USWA Wrestling Challenge
Date: January 6, 1990
Location: Sportatorium, Dallas, Texas
Commentators: Marc Lowrance, Terrance Garvin

After this one I only have one more so thankfully this one is short. The show last week was a major downturn from what they had been doing back in the fall. Then again that’s very typical of a regional company: have a hot period for awhile and then cool off significantly. Anyway I’d assume we’ll get back to something other than the tag teams this week. Let’s get to it.

We open with a clip of last week on Wrestling Challenge which isn’t last week on Wrestling Challenge. So apparently I can’t read and I did the December 23rd episode last week. Brilliant KB, brilliant.

Ok so last week there was a six man tag where Chris Adams got beaten up really badly by Devastation Inc. Chris’ chick Toni tried to keep Eric Embry from throwing Chris back inside so Eric shoved her down. This triggered a brawl between Adams and Embry which had been brewing for awhile.

The main event tonight: the Stud Stable vs. Jarrett/Borne. Again. GREAT.

Billy Joe Travis vs. Jimmy Jack Funk

This is joined in progress. Funk throws Travis around and Akbar pops in to run his mouth as usual. Garvin yells about rumors a lot while the wrestlers stand around. Funk works on the arm. That must be this place’s religion. Travis takes over and drops a knee for two. A backbreaker gets two for Funk. This is so boring and Garvin isn’t helping. Funk uses an O’Connor Roll but Travis rolls through and pulls the trunks to win.

Rating: D. Another bad match from these Devastation Inc. guys. Their matches just aren’t that good and it’s getting annoying to have to sit through them. Funk was nothing special but he could do more than this Billy Joe Travis guy. Apparently Travis was a guy everyone wanted to beat up so at least he had heat on him.

Sheik Braddock vs. Kevin Von Erich

Von Eric tries the Claw very quickly so Braddock heads to the floor. Garvin wants to see Adams vs. Embry next week. It’s kind of odd to see Von Erich as he doesn’t wear shoes and has white trunks so he looks like he’s in white briefs and that’s it. Braddock goes to the eyes for a brief advantage. Not that it matters as Kevin clotheslines him down and puts on the Claw for the pin. Just a squash.

Gary Young vs. Dustin Rhodes

This is a grudge match for some reason. They immediately head to the floor and into the crowd. Akbar has something to say too. Ok he’s reached the point of annoying instead of evil. Back in and Young hits a knee to the head to take over. Gary pounds on his head as we talk about Dusty for some reason. Dustin comes back with a backdrop and the elbow to the head. Gary responds by KICKING HIM IN THE FACE.

Knee lift gets two. This referee counts slow. Akbar drills Dustin on the floor and we take a break. Back with Young walking around slowly. Young hits another knee lift and it’s off to a chinlock. Now Garvin is whining about the mail and how Lowrance doesn’t read his or whatever. Dustin comes back with some right hands but gets caught by a piledriver. Akbar distracts the referee so Young brings in a chair. Dustin blocks it and that’s a DQ.

Rating: D. These Devastation guys are so boring and they’re killing these shows. Young is the biggest ripoff of Rick Rude that I’ve ever seen but he has no charisma at all. Boring match as Dustin was on offense for all of five seconds. Also they never told us why this is some huge feud which didn’t help.

Dustin clears the ring with the chair post match.

Tag Titles: Brian Lee/Robert Fuller vs. Jeff Jarrett/Matt Borne

Fuller and Lee get in an argument over who starts. Garvin is about to drive me crazy. There’s this whine in his voice which makes him so annoying. Also he keeps calling Jarrett Jeffy. Jarrett armdrags Lee and it’s off to Borne. Belly to belly puts Lee down but Fuller comes in for something that was supposed to be an elbow but he couldn’t even do that right. Lee starts to leave but Fuller stops him.

Lowrance talks about next week’s unexpected main event between Adams and Embry. If it’s unexpected why do you know who’s in it? We take a break and come back with Fuller complaining about being dropkicked to the floor. I’m not sure if this is the same Terry Garvin from WWF or not. That one was from Montreal and this one sounds like he’s from Tennessee. The character similarities are way too similar though.

Borne is in trouble but comes back with a devastating headlock. Lee shoves him into a knee from Fuller though to keep Borne in trouble. Back to Fuller who still can’t do much right. Off to a chinlock and Lee comes in with a middle rope knee drop. Fuller’s piledriver is countered…and here’s P.Y. Chu-Hi to draw a DQ for beating up Borne.

Rating: D+. This slow style is terribly boring. I get that it’s a cultural thing but would it kill them to get someone with some talent in there? Fuller is terribly uninteresting and Borne isn’t much of a maniac. The Stable would hold the titles for awhile longer before losing them the next month. That can’t come soon enough.

Somehow Chu-Hi slamming Borne and dropping a top rope leg on him isn’t a DQ, but rather a no contest. Whatever. Borne is carried out to end the show.

Overall Rating: D. Well it’s a little bit better than last week but that’s not saying much. This company has gone off a cliff lately and nothing is interesting at all anymore. The in ring work is killing it as there’s no emotion or interest at all in it. The angles are barely existent other than Devastation Inc. is bad. One show to go though so maybe it won’t be so bad.

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WCW Power Hour
Date: January 12, 1990
Location: Georgia Mountains Center, Gainesville, Georgia
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jim Cornette

This is a final run for this show. I really didn’t like the first one so if I don’t like this one either, I’m dropping Power Hour all together. The main event here is Anderson vs. Muta for the TV Title so you can’t say I’m possibly stopping on a show with a bad main event. Other than that I’m not sure what to expect here. Let’s get to it.

Cornette says we have a triple main event tonight. Good to know. Why do I have a feeling there are only three matches on the card?

Opening sequence.

Cornette doesn’t like this place either because it’s too low class for him.

Brody Chase vs. Steve Williams

This isn’t going to go well for the mullet man known as Chase. JR goes into the history of Williams in the Bowl Games as Williams runs over Chase like he stole something. Chase is knocked to the apron so Doc dropkicks him off that too. Top rope cross body nearly kills Chase as Corny makes fun of Williams’ face. JR stays on his knees to suck Williams off a bit more for being a football player. Powerslam kills Chase all over again and an enziguri gets two. STAY DOWN YOU IDIOT!!! Williams yells at the camera and hooks an armbar. Chase gets in a few shots so Williams kills him even deader and the powerslam ends this.

Rating: D-. WHY WAS THIS SEVEN MINUTES LONG??? We got the idea after about 20 seconds but JR needed to brag about how awesome Williams was again I guess. Really boring match because it went on way too long when we already had the idea after about 5% of it. Not liking this one at all.

Wrestling News Network says that the Rock N Roll Express is coming back, the first PPV and Clash of the year will be announced next week, Kerry Von Erich has left WCCW, and Gordon brags about Dr. Death a little bit too. Apparently Williams isn’t all there because he’s had everything handed to him so he needs to focus.

NWA World Title: Eddie Gilbert vs. Ric Flair

This is from Worldwide so the match’s outcome literally isn’t in doubt. Flair is the face here and Gilbert runs away from him to start. Flair takes him to the mat with ease and Gilbert runs. Off to a headlock by the champ as Woman and Nitron (Tyler Mane) come out to watch. Gilbert takes him down and hooks a Figure Four of his own on Flair after not working on the knee at all.

Flair of course makes the ropes because you don’t make Flair tap to the Figure Four. Unless you’re Jay Lethal apparently but I don’t think even TNA gets that idea. Now Gilbert works on the legs like a regular person would before the hold. Eh he’s from Tennessee and everything is different down there. Gilbert hits his Hot Shot but Flair gets his foot on the rope. Flair rams him into the buckle and pounds away, but he gets clotheslined down for two. Gilbert hooks a small package but Flair reverses into one of his own for the pin.

Rating: C-. Not the worst match in the world but Gilbert wasn’t exactly the best choice for a world title contender. Flair never was in any real danger here and once he got out of the Hot Shot, it was pretty clear that this wasn’t going anywhere. Not horrible though and for a TV main event, this was ok.

Funk’s Grill has Kevin Sullivan, who beat up Norman and beat him with the painting he spent months on. Sullivan thinks that Terry sees some of his brother in Norman. Terry doesn’t quite see the resemblance but says that Norman has a lot of compassion. Sullivan hates the thought of Funk having compassion because that’s not the Terry Funk he grew up on. Sullivan says that Norman is on the same intellectual level as Dory Jr. They get in an argument and Funk ends the segment.

TV Title: Arn Anderson vs. Great Muta

This is the main event and Muta is champion. Anderson takes him to the mat to start but it’s nothing major. Muta hooks on a wristlock and sends him to the floor. Dragonmaster and Buzz Sawyer, Muta’s stablemates, come out and Anderson is in trouble. Muta misses a kick so there’s a suplex to take him down. Arn takes him down with a headlock and works over the arm like a good Anderson.

Muta comes back and hits the power drive elbow as we go out to the floor. The fans are totally behind the Horseman here. Back in and a top rope chop kills Anderson. Muta busts out Cattle Mutilation years before Bryan did but Anderson escapes it and pounds away. Anderson comes back with an atomic drop and the hammerlock slam. He grabs an abdominal stretch but Muta backdrops him over the top to the floor. Apparently he fell though so it’s not a DQ. Why did they wait until 2000 to drop that rule?

Spinebuster hits out of nowhere but with Dragonmaster running interference, Sawyer comes off the top to clock Arn but it only gets two. Muta superkicks Anderson down and calls for the moonsault. Anderson gets the knees up though and DDTs Muta into oblivion to win the title and blow the roof off the place.

Rating: B. The match was really good and the reaction from the crowd was great, but it’s not enough to save the show for me. Anderson would hold the title for about eleven months before he lost it to I believe Z-Man of all people. Muta would head back to Japan after this, returning in 1992 as a MUCH bigger deal.

Anderson yells at Sawyer and they’ll face off next week.

Overall Rating: C+. The main event was awesome but I’m done with this show. I have too many of them already and this one does nothing for me. The problem is that while the main event was great, how many of these shows are going to have a main like that? My guess would be not many. Check out Muta vs. Anderson if you can find it though as it’s good stuff.

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WCW Power Hour
Date: January 5, 1990
Location: Peoria Civic Center, Peoria, Illinois
Commentator: Jim Ross

This is yet another show that I have. It’s Power Hour, which I believe was the Sunday night NWA/WCW show. This wasn’t one of the bigger ones but for awhile it had Jim Cornette on commentary, meaning by definition it can’t be horrible. I really don’t know what to expect here, other than Sting and Flair being friends at this point, which will end soon. Let’s get to it.

Corny intros us.

After the intro, Cornette says he’s not going to do the commentary because he hates Peoria.

Galaxian #2 vs. Z-Man

Apparently this is on a Friday, making this January 5, so maybe my video is labeled wrong or maybe it aired somewhere else in a different city/country? Galaxian is a masked guy in a red suit. Z-Man is pretty awesome at this point and hits a spinning cross body off the middle rope for two. Sid Vicious is hurt so we’ll have new Skyscrapers debuting tonight. Z-Man throws Galaxian around and stands tall. I mean that literally as Galaxian is about 5’7.

Z-Man reluctantly shakes his hand and the match gets going again. This match is going pretty slowly for the most part. They shake hands again but Galaxian pulls Zenk into a headlock. There are rumors of Zenk starting a team with Flyin Brian. Galaxian sends Z-Man into the corner and out to the floor.

Galaxian takes over as JR tells us to eat a lot of soup because it’s cold and flu season. Who else is going to give you health advice while calling a match? Chop gets two for Z-Man. Now Z-Man wants to work on the leg. JR says the masked man had a quickness advantage. Against the Z-Man? A middle rope dropkick ends this with Zenk winning.

Rating: D. This is one of those matches that could have been cut down to about 1/3 of what it was and you would get the same thing out of it. This match ran eleven minutes with about seven of that being standing around and doing absolutely nothing of note. I hope this isn’t the running theme of these matches.

We go to the Wrestling News Network with Gordon Solie, which is basically a control center. He thinks the world title and tag titles will change at least once this year. Bold pick man.

Cornette says his American Express has been revoked, which was his way out of Peoria. He also thinks he might want to look into managing Cactus Jack.

Brian Pillman vs. Cactus Jack

This is from Worldwide and Terry Funk is on commentary with someone I can’t place. It might be Chris Cruise. Jack is still known as Manson sometimes. Pillman hits a dropkick but they go to the floor. Jack sends him into the barricade but Pillman comes back with a cross body. After a quick armbar Jack comes back with the Cactus Clothesline and Pillman is in trouble.

Neckbreaker gets two for Cactus. Jack is still pretty young here but he’s got the vicious aspect of his style down. Russian legsweep gets two. Out to the floor again and Brian hits a belly to back suplex, dropping Cactus on his head. Back in Pillman hits a jumping back elbow and takes over. This is in Raleigh if you care about things like that. Out of nowhere Pillman grabs a crucifix for the pin.

Rating: B-. As is the norm, two talented people have a good match. Pillman was on fire at this point and Jack was still new but was learning fast. Not a great match but for a six minute TV match, there’s not much more you can ask for. This will probably be the shortest match of the night as well.

Off to Funk’s Grill, which is Terry’s talk show segment. Norman is doing a painting when Woman comes in as the guest. Terry remembers that Woman likes cowboys so he suggests dressing Norman up as a cowboy but she doesn’t think she’d like it. The idea is that Norman (the lovable semi-mentally handicapped character) likes Woman a lot and is trying to impress her. She asks if she can see the painting and he says if she’ll give him a kiss. Woman freaks and says Norman’s mama called him fat. Funk asks Woman if she’d like to be the first girl he’s ever hit. Norman says don’t even think about it so Terry throws her out instead.

Anderson Brothers vs. New Zealand Militia

It’s Rip Morgan and Jack Victory and they’re managed by a midget named Lord Littlebrook. Victory and Ole start things off. Off to Arn and say it with me, the Horsemen work on the arm. Morgan comes in and has a little bit better luck. Anderson goes right after his arm too. See Arn doesn’t care if you really are from New Zealand or if you’re from Texas like Victory is.

Ole back in and Morgan does a little better against him. JR makes short people jokes about Littlebrook. Arn now works on the arm of Victory until Victory stomps him down. That’s been the story of this match for the first few minutes. Morgan works over Arn but Arn gets in some punches to the ribs to break the momentum. Anderson comes back with a sunset flip for two.

Back to Ole who runs to the outside for a bit. Arn comes in and takes a thumb to the eye. This is a really slow paced match but not exactly in a good way. Ole comes in again and the New Zealand guys pound him down even more. Morgan misses a seated senton off the middle rope. Arn comes in (man they’re tagging fast) and hammers everyone down. JR: “Watch that hand. It’s like a hand at the end of that arm.” Littlebrook throws in his cane but Arn intercepts it and blasts Victory with it for the pin.

Rating: D+. Technically it was fine I guess but that doesn’t mean it was an interesting match to watch. Ole was a shell of his former self at this point and it was very clear that he wasn’t going to be around much longer. I forgot that Arn and Ole were the faces in this match which can’t be a good sign.

Z-Man is named wrestler of the week.

Cornette runs down Peoria and that’s about it.

Overall Rating: D+. The Pillman/Jack match was good but for the most part this show wasn’t interesting. I don’t think I’ll be watching that many more of them unless the others are a lot better. I’ll watch the next one but if it’s not a lot better, I’ll be dropping it from my list. Not horrible but it felt like a preview show for others, which isn’t really worth watching.

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Great American Bash 1990
Date: July 7, 1990
Location: Baltimore Arena, Baltimore, Maryland
Attendance: 10,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Bob Caudle

I like this doing three shows in a row as I get to see the build up for these big shows like the Bash and then the payoff here. The main event is finally Sting vs. Flair for the title after arguably over two years of buildup. Usually I’d say what else is on here, but other than that match, there’s nothing at all to talk about because it’s a one match show. Let’s get to it.

The opening graphic is the big names of WCW on stars which move onto the American flag. Cool.

Buddy Landell vs. Brian Pillman

Pillman has the Bengals trunks now. His music doesn’t get going until he’s halfway down the ramp. They slap each other around to start and I don’t think I heard a bell. Brian comes back with chops and it’s a slugfest early on. A spinning middle rope cross body gets two for Brian. The fans sound like they’re behind Landell or at least some of them are. Pillman dropkicks him to the floor and Buddy gets a breather. He looks a lot skinnier here than he usually did too.

Landell goes for the arm and uses some very basic cheating (nothing wrong with it being simple) to take Pillman down. Pillman tries the same spinning cross body that he tried earlier but gets caught in a backbreaker for two. Brian tries to speed things up but misses a dropkick. Landell pounds on him some more but gets caught by ten punches in the corner. Pillman rams into the buckle though and it’s chinlockery a go-go. Brian comes back with punches in the corner but charges into a forearm. Landell rolls through a cross body for two. Brian goes to the apron but comes back in with a top rope cross body for the pin.

Rating: D+. Was there a need for this to either A, exist or B, go nine minutes? It wasn’t terrible but I really don’t get why it went on so long. Landell was more or less just a jobber at this point after having his big run in the 80s derailed by drugs. Not bad but it felt like a low level TV main event.

Gordon Solie talks about the show and says nothing of note.

Iron Sheik vs. Mike Rotunda

Uh….sure? Sheik jumps him to start and rips Mike’s jacket off. MY GOODNESS Sheik has a beer belly and a half on him. Mike grabs a fast sunset flip for two. Rotunda speeds things up and sends Sheik to the floor where JR calls him a terrorist. Back in now and they slug it out with Sheik keeping control. The abdominal stretch goes on but Sheik gets caught cheating to break the hold. Rotunda fights back and they slug it out. Sheik throws him to the floor to keep this match going. He suplexes Mike back in and gets pinned by a backslide.

Rating: D. Again, what was the point of this? Nothing of note happened at all and there was no point in having either guy on the card. Does anyone remember Sheik in WCW? I certainly don’t, but somehow he got paid for a full year because WCW forgot to stop his contract from being renewed. And you wonder why they went out of business.

Harley Race says Flair better be ready for Sting tonight because Sting can beat him. As for Tommy Rich, Race’s opponent tonight, he knows he’s a beaten man.

Dutch Mantel vs. Doug Furnas

Furnas is the World’s Strongest Man. My goodness there are a lot of them that are wrestlers. Mantel is a Texas man with a lot of hair on his face. Furnas shoves him to the floor to start and Mantel is annoyed. Back in and Mantel grabs a headlock. Furnas easily gorilla presses him down as Mantel has nothing to slow Furnas down. Mantel slaps him twice and make it three times.

Furnas walks up Mantel in the corner and moonsaults off of him. Mantel heads to the floor to hide as things slow down even more. Cross body by Furnas gets two. The match has been going on over five minutes now and it seems like there’s been all of 30 seconds of action. Mantel gets in some offense but Furnas overpowers him and goes up. A top rope splash misses though and Mantel gets his first real advantage.

Off to a chinlock by Dutch and I don’t think this is going to last much longer. He grabs an arm hold of some sort which doesn’t really do anything. Snap suplex gets two with Furnas throwing Mantel onto the referee. Back to the arm with Mantel just standing there instead of cranking on it at all. Furnas gets up with ease and pounds Dutch against the ropes. Powerslam puts Dutch down and then Furnas starts doing nothing but kicks and punches. Furnas gets behind him and hits a snap belly to belly for the pin.

Rating: F. It was boring, there was zero point to it happening, and it was really slow. I get that this was more of the style back then, but we’re thirty five minutes into the show and this is the best that they can give us so far? This has been a horrible opening part of the show and this is probably the low point.

Cornette talks about the upcoming major matches before talking about the Southern Boys, the Express’ opponents for later tonight. Nothing much here.

Harley Race vs. Tommy Rich

After this I’m pretty sure we get to the real part of the show. Race is in a singlet which I’ve never seen him wear before. Rich runs him over a few times and avoids an elbow. Off to a headlock and Race’s arm is rammed into the post. Race comes back with a piledriver which knocks Rich to the ramp. Rich gets suplexed out there as Race takes over.

Tommy comes back, knocking Race over the top and sending his head into the apron in the process. A middle rope elbow gets two. There’s a belly to belly from Race followed by a swinging neckbreaker. Rich comes back and tries a slam and they tumble to the floor. Back in, Rich tries a top rope cross body but Race rolls through for the surprise pin.

Rating: D. The match was boring and again I have no idea why it exists. We’re 45 minutes into a roughly three hour show and the best match has been a long Brian Pillman vs. Buddy Landell match. What’s the point of these things anyway? Wouldn’t they be better suited spaced out a bit? Unless they hope they’re having the best final two thirds ever, I really don’t understand this.

Mean Mark and Paul E. Dangerously say Flair will win and that Mark will win the US Title from Luger. This is more or less the only big time match that Mark will have in WCW. Mark rips up a Luger t-shirt during this.

US Tag Titles: Midnight Express vs. Southern Boys

The Southern Boys are the challengers and are Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers. The Midnights clear the ring almost immediately and the fight heads outside. The Southern Boys get Eaton alone and hit a double backdrop followed by a double shoulder to send him out. Lane is knocked out too and Cornette freaks. He yells at a fan “WHY DON’T YOU SIT DOWN AND WIPE THE UGLY OFF YOUR FACE YOU STUPID PIG FACED MORON?” I love Jim Cornette.

Armstrong and Eaton officially get us going and Eaton gets an early advantage. He gets slammed off the top though and Armstrong speeds things up to take over. It’s not often that speeding things up works on Eaton but it is to a degree here. Smothers comes in and Eaton has just as much luck as he did with Armstrong. Smothers fires off some martial arts shots and Eaton complains.

Eaton gets thrown around a lot and superkicked to his own corner. FINALLY he tags in Lane and it’s time for a karate fight. Lane gets in the first shot and then a few more to a big reaction. Now Armstrong superkicks Lane and then does the same to Eaton. Back to wrestling now with Smothers working on the arm. Lane escapes and tags in Eaton who is taken down with an armdrag as well.

Eaton gets knocked to the floor and Armstrong kicks him down again. The Southern Boys ram their heads together and Cornette freaks out even more. This has not been his day at all. Smothers rolls Bobby up but Bobby made a blind tag, allowing Lane to throw Smothers over the top and ram him into the barricade to take over for the first time. Smother tries to speed things up but Bobby takes his head off with a clothesline.

Off to lane again as the Southern Boys are in trouble. The beating continues and Eaton hits the Alabama Jam. It hurts him too though and it’s back to Lane. Smothers gets two off a sunset flip. The Midnights use their double team moves and a swinging neckbreaker puts Tracy on the floor. Smothers manages to slingshot Eaton to the floor and then rams Lane’s head into the buckle.

Lane comes back with some kung fu fighting, but both Midnights get caught in a single sunset flip. Smothers has some great thinking here and runs over to tag out instead of the improbable tag. Everything breaks down and the Southern Boys hit a sweet double team move resembling a Hart Attack with Armstrong hitting a missile dropkick instead of the clothesline. That gets two and the Midnights take Armstrong down and the Rocket Launcher gets two. The Southern Boys switch and Smothers rolls him up for two. Lane manages to kick Smothers in the head from the apron and Eaton rolls him up to retain.

Rating: A. GREAT match here with the fans absolutely coming unglued to end things. The Southern Boys got a lot better in about the blink of an eye while the Midnights would drop the titles to the Steiners later in the year and then would split, with Lane and Cornette starting up SMW and not being in WCW ever again that I recall. Outstanding match here though, which Cornette called one of the best Express matches ever.

The Fre…..oh my. Uh…..what’s a polite way to say this……the Freebirds look like they’d make a great Survivor Series team with Adrian Street and Rico after he split from Billy and Chuck. There’s mascara, there’s eyeliner, there’s suspenders, there’s long ponytails, and I think I see glitter. They say they can drive anything and they can ride anything with four legs. They get the Steiners tonight.

Z-Man vs. Big Van Vader

This is Vader’s WCW debut and Z-Man is the kind of guy Vader sprinkles on his pizza (ten points for whoever gets that reference). He’s in a more traditional mask here and has the helmet. There’s the bell and Z-Man’s chances are done in about 4 seconds. Vader knocks him around for about two minutes and a splash ends it. Z-Man had absolutely zero offense.

The Horsemen say they have some surprises for Sting and his friends tonight. This incarnation is Windham, Arn and Sid with Ole doing a lot of the talking. You know, because that Arn guy could never do that.

Fabulous Freebirds vs. Steiner Brothers

Make your own jokes about them being called Fabulous after the way they looked earlier. The Birds jump Scott to start and knock Rick to the outside. Scott throws Garvin around and blocks a Hayes DDT. Rick comes in and punches everyone out to the floor. Scott takes them down with a double clothesline as the Steiners take over. Rick vs. Garvin officially starts us off after about a minute.

Garvin gets backdropped and it’s all Rick to start. Hayes comes in and stalls a lot. Rick bites him in a place I don’t want to check for marks and it’s back to Garvin vs. Scott. Garvin tries to go amateur with him and guess how well that goes for him. The Steiners clear the ring and the Freebirds want a time out. The fans get all over the Birds until we get to Hayes vs. Scott.

Hayes punches him a few times but Scott shrugs them off and suplexes both Birds. Both of them get slammed by Rick and the dominance is on. Hayes gets in the first significant offense for the Freebirds by punching Rick to the floor. A double suplex puts Rick down again and it’s off to a chinlock by Jimmy. Garvin hooks three chinlocks inside of two minutes.

He goes up but Rick slams him down and hits something that was supposed to be a bulldog. This match has just died since the Birds took over. There’s the hot tag to Scott and house is cleaned. There’s a Frankensteiner to Hayes but Garvin grabs a DDT on Scott. He isn’t legal though and walks into a belly to belly from Rick and Scott gets the pin.

Rating: C-. It’s not bad but at the same time there’s nothing at all here from the Freebirds that is anything worth seeing. The Steiners are completely awesome and would get the tag titles back in February, winning them from the Freebirds before the Freebirds won them in the first place. Now that’s a story that can only happen in wrestling.

Sign of the times for you: this show is in July. The next PPV is in late October.

Dudes With Attitude vs. Horsemen

It’s Orndorff/JYD/El Gigante (making his debut) vs. Sid/Barry/Arn (TV Champion) and this is more of the Sting’s guys vs. Horsemen war. Arn vs. Paul gets us going. Sid comes in instead so Paul hip tosses everyone. He can’t backslide Sid though, or at least not until the JYD headbutts Sid down. Arn comes in to pound on Paul but he fights out of the corner. El Gigante comes in and everyone named after a Horse runs.

The Horsemen have a huddle but Orndorff pulls him back in for a beating from JYD. Gigante pulls back a fist and Anderson runs very fast as his eyes bug out. Windham comes in and JYD gets down on all fours to headbutt him a few times. Arn punches the Dog a few times and brings Barry back in. Windham DDTs Dog and hey he has a hard head. That’s a new one from him.

A not hot tag brings Orndorff in and he cleans a few rooms. The Dudes were never in any real trouble so there’s no heat on the tag. He loads up the piledriver on Anderson but Barry comes in off the top to break it up. The fans want Sid so he comes in for a chinlock. Everything breaks down and a lot of people are thrown over the top. The Horsemen run from Gigante and somewhere in there the Dudes win via DQ.

Rating: D. There was no point here other than to showcase Gigante. The problem with that is he’s just there for his look rather than anything resembling skill. Very boring match here and the fans didn’t care at all other than wanting the eternally popular Sid. This wouldn’t end anytime soon that I remember.

Lex says he’s tougher than a shirt and he supports Sting.

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Mark Callous

Mark has Dangerously with him. This is Mark’s only important match in WCW. He takes over to start and works on the arm and they actually go to the mat. Lex arm drags him to the corner where Mark complains of a hair pull. Callous is the Undertaker because I’ve done the “who is he” thing too many times. Mark misses a corner charge and a cross body gets two. Time for some arm work and Paul is on the phone to someone named Murray.

Mark jumps over him with a leapfrog but misses a punch. The second attempt works and Callous takes over. This is as slow as it sounds. Mark works on the arm for awhile and then knocks Luger to the outside. Luger gets a quick sunset flip for two. He no sells a suplex and clotheslines Mark down a few times. There’s the Rack but the referee takes a shot to the head.

Dangerously throws in the phone which goes into Luger’s ribs. The fans are a lot more into this than you would expect them to be. Mark crawls over to him and gets a very slow cover for two. Mark calls for the Heart Punch but Luger gets a boot up, knocks Paul down, and wins with a clothesline of all things.

Rating: D+. Nothing to see here but this was a much more normal concept back in the day: having the midcard titles defended against big guys who haven’t really done anything of note yet. Mark would get a lot better after getting the right gimmick in about 5 months. Until then though, he was pretty worthless.

Sting says he’s ready and will have no excuses if he loses.

Tag Titles: Rock N Roll Express vs. Doom

This is more or less the final run for the RNR and they’re challenging here. Simmons vs. Gibson starts us off. JR talks about Gibson signing in the ring, as in sign language. Gibson speeds things up and gets a rollup for one, which makes Simmons tag in Reed. An elbow puts Butch back into the corner and here’s Ricky. Reed knocks Morton down so the Express double teams him down.

The idea of the match here is very simple: when the Express can double team they win, but when it’s one on one they don’t have much luck. Reed knocks both of them to the floor but it’s Gibson taking the worst of it. Back in a sunset flip gets two for Robert as does a slam for Reed. Morton comes in to speed things up and gets two with an O’Connor Roll on Butch. They speed the clock up to say that it’s been ten minutes.

Reed works over Morton with pure power and brings in Simmons. Morton gets a dropkick but Reed comes in to keep things at the status quo. Reed comes in and slows things back down again, which makes perfect sense for Doom. Gibson has had enough and comes in for some cheating but it doesn’t do enough to get him in legally. Back to Simmons as Morton takes a beating like only Ricky Morton can do.

Reed gets two off a big right hand and it’s time for more chinlocking. Doom does their cheating by throwing Morton over the top while the other has the referee distracted. Shoulder block gets two for Ron. Morton slugs it out with Reed which goes horribly and results in a powerslam for two. Morton ducks another shoulder and there’s the hot tag to Gibson. He cleans house and a sunset flip gets no count on Ron as everything breaks down. An enziguri sends Ron into Teddy to bring him inside. Gibson beats him up which is enough of a distraction for Reed to come off the top and kill Gibson with a shoulder to retain.

Rating: B. Doom was awesome at this point and would soon turn face and fight the Horsemen, causing some AWESOME fights. The Express never really went anywhere after this other than to the indies and other companies. Great match though in the traditional formula that the Express perfected long ago.

Flair says he’s going to walk that aisle against Sting tonight.

NWA World Title: Sting vs. Ric Flair

Ton of stips here: No DQ, No Countout, the Dudes With Attitude are at ringside to counter the Horsemen and Ole is handcuffed to El Gigante. Flair chops away but those don’t work on Sting of course. Gorilla press sends Flair to the corner and Rick Steiner laughs at him. Dropkick sends Flair to the outside but Sting follows him out. Back inside Flair gets a quick suplex but Sting is up first.

A top rope cross body gets two on Flair. The champ begs off and heads to the floor to take another breather. Back in and Flair kicks the knee out to get the crowd into a panic. Sting clotheslines him down but an elbow misses. Figure Four is quickly broken up but Flair keeps control. We go outside and are told that’s ten minutes in. It’s more like 5 but whatever. There’s been no clipping either.

Sting comes back in the ring but a dropkick misses. Flair goes after the knee and Sting sells it like he’s been shot. Ric tries to cannonball down onto the knee but misses. It doesn’t mean anything but the knee drop missing does. Sting throws the Figure Four on Flair and the people literally rise up. Flair escapes to the ropes and they go outside. Sting is sent into the barricade but shrugs it off.

Ten corner punches back in the ring have Flair rocked but he kicks Sting in the knee. Flair goes up and there’s the slam off the top. Sting tries to mount an offense but gets kicked in the knee again. Sting keeps avoiding the Figure Four but his counters are getting slower each time. He’s limping badly now too. Flair slaps him in the corner and chops away, which doesn’t go that well.

Sting is all like BRING IT ON NAITCH and hits a backdrop and clothesline for two. The fans are getting way into it here. I don’t think anyone doubts that Sting will win here but it’s about how he’s going to do it rather than will he do it. Another clothesline puts Flair on the apron and a suplex back in gets two. Stinger Splash hits and Flair Flops. Here comes the Scorpion and Ole is panicking. The Horsemen run out but Orndorff, JYD and the Steiners are waiting for them.

Flair FINALLY makes the ropes but the fans mostly missed it due to the outside stuff. It’s good that they didn’t end it there. Sting punches him to the apron but Flair kicks the knee out again. Scott Steiner shoves Flair’s feet off the ropes and Sting gets a backslide for two. The crowd is losing it on these kickouts. For some reason Sting tries a running knee in the corner and for another reason we cut to the crowd as the knee hits the buckle. Flair goes for the Figure Four, but Sting rolls him up for the pin and the title. To say the roof is blown off the place is an understatement.

Rating: B-. The match isn’t great and it’s nowhere near their best, but this was about a moment. Sting was the hottest thing on the planet and had been for about a year and a half, so this was academic. The idea here is that they let it be a big moment instead of some stupid swerve to mess with us. That’s what WWE seems so scared of today: people figuring out the conclusions and changing them rather than letting them go, which is the right idea. A lot of the time it’s about how you get to the ending, not what you get to.

Sting praises Flair and says he’ll do the best he can as champion.

Overall Rating: C+. The first four matches are AWFUL and suck the life out of the show, but if you edit them out (which the home video so thankfully did) you get a pretty awesome show with a huge moment to end things. Sting is officially the king of the NWA, but then things would fall apart because of the brilliance of Ole Anderson and the Black Scorpion mess, but for what this is, it was great.

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Clash of the Champions #13: Thanksgiving Thunder
Date: November 20, 1990
Location: Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florida
Attendance: 5,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Paul E. Dangerously

We’re in a very dark era for WCW at this point as it’s the final days of the Black Scorpion story. This show is probably the lowest point that it reached for reasons that you’ll see. Basically, there’s some guy in a black suit running around taunting Sting and no one knows who he is. There have been a lot of false alarms and hints which tried to imply it was Ultimate Warrior, but you would have to be a BIG old school fan to get that. Anyway it sucks but let’s get to it.

After a very basic intro which is pretty downplayed by comparison to most of their videos.

JR and Paulie talk about the show. The main event is Flair vs. Butch Reed. If Reed wins, Teddy Long gets Flair’s yacht and limo but if Flair wins, the Horsemen get a tag title shot and Teddy has to be Flair’s chauffeur.

Freebirds/Bobby Eaton vs. Southern Boys/El Gigante

The Birds have an annoying manager named Little Richard Marley (jobber Rocky King) with them. And never mind as Hayes says El Gigante got beaten up and sent back to Argentina so it’s just going to be a tag match.

Freebirds vs. Southern Boys

Eaton gets thrown out. Garvin vs. Smothers starts us off. This is a two and a half hour show (TV time that is) and we have 11 matches so most of them are going to be short. The Southern Boys clean house and send the Birds to the floor. The lighting is TERRIBLE in the arena here. Hayes isn’t really the kind of guy that can make glittery purple pants look tough.

The Birds get knocked to the floor again and we eventually get to Garvin vs. Tracy Smothers (his partner is Steve Armstrong). Garvin gets slammed off the top and the Birds double team. So then Armstrong goes one up on them with a double clothesline off the top. Marley gets up on the apron as the Southern Boys take over. Marley trips Smothers as Armstrong dives onto Garvin, allowing Hayes to DDT Smothers for the cheap pin.

Rating: D-. Well that match was worthless. I never cared for either of these teams and this was a pretty good example as to why. Who in the world thought this was going to be an entertaining match? Nothing interesting here at all and the Birds might have used three moves other than a slam. Terribly uninteresting.

Here’s Sting who is fired up to be face to face with the Black Scorpion. And that’s it. This was like 30 seconds long. Oh wait we’re not done. The Black Scorpion’s voice comes over the PA (it’s Ole Anderson, the same voice as the Shockmaster) who says that we’ll see his great powers of black magic tonight.

Buddy Landell vs. Brian Pillman

Pillman has the Bengals trunks now and is way popular. Landell looks exactly like Flair and even is nicknamed Nature Boy. He jumps Pillman to start and beats him down. Brian tries for some quick pins but once they don’t work he just knocks Buddy to the floor and dives onto him onto the ramp. A piledriver out there doesn’t work and back into the ring they go. They fight to the floor and Landell sends him to the post.

Even Dangerously says that Landell is a Flair clone. I’m not sure I get the point in having a Flair character at the same time Flair was there but he had been doing it for years so it’s not like this is some quick character for him. He was popular enough on his own too. Out to the floor again and Pillman hits a SWEET springboard crossbody to send Landell into the railing. Dang that man could fly. Abdominal stretch by Buddy is followed by a backbreaker for two. Pillman blocks a superplex and hits a top rope cross body for a very quick pin.

Rating: C. This was again short but they had a decent little match out there. Pillman was a rising star and would be in WarGames the next year (almost getting killed in the process but that’s another review for another time). This was a very basic power/brawler vs. speed match but it worked out pretty well I thought.

Big Cat vs. Brad Armstrong

Cat is more famous as Curtis Hughes and is one of three monster heels in a loose stable at this point. He wanted Luger and I don’t remember them ever fighting. Armstrong is the Candyman here because he’s only had 9485 stupid gimmicks in his career and needed another. What exactly that name means isn’t exactly mentioned but who needs to know that?

Power vs. speed here. Basically picture Big Zeke for an image of Big Cat. As for what happens in this, picture any power monster vs. speed face match that you’ve ever seen and you have that here. Cat hits a trio of backbreakers and Armstrong is in trouble. There’s a bearhug to continue the predictable basis of this one. Armstrong makes a very quick comeback but gets caught in a Torture Rack (stolen from Luger to further the feud) and the referee stops it.

Rating: D. Like I said, this was every power vs. speed match you’ve ever seen. Paint by numbers would be a good name for this. It’s not horrible I guess, but I’ve seen this sort of thing so many times that there’s nothing to be gained from it. It did its job well enough though so it’s not a total waste of time.

Dick the Bruiser is a scary man and says he’ll be at Starrcade to referee the main event.

Z-Man vs. Brian Lee

Lee is more famous as either a guy in ECW, the Fake Undertaker in 1994 or Chainz in the early Attitude Era. More speed vs. big guy here but Lee isn’t quite a full power guy. He’s more tall than strong. Z-Man speeds things up but misses a cross body and crashes to let Lee take over. Off to a chinlock as this is going nowhere. Z-Man easily comes back and a missile dropkick ends this.

Rating: F. This show SUCKS. This was another match that did nothing at all and was just there which is getting really old really fast. Lee was awful and from what I can find this is his official tryout match. To the shock of no one, he didn’t get a job out of it. Nothing match and it didn’t work at all.

Mike Rotundo is officially Michael Wallstreet after inheriting a lot of money. He’s got a new manager in the form of Alexandra York who says the computer says if Wallstreet follows the plan, he’ll beat Starblazer with ease tonight. This angle lasted longer than it should have but almost got good near the end.

Starblazer vs. Michael Wallstreet

Apparently Starblazer is (mostly) career jobber Tim Horner under a mask. How can we possibly be five matches into this show? York (Terri Runnels) shows him the computer’s plan and the fans chant boring less than a minute into this. Starblazer hits some fast dropkicks to send him to the floor. Join the WCW Fan Club! Back in they speed things up and Wallstreet throws him to the floor. Blazer makes a brief comeback and they fight over a Boston Crab for some reason. This FINALLY ends with the Wallstreet Crash, a Samoan Drop, for the pin.

Rating: D-. I have never seen a crowd that dead for a match. I mean they were not moving in the slightest. Wallstreet was such a boring character and they didn’t really ever develop him at all. He was at least better as IRS due to the character having something to talk about. Still though, bad match.

The WCW Top Ten:

Tag teams first.

10. Norman The Lunatic/The Juicer
9. Big Cat/Motor City Madman
8. Tim Horner/Candyman
7. Master Blasters
6. Southern Boys
5. Ricky Morton/Tommy Rich
4. Freebirds
3. Nasty Boys
2. Ric Flair/Arn Anderson
1. Steiner Brothers

Singles:

10. Bobby Eaton
9. Z-Man
8. Michael Wallstreet
7. Brian Pillman
6. Terry Taylor
5. Arn Anderson
4. Ric Flair
3. Lex Luger
2. Sid Vicious
1. Stan Hansen

Here’s a video about the International Tag Team Tournament which had one team from a bunch of countries/continents.

Ready for something that’s bordering on full blown racism?

African Tag Team Tournament Finals: Colonel DeKlerk/Sergeant Krueger vs. Kalua/Botswana Beast

DeKlerk is Rocco Rock before he gained a ton of work. I have no idea who Beast and Kalua are and I can’t find any information on them at all. Probably local guys. Naturally the “Africans” (yeah they’re just from Africa, even if one is named Botswana Beast) are black and the white South Africans are pretty American, as Krueger is Matt Osborne, as in Doink the Clown/Big Josh.

Krueger starts with let’s say Kalua. At least the Africans (as in not the white South Africans) are in regular tights and not tribal attire. Dangerously talks about how great DeKlerk is and all the titles he’s held on different continents. DeKlerk busts out a standing Lionsault but lands almost in a reverse DDT. Beast is a huge man and no sells a lot while his gut shakes. Beast destroys DeKlerk but gets caught with a clothesline. Another powerslam puts DeKlerk down for two. Things break down and they do the slam with a dropkick to the back for the pin as DeKlerk pins Beast.

Rating: F. It was stupid, they’re not from Africa, and I feel like I need to report this to Jesse Jackson. Just dreadful and the match SUCKED on top of that.

Sam Muchnick invites us to watch Starrcade in St. Louis. Old school fans will smile at that.

Recap of Luger vs. Hansen for the US Title, which is about Hansen FINALLY ending the title reign of Luger went on over 19 months. He did it clean too.

Vignette of Paul E. and his Motorcity Madman, another of that trio of heels I mentioned earlier.

Luger isn’t worried about the Madman. He wants Hansen but Big Cat shows up. Luger punches him once, Cat goes down, Luger goes to the ring. Cat gets up and says that was a mistake. Luger looked AWESOME there.

Motorcity Madman vs. Lex Luger

Madman is a nobody who got a cup of coffee in WCW and nothing happened with him. Lex is just ungodly popular. Big Cat sneaks up on Lex and they slug it out. Cat gets beaten back until referees break it up. The Madman jumps Luger as literally the entire two front rows are walking out at the exact same time. They must have been from somewhere else in the arena because the rows are full. There must have been 30-40 people walking though. Lex mostly suplexes the big guy as this is really just a power display for Lex. Madman hits a forearm and side slam but Lex hits a clothesline for the quick pin. Just a squash.

Nick Patrick speaks for the referees and says they’re worried about the Steiners vs. the Nasties. Ok then.

Renegade Warriors vs. Nasty Boys

They’re Chris and Mark Youngblood, a regular tag team who are Indians. JR says if the Nasties can beat the Steiners, he’ll quit announcing. Paulie FREAKS and is now Nasty Fan #1. Mark starts with Sags. It quickly turns into a brawl with Knobs taking over. Chris helps cheat which sets up an armbar. Back to Mark and now it’s Sags getting his arm worked on. Out to the floor and Knobs sends Mark into the railing. Chris bangs on a tom tom drum so Knobs DDTs Mark’s arm. Really bad match so far. The Steiners FINALLY run in and beat down the Nasties, probably as punishment for this. It’s a double DQ.

Rating: F. Oh just AWFUL here. The only thing people wanted to see was a brawl between the Nasties and Steiners, but somehow the WWF was able to get the Nasties over to WWF very quickly after this. I mean this is November and the Nasties were at the Rumble in January. I’ve never gotten how that can be done but it happened in this case.

Vader is back.

Sid Vicious vs. Nightstalker

Nightstalker is Brian Clark, or Adam Bomb. I remember seeing Nightstalker coming down the aisle and that exact camera angle watching this as a kid. I love stuff like that. Sid is a Horseman and very popular here. Test of strength to start which is won by Sid but Stalker hooks a bearhug. He talks to Sid the whole time. Clearly they’re exchanging green bean casserole recipies.

Sid pounds him into the corner and JR says this won’t be pretty. Sid’s arm is hurt and this is going nowhere. We get a rib claw and here’s Big Cat AGAIN. What is this, his 4th appearance? Sid knocks him down so Stalker brings in his ax. Yes, an ax. Sid gets it, hits Stalker with it, and gets the pin.

Rating: F. GET RID OF BIG CAT. He’s nothing interesting, he’s more boring than Big Zeke Jackson, and he’s been in half the matches tonight. Nothing to see here and a horribly bad match. Also, there’s the fact that SID HIT HIM WITH AN AX TO END THE THING. Let that sink in for a minute.

The Freebirds pat themselves on the back until the Southern Boys come up. Garvin offers to fights with an arm behind his back and here’s El Gigante to chase them off.

Missy Hyatt hypes an upcoming TV show.

We look at the Steiners attacking the Nasties earlier.

Steiner Brothers vs. Magnum Force

I can’t find who Magnum Force is anywhere. They’re one of those old school teams referred to as Magnum Force #1 and Magnum Force #2. The Steiners are the US Tag Champions but this is non-title. Scott starts with let’s say #1. The people are walking AGAIN. There has to be something to that. Rick vs. #2 in now. This is going nowhere. A quick Steiner Line ends this and the Nasties run in. Total squash and the Nasties run quickly.

The Horsemen say they’ll win. The official main event hasn’t been announced yet but it’s Flair or Arn vs. Reed or Simmons.

We recap Sting vs. Black Scorpion. The idea is that it’s someone from Sting’s past (eventually supposed to be Angel of Death, who no one was going to remember) and he’s trying to take Sting out. Sting beat a fake one at a previous Clash but the real one came down later. Then in Chicago, the Scorpion kidnapped a fan, put him in a magician’s box, and made him disappear. Then the Scorpion interrupted a title match. Tonight, they’re going to have a chat.

Sting comes out for the Danger Zone, Paulie’s talk show. He says a little bit and here’s the Scorpion to kidnap another fan. The “fan” gets a box put on his head and his “head” is spun around 360 degrees. Then he gets put in a cage and turned into a leopard. And remember, This was supposed to be the TOP HEEL ANGLE OF THE YEAR. Scorpion jumps into a box and disappears. He was narrating the thing the whole time but you couldn’t understand 90% of it.

I mean WOW. This is a fine example of what we mean by “insulting our intelligence.” This was a bad magic show, not a wrestling match. At the end of the day it wound up being Flair under the mask, which makes the whole thing even dumber. I have no idea what Ole Anderson was on when he thought this was a good idea, but man I want some of it.

We recap Doom vs. The Horsemen. They both wanted to be on The Danger Zone and it all broke down. They had a match at Halloween Havoc where it was thrown out. The aforementioned bet was made: yacht/limo vs. title shot/Teddy as a chauffeur.

All four guys come out and there are coin flips to determine who the singles guys are.

Ric Flair vs. Butch Reed

Power vs. Flair here and you know he knows how to work that match. Reed uses power and punches him out a lot. There’s the press slam and Flair is in trouble early. After a brief fight on the ramp we go back inside and Reed hooks a backslide for two. A dropkick puts Flair down but he goes to the eyes like a Horseman. He tosses Reed to the floor thanks to an accidental distraction from Simmons.

Anderson adds in some cheating on the floor but back inside they trade chops and Reed gets a slight advantage. There’s a Flair Flop and a Flair Flip, resulting in him getting popped in the face by Simmons. Flair takes over and hits a knee drop but a second one misses. Reed slaps on a figure four and Flair’s leg is in trouble.

After Flair makes the rope he avoids a middle rope elbow and Reed is in trouble. It turns into a slugout and they need to wrap this up. Reed really likes gorilla presses. He goes up top for a shoulder block but it basically hits Flair’s knee. I don’t think he was aiming for it but there you go. Reed gets sent to the floor where the referee was and everyone is down. Anderson clocks Reed with a chair and Flair steals the pin.

Rating: C-. Pretty good match but the last five minutes weigh it down a bit. The ending is a big mess but the idea was that Simmons got lost in it and therefore couldn’t make a save. It’s certainly not bad and is easily the best match of the night, but to be fair given what you had up to that point, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Decent stuff, but cutting four minutes or so off would have made it way better.

The big WCW letters are tilted to the left for some reason.

Overall Rating: D-. This is the worst kind of show: the boring kind. Other than the main event which is just ok, there’s nothing going on here worth seeing. That’s what I can’t stand reviewing: shows where it’s clear no one is giving any effort and no one wants to be there. It was a horribly dull show with nothing at all to see. Steer FAR clear of this one.

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Clash of the Champions 12: Fall Brawl 90
Date: September 5, 1990
Location: Ashville Civic Center, Ashville, North Carolina
Commentators: Bob Caudle, Jim Ross
Attendance: 4,000

We’re kind of in No Man’s Land here with no major show to build to and none to come off of. This is in the Black Scorpion period so you know things are pretty bad. That’s the main event tonight: Sting vs. the Black Scorpion in what I’m sure will be a classic. Other than that you get a Nasty Boys match of all things. Yes the Nasty Boys in 1990. That should be shall we say, interesting? Outside of that….yeah this is going to suck. Let’s get to it.

Side note: this show winds up having a special moment for me which we’ll get to at the end.

Also keep in mind this has zero connection to the PPV series of the same name. This show is also called Mountain Madness.

Jim and Bob run down the card.

Southern Boys vs. Freebirds

Garvin and Hayes here. We get the music video as it feels like the 80s all over again. You old school fans know what I’m talking about. The Freebirds are faces here which makes me think we might have faces vs. faces here. The Freebirds are the Southern tag champions here which I’m not sure what are. Yep faces vs. faces. This was supposed to be a six man with Bob Armstrong and Buddy Roberts on the respective teams but Roberts has a bad arm so it’s standard.

Hayes and Smothers start us off. The Birds have face paint on which is a different thing for them. Also the ramp is really weird here as it comes to a corner rather than the traditional side of the ring. Ok maybe the Birds are heels but the crowd just likes them. That sounds far more realistic in the South. Smothers hits a nice superkick to send Garvin to the floor. And now the fans think the Birds suck. Maybe it’s just that the crowd is insane.

Armstrong (the Southern Boys are Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers in case the names were confusing you. The Freebirds are Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin) hits a SWEET top rope cross body and the Birds go running. Or is it flying? Everything goes nuts so we kind of restart things with Smothers vs. Hayes again. BIG left hand by Hayes catches Armstrong as he’s on the apron.

I’ve looked around and I have no idea what those tag titles the Birds allegedly hold are. Now the Birds are being booed. Caudle thinks if Robert E. Lee had the Southern Boys during the Civil War Atlanta might have been the capital. They really would have been awesome if they had gotten the Confederacy to switch from Richmond to Atlanta for the capital. Yeah I’m that bored here: I’m making US History corrections.

The Freebirds are credited as being the first team to use rock and roll music for their entrances. Ross mentions that here and for once that’s accurate. Listen to some DVDs and see how many people take credit for being the first to do that. Gorgeous George used theme music back in the 50s but I’m pretty sure the Birds were the first to use rock music. Then again almost everyone in WCCW did that at first so it was either them or the Von Erichs. Again, not much is going on here so I have time for tangents like these. I need to do some WCCW stuff.

Armstrong comes in to clean some house and has a nice dropkick. Bob Armstrong comes in to cheat to counteract Roberts’ cheating. Yep his arm is fine of course. Everything goes nuts and Roberts throws a foreign object to Hayes but a double sunset flip gets the pin for the Southern Boys. The heels beat up Bob Armstrong (Road Dogg’s dad. Steve is his brother) after the match.

Rating: C-. Not a great match at all as it was very start and stop which is rarely a good thing. This wasn’t horrible and the fast paced stuff made it fairly good. Far too many dead spots in there though. Also the double Southern gimmick was just kind of a headscratcher. Crowd is red hot though so this was a good opener from that perspective.

Tony talks to the Steiners who just won the US Tag Titles. Rick in a pink hat works somehow. Scott fumbles through both of his lines. They’re fighting Maximum Overdrive tonight. No one has heard of them, which is probably because they’re a pair of jobbers.

Buddy Landel vs. Mike Rotunda

Rotunda would be gone to become IRS in like a day. Landel is still alive here which amazes me. Rotunda has some chick with him that won a poetry contest held by Burger King. Very different time obviously. Technical stuff to start with nothing really all that special about it thus far. Somewhat botched hip toss by Rotunda and we have a standoff.

Rotunda’s tights have an anchor on them for some reason. A second hip toss works a bit better this time as Landel actually jumps. We somehow slow it down even more here which I didn’t think was possible. They slug it out a bit which is definitely the best part of this so far. But enough of that as we hit the mat again. Rotunda gets up and hooks a freaking backslide to get the pin. Wow that’s not something you see everyday.

Rating: D. Just boring filler here as neither guy meant anything at all. Rotunda turned heel soon after this but was in WWF less than 6 months later. This went nowhere at all and was just about five minutes of wrestling to fill in that much time. Landel was pretty worthless here and was gone soon also.

The Freebirds say they’re awesome and are rather ticked off about life in general. Oh apparently they want the Southern Boys again. We get a video of them in Hollywood as they were supposed to be a big time rock band. Fans mob them and that’s that.

Tim Horner/Brad Armstrong vs. Master Blasters

Brad Armstrong is a very underrated wrestler that oddly enough would hook up with the Freebirds as a masked man soon after this. The Master Blasters are a debuting team of giants, one of which has a huge mowhawk which he would soon shave and replace with black hair. When this team died off he would be repackaged as Vinnie Vegas but then he would get released to go to WWF and become a guy named Diesel, who would eventually become known by his real name: Kevin Nash.

It’s weird seeing Nash look all ripped. Armstrong is called the Candy Man here. Any guesses as to what we’re going to see here? Nash, a power guy named Steel, uses a wristlock. Iron, the dude that did nothing other than be a part of this team, is really bad. You can tell Nash is really green here. Iron misses a falling headbutt so badly the fans loudly boo it. When you can see it that clearly without a video screen that’s a bad sign.

Nash hits a decent powerslam on Armstrong to take him down. His eyes are FREAKY as they’re wide open and very white. Nash works the majority of the match as he’s the one that sucks less here. This Iron guy is horrible. He falls down before a dropkick hits him and can’t take a backdrop properly. Horner comes in and gets about 20 seconds of offense in before Nash crushes him. Double shoulderblock ends Armstrong clean.

Rating: D. Just a squash but Iron was HORRIBLE. Nash wasn’t very good yet but he was passable at least. Horner was a jobber for the most part but was decent enough. Armstrong was a good worker but he was a jobber here so you couldn’t see much of that. This was fine for what it was but nothing special at all.

Brian Pillman is going to start a new contest called the gauntlet. Back in the day there was an NWA show on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. You would have a match on each show and if you won all three you won $15,000. If you lost the three guys split the money. Kind of a pointless concept but it lasted for awhile. Nothing special though.

Missy Hyatt brings out the “greatest world champion of ever”, Ric Flair. He has a US Title match vs. Luger tonight and is rather over since this is definitely Flair country. Nothing is said here at all.

Jackie Fulton/Terry Taylor vs. Nasty Boys

Fulton is the brother of Bobby Fulton of the Fantastics and did some stuff in Japan. This ends his career highlights. Everyone else I’d think you know. Knobbs and Fulton start us off. This is the debut for the Nasties and of course they would be gone in a few months. Knobbs was in the final three of the 91 Rumble so the couldn’t have been in WCW long after this.

Fulton takes them both down very quickly as the Nasties can’t get much going. Caudle tries to say that Jackie is one of the Fantastics which is incorrect but whatever. Taylor sends Sags into the post as the first time team is winning here surprisingly enough. You would think the Nasties were the jobbers here. Taylor is the key to the match here. Why he’s the key is never explained but apparently he’s the key.

The Nasties take over with the highest extent of their wrestling abilities. Taylor gets a sunset flip for two as Knobbs punches the mat by mistake. Heel miscommunication lets Fulton get the tag. He goes up but Knobbs catches him in a nice powerslam, allowing Sags to hit a top rope elbow to end it.

Rating: C. I can’t believe I’m saying this but the Nasty Boys had an entertaining match. This was kind of an odd debut here but the Nasties looked good near the end. Hardly a great match but I thought it was entertaining enough for about 7 minutes. Power vs. speed is hard to screw up even for the Nasty Boys.

Sid Vicious is here and wants to yell at Sting. Sid was a Horsemen here and wants the title, which are grounds for throwing him out. Just ask Sting if nothing else.

Bill Irwin vs. Tommy Rich

Irwin was the Goon in WWF and something close to a big star in WCCW but is a generic cowboy here. Tommy Rich is the most forgotten world champion ever and we start off fast. Rich hits a dropkick to send Irwin to the floor which Ross ensures us is NOT a DQ because his feet hit the mat first. That makes such little sense I’m not even going to try to make a joke out of it so whatever. We talk about the military for no apparent reason other than Rich is wearing a Confederate style of tights.

Rich hits a jumping headlock takeover which looked like he wanted Irwin to carry him over the threshold or something. Lot of headlocks here. Irwin stomps the same way Lance Storm does with that little hop in his kicks. Rich gets a pretty nice counter to a side slam into a sleeper. Charge misses for Irwin and a Thesz Press gets the pin. As surprising as this may be that is supposed to be a pinning combination. I’m not sure how one move can be a combination but you get the point.

Rating: D+. Far too short to mean much and the headlocks were rather repetitive but they were working rather quickly out there. Rich would join the York Foundation in a rather pointless stable but it had some success. Other than that neither guy meant anything until Rich went to ECW and did some forgettable stuff.

We get the WCW Top Ten.

World Champion: Sting

10. Buddy Landel
9. Tommy Rich
8. Junkyard Dog
7. Flyin Brian
6. Stan Hansen
5. Sid Vicious
4. Barry Windham
3. Arn Anderson
2. Ric Flair
1. Lex Luger

Tag Teams:

World Champions: Doom

10. Rotundo/Horner
9. Junkyard Dog/El Gigante
8. Flyin Bryan/Z-Man
7. Samoan Swat Team
6. Freebirds
5. Southern Boys
4. Midnight Express
3. Horsemen (no members listed)
2. Rock N Roll Express
1. Steiner Brothers

Took a minute to list off and that’s all there is to it. I never got the point of these things.

Stan Hansen is mad that he’s number 6 so he’s going to fight everyone above him.

LPWA World Title: Bambi vs. Susan Sexton

So back in the 80s and early 90s there were a fair amount of women’s wrestling companies. None of them were very good and they had a lot of the same rosters. This is another example of one where they try to get their product on national TV. Susan is champion here but it doesn’t really matter all that much as this won’t be mentioned again. Both are in the old school one piece swimsuit-looking outfits.

Sexton works on the knee early as she’s fairly decent from a technical standpoint. This is all technical stuff which isn’t that interesting but is pretty decent from the standpoint of technique. Sexton does the first move that isn’t technical with a reverse cross body. Boring match so far. Small package by Bambi gets two and is reversed for the pin by Sexton.

Rating: D. Yeah this was pretty pointless. The problem with these companies was that there was absolutely nothing separating these girls once they got in the ring. Today you have companies like SHIMMER where the girls are all distinctly different. These girls had different names and gimmicks but inside the ring they were the same thing, making the company pointless. Pretty worthless match but not terrible.

Maximum Overdrive vs. Steiner Brothers

Overdrive is an unknown team and the Steiners just won the US Tag Titles and are more or less considered the only team in the world capable of touching Doom at this point. What do you think is going to happen here? Scott and one of the jobbers start us off. Scott gets a Sharpshooter without the legs being intertwined. The jobbers names are Hunter and Silencer.

There’s a reason I’ve never heard of them. In the words of Steve Austin, it’s because they absolutely suck. Surprisingly enough Rick seems to be the more popular one here. I know I’m not saying much here but this is just killing time before we get to the end. And there it is as Scott ENDS Hunter with the DDT from the top.

Rating: D-. Again I say so? No one thought there was any kind of chance for the no names here and that’s exactly what the case was. Why should anyone have wanted to see a six minute squash, especially when the other team was awful? They were a jobbing tag team and this was their career highlight. Can we go to something else now?

Missy plugs the Main Event and I want to hit her.

Stan Hansen vs. Z-Man

Hmm what do you think is going to happen here? Z-Man wears pink in this, apparently just wanting Hansen to murder him faster. We’re already on the floor and Hansen pops him with a chair. Hansen is kind of a cross between Austin and JBL when he was a bar fighter. He had a match at a WWF/Japanese (might have been AJPW but I’m not sure) with Hogan and he nearly KILLED Fink. In case you didn’t guess Z-Man has gotten a total of one kick in throughout the match here. He gets some jobber offense in the form of dropkicks until a Lariat ends him.

Rating: N/A. Just to show that Hansen is awesome and giving him a reason to be in the building. Keep that in mind.

We recap Luger vs. Flair at Wrestlewar 90 where Luger STILL couldn’t get the title off of him. He’s been US Champion for over a year now so everyone is just waiting on him to lose it. Luger is second only to Sting in popularity but Flair is his Kryptonite. Luger says he’s not used to being the champion vs. Flair which is true as I don’t think Flair has ever challenged him for anything before.

US Title: Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger

I love that black and white Flair robe. It has to be his best one, including the blue one. Since we’re in North Carolina, Flair is more or less the second coming. There’s no feeling out period here since both of them have fought about a million times. Speaking of a million times, Flair broke his back in a plane crash 20 years ago. Flair chops Luger and Luger Hulks Up.

Luger’s offense is limited at best but the fans freaking love him so it’s easy to see why he was pushed the way he was. Flair’s shoulder might be hurt. To the shock of no one that pays attention he’s faking and a cheap shot gives him the advantage. Ross messes up when he talks about Flair’s past, saying he played football and weighed 265lbs, 25lbs lighter than he is now, putting Luger at 290 here.

Basically Flair wants this to get his shot at Sting again. And there goes the knee as Flair gets a solid shot in on it. Flair chops away in the corner then kicks Luger in the knee and repeats the sequence a few times. Nice. Luger comes back again and we get a Flair Flop, but as he goes down Flair pokes him in the eye. That is what you call thinking while wrestling. We hit the fifteen minute mark (more like 10) and Luger gets two on a backslide. We already had one fall off of that move this century so there was no way that was happening.

Flair goes flying off the top as the crowd is way into this. We get the corner flip and clothesline on the apron as Flair is reeling. Another gorilla press and powerslam set up the Rack. It’s a bearhug first which makes sense for once here. Second rope suplex gets two as Flair gets his foot on the ropes. You can hear the crowd groan as they thought it was over. Flair hits a cross body to send them both to the floor. Luger gets back in and gets MAULED by Stan Hansen. This set up their match at Halloween Havoc where Hansen ended the longest US Title reign ever. Luger would get it back about 7 weeks later and hot it seven more months, giving him the title for two years minus 50 days. That’s not bad.

Rating: B. Rather good match here as these two just have insanely good chemistry together. Other than Sting Flair brought out the best in Luger and this was no exception. It’s a natural face vs. a natural heel which is the easiest formula in the world to work and these two did it as well as anyone. Luger chased Flair for years and I don’t think ever beat him for a title.

The Black Scorpion wants Sting. If Sting wins he’ll tell Sting who he is. Sting says he’s ready.

WCW World Title: Sting vs. Black Scorpion

Scorpion has to be very careful here because he can’t let any of his trademark moves come out here so as to preserve his identity. Sting is so popular it’s unreal. This is actually the NWA and WCW Titles at once but they’re the same thing so it doesn’t really matter. Scorpion is in a hood and a mask so he’s doubling up here. Scorpion beats up Sting to start here but something tells me that’s not going to last long.

The announcers try to figure out who is under the mask as it’s been established that Scorpion is someone from Sting’s past. We hit the floor and it’s more or less even. Back in the ring and Sting takes over. He goes for the mask but the Scorpion gets out. There’s a section of about 20 empty chairs about seven to nine rows deep. Those would be excellent seats as they’re about eye level with the ring. I don’t remember them being empty earlier so they must have left or something.

They brawl on the ramp for a bit and Sting takes over. Top rope cross body gets two and Scorpion keeps the advantage. We take a shot at WWF by saying anyone can have a belt made and say they’re a champion but only this title dates back to 1905. That’s nonsense but since when has truth meant anything in wrestling? In something I hardly ever remember, Sting gets the pin off the Splash and not the Deathlock.

Rating: D+. Pretty much a standard match here which obviously was to further the angle which was blown off as Starrcade where the Scorpion was revealed to be of course Ric Flair. This Scorpion was a former midcarder named Al Perez whose name shouldn’t really mean anything to you. The match was more or less just a power vs. power match and I don’t think anyone believed Sting was in anything resembling danger.

Post match Sting goes for the mask and gets it off, revealing a red mask underneath. He goes for that one but ANOTHER Black Scorpion shows up on the ramp. Instead of, oh I don’t know, RUNNING EIGHT FEET TO GET AT THE BLACK SCORPION, Sting stares at him and lets him walk away.

Sting says he’s confused to end the show.

On a semi-related note, the Black Scorpion standing on the ramp and staring down Sting is my very first memory of wrestling ever.

Overall Rating: D+. Pretty weak show but the Luger vs. Flair match is good and the main event has the most popular guy in the world not named Hulk Hogan so it revived the crowd. The problem is this is a two hour show and about an hour of it is just painfully boring. WCW was in a weird spot here as there wasn’t really much of anything for Sting to do and with Flair leaving in about 9 months things would just get worse. It would take a combination of Rick Rude and Paul E. Dangerously (Heyman) to breathe life into the company in about 13 months. This wasn’t much at all but the last half hour was ok. Not worth seeing though.

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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.

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Clash of the Champions 10: Texas Shootout
Date: February 6, 1990
Location: Memorial Coliseum, Corpus Christi, Texas
Attendance: 3,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jim Cornette

We’re getting ready for the WrestleWar PPV and there’s one moment on this show that totally altered that PPV as well as arguably the next three and a half years of WCW as well as a legend’s career but we’ll get to that later. Also on this show….uh…..oh you get to see Foley at 24 years old against Mil Mascaras in a match he talks about in his book. Oh and Undertaker is on this show about 8 months before he became Undertaker. Let’s get to it.

The opening video looks like a bad arcade game where you have what appear to be cardboard cutouts of wrestlers being shot in windows of a saloon. It’s going to be one of those shows isn’t it? Cornette gets two talk for two and a half hours so he couldn’t be happier.

Terry Funk has a live mic in Texas to do interviews at ringside. This cannot be good under any circumstances.

Gordon Solie is doing backstage interviews and has the Road Warriors here, about four months before they bailed to WWF. They don’t like the Skyscrapers.

Oliver Humperdink does the intro for Samoan Savage (Tama from the Islanders). He comes out to something like the Halloween theme. These interviews are very, and I mean EXACTLY like ones you would see on a SNME.

Steve Williams puts a dummy in an ambulance and says to the hospital while Bad to the Bone plays in the background. This is going to be a LONG night isn’t it?

Samoan Savage vs. Steve Williams

Oliver Humperdink is listed as the Big Kahuna here. Are you serious? Williams goes right at him in the corner and the brawl is on. The Samoan runs away which is probably the right thing for him to do at this point. Williams fires off right hands and slams that fat man. How did he used to be pretty slim just a few years prior to this? He finally drills a clothesline to take Williams down and get a breath of air.

Humperdink does some weak choking as Williams has been sent to the floor. There’s a house band for no apparent reason called the Tough Guys. Woman is here for no apparent reason again. That sounds like a running theme for tonight. Nitron, Woman’s usual muscle, isn’t here tonight for some reason that the announcers don’t know either.

Time for the chinlock to go on because we have to do that. Cornette makes Mexican jokes as he has been known to do once or twice a minute. Williams fights up with no real trouble but walks into a powerslam for two. That’s almost too interesting though so it’s back to the nerve hold. Sunset flip doesn’t work for Dr. Death but hitting him in the head doesn’t work for Savage. Back to the chinlock as Cornette thinks there should be a Samoan contingent to balance things out.

Williams is sent to the floor and Humperdink gets in a shot which stuns him a bit. So let me get this straight. A right from Humperdink can sent Williams reeling a bit but at the same time a straight downward shot by the Samoan has no effect? Why is Humperdink the manager again? Anyway a top rope splash misses for the Savage so Williams walks around with him in a slam for awhile. Williams gets a backslide of all things and we’re done.

Rating: C-. For a battle of power men there it was just ok. This would be Williams’ last match actually as he was supposed to beat Luger for the US Title at WrestleWar but something happened to change that and he left for Japan as a result. Not much of a match but it’s an opener with Tama as a competitor. What were you expecting?

The Tough Guys play for a bit for no apparent reason.

Terry Funk is here to talk to the Horsemen (faces at this point) who he says will be hard to stop in 1990. In this case it’s Flair (world champion, shocking I know), Arn, Ole and Sting. Yes that Sting. Ole gets in Funk’s face for talking too much. Well no one ever accused Ole of being all that smart. Flair says they’re going to make a statement through their spokesman Ole.

Ole, the great spokesman, has his back to the camera. This is about Sting apparently, because he’s fired. Ole and Arn have been brought back by Flair to get rid of Sting, who is in trouble for wanting the world title. Sting wasn’t taken out yet because Sting saved Flair. Ole offers him a chance to live if he turns down the title shot and has two hours to do that. Sting says not a chance so Ole says the same thing. Sting finally gets a chance to say something but it’s a classic Horsemen beatdown. This isn’t the big moment that I was referring to.

Mod Squad vs. Brian Pillman/Tom Zenk

The Mod Squad is a weak heel tag team made of Basher and Spike. Pillman and Spike (I think) start us off. He’s the skinnier one if nothing else. Pillman can throw a great dropkick. Off to Zenk and the arm work begins. Basher comes in and that goes about as well. Cornette and Ross really don’t seem all that interested in this match and I can’t say I blame them.

Brian beats on Basher for awhile and Zenk adds an enziguri for two. Double teaming doesn’t work on Zenk as Pillman gets a double slingshot clothesline to take both Mods down. Apparently the Midnight Express want to reelect Marian Berry. Ok then. Spike gets a face jam to Pillman to take over as Cornette makes jokes.

We talk about Sting and Flair some more because the match is rather boring. Double teaming by the Squad as Pillman doesn’t even have the Bengal tights here. Off to a chinlock and then another one by the other Mod dude. This match is taking far too long as there hasn’t been anything of note. Cornette disputes the idea that he loves the fans as Pillman gets an elbow to Basher but can’t tag out. Crucifix gets two for Brian but Spike misses a top rope elbow, hot tag Zenk, house is cleaned, cross body ends Basher.

Rating: D. How in the world was this a ten minute match? It should have been something like three but we had to fill in time I guess. Z-Man and Pillman would win the US Tag Titles less than a week after this so there was no way they were going to lose here. Just WAY too long for what they had going on here.

Cactus Jack Manson vs. Mil Mascaras

It’s Foley before he meant anything at all. Nice heat on his introduction though. Foley BLASTED Mascaras in his book over this match so let’s see how bad it is. Cornette says Mascaras is most popular in Japan for some reason. We get to a bow and arrow almost immediately as Mascaras makes Foley look like an idiot, which to be fair is fine because Foley is a far smaller deal at this point.

Test of strength goes to Mascaras and headscissors a go-go. Cactus gets sent to the floor and falls over a chair, landing on his back. JR: “A breakfast room at a honeymoon hotel isn’t as empty as Cactus Jack’s head.” Jack hammers away and Mascaras ignores it, hooking what can only be called a Liontamer for a bit.

Here’s a great example of the no selling complaints. As you know, one of Foley’s signature moves is the elbow off the apron. He hits a backbreaker on the floor and Mascaras never actually goes all the way to the ground. Foley sets for the elbow but there’s no Mascaras, as instead he’s snuck into the ring and dropkicks Foley to the floor where he bangs his head on the concrete. That was one of his signature moves for a long time, and people wonder why he can barely move. Anyway a top rope cross body ends this.

Rating: D. Match was weak, but I totally see Foley’s point with the no selling thing. I mean dude, shake your head a little bit after a punch at least. You’re in the midcard for a one off appearance. You’re not quite Hulk Hogan here. The backbreaker thing was pitiful too. Jack took awhile to set up the elbow which I’d guess was supposed to be the spot for the plunge, but at the same time you can’t even hit the ground? Foley isn’t the only one to complain about this, so it’s not just a personal grudge.

Missy Hyatt hypes that she’s the new co-host of the Main Event.

The Tough Guys perform and Cactus Jack beats them up. That’s a perk. He and the drummer, an AWA guy named JT Southern, get into it a bit and that went nowhere.

Norman the Lunatic, more famous as Bastian Booger, is a crazy man here. As in he was in a straightjacket most of the time. Here he wants hot dogs or something and is told it’s falls count anywhere against Kevin Sullivan.

Norman the Lunatic vs. Kevin Sullivan

Before the match we get a video of Norman at a zoo, petting pigs. In the arena he’s in a cowboy outfit and hands out valentines to the fans. This was one of those concept characters if you get the idea. Sullivan jumps him and we go to the floor almost immediately. Back at this point, companies could sponsor parts of the ring, meaning Sullivan is sent into the Roos’ post.

Norman does that seated splash of his for no cover. A middle rope splash misses though and we’re back to the floor again. Sullivan actually SLAMS Norman in an impressive and surprising spot. There goes Norman’s shirt which means we have to see something rather unpleasant. A “belly to back suplex” (looked like a Russian leg sweep) gets two. Cornette: “This Norman is so stupid that mind readers only charge him half price.”

Sullivan dominates him for a good while and there’s nothing of note. I guess they’re afraid of trying to let Sullivan work a regular match which I can’t blame them for. Back in for you guessed it, more brawling/pounding by Sullivan. Norman makes a comeback and knocks Sullivan through the ropes to the outside. Up the aisle they go and the ramps is huge. Backdrop gets two for Sullivan. Into the back and they go into the women’s restroom where sound effects are used sans video. Sullivan is knocked out of the room as Norman has a toilet seat in hand. Apparently the pin happened off camera. At least it’s over.

Rating: D. This was junk of course and the ending hurts it even worse. No word on why they were fighting but I’d assume it was some kind of bully thing as that has infected even the past. Better go found a charity to help fight it. How do those work anyway? Do you accept donations to pay bullies off? Norman would stick around for awhile and do nothing of note before he became a trucker for some reason.

Funk is here for his talk show segment known as Funk’s Grill with Luger as his guest. They like each other and Luger says Sting should turn down the shot because Luger would get the shot otherwise. The fans want Sting but Luger says you have the Total Package right now. This goes absolutely nowhere.

Road Warriors vs. Skyscrapers

Skyscrapers are Mean Mark (Undertaker) Callous and Dangerous Dan (Spivey) Spivey and have Teddy Long with them. Spivey beats on Hawk a bit but Hawk runs him over because he’s….uh Hawk I guess. Animal and Callous comes in. I’ll do what I can to not call him Taker but it’s not easy. He’s 6’9, has red hair and is 24 here. Animal no sells his offense but that’s typical for Animal.

Callous MOVES out there, missing a cross body of all things but it’s off to Spivey and Hawk again. Hawk charges but hits the post and the beating is on. We get what would become known as Old School to Hawk. It’s so weird to think that Taker and Foley were 8 years away from having one of the most brutal matches of all time. Taker counters a clothesline into a Fujiwara armbar which only lasts a few seconds.

Old School doesn’t work a second time and it’s off to Animal and Spivey. Everything breaks down and the Skyscrapers double team Animal for a bit until he backflips out of a double suplex. Hawk comes back in and it’s Doomsday Device for Spivey. Callous comes off the top with a chair and everything breaks down and it’s finally thrown out as Hawk takes a spike Piledriver. The Road Warriors get a big beatdown laid on them.

Rating: C-. For Taker being this young guy out there it’s very cool to see. Other than that it’s just a brawl which is ok but they’ve had it a few times already tonight which is a bit of an issue. Either way it’s not a terrible match but at the same time it got a bit annoying throughout. Eh it’s TV so I can’t complain that much.

Back from a break and they replay the Warriors getting beaten down.

Gordon Solie still can’t get an interview with Sting. He does have Brian Pillman though, who says Sting is losing his mind.

Doom say they’re going to win the tag titles.

Tag Titles: Doom vs. Steiner Brothers

This is masks vs. titles despite everyone knowing who Doom is. It’s Butch Reed and Ron Simmons, as in two of the three black wrestlers in the whole company. Sounds bad but it’s true. Reed rants for a bit before Simmons starts with Scott. It’s power vs. power here and the voice of Ron Simmons is unmistakable. Scott makes Simmons look like an idiot and it’s off to Reed (Doom #2).

Doom is sent to the floor as this is all Scott so far. Scott wants the mask already but Reed gets out just in case. The fans chant for Sting as Rick comes in. The basic idea of this match is Doom gets mad, a Steiner runs them around the ring a bit, suplex takes the Doom guy down, start over. Back off to the far bigger Simmons who pounds Scotty down a bit. Scott plays Ricky Morton for a bit as the beating is on.

People didn’t go for as many covers back in the day. Very interesting change in the times indeed. BIG spinebuster gets two for Reed but he picks him up. Scott grabs a backslide for two and a Piledriver gets the same. Sunset flip gets two on Reed but Scott can’t make the tag. There’s a Frankensteiner out of nowhere and it’s off to Rick. He manages to rip the mask off and it’s Butch Reed. Rick rolls up Reed a second later to end it.

Rating: D+. Yeah amazingly enough, this was boring. This whole show has been that way because the matches have been going far longer than they should have. The masks were pretty pointless here so it’s not like the titles were ever in any real jeopardy. Weak match in a running theme for tonight.

Apparently if Simmons doesn’t unmask he’s suspended. If his identity is supposed to be a secret, how could they suspend him? Either way he unmasks and Ross’ reaction of “It’s Ron Simmons” is almost funny it’s so anti-climactic.

We see Sting getting destroyed again.

The Horsemen are like yeah we’re awesome.

Ric Flair/Ole Anderson/Arn Anderson vs. Dragonmaster/Great Muta/Buzz Sawyer

The ones you haven’t heard of other than Muta is called the J-Tex Corporation and had been feuding with the Horsemen. They’re heel now though so this is heel vs. heel in a cage. Dragonmaster is a guy that was known as Kendo Nagasaki who you’ll hear of every once in awhile. There are more than one of him though so it might be a bit confusing.

Sawyer (that guy was NUTS) stars with Anderson. The fans are cheering for J-Tex, which would be like cheering for Vickie Guerrero today. The Horsemen hammer on Sawyer with Flair and he exchanging shots. Off to Ole as Cornette rants about Sting a lot. Dragonmaster hammers away and is cheered loudly. Muta comes in and the place pops HARD. He and Arn go at it and it’s handspring elbow time. And here’s Sting.

Sting charges the cage and the roof is blown off the place. He climbs up the side of it and hammers on Flair over the cage wall but is dragged down by security and other wrestlers. He gets up the aisle but charges again, this time not being able to get at Flair. Sting hops down as the match is more or less forgotten about. Sawyer misses a splash off the top of the cage and Sting appears to have hurt his leg. What wasn’t known at the time is that Sting had ripped some ligaments apart and wouldn’t wrestle for six months, meaning the title match was off. As for the match, everything breaks down and Arn pins Dragonmaster with a DDT.

Rating: D. Match sucked but it wasn’t the point at all. As I’d assume you figured out, Sting’s injury was the big deal here, as it completely changed the company and took all of the heat away from him because it was Luger that got the title shot and Flair held the title another six months instead of giving it to the young lion known as Sting. Either way, weak match to end a bad show.

Flair and Sting “fight” (remember Sting has one leg) in the aisle to end the show.

Overall Rating: D-. Well Sting vs. Flair is made, but at the same time that match fell apart completely due to Flair’s egging him on for the second time there. Anyway, not a good show in the slightest but at the same time….yeah this was terrible. There’s no other way around it. The matches went on WAY too long and at the same time they weren’t that good. Weak show to put it mildly and I’m glad it’s over.

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Royal Rumble 1990
Date: January 21, 1990
Location: Orlando Arena, Orlando, Florida
Attendance: 16,000
Commentators: Jesse Ventura, Tony Schiavone

Yes, that Tony Schiavone, not the other Tony Schiavone. He was around for a cup of coffee around this time and it’s more or less completely forgotten. Anyway, we’re at the third Rumble now and the look of the show has completely changed. It’s not the old and for lack of a better term tired looking ring and logo, but rather the bright and colorful one that is more commonly known. Naturally Hogan is world champion here and is looking for an opponent at Mania 6.

At this time, no one knew who that was going to be. There were rumors ranging from Warrior to Mr. Perfect (more on that later) to Zeus of all people. There were even rumors that Vince was going to have Hogan drop the belt back to Savage to have Savage vs. Warrior for the main event.

Vince was in real financial trouble at this time and Mania absolutely had to be huge or he very well could have gone bankrupt. Other than the Rumble, there’s not a lot here. Correction: there’s nothing else here. On that note, let’s get to the drivel that is the non main event matches before we get to the real reason this show exists.

The opening is just Vince listing the card and a lot of people in the Rumble. Oh and there’s a Brother Love show tonight. Jesse is wearing Mickey Mouse ears. That’s just awesome. There needs to be another character like Jesse on commentary. He’s just so awesome at it.

Fabulous Rougeaus vs. Bushwackers

All American Boys is just an awesome song. Jimmy Hart was awesome. This whole era just completely rocks. I love me some Marching Morons. Jacques has a big old beard here so maybe Jesse can finally tell their unsimilar faces apart. Jesse says that Mickey and Goofy didn’t have tickets. That’s so stupid yet Jesse makes me chuckle with it. It’s good because they’re killing time in the ring so Jesse at least gives us something to enjoy.

This is I guess you would say a rematch from Wrestlemania 5. We’re a minute in and Ramon uses a sleeper. Butch bites the referee’s pants. There was just something slightly homosexual about these teams. Watch their matches and you’ll sense it too. Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that we have a comedy match here. After about 4-5 instances of the same exact stuff over and over again, the Bushwackers are in trouble.

Luke gets beaten on for a good while as this is running too long. Naturally Luke gets the tag to Butch. If nothing else the crowd is on fire here. If they’re like this for Luke and Butch, what are they going to be like for Hogan? Anyway, after some interference by Jimmy, the Battering Ram ends this.

Rating: D+. This just went on too long. If they cut about 3 minutes in the middle of it, this would have gone much better. It was a comedy match which is ok, but not for nearly 15 minutes. That’s just way too long. These two had some shall we say interesting matches over the years and this was no exception. There’s not a lot going on here, but the crowd liked it so take that for what it’s worth.

DiBiase and Virgil are with Gene, who suggests that DiBiase rigged last year’s drawing. Either way, he has #1 this year. DiBiase was just a masterful heel. His line of “Let me tell you something little man” is just awesome stuff.

Genius vs. Brutus Beefcake

Genius’ brother is the far more famous but possibly less talented Randy Savage. Yeah I said it. Beefcake’s music is just sweet and always has been. For like the 12th time tonight we see the capacity crowd. We get it already. Genius offers a left-handed handshake. Why don’t more people do that? Genius is doing a semi-gay gimmick here, complete with cartwheels and various things that apparently equate to homosexuality.

Sorry if that comes off as derogatory, but it’s simply the case. An atomic drop by Brutus makes Genius roll around the ring three full times. That’s quite impressive. This is really a glorified squash, despite Genius being the lackey of one of the bigger heels in the company in Mr. Perfect. He also beat Hogan (count out) on SNME a few weeks prior to this. Brutus is a power guy, but you very rarely see him portrayed as such.

For such a long match (run time of about 12 minutes) not a lot is happening here. It’s not really bad and it’s kind of interesting, but nothing of note is really happening. After the sleeper doesn’t get put on, the referee is bumped and the lack of a clean ending becomes obvious. WOW. The crowd popped like a cherry for the sleeper. That’s saying a lot. Somehow inside of about 12 seconds the Genius is sound asleep.

That never ceases to amaze me. Here’s a haircut for the Genius because the referee is still out cold. Perfect runs in and beats up Beefcake though. It’s thrown out in case you were wondering. Oh and in this beatdown, Perfect uses a Perfectplex. I won’t even touch on why that’s stupid. Perfect hits a few chair shots to the ribs as it’s announced as a double DQ, I guess for the haircut. Or some reason we have a slow motion replay of basic strikes.

Rating: C+. Like I said, for such a long match, nothing really happened. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad though. It wasn’t bad at all, but it just kind of came and went. Beefcake had a very short feud with Perfect and then got injured I think, putting his career on the shelf for a good many years. Perfect would become IC Champion after Warrior had to vacate it, and the rest of his career is well known. Either way, this wasn’t bad at all, but certainly not memorable.

Mooney is with the Heenan Family. He mentions that they might wind up fighting each other. Hilarity ensues.

Mania 6 will be in Toronto.

BLAST IT Ronnie freaking Garvin is on this show. In case I haven’t mentioned it, I want him to be shot.

Submission Match: Ronnie Garvin vs. Greg Valentine

Let’s get this over with. Both guys use submissions occasionally, so that’s validation of a gimmick match. Since this is a submission match, they both take boxing stances and pound on each other. Well if nothing else it’s physical. The boxing makes a bit of sense as it’s wearing the other guy down. That at least makes some sense. They keep going for pins here, which makes sense as it’s instinct to go for a pin in a wrestling match for these guys.

If that’s fake or legit, I’m fine either way. If it’s legit, that’s just instinct. If it’s fake, it’s a nice addition to a match. Jesse implies these two are top level talent. Not in the WWF at least they’re not. They’re really building this slowly which is something good. It’s not done anymore and it should be. Oh I forgot: both guys have shin guards on which allegedly stops the submissions from hurting.

To further my hatred of him, Ronnie Garvin is in the figure four and makes “funny” faces at Valentine. Who in the world thought that would be a good idea? No wonder Vince was running out of money. He spent a ton of it on high quality cocaine apparently. Garvin uses an Indian Deathlock. Other than Terry Funk losing to Harley Race with it, I don’t think anyone has ever won anything with it.

If nothing else, these guys are beating the tar out of each other. That’s not bad at all. After a double collision, Hart steals Garvin’s leg brace which is called the Hammer Jammer. Now the figure four works. I think that almost comes close to making sense, but it’s just overdone. After reversing the figure four, we slug it out some more. This has been a very Attitude Era style match. Garvin steals the Valentine leg brace. Hart gets beaten up and a bad Sharpshooter from Garvin gets him the win.

Rating: F. Any match that Ronnie Garvin is featured in automatically is awful, no questions asked. For an unbiased grade let’s go with a B-. This was very intense and all kinds of brutal without weapons use. I still hate Garvin, but this was his best match to date that I’ve seen.

Sean is with Hacksaw, who says that Boss Man won’t be a problem for him. Duggan just looks WEIRD here. His eyes are mostly closed so I’m guessing stoned and or drunk. The end of his board is green for some reason too.

Big Bossman vs. Jim Duggan

Duggan still has no music here. Oh and Slick is Boss Man’s manager. Surprising no one, this starts as a big brawl. Almost immediately we’re on the floor. Boss Man misses a charge and his arm hits the post, and in something that stuns me, Duggan actually follows up on it! That lasts all of 3 seconds as Boss Man goes back on offense, with a FREAKING ENZIGURI! What in the world??? Where did he learn that?

Tony says the Boss Man shouldn’t have the nightstick. Jesse counters with why should Duggen have the 2×4? Tony says it’s his trademark. Wow and I thought Vince was biased towards faces. From a wrestling standpoint, this is crap. From a brawling standpoint it’s pretty good. I’m not sure what Duggan has done other than punch, but that’s ok I suppose. No actually it isn’t. I know he’s a brawler but there’s other stuff you can do too.

Clotheslines, shoulders, maybe a suplex or something? That would at least add some variety. There’s a real similarity in styles here which means that it’s going to be very hard to have a good match between these two. It can work with guys like Bret and Shawn, but with guys like Duggan who are kind of limited in their offense, this isn’t going to go well. Also, this isn’t the Boss Man that you’re familiar with. He’s about 40-50 pounds heavier at this stage of his career.

He’s not nearly as fat as he was last year, but he’s still a big old guy. You can really tell here by the end that they’re both just completely spent. Considering we’re about eight minutes in, that’s not saying a lot. For some reason that I’ll never get, Boss Man goes for a top rope splash that naturally misses.

It’s a shame that two guys are this spent this fast. Ok maybe not fast but it shouldn’t be this bad period. Boss Man nails Duggan with the stick but gets caught for the very cheap DQ. DAng many can we please get a clean pin in a match tonight? Is that too much to ask for? The 2×4 doesn’t hit anyone but it gets rid of the heels.

Rating: C+. This was fine for what it was, which is a big brawl. Neither guy is going to light the world on fire or anything like that, so this was about as good as it was ever going to get. Boss Man had slimmed down a bit here and was getting close to the weight that he would be most famous at. That enziguri was kind of preview of the great stuff that was coming from him in the next year or so. Anyway, this was good enough and they kept it kind of short which was the best thing possible.

Nothing has change in the last half hour as Mania 6 is STILL in Toronto!

Perfect is proud of what he did, and that he got #30.

Brother Love Show

Love is talking about the definition of a lady. He brings out the definition of a lady: Sensational Sherri. Jesse actually says she looks hot. I don’t remember hearing that term in 1990. In what takes about 10 minutes, they say that Sapphire is the definition of a peasant which brings her out.

Love keeps cutting her off over and over again which gets her more and more angry. She hits Sherri, leading to Savage coming out. Dusty of course comes out and the faces run off the heels and beat up Love. That took 12 minutes somehow. What was the point of Sapphire? Does anyone have an answer to that for me? That was long and rather pointless.

A lot of people say their thoughts on their Rumble numbers.

Dino Bravo wants his to be close to Warrior’s.

Earthquake will crush everyone.

Demolition say they won’t have to fight each other this year, so they’re lucky.

Bad News Brown says that people will be crying when their favorite wrestlers lose.

Dusty says that he wants to get his hands on Savage. Sapphire joins him to incomprehensibly yell.

The Rockers say they’ll be fine and they want the Powers of Pain.

Hercules says that he’s ready.

Rick Martel says no one will touch his beautiful face.

Tito Santana says he has no friends today. ARRIBA!

Jimmy Snuka says something about sharks.

Slick and Akeem (who over the last two years has had by far the best run in the two Rumbles) is the baddest guy in there.

Warrior is his general insane self, saying something about a virus, then mentioning Hogan’s name.

Tony and Jesse say some generic stuff before the next batch talk. This must have been an intermission.

Savage says he’s the person you shouldn’t bet against.

The Powers of Pain say they’ll win, which makes no sense but whatever.

Jake says the man that will do anything will win, which is him.

The Harts say they’re ready to go the distance. Those two had scary chemistry together.

Honky says he’s going to play 29 hits.

Finally, Hogan says that he’s ready.

Royal Rumble

We already know that DiBiase got #1, so the big question is who got #2? The answer would be none other than the joke of the Hall of Fame, Koko B. Ware. Seriously, what’s wrong with this picture? DiBiase, who still doesn’t have music here but would get it by Mania, isn’t in the Hall of Fame but Ware is. That’s just inexcusable. Ted jumps him on the way into the ring which is smart.

Koko is blonde here for no apparent reason. He gets slammed head first into the buckle and for some reason that wakes him up. Koko goes into jobber offense 101 but a charge at the ropes leaves DiBiase alone in the ring. 3 is Marty Jannetty, who I’m currently debating about in the spam zones. After some more jobber offense including that signature punch of his, Jannetty tries a cross body near the ropes and goes out to leave DiBiase alone again.

Jake Roberts is in fourth. These two would go at it again at Mania. DiBiase jumps to the floor to go after him including putting on the Million Dollar Dream. Back in the ring Jake naturally takes over and goes for the DDT, which fails. Sorry for the play by play aspect here, but this early on it’s really just one liners until we get something significant going on, which may take a little time.

They beat on each other for awhile until Savage comes in at 5. He’s rocking bright blue tights trimmed with black and nearly pink gloves. I’ll give him this: he was unique. They double team Jake as we’re finally getting something going here. Far less than two minutes later, Roddy freaking Piper is in at 6. The fans pop loudly for him too. That’s a pretty good collection of talent in there, but very few titles in the company.

Savage had three, DiBiase had three, Piper had one and Roberts had zero. That’s quite surprising. That’s quite a tag match also. There are some insane feuds in there, some of which never happened. Savage vs. Piper anyone? Can you imagine the promos those two would have on each other? All four of these guys could work and talk with the best of them. We mess that up with the Warlord coming in at seven.

He’s still a Power of Pain here so he’s about as generic of a monster heel as you could imagine. In something that’s both surprising and cool, Piper just flat out beats Warlord up. That’s awesome. Piper can really fight when he has to. Sherri shouting to break Jake’s neck is creepy. The eighth guy is Bret Hart. DANG there’s some talent out there! You have Bret, Savage, Roberts, Piper and DiBiase out there.

Just how awesome of a collection of talent is that? Bret got a very good pop by the way, so people knew that he was something special. Since he’s Bret Hart he goes after the biggest man in the match. This is a smark’s dream match here. Piper and Hart work together. Is there a bad combination in there that doesn’t include Warlord? With this many great guys in there, nine has to suck.

It’s Bad News Brown, who somehow is the sixth most talented guy in the ring out of seven? That can’t be something that would happen a lot. Brown was so far ahead of his time it’s scary. Think of Brown and then think of Austin. How many similarities are there in there? Jake sets for the DDT but Savage knocks him out instead. I guess it couldn’t last forever. Piper almost puts DiBiase out but Savage makes the save.

Tony suggests that Savage has been paid off. That’s an interesting thought. We hit double digits with Dusty, who skips to the ring. That was just a wrong image. Naturally he goes after Savage with a bunch of elbows that miss by about two or three inches each. Dusty takes out Savage in what might have been the only thing Dusty ever got over Savage in their very long feud. There’s a fan in a red shirt in the front row that is as energetic of a fan as I’ve ever seen at a wrestling show.

Andre is eleven, moving so slowly that it’s flat out sad to watch. He can’t even stand up straight since his back is so messed up. Within seconds he tosses the Warlord as Heenan and Fuji are going at it on the floor. I’d pay to not have to see that. Dusty gets crushed by the epic fat of Andre in the corner. There’s some great comedy there that a guy as lazy as Dusty is getting crushed by the biggest guy in the company.

Speaking of annoying wrestlers, Red Rooster is 12. I know I wasn’t talking about annoying wrestlers but I had nothing better for a transition there. Piper throws out Brown but Brown comes back and pulls Piper out. They fight to the back with a huge Roddy chant accompanying them. This led to the weird match where Piper was painted half black.

According to his DVD, Andre and someone else ribbed him by getting rid of the stuff that got the paint off of him so he was stuck like that for 2-3 weeks afterwards. That’s just amusing. Just to recap, in the ring we have Andre, Rooster, Hart, DiBiase, Rhodes, and at 13 we have Axe of Demolition. As he gets in, Andre throws out Rooster, thank goodness. Dusty and Axe get Andre tied in the ropes but before they can try to throw him out, Haku, Andre’s partner, comes in at 14 to make the save.

DiBiase looks spent one second and the next he looks great. That’s impressive. Dusty does his weird Hulking Up thing with the dancing that I always got annoyed with. His Twinkie reserves get low though and he gets knocked back down. We get to halfway with Smash, putting the tag champions and the former champions in there at the same time. What a coincidence!

Akeem the African Dream and by far the most successful Rumble guy ever starts the second half by going after Andre of all people. Demolition take out Andre with a simple double clothesline. That gets a massive pop. Bret is thrown out during the hullabaloo over Andre. Your current lineup is Demolition, DiBiase, Rhodes, Akeem and Haku. Snuka is in at 17.  This thing is going by quickly.

He and Akeem go at it in the house show match from my nightmares. Snuka wins, putting Akeem out early, at least by his standards. Schiavone says the battle rages on, which he used to say all the time in the World War 3 matches. Bravo gets up to 18. You can tell that the guys are starting to get a bit tired out there. There’s a ton of power guys in there also. Earthquake is 19 and he nearly immediately puts out Dusty.

He tosses Axe as well so you can see how big of a deal they were going to make this guy, at least in the short term. Neidhart is 20, giving us him, Earthquake, Haku, DiBiase, Smash, Bravo and Snuka. All of them other than Bravo combine to get rid of Earthquake. Hart is panicking over this of course. Granted I think he panics ordering dinner. I mean think about it: chicken or pasta. HE CAN’T TAKE THAT KIND OF PRESSURE!!!

We start the final ten with Ultimate Warrior who is the IC Champion at the time. He takes out Bravo, who is as pale as humanly possible while still being alive. Only DiBiase and Snuka aren’t power guys out there, and Jimmy is debatable.

Martel is 22nd, and somehow he’s the only former world champion in this match at the moment. How creepy does that sound? Haku takes out Smash with a backdrop and a superkick that was always awesome. We get a Strike Force reunion as Tito Santana is in at Michael Jordan’s number.

We’re in need of some fresh jobbers in there to replace the tired ones that we have. Hey it’s Honky at 24. He certainly fits that description at this time period. Warrior and Martel take out Anvil followed by Warrior putting out DiBiase to a big pop. That man has earned a ham sandwich if anyone ever has. We’ve got Warrior, Snuka, Honky, Haku, Santana and Martel in there at the moment and they’re joined by Hogan at 25.

He stumbles coming to the ring. That’s just funny. He takes out Snuka and Haku before taking the shirt off. Warrior gets rid of Tito and you can see it coming a mile away, but the awesomeness of it isn’t diminished at all. As if there wasn’t enough ego in the ring, Shawn Michaels is out next, 26th to be exact. There goes Honky so we have Hogan, Warrior…and as I was typing the other names they were thrown out, leaving us with the showdown of showdowns.

To say the crowd popped hard is an understatement. Heenan, who has no one in the ring at the moment, is standing out there watching. That’s just cool. They hit some shoulders and no one goes back that far. A criss cross leads to a double clothesline. From an unbiased perspective, that was really boring. From a pure 80s mark, the world just exploded from the sheer levels of awesome in those few seconds.

Both guys stay down for about 15 seconds until Barbarian is out at 27. That guy has been around forever with very little change to his gimmick, but he kept getting work. That’s quite interesting. Think about it. He was in WWF in the late 80s through early 90s, then in WCW for a bit then a quick run in WWF again and then was in WCW forever. That’s saying a lot. Rude I guess jumps the gun as he’s in maybe 20 seconds after Barbarian.

Even Jesse makes a point about it. Rude hits a pretty good dropkick to put Warrior down. For some reason Warrior saves Hogan. Jesse of course hates it but Tony has no issue with it. Rude and Warrior just always had scary good chemistry together. I’ve never gotten that. Hogan tries to return the favor and save Warrior but knocks Warrior out instead. Warrior of course jumps back in and then more or less dances out.

29 is Hercules leaving just Perfect for 30. What is the deal with pale guys wearing powder blue? Both Hercules and Bravo do that. If what’s said about Hogan and Big Show is true, Hogan has bigger boots than Show. I find that unlikely. I love how Jesse and Heenan were right about Hogan being crooked for years. I wonder if those were semi-shoot comments. Perfect finishes us at 30.

He was actually more or less set in stone to win this thing, but Hogan said no, giving us this ending. Barbarian is put out by Hercules. Yeah Perfect was supposed to be the top heel to challenge Hogan, probably even fighting him at Mania but due to Hogan saying no and Perfect vs. Hogan tanking house shows, Vince went with Warrior. That explains the big showdown from earlier.

We get down to Rude and Perfect against Hogan, which was the original ending but with Perfect winning though. Perfect accidentally puts out Rude, leaving us with Perfect and Hogan. Can you imagine if Perfect had actually won this? How awesome would that have been? It’s not like Hogan would have been crushed by it or anything. Perfect gets the suplex on Hogan but Hogan pops up.

You mean he got up from a generic not exactly snapping suplex? NO WAY! Even I have to give that one to Hogan. After smacking the post, Perfect is gone and Hogan wins…of course. I would have loved to see Perfect win there to set up that match on SNME or something. It wouldn’t have worked at Mania, but it would have rocketed Perfect to the top heel spot which was vacant at the time. I guess it was him, but not by much at all. Massive posing ends the show.

Rating: A-. This was good all around. It had cool moments like Demolition beating Andre and the showdown, but it also had the great battle royal stuff like odd alliances and interesting matchups. This was the Rumble getting it right for the first time. Earthquake looked like a big deal because of this which was the main point. This certainly was a success and went by FAST, which to me says it was interesting.

Overall Rating: C-. Let’s see: first match sucked, second match was a long glorified squash, third was a Garvin match, and fourth was a decent brawl. You add in a good Rumble and to me that’s right in the middle. It’s not a terrible show, but once again this is all about the main event with a horrible midcard. This was all about setting up Mania though and it did just that. Hogan vs. Warrior was the dream match that people wanted to see and they got a preview here.

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Clash of the Champions #13: Thanksgiving Thunder
Date: November 20, 1990
Location: Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florida
Attendance: 5,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Paul E. Dangerously

We’re in a very dark era for WCW at this point as it’s the final days of the Black Scorpion story. This show is probably the lowest point that it reached for reasons that you’ll see. Basically, there’s some guy in a black suit running around taunting Sting and no one knows who he is. There have been a lot of false alarms and hints which tried to imply it was Ultimate Warrior, but you would have to be a BIG old school fan to get that. Anyway it sucks but let’s get to it.

After a very basic intro which is pretty downplayed by comparison to most of their videos.

JR and Paulie talk about the show. The main event is Flair vs. Butch Reed. If Reed wins, Teddy Long gets Flair’s yacht and limo but if Flair wins, the Horsemen get a tag title shot and Teddy has to be Flair’s chauffeur.

Freebirds/Bobby Eaton vs. Southern Boys/El Gigante

The Birds have an annoying manager named Little Richard Marley (jobber Rocky King) with them. And never mind as Hayes says El Gigante got beaten up and sent back to Argentina so it’s just going to be a tag match.

Freebirds vs. Southern Boys

Eaton gets thrown out. Garvin vs. Smothers starts us off. This is a two and a half hour show (TV time that is) and we have 11 matches so most of them are going to be short. The Southern Boys clean house and send the Birds to the floor. The lighting is TERRIBLE in the arena here. Hayes isn’t really the kind of guy that can make glittery purple pants look tough.

The Birds get knocked to the floor again and we eventually get to Garvin vs. Tracy Smothers (his partner is Steve Armstrong). Garvin gets slammed off the top and the Birds double team. So then Armstrong goes one up on them with a double clothesline off the top. Marley gets up on the apron as the Southern Boys take over. Marley trips Smothers as Armstrong dives onto Garvin, allowing Hayes to DDT Smothers for the cheap pin.

Rating: D-. Well that match was worthless. I never cared for either of these teams and this was a pretty good example as to why. Who in the world thought this was going to be an entertaining match? Nothing interesting here at all and the Birds might have used three moves other than a slam. Terribly uninteresting.

Here’s Sting who is fired up to be face to face with the Black Scorpion. And that’s it. This was like 30 seconds long. Oh wait we’re not done. The Black Scorpion’s voice comes over the PA (it’s Ole Anderson, the same voice as the Shockmaster) who says that we’ll see his great powers of black magic tonight.

Buddy Landell vs. Brian Pillman

Pillman has the Bengals trunks now and is way popular. Landell looks exactly like Flair and even is nicknamed Nature Boy. He jumps Pillman to start and beats him down. Brian tries for some quick pins but once they don’t work he just knocks Buddy to the floor and dives onto him onto the ramp. A piledriver out there doesn’t work and back into the ring they go. They fight to the floor and Landell sends him to the post.

Even Dangerously says that Landell is a Flair clone. I’m not sure I get the point in having a Flair character at the same time Flair was there but he had been doing it for years so it’s not like this is some quick character for him. He was popular enough on his own too. Out to the floor again and Pillman hits a SWEET springboard crossbody to send Landell into the railing. Dang that man could fly. Abdominal stretch by Buddy is followed by a backbreaker for two. Pillman blocks a superplex and hits a top rope cross body for a very quick pin.

Rating: C. This was again short but they had a decent little match out there. Pillman was a rising star and would be in WarGames the next year (almost getting killed in the process but that’s another review for another time). This was a very basic power/brawler vs. speed match but it worked out pretty well I thought.

Big Cat vs. Brad Armstrong

Cat is more famous as Curtis Hughes and is one of three monster heels in a loose stable at this point. He wanted Luger and I don’t remember them ever fighting. Armstrong is the Candyman here because he’s only had 9485 stupid gimmicks in his career and needed another. What exactly that name means isn’t exactly mentioned but who needs to know that?

Power vs. speed here. Basically picture Big Zeke for an image of Big Cat. As for what happens in this, picture any power monster vs. speed face match that you’ve ever seen and you have that here. Cat hits a trio of backbreakers and Armstrong is in trouble. There’s a bearhug to continue the predictable basis of this one. Armstrong makes a very quick comeback but gets caught in a Torture Rack (stolen from Luger to further the feud) and the referee stops it.

Rating: D. Like I said, this was every power vs. speed match you’ve ever seen. Paint by numbers would be a good name for this. It’s not horrible I guess, but I’ve seen this sort of thing so many times that there’s nothing to be gained from it. It did its job well enough though so it’s not a total waste of time.

Dick the Bruiser is a scary man and says he’ll be at Starrcade to referee the main event.

Z-Man vs. Brian Lee

Lee is more famous as either a guy in ECW, the Fake Undertaker in 1994 or Chainz in the early Attitude Era. More speed vs. big guy here but Lee isn’t quite a full power guy. He’s more tall than strong. Z-Man speeds things up but misses a cross body and crashes to let Lee take over. Off to a chinlock as this is going nowhere. Z-Man easily comes back and a missile dropkick ends this.

Rating: F. This show SUCKS. This was another match that did nothing at all and was just there which is getting really old really fast. Lee was awful and from what I can find this is his official tryout match. To the shock of no one, he didn’t get a job out of it. Nothing match and it didn’t work at all.

Mike Rotundo is officially Michael Wallstreet after inheriting a lot of money. He’s got a new manager in the form of Alexandra York who says the computer says if Wallstreet follows the plan, he’ll beat Starblazer with ease tonight. This angle lasted longer than it should have but almost got good near the end.

Starblazer vs. Michael Wallstreet

Apparently Starblazer is (mostly) career jobber Tim Horner under a mask. How can we possibly be five matches into this show? York (Terri Runnels) shows him the computer’s plan and the fans chant boring less than a minute into this. Starblazer hits some fast dropkicks to send him to the floor. Join the WCW Fan Club! Back in they speed things up and Wallstreet throws him to the floor. Blazer makes a brief comeback and they fight over a Boston Crab for some reason. This FINALLY ends with the Wallstreet Crash, a Samoan Drop, for the pin.

Rating: D-. I have never seen a crowd that dead for a match. I mean they were not moving in the slightest. Wallstreet was such a boring character and they didn’t really ever develop him at all. He was at least better as IRS due to the character having something to talk about. Still though, bad match.

The WCW Top Ten:

Tag teams first.

10. Norman The Lunatic/The Juicer
9. Big Cat/Motor City Madman
8. Tim Horner/Candyman
7. Master Blasters
6. Southern Boys
5. Ricky Morton/Tommy Rich
4. Freebirds
3. Nasty Boys
2. Ric Flair/Arn Anderson
1. Steiner Brothers

Singles:

10. Bobby Eaton
9. Z-Man
8. Michael Wallstreet
7. Brian Pillman
6. Terry Taylor
5. Arn Anderson
4. Ric Flair
3. Lex Luger
2. Sid Vicious
1. Stan Hansen

Here’s a video about the International Tag Team Tournament which had one team from a bunch of countries/continents.

Ready for something that’s bordering on full blown racism?

African Tag Team Tournament Finals: Colonel DeKlerk/Sergeant Krueger vs. Kalua/Botswana Beast

DeKlerk is Rocco Rock before he gained a ton of work. I have no idea who Beast and Kalua are and I can’t find any information on them at all. Probably local guys. Naturally the “Africans” (yeah they’re just from Africa, even if one is named Botswana Beast) are black and the white South Africans are pretty American, as Krueger is Matt Osborne, as in Doink the Clown/Big Josh.

Krueger starts with let’s say Kalua. At least the Africans (as in not the white South Africans) are in regular tights and not tribal attire. Dangerously talks about how great DeKlerk is and all the titles he’s held on different continents. DeKlerk busts out a standing Lionsault but lands almost in a reverse DDT. Beast is a huge man and no sells a lot while his gut shakes. Beast destroys DeKlerk but gets caught with a clothesline. Another powerslam puts DeKlerk down for two. Things break down and they do the slam with a dropkick to the back for the pin as DeKlerk pins Beast.

Rating: F. It was stupid, they’re not from Africa, and I feel like I need to report this to Jesse Jackson. Just dreadful and the match SUCKED on top of that.

Sam Muchnick invites us to watch Starrcade in St. Louis. Old school fans will smile at that.

Recap of Luger vs. Hansen for the US Title, which is about Hansen FINALLY ending the title reign of Luger went on over 19 months. He did it clean too.

Vignette of Paul E. and his Motorcity Madman, another of that trio of heels I mentioned earlier.

Luger isn’t worried about the Madman. He wants Hansen but Big Cat shows up. Luger punches him once, Cat goes down, Luger goes to the ring. Cat gets up and says that was a mistake. Luger looked AWESOME there.

Motorcity Madman vs. Lex Luger

Madman is a nobody who got a cup of coffee in WCW and nothing happened with him. Lex is just ungodly popular. Big Cat sneaks up on Lex and they slug it out. Cat gets beaten back until referees break it up. The Madman jumps Luger as literally the entire two front rows are walking out at the exact same time. They must have been from somewhere else in the arena because the rows are full. There must have been 30-40 people walking though. Lex mostly suplexes the big guy as this is really just a power display for Lex. Madman hits a forearm and side slam but Lex hits a clothesline for the quick pin. Just a squash.

Nick Patrick speaks for the referees and says they’re worried about the Steiners vs. the Nasties. Ok then.

Renegade Warriors vs. Nasty Boys

They’re Chris and Mark Youngblood, a regular tag team who are Indians. JR says if the Nasties can beat the Steiners, he’ll quit announcing. Paulie FREAKS and is now Nasty Fan #1. Mark starts with Sags. It quickly turns into a brawl with Knobs taking over. Chris helps cheat which sets up an armbar. Back to Mark and now it’s Sags getting his arm worked on. Out to the floor and Knobs sends Mark into the railing. Chris bangs on a tom tom drum so Knobs DDTs Mark’s arm. Really bad match so far. The Steiners FINALLY run in and beat down the Nasties, probably as punishment for this. It’s a double DQ.

Rating: F. Oh just AWFUL here. The only thing people wanted to see was a brawl between the Nasties and Steiners, but somehow the WWF was able to get the Nasties over to WWF very quickly after this. I mean this is November and the Nasties were at the Rumble in January. I’ve never gotten how that can be done but it happened in this case.

Vader is back.

Sid Vicious vs. Nightstalker

Nightstalker is Brian Clark, or Adam Bomb. I remember seeing Nightstalker coming down the aisle and that exact camera angle watching this as a kid. I love stuff like that. Sid is a Horseman and very popular here. Test of strength to start which is won by Sid but Stalker hooks a bearhug. He talks to Sid the whole time. Clearly they’re exchanging green bean casserole recipies.

Sid pounds him into the corner and JR says this won’t be pretty. Sid’s arm is hurt and this is going nowhere. We get a rib claw and here’s Big Cat AGAIN. What is this, his 4th appearance? Sid knocks him down so Stalker brings in his ax. Yes, an ax. Sid gets it, hits Stalker with it, and gets the pin.

Rating: F. GET RID OF BIG CAT. He’s nothing interesting, he’s more boring than Big Zeke Jackson, and he’s been in half the matches tonight. Nothing to see here and a horribly bad match. Also, there’s the fact that SID HIT HIM WITH AN AX TO END THE THING. Let that sink in for a minute.

The Freebirds pat themselves on the back until the Southern Boys come up. Garvin offers to fights with an arm behind his back and here’s El Gigante to chase them off.

Missy Hyatt hypes an upcoming TV show.

We look at the Steiners attacking the Nasties earlier.

Steiner Brothers vs. Magnum Force

I can’t find who Magnum Force is anywhere. They’re one of those old school teams referred to as Magnum Force #1 and Magnum Force #2. The Steiners are the US Tag Champions but this is non-title. Scott starts with let’s say #1. The people are walking AGAIN. There has to be something to that. Rick vs. #2 in now. This is going nowhere. A quick Steiner Line ends this and the Nasties run in. Total squash and the Nasties run quickly.

The Horsemen say they’ll win. The official main event hasn’t been announced yet but it’s Flair or Arn vs. Reed or Simmons.

We recap Sting vs. Black Scorpion. The idea is that it’s someone from Sting’s past (eventually supposed to be Angel of Death, who no one was going to remember) and he’s trying to take Sting out. Sting beat a fake one at a previous Clash but the real one came down later. Then in Chicago, the Scorpion kidnapped a fan, put him in a magician’s box, and made him disappear. Then the Scorpion interrupted a title match. Tonight, they’re going to have a chat.

Sting comes out for the Danger Zone, Paulie’s talk show. He says a little bit and here’s the Scorpion to kidnap another fan. The “fan” gets a box put on his head and his “head” is spun around 360 degrees. Then he gets put in a cage and turned into a leopard. And remember, This was supposed to be the TOP HEEL ANGLE OF THE YEAR. Scorpion jumps into a box and disappears. He was narrating the thing the whole time but you couldn’t understand 90% of it.

I mean WOW. This is a fine example of what we mean by “insulting our intelligence.” This was a bad magic show, not a wrestling match. At the end of the day it wound up being Flair under the mask, which makes the whole thing even dumber. I have no idea what Ole Anderson was on when he thought this was a good idea, but man I want some of it.

We recap Doom vs. The Horsemen. They both wanted to be on The Danger Zone and it all broke down. They had a match at Halloween Havoc where it was thrown out. The aforementioned bet was made: yacht/limo vs. title shot/Teddy as a chauffeur.

All four guys come out and there are coin flips to determine who the singles guys are.

Ric Flair vs. Butch Reed

Power vs. Flair here and you know he knows how to work that match. Reed uses power and punches him out a lot. There’s the press slam and Flair is in trouble early. After a brief fight on the ramp we go back inside and Reed hooks a backslide for two. A dropkick puts Flair down but he goes to the eyes like a Horseman. He tosses Reed to the floor thanks to an accidental distraction from Simmons.

Anderson adds in some cheating on the floor but back inside they trade chops and Reed gets a slight advantage. There’s a Flair Flop and a Flair Flip, resulting in him getting popped in the face by Simmons. Flair takes over and hits a knee drop but a second one misses. Reed slaps on a figure four and Flair’s leg is in trouble.

After Flair makes the rope he avoids a middle rope elbow and Reed is in trouble. It turns into a slugout and they need to wrap this up. Reed really likes gorilla presses. He goes up top for a shoulder block but it basically hits Flair’s knee. I don’t think he was aiming for it but there you go. Reed gets sent to the floor where the referee was and everyone is down. Anderson clocks Reed with a chair and Flair steals the pin.

Rating: C-. Pretty good match but the last five minutes weigh it down a bit. The ending is a big mess but the idea was that Simmons got lost in it and therefore couldn’t make a save. It’s certainly not bad and is easily the best match of the night, but to be fair given what you had up to that point, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Decent stuff, but cutting four minutes or so off would have made it way better.

The big WCW letters are tilted to the left for some reason.

Overall Rating: D-. This is the worst kind of show: the boring kind. Other than the main event which is just ok, there’s nothing going on here worth seeing. That’s what I can’t stand reviewing: shows where it’s clear no one is giving any effort and no one wants to be there. It was a horribly dull show with nothing at all to see. Steer FAR clear of this one.