bell.

Randy Orton vs. David Otunga

Otunga is in control quickly due to Orton being very weakened.  He pounds away and adds a slam for two.  Otunga gets his spinebuster for two which more or less seals the fate of the ending here.  He picks Orton up again and there’s the RKO to end it at 2:00.  Exactly what you would expect here.

Post match Ryan runs out after being thrown out pre-match and kicks Orton’s head off.  Orton fights him off and hits an RKO to leave him laying.  Punk comes out for the staredown while staying outside.  Orton snaps to attention and runs to the other side of the ring, punting Otunga as he gets up.  He did it so fast it was kind of hard to tell actually.  Replay shots the Punt looking great too.

Cole reveals his guest referee tonight.

Miz isn’t here tonight due to a lack of recognition.  That’s very true actually as it’s been about Rock vs. Cena.

Christian vs. Alberto Del Rio

Is there a reason this is on Raw and not on Smackdown?  Albert has Brodus Clay with his which is always a good thing.  Brodus has a mic with him so I might as well get this ready now.

Christian vs. Brodus Clay

Alberto says they’re going to fight but not tonight.  First off he has to beat Brodus Clay.  Yep I was right.  Clay takes him down almost immediately but Christian reverses a slam attempt.  Unprettier doesn’t work at all and Brodus takes over with raw power.  That would be opposed to Smackdown power of course.

He locks in an armbar which is very logical here.  There’s that T-Bone suplex but a splash misses.  A pair of dropkicks takes Brodus down for two.  Christian reverses a powerslam and a Tornado DDT gets the Canadian the win at 2:45.  Too short to grade but this was a good power vs. speed match which is the best kind of match.

Del Rio puts Christian in the Cross Armbreaker post match.

Package on Sin Cara.  They’re making him out to look like a big deal which is a good sign.

The newest Hall of Fane inductee (along with Michaels, Duggan and Bullet Bob Armstrong) is Sunny.  Oh yes this should be happening.  She’s the original Diva and belongs in the Hall of Fame.  Not a bit of sarcasm in there.

Women’s Title: Eve Torres vs. Nikki Bella

The bell is after the break.  Gail Kim is here with Eve.  Eve starts all fired up and hammers away on Nikki including a bicycle kick.  Cole talks about going to be on New Year’s Eve and waking up on Christmas morning.  That’s how he feels about introducing his referee tonight.  Cole literally gets up on the table and grabs a mic, saying we need to end this because he wants to announce his referee.  Eve uses the bottom rope as a springboard to get an enziguri.  Twin Magic gets caught and a spinning neckbreaker gives eve the win at 3:12.

Rating: C. Even with the Cole stuff in there the whole time this wasn’t bad for the most part.  Eve dominated and thankfully they didn’t manage to make things look stupid with the Twin Magic getting by again.  It makes the referee and wrestlers look stupid so I’m glad it failed here.  Decent match here and pretty good for the most part.  Should be interesting to see where it goes from here too.

Snooki of Jersey Shore will be Guest Star next week.  Dang it all.

It’s time for Cole to introduce his referee.  He has a contract and whoever signs said contract will be the referee.  If that’s not a way to cause some issues I don’t know what is.  Cole talks about how he’s been a fan of this guy for years and how he’s a guy that’s going to call the show right down the middle.  The referee Cole has picked is a legendary Texan and the fans want to cheer him so let’s start the chant: AUSTIN! AUSTIN! AUSTIN!  Cole says he fooled us because the referee is none other than JBL!

JBL talks about how Texas is a failure now with no championships in a long time.  Bradshaw looks slim here.  He talks about how until now no one has ever debuted in the main event, so I guess Lawrence Taylor and Mr. T. no longer exist.  He says that he’ll be an impartial referee and will return to the main event.

CUE GLASS SHATTER just before JBL can sign the contract.  Cole hides behind JBL so it’s a Stunner from him.  Time to drink some beer!  Cole sounds like he’s about to cry on commentary.  Austin looks down at the contract and up at the Mania sign.  With Cole crying that Austin ruined his night, Austin signs the contract and is the referee.  Austin goes out to Cole and shakes his hand before pouring beer on his head.  Cole leaves with one of the funniest looks on his face that you’ll ever see.  JBL gets another Stunner.  Hilarious segment with Cole cracking me up the whole time.

Back and Swagger says he’ll break Austin’s ankle.

Jerry takes over on commentary.

Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus

Sheamus charges to start but gets taken down and to the floor by Bryan where Sheamus seems to have hurt his ankle.  That actually gets a countout at 1:11.  Uh, ok?  Sheamus grabs a mic and says he’s on a losing streak but he’ll end that next week by becoming US Champion.  He challenges Bryan and says if he loses he’ll quit.

HBK will speak again later.

R-Truth vs. CM Punk

Truth grabs a rollup almost immediately for two.  Punk sends him shoulder first into the post twice and make it three times.  Truth tries to fight back and manages to escape the GTS.  A Rock Bottom and the Anaconda Vice (the real one, not some random hold that is called the Anaconda Vice) ends this at 2:35.  Total squash so no rating.

Shawn talks some more about HHH vs. Taker.  He talks about how HHH can do a lot and can go straight evil at times, taking emotion out of the equation.  Evil isn’t an emotion but rather a way of life I guess so that makes sense.

Vickie Guerrero comes out and we take a break.

Snooki is still coming next week.  I was hoping that was a nightmare but it seems not to be.

Vickie is here and Ziggler is rehired on Raw.  No real shock there.

John Morrison vs. Dolph Ziggler

Vickie is on commentary here and apparently she isn’t dating Dolph anymore.  Dolph dropkicks Morrison to the floor where he holds his knee as we take a break.  Back with Dolph in control but Morrison makes a bit of a comeback, even hitting the Moonlight Drive.  That more or less ends the comeback though as Ziggler hits the Zig Zag for the win at about 2:00 shown of 5:30.

Rating: D+. Can’t grade this fairly but it wasn’t much of a match.  Ziggler needed a win on his first match on the show so I can’t really complain much here.  Not much going on here as most of it was commercial.

E-Mail says that Dolph is hired, not Vickie.  She’s a polarizing figure but she can have a job if she beats Trish Stratus next week.  Security comes and takes her away.

We get the third clip of Rock’s promo last week.  Cena’s reply is next.

But first, a look at The Chaperone!

After a final piece of Rock’s promo, here’s Cena to deliver the Final Knockout.  Apparently he struck a nerve with Rock last week and Rock calls him various kinds of breakfast cereals.  Cena likes the schtick but apparently Rock doesn’t like rap.  So tonight, Cena will do it in hip hop.  I’ve always wanted to know what the difference is so this should be educational.  He talks about how Rock was reading off a teleprompter last week and how the only thing Rock is beating is himself.   Cena was here last week unlike Rock.  Rock is a disgrace and needs to just show up.  He says he’ll give Rock a pearl necklace, which he produces from his pocket.   Cena has another pocket, this time with Rock’s new shirt in it.  “I Bring It Via Satellite!”  That was good.  Cena says not to call him out again because that’s bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Cena turns around and walks into a belt shot from Miz who leaves him laying.  It’s aboutt ime Miz gets involved like this.  He’s been left out in the cold which makes me think there’s no title change coming at Mania.  Cena staggers up and takes another shot.  Miz says he’s tired of being disrespected and every time Rock and Cena go at it, Miz leaves Cena laying.  Miz: “The Rock, John Cena, Randy Savage and Liz.  Steve Austin and Bret Hart, they’re nothing compared to The Miz.”  Those might not be the right names but it’s the right rhyme.  Miz looks into the camera and tells Rock he’s the star of Mania.  He says he’ll take Rock’s glasses, his catchphrases, his father and his grandfather and shove them in Rock.  Skull Crushing Finale to Cena and a People’s Elbow ends the show.

Overall Rating: B+. This was much better than last week.  There was an energy here and a lot happened on this show.  Knowing that next week we get a Trish match as well as potentially more Austin and Rock and JBL, this worked rather well.  Mania is taking shape and it’s very fun to see the people that come out of the woodwork for the build to this show.  This is a show where the wrestling being light is an exception when they pack so much stuff in as almost everything had a point and wasn’t rehashing already established stuff.  Good show and I’m looking forward to next week, which wasn’t the case 7 days ago.

Heroes of Wrestling
Date: October 10, 1999
Location: Casino Magic, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Attendance: 2,300
Commentators: Randy Rosenbloom, Dutch Mantel

Back in the late 90s, some lunkhead decided to try to use a bunch of old wrestlers for a legends/reunion thing and this is the result. This was somehow supposed to be the first of four shows. Basically, we have big names from the 80s and that’s about it. The main event was supposed to be King Kong Bundy vs. Yokozuna.

Yoko passed away a year after this so you know how well he was health wise. Other than that, this is the infamous Jake Roberts promo show, so let’s get to this and get it over with. This is widely regarded as the worst PPV ever, somehow getting 26,000 buys at 19.95 each, meaning that this show made half a million dollars. Let that be a lesson to you kids. Here we go.

Just to really show the 80s feel of this we start with a montage before we get to the commentators, one of whom was supposed to be Gordon Solie but luckily for him he got sick and couldn’t make it. Randy has no idea what he’s talking about. We go backstage to see Bundy who says he’s the best super heavyweight of all time and Yoko shows up to argue. We get a pull apart and we hear Bundy shout that he’s prettier.

The intro actually lists Gordon Solie as host, even though we’ve met the announcers and he’s not one of them. This is dedicated to Gorilla Monsoon, who passed away just four days before this aired. The voiceover guy says this could be the most powerful storm the Gulf Coast has ever seen. I’ve got nothing for that one.

We get a second highlight package for no apparent reason. There’s actually a decent crowd there which isn’t bad. Had this been even passable, this could be considered a success. We run over the card which looks passable. On paper, this could have been ok, but it would have been put straight to DVD today and it would have worked much better.

The thing is, this was the late 90s and a lot of these people hadn’t been on television in years so they would have been way out of shape. Having this be guys from the mid 90s would have been light years better, but they had a decent idea I guess.

Samoan Swat Team vs. Marty Jannetty/Tommy Rogers

So we have a Rocker and a Fantastic. This should be…yeah. The set and ring look decent too. The Swat Team are more commonly known as Tama from the Islanders and Samu from the Headshrinkers. Rikishi was the original member but he had a career at this point. Their manager talks for no apparent reason and talks about the faces being heroes.

I think he’s trying to be Jim Cornette or something like that, although we’re never told his name.. Note: there are children in the audience. That will come into play later. He goes on and on and even messes up the name of the town we’re in. Marty is known as the Rocker Marty Jannetty and his partner is Fantastic Tommy Rogers. Clever if nothing else. They have pictures of them before they come out and you can see Shawn Michaels’ legs in Marty’s picture. Well ok then.

They get Rogers’ old partner’s name wrong, calling him Jackie Fulton instead of Bobby. That’s Dutch Mantel, the wrestler, that said that mind you. Note: we’re 12 minutes into this show and both teams aren’t even in the ring yet. OH MAN Marty is wasted. You can see it in his eyes that he’s just gone.

Marty is in fairly decent shape actually. Tama is freaking FAT. He used to be awesome in the ring but I don’t think that’s going to happen here. The announcers are arguing about the first amendment or something like that. Apparently Dutch can tell that Marty looks tired from “years and years of experience in the ring”. I’m not even touching that one.

A dropkick is referred to as a leg kick by Randy which isn’t corrected at all. Mantel is worthless too. We’re still waiting on anything of note to actually happen but nothing has yet. Hey we get an actual wrestling move from Marty! It’s an armdrag which is called a throw by Randy. Tama, a savage mind you, offers a handshake.

This is just idiotic. Marty comes in without a tag and the referee just lets him stay. We’re on the chinlock inside of three minutes as I think Marty needs a shot. Marty has mastered the art of throwing his arm in the air as he’s managed to do it 4 times now. GOOD NIGHT Tama is a huge man. This is just mindless.

The heels take over with a kick to the back. Mantel says they know what each other is doing all the time. I do too. I know because I’m watching them do it. This is so stupid and bad I’m having trouble coming up with insults and jokes for it. And I made fun of the Doomsday Cage Match! If Dutch Mantel doesn’t freaking SHUT UP ABOUT HOW GREAT HE IS I’m going to freak.

I’m trying this whole capitalizing random words to keep myself interested here. We’re about 8 minutes in and Rodgers, the better wrestler, has been legal all of 20 seconds. Jannetty takes a horrible chair shot on the floor which is called unethical. Jannetty is wearing shorts by the way instead of tights.

Tama misses a Vader Bomb and finally Rogers comes in with another flying leg kick. He rams the Samoans’ heads together and naturally gets a double headbutt for his troubles. Marty jumps over the top rope with a plancha while Samu hits a TKO (seriously??? He has him in position for a SAMOAN drop and uses a TKO. Wow.

They call it a Samoan drop anyway mind you) on Tommy for the pin. Dutch says they can put that on their resumes forever now. Yes, because WILD SAMOANS HAVE RESUMES.

Rating: F+. Instead of calling every match average at first, it starts at an D instead and can move up. Dutch Mantel’s commentary keeps us at nearly failing on average so there we are. This was just a train wreck if there ever has been one. Seriously, Rogers is the only one with any talent that he’s capable of using out there and he was in there the least amount of time. That makes sense here though.

We get a clip of Sherri and George freaking Steele of all people walking off arm in arm. They’re sleeping together apparently. Sherri runs from him in an interview later on. This is just stupid.

Greg Valentine vs. George Steele

Valentine says he’s the son of the legend Johnny Valentine. Isn’t this supposed to be a legends show where Greg is the legend? He says he’ll leave with Sherri tonight whether she likes it or not. So he’s admitted he’s going to kidnap her and you could imply rape off of that but we’ll let it go.

Sherri comes out with George. Neither have music mind you. George looks exactly like he did over 20 years before this, as does Valentine. Valentine hits the floor and goes after Sherri with Randy saying he’s doing a bit of stalking, which he does while in essence in a pair of blue briefs. Can we get this guy arrested please? George eats a turnbuckle as somehow this is supposed to be serious.

He bites Greg’s arm and he’s hurt apparently. Sherri looks like she fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Apparently it’s a disqualification if Animal fights with a shirt on. Naturally Hammer jumps him while he’s taking it off and he can’t see. George’s shirt is over his head yet we’re going on anyway. Since he can’t see, Sherri beats on him also. Shouldn’t he be disqualified already?

He’s sitting in the corner with a shirt half on and half off while Valentine beats on him. He gets it off but doesn’t know Sherri beat on him. George pulls out a foreign object and gets a shot in with it before handing it to Sherri. Dutch says that Randy knows how women are but takes it back because Randy has never had a woman. I want to slap them with a cordless phone. See, even the stupid jokes don’t work.

Sherri of course hands the object to Valentine, which despite her kicking Steele earlier, this STUNS, yes STUNS I say, the announcers. Dutch takes his headset off to talk to Sherri. Why am I bothering with this? Oh yeah. ALL OF YOUR MORONS SAID I SHOULD DO THIS. You all owe me BIG TIME.

They fight over the object which the referee has no problem with. A foreign object is fine but a shirt isn’t fine. And then Sherri hits him in the head with a chair so Valentine can get the pin. Again, the referee is fine with this and the heels leave together. Can’t say I blame them. I’d want to get out of there too.

Oh and Steele eats a lifeless object full of artificial material that makes it bigger and it takes like Styrofoam. Now, am I talking about Sherri or a turnbuckle? George throws chairs in the ring for no apparent reason. Hammer comes back for no apparent reason and hits him with a chair that does nothing. So Valentine hitting him with one doesn’t even make him flinch but Sherri’s shot knocks him out for a pin. This is making me want to watch someone watch grass grow.

Rating: F-. It was a comedy match and a bad one. I saw maybe three wrestling moves in here and all of them sucked. Seriously, who thought Steele and Sherri were good ideas here? We have a heel turn on a one off show. That makes sense.

They talk of a rematch to let Steele get his girl back. Yeah I’ve got nothing.

Julio Fantastico says that he’s great and will beat 2 Cold Scorpio.

2 Cold Scorpio vs. Julio Fantastico

Julio is more commonly known as Julio Dinero in case you’ve heard of him in ECW or old school TNA. Scorpio I’m sure you’ve heard of. If not, imagine a Godfather/Luchador combination. Yeah he was a weird one. Why is Julio on this show again? I have no idea either but whatever.

Why do these two and two tag teams have music but Steele and Valentine didn’t? Oh I guess it’s because they sucked. Scorpio is carrying a replica WCW Title belt. I know that because I see it, not because it’s mentioned or anything like that. This match might have potential to be something close to decent. Can’t you hear my enthusiasm in this show?

Lou Albano comes out for commentary for absolutely no apparent reason. I think he just wandered in here and needed a place to sit down. Albano, having no apparent power or anything, has the authority to give both announcers raises. You know, for the one night show, they’re getting raises for next week.

Albano babbles a lot but if you listen to him, he seems like he knows his stuff. Of course he does, but it’s so much rambling it’s hard to say. Can we just let him talk all night? He’s FAR more entertaining and interesting to listen to. He’s not bragging the whole time and he’s actually offering some insight and says that it’s a dropkick instead of a flying leg kick.

He then offers this and I had to listen at least three times to get all this. He says this about Randy: he’s a nice guy but he looks like he’s got the brain of a dehydrated baby if they put him in a pigeon pack and had him fly backwards. Ladies and gentlemen, this man was responsible for what became Wrestlemania. Apparently Lou looks like a pitbull in heat next to Dinero. This is making the show, hands down.

The match is very sloppy as Scorpio is having to carry this, but that’s the best choice I guess. There’s some decent stuff in there though but it’s just sloppy. We see Scorpio holding the ropes and pulling back for something but we go to a shot of Dinero and just see him being crashed on. Nice one guys. Scorpio’s hair is braided by the way.

Dinero isn’t bad at all actually and it was this match that got him a job with ECW of all things. In other words, Heyman or someone under him actually watched this and scouted talent from it. What does that tell you? Dinero takes a nice backdrop over the railing onto the floor.

They fight into the crowd and we can’t see crap because of the lighting and an annoying kid in a 49ers jersey. And the announcers point out that they don’t know what’s going on. Nice one guys. The referee sees a low blow and is fine with it of course. Dutch: we have a 2 count. The referee counted two. THANKS FOR THAT.

Albano gets on Randy for the leg kick thing again which is kind of amusing I guess. This needs to end like NOW. Dinero shoves the referee into the ropes to crotch Scorpio and that’s fine too.

Scorpio hits Trouble in Paradise which Dinero was going down from before it hit but whatever and a 2nd rope Tumbleweed (Harlem Hangover) hits then he goes up for a moonsault where he twists into another leg drop. He misses by a foot and a half, but that’s decent here.

Rating: D-. By FAR the best mach so far. This got something close to entertaining if you can believe that. The sloppiness just freaking kills it though as Scorpio just can’t do anything at all without botching it at all. There was something close to a decent match here though so that’s better than nothing.

Albano is the new commissioner and he makes a brief acceptance speech on the headset which the fans can’t hear. Brilliant guys, brilliant.

We have 5 matches to go. I can’t take this.

We go to the back for another Bundy interview. He says that he’s going to beat Yoko. I’ll give them points for trying to build to a main event if nothing else.

Bushwackers vs. Nikolai Volkoff/Iron Sheik

I’m calling them the Bushwackers as they’re Luke and Butch, formerly the Bushwackers. There’s some guy with Volkoff but he’s another guy that is imitating a better manager. I’m just not sure who he’s imitating. We get the USA chant going, despite the faces being from New Zealand but this isn’t the smartest crowd in the world.

The manager is dressed up in a Russian military uniform. Oh dear. He speaks English with a so bad it’s funny but the show is so bad it’s not funny accent if that makes sense. Oh and Volkoff is now an Olympian also. We get the Russian National Anthem of course and the Persian clubs which are as old school as possible.

The clubs become Iranian all of a sudden and we’re three minutes into this. Sheik needs to humble someone. It would be more entertaining. We hear about Hogan and Backlund for no reason at all but whatever. That’s my word for this show: whatever. We’re at about 5 minutes of build for this disaster. I guess Bushwackers is a copyrighted term.

Somehow they look better than anyone else. Luke licked my face once. Can we get the tape of the Bushwackers on Family Matters instead of me having to watch this atrocity? Apparently they’ve won tag titles in 26 countries. Well ok then. The heels jump them early to start to further establish that they’re EVIL. Dutch explains the term short end of the stick which has some kind of scale according to him. Please, just take me now.

Sheik gets on the mic and says if they keep chanting USA then he’ll leave. You know what comes next. The announcers argue about cutting each other off. I hate this show quite a bit. They’re really trying to get this whole they’re Heroes thing embedded in. Can we just watch Heroes instead? Just the first season though as it’s by far the best. Sheik is wearing shorts also.

The kicks they’re throwing aren’t even close at all. How much are these guys being paid? I guarantee you it’s too much. After a “slam” Nikolai covers Luke and Butch comes in for the save. He doesn’t need to though as Nikolai reacts to the saving shot before it hits so there we are again.

The camel clutch, which made British Bulldog tap inside of 5 seconds in 1986 is on for 15 seconds before Butch saves. At least I think he saved as we cut to a shot of the manager so for all I know Butch just did the Charleston for awhile and Sheik didn’t like his movement and showed him what to do. Who knows though?

I do however know that the manager raised his right arm. You can hear individual lines from the fans by the way. And I mean individual conversations, not just random screams. ANOTHER foreign object misses and Luke pins Sheik with the fastest count this side of Nick Patrick gets the three. The heels almost fight afterwards but they hug it out.

Rating: G+. That’s below an F-. This was stupid and bad. I think it was a comedy match but I couldn’t tell. They did manage to name the heel team The Iron Curtain though which I can’t believe no one got that before. We’re half done with this and I want to cry. Or die, either one. Getting humbled wouldn’t be bad either. When the Bushwackers are the best workers in there, that’s not saying a lot at all.

They plug a site with memorabilia from this show on it for the second time tonight. I can live with that since they were really just trying to break even here.

Tully Blanchard says nothing as Stan Lane hits him and dumps him into the trunk of the limo. He doesn’t shut it though, making the limo rental completely pointless. We get another promo from Tully where he says this was supposed to be fun and he doesn’t need to do this anymore.

He goes into a promo on Lane which is actually good. The first half could totally be put into an ad about how much this show sucked. Blanchard can definitely still talk. This was actually really good. It’s complete nonsense, but it’s very well delivered and actually got me buying the match. Tully really is awesome and that’s the first time I’ve ever said that I think.

Tully Blanchard vs. Stan Lane

So Blanchard, a career heel, is the face here while one of the Fabulous Ones, a career face team, is the heel? (Yes I know that he was a heel for a lot of his career). Lane pulls a Kennedy and does his own intro. He says he works for ESPN which is true. He once covered a boating race for them, I kid you not.

He even looks like Kennedy. This is kind of weird. Blanchard is in and we’re immediately at it. Yeah Lane is definitely heel here. Screw the Horsemen. Lane was a FABULOUS ONE. He definitely knows how to be the heel better than Tully. Mantel calls the ring the crib. I want to shoot myself even harder now. Surprisingly they both look decent considering how old they are.

They clearly stay in at least decent shape. Tully has a bit of a gut but that’s more than understandable. Also, let it be made clear: Tully Blanchard, a guy that has broken all kinds of arms and legs and more or less tried to murder both Dusty Rhodes and Magnum TA is a HERO of wrestling.

We get a figure four on the floor for no apparent reason as this match is slow and lumbering but it could be much worse. We get a belly to back suplex and both guys’ arms are down but Blanchard gets it up just in time. I guess he called his doctor about Cialis.

Rating: D-. This is likely your match of the night. It was far from great or even good but it could have been far worse. Both guys kept things in the 80s but that’s what they’re best at so I can’t argue that. It was watchable and at seven minutes it’s the second shortest match of the night so that’s all fine and not very good but somehow that’s high praise for this show.

We see Anvil and Bundy (again). Anvil does his usual insane interview and I already feel sorry for what he’s going to have to deal with later on.

One Man Gang vs. Abdullah the Butcher

Oh this isn’t going to be easy. Gang has issues getting into the ring. We have an interview with him where he shouts the whole time. I would have preferred Akeem but whatever. Abdullah’s manager is named Honest John Cheatum. We’re a minute in and Abdullah is bleeding.

That man should have a blood bank named after him. I think this is a hardcore match but I’m not sure as it’s never actually told, but we’re told this should be a treat for hardcore fans. We have chairs and chains used so I’d assume it is one. Butcher is bleeding badly to the shock of no one at all.

It can’t be a good idea to have One Man Gang run the match. This just isn’t going to go well but somehow Gang has won a more prestigious title: he actually held the US Title for a few months in 1995. Abdullah’s manager gets on commentary for no apparent reason. I guess he just wandered over there and got bored with the match. He’s from Paducah, Kentucky of all places and talks like a southern preacher. And believe me, as I’ve heard a lot of southern preachers.

He likes saying where he’s from. Apparently Butcher is here to destroy the idols. This is just odd indeed. And he’s gone now. So Butcher is the favorite here, and therefore the man that’s being cheered, but he’s not the idol? Either that or he’s going to destroy himself. Gang is bleeding too due to the fork shots.

The elbow hits, although you wouldn’t know it because the cameras were elsewhere. Have we seen a single finisher tonight??? We get a double countout. Really? Really? These guys were afraid to lay down here? REALLY??? The brawl goes on forever as they fix/clean the ring.

Rating: F-. It was a hardcore brawl, but just not a very good one. They went with the smart thing here of the brawling but it just wasn’t that good, although this was the best they could do. It was a freak show match, but still, this is hardly a kid friendly show like they seem to be marketing it as.

We have replays forever from this match.

We see a clip from a poker game between Snuka, Orton, Albano and some guy we don’t know. Orton is apparently cheating. This sets up the match for tonight. This makes great sense because, you know, in a CASINO they clearly couldn’t find a card game to play in and it’s perfectly common to play poker with a guy you’re having a GRUDGE MATCH with. Also, WHO FILMS A POKER GAME???

Albano says nothing of note. He’s managing Snuka, even though he’s Commissioner.

Orton says nothing of note.

Bob Orton vs. Jimmy Snuka

They say Orton is from Kansas City, Kansas even though it’s been Missouri his whole career. They say they’ve been excited for this match since the video of the poker game, meaning all of 3 minutes. Albano is stepping down as Commissioner after tonight. Good to know I guess.

They do a long mat sequence which is the highlight of the match but gets an Orton is gay chant. Yeah because good wrestling is such a terrible thing to have on the card. Ok to be fair he does work the arm way too long, as in he does it nearly 5 minutes. Nothing at all of note happens in this match, but it’s by far the least sloppy of them all.

Snuka wins with a crossbody from the top. Why? You have one of the most famous finishers of all time and you use a freaking high cross body that they act like is the same thing as the splash. I don’t know what to even say to this.

Rating: F+. Somehow this was 11 minutes long. I think nearly half of that was arm work by Orton. Did any of that actually mean anything? Not at all of course as that would have been psychology and a good thing and we can’t have our HEROES do that.

And here it is. The moment that makes this show so infamous. Jake Roberts cuts a promo before his match with Neidhart, and he can’t even look straight. He’s babbling, he’s slurring his words, he’s playing with his hair. Think about Roberts messing with his hair. Think about all of his promos and have you ever seen him do that?

He says he cheats at cards, making me wonder if he coached Orton earlier. He rambles on and on and on about playing cards and gambling and the snake and none of this makes any sense whatsoever. Jake is being loud and ridiculous. Think about who I’m saying is doing this. Jake Roberts is being loud. He staggers around to show the snake to Anvil and then starts saying DDT over and over again. Jake has to lean on the interviewer to stand up and the poor guy is clearly not comfortable with this. That takes us to ringside.

Jake Roberts vs. Jim Neidhart

Now the person that I feel sorry for here is Anvil. He’s a 44 year old man that was a decent wrestler but his time has gone. He was in WCW about a year before this doing nothing at all and he hasn’t meant anything in wrestling since. He gets a phone call one day offering him to come to Mississippi to wrestle in front of a few thousand people for more or less a legends show.

Say for argument’s sake he’s getting a thousand dollars for a ten minute match. That’s not bad really. He gets his gear together and shows up ready to work for the pay promised. Based on who he’s fighting, it’s fairly safe to think that Anvil is going to lose to a DDT. The match is about to begin, and he gets this. Jake can barely talk yet he’s supposed to be able to wrestle a coherent match?

Oh and the announcer says Jake is accompanied by his little friend Damien. We’ll ignore that Damien is about 12 feet long and that he died back in 1991 thanks to Earthquake but whatever. The announcer that earlier made fun of the guy that called it Biloxi, you guessed it, calls it Biloxi. Jake can barely walk to the ring and then puts the snake down and walks back up the ramp. His boots aren’t even laced up. Think about that for a minute.

Again, Anvil is playing to the referee about the snake being there and is stretching a bit before the match. In other words, he’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. And now Jake goes back through the curtain for a bit. Sadly enough, the first thing that came into my mind was he needed a hit to keep going.

Anvil again is left to make something of this but people didn’t pay to see him stand in the ring and throw his arms up. To be fair to him though, he signed up to wrestle Jake Roberts, not do a one man show. I can easily see why this is considered a bad show. Imagine paying for this and watching it live. Ah there’s Jake, sans shirt.

Jake grabs a fan’s hands and rubs them on his chest. She doesn’t seem to mind, but what if she did. Keep in mind, the match hasn’t actually started yet. Hey he made it into the ring!

The snake has gotten partially out of the bag, so Jake, likely having no clue what country he’s in at this point, takes it out and puts part of it between his legs and, you guessed it, jerks it off, thankfully on a wide shot. He lays down on the mat, which more than likely wasn’t his intention, and licks the stupid thing while Anvil just walks around. What in the world did he ever do to deserve this?

They mention Jake’s Intercontinental Title reign. For those of you racking your brain to remember it, it aired on the same tape that the Rockers won the tag titles on and that Hogan beat Flair in MSG for the world title aired on. (For those of you that don’t get it, Jake never won the IC Title. Those other things happened, but they never aired on TV or tape but they both happened.)

Anvil tries to work the arm and run the match, I think as the heel. After a LONG sequence with Anvil being in control on the mat since I don’t think Jake is capable of walking more than thirty seconds at a time. Jake loses his boots and is now in his socks as this is continuing to somehow get even worse than it already was. I didn’t think that was possible but somehow I’m wrong again.

Bundy comes out for no adequately explained reason. He breaks up the DDT for no apparent reason either and gets flipped off by Jake, again with kids in the audience. We get a 2-1 beatdown until “The Former” Yokozuna come out. Yeah that’s what they call him. It turns into a tag match with Yoko and Jake vs. Neidhart and Bundy.

They say we have 650 of Yoko and Bundy and 450 and Neidhart at over 300, even though he was announced at 256. Now we have a problem. Yoko is SO freaking fat that he can’t do anything in the ring longer than about 8 seconds. Our other option is Jake and even though they were sent out to prevent him from looking terrible, they pick him to work the majority of the match.

Oh good night this is almost too much. So it’s a standard tag match, or at least standard when one guy can’t stand up. Yoko and Bundy, the main event, interact for about 8 seconds if that. Eventually we hit the floor for no reason and Anvil hits Jake twice with a chair. I wonder if there were some extra hard shots there.

See Jake if you’re interested in shots I guess. Other than that, this is a mess. We go back into the ring and Jake makes the clear tag but Bundy splashes him and pins him anyway. Jake and Yoko beat up Bundy’s manager who didn’t appear until the end. The fans chant DDT and Yoko says give it to him but Jake won’t do it so Yoko has to give him a Samoan Drop instead. Jake puts the snake on him and it just ends without anything other than that.

Rating: Agoobwa. I have no idea what that means, but there was no rating around that I could think of to adequately describe this. It was an embarrassment to wrestling to allow this to happen and an embarrassment to Jake to allow himself to do this in front of both fans and especially children.

I get that he has demons, but he needs to get rid of them before he climbs in a ring again. If he wants to wrestle then fine, but if I was the promoter and saw him in that condition, there would be no way I would send him out there, period.

Make the main event a triple threat or something, but no way do you send him out there. This show goes WAY up if he doesn’t appear. This wasn’t funny or entertaining. It was very sad and very disturbing. Grow up Jake. You need to.

Overall Rating: S. As in I am speechless about how bad this was. The intention was there. The idea itself isn’t completely terrible but it wasn’t thought out at all. The matches were bad, the commentary was awful, nothing made sense, the stories kept changing and it just was a disgrace.

This actually cost $20. You should be given that back and a sincere apology if you bought this show. This was a complete train wreck where Tully Blanchard, who hadn’t wrestled in a mainstream company in nearly ten years had the best match. I have no idea what they were thinking backstage, but I don’t want to know.

This was just flat out bad and as Norcal put it, it’s infamous for all the wrong reasons. Avoid completely, as usually I would say to watch it for the comedy, but it’s not funny in the slightest. This could actually be the worst show ever.

Thunder
Date: January 8, 1998
Location: Ocean Center, Daytona Beach, Florida
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Lee Marshall, Bobby Heenan

So back in 1997, WCW was on fire. That’s well known, and it’s also well known that WCW shot itself in the freaking foot and various other places to mess up at Starrcade. Before that though, they were so big that they were ready to add another show to the schedule.

The result was Thunder, which was supposed to be a show where the guys that weren’t used much could have a place to get on TV and stay in the public eye while Nitro did the heavy lifting. Goldberg and Hart were supposed to be the two big Thunder guys. Kind of think of it like ECW but a bigger deal. Anyway, this is the debut and it’s an insane 3 hours. Let’s get to it.

We start with a clip from Nitro because Savage, the guy in the opening match isn’t here yet apparently. It’s the NWO arriving in separate limps. This was supposed to be them splitting, but of course that would mean they weren’t the biggest deals in the world anymore so that got thrown out pretty quickly. Geez Tony Schiavone was annoying.

We see some suit that no one had ever heard from before or since say that if anyone is caught doing anything bad will be fined. WCW, you just fail at life.

Nick Patrick is banned from officiating until they watch the tape on Thursday. Why can’t they just watch it then?

We see ANOTHER clip from that Nitro where Luger pinned Savage on a small package and then Savage beat the tar out of him. For no apparent reason Bischoff tries to get the chair from him, I guess because of that idiotic suit from earlier. The NWO fights and Nash hits Savage while Hogan tries to play peacekeeper.

Chris Adams vs. Randy Savage

Hey we get a match! This was supposed to be five minutes ago, but instead we just happened to have a bunch of footage that fit into the time period that we needed ready for us. Chris Adams was a big deal in WCCW with his biggest thing being bringing the superkick into America. Oh and he trained Steve Austin. He’s British by the way.

We hear WAY too much about Nitro and Starrcade as we begin the time honored tradition of talking about everything in the world other than the match going on. After Savage just beats the tar out of him for awhile, Luger comes in and nails Savage so Adams can get the pin. Naturally this is HUGE for WCW. Of course Adams never did anything again. JJ Dillon comes out to validate his paycheck and does nothing.

Rating: C-. Eh it’s all about an angle that went nowhere here. In other words it’s 1998 WCW. Adams was nothing at all and he was a jobber here. It never went anywhere but it was a TWIST dang it! Nothing of note here and a stupid way to open a show.

After we get back from break, Hogan and Bischoff come out with three different songs if you can believe that. We get the NWO theme, Bischoff’s theme and finally Voodoo Child. Hogan thinks he’s champion still. Don’t worry, he would have it back in four months because no one but him could carry it more than two months of course. Hogan talks and says nothing at all.

Ad for Saturday Night, which is funny that they actually thought that meant something anymore.

Mike Tenay is with JJ Dillon who says that Savage wins by DQ, making the whole thing earlier COMPLETELY POINTLESS. Luger shows up and complains that the suit from Monday decides to do that now after a year of the NWO attacking the faces. Luger would of course join the NWO in about four months. Naturally Luger says WCW has to unite. I’m getting a headache from this show and we’re not even 25 minutes into it.

Louie Spicolli vs. Rick Martel

Yes that Rick Martel. He’s not a model but rather an old guy in a leather jacket that had decent matches. He would shred his knee to death at SuperBrawl and end his career. Spicolli is yet another guy that got over because he died. He was a midcard jobber that wasn’t very good but since he was a lifelong drug addict that died of an overdose, he’s apparently a fallen hero or something.

The set is really different here as it’s like a cave theme or something. It’s hard to describe. The Flock is here, which could have been cool but they screwed it up a million ways to Sunday. As the announcers talk about money and the NWO and suspensions etc, Martel hits a spinebuster and the Quebec Crab for the tap out.

I freaking hate WCW commentators. This was about four minutes long and they talked about the wrestlers for MAYBE 20 seconds. And hey, after the match they discuss how different the Liontamer is than his Crab, because we can’t just TALK ABOUT THE GUY IN THE RING.

Rating: C. Again, this is your standard TV match. There’s not a lot to it but it’s Martel’s second match in the company so this was nothing more than a way to get him over. You know what else might have done that? Perhaps talking about him during the match. Make him seem like a big deal. We can’t do that though so there we are.

We see a clip from Starrcade where Nash no showed so he didn’t have to job to the Giant (Big Show). Who cares that it was the biggest show in company history? That’s another reason why WCW failed: Nash wasn’t punished at all for this. This was more or less the 2nd or third biggest match on the card and likely second, but hey, Nash can’t job or anything like that, so he bailed and nothing happened.

Instead Hall and Giant had a fight instead of just having Hall, who wasn’t doing anything that night anyway, against Giant. I mean it isn’t advertised but it’s hardly Scott Norton vs. Virgil. We’ll ignore the fact that we’re getting a full clip of a segment from a PPV that aired ten days ago. No reason that the people that PAID to see this should be upset at all right?

Tenzan vs. Ohara

Tenzan is a member of NWO Japan, meaning they threw a shirt on him instead of actually having a story. They were an actual stable in Japan so of course WCW decided that this was another reason to push the NWO feud, meaning that after about 15 seconds of talking about NWO Japan, we go back to talking about Luger’s rallying cry.

Other than that they just mention the WCW/NJPW show at Starrcade 95. Oh Tenay is on commentary here for this match. Tenzan hits a diving headbutt from the top. Hey, the NWO has won twice. Hey, it means nothing but let’s talk about what it means anyway!

Rating: N/A. There was very little here but what happened was fine. It was like two minutes so there we are.

We go back to Nitro from Monday with Hart talking to Flair about the world title. Since Bret was world champion when he left, he didn’t win the world title for nearly two years. Oh and Flair and Hart are about to feud apparently. Hart saying his catchphrase to Flair is actually a cool moment. This would be light years better if they just showed the promo rather than having the Thunder sound every time they made a cut.

Chris Jericho vs. Ric Flair

There was a point to a promo! I’m in awe. Jericho cuts a funny promo talking about how he’s not going to whine anymore and gives the announcer a suit jacket. The look on Penzer’s face is very funny as he’s like “Hey I got a jacket. Ok then.” Anyway, this is apparently their first meeting.

Flair has a ton of cheering and fans and Jericho is more or less bleedin charisma and talent so naturally both lost their push in about three weeks. This was when Flair was in decent shape and could still certainly go in the ring. Jericho just goes off with kicks and speed moves and gets great heel heat with it. That doesn’t mean he should be pushed of course.

Marshall references the 1924 Yankees when he means the 27 team but whatever. Well at least if he’s making obscure references he might as well get them wrong. Scratch that and reverse it. They talk literally nonstop about Hart and Flair for the opening part of this.

They mention that Bret won five world titles but don’t mention him beating Flair for his first because Flair never went to WWF remember? That never happened, mainly because it had WCW with a leg and a foot in the grave and had WWF pouring dirt on them. They keep trying to push the idea that the belt is from 1905. In case you’re confused, you’re right to be so as it’s just insanely complicated.

Short version: it goes back to about 1993 but they’ll call it 05 anyway because it technically kinda sorta is but not really but it’s so complicated we can get away with it. The World Heavyweight Championship that Undertaker has now though is far less complicated: it’s from 2002 and looks like the WCW Title, end of story. Vince of course uses the same lineage anyway to make himself feel better so there we are.

I picked that DVD up today yet I’m here reviewing a bad TV show for you so there we are. Jericho hits a top rope elbow shot which makes him awesome as it’s one of my favorite moves ever. So after doing NOTHING to the leg, Flair gets the figure four and Jericho immediately taps. Tony, after saying many times that Flair is a 13 time world champion, says that this has to be one of Flair’s biggest wins of his career.

My jaw actually dropped when I heard that. We get an explanation of the suit jacket thing as Jericho rips Penzer’s jacket again. This was the really stupid tantrum story where Jericho would whine a lot about a loss. Christian did the same thing around Mania 18. You know, because guys with that much talent can’t get serious pushes. No one would buy good wrestlers getting pushes of course.

Rating: B-. This was fine. The ending completely sucked but that’s what you expect here. You almost have to watch these without commentary as it’s just so freaking stupid at times that you can’t believe it. Jericho was treated like crap most of the time so once his contract was up he bolted and was at least given a mic and told to talk so he did. Three or four world titles later and he’s still a failure in the main event but he’s stolen several shows and is incredibly entertaining if nothing else.

DDP t-shirt ad. I remember these and loving them. The idea was they would more or less have an item of the week with Public Enemy playing the original Cryme Tyme and stealing them out of a truck and selling them through a secret phone line. It’s a lot funnier than it sounds.

Meng vs. Giant

Meng was a freaking monster most of his career as he could even put Giant out with the Tongan Death Grip. He has my birthday too. On his way to the ring, Tony says that Flair vs. Hart is happening at Souled Out (sponsored by Snickers). Tony messes up by saying that Heenan will be in the match somehow and Heenan freaks out. Giant gets an awesome looking backdrop on Meng.

I know it sounds basic but it was just freaking pretty for some reason. They announce Giant vs. Nash for the PPV as well, which at least has something to do with the match. And of course Meng is destroying him. As they talk, Giant gets the chokeslam and Tony has to say wait a second to count the pin. Meng was trying to get the Grip on Giant and if he had actually extended his arm he might have done it.

Rating: B. That’s just for that REALLY sweet backdrop. Other than that nothing at all happened here.

Steve McMichael vs. Goldberg

This was Bill’s first feud and it was over a Super Bowl ring. This is yet ANOTHER match paid for by fans who bought Starrcade, but who cares about them? We have their money so let’s just air it for free here. McMichael is the worst seller this side of Undertaker that I’ve ever seen. Goldberg didn’t sell moves, but that was the point. Mongo is just bad at it. The spear hits, called a takedown, and Heenan thinks Goldberg might be undefeated. The Jackhammer ends this.

Rating: N/A. This was the Goldberg Special as he was booked to hide his weaknesses very well. Tony, a former sports commentator, says that Goldberg made his living playing football in the SEC. I give up.

Tag Titles: Buff Bagwell/Konnan vs. Steiner Brothers

Hey it’s more NWO! We’re not even half done with this match. How in the world is that possible? This was when Ted DiBiase was the manager. There was an angle going on where both they and the Outsiders had tag titles and a unification was coming. Tony: “The Steiners are a lot more smarter than people think.” They go over the remaining card which has one big thing in it that I’m saving for later because it completely blows my mind.

And holy crab that was the worst botch I’ve ever seen. Buff was trying to use a reverse neckbreaker on Rick and Rick fell too early so Buff was standing there with his arms in the air anyway. Buff did the move anyway and Rick sold it anyway. That sums up WCW far to easily. Oh and Buff would have his neck broken by Steiner soon enough anyway. We see the beginnings of Scott’s heel turn as he avoids the double team with Rick to hit the Frankensteiner and get the pin on his own.

Rating: N/A. These matches are just way too fast to really grade. They’re going like two and a half to three minutes each and it’s just not fair to grade them based on that.

And here’s the thing I haven’t mentioned; they’re reairing, in its entirety, Bischoff vs. Zbyszko from Starrcade. I don’t mean they air clips or something. I mean the WHOLE FREAKING MATCH. It’s 12 minutes long not counting the intros which have a guest referee in Bret Hart also. This was one of the big three matches on the card, so why not air it for free a week and a half later?

Eric Bischoff vs. Larry Zbyszko

This is for control of Nitro but the winner actually wasn’t a clinch as you might think it was. There were real possibilities they would give Nitro to the NWO for a few months. That’s how insane they were with this one angle. I have a timer going here on how long this whole thing takes. Keep in mind that the live crowd has to sit through this. Actually they might not have as this is something you could easily add in later.

Larry comes out to Nitro’s theme which actually makes sense. Oh, Mike (Tenay, Rhodes and Schiavone are doing the commentary here). Remember Bret Hart is referee here. Larry is actually in good shape here. If he didn’t suck so badly when he wrestled it could have been worth having him wrestle occasionally. They did that anyway but whatever.

Bischoff is a karate guy so that’s all he tries to do. They put up a graphic to tell us when this was, as if we forgot that this was 10 days ago, or thinking that they’re actually airing NEW WRESTLING ON A NEW WRESTLING SHOW. Bischoff gets one kick that puts him down which wasn’t bad. And there we finally hit reality as Larry gets his hands on him and annihilates him.

Bret keeps breaking it up, including breaking up a sleeper that he said was a choke that actually was. He does the same with a headscissors hold. The thing is that Hart might have been joining the NWO. They actually try to imply that Larry is equal to Bret. In a funny spot, Bischoff tries to roll to the floor and just falls with a thud. It’s a great visual. Oh Scott Hall is at ringside.

The announcers keep getting on Hart when they should be kneeling down and fondling his balls for lowering himself to this crap. They actually say tweener as they decide Hart is in the NWO based on being a logical and fair referee. Oh how I hate WCW announcers. So after Hall interferes, Larry just stands there and covers up and now Bischoff is spent.

Larry proceeds to use the most basic moves in history before putting Bischoff in the Tree of Woe for absolutely no reason other than to do the main spot of the match. Hall loads up Bischoff’s foot with a piece of metal, but as he throws the kick the metal goes flying out of the shoe before it hits Larry. Naturally he just sells it anyway and the crowd audibly groans.

When I get to this show, you’ll see how completely awful this really was but how this fits in perfectly. For no apparent reason, Bret punches the heels who are more over than anyone not named Bret Hart in this match but in the name of legendary status Larry is over in the minds of WCW so there we are. There’s the Sharpshooter.

Larry has a belt for no explainable reason and chokes out Bischoff. And apparently Larry is the winner despite getting no pin or submission. This was just freaking stupid. They point out that the NWO could take over Nitro again like they did on the previous Monday but they still own Nitro anyway. So in other words, they could take over Nitro, they could throw them all out, but hey, WCW still owns the place!

Rating: F. Oh this was bad. Bischoff puts himself a match before the main event, for no apparent reason Larry wins, the foot thing was stupid, and the whole thing was just a joke. Seriously, they’re fighting over the a television show that apparently it doesn’t matter if they win or not. Are you wondering why this was a stupid match and why the show bombed like it did? Correction, didn’t bomb, but rather the ending and the aftermath failed.

I actually forgot this was Thunder. That can’t be a good sign at all. Larry comes out and apparently winning got him a shot at Hall at Souled Out. Yeah because a guy having one match in years can beat a guy like Hall who is a regular. Apparently they’re fighting over a feud from ten years ago.

This is actually a decent promo as Larry says that Hall took the easy way out and now instead of being world champion Hall is…one of the biggest heels in the world’s biggest wrestling company making more money that Larry made in his whole career. Yeah that kind of backfired on Larry.

We see MORE clips from Nitro, this one in September which is recent I guess. They beat up Boss Man and spray painted him. That of course is enough to transition us to this match.

Ray Traylor vs. Scott Hall

Hall makes sense, but this is Traylor’s (Boss Man) match because of a moment four months ago. That’s WCW for you. They hype up Giant vs. Nash and actually use the tag line of It’ll Actually Happen This Time! How in the world did this company ever make a dime? So in this one we have Hall destroying Boss Man for the most part until the referee goes down and Boss Man gets one shot in.

The announcers realize that this is the place where the NWO was formed so let’s guess what they talk about for the majority of the match. In a part that blows my mind, Tony is going on about Bash at the Beach 96 and Hall hits Boss Man in the face with his unofficial tag title belt. Tony says OH then acts like nothing happened and continues his thing about a show from a year and a half ago. Larry comes out for the interference and of course the referee gets up just in time for a Boss Man slam to end this.

Rating: D-. DAng it being long enough to grade. I’m glad to know that they managed to wait TWO HOURS to use the same ending to a match as earlier. This show is giving me a freaking migraine.

They say more from Starrcade from Baltimore later on. Starrcade was in DC. Seriously, this man is allowed free on the street without medication!

Cruiserweight Title: Ultimo Dragon vs. Juventud Guerrera

Dragon is champion here. As he’s coming to the ring, we start talking about Scott Steiner and Tony apologizes for missing him slapping a referee earlier in the night. They can’t play it again tonight and have to wait until Saturday Night. My head hurts again.

And now let’s act all shocked when Tony and company talk about the NWO the whole match until the very ending. Hey there’s a new champion. It was your generic fun spotfest with Juvi being made of awesome the whole match. He could have been a lot better had he been bigger, stronger and not Mexican. Seriously, name one guy of a non white race to do anything in WCW until Booker T.

Rating: N/A. It’s another 3 minute match that meant nothing really as it was all about the NWO just like the whole thing has been all year.

Bret comes to the ring and says he’s ready for Flair. Flair comes out and says he’s ready for Bret. This took three minutes.

Same DDP ad from two hours ago. That was a cool shirt though.

Lex Luger vs. Scott Norton

Let’s get an over/under on Savage interfering here. He doesn’t actually. Two minute match though and Bagwell and Savage come in after it ends. This show is trying to tick me off. It has to be. Nothing could be this terrible.

Rating: N/A. X, I hate you. You drove me to this.

HEY, let’s talk about STARRCADE since we haven’t done that at all!

For some reason this still surprises me as they show the full ending to Sting vs. Hogan and IT’S STILL A NORMAL THREE COUNT, IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A NORMAL THREE COUNT AND IT ALWAYS IS GOING TO BE A NORMAL THREE COUNT. I have to do this show soon and give a full reason as to why this was stupid. Mark my words: WCW died right here in this clip that is being aired.

This was just so bad and so ridiculous and such a freaking mess and so not what ANYONE wanted to see that the company was just shot dead by it. We get that there was controversy, but THERE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSY! This should have been 5 minutes and Sting nearly murdering Hogan.

Instead, we have a Montreal reference, a screwjob that was botched, and a thing that went on for two months before Sting actually became champion in the middle of February, but the thing that really killed it was Hogan had the title back in MAY. It’s not like Sting wasn’t a draw. I mean, this show wasn’t about Hogan.

It was about Sting, but Hogan insisted it become all about him again and that killed it. This was as foolproof as you could possibly make a show but this band of idiots managed to screw it up. That’s just amazing.

Seriously, they’re doing more of this. This amazes me.

So in another huge SCREW YOU to the fans that bought Starrcade, the Sting vs. Hogan rematch aired the following night on Nitro. Naturally, they ran out of time and had to end the broadcast before the match ended, so they are airing the footage here. At least this is something I guess you could say original as we haven’t seen it before. Hogan is in the Scorpion after missing the leg drop.

To the shock of all but no one there’s no referee other than the crooked one that isn’t really crooked because IT WAS A NORMAL COUNT. Hogan has a handful of tights on a rollup and gets three. So after the bell we keep fighting for the heck of it. The fans are dead after Hogan gets the pin by the way. Ok, apparently after the match ended it hasn’t ended because the original referee never called for the bell. He calls for it here though as Hogan gives up in the Scorpion again.

Dillon (who is the Commissioner guy of WCW in case I never mentioned that). Bischoff of course beats him up and Sting takes him out. So basically WCW and the NWO all come out and have a massive fight which they keep saying is a near riot. WCW unites to run off the NWO. So in other words, they did what Luger begged them to do BEFORE HE ASKED THEM TO DO IT. This of course was a huge deal which makes me think of the Sexual Harassment Panda episode of South Park where the big ending is everyone vs. everyone.

So back live we have Dillon in the ring to decide everything. He says the announcers must have formed their own opinions about everything. That’s just hilarious as he’s actually implying these guys think of anything and don’t have it fed to them. I’ve always wondered if it was someone telling them to breathe. The whole NWO comes out with him.

Sting needs to come down as well and bring the belt. Sting walking to the ring just looks odd. And the belt is held up until they can figure something else out. Immediately they decide this is a victory for the NWO because everything has to be bad for WCW.

And now we actually get to the important part of this whole show as Sting talks for the first time in over a year, saying that Dillon has no guts and that Hogan is a dead man. This was legitimately a big deal as it wasn’t something you ever saw but it happened here.

This led to SuperBrawl where they FINALLY had the title match and Sting won clean to start his two month title reign that ended with Savage getting it for a day so that Hogan could win it the next night. I’ve ranted far too many times on why this was so completely stupid and don’t have the energy to do so again.

US Title: Kevin Nash vs. DDP

THANK GOODNESS this is the ending. Hogan is with Nash here and I’d bet it ends in a fight. DDP won the title at Starrcade from Hennig. Oh apparently Nash had a knee injury and wasn’t at Starrcade because of it. And of course Nash would know nothing about faking knee injuries to get out of a big match where he was supposed to job.

No one he’s ever associated with has done ANYTHING like that. I think that might be a rib of some kind actually. And what a shock that Nash agrees to come back to fight one of his buddies. This is about five minutes long and you can see the DQ coming a mile away and there’s Hogan hitting Page. They beat on him and Giant comes out to have them brawl for like 10 seconds before we’re out of time!

Rating: O. As in oh I don’t care anymore.

Overall Rating: F. And that’s as high as anyone can convince me of. This was horrible. Counting commercials, we’re looking at about two and a half hours of television time. Of that, we had one match go over five minutes. That’s ok. I can understand wanting to get a lot of people on the card. The weird thing though: so much happened yet it seems like none of it matters.

Oh, MAYBE BECAUSE NONE OF IT DID! I will not and cannot agree with having a match from the PPV, a rematch from the PPV and about three more clips straight from it, ten days after it aired. Seriously, that’s just saying hey buyers, SCREW YOU. We got your money and now we’re gonna show everyone what you idiots paid 30 bucks to see.

Oh and on top of that, if you want to see the matches you paid for, you have to buy Souled Out AND SuperBrawl to see them. That to me is what wound up killing them. The ratings for the first night after Starrcade were HUGE. The next week they fell back to Earth because the fans that bought the PPV, the highest selling in WCW history, all saw that they were getting screwed over again.

The other problem here as usual is the commentary. The whole night was about the NWO or the fines from earlier or everyone being against WCW and how they’ll rise up or something and it just got freaking stupid. This is where the Attitude Era crushed WCW: versatility.

If you didn’t like the main stories, you had about 6 others to go with and they got treated like individual stories. WCW had everything tied into the NWO almost and people just got sick of it and when they got sick of it WCW had no idea what to do so they just stayed with the NWO hoping that somehow they could get something right. And that’s where Goldberg came into play.

The fans saw someone different, they saw someone new, they saw someone that could break up the monotony of this show. And then Nash beats him and hands the title back to Hogan all over again. People were just done with it and WWF was there waiting with open arms. The rest is history. Don’t watch this, not even for nostalgia. This was awful beyond words. Actually I hope not because if it is then I just wasted four hours.

Smackdown
Date: March 4, 2011
Location: Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, Ohio
Commentators: Booker T, Michael Cole, Josh Matthews

Well it’s another week closer to Wrestlemania and we’re coming off a kind of lackluster show last week.  However, we don’t have Vickie around anymore so I guess our ears will be in better shape now.  Tonight we have the official contract signing for Edge vs. Alberto and the approximately 100^th return on Smackdown of Undertaker.  There’s probably a DVD worth of them and I’m not exaggerating.  Let’s get to it.

We open with a recap of the events of last week that led to Vickie being fired.  She’s coming back isn’t she?

Edge and Alberto sign the contract tonight.

Theme song opens us up.

Here’s Edge whose left arm is taped up.  He talks about wanting to be able to look into Alberto’s eyes so Alberto can see what it takes to main event Wrestlemania.  Also he has a bone to pick with Alberto, as last week he was trying to say goodbye to Vickie but Alberto interrupted.  Edge wants to finish singing goodbye to Vickie though.  Drew McIntyre runs out though and is almost instantly sent to the floor.

Cue Teddy who wants to thank Drew.  He also wants to thank the fans around the world (assuming that was a misspeak) because they owe Drew a debt of gratitude because thanks to him, Vickie is gone.  Drew vs. Edge is made for right now.  Well right after the break and a thank you Drew chant led by Edge.

Drew McIntyre vs. Edge

Drew works on the arm to start as makes perfect sense.  Nice to see the show opening more or less with wrestling for once.  Edge tries to speed things up but gets caught in the face by a big boot and we go to the floor.  It’s been more or less all Drew in the first three minutes or so which has been about 80% arm work.  Drew says he’s going to end Edge’s career and then gets two in the ring.

There goes the arm tape and we hit the armbar again.  Hot crowd tonight as they chant for Edge.  Edge hits the floor and takes off his elbow pad.  We’re 30 days away from Wrestlemania.  That brings a smile to my face.  I love this time of year and we’re getting a pretty decent build to the show.  Edge plays possum on the floor and gets a backdrop to shift the momentum.

Back in and Edge gets a top rope cross body for two.  Booker completely ignores Josh’s questions about what Booker thinks of Edge’s arm injury.  Out of NOWHERE Edge hits the spear for…two as he picks Drew up.  Instead he throws on the Edgecator (the kneeling half Sharpshooter since he doesn’t use it that often) for the tap out at 5:15.  During the post match stuff Cole says it was a new move to Edge’s arsenal.  Considering it has a name I think that would be incorrect.

Rating: C+. Just a quick opener here but they had some psychology in there from Drew as he went after an injured body part.  I’m not entirely sure I get why Drew ran in to Vickie’s defense as I know he was defending her last week but I didn’t think they were best friends or something.  Fine for a quick opener and it added something to Edge as he apparently has a “new” finisher.

Show vs. Kane later.

Cole brings up his match with Lawler but apparently he’s not talking about that right now.

Here’s Rey….in a suit?  Cole says he’s back.  He was there last week so I guess everyone is back this week.  He also grew about 8 inches.  If you didn’t get that it’s not Rey but rather Cody Rhodes as the music changes and the mirror pops up on the screen.  We see a clip of the Rhodes’ beatdown from last week on the real Rey which really was good stuff.

Cody says don’t look at him.  Maybe the whole coming out in a Rey mask with loud rap music and fireworks before switching over to another song which would confuse the fans and then standing in the middle of a ring in the middle of the arena while talking and with a microphone amplifying your voice is causing them to look at you?  Anyway, Cody talks about wanting to get revenge on Rey, giving him just a fraction of the damage that Rey gave to Cody.  He challenges Rey for Mania and promises and promises to expose Rey’s face on the grandest stage of all.

In the back Corre comes up to talk to Kane.  They say that they helped Kane get the biggest victory of his career.  Tonight they want him to beat Show.  I’m assuming foreshadowing here?

Tag titles on the line next.

Tag Titles: Heath Slater/Justin Gabriel vs. Santino Marella/Vladimir Kozlov

Ok, PLEASE let this be the last match between these teams.  Is there a reason why a Raw (complete with name graphic) team is challenging on Smackdown when the tag champions can compete on both shows?  Santino and Gabriel start us off with Gabriel scaring Santino back with kicks and Santino scaring Gabriel back with the threat of the Cobra.  Santino gets the first offense in with a slam.

Booker still doesn’t like Jackson and still thinks he’s a thug.  Off to Kozlov as Booker intentionally ignores Cole.  Cobra puts Gabriel on the floor as we take a break.  Back with the Russian holding Slater in a headlock on the mat.  Slates goes for the knee and down goes Kozlov.  Barrett sneaks in a shot and Booker isn’t happy.  Off to Gabriel and we get a Santino chant.

Cravate by Gabriel as Cole brings up some cheating moments from Booker’s career.  Booker says “My career is….” and he’s cut off by having to stop to call the match.  I didn’t think he had retired or anything officially so that could have been interesting.  Anyway Kozlov takes Slater down and it’s off to Santino.  He gets his usual offense on Slater and hits the salute headbutt for two.  Everything breaks down and Santino loads up the Cobra.  He takes Barrett down with it but Slater hits a reverse DDT to retain at 4:06 shown of 7:36.

Rating: C-. Ok, we get it: Corre can beat Santino and Kozlov.  Now give us something else with these teams.  This would be a good chance to start rebuilding the tag division with some random teams facing Corre but that’s not going to happen.  Nothing special at all here and more of the same stuff we’ve seen a half dozen times with these guys.

Christian is back next week.  No word on if that’s in the ring or not.  At the same time we recap his injury and return at the PPV.  No mention of him at the Slammys which was hilarious.

Alberto and Ricardo are in the back and Alberto says he almost captured his essence.  That’s all there is to this segment.  No idea what the point of that was.

Time to talk about Taker vs. HHH and by that I mean show the HHH promo from Raw in its entirety.  You know, you could get A LOT more wrestling on the two shows not named Raw if you stopped airing five minutes worth of talking from Raw on them.  This would have been a far better promo if they hadn’t fought already at Wrestlemania in a good match.

Here comes Taker to the Johnny Cash song.  I’d really rather hear the organ music for him as it just fits better.  Cash is awesome but at the same time it just doesn’t seem right for someone like Taker.  Taker is actually kind of moving to get down to the ring.  I almost couldn’t finish marinating the turkey I cooked while he was coming down.  At least the song fits the character so that helps.

Taker talks about how surprising he finds it that the greatest of the great don’t know when to leave well enough alone.  There are some things that just can’t be done.  There are mountains that can’t be climbed, seas that can’t be crossed, and Streaks that can’t be broken.  He agrees with a lot of what HHH said as they’re the last of a dying breed and the last of an era.  Taker thinks that HHH is the greatest world champion over the last fifteen years.  That’s covering a lot of ground there Deadman.

HHH claims to have found the way to get rid of the Undertaker: beat him at Wrestlemania.  That’s easier said than done though.  If HHH can do it, he will be the Game and the King of Kings.  But if he loses, he will become nothing more than a number and a name on a list.  You mean like he already is?

Taker plays no game and bows down to no man, especially the king of kings.  At Wrestlemania, HHH will find out that Undertaker is the Last Outlaw.  That’s the new name I guess.  HHH will also find out what it means to Rest in Peace.  This was more like Mark Calloway playing Undertaker rather than Undertaker if that makes sense.

We see a clip from the Sin Cara/Mistico contract signing.  That’s another step for WWE in their international push.  Having lots of guys of different nationalities worked in the 60s and 70s so why not here?

Rosa Mendes/Beth Phoenix vs. Laycool

I guess the foot is ok.  During Laycool’s entrance Cole goes on a rant against journalism and the internet for overplaying the problems Laycool has been having.  Beth and Michelle start but it’s off to Rosa and Layla very quickly.  Booker mentions that Laycool is like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.  Last week I thought Michelle was starting to seem a lot like Hilton so maybe I was onto something.

Off to Beth vs. Layla now with Beth dominating her.  Beth completely destroys her of course and a powerslam gets two.  Michelle gets a big boot to the head of Beth for the pin at 2:20.  There’s a possibility that the boot is loaded.  I guess the Laycool problems are put of hold for a week which might be a good thing at the moment.  No rating as again this was short but the Smackdown Divas are so far ahead of the Raw Divas it’s unreal.

Big Show vs. Kane

Remember that Corre talked to Kane earlier tonight so they might get involved here.  They also show the clip from last week with Show running Corre off with a chair.  This is match #847 or so between these two.  Show backs him into the corner but gets drilled in the chin for his niceness.  K-Mart is sponsoring the live tours now.  K-Mart still exists?  There used to be like 4 here in Lexington and now there is one and no one goes there.  Double clothesline makes it seem like it’s time for a break but here comes Corre with a chair.  Barrett slides it to Kane and it’s a DQ at 1:16.

Kane cracks Show with it and Corre comes in for the beatdown.  Then Kane cracks Gabriel with it and runs off Corre with the chair.  Huh?

We hear Shawn’s thoughts on HHH vs. Taker where he still doesn’t really say anything.

Here’s Jack Swagger.  Basically this is to push Cole as Swagger’s student.  There’s a Team Cole now.  Better than Team Edward.  Cole says that on Monday we’re going to find out who the referee is.  The referee is awesome and one of the best of all time.  Also, the referee, Swagger, Cole and LeBron James think Cleveland stinks.

Jack Swagger vs. JTG

This starts after a break.  Cole goes on a huge rant, explaining how Swagger has been teaching him.  Swagger massacres JTG, hitting two Vader Bombs seconds in and the ankle lock ends this in 1:03.  I think Cole’s entire speech was one long sentence.

Since it’s been a full five minutes since we talked about Raw, here’s a recap of Rock’s promo on Raw.  This one is thankfully cut down.

Edge defaces a painting of Alberto and leaves it in the back.  Ok then.

Time for the contract signing with Teddy moderating things I guess.  I love that smirk on Alberto.  I’ve seen him live and you can tell he’s having a blast.  Why does Alberto keep paying Ricardo if he introduces himself a minute later?  Ricardo starts singing the Mexican national anthem but here’s Edge to save our ears.  Teddy wants to know if we can have a contract signing end peacefully.  Oh Teddy, you poor bad dancing stupid bald man.

The idiotic fans chant USA while the Canadian talks to the Mexican.  Maybe they’re cheering for Teddy?  Edge tells Alberto he doesn’t know what it’s like fighting on the biggest stage in the world.  Alberto says this is his destiny.  Edge says destiny can change and Alberto’s destiny may be to lose at Mania.  Intense stuff here from both guys.  Del Rio signs but it looked like just one word.  Edge signs too and I guess everything is ok.

Edge asks Teddy if he remembers asking if a contract signing can end peacefully.  He says he has an answer and Teddy sprints out of the ring.  Edge hammers away and clears the ring of all the Mexican stuff Del Rio had set up.  He sets for the spear but Ricardo grabs his feet and Del Rio hammers away.  Cross Armbreaker goes on and Edge kind of taps.  It’s let go quickly for no reason and Edge barely sells it on the mat. At least grab your arm dude.

Out to the floor and Edge’s nose is busted.  I’m surprised they didn’t blur it out.  Ricardo hands Del Rio a chair and it gets wrapped around the arm of Edge.  Christian runs out (in wrestling gear) for the save.  He beats Del Rio for a good while before security breaks it up to end the show.

Overall Rating: B-. MUCH better than last week.  It’s not a great show but it’s a definite improvement as there was a lot more energy this time around.  Storylines were advanced and there were some new developments.  I still wish they’d cut out the Raw stuff but I guess it’s a Mania thing.  Also some additional wrestling would help.  Still though this was a solid show and entertaining throughout.  Good show this week.

Results

Edge b. Drew McIntyre – Edgecator

Heath Slater/Justin Gabriel b. Santino Marella/Vladimir Kozlov – Reverse DDT to Marella

Laycool b. Beth Phoenix/Rosa Mendes – Layla pinned Phoenix after a big boot from McCool

Big Show b. Kane via DQ when Kane used a chair

Jack Swagger b. JTG – Ankle Lock

It starts Tuesday.  Just like I did with the Rumble, every day I’ll be counting up a Wrestlemania.  These are the redone versions and are different from the ones on WZ.