World War 3 1997
Date: November 23, 1997
Location: The Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 17,128
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Mike Tenay

Last show in this series here but not the last chronologically. It’s the final show before Starrcade 97 and the bullet that killed WCW. Anyway, the feature match here is of course the battle royal with the winner getting a shot at SuperBrawl which would later be changed to Uncensored (why Souled Out wasn’t an option is anyone’s guess). This is from when this was the hottest company in the world so I’d expect a lot more energy here than the next year. Let’s get to it.

The opening video is of a pilot/soldier in a decimated war zone with a destroyed ring in it. This is interspersed with clips of the show from the previous two years. Bet that cost more than some wrestlers’ salaries.

After the announcers talk for awhile we’re ready to go.

Glacier/Ernest Miller vs. Faces of Fear

Miller and Glacier aren’t total jokes yet and the Faces of Fear (Meng/Haku and Barbarian) are monsters at this point of course. We brawl to start and Meng vs. Glacier opens us up officially. Glacier moves around as much as he can but his shots don’t mean much at all. Standing armbar goes on and it’s off to Miller. It’s so weird to see Miller all serious like this instead of the James Brown thing.

Miller hammers on Barbarian but the three time world karate champion can’t put down the Tongan. Back off to Glacier as we’re up to speed vs. power here, making this mostly awesome. Miller dives on Barbarian on the floor, using Meng as a springboard. That looked rather awesome indeed. Jimmy Hart distracts Glacier and Barbarian runs him over.

Back in the ring Meng backdrops Glacier into a powerbomb by Barbarian for two in a sweet spot. We get into a basic face in peril sequence with Glacier getting beaten down. Powerslam by Meng gets two. Off to Barbarian in the corner and since Dusty isn’t here, I’ll say it: THEY BE CLUBBERIN TONY!!! THEY BE CLUBBERIN!!!

Apparently Barbarian used to play rugby on the Isle of Tonga. Why in the world would Tenay know that? I get that he’s the Professor but dude, does Barbarian even speak English? Another powerslam by Meng gets two. Time for the nerve hold which is an old Tongan/Samoan/Savage standard. We hear a cool story about Meng being a bodyguard for the Emperor of Japan as this needs to end rather soon.

Elbow drop misses and Miller still can’t get tagged in. We finally get to the hot tag and Miller cleans house. He kind of reminds me of Tajiri actually but a bit taller. Kicks all around, including one to Jimmy Hart. It’s not like it matters though as the Tongan Death Grip ends Miller cold.

Rating: C-. I’ve seen far worse actually. Not particularly good but it was light years better than the 10 minute squash that we got the next year with Glacier in there. This wasn’t anything I’ll remember in about five minutes but it was still decent enough for an opener and that double powerbomb spot was cool. Not terrible.

TV Title: Disco Inferno vs. Perry Saturn

Saturn had won the title in his debut off of Disco so this is his rematch. There’s your backstory. Oh and Saturn is in the Flock. Disco is being serious at the moment and he got the TV Title because of it. Raven comes to the ring with Saturn despite sitting in the front row pre match. Raven says let the stretching begin. Saturn immediately takes Disco down and the Inferno is frustrated.

Tenay vaguely references ECW by calling it an other organization. Saturn runs over Disco with power. So he can’t hang with him on the mat or power and Tenay said Saturn can fly. What chance does Disco have here exactly? Disco sends him to the floor as we hear about how during his six week reign with the title he never got a clean pin. Wait are we supposed to buy him as a credible guy or not?

Heenan might have picked Saturn for the battle royal but it’s not entirely clear. Disco makes Saturn take a break and then gets his head knocked off by a boot and clothesline. Atomic drop puts Saturn back down as this is a weird kind of back and forth. Disco hammers away with a back elbow and fist drop for two.

You may not believe this, but Disco does something incredibly intelligent here. You know that spot where a guy comes off the middle rope and jumps into a boot with no possible move they could have had other than jumping into the boot? Disco does it here but avoids the boot. Granted the elbow he attempted missed but I like what I saw there. T-Bone suplex to Disco has Saturn in control again.

Saturn covers him time after time but can’t get the pin. Second rope moonsault misses and Disco, who doesn’t have a finisher, tries a bunch of stuff for two. Saturn gets a backslide but sits down with it so that it’s like a sunset flip/backslide hybrid. Never seen that before. Disco is crotched on the top rope and Saturn hits a middle rope clothesline to send both guys to the floor.

They more or less fell onto the apron with that so it wasn’t the best looking move in the world. Disco yells at the Flock and hits Chartbusters (Stunners) on various members over the railing, including one on the debuting Lodi. He can’t hit one on Van Hammer and Saturn uses his chance to drill Disco and take over. Back to the middle ring and Disco gets a neckbreaker for two. Top rope cross body hits but Saturn rolls though into the Rings of Saturn (double arm hook submission) for the submission to retain.

Rating: C-. Not bad here but there were some bad spots. Also I still don’t know if we’re supposed to take Disco seriously even in his more serious persona or not. They didn’t seem to have much of a plan out there but that was somewhat typical of a Saturn match. Not bad though.

Yuji Nagata vs. Ultimo Dragon

Nagata has Sonny Onoo with him and if Dragaon, Onoo’s former protégé, loses then he gets five minutes with Sonny. Dragon has a bad arm thanks to Nagata. Dragon is fresh off one of the least interesting feuds over a title you’ll ever see, trading it twice with Alex Wright. Nagata is a much bigger star in Japan and takes over early by going after the arm, but Dragon fights his way out of it.

Nagata heads to the floor and Dragon follows. Sonny fires in some kicks so Dragon tries a suplex which Nagata breaks up to take over. Dragon grabs a headlock and gets suplexed. Nagata is one of the least interesting guys I’ve ever seen. Whenever his matches are on I can’t get interested in him at all. Piledriver gets two for Nagata. He grabs a chinlock and shifts it into a sleeper. Then he makes it even more interesting by going BACK to the chinlock! WOW!!!

Another Piledriver gets two. So is the BIG FREAKING BANDAGE on his arm not a big enough target that you should work on the arm? Nagata kicks him and heads to the camel clutch, shifting over to the back now. After that gets broken up he FINALLY works on the arm with a Fujiwara Armbar. Let’s hit that chinlock/sleeper again because that arm work can’t last that long.

Belly to belly overhead suplex gets two. Dragon avoids a backdrop and kicks the tar out of Nagata. Some Facewashes in the corner have Nagata in big trouble. Pescado is almost caught by a kick but Dragon catches the kick and hits a Dragon Screw Leg Whip to take Nagata down on the floor. Top rope cross body to the floor puts Nagata down again.

Back in and Dragon goes up again. Suplex off the top by Nagata is blocked and Dragon adds a moonsault for two. Dragon tries a suplex but Nagata reverses. That reversal is reversed into the Dragon Sleeper but Sonny distracts. Dragon Rana gets two but Sonny puts Nagata’s foot on the rope. We then get one of the sloppiest finishes I’ve EVER seen. Dragon tries a belly to back suplex but seems to fall towards the ropes. Nagata’s foot hits Sonny and Nagata falls on top. Dragon’s shoulder was up and he was in the ropes but the referee counted to four (yes four) anyway. That had to be at least one botch.

Rating: D+. I’m not a fan of Nagata at all and this didn’t help my opinion of him. Terribly boring match with a bad finish and a total lack of psychology. Once Dragon got going in there towards the end it was an improvement but it didn’t make up for the previous eight minutes or so. Nagata continues to bore me.

 

Tag Titles: Blue Bloods vs. Steiner Brothers

The Blue Bloods are Dave Taylor (old English dude) and Steve Regal (yes that Regal). This was when the Steiners were tag champions but the Outsiders had their own belts. This would result in the temporary “Unified” tag titles. Ted DiBiase is managing them here. Scott vs. Taylor to start us off here. Scott isn’t that far away from turning heel and breaking up the team.

We hear about how awesome the Steiners are, including their two tag title reigns from another promotion (WWF) and how dominant they are. The Dudleys would more or less destroy every record they had but until they came along it was all Steiners. The British dudes get thrown around with ease and are sent to the floor to hide a bit. Rick vs. Regal now and it’s a USA chant.

Regal tries to use his technical stuff so Rick grabs his hand and cranks on it to take over. Well no one ever accused Rick of being a mental giant. Regal takes over for a bit but gets cocky and Rick gets a Fujiwara Armbar of all things to take him down. Off to Scott who gets that sweet belly to belly for two. STF goes on for all of two seconds and it’s back off to Rick.

He goes for the arm of Regal again but as Dave has the referee, Regal gets a finger to the eye to take over. And never mind as Rick gets a shoulder block and powerslam to take over again. Regal gets a knee to the back of Scott and pulls the rope down to send Scott outside. Taylor goes for the arm and it’s back to Regal. He hooks Scott in a leg lock and brings Taylor back in.

The Brits have used a lot of European uppercuts and every time they’ve put the Steiners down. Regal tries to speed things up and walks into a belly to belly by Scott, allowing for a tag to Rick. Down goes everyone and it all breaks down. Scott backdrops Taylor onto Regal and the Steiner Bulldog ends Regal to retain.

Rating: C-. Just an extended squash here. I don’t get why the vast majority of these matches have been on this show so far. I guess because we can’t have a battle royal go on for three hours. Either way this was more or less exactly what you would expect here. The Blue Bloods were more or less tag team jobbers so this didn’t have any heat on it at all.

JJ Dillon says Raven has 24 hours to sign a contract or he’s gone.

Raven vs. Scotty Riggs

Riggs is in an eyepatch due to Raven hurting him. Kidman, a member of the Flock, insists on Raven’s Rules, meaning No DQ. Raven has been trying to get Riggs to join the Flock, so what do you think is coming at the end here? Riggs jumps him and beats on Raven for awhile in the kind of offense you would expect from a guy that has no chance at all. Riggs gets a rollup for two as Raven can’t get much going.

Heenan makes blind jokes which are kind of funny. First of all he suggests moving the patch to the other eye. That’s actually rather smart when you think about it. Raven uses the shirt around his waist to choke away and we head to the floor. Riggs reverses and sends him into the steps and chokes with a cord. Tony says Raven is helpless, just as he pops up with a jawbreaker. I love it when Tony looks like an idiot, which means I love a lot in WCW.

The announcers say Scotty has done nothing since Bagwell and he broke up which makes me laugh for some reason. Raven gets a chair and hits him in the back with it a few times for some weak shots. Riggs gets the drop toehold into the chair as a reversal to break Raven’s momentum. Modified Van Daminator by Riggs gets two.

Riggs manages a bulldog onto the chair which looked either awesome or awful and I’m not sure which. Either way it gets two. And never mind as there’s the Evenflow DDT to kill Riggs dead. Raven wants a microphone instead though. There’s a second DDT as he says he feels Riggs’ pain and that it hurts Raven more than Riggs. Heenan: I don’t think so. Raven shouts about feeling the pain again and a third DDT has Riggs unconscious. The referee counts him out and it’s over.

Rating: D+. What was the point of this being on PPV again? For the big blowoff for Raven vs. Riggs? Weak match all around and Raven looked completely dominant even though he got beaten up. I think he would sign the next night but I’m not sure. Either way he would have Riggs in the Flock then and that’s about it.

Steve McMichael vs. Bill Goldberg

This is over Mongo’s Super Bowl ring that Goldberg stole at the previous PPV. Mongo comes out with a pipe Goldberg’s music hits and there’s no Goldberg. Mongo says this isn’t happening and says he can sneak up on people too. We go to the back and Goldberg is out cold. So no one noticed the big man in his underwear out cold on the concrete just behind the entry way? Mongo more or less gives an open challenge, resulting in this.

Steve McMichael vs. Alex Wright

Wright isn’t here because he wants to be but because Debra, Mongo’s estranged wife, brings him out and more or less makes his fight. Wright whips him with his jacket to start. Wright is from Germany so wouldn’t that be a foreign object? Mongo is like screw this and hammers away, sending Wright to the floor. He tries to leave but Debra more or less makes him come back.

Alex tries to fight and gets slammed down to the mat with ease. Mongo is barely breaking a sweat in this. Was there a reason they didn’t have Goldberg in this that I’m not getting? Debra’s voice is irritating to put it mildly. Wright takes over for a very little bit with chops but McMichael takes out the knee. Side slam sets up the Tombstone to end it. Total and complete squash squash and no rating here. Heenan asks Who’s Next for Mongo. Nah that’ll never catch on.

Cruiserweight Title: Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio

They’re coming off an absolute classic the previous month at Halloween Havoc. Eddie (not Eddy blast it!) is champion here. Also what is with the total lack of promos here? I think JJ had the only one so far. They start off with speed stuff to the shock of no one. Eddie is in gold tights and they’re really not working on him here. Rey gets that elevated snap mare to take Eddie down and it’s a stalemate.

The fans are all over Eddie here and his reaction is quite funny. Eddie ripped the mask off partially last time so we talk about that a bit here. Guerrero hits a German suplex and busts out some suplexes to take over. The problem here seems that they’re trying to have the match of the year rather than having a great match.

They fight towards the ropes and neither guy can take over. Hilo misses and Rey hits the floor. Both guys try dives but neither can hit them. Rey can’t get a sunset bomb so Eddie hits a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Back in and Eddie goes up, only to get blocked by Rey. Superplex by Eddie takes Rey down but the Frog Splash misses. Eddie rolls through and Rey gets a rana for two.

Flapjack puts Rey down but Eddie can’t get up either. After some shots by Eddie he drops Rey over the top rope and spanks himself a bit. Eddie tries a sunset bomb which is reversed into a rana by Rey. Rey adds a front flip over the ropes to end Eddie. That and a moonsault gets in the ring. Eddie charges and is sent into the post but powerbombs Rey out of a rana to take over again.

Gory Special goes on by Eddie and Rey is in trouble. Rey counters that into a sunset flip for two. Leg lariat puts Eddie down again but Rey doesn’t cover for no apparent reason. They try something from the top and Rey falls off in what looked like a mild botch. Moonsault press gets two for the guy in the mask. Dropping the Dime gets no cover as Rey wants to go up again. West Coast Pop with a flip gets two as Eddie grabs the rope. Awesome looking move. Rey tries to run at Eddie who is on the corner but Eddie gets a hot shot to block it. Frog Splash ends it.

Rating: B. Good match but their match the previous month gave them WAY too much to live up to. Naturally this was still great as their matches always would be. Not a classic but worth watching if you like these two. There were some botches in there and they were trying to live up to the previous month which never works at all.

Ad for Starrcade. Remarkable that they managed to screw that up, it truly is.

US Title: Ric Flair vs. Curt Hennig

Hennig had turned on Flair and the Horsemen at Fall Brawl, slamming Flair’s head in the door. He won the US Title soon thereafter and more or less hasn’t looked back since. This is Flair’s revenge match rather than for the title. It’s also No DQ and Hennig brings a chair with him. The referee gets rid of the chair which is kind of pointless but whatever. Hennig is wearing a Syxx shirt for no apparent reason.

Curt stalls like a Memphis man but gets caught on the floor and Ric hammers away. This is the last match before the battle royal too. We hit the crowd with Flair dominating. This is your usual brawl in the crowd with various punches and eye rakes along with people being rammed into objects. Flair is rammed into the railing as Curt dominates for awhile.

Back into the ring and Hennig chokes away with a cord and we go back to the floor. We hear about Flair playing football at the University of Minnesota which isn’t something you often hear about. Flair goes up top and drops a double axe onto Hennig into the railing by the throat but he might have hurt his ankle. Flair chops away as we talk about the battle royal with the various countries etc that are going to be here for the match. Good to know that a bunch of people we don’t know will be competing here.

Back into the ring (again) and the referee got poked in the eye by Hennig apparently instead of letting him count three. Hennig was covering Flair which means it was even stupider. He works on the leg with Flair losing his mind as usual of course. Heenan says you can forget the Figure Four now. Why do I not believe that in the slightest?

He drops a leg between Flair’s legs as Flair’s ankle is still hurt. Modified Indian Deathlock goes on by Hennig and he gets two on it as Flair is laying there. Ric fights out of it and gets a chopblock as the crowd is way into him, or at least his wooing. Snap mare puts Hennig down and drops the knee. After some right hands Flair goes up. Take a guess as to how this goes. Just take a guess.

They chop it out with Hennig easily getting the best of it, resulting in a Flair Flop for two. We slug it out in the corner a bit more with Flair tossing Hennig into the corner where Curt is crotched on the post as is his custom. Hennig drops low to avoid a chop as it’s Flair in control again. They ram heads though and both go down for a bit. Belly to back gets two for Flair.

To change the pace a bit, Hennig chops away in the corner. They’re in a different ring now also. Flair Flip in the corner and we go outside again. Scratch that as just Flair does as Hennig chills in the ring a bit which is probably pretty smart. They fight a bit on the floor with Hennig in control again. Flair sends him into the railing and both guys are down again.

Flair suplexes him back into the ring but that also only gets two. This is at about 15 minutes now and probably needs to end very soon. Flair gets a chair as I had forgotten this was a No DQ match. It gets set up in the ring and Flair crotches him on it and kicks the chair into the knee. Flair rams the knee with the chair and brings the belt into the ring. Figure Four goes on but the belt that is RIGHT NEXT TO HENNIG goes into Flair’s head and it’s over. Weak ending to say the least.

Rating: D+. This was WAY too long. This is nearly 18 minutes long and I legitimately forgot about the No DQ aspect of it for a very long time. I’m not sure what they were going for here as Flair is made to look like a guy that can’t get revenge in a match where he’s supposed to be dirty. Not a great match at all and very boring and repetitive as can be here.

World War 3

Chris Adams, Brad Armstrong, Marcus Bagwell, The Barbarian, Chris Benoit, Bobby Blaze, Booker T, Ciclope, Damien, El Dandy, Barry Darsow, Disco Inferno, Jim Duggan, Fit Finlay, Héctor Garza, The Giant, Glacier, Johnny Grunge, Juventud Guerrera, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Eddy Guerrero, Scott Hall, Curt Hennig, Prince Iaukea, Chris Jericho, Lizmark, Jr., Lex Luger

Dean Malenko, Steve McMichael, Meng, Ernest Miller, Rey Misterio, Jr., Hugh Morrus, Mortis, Yuji Nagata, John Nord, Diamond Dallas Page, La Parka, Stevie Ray, Lord Steve Regal, The Renegade, Rocco Rock, Randy Savage, Silver King, Norman Smiley, Louie Spicolli, Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner, Super Calo, Squire David Taylor, Ray Traylor, Último Dragón, Greg Valentine, Villaño IV, Villaño V, Vincent, Kendall Windham, Wrath and Alex Wright

What you might notice is that there are only 59 names there, so yes it’s time for shenanigans. As far as people you might not know, the only one that pops off the page to me is John Nord, who is more famous as the Berzerker. The introductions are odd as they say the wrestlers can go from ring to ring. What sense does that make?? Also once we get down to five people per ring we go to the middle. So if they get down to five in a ring and the other rings aren’t yet we just stop? See why this match tended to suck? The rules rarely made sense. Just have a freaking battle royal. How hard is that to accomplish?

As usual the entrances take about 5 minutes. They seem to be a bit faster this year though, mainly due to some people coming out in groups. The Giant is the defending champion and has a broken hand here. There’s an NWO member missing let the confusion begin. The missing one is apparently Kevin Nash who might be out with a knee injury.

The bell rings and we immediately go split screen, meaning YOU CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!!! WCW didn’t get this through their heads until the final year when they just didn’t film everything in every ring, like the intelligent people would suggest. Let’s get this over with. Lizmark Jr. and Disco Inferno plus anyone else Giant touches are gone. He must have gotten four people at a time. Louie Spicolli and a Villano are out.

La Parka is out. Expect a lot of “so and so” is out, just like Norman Smiley. Public Enemy goes after Meng and Grunge is put out. Ring 2, the Giant’s ring, is emptying quickly. DDP just walks into another ring. Scott Hall puts out El Dandy. I guess Hall didn’t doubt him. The NWO is in ring 1. Bobby Blaze is gone. Ring 2 has like 30 people in it. Or is that 3? The announcers say 2 and the graphic says 3. Whatever man. It’s in the middle.

Graphic now says 2. Flair isn’t here either apparently. Who replaced him I wonder since they made it clear he was an entrant during his match. Stevie Ray hangs on with a rake to the eyes. We’ve more or less stopped checking the other rings. Brad Armstrong is gone. Silver King is gone. Damien, a luchador, is thrown out. DDP and Wrath go at it but Wrath hangs on.

DDP tosses Prince Iaukea. Nagata is out so the match is less boring now. Wrath and Renegade are gone and fight up the aisle. No idea how many people are left at the moment. Ring 1 is rather empty now with maybe 7 people left and all of the NWO in still. Jericho is out. Hall winds up hanging on by one hand but the NWO runs in for the save to keep him in.

Greg Valentine is gone. Giant’s hand is killing him so Mortis and Duggan double team him. The people keep switching rings so you can’t tell who is where and who is left as you think they’re eliminated but they’re in a different ring. Most annoying indeed. Ring 3 is mostly empty now while ring 1 is a lot more full now. Harlem Heat beats on Chris Adams. Adams is gone but tries to sneak back in ala his most famous student: Steve Austin.

Ray Traylor (Big Boss Man) chokes Savage as Finlay is gone. Page and Benoit fight to the apron but both get back in. We’re roughly halfway done here as Dave Taylor is gone. Page and Malenko put I think Benoit out. Yep that was him. Miller puts Malenko out. Ring 3 seems to have Meng, Giant, Alex Wright and Mortis. Duggan is out to some booing. Miller is gone.

Leave it to the WCW cameras to focus on Giant’s hand. That’s all you see in the entire ring. Barbarian goes out and McMichael is also in ring 3. Rey puts Eddie out and gets ganged up on by the NWO who finally gets him out. Traylor is gone as is Darsow. Wait Mysterio pulled a John Morrison/Shawn Michaels and is hanging on to the apron! Mongo is out as are Wright and Mortis. Giant and Meng are the only ones left in that ring. Luger, Harlem Heat, DDP and Rick Steiner are in another ring and the NWO remain in the other.

Stevie Ray is out so we have ten left I think. Giant DROPKICKS Meng out. That was incredible and he wins the ring. Ok so it’s Vincent, Hall, Savage, Bagwell, Hennig, DDP, Rick Steiner, Luger and Booker T. The NWO won’t change rings and say come over here. They beat up the referee who says go to the other ring. Giant chills in the ring while the other four change to the NWO ring.

Ah there’s Giant so they’re all in the ring closest to the entrance because clearly the most fans can see them there right? Diamond Cutter to Vincent and a HUGE pop. Giant rolls Vincent out to get our first NWO guy out. Booker is out via someone we didn’t see as is Rick Steiner. Bagwell talks to the camera so Giant rams Bagwell and Savage’s heads together.

Luger hammers on Hennig on the second rope and doesn’t get tossed. Luger wakes up and hammers on people but gets jumped by the NWO. Giant comes over and puts out Bagwell, Hennig and Luger, leaving us with Savage, Giant, Hall and DDP. There’s a decent midcard tag match in there somewhere. Savage fights Page while Hall gets beaten up by the Giant. Giant slams Hall instead of throwing him out.

Savage wants an elbow to DDP but Giant stands in front of him. Savage, the crazy man that he is, jumps anyway and gets caught. He doesn’t get tossed though but takes a Diamond Cutter. Giant won’t let him get tossed though because he wants to chokeslam him. Savage is more or less dead and is tossed with ease to get us to three. The next year it would be the same three but with Nash instead of Giant.

More or less it’s a handicap match with Hall vs. Giant/DDP. Hall heads to another ring which is pretty smart actually. He does the point and here comes….no one as the NWO music starts and ends. Hogan’s music kicks on and is here now instead. So apparently Hogan, the WORLD CHAMPION, is #60, being allowed to skip 25 minutes of the match to potentially win a title shot against….himself? There are 7 minutes left so let’s just go with it.

We get a tag match now with Hogan fighting Giant and Hall vs. DDP. Ok so during Hogan’s two minute or so long intro, did Giant and DDP just stand there instead of going after Hall? Six minutes left so I don’t particularly care here. The fans want Sting as the NWO starts dominating. Hogan slams Giant to a big pop. Hall is sat on the top rope by Giant as DDP is crotched on the top rope.

Bear hug to Hall as Sting rappels from the ceiling, somehow about 10 inches taller and with darker hair. Hogan eliminates himself to run from Not-Sting and Not-Sting hits Giant with the bat to eliminate him as I guess DDP went out somewhere. Not-Sting points the bat at Hall as the fans chant Nash, having basic intelligence. The NWO celebrates to end this stupid, stupid match. Hogan gives DDP a Diamond Cutter to take us to the credits. Yes WCW had credits.

Rating: F+. Where do I even begin? Awful in every sense of the word with nothing making sense and the whole thing being a disaster. The switching of the rings thing made it virtually impossible to know who was where. The ending was just idiotic as Hogan apparently can just walk into a match he’s not a part of and has no business being involved in as he’s competing for a shot at something he already has. Nash made things look stupid and the whole thing was just a mess from start to finish. Also the triple camera didn’t help either.

Overall Rating: D-. Just a terribly dull show with nothing going on at all that was worth seeing. Rey vs. Eddie is good but it’s got nothing on the previous match they had at the last show. This was a very boring show overall as it was clear that Starrcade was all set in stone already. Not a good show in any sense of the word and boring beyond belief. BIG pass here.

 

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Uncensored 1996
Date: March 24, 1996
Location: Tupelo Coliseum, Tupelo, Mississippi
Attendance: 9,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Dusty Rhodes

When I was a kid, this show looked completely awesome. I mean, Sting and Booker T vs. the Road Warriors in a street fight? Hogan and Savage against ten guys in a cage match? All of the matches with no rules? How could this not be good??? Well, this show has since been considered one of the worst of all time. After reading this raping of my childhood, I had to take another look at it to see if that’s the case or not.

The main theory here is that these matches aren’t sanctioned by WCW and therefore are more or less anything goes. That turns out to be bogus though as it’s really just a gimmick match PPV. Your main feud here is Hogan and Savage vs. the world.

There’s an alliance between the Horsemen and the Dungeon of Doom called the Alliance to End Hulkamania. Yeah, starting to see why wrestling was dying a painful death at this point? This was the top storyline. More on that later though, because we have an apparently awful show to watch.

Also, this is one week before Wrestlemania 12 where Shawn would win the title, just to give you a little perspective on what was going on with the competition.

The cage match is called the Doomsday Cage Match, so the opening video is about Doomsday. This is so ridiculously over the top that it’s hilarious. This reminds me of when they had Cena and Orton against the “roster” about a year and a half ago. They’re just throwing everyone they can into one match to feed them to Hogan and Savage.

This is going to be so bad it’s great. Tony says there isn’t a seat to be found in Tupelo. No, I’m pretty sure I see about 5000 tarped off up there. There are three in the announcer’s booth since they’re all standing. Oh and Bessie Mae Scroggins is only having two people for dinner tonight so there’s a chair free at her kitchen table.

The cage is just standing there next to the run way instead of you know, at the ring where people can see it. It’s very dark so you can see where this is going. Dusty says there’s a feel of danger. I have no idea what that means so Dusty is at the top of his HHH tonight. He says that Hogan needs to survive here to carry on into the 90s. You know, the decade that’s over 50% over already. I missed Dusty’s awfulness. We get a match to shut him up though.

US Title: Konnan vs. Eddie Guerrero

Eddie is the challenger here. He’s just gotten out of jobber status and this is his first big time title match. Konnan is still in his Mexican champion mode here and is rocking neon pink and blue on his jacket. Somehow it works though. You know before he came here and was a completely racist and insane bigot, he was actually a very entertaining wrestler.

Dusty calls Eddie his homey from El Paso. I wonder if they exchange bicycles. They start with a technical sequence which is the best thing they likely can do. Both guys are really good wrestlers so that’s always a good thing. This is right around the time where WCW with the cruiserweights was about to explode with Eddie being one of those leading the charge.

They point out the large amount of people that are here from other countries, which is kind of cool I think. WCW had a tendency to overpush that though and it hurt things. Konnan uses a heel hook as Dusty says he’s trying to uncle him. I should note the crowd is quite dead here. Now since Eddie was smart, he noticed this and more or less said screw this and just went insane on it.

Apparently the winner of this fights Mr. JL (Jerry Lynn) tomorrow on Nitro. I have no idea why, but whatever. This homey nonsense needs to freaking stop Dusty. It’s not funny and it’s just annoying. As for the match, it’s going ok I guess. The speeding up has really woken up the crowd. They’re desperately in need of a Mike Tenay here though to tell them what the heck is going on.

They have these weird spurts of awesome stuff and then they go into boring stuff 101. After some more time spent just making the audience go back and forth from being half asleep to freaking out, we get a weird ending. Eddie goes for a leapfrog or a hurricanrana or something like that and I think Konnan stops early. Either way, Eddie’s balls land on Konnan’s head and as he’s screaming, Eddie is covered and pinned.

Naturally he’s ticked off. Let’s look at this from a Kayfabe perspective. Eddie is the one that jumped on Konnan right? Why should he be ticked that he landed wrong? From a legit perspective, it’s an accident and no reason at all to be a jerk about it. If it were me, I’d think it’s because Vickie is the one that’s going to massage them back to health. Anyway, that’s how it ends which kind of sucks from either perspective.

Rating: B-. This was so back and forth all match that it wasn’t funny. The fans could tell also as you could see them waking up and then just dying at various intervals of the match. WCW was on the verge of the big time here and I think this match had a lot to do with it. I think they were starting to see that high flying stuff could really work well if they did it right and once they figured that out, it was all cruise control.

Gene is with Dick Slater and Colonel Parker. This was a buildup for Parker against Medusa later on tonight. The thing here is simple: Medusa is a decent wrestler and he’s a chauvinist that wants her in the kitchen. He says he’s doing this for all the men in the world. Parker was always pretty overrated as a manger and about as generic of a stereotype as you were ever going to find. Oh yeah and then there’s Slater who is even more generic.

Belfast Bruiser vs. Steven Regal

For you that aren’t familiar with these two, it’s William Regal vs. Finlay. This was some feud that they said was allegedly about something that happened in Europe but they never actually said what that was, which tells me it never happened. Regal has a butler with him named Jeeves. Make your own jokes. Finlay pops Regal with his jacket. Well ok then.

This is a freaking FIGHT. These guys are hammering on each other in a way that I’ve hardly ever seen before. It’s rather cool looking actually. Dusty drops the term stomp a mudhole in someone. That’s something new. This is just freaking brutal in there. We get a Pedro Morales reference who is apparently part of the Spanish announce team.

Since when did they have a Spanish announce team?? I don’t remember that at all. Dusty is a flat out idiot. He says that one of the Spanish announcers can get the truth out of Konnan because he speaks the Espanol. Not only that but he says that of the 32,000 people in the town are all here. Wow this man is impressive. He can’t wrestle, he can’t talk, but he’s a legend.

Apparently this is the WCW PPV debut in Australia. That just isn’t fair and I apologize to them. This is one of the most brutal matches I can ever remember. I mean there’s nothing special about it but they’re just hitting each other especially hard but they’re doing stuff like the forearm to the face on pins. That’s just painful looking. More or less it’s a street fight where you can get disqualified though.

They announce that tomorrow it’s Finlay vs. Savage. I like that, as they advertise the matches like that. Also, that’s what they need to do more of today in WWE: having main event guys fight midcarders. It worked back then and it would work today. Dusty continues to amaze me by saying Ireland and England aren’t close to each other at all. The crowd is completely dead by the way.

They hit the floor for about the third time and run to the Doomsday cage. After a solid shot into that still doesn’t draw a DQ, the freaking Blue Bloods run in for the actual DQ, despite having a lower combined IQ than the cage. I know this was a short review, but this was nearly a twenty minute fight. Yes fight, not match.

Rating: C-. This is a very hard one to describe. This had to be at least 75% shoot though, as there’s no way they could hammer on each other that well and have it be fake completely. They hammered on each other in probably the hardest hitting match I’ve ever seen. The problem is, the fans were just completely bored with it. Think of the Nastys vs. Sullivan and Cactus from Spring Stampede 94, but add ten minutes to it and less weapons. See how that could be a problem?

This is a very odd show so far. The crowd simply doesn’t care about much at all, and between that and Dusty’s complete insanity at commentary, I’m not sure what to think yet. Let’s keep at it though.

Gene is with the Giant and Jimmy Hart who say they’ll take care of Loch Ness. Giant threatens to smoke Loch Ness like bacon. That joke writes itself. Apparently the winner of this gets a world title shot against Flair tomorrow night.

Colonel Parker vs. Madusa

The story here is about as complicated as you can think of. Sherri had gotten hit on the head and decided she was in love with Parker. They kissed at Fall Brawl so he decided he wanted to marry her. They had the wedding and for reasons that were never explained, Madusa jumped out of a trailer and broke it up.

That leads to this, which is man vs. woman, yet I’ve never heard of another woman named Colonel Robert Parker before. That’s clearly the less masculine of the two here though. Before this starts though, Heenan and Tony get into this STUPID argument with insults that aren’t funny and wouldn’t be funny in 6th grade. After some brief predictions, we get to the match.

Bobby is clad in leather for some odd reason. He suggests buying off Madusa here with credit cards and flowers. Oh thank goodness for Bobby Heenan. We get a WWF reference as this is just a bit after she dropped the women’s title in the garbage which inadvertently led to Montreal. Parker is just stupid looking here, wearing a white suit.

Madusa was more or less the only American women’s wrestler worth a thing that anyone could stand the sight of for a good many years, but Sable was on the rise and it would be a few years before this indy chick named Amy Dumas came up. Trish was probably in high school at this time. Madusa is supposed to be sexy I think, but she’s just not as she’s more masculine than Parker.

Naturally she’s a black belt also as all women wrestlers apparently are. After the bell we get a lock up. We’ll move on with the match in just a moment, but first, this pearl of insight from Dusty: “HE LOCKED UP WITH HER! HE LOCKED UP WITH HER! WHAT THE HECK??? HE LOCKED UP WITH HER! SOMEBODY GET MY MEDICINE!” This is going to be a really long night. What in the heck am I watching???

The fans are about as one sided as you could possibly believe. After an Airplane Spin that brought on some of the highest pitched screams that I can ever remember, she reverses into a sunset flip for a HUGE pop. I mean that was loud. She slams him and Dusty needs new pants I think. Not due to an issue or anything, but the 12 cheeseburgers he’s had during this match made him go up a size.

Heenan continues to crack me up by saying the closest thing he’s ever seen to this is one night when Gene got home late and his old lady backdropped him. Would anyone else be far more interested in a reality show of Gene and Bobby wandering around to various places and having stupid misadventures? Dick Slater, who was somehow married to Madusa at the time keeps him from running. Screw you Slater.

Madusa actually wasn’t that bad in the ring. They’re in Trish territory. Sadly that’s the only thing about her that’s in Trish’s territory. She gets her signature German suplex, and actually gets a decent one all things considered, but Slater hooks her foot and Parker falls on her for the pin. That was…yeah.

Rating: D. That’s because she looked ok and to be fair, she was asked to do a lot out there and while it sucked beyond belief, she worked very hard so I’ll give her points for that. This made less than zero sense though and I have no idea what this was supposed to be other than a really bad comedy bit. It lasted about 4 minutes though, and that’s too long. My head is starting to throb from this show.

Lee Marshall says there’s no question why this is called Uncensored. Really? I’m not sure I know what that is. Apparently the tag team division is hot, so let’s talk to the Road Warriors. The idea tonight is that Luger and Sting are the tag champions and the Warriors want their shot. Luger however is in the main event so we have Booker T in as Sting’s partner.

It’s a standard Road Warriors’ interview, although Hawk does get in a line about the medulla oblongata at least a year before Waterboy came out. However, the part that makes this absolutely great is that behind them is a chalk board. On this chalk board, IS THE HEEL BATTLE PLAN FOR THE MAIN EVENT. Literally, just behind them is a drawing of the triple cage and the places where the heels are supposed to be, including a list of strategy and tips for the heels.

Again, let’s look at this from two ways. First of all, let’s say it’s supposed to be kayfabe and written by a member of the heel team. First of all, how in the world is Lee Marshall getting an interview with the LOD in that locker room? Two, wouldn’t you think that they would have hid it better? Three, they use the same symbol for Hogan and Savage in their key.

Looking at it from a legit perspective, as in it’s there from a production meeting or something, FIRE THE PRODUCER OF THE SEGMENT! My goodness they let the plan for the main event be seen. How stupid can they be? Either way, this is just dumb on so many levels and looks completely stupid.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Booty Man

Oh where do I even start here. Ok, Booty Man is Brutus Beefcake first of all, who is freshly face again, having been a heel in the Dungeon of Doom, only to be thrown into this match with the explanation that he was sent in by Hogan as a spy and was really a good guy all along. That….actually could work.

I mean think about it: is that really such an insane plot idea? I certainly wouldn’t think so. I mean it’s certainly not great or fleshed out or anything, but considering it was likely thrown together at the last minute it’s fine by me. Now, you might be wondering why we’re even having to talk about Brutus here. Well, this was supposed to be Johnny B. Badd fighting DDP for the 12th time in a week or something like that, as they had been feuding forever.

Why were they feuding? Well, DDP was this poor guy that got some money together and went to play Bingo with Kimberly. He bought her ticket and she won $12 million dollars at a freaking Bingo game. I want to play in that game! Anyway, they went to court over it and the judge gave it to her. The thing was, he had already spent a ton of it, and Johnny was the only guy that would defend her. The TV Title got involved in there too but it wasn’t important.

Anyway, this is money vs. career so there we are. Badd had jumped ship about two weeks before this to WWF as Marc Mero and debuted 7 days after this. So with no one at all to go to, they turned Brutus into the Booty Man of all things and we have this. Think about that story for a bit: that’s pretty much the main midcard feud: a feud over a game of Bingo, and people wonder why this company sucked so much at this time. DDP is allegedly penniless here, but he has enough to get tights and boots.

He’s doing some almost biker gimmick or something here too. Oh and Kimberly is called the Booty Girl now. Page looks like garbage here. Brutus is wearing the same tights he wore as the Barber but now he’s wearing a headband and has a REALLY bad song. They bury Badd before the match, saying he decided he just couldn’t compete in WCW anymore. Ouch.

It’s a shame he had about 5 times as big of a career in WWF than he ever would have in WCW where he would have been swallowed by the NWO in six months and gone to WWF for half the money later on. Yep, his life sucked. Sadly, we haven’t even started the match at this point. We start with Page hiding and smoking a cigar as Brutus is apparently a Hulkamaniac.

The way his tights are cut Brutus looks like he’s wearing a really big thong. They haven’t actually made contact yet. HE LOCKED UP WITH HIM! HE LOCKED UP WITH HIM!!! After that, we waste some more time. We’ve been going for almost three minutes before they actually do any real wrestling. We get a great line of after the money came in, the Diamond Doll (Kimberly) got built up with Page. Think about that for a minute and you’ll get it.

Anyway, they finally get going here and in a funny bit, Heenan starts talking about the angle and Dusty talks over him. Bobby starts getting upset and complaining, saying that he won’t talk anymore and it’s now the Tony and Dusty Show. BOBBY, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF THINGS GOOD AND MADE OF PORK TALK TO US!!! DON’T DO THIS TO US!

Thankfully he’s back a few seconds later. Dusty actually says Brutus is a skilled mat wrestler. Yep, that’s what he said. Anyone want to place a bet on him topping that one later on? As Dallas is on the floor, Kimberly comes out looking like a roller disco cheerleading French maid. Trust me, you would describe her the same way. This is just horrible.

It’s more or less a dance recital with some arm work in there. That was the absolute worst mistiming thing I’ve EVER seen. DDP reverses an Irish Whip and then I have zero clue what they were planning as Page lays down on his back and Brutus bent forward after running like he was going to back drop Page. I really don’t know what that was supposed to be but even the announcers can’t hide the fact that it was horrible looking.

I mean TONY FREAKING SCHIAVONE says “Oh what was that?” in a very sarcastic tone. They try to say it was a botched arm drag but that doesn’t work. OH! They repeated the spot (dingbats) and it was supposed to be Brutus goes for a cross body and Page ducks. The problem was that the first time I think Brutus was thinking shoulder block or something.

It was so obviously a repeat of the spot and it just looked awful. You can tell that Page, who likes to map stuff out, has no clue what to do here. He liked to have his whole matches scripted beforehand, something Randy Savage was notorious for in his best days, but this was thrown together so there we are. Also, this is nowhere NEAR the DDP that you’re used to.

Kimberly wants Brutus to be her boyfriend. That’s her exact line. Is she wanting to participate in a drug intervention or something? In another jab at Badd, they say that Page signed to fight bad and the announcers unanimously agree Page would have won. They say a heel would beat a face, which sums everything up. Heenan says if she’s looking for a boyfriend to put an ad in the paper. Bobby says that in that outfit the only person she could get is a fellow acrobat.

Page kisses Kimberly, leading to a high knee for the pin. Brutus “keeps” Kimberly due to the stipulation. WCW: a slave trader’s paradise! Brutus kisses her. I’d recommend about a week in a dentist’s office along with a high dose of antibiotics. She’s the Booty Girl now. I’m out of jokes here so post amongst yourselves. Page would of course be back and somehow wrestle THREE MATCHES at the next PPV. Good to see they’re keeping their promises.

Rating: D. This went WAY too long. To be fair, Kimberly looked pretty good so it gets points for that. It also launched DDP’s career as he became this guy that despite being fired still was filmed by WCW cameras and shown on WCW TV. He would get some mystery benefactor that was never revealed due to the NWO. He would return and become the character we all know and at least like, launching him into the stratosphere in WCW.

Gene is with Jimmy Hart and Luger. Jimmy says that tonight is the last night he’s going to be with Luger. Why is this the case? We’re never told. Luger looks stunned as well, which makes even less sense because the explanation Jimmy gives is he’s a man of his word. Jimmy starts to cry and leaves, and for some reason we get a random bell in the arena.

Luger says that tonight he has to watch his friend and partner defend the titles without him in a Chicago Street Fight, and he’s the one from Chicago. The odd part here is that Jimmy leaves him, but Luger would turn full face (he was a tweener at this point) later on in the night.

Now having Jimmy leave here keeps him from having to do that later on, but why not turn face and then dump Jimmy? That would at least make sense and strengthen his face turn, but they went with this instead. It’s illogical, it makes no sense, and it came out of nowhere and is expected to make sense. IT’S WCW!

Giant vs. Loch Ness

Apparently Loch Ness was supposed to be in the cage and this was supposed to not happen I guess, but Luger was pulled from the street fight and put into the cage, so Loch Ness is given a #1 contender’s match. He weighs 699lbs and he is coming out to what would become Rey Mysterio’s music.

This is Giant (Big Show) at about 420 and scary looking. He’s still huge and strong but he’s skinny here. This is the big man that was supposed to be the best big man ever and at this point, that really wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch. Loch Ness is actually bigger than Yokozuna ever was, so take that for what it’s worth.

Naturally they beat the heck out of each other with just big pounding shots, until Giant goes to the other corner and throws himself at Loch Ness but misses, sending Giant up over the top rope and corner and crashing to the floor. The camera is in the corner though so it doesn’t look as cool as it sounds, but still it’s amazing that a guy that size can throw stuff like that and make it look pretty decent.

In a flat out scary move, Giant hits what we would call Sweet Chin Music on Loch Ness, who was billed as 6’11. He nailed it too. A Hogan leg drop ends it and Jimmy Hart celebrates like he’s a new father. Giant screams into the camera that the leg drop was for Hogan. That made zero sense. He also says he’s coming for the WCW Title a month later (for the life of me I thought he won it the next night), which he would win with relative ease and hold all summer.

Rating: C-. This is for the Giant doing some freaky stuff out there, like hitting the kick. That was impressive. Loch Ness would be gone I think after this match and then he died about two months later. This was a 3 minute “war”, so there we are.

Lee Marshall has a great mustache for the ages. Sting and Booker more or less say they don’t want to do this but they respect each other. We’re still in front of the board with the plans on it. Sting talks like a guy from the streets, and actually pulls it off very well. Sting and Booker have so much charisma it’s flat out terrifying.

Chicago Street Fight; Road Warriors vs. Booker T/Sting

Now say it with me: a Chicago street fight is happening in MISSISSIPPI. The idea here is that if Booker and Sting win here, Harlem Heat gets a title shot. I think the belts are on the line here but it’s never made clear, at least not so far. This is Booker’s dry run for a singles push, which obviously went well as he won his first TV Title a year and a half later. Yeah the NWO REALLY threw a lot of stuff off.

Naturally it’s a brawl to start and they’re already on the floor. We go split screen here which is a good idea. Granted then they have just two separate shots of the same thing and I continue to wonder how they stayed in business as long as they did. Tony must be drunk because he makes a good point, saying that these kinds of matches should have two referees.

Aside from pointing out the stupidity of the higher ups with them allowing such an idiotic move, that’s very accurate. Sting and Animal trade low blows on the post because that’s very normal. We switch back to the split screen, now complete with a graphic reminding us that this is the Chicago Street Fight. In yet another great moment from Bobby, he says that instead of covering someone that’s down, you go through his pockets and look for cash, jewelry, watches, etc. I love Heenan.

The wrestlers can apparently get away with murder, but they can get disqualified. I love wrestling. It’s Booker and Animal in the ring and Sting and Hawk, who is also an animal but whatever, with Sting in the aisle. Hawk can throw a freaking dropkick when he has to. That was impressive. Sting gets a chair and hits some absolutely laughably bad shots with it.

However, they’re divine ones compared to the ones that Animal hits the faces with. How weird is it that the Road Warriors are the heels in a match? Those shots were just awful though. I think I’ve seen Rey throw harder ones. Hawk no sells a piledriver. Really? How do you not sell a freaking piledriver? You’re dropped on your head for goodness’ sake. The stupid stuff continues as we have a chinlock in a street fight. Oh yeah work that chin!

Heenan says that Animal or Hawk need to get with their partner and say something to them. The thing he says takes him 11 seconds to say. It’s not really funny, but there’s something that’s just great about that. They hit the stands for about a second and we have the second instance tonight of the chairs being in big rows for no apparent reason. Why do they insist on using two camera for the same shot? I love wrestling at times, but this makes my head hurt.

Apparently this is non title, so therefore Sting can’t lose his title and can only get hurt, the Road Warriors have nothing to gain, and Booker can get a title shot. Why are the three not named Booker here? Sting and Hawk are in the ring and Booker and Animal are near the cage. They set for the Doomsday Device but Booker makes the save by crocthing Animal (who usually doesn’t go up top).

This prompts Dusty to say E.T. phone home. I gave up on trying to figure this out a long time ago. Sting hits the fifth low blow in 15 minutes. I wish they would make a reference to Sting and Dusty teaming up to fight the Road Warriors at Starrcade 87. Just as I say that, Bobby asks Dusty what he would do if he were Sting’s partner in this case.

I wish he would have said that he was and left it at that but no go. The spinaroonie is known as the whirly bird here. I’d love to see Sting against RVD in a jumping contest. It would be a very interesting challenge. Apparently the fans are standing everywhere. They must be about an average of 4ft tall because they look like they’re sitting to me, but then again I’m no professional announcer.

Booker hits low blow #6. Tony, continuing his brilliant career as an announcer, points out that they haven’t done anything incredibly extreme and this has really just been as basic as possible. Thanks for pointing out that this isn’t as great as it was built up to be and giving us no reason to believe the hype on future PPVs.

I think I’ve finally started figuring out the problem that I have with this commentary team: I don’t know what they’re saying and it just passes through my head as being fine. Bobby and Dusty are talking about glomming someone. What the heck does that mean?

I guess it means double teaming, but it could mean sharing a turkey sandwich and a white wine for all I know. I will give them this: they’ve managed to keep going with the singles and team fighting. That’s hard to do but they’re pulling it off here. Off a top rope powerslam, Bobby says Sting landed on his shoulder like Apollo 13.

THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!!! What in the world is that supposed to mean? It’s like just random gibberish that sounds good. What the heck does Apollo freaking 13 have to do with this match and how in the world does it relate to a guy landing on his shoulder? Animal follows it up with even more weak chair shots. Uh oh, a weak clothesline hits the post.

The weapons shots here just flat out suck. Hawk just somehow managed to hit Sting with the side of the chair facing Hawk when he swung it. That’s hard to do. Sting then leaves his partner alone to go get some plunder (which I figured out means weapons). He comes back with….brooms. Yep, he’s got brooms.

Even Tony sounds annoyed with this match as we’re well past 20 minutes here which is mainly just stupid stuff where they look tired. Now instead of hitting Hawk with the wooden handle of the broom, he hits him with the straw. Yep, that’s what he did. Animal apparently noggered Booker. There’s a new language being formed here. Bobby makes a vacuum reference for no apparent reason.

They trash Luger some more as it occurs to me that Dusty has fought him at Starrcade as well. Hey WCW: GET NEW TALENT! Booker apparently walks out with Animal following him so we hit the split screen again. Animal and Booker fight in the back even more with Luger there. Animal accidentally hits Luger and knocks him into some trash, which ticks him off of course.

With a Viking like yell he runs at Animal and takes him out. Stevie Ray, Booker’s partner, shows up and along with Jimmy Hart they beat the heck out of Animal and tie him to a post. In the ring, Hawk is beating the crap out of Sting which is odd to see indeed.

Sting goes into his insane offense that works better than anything else. Booker is back now as it’s all faces here. Stevie runs out to hit another crap chair shot to end this. Right after the pin we cut to Animal who is screaming about nothing in particular other than having his teeth kicked in, being taped to a pole and being handcuffed. I love wrestling!

Rating: D+. This is just hard to grade. The main problem is simple: this went thirty minutes. You could cut at least 15 of that out and this is a B- or so. There’s just way too many dead spots though where it’s just random punches and kicking that get very boring.

The street fight aspect of this was awful with only a few chair shots and the broom being in there to do anything at all. Also, it’s not even for the titles. Put Booker in there as a substitute partner. That would have at least given us something close to a reason to care. The brawling was ok, but that’s overshadowed by the pure dullness of about 15 minutes of this.

We recap the feud with Hogan and Savage against the Alliance. More or less what happened was simple: the Alliance challenged Hogan to a 4-1 cage match, but WCW wised up and realized Hogan carrying a match like that could expose him too much, so they threw Savage in there too.

Now, how did the Alliance put out this challenge? Was it by beating down Hogan? Was it by destroying something he held dear and valuable? Was it by making threats to his family and home? Nope to all three. They sent him a telegram. Let me repeat that. The feud and match were set by a group sending Hogan a telegram. That’s so freaking stupid I can’t even make fun of it. I truly can’t.

They sent him a telegram. I can’t get over that. Something else I notice: there hasn’t been a single mention of Randy Savage all show. It’s been nothing but Hogan. The team is known as the Alliance to End Hulkamania. In the build up from the announcers there’s no mention of Savage. What in the world is wrong with these people? Why am I trying to figure that out?

Doomsday Cage Match: Hogan/SAVAGE vs. Alliance to End Hulkamania

The Alliance is Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Meng, Barbarian, Lex Luger, Taskmaster (Kevin Sullivan), Z-Gangsta (Zeus from the late 80s) and Ultimate Solution (big fat strong guy that never did anything other of note in wrestling. He did play Bane in Batman and Robin though in case anyone is interested.) Now you might be wondering how this is going to work.

Well until about 3 minutes before the bell rings, so was everyone else. Literally, they didn’t know what they were going to do until the day of the show. That’s your brilliant wrestling company at work. The idea would be this. You have a ring with three cages on top of it. In other words, there’s a ring with a cage over it that’s very tall and has a top of in. The top of that cage is the floor of a second cage. That cage has six sides, all made of cage.

There’s ANOTHER of those on top. The match starts up at the top for no apparent reason. The idea is that it’s more or less a gauntlet match. There’s two guys on top, four in the middle cage and two in the bottom cage and Hogan and Savage have to win in all three cages. Yep, that’s it.

In a match that’s supposed to be all about violence and called a Doomsday match, we have a freaking gauntlet with regular pins and submissions. Let’s get to this. Michael Buffer is in the ring doing introductions for this as I have a feeling that this is going to take a LONG time.

He asks if they’re ready. He asks it again. I wonder if they’re going to break it down after the match. The cage I mean. Oh Brian Pillman is supposed to be in this but he’s left for ECW at this time where he would be for all of a day or so and then on to WWF. Flair comes out sans belt or any acknowledgement that he’s champion so you can see where the priorities are.

Oh we also have to wait for them to all climb up the steps to get to their cages too. Barbarian has been banned from wrestling in most countries in the world too. You learn something new every day. Zeus (I refuse to refer to him as Z-Gangsta more than I have to) and Ultimate Solution aren’t here yet. His original name was Final Solution. I’ll give you two guesses as to how that went.

So we’re starting with Anderson and Flair at the top so we’re starting with the Mega Powers vs. Anderson and Flair. Tell me, what’s wrong with that as a main event? I’d like that FAR better. Luger left WWF for this. That’s just sad. They finally just give up and call Hogan a superhero. Naturally the camera follows him up the stairs as my fear of heights is kicking in.

Dusty says the fans have been waiting for days in and around this building. Just go with it. Once they finally reach the top we start immediately and also immediately we see the massive problem: the fans can’t see a freaking thing. They’re about thirty feet from the ground (which of course hits as high as 65 so far according to Brain) and the lighting is awful.

Also, this is before the days of the Titantron. If they had that, this would be ok. No actually it wouldn’t be but it would have been better. The people watching the PPV from home have a hard time seeing this so imagine what it’s like for the fans there. They’re dead quiet too after the opening maybe 10 seconds because reality has set in. Oh Arn is wearing a full black body suit for no apparent reason.

Heenan says what I think might have been hidden jabs at WCW by saying “What a great thing for television!” and “Only here in WCW!” Those are either fed to him or shots at the brilliant minds who came up with this. Actually no. They’re not worthy of sarcastic praise. They’re freaking idiots. I mean seriously, WHAT ARE THEY THINKING???

If you’re going to do a cage match, fine. If you’re going to do a big cage match, fine. If you’re going to do a gauntlet cage match, that’s fine too. Actually that’s kind of an interesting concept. However, DO IT WHERE THE PEOPLE CAN SEE IT. My goodness how hard of a concept is that? What’s the most important aspect of any show? How about being able to see it?

The fans here might be able to make out someone next to one side of the cage but other than that, nothing. And don’t even bother staying if you sit across the arena and don’t have binoculars because you’re screwed. Sting and Booker won the main event already. I can’t get over how ridiculous this is. Seriously who thought this was a good idea?

Oh and there’s a referee up there too even though it’s Uncensored and therefore unsanctioned. There’s also a massive pole in the middle in case Hogan wants to shoot a Brooke Hogan video up there. They go to a wide shot to just further show how stupid this is. We can hear the wrestlers talking which is usually covered up by the crowd.

Maybe they can see as there’s a pop for Hogan ripping the shirt off. Heenan says this is better than the World Series or the Super Bowl. Yes it does Bobby, yes it does. Hey we’ve hit 70 feet in the air! Heenan redeems himself a bit with the line of all a manager can do here is hope they have a client in the morning. We get a random reference to some woman named Becky in Denver. Ok then.

Tony sums up the match perfectly: the fans wanted to know what the Doomsday Cage was so they’re finding out here. Well thanks for that Tony. In other words, we’re going to throw out a cool sounding name and say Hogan is in it against a bunch of guys that we’re only going to vaguely mention and say to find out, pay up. Once you hook them, you don’t have to do jack.

They did the same thing with the Elimination Chamber in 2002, but the difference was that match wasn’t bad. It certainly wasn’t great but I’ve seen far worse matches. Exhibit A is being reviewed at the moment. In the ultra violent match, we get double figure fours.

Heenan’s comedy is all that’s holding the pieces of this in place. Notice I didn’t say together but just in place as they would likely want to run away and join a witness protection program or something. Zeus and Solution didn’t wrestle again after this. They were the smart ones I guess.

Dusty says if you have a chain length fence (who doesn’t?) just go lay on it to see what this is like. Bobby: Then call your neighbor over and slap the figure four on him! Then put the figure eight on your Doberman! Bobby Heenan, I love you very much. You need massive amounts of therapy and medication, but I love you.

Flair drops something from one cage to the other which is never explained or mentioned again. My guess would be the will of Flair’s career since it’s dead at this point. Hogan and Savage throw powder, which is likely the remains of the cocaine they needed to agree to this.

They go through a trapdoor to get to the next cage, and Anderson and Flair are eliminated. WOW. Ok so wait. All they had to do was get through a door? They didn’t have to pin someone or get a tap out but just go through a door? Ladies and gentlemen, I’m done. I’m going to stop trying to make sense of this match and that’s all there is to it.

This just doesn’t make sense at all but for some reason they insist that it does. Bobby says Boris Karloff would love this. Not really but ok. Hogan has a chain and beats on Sullivan with it. They’re down about 12 feet now so the crowd is a bit more into it. It’s the Faces of Fear (Meng and Barbarian) on Savage and Luger and Sullivan on Hogan.

This room has a door in the middle of it so it’s like two small cages. Actually there’s a reason for it though which will come up in a minute. After being beaten on by two grown men and a steel chain, Hogan is fine and manages to get the chain away to lock the door (which didn’t have a lock before but whatever) and trap Meng and Barbarian inside.

A shot of the cage from the floor makes this look a lot better as in essence they’re fighting on top of a regular cage. That’s not bad I guess. Anderson and Flair drop to the second cage and are trapped as well. Where’s my wah wah music when I need it? Heenan says it’s a maze with no way in or out.

Yep other than the doors they came in through, the doors they leave through or the path that the referee points them through to get to the end. Speaking of doors they go out of one and fight on the stairs which is kind of scary when you think about it as there’s no wall to save them there.

Sullivan is actually over halfway out as Heenan says that he’ll be spam if he hits. I’ll infract him if he does. I don’t want any spam in my reviews. Savage and Luger are still in the cage by the way. According to Brain everyone is on their feet. They have to be to see this I suppose. They’re more or less quiet by the way.

Luger gets loose and we’re out on the floor. Yep, they got out of the cage and while the rules stated earlier in the match said that Hogan and Savage just needed to get down to win, they apparently are going to keep going. Hey, we’re having a Doomsday Cage Match, so let’s fight in the ring!

Yep, they’re fighting in the ring. Luger and Savage are fighting by the cage with Hogan and Sullivan in the ring. The four guys in the upper cage break out and head down the cage. Now this could be cool: Hogan and Savage 6-2 in the arena. Well ok I can go with that as at least its easier to see.

It’s more or less the same thing as the previous match but…that’s….why are the other four just leaving? They just walked back to the dressing room. Anderson and Flair are supposed to, but the Faces of Fear are still in this legally, but who cares about that? That would MAKE SENSE! Hogan is beating on Luger in the ring while Savage is having boards thrown at him.

Apparently the Faces of Fear have been eliminated. Oh ok I think I’ve got it now: the rules are as follows. Hogan and Savage had to go to the top of the cage where they had to either pin or get a submission from Flair and Anderson but they were allowed to have an alternate way of winning because Hogan made a large donation to the Save the Wombat Foundation.

Next up they had to get pins or submissions on some combination of the Faces of Fear, Sullivan or Luger, but they were able to lock the Faces of Fear into a cage and therefore receive a Federal credit for preventing an international assault and battery charge since both men are international ambassadors sent by the King of Tonga to study wrestling (that’s actually not made up if you can believe that. That’s legit true).

Now at the beginning the rules stated that they simply had to get to the floor to win, however there was a clause stating that if there was a high percentage (17 or greater) of time spent on discussing the social habits of Bulgarian monks in the 15th century by the four in the second cage during the battle in the first cage, then simply getting to the floor wouldn’t be classified as a win.

In that case a pin in the other ring would work. However, that won’t work either because Lex Luger’s lawyers feel that the population of fire ants in this match were misrepresented so therefore a simple pin in the ring won’t work either, and the final two members of the Alliance to End Hulkamania, which has founded new chapters in Laos, Manhattan and the North Pole, fighting off the evils of Hulk-Chi-Min, Hulk Maritoni and Hulk-a-Claus, must be equally represented in this match, which must end via pinfall in the original ring.

HOWEVER, it will be allowed for former members of the Alliance to reenter the match under the Columbus Act which also founded Ohio in 1776, but also said that wrestlers were unlawfully evicted from the match via an international treaty can be allowed to return. ANYWAY, now that we’re back to the match, let’s continue here but I need to make sure this remains logical. It’s very important to keep that going here.

They’re all at the ring now and we have more bad chair shots. I love how the graphic under the split screen says Doomsday Cage Match despite a significant lack of cage. Here’s Ultimate Solution and Zeus. According to the clause listed above, we head back to the original cage for the showdown. Yep, it’s Hogan and Savage in a no tag tag-team match against two big strong guys. How do they come up with these things? Sullivan is lurking around as I feel he needs to register. I’m sure there’s something in this match for him too. There must be a tournament somewhere.

As if this wasn’t riveting enough, we hit a bear hug. Hey now, it’s time for the rematch of the match that didn’t happen seven years ago in another company that we’re not going to mention but imply that everyone knows anyway because that’s how we roll.

Ultimate Solution (hereafter known as porkchop for no other reason than I have the Doug song in my head) picks up Savage and has him in position for a slam, prompting Dusty to wonder what he’s going to do with him. Heenan says that he picked Savage up like a 100lb infant. Tony says there’s no winning or losing but only surviving. Yeah I’d agree.

Whose career can survive this match? Here’s Arn and Flair again as apparently their plan to eliminate Hulkamania is just to stomp them and punch them and slam them a lot. Yep, that’s the epic plan. Tony is holding out hope despite a few seconds before saying it’s hopeless.

I love that top level journalism there Tony! Keep it up and one day you might be able to get a better job like selling meat from a truck in Minneapolis! They actually argue over how many people are in there against Hogan and Savage. To get off of that we point out that this started with a telegram. Somehow that’s an improvement.

Naturally they ask if Hulkamania can survive instead of Hogan and Savage. It amazes me that he got so little respect over the years. He was nuts, but man could he wrestle. In one of the best unintentionally funny moments I can ever remember, the powder that Hogan and Savage have spills out and within 5 seconds Brutus is there to help them. That’s just greatness.

Also they’re almost face down in it. Could this get any funnier? Now the interesting part is what Brutus does for them. He brings them weapons to even the odds, instead of actually sticking around to help fight like a friend would. Nope he brought them something to help them fight off the forces of evil. What does he bring? Does he bring brass knuckles?

Maybe a club? Perhaps a couple of chairs? Nope. He brings frying pans. Brutus Beefcake brings a pair of frying pans to help save his friends. Where in the world do I start? Let’s see: how about WHY DID HE HAVE FRYING PANS??? Was he making bacon in the back or something? Does he tend to carry cookware around with him? Did the barber shop fall through? I guess he couldn’t repair the window after Shawn broke it so he became a chef.

Somehow, that is the most logical thing I’ve said all night. There’s five minutes left so let’s get through this if we can. Luger comes back in with a glove that they imply is loaded. He sets to hit Savage but Macho ducks (that sounds like an upgrade to Duck Hunter) and Luger stops, but then starts again to hit Flair and turn face I guess.

Hogan and Savage turn to leave but Savage runs back in and pins Flair while everyone else kind of stands around and lets it happen. WOW. So did they forget the whole pin thing too I suppose? Heenan is ticked off and leaves and we’re finally done.

Rating: -F. This is below an F. We’ve gone so low that we’ve went past Z (which stands for Zeus not Z-Gangsta blastit) and we’ve reached negative letters. That’s how insane this was. I mean it made no sense, the rules I laid out might as well have been the real ones because nothing stayed the same as it was in the beginning, you couldn’t see a thing if you were in the audience, the match was exactly the same thing that it had always been with Hogan surviving, and the plan was just to beat them up a lot? Take note fans: never, I mean never, send a telegram in your life. You can see what it can lead to.

Overall Rating: D-. You know, for some reason I like it. I have no idea why, but somehow I like this show. I think it’s the whole crazy aspect of it. It’s so completely ridiculous that it’s actually fun. The earlier stuff isn’t great and is incredibly boring, but the rest of the show is just such insanity and stupidity that I’d only recommend watching it while completely and utterly stoned or drunk or hopefully a combination of both.

If that’s the case, this is the greatest match of all time. This actually prompted Hogan’s heel turn as he was more or less booed out of the building the next time. Hulkamania was completely gone here as the whole idea of him being able to pull this off was just too much even for the hardcore Hulkamaniac to take.

Something had to be done, and while it turned wrestling upside down and more or less screwed up a ton of pushes and plans, Hogan was saved so all was right with the world. As for a recommendation, note that this is a terrible show and should only be watched if you’re interested in the complete insanity of it. It’s the absolute worst main event I’ve ever seen. I have however heard of something called the Extreme Elimination Chamber. That could be worth looking into.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

Uncensored 2000
Date: March 19, 2000
Location: American Airlines Arena, Miami, Florida
Attendance: 5,000
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Mark Madden, Tony Schiavone

 

Time for the last show in this series as we hit the ugly days of the company. There’s a double main event tonight in the form of Sid vs. Jarrett for the title and Hogan vs. Flair because Hogan needs his win back from last year I guess. The company is on its very last legs at this point and would be rebooted, as in all titles vacated and a lot of stories restarted, in about a month, making most of this show totally pointless. Let’s get to it.

 

The opening video is about the Total Package (he didn’t go by Lex Luger at this point) and was breaking everyone’s arm. This set up Sting vs. Luger FOR THE LAST TIME, in a lumberjack match. Also we get some clips of Hogan vs. Flair, which is going to be an Indian Strap Match, meaning all four corners. Oh dear.

 

Hogan and Sid are in the back talking and Hogan offers to watch his back later. We cut to the Harris Brothers talking to US Champion Jarrett about an insurance policy. Ok then.

 

The pyro goes off and the people do not move. It’s pretty sad looking.

 

Cruiserweight Title: The Artist vs. Psicosis

 

Artist has Paisley (Sharmell) with him and is more famous as Prince Iaukea. He’s also champion. Artist wears a lot of purple. Psicosis has Juvy with him and sound like people actually know who he is. Artist is in a dress shirt and dress pants. He was a bit of a weird character. Before they get going here’s Chris Candido for no apparent reason. I think this is his debut and he sits in on commentary.

 

He talks about how the internet rumors on him signing are true and he’s here to be the new Cruiserweight Champion. Psicosis hits a rana off the top to start and clotheslines Artist to the floor. Candido rants about a bunch of stuff, saying he could do all this stuff they’re doing but can wrestle which they can’t do. Back in Psicosis gets caught in the Tree of Woe and Artist drills him.

 

Off to a quick rest hold as the match is completely ignored. Big superkick by Artist for two as there are barely any fans to be seen. Out to the floor and Artist keeps his advantage. Into the ring steps and then back into the ring we go. The crowd can’t seem to decide if they’re interested in this or not as all of a sudden they get loud for nothing special. Artist gets some two counts and is frustrated.

 

There’s been no mention of a feud or a reason why Psicosis is getting the shot here so everything is normal. Sunset flip gets two for the challenger as the fans are booing LOUDLY at everything now. Middle rope rana gets a nice reaction and it’s back to the booing. Weird crowd to put it mildly here. Sitout gordbuster puts Artist down but Paisley distracts Psicosis from hitting the guillotine legdrop. Juvy kisses her and they brawl as the legdrop hits for a delayed two. Paisley distracts him again, allowing Artist to hit a jumping DDT off the middle rope for the pin to retain.

 

Rating: D+. This was a total mess. The crowd was all over the place and was really distracting. This was more or less a TV match all the way and was just not that good. Not interesting either which makes for a really awkward way to start off the show which looks awful on paper.

 

Tony throws it to Gene and says “that’s how you fill some time”. I seriously don’t know if that was supposed to be heard or not.

 

Anyway Gene is with Bigelow who faces The Wall tonight. Bigelow doesn’t know what’s wrong with Wall who has been on a roll as of late. Apparently it’s mentor (Bigelow) vs. mentee. Why mess with a classic story I guess?

 

XS vs. Norman Smiley/KISS Demon

 

XS are Lenny Lane and Lodi, who is called Rave here.. The KISS Demon is a complicated character as it was supposed to be one of four KISS themed characters which ultimately wound up being one and nearly resulted in a big lawsuit. Smiley is there because he’s the comedy character of WCW, similar to Eric Young or Santino I guess. This is apparently a long running feud and I have no idea why they’re feuding. Even the video about it doesn’t help. Lodi is called Rave here.

 

And never mind as here’s Stacy Keibler (Miss Hancock) in her sexy beyond belief corporate look with the skirt that might be 6 inches below her waist. The hair is pulled back and she has the glasses on. She’s also 20 years old here so how good do you think she’s looking? She wants to manage XS like she used to and they tell her to leave. They say she’s not worthy of them and she says they need female companionship.

 

Now we go from Van Halen style music to dance music for Hancock to God of Thunder for Smiley (coming out of a casket) and Demon. Apparently they’re the Screamin Demons. Norman is dressed as a demon also and gets some insane pops. XS jumps them only for Demon to beat the tar out of Lodi. Smiley and Lenny are in the ring now and I kid you not the reaction for Norman is so loud you can barely understand the announcers. Who would have guessed that?

 

Off to Demon as Stacy says that she’s going to manage Silver King and El Dandy. I kid you not again. This is a bizarre match and gets weirder as a very loud NORMAN chant starts up while he’s on the apron. Lodi gets a suplex for two on Demon. They totally botch a double clothesline as Lenny waits for after the other two go down to fall. Hot tag to Norman and there goes the roof. Spinning slam puts Lodi down. Lane and Demon look almost identical from behind.

 

Lane hits a Skull Crushing Finale to Norman for two as Hancock is annoyed with XS so Madden says he’ll comfort her. Everything breaks down as Demon and Lodi go to the floor. What kind of a name is Lodi anyway? Not that it matters because Norman gets the Norman’s Conquest (Crossface Chickenwing) for the tag from Lane.

 

Rating: D-. Stacy being out there helps this more than anything but the camera not being on her hurts it a lot. The match itself was another bizarre one as the fans were madly behind Norman, guaranteeing that he would never get a serious push or a push at all. Demon was just annoying and XS was worthless, so I have no idea what the point of this was.

 

XS goes after Hancock post match so the Demons chase them off. Hancock dances with Norman post match to an eruption. This is good until Demon cuts in to dance with Norman.

 

Billy talks to Booker about getting messed up by Stevie Ray. Booker says get your head in the game.

 

David Flair is with Crowbar and Daffney, demanding that she stays in the back for their match.

 

We get clips of Wall massacring everyone in sight, namely David and Bigelow.

 

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. The Wall

 

Big brawl to start as the ring is really loud. Bigelow gets him down and hits the top rope headbutt for two in the first few seconds. A HHH style knee to the face puts Bigelow down for two. Spinning DDT gets two for Bigelow as nothing is sticking here with momentum shifting with every move. Wall is knocked to the floor and they fight up the aisle. Wall sets for a chokeslam through something and that’s a DQ to end it. Crowbar and David come out for a beatdown on Wall and that totally fails.

 

Rating: F+. Was there a point to this at all? It’s barely three minutes long and was one move by one guy and then the other guy would hit one, repeat for three and a half minutes. This is the third straight horrible match to start the show, meaning we’ve wasted about 35 minutes of this show so far. Somehow that’s probably an improvement from what’s coming for this company.

 

Bigelow is taken out on a stretcher as Crowbar is up on the scaffold on the set. There’s a chokeslam off the set through a wooden piece of the stage. He goes all stoic after hurting people, which is absolutely nothing like Bubba Ray Dudley making the same face after he put people through tables. Not a thing like it at all. Crowbar is stretchered out as this eats up forever.

 

The announcers are all serious, so let’s throw it to Brian Knobbs who says he’s dedicating the next match to Bam Bam and Crowbar.

 

Hardcore Title: 3 Count vs. Brian Knobbs

 

Knobbs is challenging and has to beat all three guys. Apparently it’s a gauntlet match. 3 Count does their dancing thing and then Tony says “Wait a second. How can we do this after what we just saw?” He’s talking about Crowbar and apparently it took him three minutes to realize how distraught he was. They talk about stopping the show, and the thought occurs to me that this could somehow be a commentary on Vince not stopping the show after Owen fell last year. If that’s the case, this company deserves to die more than anything I’ve ever seen.

 

Anyway, Knobbs wastes some time looking for weapons before the match starts. Knobbs is all upset by Crowbar apparently. As he’s putting the weapons in one of the champions jumps off the top with a kendo stick to drill him. By gauntlet apparently they mean handicap elimination because they’re all out there at once. Knobbs cleans house and uses the Pit Stop on all three of them. Helms gets a chair shot to take over and sends Knobbs into a ladder in the corner.

 

Splash off said ladder gets no cover because the other two have to go up for splashes also. Karagis uses a corkscrew one and Moore’s Swanton misses. With Knobbs crawling away for weapons, 3 Count turns their back on him for a dance sequence. Helms has a chair on his face and Knobbs hits the chair with a mop to eliminate him. He had a broken nose so that’s more painful than it sounds.

 

It’s Table Time and after walking around for awhile, Knobbs powerbombs Karagis over the top rope through the table which more or less explodes. Helms is still around and beats on Knobbs a bit to no avail. Tony calls a chair shot a table shot because he’s not very smart. Another table is sent in while Moore is out cold. Moore manages to get a pin when Knobbs trips over something, but it’s a DUSTY FINISH due to Knobbs’ foot being on the ropes. In a freaking ow man moment, Knobbs throws a ladder over the top rope to land on Karagis who is still down. Middle rope garbage can shot gives Knobbs the title back.

 

Rating: D+. Somehow this might be the match of the night so far and it was a Brian Knobbs showcase match. Why in the world is this happening in the year 2000? And with a freaking Dusty Finish of all things. It was fine for a weapons match I guess, but there was never any doubt of the finish. Why in the world was this on PPV in 2000 though?

 

Harlem Heat 2000 (Stevie, Big T (Ahmed Johnson who has gained about 150lbs since his WWF time), J Biggs (Clarence Mason) and Cash (big muscle guy that never talked) say they’re ready for Booker and Kidman.

 

There’s a black limo that may have the insurance policy that Jarrett was talking about earlier.

 

Vampiro apparently likes being violent and doesn’t like Fit Finlay being in his face. This is a 30 second promo that is literally all one sentence. Apparently he likes to hurt people.

 

Booker/Billy Kidman vs. Harlem Heat 2000

 

Just Booker here after, and wait for this one, Harlem Heat 2000 won the rights to the letter T in a match against him. Booker is mad at Kidman for not having his back recently. At least we get to look at Torrie who is smoking in a green dress. Biggs, the lawyer, is on commentary here. Booker vs. Stevie to start as we talk about Crowbar some more. Kidman comes in and the faces dominate early.

 

Stevie gets a powerslam and it’s off to Big T. So if they had lost the match for the letter T would he just be known as Big? Biggs, a real life attorney, is ranting about whatever comes to his mind. Booker gets a sidekick to take down T and hits an axe kick to Cash. Kidman tries to come in off the top but jumps into a right hand. Time for him to play Morton for awhile I guess.

 

Biggs says Harlem Heat are ten time tag champions, claiming that this version keeps the reigns. T heads to the floor and tries to dive over the railing like he used to and mostly gets over, despite hitting Kidman in the feet. Spinebuster gets two on Kidman back in the ring. Kidman escapes the beating and brings in Booker, who is the only member of his team that’s been able to not get destroyed. Book End to Stevie gets no cover as T jumps him. Double spinebuster puts Booker down but Kidman makes a very last second save. Kidman then gets a sunset flip on T for the pin, despite not being legal.

 

Rating: C-. Now this is by far the best match of the night and we’re an hour into this. That should tell you all you need to know about this show. Nothing special at all here as it was a kind of sloppy seven minute tag team formula match. Not horrible, but nothing you wouldn’t see in any company at any given time. Nice to see something somewhat decent though.

 

We get a clip of Wall hurting both guys earlier, complete with a graphic saying “earlier tonight”. You know, for people that buy PPVs an hour in.

 

Finlay talks about wanting respect from Vampiro.

 

Vampiro vs. Fit Finlay

 

This is falls count anywhere. Back and forth stuff to start until Vampiro hits a top rope spinwheel kick for two. He busts out some more kicks and Finlay is in trouble. Apparently Bigelow and Crowbar are injured and Crowbar is far worse but it’s nothing incredibly serious. Ok, so now we can stop talking about them right? Finlay brings in an old school chair which of course winds up being kicked into his own face.

 

Both guys have broken arms due to Luger. Out to the floor and Vampiro is dropped throat first across the railing. We go into the crowd and isn’t it always lucky that they land where there are no fans. They go up the steps and into the back with Finlay in control I guess you’d call it. Time to go into the women’s bathroom and now we shift to the men’s room. I think Finlay went the wrong way or something.

 

Madden: “A good hold to use in there is the urine-age.” Into a stall and there’s a trashcan shot. Vampy climbs to the top of a stall but the can is tossed at him as he jumps off. They go to the commons area which has a weird Kane red light thing to it. They’re outside and the red light thing is still going on. Maybe a camera issue or something. Back inside now as they’re barely fighting because of all the people. Backdrop by Finlay but Vampiro rams him into a wall and the Nail in the Coffin (Michinoku Driver) ends this.

 

Rating: D+. We’ve seen this match so many times before that this means nothing for the most part. The lack of action after about 4 minutes in though really hurt it. The bathroom spot has been done before and done way better than this. Not impressed here, namely because WWF at the time was making these hilarious and hard hitting at the same time. This was kind of hard hitting but nothing interesting at all.

 

The Harris Boys say they’ll win the tag titles. That’s it.

 

Disco says he and his Mamalukes (Disco is managing) will keep the belts. It’s about respect apparently.

 

Tag Titles: Mamalukes vs. Harris Brothers

 

The Harris Brothers are NWO here, in part of the final incarnation which was also the weakest probably. Vito kisses both his partner and the referee on the cheek. This is No DQ apparently. Disco Inferno is on commentary as our what, 4^th guest commentator tonight? Vito vs. we’ll call that Ron while Madden and Disco banter back and forth. Powerslam by Johnny gets two. The teams are Ron/Don Harris vs. Johnny the Bull/Vito. That might clear some stuff up.

 

This is pretty weak to start as the styles are totally clashing. Back to Vito who gets a Japanese armdrag to take over. Disco is cracking me up here. The Mamalukes hit the H Bomb (Harrises’ finisher) on we’ll say Ron for two. Out to the floor as Johnny is in trouble. Spinwheel kick gets him out of that but Vito is drilled before the tag can be made. Well sure now: let’s talk about Crowbar some more. This is so freaking annoying anymore.

 

Yes, Vince didn’t stop the show for Owen. FREAKING GET OVER IT. I know that sounds bad, but there’s a HUGE difference between a real life accident and a scripted moment being used as a commentary on a real tragedy. Hot tag to Vito and some “Mafia” kicks clean house. Everything breaks down and Vito hits a top rope elbow for two. Modified Hart Attack gets the same. Double flapjack gets two on Johnny as the twins take over. Disco comes in for a belt shot for two. A belt shot to Vito sets up the H Bomb (kind of a double belly to back suplex) for the titles for the Brothers.

 

Rating: D. This was rather weak overall with the Brothers just doing their usual stuff. The Mamalukes were ok at best although I kind of liked Vito. They couldn’t get much going here and that was mainly due to the styles being too similar. The titles would be vacated anyway so again, all of this means nothing for the most part.

 

Finlay says he beat respect into Vampiro but the better man won. Keep the fire burning Vampy.

 

Luger and Flair say they’ll win. Gene calls Flair Luger by mistake.

 

We recap Terry Funk vs. Dustin Rhodes. The idea is that Rhodes is now a heel because his family life sucked due to the Rhodes vs. Funk feud. Yes, they actually think people care about Rhodes vs. Funk in the year 2000. This also involves Dustin being knocked out cold with a chicken. Yes, as in something you put in a pot and cook then eat.

 

Dustin says this is Funk’s retirement match. His first was in 1983 so what do you think is going to happen with him retiring?

 

Terry Funk vs. Dustin Rhodes

 

Oh and of course it’s a Texas Bullrope Match. You know, because two strap matches/rope matches in the same show is FINE. Funk has the chicken again and says Rhodes’ baby brother is here. And here’s a guy in a chicken suit. I kid you not, this is really happening. Dustin chases him and is hit in the face with the actual chicken. Into the ring and Dustin is whipped by the rope which isn’t attached.

 

This is just a bad match here with random cowbell shots added in. Low blow to Funk as this needs to end now. Naturally, this is the second longest match of the night. Dustin hits him with the bell and the rope a lot and that’s about it. We actually argue over experience here with the main point being does Dustin have half the experience that Funk has. We actually tie them together now to actually follow the match rules.

 

DDT gets two for Dustin. Bulldog onto the cowbell gets the same and the chicken man is back. There are chicken sound effects to go with it. Madden keeps ranting about how the chicken needs to die. Funk gets a low blow in with the bell and grabs a mic. It’s now an I Quit match. The referee protests so he gets cussed at and there’s a cowbell to the head for him. Dustin says I QUIT but the referee says that’s not a submission so we keep going. I hate this company.

 

After being hit in the head literally about 8 times with a metal bell, Dustin gets up and hits Funk once with it to put him down. There are a bunch more shots to the head as this is just awful. Funk keeps getting up because he’s from Texas or something. Piledriver onto the bell and we’re finally done.

 

Rating: F. This was literally 90% cowbell. Also, NO ONE CARES ABOUT FUNK VS. RHODES IN THE YEAR 2000! That feud meant something 25 years prior to this, so WCW of course thinks everyone cares about it. This company is so stupid it’s unreal at times. The match sucked also because apparently saying I QUIT isn’t giving up.

 

Sid says he’ll win.

 

We recap Sting vs. Luger’s complete history. By that they mean this story but whatever. Luger has been breaking everyone’s arms and he started with Sting. Sting started his usual mind games and then came back when Luger kept hurting people.

 

Sting vs. The Total Package

 

This is a lumberjack match. Sting’s lumberjacks are the people whose arms Luger broke. Luger’s are just guys wearing fake casts. And yes he’s really called The Total Package here. Luger says he’s sorry to all the lumberjacks for breaking their arms. His lumberjacks are Harlem Heat 2000, Hugh Morrus and the Harris Brothers. Package goes for the arm to start which doesn’t work that well.

 

All Sting here for the most part as Luger is in trouble. The fans want Goldberg but it’s a shame that’s just not going to happen. Luger goes to the floor and everything goes nuts as you would expect. Now Sting gets beaten down outside also. Tank Abbot comes out for no apparent reason and knocks Doug Dillenger (security guy who Luger hurt) out cold with one punch before leaving.

 

All of the lumberjacks fight towards the entrance and we have a regular match. Luger has a chinlock on as this is making my head hurt. Oh wait Vampiro is here still. Flair comes out and fights with Vampy as Sting takes over. Now Flair comes in and that goes badly for him. Stinger Splash to Luger but Liz hits Sting with the bat. Jimmy Hart, another lumberjack, takes Liz to the back. Vampiro hits Luger with the bat to break up the Rack and the Death Drop ends this.

 

Rating: D-. And most of that is because Liz looked great around this time. The ton of run-ins and the gimmick more or less going away halfway through hurt this badly, along with Luger being completely uninteresting by this point. The match itself was really boring too, making the whole thing awful.

 

Sting and Vampiro hug post match. That wouldn’t last long.

 

Abbot says nothing of note about Dillenger.

 

We recap Sid vs. Jarrett which is happening because they needed a world title match I guess. The NWO wanted the world title which Sid had so Sid rambled a lot and Jarrett said he’s win.

 

The match order is changed so the world title match is now.

 

WCW World Title: Sid vs. Jeff Jarrett

 

The door of the black limo is opened but we cut away before we see who’s in it. Jeff is US Champion. Sid dominates to start but a chokeslam is broken up by a thumb to the eye. Out to the floor and Jeff is put on the table. They go out into the crowd and it’s almost all Sid. Up to the stage area and here are the Harris Brothers to beat Sid down. Jeff throws a sleeper on back in the ring.

 

Sid blocks a middle rope double axe handle and the Harris guys get up on the apron, one with the belt. Jeff is slammed into it by mistake but it only gets two. Chokeslam is blocked and there goes the referee. Guitar shot to Sid but there’s no referee. He waves down a crooked referee but Hogan comes out for the save. Big boot and legdrop to Jeff as Hogan beats everyone up. In the chaos Sid covers him and gets the pin.

 

Rating: D. Just a big mess here and the whole thing was just 8 minutes long. That’s hardly a full length PPV main event in my eyes and when the majority of that was spent in a brawl on the outside, that’s not really a good sign. Hogan only comes in at the end to set up the main event and the whole thing just felt thrown together.

 

Anyway the limo guy/insurance policy is the returning Scott Steiner who would soon begin a big heel push. He hits Hogan and since Hogan is down, here’s Flair to start the main event sans entrances.

 

Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair

 

Strap match here, meaning touch all four buckles. The brawl goes to the floor almost immediately as Hogan is wearing a weightlifting belt and trunks which is a rather weird look. Flair begs off and gets beaten up. Good to see that the Steiner interference made such a big deal. Into the ring again and Flair gets whipped.

 

Flair begs off some more but gets a thumb to the eye. Thankfully he doesn’t have the short and spiked hair here as the blonde locks are flowing pretty solidly. They slug it out and guess who wins that one. The strap is really long here. Flair is being dominated here. He hits the floor and begs off again as no one has tried for a corner yet. Naturally the guy with hair is bleeding.

 

Hogan slams him off the top as always and hits a clothesline on the floor. Jimmy Hart is here too and gets in some shots with the strap. Flair gets some shots in and Hogan is like dude just no. They go up to the stage and Luger pops up with a chair shot to put him down. We’re probably almost ten minute into this and not a single corner has been touched.

 

Low blow on the floor puts Hogan down again and Flair unhooks himself from the strap. Flair hammers away because that’s worked so well for him in the past right? Hart comes in again and he gets drilled. That guy deserves a medal for the abuse he’s taken over the years. Flair finally goes for some corners, getting three this time. Flair pulls out brass knuckles and hits him for a two count. In a strap match. Well of course he does. Hogan Hulks Up, beats Flair up, touches three corners, beats up Luger when he runs in, drops the leg on Flair and pins him, then touches the fourth buckle after the bell rings. You figure it out. I’m done.

 

Rating: D+. This was a Hogan vs. Flair match, but not a particularly good one. The biggest problem here is simple: this is the year 2000. In like 1994 or so this would have been ok, but it’s not 1994. Hogan and Flair with Hogan doing his old school thing and Flair being a basic jobber and not even for the title isn’t something that’s going to work here. Yes, some fans cheer Hogan, but he shouldn’t be on top in the year 2000. To be fair though the company was deader than dead by this point, so who cares? This would be a month before the reboot anyway, so again it doesn’t really matter.

 

Overall Rating: F. When one match is what I’d consider not bad and that’s about as high as we get in the grades, what do you expect me to say here? The show is meaningless and it’s not like the matches are even good. This was just boring with all kinds of stuff that didn’t excite anyone. The crowd was tiny too and the whole thing was just bad. Total mess here and WCW would continue to sink into the abyss until finally dying soon after this. Ok so it was a year later but they were more or less dead by the summer.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

Starrcade 1988
Date: December 26, 1988
Location: Norfolk Scope, Norfolk, Virginia
Attendance: 10,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Bob Caudle

We’re firmly in the Horsemen era here with the main event being Luger vs. Flair for the title in what is considered their best match of their seemingly never ending series. There’s an interesting story to that which I’ll get to at the end of the review. Since this is NWA time there are only seven matches and 6 of them get over ten minutes and 5 of them get over 15 minutes.

That was one thing you could count on in this era: nice long matches. The only other thing you need to know about here is the Varsity Club, a group of guys that were “amateur stars” (most of them were but not all of them. Picture a Jack Swagger stable) who are the upper midcard heel group. They’re around a lot here. Let’s get to it.

Kevin Sullivan and Mike Rotunda (members of the Varsity Club) say they’ll beat Rick Steiner (former member of the Club) and Rotunda will keep the TV Title. Rotunda cannot talk that well. Oh this is actually part of the preshow.

Steiner apparently got electrocuted and can’t remember how to talk that well. Yeah this was a weird time. He has a face painted on his hand named Alex. Ok every gimmick can’t be a Horseman. This show is on a Monday actually, but the Sunday was Christmas Day so the thinking is correct here I guess.

Standing highlight package of the matches tonight opens us up, with the highlight being Dusty, who had his eye stabbed by the heel turning Road Warriors, says “make sure you take both eyes, both limbs, both hearts, both ears etc.” See an issue there?

Tony Schiavone is the host and has a true mustache going on. Magnum TA is with him and isn’t even 30 years old at this point. Such a shame.

US Tag Titles: Varsity Club vs. Fantastics

Kevin Sullivan and Steve Williams here. Williams is an absolute monster who is far more famous in Japan than he is here. Sullivan is listed as being from Singapore. Ok then. Rogers and Fulton (the Fantastics) are an incredibly underrated team as this era was dominated by teams like the Road Warriors, the Horsemen, the Rock N Roll Express and the Midnight Express. This is a shame as they really were good.

Sullivan and Fulton start us off and Fulton hits a Thesz Press off the top for a fast two. Williams comes in and things slow way down. And Jason Hervey is here to just tick me off. Why did he have to ALWAYS get some quick camera time? The champions use their speed and tandem offense to work on Williams’ arm. Nice double monkey flip by the champions but Fulton gets caught in a gorilla press where Williams literally throws Fulton in the air about 6 times in a row. He had SCARY power.

Williams is 27 here which is scary. Fulton gets a headlock on him and Williams is just like screw that and hits a suplex to counter. He’s almost the Brock Lesnar of his era actually. Sullivan comes back in to give the champions a chance. Williams comes back in and just ends the Fantastics before tagging back out. Ok so he didn’t as Sullivan was just being a jerk.

Rogers gets a sunset flip for two on Williams and that’s about it. Back to Fulton who locks in a big old bearhug that the heel has to resort to the thumb to the eye to get out of. Both guys tag but the face one isn’t seen. Who cares about that though? We go from five minutes gone by to ten in less than 4 minutes so I’m betting on a clip in there somewhere. Actually it’s been about 10 minutes since the match started so maybe the five minute call was late.

Sullivan misses something from the top and Williams is tagged and just MAULS Rogers. This guy is awesome. The heels are tagging incredibly fast in this match. In about 12 minutes we’ve seen at least 8 or 9 tags from them so far which is a tonw hen you think about it. It’s also a ton when you don’t think about it but you get what I mean. Rogers gets a dropkick to send Williams reeling but Sullivan stops the tag.

A pair of double stomps to the ribs of Rogers gets two. Rogers jumps over Sullivan to get the tag to Fulton. We hit fifteen minutes (the ring announcer says this and I figure it helps give an idea of how much we’ve gotten through) and the champions both get sleepers on. Fulton goes for the Thesz Press but Williams catches him in a Hot Shot for the pin and the titles.

Rating: B-. Good match here with Williams being shown off as an absolute ANIMAL. The Fantastics, who were a very good if not great tag team had nothing to stop him with and lost the titles because of him. Sullivan might as well have been a ham and bacon sandwich on the side here as it was so much a one man team out there. Nice opener and the fans seemed into it.

Tony and Magnum run down the rest of the card and we get their predictions.

Midnight Express vs. Midnight Express

No that’s not a typo. Over the years there have been a LOT of people in the Midnight Express but originally they were a tag team comprised of Randy Rose and Dennis Condrey. This evolved into a team of Condrey and Bobby Eaton. In one of the strangest stories in wrestling history, Condrey disappeared for a year. I don’t mean storyline disappeared. I mean no one from his boss to his friends to his wife knew where he was for 12 months. Then one day he popped up in the AWA and reformed the original Midnight Express with Rose. To this day he’s never explained what happened.

Anyway, Eaton had gotten a new partner, Stan Lane, and made the new Midnight Express. Rose and Condrey came to the NWA to jump the new Express during a squash. Their manager: Paul E. Dangerously (Heyman). The new team is managed by longtime manager Jim Cornette and amazingly are faces which is very rare for them. They jump the originals (remember: Rose and Condrey are the originals and Lane and Eaton are the new ones in case you get confused) and clear the ring to start us off. This should be awesome.

Cornette wants Dangerously and of course grabs the mic to say he wants him. Oh hey let’s introduce the teams. Both teams are billed from the Dark Side which is kind of awesome. The new guys clear the ring one more time just to get their point across. Cornette is WAY fired up here. He points at Heyman and dances like a chicken. The fans are eating this up to put it mildly.

Rose and Lane start us off. Rose goes to the floor and Cornette BLASTS him with the tennis racket. He’s absolutely stealing the show here. Teddy Long is the referee and has hair. We FINALLY get the regular stuff going and it’s all new guys. Cornette pops Rose with the racket one more time and the fans are eating it up. Heyman, in his pink shirt, is losing his mind.

Lane comes in and throws his kicks which were always awesome. The originals haven’t been on offense whatsoever here. Condrey gets in like four punches and then gets his head kicked some more. Rose gets in a bit of offense and so much for that. Even jobbers get better offense in than this. Caudle is having audio difficulties. The heels FINALLY take over on Eaton.

Dangerously sneaks in a shot and Cornette SPRINTS after him in a funny bit. We hit the chinlock and get a Bear Bryant reference of all things. Heel dominance ensues for awhile as this is pure 80s formula stuff. While that sounds bad, given the people in there, as in the teams that partially invented it, this is solid stuff. Rocket Launcher misses and Cornette is “tapping like a drunk man”. We hit fifteen minutes and Lane gets the hot tag to a nice pop.

Enziguri puts Condrey down but Heyman gets a shot with his phone. Cornette FINALLY gets his hands on Heyman and lands a decent punch on him. Condrey goes for the cover but Long sees the phone and won’t count it. Lane gets behind Rose and Eaton hits a clothesline (Ross shouts DOUBLE GOOZLE, which is a nickname for a chokeslam and makes no sense at all) to send Rose over Lane for the pin.

Rating: B. More solid tag stuff here with the fans loving all of it. This feud would continue until Condrey just left and Rose was fired also because no one cared about him without Condrey. This was a solid match as expected with classic 80s tag wrestling at its finest. Why would I have expected anything different? Fun stuff and a very good match.

Post match the originals beat up everyone, mainly Cornette. Eaton gets up and gets the racket for the save. Crowd was INSANE for this whole thing.

Magnum talks to the new US Champions and points out the obvious: Williams made the difference. The Club complains about Steiner for later.

Russian Assassins vs. Junkyard Dog/Ivan Koloff

Well you knew it couldn’t be good the whole time. Also notice the INSANE emphasis on tag wrestling with a total of four out of seven matches here being tag matches. The Assassins are just numbered 1 and 2 with 2 being ECW’s Jack Victory. If the non Russians win then Paul Jones, their manager, has to leave the NWA. Koloff is only famous for stopping Sammartino’s legendary world title reign that lasted over seven years.

No real way to tell the Assassins apart so I’m not going to really try to. Dog with a cradle gets zero to start. Ah ok that’s #1 in there. #2 appears to be fatter. That helps a little. Ah and the other stipulation is that the Russians have to unmask. Is there any benefit for them winning here? Koloff sends #2 in and grabs him by the throat to take him down in what could be called the chokeslam’s half uncle by marriage once removed I guess.

Clothesline from the middle rope puts #2 down. Ah apparently that was a Russian Sickle. How could I be so stupid? He curled his arm up slightly. The Dog comes in to cheers so loud you can barely understand the audio. For the life of me I’ve never gotten his appeal. The heels take over on JYD and one of them kicks him in his boneyard. Some double team move misses and both guys are down.

Ivan vs. #1 now. Jones is on the apron and the heels are slammed into each other. Big old brawl now that is boring. There’s the Sickle again which of course is a clothesline but one of the Assassins puts something in his mask and rams his head into Ivan’s for the pin.

Rating: D. Well at least it was short. Total nothing match here with nothing special about it. Other than the JYD’s hot tag there was nothing the crowd got into at all. With that many stipulations in there it was very unlikely for the faces to win which was expected too. This more or less went nowhere at all and had one good thing going for it: it’s the match on the show that didn’t break 10 minutes.

Jim and Bob talk about the show so far for any viewers that missed the first third of the show I suppose.

TV Title: Mike Rotunda vs. Rick Steiner

This is a big old grudge match. Sullivan is in the cage above the ring. Rotunda has held the title for about a year now and is considered to be unbeatable in 20 minutes, which is the max a TV Title match can go. Steiner was thrown out of the Varsity Club where he was more or less considered too stupid to mean anything. They treated him as their lackey for months until he went nuts and hit one of the best belly to belly suplexes ever to just kill Rotunda. He would bring in some dude named Scott to help him in this war. Pretty sure they never went anywhere.

They slug it out early on and Rotunda is out of his game there so he hits the floor. Steiner goes off with some basic wrestling moves and Rotunda has nothing. Long headlock sequence follows with Rick dominating. Rick has dedicated this match to his mother. I think we know what’s coming here. All Steiner so far as Rotunda runs and hides. He keeps pulling Rick’s hair to no avail. We go to the mat and once again Rick controls.

Rick bites his tights in a hammerlock just to be funny I guess. The next PPV is in February. What’s it called? Where is it? Who cares apparently. Rotunda FINALLY gets a suplex to….never mind he’s back on defense already. We’re over seven minutes into this and Rotunda has hit a total of a suplex, a headlock and a drop toehold. He hits the floor to stall and nothing of note is going on here.

The crowd thinks Syracuse (Rotunda’s school) sucks. Steiner goes for a big old clothesline but hits the floor at the ten minute mark. Rotunda gets a long chinlock and uses the ropes to cheat, drawing solid heat. Little things like those can go a long way. And we have no commentary now. After a brief Steiner comeback we hit that chinlock again. Sunset flip a few seconds later gets two.

We hit the fifteen minute mark meaning there are five to go, drawing loud boos. Rick starts the comeback with a Steinerline. Ah there’s Ross again. Steiner beats the heck out of Rotunda and here comes Steve Williams. Belly to belly connects but Williams rings the bell. Teddy Long thinks the time is up but here comes senior referee Tommy Young because Rotunda has done this to steal a win before.

The referees talk and Sullivan is let down. He argues with Young and Rotunda punches Steiner. Steiner shoves Rotunda into Sullivan and they bang heads. Steiner jumps on Rotunda and both referees count three to absolutely blow the roof off the place. This would be like Virgil beating DiBiase as Steiner FINALLY shuts up Rotunda and beats him at his own game after being told he was too stupid to do anything right. Steiner’s celebration is awesome beyond belief. Look it up as it’s incredible.

Rating: C-. Match was pretty meh but the ending is just straight up awesome. Steiner would lose the title back in February but this was the moment that EVERYONE wanted to see and they delivered perfectly on it as Steiner had him twice and actually got the pin on the second time. Just an awesome moment that is reminiscent of Foley winning the title. I loved this and it worked very well.

Tony and Magnum talk some more.

US Title: Barry Windham vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

Windham is champion and a Horseman. Bigelow had left WWF shortly after Mania so he’s wildly popular here. Bigelow shoves him around to start and is just MAD over. He gets Windham in a Fireman’s Carry and drops to his knees for a modified gutbuster. This is back when Bigelow could still go very well and Windham was one of the best in the world so this is far better than it sounds.

We get into a power match and Bigelow starts no selling shots. BIG old gorilla press and Windham is rocked. The fans are really into Bigelow here, even at a rate that surprises me. He gets a dropkick that sends Windham to the floor, making JJ want a DQ. See that’s what a manager is supposed to do. He did something so simple like that but it got heat on both him and his man and at the same time didn’t take anything away from the match because Barry was still down. It also keeps the fans from being taken out of the match by giving them a little something to tide them over. It’s so simple yet so effective.

Windham makes a small comeback and thrown Bigelow to the floor, hurting the big man’s knee. We hit the ten minute mark and it’s a back and forth match. Bigelow hits the slingshot splash, one of his finishers, and lets Windham up. He goes up top and misses the splash completely. Windham takes his head off with a BIG old lariat and Bigelow is in trouble.

Very nice belly to back suplex takes Bigelow down again. Dillon wants the Claw (Windham’s finisher) and there it is. After that is broken by the ropes we get a slam by the champion at the 15 minute mark. Windham misses a top rope elbow and the fans are WAY into this. Bigelow makes his big overblown comeback with the big wild swings. Bigelow goes for a back drop over the top but his knee gives out and we’re both on the floor. Windham sends him into the post and it’s a countout.

Rating: B-. FAR better than I expected here with a white hot crowd. Bigelow could go back in the day and this was no exception. This was a solid match and the countout finish is probably the only thing holding it down. The match isn’t a classic or anything but it’s a lot of fun with Bigelow being over dramatic about everything (in a good way mind you) and Windham being himself. Solid and fun match.

Steiner talks about winning the TV Title and is very confused about a lot of things. He was still a comedy character at the time but a very lovable one. Magnum says a lot of people are going to be coming after Steiner for the title and Rick seems shocked by this idea. After almost freaking out over the concept that people will be coming after his title, Rick calms down instantly and says “eh I’ll beat them.” Much funnier than it sounds.

World Tag Titles: Sting/Dusty Rhodes vs. Road Warriors

BIG blood feud here. The Warriors turned heel and destroyed both of these guys recently (prompting Dusty to botch a blade job and nearly cut his head off, getting fired) before winning the tag titles for the first time ever in a glorified squash over the Midnight Express. The problem was they were so insanely popular and such tough guys that they were turned face again anyway, much like Orton recently.

It’s weird seeing no name graphics for these guys. Something you just get used to in the modern product I guess. Ok so the Road Warriors get them but not the challengers. Ok then. They’re called the Legion of Doom: the Road Warriors here, which is a common thing back in the 80s. Sting and Animal start us off. Dusty is allegedly a power guy. What power? The power of hunger? Sting goes after Animal’s arm and Dusty gets a nice pop when he comes in.

Ah the soon to be named Chi-Town Rumble has a date now. Rhodes’ fat is a sight to behold, although certainly not in a positive way. Hawk in now and he just beats Sting up to a solid pop, doing what we would call stomping a mudhole. It’s weird seeing Sting treated like a jobber like this. A gorilla press into a hot shot is no sold which is weird indeed but it sets up a HUGE dive from the top to the aisle onto Animal. That was SWEET.

Five minutes in now. Dusty of course, rather than going after the arm that Sting spent three minutes working on, goes for the knee because he’s a fat slob that WILL use his stupid figure four. Test of strength between Hawk and Dusty but Dusty suckers him in and of course, goes for the figure four. Hawk wants the eye that he almost put out of Dusty because he’s EVIL.

Dusty starts his fat man dancing stuff as I wonder what Dashing Cody Rhodes would think of his fatness. Dusty goes for a “dropkick” and does indeed drop when he tries it. Dusty plays Ricky Morton in a weird bit and we get a sleeper. Hot tag to Sting and house is rapidly cleaned. Scorpion on Animal but Hawk kicks him in the head. He sends Sting over the top and I can see the finish coming. Top rope cross body by Sting but Ellering pulls the referee out for the DQ.

Rating: C-. Pretty boring match here but the crowd helped it out a lot. These were four very popular guys and that aspect carried the match. Dusty was gone soon thereafter due to his initial booking of the main event and the blade job, sending him into polka dot world. This was a basic super team tag match that didn’t go anywhere but I’ve seen far worse ones.

NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger

If Flair gets disqualified he loses the title. Ok before I get into this match, here’s the original booking for this show. The idea was to have the Varsity Club jump Luger before the show and injure him. Luger would give his title shot to Rick Steiner of all people, because you know, wrestlers can decide title shots at the biggest show of the year. Steiner would proceed to beat Flair to win the world title IN FIVE MINUTES. Imagine say Eric Young beating AJ Styles in five minutes for the world title completely clean. This match goes over 30 minutes and is borderline classic, so it’s pretty clear that Flair, the new booker, got it right. His next idea was to sign this guy named Steamboat. I think you know the rest.

Luger is the insanely popular young gun and Flair is the evil veteran. You can’t beat that really. It didn’t hurt that other than Sting, Luger might have had the best chemistry with Flair in big matches. Luger has dropped a few pounds for speed and endurance. We get a WOO to start and Flair plays mind games. Flair starts the chops and Luger just drills him with a clothesline to send him to the floor.

Lou Thesz is here. In a surprising spot, Luger gets knocked down by a shoulder block. Gorilla press sends Flair to the floor and another one has Flair in trouble. Luger works on the back which makes sense here as his finisher is a backbreaker. Five minutes in and Luger controls firmly. Luger works on the arm and is apparently hard as a rock at this point for some reason. Chop is no sold and Flair runs.

Flair Flop as Luger has shifted to the arm. He’s working on it for awhile at least though so I can’t complain as much. Flair taps but it doesn’t mean anything for about another 5 or 6 years. The eternally awesome thumb to the eye takes Luger down though and Flair goes into his routine. The chops just tick Luger off though and Luger chases him to the floor where he works on the arm by wrapping it around the railing.

Ten minute mark now. Delayed vertical suplex and Flair is rocked. Luger’s big elbow misses though as it tended to do every single time. We hit the floor with Flair in control for a change. Flair and Young (referee) get into it in the ring which was always a semi-feud which was rather cool. Fifteen minutes in and Flair is finally waking up a bit. Big knee drop “hits” Luger. That move was one of the moves that clearly missed more often than ever before.

The chops tick Luger off once again and here we go again. Flair keeps chopping like an idiot and gets caught in a sleeper to a ROAR. Flair escapes with a belly to back and goes up top. Rather than your typical slam off there he gets a suplex instead for two. And now Luger puts Flair in the figure four just to mess with his mind even though he’s worked on Flair arm and back the whole time so this is really just to be a jerk. We hit 20 minutes.

Luger accidentally hits Young and Flair fires him over the top which should give Luger the title. Luger comes back with a cross body of all things off the top for two because JJ had the referee. Ten punches in the corner and Luger takes over. Another suplex and Luger calls for the Rack. More softening up first and NOW we set for the Rack. JJ distracts the referee though and Flair gets a chair shot into the knee of Luger.

Flair goes for the knee and we get to see some of Luger’s awesome selling. This is the part where both guys are basically awesome. Twenty five minutes in now. Figure Four goes on (the wrong leg of course as was Flair’s trademark) and Luger begins his best orgasm impression. The fans get way behind Luger which is saying a lot as we’re in Flair country here. Luger Hulks Up and shows off his arms which are supposed to scare Flair I guess.

Reversal and the hold is broken. More knee work and Flair goes up again. There’s the slam and Flair is rocked again. It’s Superman comeback time and here comes Luger. Sunset flip gets two. Luger’s selling of the knee is awesome here. We hit the thirty minute mark and a clothesline gets two for the challenger. Crisp powerslam hits and Luger calls for the Rack. There is finally is but Luger’s knee buckles underneath him and Flair falls on top, throwing his feet on the rope for the pin.

Rating: A. This was a GREAT match with both guys controlling for long periods of time. These two were always good for a very solid match and this was no exception. Flair was great here as the heel that simply would not lose while Luger played the Superman role perfectly. The knee being the deciding factor in the end was a very nice touch as no matter how hard he tried Luger just couldn’t get to the finish line. Excellent match with a very good story being told and well worthy of a major show’s main event.

The announcers all talk about the match and how awesome Flair is. They talk about how great Luger is and how great he could wind up being and he’s right. We can hear the announcer talking about a Bunkhouse Stampede Battle Royal which was a dark match won by Junkyard Dog.

Magnum is with Flair. I wonder if he’s thinking that belt should be mine. Flair goes on a long rant about how awesome he is but is drowned out by the announcement for the battle royal. That was Luger’s LAST shot of course.

Tony talks about how great the NWA is as we fill in time. Literally he says stuff and then Ross and Caudle just say how great the company is. A highlight package ends the show.

Overall Rating: B+. Rather good show here with everything working rather well. There’s only about one bad match on the whole show and it’s like 7 minutes long. The main event is well worth seeing and the crowd is a traditional white hot NWA 80s crowd. This is completely different from the stuff you would be seeing in WWF at the time and really does work as an alternative to it. I had a good time with this show, but unfortunately it’s the last good Starrcade in the traditional sense for a LONG time.

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

 

Spring Stampede 2000
Date: April 16, 2000
Location: United Center, Chicago, Illinois
Attendance: 12,556
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Mark Madden, Scott Hudson

 

This is a show I’ve wanted to do for a good while now. Russo and Bischoff are in charge now and have rebooted WCW. In short, all titles are vacant and will be decided tonight in a bunch of tournaments and random one off matches. The interesting thing to me is that the titles were vacated on Monday before this show. What was the card for the PPV before they did that? Let’s get to it.

 

The opening video is about Russo vs. Flair and Russo stealing Flair’s Rolex watch. Also Eric has recently turned on Hogan and made the New Blood. Oh and they brought back the stupid Hummer angle (even though it was a different color) and had Bischoff driving it.

 

For those of you that don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, in 1999 there was a BLACK (this was white) Hummer trying to run over various people. The question was who was driving it. It was heavily implied to be Sid and everyone assumed it was him. Bischoff brought it back 9 months later after everyone had forgotten about it. Amazingly enough, no one cared at all.

 

Eric yells at Kidman, Torrie and Russo.

 

Hudson runs down the participants so fast that we can’t keep up with them. I’ll try to give you the brackets as the show goes on but don’t hold me to that.

 

Tag Title Tournament Semi-Finals: Mamalukes vs. Team Package

 

Team Package, Flair and Luger, say that Flair is in street clothes because Russo has made it a street fight. Who wears golf clothes to a street fight? I think Team Package are the faces here but I have no idea for the most part. The Mamalukes have Disco Inferno with them. I have no idea if there has been another round before this one or if there were only four teams in the whole thing.

 

After taking a good while with the intros, here’s Russo to shake things up a bit. Russo says this isn’t an even playing field because you have two rookies against two established veterans so let’s even this up a bit. He adds the Harris Brothers to make it 4-2. After a beatdown to start Flair fights back and gets the Figure Four on Johnny the Bull, only to let it go for no apparent reason.

 

Vito kicks Flair’s head off and they’re legal to start. This is a one night tournament. Luger comes in because he can and the handicap aspect of the match starts to become a lot more clear. Flair wrestling in street clothes looks weird. He tries to go up top but gets slammed off by a Harris Brother. Everything breaks down again and Disco sends Luger into the post, only to get decked by Liz.

 

Two “security” guys come out and take Disco out. No idea who they are. Oh ok this is something to do with the Mamaluke angle that sucked. Hot tag to Luger and after waiting on Vito to jump on him, house is cleaned and Bull is racked after heel miscommunication, sending Team Package to the finals.

 

Rating: D+. It’s just a big brawl but it wasn’t boring. Flair and Luger having to fight off the insane odds was fine I guess but it’s not like the odds ever really came into play after the first minute or so. Flair was pretty easily able to fight off both Harris Brothers and the other Mamaluke, making this pretty weak overall.

 

Mike Awesome is the surprise 8^th entrant in the US Title tournament and fights Ernest Miller later. He’s not afraid of Cat and Bigelow comes up to complain about Awesome being in the tournament. Awesome decks him from behind.

 

We recap Jimmy Hart vs. a radio show host. Yes this is happening on a PPV.

 

Mancow vs. Jimmy Hart

 

Hart has some big guy out there with him and is wearing a Howard Stern t-shirt. I don’t recognize the guy but Hart is able to find people at will so it’s not exactly surprising. Mancow is a celebrity in Chicago so the crowd is completely one sided. The big guy is named Hail. Mancow comes out with his entourage including some hot women. Mancow runs his mouth for a bit and the “match” begins. Seriously what are you expecting here? It’s a bit under three minutes long and there’s a ref bump and a chair shot. Hail interferes and Mancow wins anyway.

 

Kidman comes out to beat up Hart for no apparent reason.

 

Russo yells at the four guys that Team Package beat.

 

US Title Tournament Quarter-Finals: The Wall vs. Scott Steiner

 

Steiner comes out to his old Steiner Brothers theme here for some reason. This is New Blood vs. New Blood. They’re both power brawlers and they completely live up to those stereotypes here. Steiner pounds away in the corner then Wall pounds away in the corner. Sting is the only member of the Millionaire’s Club in this particular tournament. Wall takes a low blow and Steiner hits a belly to belly to take over.

 

Now Steiner takes a low blow. Are you noticing the whole mirror image thing? Have you noticed how stupid the all No DQ rules are really freaking stupid? Oh wait there are disqualifications but they have to be REALLY big things to cause one. Remember that. We go to the floor and Wall pulls out a table. Steiner blocks a chokeslam through it and a blinded Wall chokeslams the referee through it for the lame DQ.

 

Rating: F+. It was stupid but they had to hurry through it because they have about 13 matches to get through tonight. Wall was a guy who was supposed to be all insane and crazy but when you’re up against Scott Steiner, your craziness is kind of overshadowed. This was nothing significant and was just a way to get Steiner to the final four quickly.

 

Ernest Miller isn’t worried about Awesome. There’s a James Brown reference for no apparent reason and Bigelow drops Miller.

 

US Title Tourament Quarter-Finals: Mike Awesome vs. Ernest Miller

 

This is six days after Awesome, still ECW Champion at the time, ran in on Nitro after jumping ship. Bigelow jumps Awesome and has taken Miller’s spot it seems. Well sure why not. Big dive to the floor takes Bigelow out and then dumps him into the crowd. Awesome busts out an Ahmed Johnson style dive over the railing as the brawl keeps going. Top rope clothesline back inside gets two. Bigelow wakes up and slams Awesome down and adds the headbutt for no cover. Here’s Miller who kicks Bigelow in the head and dances a bit. Awesome kills him with a powerbomb and frog splash to advance.

 

Rating: D. The brawling was decent and Awesome was incredible as usual but the whole Bigelow/Miller thing was totally pointless. Also it makes no sense as either guy not named Awesome should have been disqualified for interference but whatever. This was nothing interesting but was there to have Awesome get pushed harder, which is fine.

 

Russo tells Bischoff to calm down. Bischoff tells Kidman to take care of Hogan.

 

Bagwell and Douglas say they’ll be champions and Shane wants to beat up Flair.

 

Tag Title Tournament Semi-Finals: Harlem Heat 2000 vs. Buff Bagwell/Shane Douglas

 

This is Stevie Ray/Big T (Ahmed Johnson). Shane vs. Stevie starts us off after a quick brawl. Harlem Heat beat on Buff for a bit and then we get a tag to Shane who hits a release Pittsburgh Plunge to end this in less than three minutes. I’ve never seen such a nothing match that went so long.

 

That makes the finals Team Package vs. Buff Bagwell/Shane Douglas

 

Booker says he’s not New Blood because he doesn’t agree with Bischoff about anything.

 

US Title Tournament Quarter-Finals: Booker vs. Sting

 

Yes it’s officially Booker after he lost the rights to the letter T to Harlem Heat (don’t ask). They’re treating this like an epic battle and while it’s not quite that it is a big deal I guess. Leave it to WCW to have it in a match on this show in this position that gets about six and a half minutes. Sting gets a hip toss for the first move of the match. Sting keeps up the dominance and we head to the floor.

 

Booker goes into the metal barrier and the crew goes flying. Over to the announce table since we can’t have a match without a brawling segment because that’s what WWF and ECW does. Booker gets in a shot and back inside we go. Off to the chinlock which lasts a bit until we get a knee drop and hey, let’s go back to that chinlock. Axe kick hits for two and the announcers are stunned. Booker spins up but walks into a DDT for two. Stinger Splash hits but a second jumps into the side kick. Booker tries a suplex but gets reversed into a Death Drop to end it.

 

Rating: C+. Not a bad match but you would think this was Benoit vs. Angle at the 03 Rumble based on the reactions. It was certainly good and by far the best match of the night so far but it’s just not as good as what they’re hyping it up to be. If they had more than 7 minutes it could have been but we don’t have time for wrestling here on this wrestling show people.

 

Booker brings him back to shake his hand. Booker is New Blood according to Tony. Whatever man.

 

Torrie, Bischoff and Kidman aren’t worried about Hogan.

 

US Title Tournament Quarter-Finals: Billy Kidman vs. Vampiro

 

Vampy takes over to start with a bunch of headbutts and right hands. It’s kind of hard to get into these matches that are happening for the sake of a tournament rather than a story or a feud between the guys in it. Kidman snaps off a rana to take over and pounds away in the corner the same way. Ten punches are countered into a SWEET release powerbomb but the Nail in the Coffin is countered into a facejam by Kidman.

 

They keep exchanging control with Kidman having it as I type this. Nail in the Coffin (Michinoku Driver) is countered into another facejam and we head outside. Vampiro gets a spin kick in and works on the arm after injuring his rib. And let’s cut to the back where a Dodge Charger containing Hogan is here. Hogan comes in and with the referee watching he beats up Kidman with ease. By that I mean he does it for several minutes. The idea of disqualifications are forgotten though so this is all cool. Hulk uses the steps as a step to chokebomb Kidman onto the table. Kidman is slammed through it and Vampy gets the pin.

 

Rating: C-. Hogan killed this period. The lack of disqualifications is just stupid as why shouldn’t the entire New Blood come in and beat up every member of the Millionaire’s Club every match and ensure that they win? My guess would be that would make sense, which is why this gets really old really fast. I mean the referee is watching the whole thing and doesn’t even try to interrupt it. It takes the wrestling out for the sake of brawling, which isn’t why I watch these shows. Once in awhile is fine, but not in every single match.

 

Hogan, ever the stealth one, gets on a mic and shouts that he’s coming for Bischoff.

 

In the back Russo leaves Bischoff to freak out on his own.

 

Hogan goes Bischoff hunting and finds him in like the 7^th door. And never mind as cops with guns are here to get him off. Yeah that’s not going to go badly at all is it?

 

Oh before I forget, here are the US Title brackets:

 

Steiner

Awesome

 

Sting

Kidman

 

Terry Taylor tells Terry Funk that the Hardcore match is going to begin in catering. “Take a right at the Doritos.”

 

Hardcore Title: Terry Funk vs. Norman Smiley

 

Norman is hiding in the men’s room and is in a catcher’s uniform complete with chest protector. They’re into catering now and it’s all Funk. Funk pours a bunch of Cokes on him (still in cans) as Tony says this isn’t a match, despite Taylor calling it a match and a bell ringing. They’re in the kitchen now and they crawl through a dish return line to get there. Tony talks about the merits of industrial strength cookie sheets as he probably wonders how he still has a career.

 

They head into the hallway and Norman climbs a conveniently placed ladder. Norman gets some chair shots in and we head to the arena. Terry is taking a bunch of chair shots to the head which are scarier each time. Madden wants to know why Terry would do this to himself. The term “middle aged and CRAZY” doesn’t work for Madden I guess. It’s Wiggle Time but you don’t simulate anal sex on a Texan! Funk hits a huge chair shot and we’re back outside.

 

Terry pulls out a ladder and puts it between the bottom and middle ropes on the inside. Dustin Rhodes comes out because we MUST have more Rhodes vs. Funk because the feud only started 25 years ago so we’re all begging for a continuation right? Dustin of course fails because he’s booked like a clueless putz when he’s not Goldust so he causes some pain for Norman. Funk drops a ladder over the top onto Norman for the title.

 

Rating: C. These matches are hard to not smile at a bit. Yes they’re stupid and mindless brawls but at the same time, they’re stupid and mindless brawls. Nothing great and Dustin added absolutely nothing to it at all (which should be on his tombstone), but Funk vs. Smiley was a weird combination that made for entertaining comedy and with the Hardcore Title, what more can you ask for?

 

Russo tells Booker to watch his step and wants a favor.

 

US Title Tournament Semi-Finals: Mike Awesome vs. Scott Steiner

 

Steiner takes him to the mat to start which is smart as he wants to keep the power/high flying guy on the mat where he can’t use his physical advantages. Awesome is sent to the floor but he manages to get the slingshot shoulder to take over. Splash gets two. This is Mike’s second WCW match after his debut earlier. Top rope clothesline gets two but the spinning belly to belly shifts things again. With Awesome taking back over here’s Nash with a crutch (same thing Awesome did to Nash) to take Awesome out. Recliner puts Steiner in the finals.

 

Rating: D+. They only had three minutes to work with so how good could it be? This was all about Nash getting his shot in on Awesome to set up a match that I don’t think ever actually took place. Awesome’s fate was written on the wall here though as he never would become anything significant in WCW at all due to an extreme amount of talent.

 

Dustin, who is somehow New Blood, is fired for not keeping Funk from winning the title. Russo takes credit for Goldust and making him everything he ever was. I give up.

 

US Title Tournament Semi-Finals: Vampiro vs. Sting

 

Sting charges to the ring as there’s an actual feud to this one. Sting no sells some stuff and hammers away with strikes. Out to the floor and it’s all Sting. Back in a top rope splash gets two after a lot of looking at Vampy. Back to the floor for more brawling and Sting misses the move that always misses, the splash onto the railing. Vampiro gets a chair and puts Sting face first onto it before a superkick puts Sting down.

 

In a weird moment, Vampiro rolls him in and sets for something off the stop but Sting won’t lay still and clearly shakes his head no at Sting. Vampiro is like dude what are you doing and just jumps off with no real contact. I don’t get that. Suplex gets two instead. Another suplex gets two again. A top rope…something is countered into either a powerbomb or spinebuster. Death Drop sets up the Deathlock to send Sting to the finals.

 

Rating: C-. The top rope stuff was rather odd but Sting continues to look good here. He was all fired up and they had to have someone in there to give the Millionaire’s Club a finalist. Not great or anything but these two had no real chemistry in most of their matches. Sting would beat him again the next month in something close to a squash.

 

Sting vs. Steiner for the title later.

 

Page wants to beat Jarrett.

 

Cruiserweight Title: Artist vs. Chris Candido vs. Juventud Guerrera vs. Shannon Moore vs. Lash Leroux vs. Crowbar

 

No Evan Karagis for 3 Count here. I think they would split soon after this. The two 3 Count guys do their thing before the match. It’s a Suicide Sixway. The other guys run out and the big fight is on. Shane is on the outside and not in the match. Candido vs. Moore at the moment and I don’t think tags are required. Ok so yes they are. Crowbar escapes a DDT and gets a northern lights suplex for two.

 

One fall to a finish here. If DQ rules have been relaxed why not allow everyone to run in all the time? Lash vs. Juvy now as this is going to be one of those insane matches. Juvy Driver gets two as Artist saves. Daffney accidentally hits a Frankenscreamer on her man crowbar and then screams her way out of trouble. We bust out the dives by everyone and everybody is down.

 

David Flair comes in and beats up Helms and Candido is crotched by Artist. Candido misses a swan dive and Artist hits an Angle Slam (called a Samoan Drop) and Tammy debuts with a chair to give Candido the title. I can’t complain about her in a see through nightgown and a nice thong shot.

 

Rating: C. This was your usual insane Cruiserweight spot fest but I could have gone for it being longer than 5 minutes. The non-high flying power brawler as champion is the usual bit for them and that’s fine. The title hadn’t meant anything in years so throwing this together is fine. Nothing great but it did its job I guess and we have a new champion now and he’s New Blood.

 

Jarrett says he’s not worried about Page.

 

Tag Titles: Team Package vs. Buff Bagwell/Shane Douglas

 

Russo comes out with the New Blood and sits in on commentary. Luger vs. Bagwell gets us going. Russo is guaranteeing victory. Buff rakes the eyes to stop the offense and it’s off to Shane. Luger casually gorilla presses him and Flair gets in a right hand and they go to the floor. Tony shouts BS about something as the New Blood beats on Flair. How a guy that was world champion seven years ago can be considered New Blood is beyond me but it’s WCW so who cares.

 

Bagwell beats down Flair and Tony wants more choking and violence. That would be cool if we hadn’t seen it in every single match so far tonight. Flair gets a chop and they hit the ropes, bumping heads to put both guys down. Luger FINALLY does something to break up the beating on Flair. There’s the hot tag to Luger who cleans house for a bit and there’s the Figure Four on Shane. Russo gets up with the bat as the Blockbuster hits Shane by mistake. Russo pulls the referee out as Kronik debuts and hits the double chokeslam on Luger to give the New Blood the titles with Russo counting the pin.

 

Rating: D+. Just another match here and Kronik added nothing for the most part. The New Blood win the first tournament and I’m sure that’s all they’ll win right, because it’s not like they’re going to put all the titles on the heel faction like the NWO because that would just be stupid when they had done that a few years ago right?

 

Steiner says he’s not worried about Sting because he has big arms.

 

Sting says Steiner is the next casualty of this war.

 

US Title: Sting vs. Scott Steiner

 

Steiner hammers away to start but Sting gets a drop….he gets a kick…we’ll call it a leg attack to take over. They go to the floor for a bit but Sting gets caught coming in off the top rope. We get into a nice rhythm here: Steiner hits Sting to knock him down then yells at the fans then hits Sting to knock him down then yells at the fans. Repeat that for about 2 minutes and you have the middle of this match.

 

Sting starts his comeback and hits the Stinger Splash. The second one results in the referee getting crushed so Sting goes for two more of them. The first one hits but the second is stopped as Vampiro pulls him under the ring through the mat and Sting is gone. He comes back and is busted open and out cold. Steiner puts on the Recliner and wins the title by TKO.

 

Rating: D-. Well this was worthless. Sting was more or less waiting around for the Vampy thing which wasn’t needed as he beat Vampiro cleanly earlier on in the night. Steiner gets the title after beating three guys despite being a terror in the back at this point. Steiner would hold the title for a few months until getting suspended for using a banned hold. Not bad for about 12 minutes combined in three matches.

 

We recap Jarrett vs. DDP which was set up Monday. Jarrett got his spot in this automatically while Page had to beat Luger and then the winner of Sting vs. Sid. Sid was champion but was stripped of the title instead. DDP beat Sting after New Blood interference in all three matches.

 

WCW World Title: Jeff Jarrett vs. Diamond Dallas Page

 

Kimberly is with Page here. Page hammers away to start us off and a discus clothesline puts Jarrett down. Spinning DDT gets two and a pescado follows. We’re on the floor again and Kimberly slaps Jeff. They go into the crowd and there’s a crutch used on Jarrett’s back. We can’t see anything here for the most part due to a combination of bad camera work and the fans being in the way.

 

Jarrett tries to cheat but gets caught in a sunset flip for two. Almost all DDP here so far and as I say that he gets crotched. There’s a superplex and Jeff goes to grab a chair. Jeff works over the back without using the chair because he’d rather wrestle. I can’t believe I’m saying this but God bless you Jeff Jarrett. Page starts firing back with right hands and a sitout powerbomb gets two.

 

Bischoff is standing in the aisle. They head to the floor where Jarrett uses various instruments on him. He rips up a copy of Page’s book and posts Page’s balls on the post. Page starts a comeback and rams Jeff’s balls into the post for some nice comeuppance. Jeff blocks the Diamond Cutter and down goes the referee. A belt shot puts Page down and the referee makes a two count.

 

Figure Four goes on to Page and Kimberly grabs the guitar. If you don’t know what she’s going to do with it, you’re a freaking moron. Page is still in the hold as we wait for the SHOCKING, yes SHOCKING I SAY heel turn by Page’s chick. He finally reverses it into a small package for two. Jarrett jumps into a spinning Rock Bottom for two. Jeff throws on a sleeper which is reversed, drawing Eric and Kim up to the apron. Diamond Cutter hits and there’s the turn and Jarrett wins the title.

 

Rating: C. It’s probably the best match of the night and that’s because it had some time to develop. If my memory and math are right this was the only match that went over ten minutes all night. I can understand having a problem with that when you have 13 matches, but there’s a simple solution to that: DON’T HAVE THIRTEEN MATCHES. Not a great match or even a good one but after three hours I’ll take it.

 

The New Blood celebrates together to end the show.

 

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

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

Wrestlewar 1989
Date: May 7, 1989
Location: Nashville Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee
Attendance: 5,200
Commentators: Jim Ross Bob Caudle

Well this is here because of one main reason and a few unimportant minor ones. The main one of course is the World Title match between Flair and Steamboat. Flair had dropped the title to Steamboat back in February at Chi-Town Rumble. There was a rematch at the sixth Clash where there was a one hour time limit in a 2/3 falls match.

They split the first two and Steamboat got a suplex for the pin to end it but Flair’s foot had been under the rope, resulting in this final blowoff match that is called the greatest match ever. I think that’s good enough reasoning to do this don’t you? Other than that there’s nothing at all special going on here. Let’s get to it.

I was lucky enough to find a recording of the original PPV meaning no clipping and I get the FULL preshow. For the sake of time I’ll skip that here but there are some interviews and basically just people talking about the matches. Free bonus material so I can’t complain here.

The opening is a very fast montage of people in matches tonight and then a picture of the logo with a banjo. Oh great.

Oddly enough when Jim and Bob are doing the intros they don’t put a graphic up for Jim. Most odd.

The Oak Ridge Boys sing the National Anthem.

Ross tells us that there will NOT be a hair vs. hair stipulation in the US Tag Title match. The NWA has decided against this as apparently WE WRESTLE in the NWA so gimmicks can’t be used. This would of course be just over one year before the Robocop show and about 30 minutes before the bullrope match.

We run down the card in order that it will air.

Doug Gilbert vs. Great Muta

Gilbert is a substitute for Junkyard Dog who likely found a larger group of people to annoy. This is back when Muta was blowing the minds of everyone on the planet as no one had ever seen anything like him. Muta Mist to the face to start and let the pain begin. Gilbert is rather sloppy to put it mildly. He’s from Tennessee so he’s the hometown boy here. Handspring elbow connects and this is more or less a squash. Moonsault misses, pescado hits, moonsault hits perfectly to end this. Nearly total squash.

Rating: N/A. Total dominance here with nothing from Gilbert that gave Muta anything to worry about. Muta was flat out amazing and his feud with Sting was coming soon which would be absolutely epic.

Lance Russell talks to Ric Flair which causes the 80s to explode. Flair says Steamboat is the best wrestler in the world, but to be the man you got to beat the man, and the man is Flair. So basic yet so effective.

Butch Reed vs. Ranger Ross

Oh what are you expecting here? Ross more or less is just a run of the mill soldier character. Ross does Rude’s hip swivel for no apparent reason. Ross takes him down to start as we may be in for a more competitive match than I thought. They look a lot alike so it’s a bit hard to tell them apart other than their tights. Reed finally takes over as he’s far from popular.

Long is here even though he didn’t have any guys at this point. Doom was on the way I guess. Reed uses a knee lift that literally does not hit Ross but who cares about that? We hit the chinlock which isn’t around the chin or actually locked but why nitpick I guess. They botch the heck out of something and go with a headlock as Ross uses various strikes to send Reed to the floor.

They punch on the floor a bit so Reed kicks him in the head as he’s coming back in. All Reed here as they mess up a suplex back in. A top rope shoulder block where Ross was too close so he more or less got destroyed to end it. Not much at all here.

Rating: F. No point, dull match, ton of botches, what else do you expect?

Luger says he’ll beat Michael Hayes.

Dick Murdoch vs. Bob Orton

This is a bullrope match and Murdoch is Captain Redneck. I give up. You can win by pin here. This is boring already and we’re not a minute into it. Nothing but punching for the most part. The story is that Gary Hart, Orton’s manager, did some evil business deals and Murdoch went after him, resulting in him getting his head kicked in by Orton. Here you go.

Orton controls then Murdoch punches him in the balls just to be a jerk. Murdoch hits him with the boot as this is rather boring to put it mildly. A few more boot shots get two. Murdoch finally hogties him and drops an elbow for the pin. For the love of crap SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE POINT OF THESE MATCHES ARE!

Rating: F. It was like 4 minutes long and I have no idea who the face was supposed to be. I can’t stand these southern boys matches where there’s some idiot cowboy dude out there and he wants to treat the other guy like a cow. HATE these things.

Orton hangs Murdoch afterwards and no one cares.

Hayes says he’ll beat Luger. Hayes is a glorified jobber and Luger is more or less the next guy to challenge Flair for the world title. This should be a total squash which was common back then on PPV in midcard title matches.

Samoan Swat Team vs. Dynamic Dudes

This is the Dudes’ debut I think. They’re skateboarders and no one could stand them. Both guys deny being part of the team today as even they get how stupid it was. The Swat Team are the Headshrinkers. The announcers keep talking about how awesome the Dues are. Dangerously manages the Samoans here and we start with Johnny Ace vs. Rikishi. What a great sounding match.

Shane comes in and Fatu drops down to avoid something but Shane dives behind him anyway. Was there a point to that? Nice dropkick by the ECW Dude. They double team Fatu and nothing much is going on here. And then Samu kicks the heck out of Johnny to take over. Ross says they’re like caged animals. You know I don’t think caged animals often wear tights and pound on professional wrestlers named Johnny.

Samu uses a leg whip. What kind of wild savage uses a leg whip? Johnny gets beaten down for a good while as we hit five minutes. We get heel miscommunication but Johnny still can’t make the tag. You can tell he’s in trouble when he can’t get a tag even with that. We hear again about how amazing the Dudes are from Caudle as I think he has a shrine to them somewhere.

Johnny tries to face plant Fatu like an idiot but for some reason it works. He can’t make the tag though as he’s a foot away but just misses it. Fatu uses a Boston Crab, allowing Paul E to grab the mic and say that Johnny is as useless as a Nashville woman. Shane finally comes in and that doesn’t get him anywhere. Fatu goes to slam Shane but Johnny gets a dropkick off the top for Shane to fall on top and get the pin.

Rating: C-. It’s about as formula based as you could get here but at the same time there was absolutely nothing special going on here at all. The Dudes were just annoying and the Samoans were just generic big men. This was ok at best but compared to the other tag teams going on at the time, this was nothing. Not a horrible match though.

Video about Steamboat vs. Flair set to Final Countdown. The highlights are cool if nothing else. It’s a music video set to Europe singing Final Countdown, but pretty cool.

The Oak Ridge Boys perform for FIFTEEN MINUTES. Dang Kid Rock has nothing on them. Ok so he does but this was still a waste of time.

Lance Russell is with Lou Thesz, Pat O’Connor and Terry Funk, the three judges for the world title match tonight. I’ve never heard Pat or Lou talk. Funk is young looking here. This is before his hardcore days started. They give their criteria to the winner.

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Michael Hayes

This would be like Cena vs. Miz two years ago. Hayes is the career tag team guy that says he can do it without help. Luger is the hottest thing in the world not named Sting. Both guys in blue here which is kind of a weird look. Hayes stalls a lot to open the match as he tries to frustrate Lex. Hayes was Luger’s partner for no apparent reason and then turned on him because he’s a natural heel.

Teddy Long is here again for no adequately explained reason. Hayes gets slapped and stalls again. He comes back in, gets slammed and hits the floor again. Five minutes gone and Hayes has stalled more than a broken down truck. Hiro Matsuda, a big time heel manager, is here too. Luger works on the arm to take away the DDT which makes sense.

The idea here is Hayes does basic stuff, it doesn’t work, Luger pounds on him for a bit, Hayes stalls and cheats then we start again. Ten minutes in and Hayes has a chinlock. Hayes gets in a nice left hand and a bulldog for two. Matsuda sends Luger into the railing as Luger is in trouble. Bulldog is blocked by Luger and the crowd pops big.

Luger goes nuts again with a bunch of slams and clotheslines. The Rack is reversed though and Hayes gets the DDT to shock the crowd. No cover though so we slug it out. They hit heads and the referee goes down. One of the Freebirds comes down and puts Hayes on Luger and shoves Luger’s foot off the ropes to allow Hayes to win the title as the crowd is SILENT. This was legitimately a shock, up there with Sheamus beating Cena for the title at TLC.

Rating: D+. The match sucked but the ending brings it up a good bit. This was far too long at over 16 minutes but it wasn’t completely worthless. Luger would get the title back in just over two weeks and hold it for about a year and a half so it’s not like this meant anything long term. Pretty weak match but the ending helped it a lot.

Sting is all fired up.

TV Title: The Iron Sheik vs. Sting

Sheik doesn’t even get an intro. Sting’s pop is just ridiculous. He had a cool entrance where this army of kids would run through the curtain before he came out. He’s the hottest thing in the world and would be for a very long time. Sheik’s other dude hits Sting with a flag pole and Sheik pounds on him a bit. Take a guess how long this works. The match ends in maybe two minutes with Sheik tapping. This was the norm for Sting for a long time as he wasn’t ready for Flair yet but he was way bigger than anyone else so it was all they had for him.

Steamboat talks about how great this is going to be and that no matter if he wins or loses he’ll shake Flair’s hand and good luck. Very classy here as this was far more about respect than hatred which helped it a great deal I think.

NWA World Heavyweight Championship: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat

Flair brings out FORTY women with him. That’s not an exaggeration either. No one can say he can’t make an entrance. Steamboat brings his wife and his son on a freaking pony. Dude, he got his son a pony. How awesome is that? The judges are introduced which is a really great idea. Thesz is a six time world champion which back then was a seemingly unbreakable record although Flair is a five time one here.

Basically everyone knows this is going to absolutely amazing but the question is will it be the best match ever as most people have made it out to be. It’s considered the best match ever, so let’s get to it. They feel each other out a lot as it’s a chess match so far. Big armdrag by Steamboat as the cameraman is filming the fans. We’re going to get updates from the judges every fifteen minutes.

Flair chops the tar out of Steamboat so Steamboat chops the tar out of Flair. The challenger goes to the floor after some SICK chops from both guys. Steamboat works the arm to set up his double chickenwing that he made Flair submit to back in April. I love those armdrags. In an impressive moment, Flair is getting his arm cranked and managed to tell a fan to keep their mouth shut.

And that is why Flair was able to stay where he did for so long. He played to the crowd so well. Little things like those are what separates great people from ok ones. By doing things like those or putting his feet on the ropes for a pin he ticks people off just a little bit more so that you want to see him lose just a little bit more. It may not sound like much but it adds up.

More arm work from the Dragon as Flair is in trouble. They chop it out again and Flair is rocked. Back to the arm as you have the pure psychology there. Steamboat knows he can get Flair to submit to an arm hold so why would you go away from that? Flair uses the good arm to get a fireman’s carry and put Steamboat on the top which fails for some reason. Flair is dropkicked to the floor and doesn’t want to get back in.

An elbow misses by Flair so it’s right back to the armbar. We’re about fifteen minutes in and we’re getting the first scores from the judges: Steamboat is definitely ahead and it’s unanimous. Steamboat goes insane again and chops Flair half to death. He sends him to the corner and we get a Flair flip but he gets caught in the Tree of Woe. Steamboat, ever the gentleman, pounds away at the ribs and chest.

Mostly Steamboat here as Flair is just trying to stay in there. We hit the fifteen minute mark and Flair sends Steamboat to the floor but it was momentum so it’s NOT a DQ. I can’t stand that rule but WCW kept it for years. On the floor and they chop it out again with Flair trying to get away. Steamboat climbs the ropes (not in the corner mind you) and comes off with a big chop. Flair Flip gets chopped down as well as it’s all Steamboat.

Back to the arm one more time as Flair’s arm is killing him here. Steamboat misses a charge and goes over the top as well. Flair drops a knee as you get a shot of a BIG tarped off section in the back. The referee goes down by accident as Flair controls now. Belly to back gets two. About twenty minutes in now. Another knee drop and a butterfly suplex get two each.

Flair keeps cradling the head on covers for some reason. That’s not something he tends to do but he’s doing it for every cover here. Suplex on the floor has Steamboat rocking. We get some new results from the judges as it’s 2-1 for Flair which is kind of stupid as Flair has controlled for about 15 minutes and Flair for about 8. Steamboat has 4 total votes to Flair’s 2 which Ross says puts him ahead. Was there supposed to be a total or something?

Steamboat gets a rollup for two but both guys go to the floor and everyone is down. On a countout we go to the judges which apparently would go to Steamboat at 4-2. Ok so apparently these points do indeed count. Flair goes up and of course gets slammed down and here comes Steamboat. Crowd is way into this if you didn’t guess that part.

Suplex off the middle rope rocks Flair again and here comes Steamboat. He goes for the chickenwing but Flair gets his feet in the ropes before it goes on. He hits a top rope chop but Flair hits the ropes the second time to send Steamboat to the floor and Ricky has a bad knee now. After some basic knee stuff, there’s the Figure Four to a big pop.

We’re thirty minutes in and Steamboat is in big trouble. Rope is grabbed though and Flair stays on the leg. BIG chop in the corner has Steamboat in big trouble. Steamboat throws chops and Flair pounds the knee. Enziguri connects and here comes Steamboat again. He goes for a slam, and in a GREAT nod to Steamboat, Flair rolls him up into a small package for the pin and the title.

Rating: A+. It’s a great match indeed. I’m not entirely sold on it being the greatest match of all time, but this was indeed great and worked all the way through the thirty minutes. This was two guys being allowed to perform out there and it worked as well as it could have. Excellent match and definitely one of the best ever, but I’m not sure if it’s the greatest. Doesn’t matter though obviously as it’s great.

Steamboat shakes his hand and Flair says Steamboat is the greatest champions he’s ever faced. Funk comes in and congratulates him on being the best champion, saying that if it had gone 60 minutes he would have voted Flair. Funk won’t leave and challenges Flair for the first title shot but Flair says no because he’s not an active contender.

As long as Flair has been around, apparently he’s stupid enough to tell Terry Funk that he’s not good enough. Funk says he was kidding and they hug. Naturally Funk DRILLS him and beats the living crap out of him. And then, in something that back then was huge, piledrives him on the judges’ table, which doesn’t break. Flair wouldn’t wrestle again for nearly three months, returning at the Great American Bash to face Funk, which is the next show I’m doing.

Something to note here: look at how basic this was. Flair has a great match, Funk wants a shot, Flair says no, Funk doesn’t like it and injures Flair, big match is made. WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO GET???

We go to Nikita Koloff who will be refereeing the world tag title match. Yeah there are two tag title matches left to go. The booking wasn’t your normal formula stuff back then. Nikita won’t be intimidated.

World Tag Titles: Varsity Club vs. Road Warriors

The Club is Rotunda and Williams this time. The Warriors coming out to Iron Man is still awesome stuff. It’s on while their pyro is still going off as this is a big old feud. Big boot to Rotunda and he’s in real trouble already. Koloff throws Sullivan out. The Warriors lost the titles to the Club in April at the same show as Flair vs. Steamboat II with the fastest count ever by Teddy Long which is why he was fired.

Hawk and Williams start properly here and it’s just a big brawl. Williams is completely awesome as he manhandles Hawk which isn’t something you see very often. Hawk’s arm hits the post. Double clothesline back in the ring and both guys are down. Animal comes in and destroys everyone in sight but only gets two as Williams saves.

Big old brawl but Rotunda goes to the floor. The Road Warriors do their big power stuff and it’s Doomsday Device time for Williams. Dan Spivey and Kevin Sullivan run out and take out Nikita as the champions beat up Animal. It gets thrown out as a DQ for the Warriors of course.

Rating: D. Total nothing match here but this wasn’t supposed to be anything special. The fans pop big for the win but no titles. They would never get those titles back.

US Tag Titles: Dan Spivey/Kevin Sullivan vs. Eddie Gilbert/Rick Steiner

Gilbert and Steiner are the champions here. They’re the First Family apparently despite not being related. Sullivan almost immediately goes after Hyatt as he had a thing for blondes I guess. Other than his own wife you know. Spivey sends Steiner’s shoulder into the post twice and adds a shoulderbreaker so it’s more or less 2-1 now.

Apparently Steiner was legit hurt so that explains the injury thing. It’s a glorified handicap match with Steiner not even able to get his jacket off due to how bad his arm is. Gilbert gets massacred by Spivey who throws in what we would call a Punjabi Plunge. Spivey was decent but Diesel more or less ended his career off a powerbomb. Steiner gets onto the apron.

Sullivan comes in for a second but here’s Spivey again. Gilbert gets a tag out of nowhere but the referee didn’t see it. Everything breaks down anyway though and Steiner hits a Steiner Line to Sullivan and Gilbert falls on top to keep the belts and pop the crowd like crazy. The Varsity Club beats on him some more afterwards. Gilbert saves Hyatt from Sullivan afterwards.

Rating: D. Another pointless match here other than to give the fans something to send them home happy. Nothing more than that. The titles would be stripped later in the month, I’d assume due to the injury and they would be gone for about 9 months and would be gone in less than a year and a half.

Ross says that the Varsity Club have been stripped of the world tag titles. The Freebirds would win a tournament at the next Clash to get them which I’ve already reviewed.

We replay the Funk/Flair thing to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. This is the epitome of a one match show. Only the world title match is worth anything but that was how this era went for the most part. The next show would more than make up for it though as it’s considered the best WCW/NWA show of all time. That’s also the next review I’m doing. Anyway, the show isn’t worth seeing, but the Flair/Steamboat match is. That’s about it though. Get the two hour version if you really want to watch it as the full one drags A LOT.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

Wrestlewar 1990
Date: February 25, 1990
Location: Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
Attendance: 9,894
Commentators: Jim Ross, Terry Funk

We’re into 1990 now and Funk has stepped into commentary, so we need a new feud for Flair. That man would have been Sting who had been thrown out of the Horsemen on February 6. At Starrcade, Sting had pinned Flair to win the Iron Man Tournament and asked for a title shot. Flair snapped and turned the Horsemen heel again, destroying Sting in the process. That night, Sting legit hut his knee so his title match tonight (which he was supposed to win) was postponed. The replacement? Lex Luger, who has had more classics with Flair than should be legally allowed. Let’s get to it.

This show is called Wild Thing. The NWA had a habit of adding random titles to shows which have nothing to do with them for the most part.

Dan Spivey is hurt and may be out tonight.

JR and Terry run down the card.

Teddy Long says Spivey is indeed hurt and there will be a replacement for him tonight. There’s another surprise later as well.

Kevin Sullivan/Buzz Sawyer vs. Dynamic Dudes

Sawyer is insane and that’s about all you need to know about him. He starts with Ace and these people are a bit more receptive than the Philly crowd was in our last show. Speaking of last shows, this is the final major show that Sawyer was on for WCW if that means anything for you. Ace sends him to the floor and a brawl breaks out on the outside. Shane and Sullivan come in and the Dudes keep control with the arm work.

Ace comes in to work on the arm more but Sullivan gets a tag. He also gets in a fight with Sawyer, much to the Dudes’ amusement. That’s smart: why break up a fight when you can get a breather? Sawyer’s arm goes into the post so Shane cranks on it. Out to the floor with Sawyer taking over. Sunset flip gets two for Ace and there’s the tag to Shane. Buzz immediately takes him down and hooks a bearhug to take Shane to the mat.

Sullivan comes in and pops Ace, which draws him in so that Sullivan can throw Shane to the floor. Everything breaks down and Johnny botches a flying headscissors. Sawyer goes up and hits a big old flying splash for the pin. That’s the interim Raw GM and the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations for you. Funk called it the Jam Sandwich, which is something Brodus should use.

Rating: C-. Not much here as none of these guys was much to watch at this point. I’ve never been a big fan of Shane and Ace is just ok. He never was all that good as his size became an issue for him but he was too slim to be a power guy. Not a very good match with a total contrast in styles that didn’t work at all.

Norman the Lunatic, who is a goofy character that isn’t all there upstairs, hits on Missy Hyatt.

Cactus Jack Manson vs. Norman the Lunatic

Yes it’s Mick Foley and no he doesn’t mean a thing yet. He’s pretty much just thrown onto the card here, much like Cuban Assassin was last time. Jack jumps him to start but gets thrown to the floor with ease. JR: “This will not be a battle of wits. It may be a battle of nitwits.” Also Jack’s favorite color is light black and wants to be the foreman of the Double Cross Ranch.

Jack rams Norman’s head into the buckle and Norman says do it again. A quick bearhug goes on Jack but he’s soon whipped over the corner and out to the floor in a big crash. Headbutt knocks Jack off the apron but misses a charge into the post. Back in and Cactus rips at his face. Cactus pounds him down and it’s off to a chinlock. The electric chair drop puts Jack down but a splash misses. Jack tries a sunset flip but Norman drops onto him for the pin.

Rating: D. Yeah it was bad but Foley of course would get a lot more going for him. Norman is more famous as Bastian Booger and a lot of other bad characters in WWF. Jack was clearly going to be a guy that bumped like mad, but at the end of the day what sets him apart is that he made people care about him as opposed to guys like say New Jack.

Jim Cornette talks about how things change but some things stay the same. Tonight the Midnights have the Rock N Roll Express, which is something that never changes.

Rock N Roll Express vs. Midnight Express

This is another one of those matches where the starting rating rises up from a C to a B. These guys feuded for probably 6 years on and off and had more classics than you could shake a stick at. Why you would want to shake a stick at it is beyond me but you get the idea. Gibson vs. Stan gets us going. Lane dives to the mat and they counter each other a lot. Gibson counters a counter and drops a fist onto Lane’s head to take over.

Cornette gets in an argument with Nick Patrick and wants to box him. This is an old spot they did which always gets a big reaction. Cornette is dispatched quickly and it’s Morton vs. Lane now. The fans are into this too. Bobby gets knocked to the floor and Lane shoves him down as well. We never got a big singles match between those two and I think that’s for the best.

Lane vs. Bobby now and they speed things up. Nothing seems to be coming out of the shove from a few moments ago. Off to a test of strength and Morton is losing. He climbs up Bobby, stands on his shoulders, and jumps onto Lane in the corner. Gibson runs off Lane and the Midnights are knocked to the floor. Cornette tries to get in and falls over the top rope so Gibson knocks back down. Both Midnights are double clotheslined to the floor as well and it’s been one sided for about the first eight minutes.

Back in now and it’s Gibson vs. Lane but Lane still can’t get anything going. Morton comes in for a double elbow but gets sent outside. Never mind again as Lane goes into the post. Now it’s Eaton again and it’s a slugout. Terry gets into this and they both tumble to the floor. Outside Lane slams Morton and the Midnights take over.

Now we get into a much more traditional tag match which was popularized if not perfected by these teams, making this a fun match. Morton is sent to the floor and rammed into various metal objects. He manages a sunset flip but Cornette grabs the referee. Morton tries an O’Connor Roll but Lane makes a blind tag and hooks a neckbreaker for two. Eaton goes after the arm with a single arm DDT and into a hammerlock.

Lane comes in for a quick reverse chinlock before bringing in Eaton for a top rope elbow. Back to the arm by Lane. Man the Midnights tag in fast. Eaton works on the arm again with the hammerlock and the Midnights set for the Rocket Launcher. It hits the knees though and here’s Gibson. Everything breaks down but he’s still 2-1. The Midnights load up the Flapjack but Gibson rolls through for the pin on Lane.

Rating: B+. Oh come on it’s the Midnights vs. Rock N Roll. There’s practically no way that this can be screwed up. It’s a great speed match and they know each other so well that they’re going to have a good match through familiarity if nothing else. Fun stuff here but somehow not their best work together.

The Road Warriors have Sting armbands on and are ready for the Chicago street fight up next.

Skyscrapers vs. Road Warriors

Street fight. The Skyscrapers are almost a revolving door of members and in this case it’s Mark Callous and a masked man who is played by Mike Enos. The Skyscrapers have Teddy Long to counter Paul Ellering. Long comes in to fight Ellering and is knocked to the floor with one punch. Everyone is in street clothes. What street these would be normal on I have no idea but the thought is there.

The Warriors dominate to start and here comes Doom for no apparent reason. They’re in suits and Teddy goes to join them. Enos gets in some offense to take over (he’s just the masked man here but I’ll be calling him Enos to keep things clearer) but it’s pretty short lived. The Road Warriors shrug it off and Hawk hits a running clothesline off the apron to Callous. They get back in and this slows down even more. The Warriors throw Callous out and the Doomsday Device kills Enos easily for the pin.

Rating: D. I love the Road Warriors but they need the right kind of team to make things work. The Skyscrapers were never quite a team that worked, at least not here. They were good at destroying jobbers and small people but having brawls like this was never really anything worth seeing.

Doom comes in post match and brawls with the Warriors in a much more entertaining fight. This feud never really happened as the Warriors jumped to the WWF in June.

US Tag Titles: Freebirds vs. Brian Pillman/Z-Man

The Birds are challenging here. They get sent to the floor immediately and the champs steal their clothes and dance around as Badstreet plays in the background. Funny moment. The crowd is all over the Birds. They weren’t much in the ring but they were heat machines. Today is Flair’s birthday according to JR. We finally get going with Brian vs. Hayes. Brian knocks him around with a clothesline and Garvin fluffs his hair.

Speaking of Garvin here he is and he gets Z-Man. Z takes him down with a headlock but misses a dropkick. Garvin, ever the Rhodes Scholar, ducks his head and gets kicked in the face. Back to Brian for another headlock. Hayes comes back in and things are going slowly to start, implying that they have a lot of time to work with. Sunset flip with a great jump gets two for Pillman.

Z-Man works on the arm and goes into a Fujiwar Armbar to Hayes. Back to Garvin who loses any advantage that Hayes had gotten on Z-Man. Pillman comes in as the fans seem a bit distracted. Hayes comes in and hooks a sleeper (sleep hold according to Ross) as JR talks about Paul Boesch, the promoter of Houston Wrestling for decades, demonstrating this hold in the second World War.

Brian escapes and sends him into the corner but charges into a great left hand to put him down. Brian rolls through a cross body for two. Back to Garvin as this is going a lot longer than I was expecting it to go. Since Garvin can’t manage to keep Brian in one place he makes the tag to Z-Man. Z-Man puts the Z Lock (sleeper) on Hayes but Garvin comes off the top for the save.

Garvin hooks a chinlock as this match has gone well over fifteen minutes so far. Now they mix things up with a Hayes chinlock. After 18 minutes, we’re told this is a rematch from the finals of the tournament where Z-Man and Pillman won the titles in the first place. Z-Man gets a small package for two. Hayes is like enough of that and goes back to the chinlock. JR thinks Hayes looks like Alice Cooper. Terry wants to know if Hayes knows who Buffalo Bill is.

Hayes goes up and kind of steps off with no significant contact being made. Back to Garvin as this needs to end really soon. Who decided to give the Birds over twenty minutes? Top rope fist gets two for Hayes after a non-tag. Bulldog gets two as Pillman breaks it up. Back to the chinlock #4 but Zenk drops him with a DDT of his own. There’s the tag to Pillman and the fans care more than I expected them to. Pillman cleans house but Hayes brings in a title but Pillman comes off the top with a cross body as the title is being taken out to retain the titles.

Rating: D. Technically the match was fine but MY GOODNESS this ran long. It clocks in at almost twenty four minutes which is just far too long. Pillman and Zenk can easily go that long but the Birds were already through their whole set of stuff at about 10 minutes in. The solution of course? Go 14 minutes past that. WAY too long and if you cut this to like 12 minutes it’s probably an okish match.

The Birds DDT both champs post match.

The Steiners are all fired up and dedicate their match to Sting. Rick calls himself a big bad bully beater upper.

Tag Titles: Ole Anderson/Arn Anderson vs. Steiner Brothers

This was supposed to be Tully/Arn but he failed a drug test and was pretty much finished in mainstream wrestling so they brought out Ole in the finals part of his in ring career to fill in for him. Scott starts with Arn and the ring is quickly cleared by pure power. The Steiners are champions if that’s unclear. The Andersons try to double team and that fails as well. Rick and Scott go after the knee of Ole so Ole bails and almost says some very bad words.

Rick vs. Ole now and it turns into another brawl very quickly with the champs clearing the ring again. Rick hooks on a headlock to Arn and JR talks about Rick wanting to be an elementary school science teacher. Terry wants to know why he isn’t anyone’s favorite wrestler. Arn gets in a knee and goes up but has Rick waiting on him. For once a Horseman thinks better of it and climbs down.

Arn bails to the floor and both Steiners are in again. That’s been a habit of theirs tonight. Back to Ole with a headlock on Scott which goes nowhere. Arn comes in again and takes an atomic drop, allowing him to do his great selling of it. Figure Four is broken up by Ole who then comes in legally. For some reason Ole tries amateur stuff on Scott who easily suplexes him and tags in Rick.

The Anderson get an advantage for what must have been a good three seconds but Rick suplexes Arn to stop it cold. Ole tries to hit Rick in the head and that goes about as well as anything else has. The Andersons are brothers at this point for those of you that try to keep track of how they’re related. They go after Rick’s arm which is their trademark. Ole tries to hit Rick in the head which is enough for Rick to make the tag back to Scott.

Scott and Arm go outside and Scott accidentally clotheslines the post. You know Arn is going to go after that like Elvis on a pound of bacon. Ole comes back in and the arm work continues. For some reason the Andersons keep switching off from the arm to general attacks which never work. A Vader Bomb gets knees and there’s a Frankensteiner and a hot tag to Rick. In a fast ending, Rick punches them both down and a fast small package pins Ole.

Rating: C-. It’s not bad but again this was long and not that great. The Andersons were a lot stupider than you would expect from them here which is very Un-Horsemenlike. It’s much better than the previous one but it’s still long and boring. It was too slow and these guys didn’t click at all for the most part.

The Andersons get in a double team move on the arm of Scott post match to injure it.

Lex says he’s nervous but he’s going to Rack Flair tonight and win the title.

Flair says that he’s great and has Woman says that Lex needs to get his engine started, whatever that means.

NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger

Sting is with Lex while Woman is with Flair. The idea here is that Sting was supposed to get the title shot here but legit injured his knee which makes this out to be a “tragedy” according to the introductions. This is the main event and we have 45 minutes to go during Flair’s entrance. Chain wrestling to start with no one having an advantage. Flair shoves the referee and is shoved right back.

Flair agrees to a test of strength and down goes Naitch. Flair bails to the floor and says Wooo a lot. Lex knocks him to the floor again so Ric takes the walk. Luger chases him down and the beating continues. Lex is US Champion here. A gorilla press by Luger puts Flair down so Flair tries the chops. Those do about as well as they do against Sting and Lex is all fired up.

There’s a bear hug which Luger bends forward for a two count. Luger hits ten punches in the corner but Flair ducks a clothesline and Luger falls to the floor. Flair chops away outside and back in they go. Scratch that as Flair dumps him again and calls for Woman to get on the apron. With the referee distracted Flair sends him into the barricade and chops him down. Flair punches him back down to the floor as I guess he’s looking for the countout.

Back in for more than ten seconds this time and Flair drops a knee on the head. Another knee drop hits for two. Lex pops up for his comeback but misses a corner charge and is right back down again. This is one of those matches that’s hard to make fun of because they both know what they’re doing and have such great chemistry together that there’s not much they can’t do together.

Flair hooks a hammerlock and stomps on the arm. Lex starts coming back again so Flair pokes him in the eyes, which Funk calls the Achilles Tendon of big men. Luger gets caught in another hammerlock and when he tries to punch his way out of it, the referee stops the fist, allowing Flair to poke him in the eye again. Ric works on the arm even more but Lex grabs the throat to break it up. He throws Flair into the corner for the Flair Flip and we go to the floor.

Flair chops Lex again and Luger is all fired up. Back in and Flair is caught in a sleeper which puts him down. The champ gets his foot on the ropes and manages a belly to back to escape. Luger suplexes him right back and goes after the knee. He wraps it around the post and tries a figure four. Even JR basically says it’s awful as he spins the wrong way, making him look like he’s a nine year old imitating it.

Ric fights up and chops some more but walks into a powerslam for two. The pop on the kickout was big as the fans thought it was over. Flair still can’t get that the chops don’t work and Lex is all fired up. After a quick exchange outside, Luger backslides him for two. Luger punches him in the corner but Flair atomic drops him, hurting Lex’s knee in the process. Where are these knee injuries in matches against people not named Flair?

A pair of top rope axhandles gets two for Flair. Butterfly suplex gets two. Here’s a sleeper by Flair as he hasn’t gone after the knee much yet. That gets broken after awhile and NOW it’s knee time. We’re probably half an hour into this. Flair works on the knee in his usual manner as Sting comes back to ringside. Sting cheers Luger on enough for him to reverse the hold and it’s broken up.

He slaps Lex to fire him up and Flair bails fast. Out to the floor and Lex no sells a whip into the barricade. There’s a gorilla press and Flair goes up, only to get slammed down. Luger clotheslines him to the floor then suplexes him back in for two. There’s the powerslam which Luger earlier said would set up the Rack. Woman distracts Luger, allowing Flair to knee Lex in the back, crushing the referee in the process.

Lex clotheslines Flair down but there’s no referee. A superplex kills Flair dead again but the Andersons run in because there’s no referee. There’s the Torture Rack and the referee is back up, but the Andersons go after Sting. Luger drops the hold when Flair is about to give up, going to save his friend. The Horsemen keep him out there long enough for the count out and a HUGE boo from the crowd. Sting’s day was coming soon though.

Rating: A. See, THIS is how you book a screwjob finish. It made perfect sense for Lex to go out there, meaning that for once he wasn’t an idiot. They had the crowd into this and when you can do that during a forty minute match, that’s usually a great sign. It was an excellent match and the ending is about as perfect as it could have been. Luger would get a rematch the next month in a cage and then it was Sting’s turn.

The Steiners come out for the save. Good thing they couldn’t be out 40 seconds earlier to let Lex get the title isn’t it?

Overall Rating: B-. Still not a classic but it was a better show than Halloween Havoc for sure. The two later tag matches weren’t anything of note and you can always find a good Express vs. Express match. Still though, this was a good show overall and there really isn’t anything all that terrible on it. I’d highly recommend the clipped version or one with a fast forward button at the ready.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

Halloween Havoc 1997
Date: October 26, 1997
Location: MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada
Attendance: 12,457
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Dusty Rhodes, Bobby Heenan

 

This was another request and since I want to get some WCW PPVs done I have no problem knocking this one out. We’re two months out from Starrcade so this show doesn’t mean much. We have something resembling a double main event with Hogan vs. Piper in a cage and DDP vs. Savage in what would be called a last man standing match.  Let’s get to it.

 

After a brief intro that is literally all about Hogan vs. Piper, we’re into the arena for some talking.

 

Tony talks about how a year ago Piper debuted in this arena. Oh and it’s the biggest cage match EVER!!! The announcers talk about the cage match a lot which is of course non-title as Sting vs. Hogan is carved into granite here. If Hogan wins, the NWO may never die. Yes, Piper was pushed that hard.

 

Yuji Nagata vs. Ultimo Dragon

 

The Dragon wanted to get his hands (or is it claws?) into Sonny Onoo, the manager of Nagata. Onoo is the old manager of Dragon and he screwed him over for Nagata. I guess cuddling with the scales didn’t work. This feud went on way too long and no one really wanted to see it but it kept getting pushed anyway. They trade some kicks to start and Nagata takes over.

 

They speed things up and Dragon tries some more kicks which results in him getting suplexed hard. There’s the head stand in the corner but Dragon gets caught in a neck crank. He can’t get anything really going here. Dragon finally breaks the hold and gets kicked for his efforts. Tenay thinks the winner here might be #1 contender for the Cruiserweight Title.

 

Camel clutch by Nagata and Dragon is in trouble again. We hear about Nagata being in MMA which is true. He was 0-2 and his fights lasted less than a combined 90 seconds. To be fair though, his opponents were Cro Cop and Fedor. Wait those fights hadn’t happened yet. Unless they were amateur or at REALLY small promotions, I have no idea what fights Tenay is talking about.

 

Suplex gets two for Nagata as I’m in pain simply thinking about having to fight those two. Dragon gets a Dragon Screw leg Whip out of nowhere and we hit the floor. Dragon tries a dive and jumps into a kick. This has been about 85-90% Nagata. Here comes Raven with the Flock for some reason as Dragon hits the Asai Moonsault. Back in the ring and the handspring elbow by Dragon eats a knee.

 

Sunset bomb off the top gets two for Dragon as he’s slowly getting more moves to hit. Apparently he has a bad elbow. Standing moonsault gets two and Dragon wants the spinning frankensteiner. Nagata reverses and is able to drop the arm across the thing that connects the buckle to the post. He hammers the arm and gets a belly to belly for two.

 

Nagata Lock (a leg lock. What the heck?) goes on for a bit but Dragon grabs a Dragon Sleeper for a few seconds as Nagata escapes. Both guys down now but Dragon pops up to hit his kicking sequence to take over. Spinning frankensteiner hits but the arm is hurt. He goes for the Dragon Sleeper and Nagata reverses into an armbar for the tap out. Quick finish there.

 

Rating: B-. Basic match here and Nagata was dull as always, but this was still good. This feud would go on forever with Nagata never really losing. Dragon never really meant anything after this, although you could say the same thing for the whole company in about six months. Not a bad opener, but Dragon got beaten down too much.

 

Disco Inferno is on WCW.com with Mark Madden. Hey it’s like a WZ Party! He runs his mouth about facing Jacqueline, a woman, tonight. I can’t stand her and this angle was bad.

 

Gedo vs. Chris Jericho

 

This is a bonus match. Gedo has blonde hair and is in a dark yellow cut off shirt and pants. Gedo’s partners may be coming to WCW soon apparently. Apparently Gedo lost in the finals of the Super J Cup. Jericho sends him to the floor and then a long suplex in the ring puts Gedo down. Jericho is a face here.

 

He chops away but gets knocked over the rope once and skins the cat. I still wonder how in the world that name came from. Gedo is apparently a fan of 1970s southern brawling and is like Dusty Rhodes. Oh dear indeed. And this guy almost won the Super J Cup? That could be horrifying. Gedo takes over with a powerslam and a sleeper but Jericho gets a clothesline to make Gedo flip inside out.

 

Double powerbomb by Jericho (I didn’t know he did that in WCW) gets two. They both go to the top but Jericho botches the tar out of it (how often do you hear that line?) and almost lands in a Styles Clash kind of move. That looked painful as all goodness but not quite a FREAKING OW MAN level. Pescado by Jericho eats boots and they head back in. Gedo gets a shot at the knee and goes up, only to jump into the Liontamer to end this.

 

Rating: C+. Pretty good match here but not quite as good as the first one. The styles kind of clashed here (haha that was funny) but the result was still solid. Jericho botching is always interesting to see due to the rarity of it. Decent match as yet again we see the WCW formula of good matches from young guys and the bad matches from the old guys to end it.

 

Mongo and Debra argue about divorce things.

 

Cruiserweight Title: Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio

 

This is mask vs. title with Eddie as champion of course. Great heat on Eddie to start as he’s totally evil here. Rey gets an arm drag and a cross body to send him to the floor almost immediately. Rey flips to the apron but gets caught by Eddie and tripped, sending him to the floor. Eddie rams Rey into the steps and adds a hilo to the back in the ring. Rey fires off a dropkick but tries a cartwheel which gets caught in a belly to back as Eddie continues his dominance.

 

Tilt-a-whirl backbreaker by Eddie gets two. Eddie goes after the mask but this is part of a bodysuit kind of a thing. Abdominal stretch by Eddie and Rey is in trouble. Tenay says that Rey used to wrestle as Hummingbird which Heenan of course rips into. Rey is on his back in a test of strength position so he uses Eddie as a board to pop up with and jumps to the top rope, backflips over and grabs a DDT out of nowhere to break Eddie’s momentum. AWESOME move.

 

Rey sends Eddie to the apron and tries a dropkick but Eddie moves and sends Rey to the floor. After sending him into the railing it’s a camel clutch with Eddie ripping at the mask again. Off to the Gory Special and Rey is in trouble. Modified surfboard as Eddie is in total control here. We hear about El Santo which is someone you hardly ever hear about at all.

 

Rey tries to fire some shots off in the corner but gets sent into the opposite corner and caught in the Tree of Woe. Baseball slide by Eddie misses and he does the Hennig crotch spot against the post. Rey dives off the top onto Eddie on the floor and here comes Rey. Standing rana gets two back in the ring. A headscissors puts Eddie on the floor and in perhaps the most awesome spot I’ve ever seen, Rey gets a running start and dives over the ropes, catches Eddie in a rana and swings him around without touching the floor until he releases the hold.

 

Back in and a corkscrew moonsault gets two. Split legged moonsault misses and it’s a big powerbomb by Eddie and Rey is in trouble. Crowd is getting into this quickly. Big heat on Eddie now. Rey takes him down with a spinwheel kick but the West Coast Pop is reversed into a backbreaker. Frog Splash misses so Rey goes up top. Eddie tries a crucifix bomb off the top but Rey reverses into a rana out of air and holds Eddie down to get the pin and the title! AWESOME ending!

 

Rating: A+. This was in the running for match of the year and it’s easy to see why. The problem is when you have Austin vs. Hart in the I Quit match and the original Hell in a Cell in the same year. That kind of slows things down a bit which is a shame as this was a great match indeed. Rey was awesome at this point and moved around here so well that it was almost uncanny. Great match and Eddie played an awesome cocky heel here. Great match and the best I’ve ever seen out of Eddie I think.

 

Bischoff and Hogan babble about wanting Sting guaranteed to be out of the arena before he’ll fight tonight. Ok then. This took four minutes somehow with them talking about wanting a contract or something so he can get the physical belt back.

 

Debra has a surprise opponent for Mongo.

 

Alex Wright vs. Steve McMichael

 

This is more of Debra vs. Mongo with her managing Wright here. And it’s time to talk about Hogan not being in the main event now. Mongo works on the wrist but Wright bounces out of it. A minute into the match the announcers say the names of the wrestlers for one time each. I think Wright is a heel here but it’s really kind of hard to tell. Not like the announcers are helping us any as we need to talk about Hogan being a coward.

 

Yep Wright is a heel here as we discuss the NWO having power now and how they have the fans over a barrel. Wright works on the arm but I’m not sure why. It’s not like they’re being recognized for it. Tony is calling them con men or whatever. Mongo takes over again as now we’re going to talk about Sting to avoid talking about the match. They collide in the ring and neither guy goes anywhere.

 

They talk about the match for 34 seconds and just flat drop it to talk about Hogan more. After a bit more talking it’s a tombstone, Mongo’s finisher, to Wright. Goldberg comes in while Debra has the referee, and spears Mongo. This would be a bit more effective if the referee hadn’t looked over his shoulder to make sure the spear hadn’t happened yet. The Jackhammer hits (how does the referee not notice a third person in there) and he throws Wright on top for the pin.

 

Rating: C. I’m giving them some credit here because they got such little love from the announcers. In a six and a half minute match the match was talked about for all of a minute. That’s pathetic and they did it on TV also. I can kind of understand it there but here? Why? Are they trying to sell it or something? We already have the PPV man. What’s the point?

 

Debra gives Goldberg the Super Bowl ring which is now apparently Goldberg’s. He lays out Wright and he’s the real man for Debra.

 

Savage and Liz (looking sexy in an NWO t-shirt) say various things about beating up DDP.

 

Disco Inferno vs. Jacqueline

 

This was supposed to be for Disco’s TV Title but the wrestling commission wouldn’t let us have a title match where the area between their legs wasn’t matched. Tony tries to tell us that WCW should ban Hogan from coming back to PPV if he bails tonight and talks about court cases or something. It’s so hilarious to hear someone on Halloween Havoc talking about not giving the fans an advertised main event.

 

Disco runs of course as he’s both afraid of her and is afraid of trying to touch her. We’re at stall #3 by Disco so far so we talk about WCW having momentum or something. WCW never got that no one cared about WCW or momentum or a war or whatever as it went on FOREVER. Disco has hit the floor five times in three minutes now and there has been zero contact whatsoever.

 

To the ropes again as this is just idiotic. The fans boo loudly and I can’t say I blame them. We talk about how Hogan ran too. OH COME ON as he’s hit the floor eight times now and she finally chases him. A sunset flip gets two as we’re firmly in the “let’s praise Jackie for doing basic moves on a man because she’s female” territory. Drop toehold takes her down and Disco hits the floor again.

 

We play keepaway on the floor for awhile and Disco hits the floor for an 11^th time. WHO BOOKED THIS CRAP??? Jackie finally catches him and hammers away….kind of. Disco tries to leave and that gets him nowhere. Hip toss doesn’t work and he sends her to the floor. The problem here is simple: Jackie is just a brawler that talks tough.

 

That doesn’t make this impressive. It makes it long and like they’re trying to say “look at us! We’re awesome because this chick is awesome!” See, when Chyna did it, it was realistic because she could hang with them and you kind of forgot she was a woman. Jackie is a chick that is doing moves to men. Cross body is rolled through by Disco for two and Jackie rolls up the TV Champion and pins him clean. No one cares about Jackie still.

 

Rating: F. Oh do I even have to explain this one? Jackie isn’t impressive, no one cares about her and she was supposed to be Chyna or something like that. Boring match that might have had 1 minute of “action” out of nine. This was just terrible and they had to know it was.

 

US Title: Ric Flair vs. Curt Hennig

 

Hennig stole Flair’s robe and turned on Flair and the Horsemen at Fall Brawl. Hennig, the champion, comes out with the Cruiserweight belt instead of the US belt. Flair sprints to the ring and beats the tar out of Hennig to start. Time to talk about Hogan some more as we finally get the robe off Hennig and onto Flair (minus the sleeves). Hennig gets his first offense in, a clothesline, at about two and a half minutes.

 

Tony manages to say by golly as he rants and raves about WCW and pride and all kinds of nonsense like that. Hennig goes after the knee and the announcers rant about Hogan even more. Just say he’ll be here and get it over with. Hennig works over the leg a lot as the momentum this match had has just died completely. Elbow gets two as Hennig goes after the head, which is what was injured in the War Games match where Hennig turned.

 

All Hennig and his orange crotch of tightness here as he hammers away at Flair’s head. He hammers away and we talk about what WCW might offer Hogan and Bischoff. Sleeper goes on which is very appropriate here. A chair is grabbed and Hennig tries the weakest chair shot ever as Flair’s head is up against the post. Flair chops away and hammers Curt down. Slingshot sends Hennig into the post which happens a lot to him. Still on the floor mind you as we have been this entire paragraph.

 

Back into the ring now as Hennig wants to leave. Flair chases him down and they head back to the ring where Hennig beats him down again. The belt is in the ring from where Hennig tried to leave. Hennig sets for the Perfectplex onto the belt but of course the idiots that are the WCW announcers don’t get what he’s going for because it’s not like THAT IS HIS SIGNATURE MOVE AND HE HAD THE LEG HOOKED ALREADY!!! Flair suplexes him onto the belt and then puts Hennig in the Tree of Woe, puts the belt on Curt’s face and stomps it for the CHEAP DQ!!!

 

Rating: C+. Decent match but the talking and the ending completely crippled it. Flair and Hennig can have a good match in their sleep and this was ok, but the lack of offense from Flair in the middle hurt it as he more or less lost his momentum after a single punch. Still though, not bad at all and awesome due to sheer talent.

 

Flair keeps up the beatdown but the NWO ran out for the save.

 

Savage says he’s awesome on the internet.

 

JJ Dillon, back from an injury angle, says the match is going to happen. Ok, NOW FREAKING DROP IT ALREADY!!! Bischoff of course comes out to complain and say Dillon has no authority or something like that. Dillon has a contract that has been notarized or something. That’s what he uses in a wrestling show. Dude, wrestling fans don’t care about contracts. Let it die. Bischoff says if Sting is here, they want Nitro. Whatever!

 

Lex Luger vs. Scott Hall

 

Larry Zbyszko is referee for no apparent reason. The announcers get the contract from the previous segment because you pass it around like something brought in for show and tell. Zbyszko wants to fight Hall over some AWA thing and he wouldn’t get to until January. We talk about Hogan and Bischoff EVEN MORE because we haven’t hammered that out yet I guess.

 

Larry takes a toothpick to the face and here comes Lex. Larry pulls Hall off of him as we hear about the one feud of Larry’s that anyone cares about, that one being against Sammartino. Larry calls it down the middle here as Hall throws on a headlock. Luger works on the arm as we’re having a very basic match to start us off here. Syxx is at ringside here.

 

Hall puts on a hold where he grabs Luger’s wrists and bends his arms back. Luger reverses it so that he’s behind it. Hall is still holding the wrists even though he’s in pain here. I give up. He uses the ropes to escape. Really? I mean dude, REALLY? And this guy was in THE LADDER MATCH people! Clothesline puts Luger down and Hall takes over again. Zbyszko counts slow.

 

Off to a sleeper by Hall as this match is putting me to sleep. That goes on for awhile until a suplex gets Luger out of it. Larry, ever the impartial referee, backdrops Hall to the floor. Here’s Bischoff who gets drilled also. Luger starts his comeback and hits three atomic drops and the forearm. Bischoff distracts Larry and Syxx kicks Luger down. Outsider Edge hits and there’s the pin. Wow I’m kind of surprised.

 

Rating: D. The referee thing got old quick as Larry didn’t need to be there in the slightest and they never told us why Larry and Hall didn’t like each other. I knew because of prior knowledge, but this is a bad thing that only WWF ever seemed to get right: let us know in case there are first time viewers. That might make them want to see more instead of “oh they’re feuding and don’t worry why.” Never got that.

 

Larry sees the replay and we restart the match. Rack goes on and the bell rings just as Syxx kicks him for the potential DQ. This extra time might have been 12 seconds long and I’m not sure if Luger won by submission or DQ. Does it matter? Rating is the same as above. Bischoff beats up Zbyszko as his ego continues to dominate the show. I mean dude, why in the world was Bischoff in a competitive match at Starrcade? The point of a match like that is for him to be destroyed, but they let Bischoff fight and win a screwy match. That’s WCW for you though. And you wonder why they went out of business.

 

Oh and Larry choked Syxx with a submission hold. That was a reason to get him out of the ring as he had a bad neck. He would be gone just after the beginning of the year and I don’t’ think he wrestled again for WCW.

 

Randy Savage vs. Diamond Dallas Page

 

This is billed as a Las Vegas Death Match which means Last Man Standing. These two feuded all year and it was AWESOME. By the way, Liz in a short leather skirt, tied off NWO t-shirt and three inch heel thigh high boots: WIN. Page has taped ribs which were injured for about 3 years I think. Savage attacks the ribs which Dusty says you can’t hide. Well gee Dusty how did you figure out he had bad ribs when they’re taped?

 

We head into the ring after starting on the floor and Savage hammers away. Page does that pull up out of the corner to break the count and beats the tar out of Savage. Both guys are down quickly off a double clothesline which Dusty explains the name of. Diamond Cutter attempt goes nowhere as Tony and Dusty argue over whether or not that move would be effective here. How are these people so freaking stupid?

 

Page goes lucha and dives over the top to take down Savage. Back into the ring but Page gets caught coming in and tumbles back out. Savage gets his patented (and he has the paperwork) axe off the top to the back of Page, sending him into the barrier. We head into the crowd where Raven’s Flock is sitting. They slug it out in the crowd and brawl out of the crowd up by the entrance way.

 

Savage sends him into the safety rail which makes sense as it hurts the ribs. Page throws him into the set which is made of fake tombstones and slams him onto a “stone” which explodes. Dusty of course freaks out over everything. Back towards the ring and Page goes rib first into the railing again but he might have blocked part of it. The shot into the steps doesn’t get blocked though and Page is in trouble.

 

Another shot with the steps gets about five and we’re back in the ring now. Savage steals a camera but Page gets his feet up to kick it back into Savage’s face. Nice counter there. Both guys are down and Liz pops up on the apron with a tray of some kind which is shattered over the referee’s head. She chokes Page but Kimberly comes out for the save. Yep Liz is far hotter.

 

Nick Patrick comes out to referee it and Page hammers away. Atomic drop and the Pancake (Styles Clash without the arms being hooked) sets up an attempt at a Diamond Cutter which misses. That gets a count of about five so Savage slams him and drops the elbow right into the ribs. Somehow that only gets 9 and there goes the referee right before a Diamond Cutter. Well of course he goes down at that exact moment.

 

Patrick gets up but both guys are down since Page never got up after dropping Savage with the Cutter. Both guys are rolling around at five and are both up at eight. Another Diamond Cutter attempt is countered by a low blow and Page hits the floor. And here’s Sting who hits Page in the ribs with the bat. Even Tony knows it’s not Sting so you can tell the joke was dead here. Somehow he couldn’t tell it was Nash as Sting the next month though. Page can’t get up as Savage makes it and this war is over.

 

Rating: A-. The ending is what holds this back but this was a war. Both of these guys liked to map out their entire matches so this was more like a recital than a match but that’s fine. Savage vs. Steamboat was like that. Very good match here as they beat the tar out of each other and it’s only the stupid ending that keeps it from being a classic. Still worth a watch though.

 

Bogus Sting was Hogan if you’re curious.

 

Savage jumps DDP while he’s attached to a stretcher.

 

The announcers talk about the match some more. Why are you surprised here?

 

Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper

 

Piper has the belt here but isn’t champion. This is non-title and in a cage because this match is supposed to draw money in 1997. This is more like the Cell with no top and with big spaces in the walls shaped like squares. Think the blue cage but with squares big enough to pass a crack baby through. No word on what you do to win this but it’s implied Piper can win with the sleeper. Granted they don’t say get the sleeper and walk out or win with a submission out of it but whatever.

 

Hogan tries to climb out but Piper whips him with a belt. Now Piper bites Hogan’s tights. Dude, are there some surpressed feelings there? I’ve seen a lot now. We head into the ring for a change and it’s and atomic drop and a head slap. No referee here either. The cage here is more for keeping people out than a weapon which is fine I guess. Back to the floor again and Hogan tries to climb but is caught with a low blow.

 

They slam each other into the cage and Hogan wants the door open. Ok, Piper shoves Hogan out, meaning Hogan was out FIRST, but they went out at the same time so this continues. I guess that means you can win by escape but they just want it to keep going. Hogan tries to leave but Sting, and I’m assuming the real one, is pointing a bat at him. Piper catches up to him and slams the door on his back/shoulder.

 

Hogan gets Piper in and then falls out of the ring. He wants to get out now so I’m assuming it’s escape. Seriously, it’s that confusing. How freaking hard is a cage match anyway? Hogan rams him into the cage a few times as I keep tellimg myself this is almost over. Hogan climbs but Piper follows him. There’s a pair of Stings in the aisle as now Piper is near the top of the cage.

 

Hogan kicks Piper down off the cage (Piper kind of climbed down) and then Hogan climbs down as well. Weightlifting belt to the back and Hogan goes up instead of going through the door like an intelligent heel would. That cage is shaking too which is a bit scary. There’s a Sting waiting on Hogan at the bottom so Piper pulls him back in. Here’s a third Sting, this one kind of chunky.

 

Actually we have four of them now and now it’s five. Hogan climbs down so Piper tries to get out like an intelligent person but Hogan stops that also. Back into the ring now for some reason and Hogan pops him with the world title. There’s the leg drop onto Piper onto the belt which gets two as the referee has to come in.

 

Savage comes out and climbs to the top of the cage and jumps into the middle of the ring. Now to be fair he missed Hogan by about two feet but he caught him on the top of the head at least. Not criticizing him there mind you but pointing it out. I’d be scared to death from jumping that. Sleeper ends Hogan just after that.

 

Rating: D-. This match made no sense at all. You go from the lack of knowing how to win the match to kind of knowing how to win the match to no one wanting to escape the cage it seemed to the Sting army who did a total of one thing (keep Hogan from leaving) to Savage coming in at the end to the biggest problem: they really didn’t do anything.

 

This was about 14 minutes long and the vast majority was laying around, climbing the cage and punching. There was no drama, no extended advantages, very little violence and it really seemed liked there was no real reason for this to be in a cage. Bad match indeed for a lot of reasons.

 

Post match Bischoff comes out and he, Hogan and Savage beat up Piper. One of the Stings gets in and gets taken down with ease. They handcuff Piper to the cage and the beating is on. Hogan puts the Sting mask on for no apparent reason. A kid climbs over the cage and the fake Sting takes him down with ease and then Hogan and Savage beat the heck out of him in the ring for no apparent reason. This is either REALLY stupid or a totally pointless work. Security comes in and takes FOREVER to get him out. And that’s the show. Seriously, this ends with the fan being taken out.

 

Oddly enough the music for the credits is what would become Marc Mero’s theme music in WWF. No idea why but it is.

 

Overall Rating: C-. This is a hard one to grade. However other than the main event and the man vs. woman, nothing is really that bad. Hall vs. Luger is dull but not particularly horrible. Then you have two awesome matches including an all time classic which is more than enough to keep this from a terrible grade.

 

The constant talking of Hogan possibly not wrestling is REALLY annoying and I’d recommend fast forwarding about 45 minutes after that Hogan/Bischoff promo. It’s certainly not the worst WCW show ever but the bad stuff is rather bad. See those two matches and if you’re incredibly bored the whole show minus the main event and man vs. woman. Not too bad but still not great.

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

SuperBrawl IV
Date: February 20, 1994
Location: Gray Civic Center, Albany, Georgia
Attendance: 7,600
Commentators: Bobby Heenan, Tony Schiavone

For no reason that I can find anywhere, this was never released on home video. I simply don’t understand that. Why not? It doesn’t look like much on paper but WCW and Turner would put ANYTHING on VHS to make a quick buck off of it. Bischoff is in charge now kind of and Bill Watts is gone so the show is more or less automatically better than last year’s was. Flair is booking the show mind you, so this really is a new era for the company.

This is highlighted by two Thundercage matches which more or less is a cage that curves up to the top. It’s nothing special but it’s Vader vs. Flair so I can’t complain. Other than that the card is more or less a complete mess with so much going on that it’s hard to really see a point at all. Let’s go as I haven’t seen this show ever before.

The opening video talks about various matches going on tonight, none of which sound interesting in the slightest. Ok Vader vs. Flair sounds ok. We actually see Flair training which is something you never really see. He says he’s going to run Vader out of gas. If anyone could do that, it’s Flair.

His cardiovascular conditioning is better than anyone’s in history more than likely. Seeing him lift weights is just odd indeed. For no apparent reason, Big Boss Man is refereeing there. We also have Badd vs. Michael Hayes which started out yesterday but tonight they’re FINALLY settling it.

Michael Hayes vs. Johnny B. Badd

Badd is still just a comedy character that no one likes yet. Actually people like him. They’re just idiots though. He has two Badd Blasters to shoot freaking glitter and confetti though as he has nothing better to do with his life. And Hayes is in a wheelchair with Jimmy Garvin pushing him.

Hayes says that he fell down the stairs but Garvin says that he slipped on a banana peel while they suck up Nick Bockwinkle. I actually don’t recognize Garvin with short hair. That mullet he had could have shielded a small country. He shoots his mouth off and he’s the replacement now. Ok so the match is with Garvin and apparently in 45 minutes or so.

Harlem Heat vs. Thunder and Lightning

Thunder and Lightning were rookies, meaning this had no point being on PPV. Harlem Heat would one day become great but here they’re relatively new. They debuted in August so it’s not like they’re well known or anything. Also they’re named Kane (Stevie Ray) and Kole (Booker T). Heenan rips the white guys like there’s no tomorrow as he’s in his element here. Seriously, Thunder and Lightning is the best name you can come up with?

I never got the Heat having their names changed. They look exactly the same as they would in later years with the same outfits and everything but their names were changed. It helped a lot but I never got the point to it. You could tell that Booker had that it factor to be a big deal. Tony thinks the winner here should get a title shot. We get a camera into Flair’s dressing room to show that he is indeed sitting in it. Apparently Steamboat gets a title shot at the next PPV.

That one is coming soon. Thunder gets the hot tag and no one cares. His dropkick misses completely but Kane (that just sounds weird to type) sells it anyway. Kole kicks the heck out of Thunder for the pin.

Rating: C-. This wasn’t bad but I just couldn’t have cared less. Heenan calling them Batman and Robin the whole time was funny if nothing else. This just wasn’t very good. It’s not bad to be fair, but this got 10 minutes for two rookie teams. Who thought this was a good idea?

There’s a ton of security outside Flair’s dressing room as Vader threatened him.

Jungle Jim Steele vs. The Equalizer

Steele is I think an Indian character or something. Oh it’s Tarzan or something. This feels like something from the mid 70s. Apparently Steele has been on a winning streak or something but he keeps winning in like three minutes. Equalizer would be Evad Sullivan in a few months. Again, this is getting PPV time. What does that tell you about 1993-1994 WCW? Steele doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

Seriously, JUNGLE JIM Steele? That’s the best they can come up with? He looks like a combination of Jimmy Snuka and Ultimate Warrior. What does that tell you? They try to point out the history of great opening matches in SuperBrawl history, although the matches they mention didn’t open the show. We hear the name Hulk Hogan. Yeah that’s not foreshadowing at all. And Steele hits a Thesz Press for the pin out of nowhere.

Rating: F-. It’s called the Steele Trap. That makes this a failure alone. I can’t emphasize how stupid this was. Seriously, THIS got 7 minutes of people paying for it. That boggles my mind.

The question on the Hotline is was it fair for Bockwinkle to say Garvin has to wrestle or be suspended. Yeah he’s going to suspend a retired guy.

Steamboat is named the official number one contender to the winner of Flair vs. Vader. Gene asks if he knew about the added security in the locker room he left to come do this interview. My head hurts again. Dang how awesome would a long Steamboat vs. Vader have been?

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Terry Taylor

Page is a biker here as he’s more or less worthless. Then we have Taylor who just is worthless. Page had been doing this thing where he would draw names out of a bowl for who he was going to fight but they were always retired or something like that. Taylor called him out so Page got a box full of bricks and hit him in the head with it, which should have killed him. I can’t get over this: it is 1994 and TERRY TAYLOR is wrestling on PPV. How in the world is that possible?

Page is REALLY bad at this point as he’s completely unpolished and was just a really hard worker. Page hooks a cobra clutch as his offense was just all over the place at this point. I don’t think he had the Diamond Cutter yet. Apparently the future world champion taught Randy Orton how to wrestle given all of these chinlocks.

This is ridiculous anymore with all the rest holds. It always makes me wonder: what are they resting from? And then Taylor throws DDP into the corner and rolls him up for the pin. Again, it was like they ran out of time and had to finish all of a sudden.

Rating: D-. Dude, TERRY TAYLOR was on PPV in 1994. Why would I want to pay my money to watch this nonsense?

The WCW announcer from Germany is here. And moving on.

Spring Stampede is the next PPV. Again, that one is coming as it Slamboree 94 so I’ll have all PPVs from 1994 covered.

Johnny B. Badd vs. Jimmy Garvin

I have to put up with his entrance twice tonight. What bus full of nuns did I run over in a previous life? The Freebirds would be gone in about two months. This is another one of those matches that have no business being on PPV but it is anyway and will get at least ten minutes. I get that this was Flair’s first time booking, but seriously, get him some better talent and have Flair think some more. In the last match it was a lot of chinlocks.

This is a lot of using the armbar. Oh and a lot of strutting. This is another one of those matches that just isn’t interesting at all but they just keep going with it anyway because they have to fill time. I hate matches like that. Let’s have another armbar while we’re at it.

Garvin controls most of the match because it makes sense for a guy that wasn’t very good in the first place to “not wrestle for two years” to come back and dominate the younger and better guy in Badd. Badd gets his big knockout punch and then has to go up top for the sunset flip off the top. Post match the heels beat up Badd with what would become known as the Stunner.

Rating: D. Again, WHY WOULD I PAY FOR THIS STUFF??? Garvin isn’t even a big name other than from about 7 years before. This would be like having Maven wrestle on Raw. There’s no point to it and the match was boring anyway.

Vader is banging a chair against a wall and shouts no interviews at Gene.

TV Title: Steven Regal vs. Arn Anderson

The real man’s man is the champion here. The idea here was simple: they just kept telling these two to go out and have a 25-30 minute war so they did about 4-5 times, including here. The only problem here was that the fans didn’t really want to see these two do that match this often, as a lot of the time they were about 10 minutes of chinlocks and rest holds. They were interesting to a point, but once they fell off they fell off quickly.

We have Buffer doing the intro here so you know it’s a big deal. Anderson is said to be from Apple Valley, Minnesota. Is that some nickname for Minneapolis which is where he’s been from EVERY OTHER TIME? The title looks different here and they should have stuck with that one as it’s much better looking than the one that it usually was. They start with a long wrestling sequence which is ok but it’s just kind of boring. Screw the kind of aspect. This is boring already.

Bobby tries to push the PPV to people to buy it halfway through. He does get in a good NASCAR line saying that if he wanted to watch cars go by he’d go sit by the interstate. That’s very true actually. We’re six minutes in and they’re still feeling each other out. Regal busts out a nip up. That came from nowhere. Regal works on the arm. He works on it very slowly, but he is indeed working on it. Arn works on Regal’s arm.

I wish someone would work on my arm so I’d have something to be interested in. We’ll ignore the big bandage on Regal’s leg because it would make too much sense to do that I guess. This is just a freaking boring match. There’s a ton of arm work but it’s like they’re just meandering from spot to spot as Arn FINALLY works on the bad leg after 25 freaking minutes. Seriously, this has gone nearly half an hour now.

Anderson is covered in glitter from Badd. He deserves better than this. Sir William, Regal’s manager keeps losing and regaining his accent. That’s always amusing. They keep announcing the time remaining which doesn’t mesh with the time I have on the counter here. And with 10 seconds to go Anderson goes for a sunset flip and the manager throws the umbrella up there so Regal can grab it and holds it for the pin. That makes me hate this show in ways I never thought possible.

Rating: D. I sat through 30 minutes for that? Seriously, they made this 30 minutes long??? Was everyone injured or something? Steamboat is in a suit and he couldn’t have had a 5 minute match or something to cut about ten off of this? That’s freaking DUMB man. This went 27 minutes. That’s just unforgivable.

We get a quick recap of Jack and Payne vs. the Nasties. The Nastys lost a non title match. That’s all there is to it.

Tag Titles: Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne vs. Nasty Boys

Naturally we get the big match intros which mean nothing here. Payne was annoying and not that good. Jack is of course epically awesome. Some very hot blonde is at ringside. I’m pretty sure Cactus and Payne are the faces here. They again try so hard to make someone, Payne in this case, a big deal and it still doesn’t work. The fans are dea here despite the company trying to push Cactus as a big deal.

Two to one says the champions keep their belts. Payne was one of those guys that never did anything but was supposed to be a big deal anyway. He’s more commonly known as Man Mountain Rock in case you didn’t know that one. Who thought this was a good matchup anyway? Cactus comes in for the hot tag to clean house and the match picks up a bit.

This is far less of a match and far more of a fight, which makes sense given that the second most talented guy in the match is freaking Brian Knobbs. HOKEY SMOKE Foley just got knocked from the apron to the exposed concrete and landed on his freaking HEAD. He’s got to have a concussion. He has to. So the idiot Sags kicks him in the head. Keep in mind, you can see them TONIGHT on Impact!

They have to bring up Lost in Cleveland after that. That’s a story we’ll cover someday. Think of the dumbest angle you’ve ever heard of. This is worse. This feels like one of those bad ECW matches that they have a bad name for putting on time and time again. The rematch would be far better but that’s not saying a lot. This thing needs to end, like NOW. Payne gets his armbar (yeah that’s his finisher) on Knobbs but Sags gets a guitar shot to him for the DQ to end it.

Rating: D. It’s an ok brawl but a terrible match. The Cactus bump was great but just another reason why Foley isn’t going to know his name about three years from now. Still though, this could have been far worse but it was boring stuff. Why have these guys try to wrestle?

Flair says he wants Vader but mentions Hogan also. Yeah he was locked in already. Steamboat is glad he’s the number one contender. Anderson shows up to offer his support as well.

They cut the lights for the cage to be lowered and Tony says hide your wallets since it’s dark and Heenan is in the building. That made me laugh.

Steve Austin/Rick Rude/Paul Orndorff vs. Sting/Dustin Rhodes/Brian Pillman

Austin is feuding with Rhodes, Rude is feuding with Sting and I don’t remember Orndorff vs. Pillman. Think of Thundercage as a weak Hell in a Cell but it’s the same idea, minus a top to it. It curves to the top though so it’s kind of like the red Terrordome that TNA uses. That’s good: a combination HIAC and Terrordome. Austin vs. Sting is an awesome matchup that would have made MILLIONS in 1998.

Apparently Austin is feuding with Pillman and Rhodes is having a small feud with Orndorff. That makes more sense I guess. They actually have to tag in and out. Why? It’s a freaking cage match for crying out loud. Pillman is busted just a tiny bit. Rude is the International Champion, which is a parody/replacement for the NWA Title. It would be merged with the WCW Title soon enough. Ok, upon further review, the cage doesn’t come up like Terrordome.

It just curves up a tiny bit. It’s a cheap version of HIAC. Go with that instead. Sting gets the hot tag to clean house, but that’s freaking stupid because it’s A CAGE MATCH! For one thing the star power is helping a lot here. Before this it felt like a bunch of midcard matches. Now we’re getting some big names. Ok just two but it’s better than nothing I guess. Dustin comes in and punches the tar out of Orndorff.

Rude comes in and counters the bulldog, Dustin’s finisher, to take back over. Rude would get hurt against Sting soon to end his career. Austin gets slammed into the cage to finally use the stupid thing. He’s US Champion here mind you, even though that means nothing at all. It finally breaks down and they all go in at once. Sting gorilla presses Brian and throws him at Austin for the pin. Sting gets beaten up by Rude afterwards. They were supposed to fight the next month but it didn’t happen.

Rating: C+. Better than anything else tonight but not by much. The star power helped a lot here. The match isn’t bad at all but it’s far from great. This was mainly about Sting vs. Rude and it came off pretty well. It’s not great but it’s a breath of air here so there we go.

We recap Flair vs. Vader. It’s the rematch but Flair was injured in a tag match at Clash of the Champions. The match was off but now it’s back on. This took 5 minutes to explain.

WCW World Title: Vader vs. Ric Flair

Big Boss Man is the referee remember. It doesn’t mean anything but he was signed recently so here he is. He would also fight Vader for the better part of a year. Vader’s attire is different as his chest is covered. I’d guess injury or something. Naturally this is a fight more than a match. Vader dominates but just like at Starrcade Flair keeps fighting back here and there. Boss Man (Heenan’s words, not mine) gets nailed and handcuffed to the cage as Race comes in.

Note: Race almost fell through one of the squares. Anderson and Steamboat come out and try for the door because they’re idiots. Steamboat smacks the lock with a chair but it won’t work. He clearly says son of a  gun, breaking my feeble world at the same time. Boss Man ribs the cuffs off the cage and hits Vader with a nightstick in the knee so Flair puts some leg lock on him.

Note that I didn’t say Figure Four as that’s not what it was. They blew the heck out of whatever it was and Boss Man calls for the bell without even looking at Vader. Flair keeps the title and gets Steamboat next month.

Rating: D. Somehow this got 11 minutes. Yeah, the main event got eleven minutes, or about what Taylor and DDP got. The insanity started about 6 minutes in. Even the Attitude Era wasn’t that bad. This was a total disaster and rushed on top of that. I’ve seen worse cage matches, but not that many of them. This would have been FAR better with about 5-7 more minutes. At least it would have felt more like a main event. But hey, Regal had armbars and chinlocks to use in that time I guess.

Overall Rating: D-. This was just awful all around. Nothing is interesting, nothing is any good, the main event is crap, the first 3 or 4 matches belong on Power Hour or something, and nothing wound up mattering anyway. This show was terrible but since it was never released on VHS, it’s not like most people would have access to it anyway. Maybe that was the point.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews

Superbrawl VI
Date: February 11, 1996
Location: Bayfront Arena, St. Petersburg, Florida
Attendance: 7,200
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Dusty Rhodes

So this is an infamous show online for one match which I’ll get to later. It more or less changed a good portion of wrestling due to a joke for smarks and smarks alone, but it didn’t go well. Also it shows the issue of worked shoots. Other than that, Hogan vs. Giant in a cage and Savage vs. Flair for the title. Riveting I know. Savage won it back on Nitro and this is the like 9th world title match between them. Not sure if that’s an exaggeration or not.  Let’s get to it.

I have no idea who that person is that they got to do the voiceover here, but he needs to stop. Totally unfair to let a guy that hasn’t gone through his voice change yet do work like this. Tony talks about how you settle a feud in a cage. True I guess. We have to have a cage match after one guy fell off a roof right

Public Enemy vs. Nasty Boys

Now take notes here you fans that want to learn how to be technical master. This is going to be what NOT to do. It’s a street fight which means hardcore in WCW terms. The Nastys are wearing tennis shoes. Why? Apparently it’s so they can move easily. Sure why not. We’re already on the floor. The Public Enemy bailed on Heyman for a little while but they would be back. Sags wears Rocco out with a chair. Nice shots.

We bust out a table and Rock goes through it. But remember, WCW NEVER stole anything from ECW. Pay no attention to WCW using ECW guys and doing their signature ECW stuff. Pay no attention to it at all, because WCW NEVER used any ECW stuff. Simply misunderstood. Bobby tries to figure out what plundah is. Bobby, as a promoter said to you many moon ago, USE YOUR BRAIN and stay out of there.

Dusty isn’t someone you want to try to understand or want to understand for that matter. There’s only one referee here of course, which is just idiotic. Grunge throws soda in Knobbs’ eyes. Dusty says it was acid. Ok then. We go split screen. This can’t be a good thing.

They’re all spent now so this slows WAY down. Fans kind of care but not really. Rock misses a dive from the stands and crashes through a table. Knobbs pins him. This was just idiotic. On a replay we see Rock getting suplexed through a table. The problem is the table doesn’t break where he lands on it. Nice job of protecting stuff there guys.

Rating: D-. Just a brawl here but nothing of note here at all. It just wasn’t very good at all, even for a big sloppy brawl. I have no idea what the point of this was but it didn’t work well at all. Just boring and I think I’ve padded this well enough.

Konnan reads a promo in Spanish, thanking the fans. He reads it off of a teleprompter but whatever. Gene mentions that on the hotline there’s a rumor of two WWF guys jumping here in a few months. Any guesses who those two would become?

TV Title: Johnny B. Badd vs. Diamond Dallas Page

Hey they’re a spot lower on the card! DDP has nothing left but his money so he’s putting that up here vs. the girl and the title. Kimberly is more or less a cheerleader here. They have a massive check that just says CASH on it. It’s so beyond stupid I can’t even fathom it. You can see someone that looks a lot like Linda Hogan in the crowd. These two usually have good chemistry so I can live with that.

Badd throws him over the top but they of course alter the rules AGAIN saying that Badd was on the apron and it might not have been deliberate. This is one of my favorite aspects of these matches as I get to hear the excuses for that idiotic rule. Most amusing. Badd counters more or less everything Dallas does which is pretty decent I guess you would say. The crowd is into this so I can’t complain much.

Bobby makes a great point: Badd is trying to win the money so he can hand it to Kimberly? Why? What can Badd gain here? He’s beaten DDP like 4 times now and can lose his title here. What can he gain here? Kimberly’s acting makes Stephanie look like Meryl Streep. Page is in control but he does NOTHING but showboat after he hits a big move. Even Heenan is yelling at him about it. He hit a tornado DDT and literally walks around yelling at the fans and Kimberly for FORTY seconds.

Badd doesn’t move at all the whole time. DDP isn’t very good. Like at all. He just isn’t very good at all and it’s kind of pitiful. Not sure why but it just comes off like that. Pedro Morales is shown. Pay no attention to the two count and the crowd popping during that shot of Pedro either. I’m sure it meant nothing at all. We’re about 10 minutes into this and Heenan says Badd has been worn down these past 20 minutes.

Did he get beaten up by a bus full of nuns before the match? Did a wild moose stomp him for not paying him for that six dollars he borrowed? Top rope sunset flip gets two. A pretty bad Batista Bomb gets two. They trade sleepers. I’m a bit bored here. And then Badd hits a Tombstone of all things for the pin.

Points for them using something other than their finishers to end the match. There was supposed to be one more match at Uncensored but Badd left to become Mark Mero like a little coward. At least that’s what they called him after it. Badd would drop the belt to Luger before leaving.

Rating: C+. Not bad I guess, but DANG I’m tired of seeing these two fight. This is what, four straight PPVs for them? We get it: DDP can’t beat Johnny B. Badd. Do you need to tell us that a thousand times? It was competitive, but there was no way Page was winning and everyone knew it.

Harlem Heat talks about their title match against Sting and Luger who beat them for the titles recently. Booker was clearly better than Stevie back then. Apparently the winner of this next match gets to fight the Road Warriors later in the night. Not for the titles mind you, but for the chance for a future title shot. Makes sense right?

Ok apparently later is for the tag titles. At least that makes more sense.

WCW Tag Titles: Sting/Lex Luger vs. Harlem Heat

Apparently the Road Warriors are guaranteeing the champions retain. I wonder who is winning here. Luger pulls an Eric Young and gets scared by the pyro. That’s rather amusing. Was Sting EVER not a champion? He was one of the only guys that wasn’t crushed by Hogan, which was nice as I was and still am a Sting fan. Tony and Bobby get into a debate about wrestlers on rollercoasters. Just go with it.

Sting and Booker start us off. That’s a plus. Also it’s nice to see a career tag team like Luger and Sting. They feuded at times, but they at least teamed together on and off for years. The main thing here is Sting is pure face and Luger is about half heel at least. They don’t get along, but they’re really good partners. Actually the not getting along part is a stretch. They get along, but Sting really doesn’t like Luger’s tactics.

And now we talk about the double main event for no apparent reason. If WCW announcers stayed on topic for more than 8 seconds at a time I’d be STUNNED. Did Luger ever hit that big elbow he would use? I don’t think so. Apparently no one comes to WCW shows and there is no TV, as Tony says the only way to watch WCW, not WCW PPVs but just WCW, is on Pay Per View. Got it.

Thanks for admitting no one watched Nitro Tony. Luger gets a clothesline to the chest. That looked weird. Stevie messes up a powerbomb. That was AWFUL looking. Stevie proceeds to hold Luger’s neck with no visable pressure on it. Wow that’s idiotic looking. And let’s look at the crowd. Sure why not?

Booker is in now and continues to bore the heck out of the crowd in his control of Luger. Sting gets a tag and the referee doesn’t see it. Sting comes in anyway. Love face tactics like that one. And here are the Road Warriors to hit Stevie in the ribs with something metal. Luger falls on top for the pin. At least it’s over.

Rating: D. This was just BORING. It’s not bad at all I guess, but dang this just wasn’t interesting at all. Should be noted that Sting didn’t see Animal hitting him in the ribs. This was just boring though and while the wrestling is ok, I just wanted it to end in the second half.

Gene asks Luger about the ending but Luger cuts him off. Sting still doesn’t know about it I don’t think.

US Title: Konnan vs. One Man Gang

So like I mentioned in the Starrcade review, Gang won the title and Konnan took it from him. Here’s your rematch. Konnan actually cared at this point and it was very apparent. He’s moving all over the place at this point and doing all kinds of weird and big spots that are working really well. To be fair though, I could give Gang a run for his money I think.

Konnan runs around and beats up Gang for about two minutes, as in the first two minutes of the match, but Gang gets one shot in and Dusty proclaims that Konnan has barely been on offense. That’s just amusing. A side slam is called a side salto. Apparently Gang has been called one of the best men in the business for years. What kind of undiscovered years are those Tony? Konnan is selling well too here which is helping a lot also.

Let’s show the WCW NASCAR driver for like 30 seconds. Not like we can have anything of note going on in the ring at the moment. There was a WCW Motorsports? Since when? Gang hits his splash and pulls him up. That should more or less seal this one. Gang goes to the middle rope (called the very top by Tony) and misses to ZERO, I mean ZERO reaction. Konnan goes up and hits a front flip onto Gang for the pin. Wow this was bad.

Rating: D-. Again, One Man Gang as a title contender? What in the heck were they thinking??? This was again just bad and the crowd was deader than Konnan’s career. Terrible match.

The Road Warriors will get the tag belts tonight apparently.

Kevin Sullivan vs. Brian Pillman

This is the match I was referring to earlier when I said there was a massive smark joke. This is a strap match where you have to get your opponent to say I RESPECT YOU into a microphone to end it. Fair enough. Pillman sprints to the ring and they have a very unconventional looking fight. It looks very, dare I say, real?

Pillman gets a few shots in, Sullivan gets a few shots in, and then Pillman runs over to the referee, grabs the mic and famously says “I respect you….booker man.” He then leaves. The never even got the strap unraveled to put it on their wrists. After standing around for a bit, here’s Arn Anderson for an impromptu match.

Rating: N/A. This might have broken 45 seconds. Explanation coming in a minute.

Kevin Sullivan vs. Arn Anderson

Anderson is in street clothes here. Seeing him in shorts is weird. Anderson takes his shirt off and we’re getting a match apparently. The Horsemen had been feuding with the Dungeon of Doom in case you were looking for what Anderson had to do with this. If nothing else there’s a point to having Anderson there so it makes sense.

Anderson grabs the mic and has to stop himself from cursing. He beats the living tar out of Sullivan and neither guy will say it. Flair finally runs out and says that this doesn’t need to happen, saying they don’t need to fight, more or less starting the Alliance To End Hulkamania. Flair saved this segment. Flair rants about Hogan and leaves.

Rating: D. Not even a match but for something totally unplanned to fill about 5 minutes this was fine. I’m going to cut this grade short to get to the explanation. Can’t really blame them in an impromptu situation though.

Ok, so what the heck just happened? In short, everyone, including Anderson and Flair, just got worked. Sullivan and Pillman cooked up this idea to have a “shoot” match and a “shoot” angle. This was back in the day where smarks were gaining accessibility to information via the internet. The biggest bit of news was that Sullivan was the booker for WCW, as in he picked most of the matches that aired.

The fans found this out, so Sullivan and Pillman did this kind of as a nod to them. There was one problem: They didn’t tell ANYBODY else. To everyone but them, Pillman had just totally broken kayfabe on national TV and walked out on a match. Sullivan knew what was going on, but the announcers didn’t, the fans didn’t, the executives didn’t, and the wrestlers didn’t.

They threw Anderson out there to try to put on something to make it look “real” in a kayfabe sense and I guess Flair came out there because they didn’t know what else to do or he was the planned ending of the other match. Anyway, later that night Pillman and Sullivan explained what was going on to the roster and a few executives and smoothed a lot of this over. Obviously Sullivan let them keep going with it because it was about half his idea.

So I think the next night on Nitro, Pillman did another “shoot” (remember that it’s all planned but it comes off like it’s real, as in real life real but it’s still all planned) where he says he wants out of his contract and to be released. Here’s where it goes insane: WCW RELEASED HIM. The very higher ups, as in the guys that handled contracts, didn’t know that this was all planned and the roster was in on it, so they let him go.

The thing was, Pillman had no problem with leaving and was in ECW like a day later. He hung out there for a couple of months and then was in WWF free and clear. Now, Bischoff in his book claimed to know about this and that it was all planned for Pillman to go to ECW, but no one other than Bischoff has ever made anything close to such a claim. In short, I don’t buy Bischoff knowing about this for a second.

For one thing, Sullivan had control over the on screen product to an extent so it’s not like he would have needed Bischoff’s permission for this. Also, with Bischoff stealing talent from ECW at the time, such as Konnan, Benoit, Malenko and Psicosis to name a few, something tells me there was NO WAY Heyman would have been in the mood to let Bischoff have a favor like that. As a worked shoot though, this was one of the best ever as even Flair and Anderson bought it apparently.

Giant and Jimmy Hart say they’ll beat Hogan tonight. He’s still not any good on the mic, but he’s trying.

Tag Titles: Road Warriors vs. Sting/Lex Luger

There’s a very nice little face/heel thing as Sting slaps hands but Luger, who is behind him, doesn’t. Nicely done. Luger tries to leave but Sting talks to him and gets him to come back. Thanks for wasting our time like that. And now we do that again. Is this in Memphis or something? Seriously we’re just waiting around here. Heenan gets a good line in by saying that the Road Warriors were at a restaurant today and 4 people hung their coats on their spikes.

Dusty calls them the Legion of Doom. I think that’s been said in WCW before but I’m not sure. Hey Sting is in! Luger….not so much. Luger runs AGAIN. This is rather annoying. He hasn’t been in the ring yet and was introduced 3 minutes ago. Ladies and Gentlemen, LEX ORTON! Sting could dance a softshoe and it would be more entertaining here. Four minutes plus and he’s FINALLY on the apron.

Dang I was looking forward to Sting dancing. Wow that’s an odd thought. Sting takes a dropkick and sells it like he got shot. This is a bizarre match. The Road Warriors are wrestling them. This is weird stuff man. Luger comes in and not a lot changes at first. The challengers are mad at him over some undisclosed thing done on Nitro. Apparently Luger screwed them over somehow and they’re mad about it.

Yeah they’re mad and they’re using arm bars. Why does this seem idiotic to me? Sting gets a top rope splash that misses. That looked awesome though. Sting might be the most complete wrestler ever. Is there a point to this anywhere in the near future? I highly doubt it.

We get the big brawl and naturally there’s a double DQ. This is the closest we would get to a showdown here as Sting and Booker would team up at Uncensored to fight them in a dumb and complex angle. Just terrible.

Rating: F+. What the heck was the point of this? Seriously, the Road Warriors were trying to wrestle. Yeah it failed completely. Just a terrible match overall and it came off really badly. I was bored out of my mind for about 15 minutes and that’s rare for me.

Flair says his usual stuff. His facials are of course great though.

Savage’s bad arm which was good at World War 3 is now bad again. Savage got the title back after losing it at Starrcade which isn’t mentioned yet. The cage is lowered.

Liz, looking GORGEOUS in a tight blue dress, is interrupted by Savage who looks especially awesome for no apparent reason. He naturally talks about Hogan before doing his regular promo. My cousin looks like Liz actually. Minus the whole now dead part.

WCW World Title: Ric Flair vs. Randy Savage

Yes, Hogan goes on last, ahead of the world title. For those of you that read my TNA rants, this is where I got the idea that he would do stuff like that. Woman was hot back in the day too. To say Liz was gorgeous would be an understatement. Flair cuts a short promo and more or less laughs at Savage. And say it with me: he stalls. Savage goes at him like a crazy man. Always good to see a character being able to act like himself in there.

Remember the top on the cage? It must be invisible. Naturally there’s no top on it. That doesn’t make this a cage match. It makes it a fence match. And two minutes in, Flair punches the referee. Ok then. Well at least he’s Flair so it makes sense. Flair gets a backslide but there’s no referee. He’s back up like 20 seconds later. Was there a point to that that I’m just missing? They mention there’s no Benoit so far tonight.

Yeah we can have the Nasty Boys vs. Public Enemy, One Man Gang getting a TITLE MATCH and two Sting/Luger matches, but we can’t fit Benoit, a Horsemen, on the card. See what I’m getting at when I criticize Hogan’s questionable booking practices? Guys like Benoit, one of the most talented workers of all time, can’t make a PPV card? Seriously? Give me a break. Is there a referee shortage tonight?

This guy has refereed like three matches so far. Savage hooks a figure four on Flair which is always a nice touch. Unless Dusty does it. Then it just freaking sucks. For no apparent reason, Savage lets go of it. Ok then. Savage goes to the top of the cage. Being the rocket scientist that he is, he climbs down and keeps the title. Naturally he doesn’t jump down while he has a ten second advantage that a feeble old man could have managed to escape the cage inside of.

Nah he couldn’t do something like that. Only an idiot would do something like that. Not Savage. Nope not him. He’s too level headed to do that. The match is already over and he’s in the shower. OH OF COURSE HE JUMPS ON FLAIR.

Flair controlling now as I wonder what kind of crack most faces are on to be so stupid. Has there ever been an intelligent main event level face? I mean dude, CLIMB THE HECK DOWN! Figure Four is let go of again, this time by Flair. ARE THERE ANY INTELLIGENT HEELS??? Woman can scream louder than Melina. Think about that for a minute. Flair is bleeding. And there go his trunks. Can we fast forward on that part?

Savage gets a cover and they ring the bell early. Did the ring announcer just release early after seeing Flair’s trunks go down? Seriously? That can’t be a good sign. Dare I say Flair is sauntering? It certainly looks like he is. And now we see them come down againAGAIN. DANG IT USE TAPE OR SOMETHING! And now Savage and he are on the top rope where he pounds Flair from behind while he’s exposed. I love double entendres.

Flair apparently is energized by ramming his head into the cage. The door is opened for no apparent reason. Due to Flair’s heavy bleeding, we go to a wide shot. When I say wide I mean you can see the second or third row on all sides. Woman throws powder that misses. Liz turns heel by giving her shoe to Flair as we get a nod to the Mania 8 ending as Savage rolls Flair up for two.

A shoe shot to the face gives the title to Flair. Seeing Liz smile is worth it. Great to see the new champion’s face in that wide shot where you can see half the crowd. Hogan comes out to chase the girls (write your own jokes) and goes after Flair and Anderson, who just ran down here, with a chair but it doesn’t work. Tony says nothing can be done about the cheating because it’s basically a cage match. I thought it was a cage match literally but then again I’m no professional.

Rating: B+. Solid match here with a legit surprising ending. It’s no classic, but it’s good indeed. Flair vs. Savage had a tendency to prove that main event matches could be classics without Hogan being involved. Hmm and oddly enough Hogan consistently beat them both for the title. I wonder if there’s a coincidence there. Anyway, very good match.

Hogan rants about Liz and has one eye bandaged thanks to a shoe to the eye last week. He says he now has no guard on his blind side. Boo hoo.

The Giant vs. Hulk Hogan

It’s another cage match. Yeah we couldn’t end on the great cage match. We need HOGAN BLAST IT! Giant is introduced as the man that literally returned from the dead at Halloween Havoc. Why can no one learn the meaning of that word? Hart is called a dapper gentleman. What the heck ? LOUD Hogan sucks chant just after the bell rings. That’s just amusing. But remember, the fans don’t know what they want and they really love Hogan.

Seriously, what do you expect here? It’s Hogan vs. a monster in a cage match. You know the drill I’m sure. Dusty says Hogan doesn’t fight for money or anything like that. WOW. Giant stomps on his fingers. That must have made rubbing lotion on his 19 year old daughter difficult. Poor choice of words. Actually it isn’t. Giant pulls Hogan to his knees and Tony credits it to the fans and Hulkamania.

I would say taking a shot every time the announcers suck up to Hogan is a great drinking game but in reality it’s a recipe for suicide. The announcers point out the idiocy of not going for Hogan’s eye when there’s a huge bandage on it. Actually you could argue that going for the other eye would be smarter but you get the idea. Ah now he’s going for the eye. There we are. Might not be a good idea to suggest having Hogan fight blind.

It might give him an idea to throw a fireball at someone so they’ll make a big comeback while blind. Sadly, that happened against Warrior in 98. Naturally it didn’t work and Hogan nearly lost his eyebrows when throwing the fireball. That might be the worst match ever. Sweet goodness this is boring. No use of the cage yet either. Say it with me: perfect timing on that. And now let’s hit a bearhug. Brain thinks you wouldn’t want to lose your sight.

The fans are seemingly bored here. They still love Hogan though. Oh I know: they’re holding their breath in fear for their hero right? The chokeslam is called a chokehold. And remember, Schiavone knew all kinds of dives and planchas at Starrcade, but with Hogan he doesn’t know that when you choke a man and slam him at the same time it’s a chokeslam. Sure why not. Oh NOW it’s a chokeslam.

Tony makes me cringe by saying Hogan came back from the chokeslam like Giant came back from FALLING OFF THE ROOF OF COBO HALL. Yes, a chokeslam is equal to falling off a roof. Only in WCW. Three legs hit and Giant sits up like Undertaker. Tony cracks up laughing. Great selling there buddy. They fight on the top rope, Giant falls with a THUD, Hogan climbs over and we’re done.

Rating: F+. On a house show, this is a fine main event. For one of the biggest PPVs of the year, this was boring. Just boring on so many levels and nothing but a massive blowjob for Hogan from the announcers. Just 15 minutes of Hogan praise, but we’re not done yet.

Hogan gets in the ring with a chair and here comes the Dungeon of Doom. I count 8 people in there, including Giant. THEY DON’T LAND A SINGLE SHOT. Hogan literally is beating up 8 guys on his own. And here’s the Lock Ness Monster, a guy that weighed 700lbs that was there like four months.

He can’t get in because the Dungeon holds him back. Read that as he’s too fat to get through the door. Yes, Hogan just beat up EIGHT GUYS ON HIS OWN AFTER A FIFTEEN MINUTE CAGE MATCH AGAINST A FORMER WORLD CHAMPION. I can’t believe what I just saw. Oh wait. It’s Hogan. Sure I can. Abyss’ theme music takes us out.

Overall Rating: D-. Just WOW. There is one good match on this card. One. That’s it. That match was the world title match and of course, Hogan BEATING UP EIGHT GUYS AT ONCE goes on last. When I say he beat them up, I mean no one touched him. It was like seeing an arcade master play the first level of an easy game. That’s pitiful. How deep did he bury those guys with that nonsense?

Do you have any idea how bad they look now? Seven of them are FRESH and they can’t get a single shot in on a guy that’s had a 15 minute match. I mean seriously, how inept did they just look? To top it off, Hogan would get a cage match against most of them plus 2 more monsters and would beat them officially with the help of Savage next month.

It was those two matches that more or less killed any realistic credibility he had as a face for years, resulting in the heel turn. This was an abomination and is only what it’s rated as because of the good world title match and the passable TV Title match. This was horrible and it can more or less be solely placed on Hogan and his pushing of his buddies. Just awful. GET US TO THE NWO!

 

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