Crockett Cup 1987
Date: April 10, 1987/April 11, 1987
Location: Baltimore Arena, Baltimore, Maryland
Attendance: 9,300/13,000
Commentator: Tony Schiavone

Back to the Crockett Cup and the annoying tag team tournament format. This year there are still 24 teams and it’s the same format. We also have Ole Anderson vs. Big Bubba in a last man standing cage match and Flair vs. Windham for the title which should be awesome given how good Windham was in 87. Hopefully we actually have commentary here. Let’s get to it.

This is the home video so a lot of it is going to be clipped. There might be some full versions out here but I’m not going to look for it. The VAST majority of this is clipped with most of the first round not existing. Believe me, it’s nothing to see.

It’s the same format as last year, where 16 teams compete for 8 spots in the second round against 8 teams that already have spots in the second round. The team in parentheses is the team that the winner of the previous match will face.

Bob Armstrong/Brad Armstrong
Arn Anderson/Kevin Sullivan
(Ivan Koloff/Vladimir Petrov)

MOD Squad
Wahoo McDaniel/Baron Von Raschke
(Lex Luger/Tully Blanchard)

Denny Brown/Chris Champion
Bill Mulkey/Randy Mulkey
(Giant Baba/Isao Takagi)

Steve Keirn/George South
Mike Graham/Nelson Royal
(Rock N Roll Express)

Lazer Tron/Jimmy Valiant
Teijho Khan/Shaska Whatley
(Road Warriors)

Italian Stallion/Ricky Lee Jones
Jimmy Garvin/Ronnie Garvin
(Midnight Express)

Bobby Jaggers/Rocky King
Thunderfoots
(Manny Fernandez/Rick Rude)

Barbarian/Bill Dundee
Tim Horner/Mike Rotunda
(Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff)

Thank goodness so much of this is clipped. There are only two first round matches on the tape. I know it’s not complete, but it’s not like these matches mean anything or are worth seeing.

This tape actually has a host: Tony Schiavone. He introduces the concept: 24 teams, one million dollars to the winner. He tries to say these are the best teams in the world. Take a look at those brackets Tony.

Crockett Cup First Round: Bill Dundee/Barbarian vs. Tim Horner/Mike Rotunda

This is joined in progress as Barbarian sends Rotunda into the railing. A big boot puts the very young looking Rotunda down and it’s off to a chinlock. Rotunda gets up and a double clothesline puts them both down. Barbarian misses a top rope clothesline and it’s off to Horner. He cleans house until Dundee hits him with a foreign object and Barbarian gets the pin. This was really short and about five and a half minutes were clipped.

Crockett Cup First Round: Jimmy Valiant/Lazer Tron vs. Shaska Whatley/Teijho Khan

Tron is Hector Guerrero in a mask. Clipped to him working on Khan with a dropkick and it’s off to Whatley. The ring is cleared so Tron and Valiant dance a bit. The heels collide as they look like idiots. Valiant comes in and the fun part goes away quickly. Valiant vibrates on the mat as he’s beaten down and Whatley dances some more. Back to Tron who cleans house but the other guys brawl as he’s covering Whatley. Whatley charges at Tron and Khan pulls the top rope down so his partner goes crashing, but it’s a DQ win for them as the referee thinks it was intentional. Only a minute clipped here but not enough to grade.

That’s it for round one so here are the updated brackets.

Ivan Koloff/Vladimir Petrov
Brad Armstrong/Bob Armstrong

MOD Squad
Lex Luger/Tully Blanchard

Giant Baba/Isao Tagaki
Denny Brown/Chris Champion

BYE
Rock N Roll Express

Road Warriors
Teijho Khan/Shaska Whatley

Ronnie Garvin/Jimmy Garvin
Midnight Express

Manny Fernandez/Rick Rude
Thunderfoots

Barbarian/Bill Dundee
Dusty Rhodes/Ivan Koloff

The BYE is from a time limit draw. Why would anyone want to know that?

Crockett Cup Second Round: Ivan Koloff/Vladimir Petrov vs. Brad Armstrong/Bob Armstrong

The Armstrongs are father and son. Petrov is an American Russian that was brought in to replace Nikita who left the team. He is however, a roided up freak so the look is good. Joined in progress again with Bob, the old man, getting beaten down. Petrov hooks a bearhug and it’s back to Ivan. He and Bob collide and it’s hot tag to Brad. A cross body gets two and things break down. Petrov uses the chain and it’s a DQ. This was about two minutes shown of four.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Jimmy Garvin/Ronnie Garvin vs. Midnight Express

Eaton/Lane here and we see the opening! The Garvins clean house early and we have a tug of war over Cornette. Cornette panicking in the corner is great stuff. Clipped to Bobby in control of Jimmy and it’s off to Stan for some karate. This is the five minute mark as Eaton hooks a chinlock.

The match isn’t much longer so I don’t get why the clipping happens. Hot tag brings in Ronnie who uses his hard fists to take over. A big right hand puts Bobby on the apron but as he tries a piledriver on the floor, Cornette pops him with the tennis racket which gets the countout. About half of it was clipped and it was like two halves of two different matches so no rating.

Ricky Morton is injured so there’s no Rock N Roll Express match tonight. That means that Baba and Tagaki are in the semi-finals (fourth round) after wrestling once. Remember that the Rock N Roll Express would have had a second round bye due to the draw in round one. Brackets coming before round three.

Ole Anderson vs. Big Bubba Rogers

This is the main event of the first night, meaning the rest of the second round isn’t going to be mentioned. Bubba is really fat here and Ole is….uh…..old. They “brawl” (read as hold each others’ hair and occasionally punch) for awhile as I think Ole is the face here. The fans chant boring. See, this is an NWA stronghold and the NWA fans could rival ECW fans for most excitable fans. For these guys to say something is boring, it has to be HORRIBLE.

Bubba slams him into the cage and this needs to end quickly. Ole is busted and you have to win this match like a last man standing match instead of by pin. Bubba chokes away and I have no idea why this match is taking place. It’s not like Tony or anyone else tells you so I guess they expect us to know. You know, because no one will ever watch a tape after a few weeks anyway right? I mean, it’s not like this preservation of a story will hold on right? Bubba misses a top rope splash and a piledriver (more like a faceplant) ends this.

Rating: F. Oh just….no. There’s nothing to say here as the match was between an old guy and a fat guy and it was somehow even worst than it sounded. This got about five minutes shown while the whole thing ran about seven. I have no idea how much worse it could be with the other two minutes on there, but my goodness it couldn’t have been that much.

Now this tape runs about two hours and we’re just over twenty minutes in. For the next thirty five minutes, we’re going to show three Magnum TA matches. As in the guy that is retired at this point and isn’t here for any particular reason. The NWA was a little nuts at times. Magnum says this is a big night for him. Why? I have no idea.

US Title: Magnum TA vs. Wahoo McDaniel

McDaniel is very old but is US Champion here. It’s in a cage and is the real push for Magnum to the solid midcard spot he held until he retired. From March of 85 if you’re curious. Tony puts over the belly to belly as being really sudden and Wahoo kicks him low. Magnum fires off that great right hand of his but gets rammed into the cage. Magnum is like BRING IT ON and takes Wahoo down for two and an eruption from the crowd. A dropkick gets two.

They chop it out and Wahoo isn’t going to lose something like that. Wahoo goes into the cage again and just collapses this time. A headbutt puts Wahoo down and David Crockett, the other commentator, is getting on my nerves. Wahoo sends him into the cage again and a chop gets two. The mat isn’t a regular mat but is a bunch of blue gym mats shoved together. You can see the lines between them.

Magnum kicks him in the chest to take him down as the momentum doesn’t last long for Wahoo at all. He does manage to get a small package for two but Magnum is back up and punching away again. Wahoo tries to escape (I guess you can win that way) and Magnum suplexes him off the top for two. Wahoo, the old school lunkhead that he is, charges off the ropes a few times into Magnum which lets Magnum snap off his belly to belly suplex finisher for the US Title.

Rating: C-. Not bad here and it’s so nice to see a full match here. Magnum was so awesome and this was the moment that launched him up the card. His real classic would be later that year (and later on the tape) against Tully in a cage. Wahoo was just old at this point but this is how you go out: you lay down for a young guy clean and give your title up to him. Perfect example of that and good to see Magnum get the title that he should have had.

US Title: Kamala vs. Magnum TA

This is from the Great American Bash 1985. Kamala recently had his foot/leg amputated so the timing is appropriate. Kamala jumps him before the bell and it’s on. Magnum fires off a cross body and hammers away on the big man. You know Kamala never did much other than get beaten up. I never remember him winning anything of note and he’s usually just around because he’s big.

Kamala wants a test of strength but Magnum is a lot smarter than that, popping him in the jaw instead. Magnum gets knocked down by a chop and kick as Kamala takes over for token reasons. A choke somehow counts as a cover and gets two. Kamala grabs Magnum’s chest in a weird claw move then splashes him twice. Magnum is on his stomach so it doesn’t count. That’s an old standard for moon belly man. Back to the claw which wastes more time. Magnum makes his comeback and gets an easy slam. Kamala walks into the belly to belly and we’re done.

Rating: D. Kamala as usual isn’t interesting. He was supposed to be this savage and all that but it just didn’t work at all. He did his thing and that thing never was all that interesting. This is the definition of a house show match and the whole idea was to set up a quick match for Magnum to look good in. This was pretty weak.

The next match is clipped on the tape but I’m copying and pasting the full one.

US Title: Tully Blanchard vs. Magnum TA

OH YES!!! In short, forget everything else in the history of Starrcade. THIS is the greatest match in the history of the show, period and end of story and argument. Ok, so more or less, this is the idea: culture clash. Tully is considered the wrestler’s wrestler. He’s the epitome of the rich guy that is a total jerk to everyone but no one can beat him.

Magnum is from the South, rides on a Harley, drinks beer instead of champagne and is a fighter known for two things: a great right hand, and the sickest belly to belly this side of Brock Lesnar. For months upon months these two had gone after each other but there had never been the definitive match. Everyone knew that would come on Thanksgiving night and here we are. The build for this is off the charts.

It’s also in a cage and an I Quit match. Hmm. A match between a guy considered to be the top technical man in wrestling and a pure redneck where you win by submission. Just goes to show you that even the best angles such as Hart and Austin aren’t always original. Also, this is a more violent match so there you are.

Magnum is introduced as the vastly popular Magnum TA. That’s an understatement. Hey they hit the lights so we can see! The fans pop like crazy over a single punch. They help this match a lot as they’ve watch this build for about a year or so and are drooling for the end. They slug it out to start and I’m glad there’s no commentary here as it’s not needed. And of course there goes Bob Caudle.

The people here are popping for every single thing so they can more or less do whatever they like. This is a match where it’s all brawling and that’s all it should be. Tully is bleeding from the face and the arm which is something you hardly ever see but it’s working for me. Magnum, being smart, goes for the arm. Magnum is bleeding too.

The microphone they have to say they give up into is finally brought into play and we get the famous sequence as Tully screams at him to say it but when he says no Tully blasts him with the microphone. So simple yet so effective. They do it again and Magnum is in big trouble. He dodges an elbow drop and the fans EXPLODE. You would think he just won the freaking title. Tully won’t give up either.

The mic use is what I like about this as it makes perfect sense to have that in the ring with them rather than the insane things you get in Hell in a Cell matches. With both guys on their knees they just start throwing bombs at each other. Tully is getting very frustrated and loses his cool. Hmm where have I seen this before?

Baby Doll, Tully’s manager, throws a wooden chair in and it gets broken up. Tully uses a piece to drive into the head of Magnum but it doesn’t work. Magnum gets the spike and DRIVES IT INTO TULLY’S EYE FOR THE SUBMISSION. Tully screaming in pain after it’s over makes this whole thing even better.

Rating: A+. Just an epic fight here with tons of blood and straight up violence. THIS is how you blow off a feud. Go find this match. It’s on the Essential Starrcade and shouldn’t be hard to fine online. Go watch it as it’s an absolute classic.

Magnum picks Dusty/Nikita to win. Dusty is booking this show so I’d call that a smart pick.

Here are the updated brackets:

Bob Armstrong/Brad Armstrong
Lex Luger/Tully Blanchard

Giant Baba/Isao Tagaki
BYE

Road Warriors
Midnight Express

Manny Fernandez/Rick Rude
Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff

Crockett Cup Quarterfinals: Midnight Express vs. Road Warriors

The Warriors won last year and beat Khan/Whatley to get here. Clipped to Animal avoiding a clothesline from Eaton and running over Lane with an elbow. Off to Hawk who clubs away. A middle rope clothesline by Hawk takes down Lane but it knocks him into his own corner, allowing the tag to Eaton. The Midnights cheat as much as is humanly possible and Cornette cheers them on. A tennis racket shot to Hawk slows him down even more as we hear the ten minute announcement.

Lane hits a superkick for two. By superkick I mean he kicks him in the ribs/chest but Shawn wasn’t around yet and Chris Adams was just a territory guy. Hawk gets a shot in to the ribs but that doesn’t get him anywhere. A second shot is enough to bring in Animal and a dropkick gets two for him. The Warriors take over and a shoulder puts Eaton down but the managers come in. The Warriors get disqualified and the Midnights are in the semi-finals.

Rating: C. This was one of the better tournament matches so far and was cut roughly in half. Not much to see here but these two always have some passable chemistry together with the Midnights cheating as much as they can to slow down the unstoppable Warriors. Fun match but ENOUGH WITH THE WEAK FINISHES. Rude would be out of the company by the end of the month and in WWF by the summer.

Crockett Cup Quarterfinals: Super Powers vs. Manny Fernandez/Rick Rude

Rude and Fernandez are tag champions. Clipped (duh) to Dusty hammering on Manny and trying to fire the crowd up. Manny takes over and chokes away on Dusty while Nikita comes in to try to help out. He’s in a neck brace which would cost him the US Title soon to a young guy named Luger. An elbow gets two. Off to Rude who was flamboyant even back in the day.

Rude’s top rope fist gets two. Manny comes back in and Dusty hammers away on the Raging Bull until we’re into a chinlock. Yeah Dusty needs a rest already. Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Dusty comes back with a clothesline and everything breaks down. He rolls through something like a cross body and the tag champions are out to Dusty and Nikita after winning a single match.

Rating: D-. Yeah expect Dusty and Nikita to do really well in this. Dusty had a habit of pushing himself really strong and insisting he was what the fans wanted to see. He also had a habit of booking the company into the ground and causing Crockett to go out of business, but hey, Dusty was the US Champion baby! About five minutes were clipped here if you were curious.

Crockett Cup Quarterfinals: Lex Luger/Tully Blanchard vs. Bob Armstrong/Brad Armstrong

Clipped to Brad making what looks to be a comeback on Blanchard. Tully throws him over the top which should be a DQ but the referee doesn’t see it. The Horsemen take over on Brad as he reaches for a hot tag from the nearly 50 year old man. This would be the guy who would get a tag title shot twenty years later in TNA. This has been going 15 minutes now according to Penzer. Off to Lex who beats on Brad a bit more. Brad grabs a backslide for two and an eruption at the thought of the Horsemen going down. Hot tag to Bob who cleans house. Everything breaks down and JJ helps Tully take down Bob for the pin.

Rating: B-. The full version was about 17 minutes and we saw 5. This could have been a good match too as the 30% or so that we saw here were good. Brad was pretty awesome as he was very steady in his offense. The Horsemen were going on to the finals of this thing (which isn’t a spoiler as I’ll explain in a bit) and Brad would go on to total mediocrity which is a shame.

Crockett Cup Semi-Finals: Super Powers vs. Midnight Express

We start at the five minute mark and Dusty beating up another team. Lane vs. Nikita now with the non-Russian (as in Nikita. He was born in Minnesota) working the arm until Eaton cheats to break it up. Nikita gets worked over and Cornette yells about Dusty a lot. A long chinlock eats up some time but working on Nikita’s neck makes sense. The racket is brought in again but the referee is with Dusty. A big shoulder puts Eaton down for two and everyting breaks down again. Heel miscommunication (they didn’t collide but that’s a minor detail) allows Nikita to hit the Sickle on Eaton for the pin.

Rating: D. Another weak match here in a string of them. Dusty was just bad at this point but there was no way around it, much like Dusty. There isn’t much else to say here as Nikita was in a chinlock for a long part of that match. He’s more popular than Dusty though so at least the fans were more into it.

Since the NWA didn’t think the Horsemen vs. the Japanese team was worth showing, the second semi-final isn’t included. It’s Horsemen vs. Super Powers.

NWA World Title: Barry Windham vs. Ric Flair

We’re clipped to about ten minutes in as Windham is fighting back. Flair avoids something by grabbing the ropes and the Figure Four is on. He gets caught cheating so the referee and Flair get into it a bit. A big jumping lariat puts Flair down and at least Windham has the courtesy to limp. Windham’s tights have the same lightning bolt that Don Muraco had around this time. Flair knocks him to the floor and Windham crashes into the railing.

Back in Windham gets a sunset flip for two and a backslide gets the same. Flair bails a bit and then they slug it out at the fifteen minute mark. A suplex puts Flair down but a top rope elbow misses to put both guys down. Flair grabs a sleeper which lasts about two seconds. Windham takes over on the floor and they exchange control inside. They head to the floor again which doesn’t last long.

Back in Windham grabs a sleeper to fill in some time. Flair goes up but Windham gets up. Instead of jumping, Flair stands on the buckle and waits for Windham to slam him off. You know what Ric, you deserved that one. Now Barry hooks a Figure Four which goes nowhere. A powerslam gets two and Barry pounds away. Flair hits a cross body and they tumble to the floor. Back in a flying boot by Barry gets….the pin??? Oh wait Flair had the ropes.

Windham goes off on Flair with suplexes and power moves but he can’t keep Flair down. We’re at the 25 minute mark and Flair is reeling. The crowd is starting to really get into it here after being into it the whole match so far. Barry gets a backslide for two and rolls through a belly to back (impressive looking). He rolls Flair up but Flair keeps rolling and grabs the trunks for the pin.

Rating: A-. This had about ten minutes cut off and the rest of it could have made it better. The going to the floor time and time again hurt it and Tony wasn’t ready to call a match like this yet. These two had great match after great match and this was their usual solid match. It’s fifteen minutes of near falls and even a false finish so it’s hard to argue. Good stuff indeed.

Crockett Cup Finals: Super Powers vs. Lex Luger/Tully Blanchard

Dusty brings out Magnum to be in his corner. Gee, I wonder who will win this now. Luger isn’t a full Horseman yet but it was coming very soon. Clipped to Koloff taking Tully’s head off with a clothesline. Another clothesline puts them both on the floor where JJ steals the neck brace. Nikita is in trouble at the 10 minute mark. Lex works on the neck and it’s off to Tully.

I don’t know why they’re wasting our time like this. Everyone knows Dusty is coming in soon and will elbow everything in sight for the big “emotional” win. Nikita takes a LONG beating which eats up the majority of the match that we’re seeing here. Tully throws on a chinlock which at least works on the neck. After a front faceblock by Lex, Tully throws him over the top to draw in the fat Texan for a protest.

Nikita catches Tully coming off the top with a lariat and it’s hot tag Dusty. He fires off about 10 elbows to the head to take over and we’re rapidly running out of time. He misses a charge and Tully misses a shot to the head with JJ’s shoe. Blanchard sets to piledrive Nikita but Dusty comes off the top and OH THE HUMANITY!!! He crushes Tully with a cross body for the pin and the tournament win.

Rating: D+. We saw about 8 minutes out of 17 and this was nothing to see. The problem was that Nikita had to play hurt and while Dusty was great at a comeback and firing up a crowd, there was no reason for his team to win this. This wasn’t aired anywhere but they could easily just give it to someone else to build them up, but Dusty needed this win right?

There’s a trophy presentation to end the show.

Overall Rating: C-. With two matches like Windham vs. Flair and Magnum vs. Tully, you can’t really say it’s anything but good. Now as for the rest of it, there isn’t much at all to praise. This is only a two hour tape though so when you have about 25 minutes dedicated to that, it’s hard to complain. The tournament though…..yeah it still sucks. The Japanese team, one of the final four, isn’t even on here nor are they mentioned. What’s up with that? I mean….why did they have three Magnum matches on there? I don’t get the NWA at times, but when their matches were good, they were REALLY good.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/kbwrestlingreviewscom/117930294974885?sk=wall

Survivor Series 1991
Date: November 27, 1991
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 17,500
Commenators: Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan

Ok, so due to Microsoft and their annoying automatic updates that no one actually knows what they’re good for, I lost 91-94, so this is the second time I’ve reviewed these four shows. Therefore if I seem a bit annoyed, that’s why. Anyway, the main thing here is simple: Vince has more or less given up on the idea of having all Survivor Series matches and has given us a traditional main event match, in this case, Taker challenging Hogan for the world title.

Also, Flair has jumped ship to the WWF in a huge botch on WCW’s part. Finally, the hottest feud in the world right now is Jake Roberts vs. Randy Savage, but I’ll get to why I’m ticked off about that in just a few minutes. Other than that, the show is pretty much what you would expect.

The roster is changing a bit though; with it being more like the early 90s look than what we had seen for years before. It was a pretty bad show when I watched it two weeks ago, so maybe it’s somehow improved since then.

We get the logo and everything with a huge banner over it saying 5th Annual. Is it really something we need to know that badly? Within 30 seconds of the start of the show we’re hearing about the Roberts vs. Macho situation. So here’s the idea: Savage lost the career ending match at Mania and is officially retired. However, he’s trying to get reinstated since no one really stays retired (are you listening Ric Flair?).

Roberts had been supposed to feud with the Warrior for a huge program but Warrior was a jerk and got fired, which you can read about in my Summerslam 91 review. Anyway, they instead paired him with Savage for this. This past Sunday (this show is airing on Wednesday which was the tradition back in the day) Roberts got Savage into the ring and tied him up in the ropes before pulling out a cobra. Before I go on, does that sound like some latent sexual issues or is it just me?

Anyway, Savage get bit by the cobra and they can’t get it off of him. The crowd is so into this it’s unreal. Eventually they get him out of it and Savage tries to fight back but can’t stand up because of the “venom”. In one of the absolute funniest moments I can ever remember in wrestling, Vince is FREAKING over this and actually doing a great job on the mic which is a lot more than he usually does.

However, as Savage is being put on the stretcher, we cut to a kid in the audience crying and Vince absolutely loses it. He’s cracking up and since Piper ran to the ring to help Savage, there’s no one to bail him out here. It’s just great as he’s trying to stay serious but just can’t do it because he’s holding back laughter.

I guarantee that whoever did that cut was fired. I can’t imagine they weren’t. So anyway, after all that (they showed the entire segment which was about 4 minutes long), we go to Jack Tunney who says that this is his fault and he’s to blame for what Jake did.

Now we get to the big part: Savage will not be allowed to wrestle tonight, and Jake has been pulled from his match as well. HOWEVER, Savage is reinstated and will face Roberts at ANOTHER PPV called Tuesday in Texas, SIX FREAKING DAYS AFTER THIS SHOW. Remember, the incident that they’re referencing was three days prior to this. They’re changing the main event three days before the show so that they can hook in more PPV buys for ANOTHER show six days after it. That my friends is nonsense.

I’m sorry but that just doesn’t work. The fans are already paying 30 dollars for this show and they don’t get the real main event out of it? Hogwash. Instead Vince says for only 20 dollars more you can see the main event that you paid for here. I get that Vince was running low on money at this point, but there comes a point where you’re just screwing the fan too much. This is stupid on all levels. If you want to do this, give the people more than 72 hours notice.

How many people do you think might have missed Superstars and not known about this until after the show had started and their money had been paid? Again, that’s nonsense. I’m legit ticked off again over this, with the only thing that’s keeping me calm being Tunney’s licking of his lips in this promo. It’s just weird looking. He looks like he’s getting ready to eat an ice cream cone or something. This whole segment was just designed to tick off fans.

But hey! In six days, you can pay us MORE money to see this match, so make sure you order the other show. Gorilla and Bobby plug the show even more before we start our first match, 6 minutes into the show. Ok make that 7.

Roddy Piper’s Team vs. Ric Flair’s Team

Piper: Bret Hart, Virgil, Davey Boy Smith
Flair: Ted DiBiase, Warlord, Mountie

The feuds actually match up here as Piper and Flair were feuding, DiBiase and Virgil had just finished feuding, Hart and the Mountie would clash over the IC belt in a few weeks and Smith and Warlord were arguing over who was stronger. Wow a match that actually works out well in that area. I don’t know what to say. Sherri is with DiBiase here.

Actually, all four heels have managers, with (going in order listed above) Mr. Perfect, Sherri, Harvey Whippleman and Jimmy Hart. They can’t stay at ringside though. Flair is out now with a censored belt. Ok so this deserves an in depth explanation as well I guess. Back in the 80s, wrestling was based on the territory system as you likely know. Most companies were part of the NWA but all had their own champions and talent (think of it like the NCAA with its conferences).

However, there was still an NWA world champion that went around the country defending his title everywhere. This you likely know or have at least heard of. Now like I said, there were all kinds of territories. One guy in the south started to buy a bunch of them and join them into a superterriory.

This man’s name was Jim Crockett who you’ve likely heard of. He turned it into what you now know as WCW, but it wasn’t known as that at the time. Anyway, he tried to go to war with Vince but just didn’t have the money to do it. He eventually sold to Ted Turner, who changed the name to World Championship Wrestling.

Turner slowly started to fade away from the NWA stuff as he and Crockett had realized the same thing: WCW was the NWA at this point. He owned all the talent and the NWA championship (the big gold belt was made by Crockett for Flair. Before that they had used a different one.) Now at the time, Flair was still the NWA champion, but was also the WCW champion.

This was represented by the same belt though, as more or less it was the same title but officially it wasn’t. It’s very complicated no matter how you look at it so if that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t be surprised. So Turner brought in a bunch of people that had no freaking clue how to run a wrestling company, with the main one being Jim Herd. Herd looked at Flair and thought that he was washed up and past his prime.

This was abdsurd as well since Flair was not only world champion but the top draw still. Herd thought the Nature Boy gimmick was stupid and wanted to change Flair into, and I’m not making this up, a bald gladiator. Yes, he wanted to drop one of the most famous gimmicks in history to make him a stupid character.

As Kevin Sullivan put it, “after we change Flair’s gimmick, let’s go change Babe Ruth’s number.” Flair, having a brain, told Herd that this wasn’t going to work. Herd, being the idiot that he was, decided he knew more wrestling than Flair and told him that Flair would do it or be fired.

Now this is where Flair had him. Since, like everyone that knew what they were talking about, Flair knew that he could walk straight into the WWF and be launched right to the top of the show, he didn’t back down. Herd fired him and Vince got a nice big present called Ric Flair just handed to him. Now let’s get to the interesting part. When he was fired, Flair was still WCW and NWA champion.

Yes, Herd was dumb enough to fire him BEFORE changing the title. See what kind of idiot he was? He was stripped of the WCW Title which was then put in a match between Luger and Barry Windham, which was booed out of the building with chants of WE WANT FLAIR! The winner didn’t matter, because no one was going to take them seriously as champion, and why should they have? They never beat Flair for the title so they were in essence fighting for the number one contender spot.

No one bought it and the title was hurt badly for the next year and a half since instead of watching fake champions, they turned the channel to USA to see how the real WCW champion did in the WWF. Now the REAL interesting part lies in the NWA title. Like I said, Flair held both titles which were represented by the same belt.

The NWA had a policy for its world champions: you win the title, you pay 25,000 dollars as a deposit on it. The deal was done to prevent people from showing up in other companies with the title. In other words, you rented it. Once you lost the belt you got the money back with interest on it.

Now that’s fine and good. Flair paid the deposit and all was well and good. However, once he was fired from WCW he was stripped of the belt and was told to return it to the NWA. Flair said he’d be glad to do it as soon as he was given his money back. Problem: the NWA didn’t have it. Flair says well then you don’t have a belt either. He took it to Vince and used it in a gimmick, calling himself the REAL world’s champion.

The NWA panicked since there was no way they could let this happen. They took Flair to court over it and were laughed out of the room since they had absolutely no case. They made a deal with Flair and weren’t living up to their end of it. Therefore, there was nothing they could do to keep Flair from using the title on WWF TV. It was his property so he could do whatever he wanted with it.

Eventually Flair went back to WCW and let them use the belt after they paid him what he was owed. The big gold belt became the WCW Title and the rest is history. WCW left the NWA in about 1993 and the NWA tried to revive itself with a tournament in Philadelphia. I think you know what happened there.

Anyway, the point of this was that during this time, the NWA got a temporary injunction against Flair to keep him from using the big gold belt but the angle kept going anyway with other belts being used in its place. Tonight it’s a tag title, which is blacked out but at times you can see the edges of it. How weird would that have been? Flair is just standing there holding up one of the tag titles. Oh yeah we’ve got a match to do too. Let’s get to it.

Hart’s pop is INSANE. They knew what they had here and that would be made apparent as next year at this time he would be world champion. We start off with DiBiase vs. Piper. That’s a very interesting match that I don’t think ever had a big time feud. They of course have a great match here as my amazement never ends as to how DiBiase never got a title run. They of course have a great mini-match here since they’re both awesome.

Sherri comes in for interference but it of course backfires since Piper was practically a main eventer and such things don’t bother him at all. Now we get Virgil, who for some reason gets a pop. This is even more reason for me to hate what they’re pulling tonight. The crowd is white hot, so instead of giving them a big match, let’s give it to people in a week. Yeah that’s very good work there guys. Way to support your fans.

The face team spends about three minutes just killing DiBiase with all three guys getting in a lot of work on him. Finally he gets out and we get Flair vs. Hart. Even back then we knew it was something special. Bret was so on at this time that it’s unbelievable. The Heenan cheering for Flair is just funny stuff. Now the faces take their turns beating up on Flair. About 5 minutes straight is just faces beating on DiBiase and Flair.

Despite that, this is very entertaining either way as both guys are big time heels so the beatings work well and the crowd is WAY into this. Piper comes in to beat up Flair some and it’s so loud you can barely hear much. He finally gets out and we have Warlord and Bulldog in a test of strength. Due to some expected heel cheating, Bulldog is in trouble now as the Mountie continues to crack me up with how completely over the top he is with his gimmick. It’s so ridiculously insane that it’s greatness.

We get a funny bit as we see Jimmy in the back PANICKING since he can’t be out there with the Mountie. Managers really are a lost art indeed today. They’re something that can really enhance a character yet for some reason they’re never used anymore. I don’t get that. Being a manager requires two things: being able to talk and being able to take a beating once in awhile. Seriously, is that something that sounds next to impossible or next to that difficult even? I don’t get it.

It’s just not that hard to me, at least in theory. Instead we get people like Santino and Abraham Washington. Why not make one of them a manager? Nope, instead everything has to be about comedy instead of enhancing a character. Yep, you have to love that.

Bret comes in so Mountie bails as fast as he can, giving us Bret vs. DiBiase again so I can’t complain. Smith comes in after about 8 seconds of this as Mountie is tagged in. It’s brawl time and note: Gorilla says that the legal men are Flair and Smith, which would be wrong. Anyway, Smith hits the powerslam on Mountie but Flair goes to the tope and hits a double axe handle shot to the back of Davey’s head.

He rolls him over and pins him as Gorilla is freaking out about how Flair wasn’t legal, despite him saying that he was not 20 seconds before this. I love the confusion that is Gorilla Monsoon a lot of the time. Piper immediately runs in to beat on Flair, despite him not being legal in the match but who cares about something stupid like legality? All four people beat on Piper for a bit as the fans are still way into this match. That’s a good sign that after about eleven minutes we’re still this into a match.

Piper puts the figure four on Flair to a HUGE pop. Virgil comes in to fight Mountie who is terrified of him. For some reason, no one wants to fight Virgil. Why not? The guy just wasn’t that big of a deal. All that mattered in his career was that he beat DiBiase one time. That’s all anyone ever actually cared about and it was indeed a cool moment. However, once that angle ended, which it had by this point since DiBiase got the belt back, he was just Virgil, a bald guy that threw decent punches.

There’s just nothing really to market there and it turned into nothing at all because there was just nothing they could do with him at this point. It’s the quintessential difference between having a gimmick and being a character. A gimmick is something like Repo Man. He was something that you could throw in with anyone at all and the gimmick would work fine. John Cena is a character. He’s just a man that goes out there and wrestles really well.

There’s more depth to him, but it’s harder to put him with someone because you have to build something up with him. Also, it takes away from the creativity of the storylines with him as you can’t really do much other than have it be about respect or a challenge or so and so wants the title etc. It leads to some very boring and generic storylines.

There’s no right or wrong answer about what’s better, but for someone like Virgil with limited skills and charisma, a gimmick would have worked much better for him. The same holds true for Cena as a gimmick would be awful for him. It’s usually the bigger a star you are, the less you need a gimmick. He and Flair go at it for a bit and as usual, Flair loses at first only to make his comeback and look dominant.

A lot of people say that Flair’s style is boring. I disagree. Yes, he does the same stuff a lot of the time, but how many truly bad Flair matches can you remember, and I’m not talking about when he was all old and likely not legally considered alive. I’m talking about when he was in shape and not old. Think about it: the guy had good matches because he had a formula.

Flair gets beaten on, he makes a small comeback, gets beaten on again, makes a big comeback, goes for the leg, gets the figure four, the face gets to the ropes, and then the finish. The matches worked though and that’s all that mattered. Then you would get idiots like Dusty Rhodes who of course just couldn’t do things the intelligent way and had to have his style of match with Flair, which made them a lot worse.

Those aren’t Flair’s fault. Dusty is to be blamed for those since he’s the one that screwed them up by having to wrestle his horrible style. Dang I’m going on a lot of tangents here. Anyway, Hart does the nice thing and throws Virgil back in to get beaten on some more.

Full nelson goes on but Bret breaks it up to let Piper pin Warlord in the exact same thing that got rid of Bulldog. Well played Hitman. Everybody beats on DiBiase a bit more, with even Virgil getting in some solid stuff. Flair however just ends that as he becomes my hero. Heenan is singing Flair’s praises which never gets old as he even threatens to have Gorilla thrown out. The response of silence is just funny.

Virgil gets beaten on for about three minutes to set up the ending that I hate. He gets DiBiase down and heads for the corner. Both Piper and Flair come in for a big fight, but then the other four come in. Flair gets knocked to the floor and we have a big brawl. Then to end the match, 5 people are disqualified except for Flair because he was on the floor, making him the sole survivor. I get that they wanted to push Flair, but this match was so awesome up to this point that I wanted to see them go longer.

It’s not like they were short on time. Later on the tag team match gets twenty minutes. You could have given this another ten and it would have been fine, but then again, I’m no professional.

Rating: A-. This match was awesome. The crowd was way into it, the wrestlers were all on fire, the feuds made perfect sense, the pacing was good, and then the ending screwed all that up. Yeah here the main issue is the ending, which was just flat out bad. It put Flair over which was the point of the match, but I wish there was another way they could have done it. Either way, this was a very fun and entertaining match. Now if only the rest of the show is this good, which I doubt.

Savage and Liz say to buy Tuesday In Texas. Screw you both. Actually no, just screw Vince and his greed.

Team Slaughter vs. Team Mustafa

Slaughter, Duggan, Texas Tornado, Tito Santana
Colonel Mustafa, Berzerker, Skinner, Hercules

Oh this is going to be bad. It’s like the 80s died and this is the corpse. Basically, it’s America vs. not America here, with Mustafa being more commonly known as Iron Sheik. He had managed Slaughter during his heel run but now Slaughter is red white and blue again so all is fine and dandy. Duggan makes sense to be there, Tornado and Santana are midcard faces. Berzerker, Skinner and Hercules…eh they’re just there to fill in the dates their contracts say they have to work.

Yeah this is going to be pretty bad. Look at the face team. It’s a former world champion, a former NWA champion, a two time IC champion, and Duggan who was always in the upper midcard. They’re against a guy that used to be world champion but that’s not mentioned here and three career jobbers. Yeah this is going to go GREAT. I love how Slaughter can go so evil and then in just a few months he’s a beloved face again. Yeah it’s stupider than it sounds.

The most entertaining part about this match is Gorilla and Heenan arguing. You can tell they’re fairly bored out there and I can’t blame them at all. This match is just boring. There’s no point to it, there’s no reason to want to watch it, and there’s nothing of interest going on. You can tell this was just thrown together and that’s never a good thing. I don’t care about seeing these people fight because they’re just beating on each other with no particular rhyme or reason.

Heenan says some lines about Middle Eastern people that are borderline racist but not quite. Now we get to the best part of the match: the part where the bookers thought it was ok to have Sheik in there for over two minutes straight. Seriously, why? The guy can barely move and he’s going to carry the match? Yeah I think you’re getting why I hate this imbecile. They fill in the void by talking about the Taker vs. Hogan match which is fan better and more interesting.

Sheik gets pinned by a Slaughter clothesline that wasn’t anything special at all. Yeah, this might be the worst Survivor Series match of all time. It’s just flat out boring in all aspects. After about 5 minutes since Sheik got beaten, the other three heels are dispatched in less than two minutes total. Duggan dances around like this is a big deal. Apparently he was captain?

Rating: F. This was just awful. It wasn’t interesting, there was no story, the winners were never once in doubt, and it was just not any good. This was just completely pointless on all levels and was just there to fill in about 20 minutes counting the introductions. Egads what a horrible match.

The winning team walks down the hallway and says they can’t wait to see this match on video. Yeah that wasn’t pointless at all.

Jake Roberts says you should buy Tuesday in Texas. Somehow this takes five minutes to say.

We recap Hogan vs. Taker. They don’t mention how he got the title shot, but they make it obvious that Flair is going to be involved in this. On the Funeral Parlor, Taker’s segment, Flair confronted Hogan which led to Taker beating him down with the urn. Savage and Piper ran out to help him and couldn’t really do anything.

Savage hits Taker with the chair but Taker just knocks it away. That was awesome. Also, Taker rips the cross off the neck of Hogan, which is a direct homage to Andre 4 years prior to this. Taker was billed as undefeated here, despite having lost a bunch of matches to Warrior.

WWF Title: Undertaker vs. Hulk Hogan

So this is the first non Survivor Series match in the history of the show, which I think was what was needed. Since it’s the main event, of course it’s the shortest match on the show. We could have a problem here though as neither guy is going to sell crap here. Gorilla tries to convince us that they’re the same size. That’s just amusing. He goes on to say that Hogan has quickness and agility. I’m sorry but that’s just hilarious.

Hogan looks scared to death which is awesome. Bearer of course gets in his shots as Taker is in control. You have to remember that he’s only been around about a year at this point. This would be like Cena vs. Swagger in the main event of a major PPV for the title. Apparently it’s a big deal that Hogan can’t slam Taker despite him hitting Hogan as he goes up. Yeah that’s not a big deal at all. Taker gets clotheslined over the ropes and lands on his feet.

That’s always a cool looking spot and it makes it look like the move did nothing at all. The never ending debate about what’s in the urn continues. Was that ever answered? Taker’s tattoos interest me. Given his gimmick, what must that day in the tattoo place have been like?

Gorilla is of course freaking out over Bearer as Heenan says his monitor keeps kicking in and out. Monsoon says he’s going to start kicking Heenan in and out in a bit. Those two are just great together. There’s a Hogan lookalike at ringside who is leading cheers. It’s really quite amusing. Taker uses a smother on Hogan. That’s an interesting move as he just covers Hogan’s face with his hand.

That’s both good and bad as it looks a lot more effective than some moves do, while at the same time really being nothing at all. Heenan naturally can’t hear Monsoon, which is odd as he has that big headset on. Ok the smother doesn’t need to go on for two minutes. Taker does the eye roll that never gets old. Hogan makes his comeback but after more interference he takes a tombstone. Naturally he pops right up and starts his finishing sequence.

Bearer’s reaction to Hogan popping up is just great. As he goes for the legdrop, Flair comes out and touches his belt. Hogan, feeling a sense of animalistic pride, goes out and stops him. He puts Taker down again and goes for the leg but Bearer grabs him.

As he’s got the referee, Flair puts in a chair and Taker tombstones him on it for the title to more or less kill Hulkamania. Taker’s slow walk to the back with the belt is nothing short of greatness. Also, if Hogan isn’t legit hurt here, he needs an acting award. He looks completely gone.

Rating: C-. Again, this is a match where the historical aspect far outweighs the wrestling that you saw on display. Hogan losing at this point was a big deal, but he was getting very little reaction in this match. His time had simply gone by this point and it wasn’t working anymore.

That’s all fine and good, so Vince decided to take a BIG gamble and have him lose here. There would be a rematch in 6 days, but Hogan would only hold the title for a few days before it was declared vacant with the winner of the Rumble getting it. Hogan wouldn’t hold it again for over a year.

All the faces say they’re going to win.

All the heels say they’re going to win.

Tunney announces the rematch with Hogan and Taker for next Tuesday. Yep, it’s only 20 dollars and you get two main events, which you were supposed to get tonight, but screw that idea.

Nasty Boys/Beverly Brothers vs. Bushwackers/Rockers

The Rockers are on the verge of splitting up at this point with the Barber Shop happening in just under two months. As for the other three teams, they’re just there. Yes, this is the match that gets over 20 minutes and is the longest of the night. What in the world was Vince on tonight? This makes tonight even more of a slap in the face of the fans as we get 23 minutes of this and no Savage/Roberts.

Yeah that’s just great Vince, thanks for screwing over every person that pair their money to see this match. The Rockers are just ungodly over here, so of course they were being split up. We start off with Butch and Knobbs. Gorilla says no one knows more about surviving than the Bushwackers. Um, what? They do their comedy act as I can’t believe they still had jobs at this point. Somehow they would last until 1994.

Yep, no one cares about this match at all, but since the theme of the night seems to be how can we screw the audience over even more than we have earlier on in the night, it of course goes on and on and on. Luke, who once licked my at a house show, is gone fairly early due to a Brian Knobbs flying clothesline. Yep, that’s the kind of match that this is going to be: the kind where a flying clothesline that more or less sucked can get an elimination.

Can’t you tell how excited I am to be reviewing this match AGAIN? Oh I’m in heaven here people! Anyway, Marty comes in then and is looking either confused or stoned out of his mind. It’s likely both. Heenan, being as bored as ever, starts an argument with himself.

Heenan goes on to say that had Hogan not gone after Flair he would have won, which is likely correct. After more bad offense from both teams, Butch is put out following a weird double team move. It was supposed to start with a backdrop and end with a facebuster, but instead it looked like a bad botch. It was kind of like a 3D but nowhere near as cool looking or effective.

I think the Beverlies were supposed to be rich guys but I’m not sure. We’re down to Rockers vs. all four. Shawn starts getting his head handed to him as I’m sure Becca would love to steal it but that’s a different story. After getting beaten on forever, Shawn hooks a quick backslide and pins Beau. So now it’s Marty’s turn to get beaten up on for a good while as still nothing happens. We’re nearly 20 minutes into this and Marty puts on an armbar.

Yeah and you wonder why Shawn was given the big push. Shawn gets the tag leading to all five guys being in there at once. During this, Marty slams Sags but his feet hit Shawn in the face to let him get rolled up for the pin. Shawn is LIVID. He looks like he’s about to kill Marty but it doesn’t happen and Shawn goes to the back to leave it at three on one.

Jannetty fights as much as he can but even after some cool looking spots, he goes out to a bad small package. Seriously, it just looked awful. Marty’s shoulder was up and yet he got counted down anyway. It was just bad on all levels.

Rating: D. This was just BORING. Look at the opening match and then look at this one. The first one was a minute shorter yet I had FAR more to say about it. This was just boring and it’s a great example of how two matches can be completely different. The first one was interesting, sharp and fun. This was long, boring and sloppy. Granted it could be more about a lack of talent in this one but I digress.

This was just not good and there was absolutely NO need to give this nearly 25 minutes. You had a great match to open the show that would have been an A+ had it been given a few more minutes. The world title match could have used another 2-3 minutes. Yeah I know I say that a lot and in most cases there just isn’t enough time to go around. In this case, there should have been all kinds of time to go around but instead it got wasted here. That’s inexcusable.

With nothing else to say or do, it’s main event time.

Legion of Doom/Big Boss Man vs. IRS/Natural Disasters

Yep, this is the main event. Even at a house show this is a weak match, but here at the “Let’s screw the fans show”, it’s the main event. Apparently this was supposed to be Sid on the face team and Roberts on the heel team. Sid got hurt so they were going to put Savage in, but due to the move on Sunday, which means Vince’s greed, he got pulled and they took off Roberts too, since IRS is FAR ahead of Roberts on the company totem pole.

Anyway, IRS and Boss Man start, despite having no animosity at this point in time. LOD and the Disasters were feuding, but other than that, there’s little point to this. I really want this to end soon. Nope, apparently we’re in for the long match here as it’s generic offense all around to start. Yep, again, no one really cares about this match because we haven’t been given a reason to care.

The announcers clearly aren’t interested in the match at all as they bicker. Rule of thumb: the more bickering you hear between the announcers, the more bored they are. Finally after five minutes of people hitting each other and doing shoulder blocks, we get something interesting as Boss Man has IRS in trouble but he gets a metal briefcase to the head and is pinned. Unfortunately this messes up Gorilla’s rant about how Flair stole the title from Hogan.

Also, apparently there has to be something in the briefcase because it being made of metal isn’t enough to knock out Boss Man. Yeah that makes sense. So now it’s LOD against the three of them. Since they’re the tag champions at the moment, I doubt they’ll lose. As I say this, we get the fourth plug for Tuesday in Texas. We get it already guys.

Vince wants our money and if we want to see the big matches we were promised we have to pay another 20 dollars next week. As if we haven’t had enough excitement in this match, it’s time for a BEARHUG. Gorilla: I think he’s wasting time with this hold. I would agree if the last word was match. IRS goes for the briefcase again but it misses and hits Typhoon in the head and eliminates him. Quake is TICKED.

He’s ticked enough that he leaves with Typhoon. So it’s IRS 1-2 with the tag team champions. What happens of course? It goes on for 6 minutes. My goodness give me a break. Finally the LOD wake up and hits a top rope clothesline to end this which Gorilla says was inevitable. See, even he knew this was how it was going to end. Hey let’s plug Texas again. Heenan says it’ll be better than tonight. It couldn’t be much worse.

Rating: D. Again, this was BORING. There was no point to this being a six man. If they wanted to just have the faces win to end the show, do the smart thing and just make this a tag team title match. A few things are accomplished by doing that. Number one, it makes the match at least seem important.

Sure the LOD would keep the belts, but at least it would have had a sense of meaning to it instead of just a random match like this. Second, it would have been far more logical than this. Anyway, this was just bad and boring, but the faces won and the fans went home happy, so that’s good I guess.

Gene is in the catacombs of the arena. Joe Louis Arena has catacombs? Cool? Anyway, Bearer says that Hulkamania died tonight and plugs Texas to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. And that’s being generous. The first match on this show was awesome. It goes downhill fast. I don’t know what the heck they were thinking on this show. Wait, yes I do. The fans will buy one PPV. That means they’ll but a second. Seriously, this was sickening to see from the WWF. There’s no call for pulling the big match three days before the show just to have a one on one match six days later. I’m sorry but that’s not right.

Also, it was a Survivor Series match tonight. How hard would it have been to have them in there but just have them do a double count out with Jake running away or a double DQ or something like that? You give the people what they paid to see, you tease them with the big match just a bit more, and THEN you put the big match on the card in six days. That’s fine with me, but don’t advertise this as being the big match between Randy and Jake and then not have it.

Let them have their quick thing here and then let them do the match Tuesday. That’s all well and good. Other than that, this historic moment with Taker winning his first title mixed with an awesome opening match isn’t enough to make this work anything though, so it’s not recommended at all. The first match is worth seeing though.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/kbwrestlingreviewscom/117930294974885?sk=wall

I was listening to ESPN Radio about ten days ago before the World Series began. The analyst said that he hoped we were realizing what we were seeing with Albert Pujols (baseball player for any confused readers). He’s the best player in the game today and is putting up numbers that other players probably dream of. This got me to thinking about wrestling (as almost anything does) and I started thinking about John Cena.

I’m pretty much in the minority on John Cena, in that I’m pretty neutral on him. I have never once been what you would call a Cena hater. I’ve never reached the point where I’m sick of him and want him gone. I’ve also never been a huge fan of his. However, and this is partially the whole point of this entire writing: he is without a doubt one of the greatest stars that we’ll ever see and one of the greatest wrestlers ever.

Now let’s take a look at this from a few angles. First and foremost, John Cena has more detractors and more supporters than anyone else in wrestling right now. That is indisputable. When you watch a show, be it on PPV, TV, DVD or in the arena, one thing is always certain: people react to John Cena. You often read about the size of the pops that someone gets. When is the last time you remember people being silent for anything related to John Cena? The answer to that would be never.

The whole idea of wrestling is to get the fans to care about you. You have to establish a character that people are going to want to watch and when you put that character up against another one and develop a conflict between them, you might be able to get the fans to pay to see the resolution of that conflict, which is the whole point of wrestling. That being said, John Cena is one of the few guys that people are always interested in. Think about this for a second.

John Cena is the face of the company. He’s the guy that is put out as a spokesman, he’s the guy you see on the posters, he’s the guy that you see in K-Mart on WWE merchandise, he’s the guy that goes on talk shows, he’s the one (current) wrestler everyone knows and he’s the guy that Wrestlemania is built around every year. That puts him in rare company: Hogan, Austin, HHH, Cena. In WWE history (as in post-Hogan’s first title win), there aren’t any other people that are the undisputed top guy in the company.

After that, let’s look at what everyone thinks is the most important thing in wrestling: the matches. Let’s get the biggest piece of evidence out of the way: when was the last time you saw a bad John Cena match? I don’t mean a match you weren’t into. I don’t mean a match that you didn’t care about. I mean a match that was flat out bad. Cena is one of very, very few men that have had a match rated 5 stars by Dave Meltzer. Also on that list: Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Steve Austin, Undertaker, CM Punk. Cena was in the first match to get such a rating in almost 14 years. Think back over 14 years. It’s the first match in that long to get a perfect score in this company (I’ll save a Meltzer rant for later. I’m by no means a follower of his but his opinion is highly valued online).

The main argument against Cena matches is that he uses five moves and that’s it. Let’s think for a minute and realize why this is stupid. We’ll start with AA, STF, Shuffle, Top Rope Fameasser, Protobomb, Shoulder Block. There are your six moves right there. That being said, if you believe the amount of moves that someone uses determines whether or not you’re a talented wrestler, you have no idea what you’re talking about. If it was about the amount of moves a wrestler knew, Dean Malenko vs. William Regal would have headlined about 8 Wrestlemanias in a row.

Speaking of multiple Wrestlemanias, let’s look at Cena’s career span. Let’s say he became an A-list guy the night he first won the title, which was at Wrestlemania 21. For the sake of math, let’s say we take this up to Wrestlemania 27 where he was in the main event. That’s six years with him on top and he’s going to be there longer than that. By comparison, let’s say Austin was on top from Mania 14 through the day he walked out on the company in 2004. That would be 4 years on top, including his year out for neck surgery. Shawn was on top for about 2 years. Rock got let’s say 4 (99-02, which is being VERY generous). Other than Hogan and Sammartino, a guy being on top for that long simply does not happen.

Cena has been in a main event/featured match at 7 Wrestlemanias (not including the upcoming one). By comparison, Mr. Wrestlemania Shawn Michaels was in (arguably) 6 main event/world title matches at Wrestlemania. Austin had 4 or so. Rock had even less than that. The only person in the same league as Cena is Hogan who had 8 (I don’t count WM 9 as one of these as it was a surprise match and lasted all of 40 seconds but again that’s arguable). Even if you count that match, that record will come down in a few years.

Getting to records, we reach the world title record that Cena is going to break one day. As everyone knows, the record is currently held by Ric Flair with 16. You have Hogan with 12, Edge with like 13, HHH with about 13 and Angle with ten I think (don’t bother telling me what the actual numbers are as that’s not the point). Yes, having two titles makes this a lot easier to reach. Yes, Flair usually held the title longer (except for the two NWA Title reigns that didn’t last two months, the five WCW Title reigns that didn’t last three months each (with two reigns combining to last 7 days) and the 2 WWF Title reigns that didn’t last three months because we don’t like to talk about those), and yes that means a little something.

However, Cena wrestles in an era with potentially 9 hours of programming (Raw, NXT, Superstars, SD and a PPV) a week. This isn’t the days of the NWA where you saw the stars in town once a year at a house show and the title changed hands twice in three years. The amount of title reigns doesn’t mean a thing but people like to complain about Cena and Edge and HHH and the amount of quick title changes they have without thinking about it so who cares about stuff like consistency right?

This brings us to the present: John Cena vs. The Rock. It’s no secret that Rock is the biggest mainstream star the business has ever produced. He’s a big time movie star, he’s hosted SNL, he’s been the lead guest on the Tonight Show, he’s going to be in the new GI Joe movie, he’s a legit celebrity. And now he’s coming back to wrestling. Who do they put him with? John Cena. This match is going to be one of the biggest in the history of wrestling and it’s going to be built up for over a year when it finally happens.

These are two of the biggest stars of all time and this match is literally going to be over a year in the making. When has there EVER been a match with that kind of build? Off the top of my head, nothing is coming to me. I mean there were matches we knew would be happening at a certain show, but I don’t ever recall being told that a match would be happening a full year in advance with build lasting even longer than that. Cena is the one being trusted with this and that says something to me.

Speaking of the build, let’s take a look at Cena’s mic skills real quick. One of these guys is always talking about childish things, making funny faces and cracking jokes while the guy he’s feuding with is being serious. The other is named John Cena. Think back to the night when Rock came back. He cut a promo on Cena and imitated John in a funny voice while talking about Fruity Pebbles. Cena replied in a rap, pointing out that Rock has made some silly movies (true), that he’s never around the People he claims to be champion of (true) and how we’ve barely seen him for seven years (true). Rock’s reply: more funny voices, more cereal jokes, more making fun of Cena’s clothes.

Cena has responded to everything Rock has said and has made sense the entire time. Every word he has said about Rock has been true. It’s been Cena here the last seven years. Rock has been out in Hollywood (and please, spare me the nonsense about Rock turning his back on wrestling. You would have done the same thing and it was smart of him to do). In short, Cena has been the mature one here and Rock has talked down to him like a bully the entire time.

In summation, John Cena isn’t the devil in a pair of jean shorts. He’s a star the likes of which we haven’t seen in a very long time. Is he Austin or Rock or Hogan? No he isn’t, but to say he’s awful or he has to turn heel to save his career is ridiculous. When the Summer of Punk happened and Cena was having the hottest angle he’s had in years, he was the same John Cena we had seen every time and I didn’t hear anything but rave reviews for him. Whether you think it’s going to be good or not, Rock vs. Cena is going to probably break 1 million buys on PPV and make a fortune for the company and it’s going to be the same John Cena. Like him or not, he’s the best there is and one of the best ever and that’s all there is to it.

Impact Wrestling
Date: October 27, 2011
Location: Impact Zone, Orlando, Florida
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Tazz

We’re in the James Storm as champion era now which is what a lot of fans have wanted to have happen for a very long time now. It’s nice to have some fresh blood in there because there’s no reason to have Angle as champion anymore. His reign was becoming stale so having the change was a good thing. That being said, let’s see if TNA can keep up their hot streak. Let’s get to it.

We open with a recap of last week’s title change as Storm won the world title in a shocker, providing you don’t read spoilers.

Here’s the champ to open the show with a new video, a new song and the belt. He talks about watching Wrestlemania III with his dad and saying he wanted to be a pro wrestler. He couldn’t do it without all of the fans. However there’s another group of guys he wants to thank, so get out here Fourtune. Storm wants to set a few things right, and that means Roode gets the first shot at the title.

That brings out Joe of all people. He says he used to be part of the group that was always held down. James has broken out of that role though because he’s now the champion. Joe sees the same four people before he got that belt. He looks at Fourtune and sees a group trying to keep it all in the family. Incest is implied. Storm says Joe hasn’t earned anything so why is he running his mouth? Joe says because Storm is about to give the title shot to a failure.

Cue Sting who makes Roode vs. Joe for the title shot tonight. The winner gets the title match next week.

Hardy vs. Ray tonight in his first match since March.

Daniels says he didn’t say he quit at BFG. AJ doctored audio allegedly, which is what Rock/the Corporation did in 99. He fights Van Dam next.

Christopher Daniels vs. Rob Van Dam

Feeling out process to start with both of them having control for a bit each time. AJ pops in for commentary a few minutes into things. Standing moonsault gets two for Van Dam but Daniels takes over again with a release Rock Bottom. BME doesn’t hit so Van Dam fires off some kicks. He loads up Rolling Thunder but Daniels rolls to the floor. Van Dam is like whatever man and dives out to take Daniels down again. Five Star misses but RVD lands on his feet. They go to the floor where Daniels finds a tool box. A shot to the ribs of RVD draws the DQ at 5:23.

Rating: C-. I don’t get the appeal of Daniels. The guy bores me to death every time I see him out there. He’s glued to AJ’s hip which isn’t helping him at all either. Get the two of them apart and let Daniels face someone else. ANYONE else. Not a bad match here, but I didn’t want to watch it at all, especially since it’s just leading to more AJ vs. Daniels.

AJ comes down for the save from a screwdriver.

Here are Gail, Karen, Madison and Traci. Gail talks about how she did what everyone told her to do for years until Karen brought her back and told her that it’s all about Gail. Karen makes Gail vs. Velvet for the title at Turning Point. Gail says get someone out here for her to beat up.

Gail Kim vs. Tara

Gail jumps her to start and it’s all her in the opening. Tara is sent to the floor and Traci is yelled at for trying to help her. After a break we’re back with Gail still in total control. Tara fires off some basic stuff but Gail uses the same finisher she used back in WWE, which is that boot to the jaw where she drops the other girl down onto the side of her boot. That’s good for the pin at 6:57.

Rating: D+. Same thing as before here, although the legs looked better in this. Gail practically squashing Tara isn’t something I expected. Not that Gail shouldn’t have squashed someone, but is there really no one else? Gee I guess there actually isn’t. At least it wasn’t ODB or Jackie.

Bischoff and Flair are here. Didn’t they hate each other or something like 13 years ago?

TV Title: Eric Young vs. Robbie E

Eric starts by locking up with the referee and now we’re ready to go. Eric gets a sunset flip for two. A crucifix ends this at 1:00.

Rob Terry and Robbie E beat Young down with little Rob saying he’ll win the belt. Eric gets on the mic and says a Jersey Shore guy is coming next week.

Daniels is on the phone and says he wants his title match after beating RVD. Kaz comes in and says he wants AJ and Daniels to make up. He offers Daniels a mini vacation in California and Daniels says he’ll call him about it.

Ray says he’s going to take care of Hardy tonight and make his first match back his last.

Garrett Bischoff recaps the story of his dad making him be all evil. I’m not sure I buy that but it works for a backstory.

Here’s Eric who says he has important family business to take care of tonight. He calls out Garrett and after awhile here he is. Eric talks about how he raised Garrett to follow him instead of to think for himself. He says about what you would expect him to say to his son. Garrett says this isn’t what he wanted. Eric says he has half an hour to either apologize or it’s child abuse time.

We cut to Flair in the back where he rants about Garrett a bit and says he’s going to yell at him.

After a break Flair and Garrett miss up (Garrett: “Yes Mr. Flair?” Flair: “Not Mr. Flair. God.”) and Flair says Garrett is a punk. He rants for a long while more and says he might beat Garrett up later.

We recap Jeff Hardy’s return and all of the people reacting to him. Jeff Jarrett’s voice is over the video, talking about how no one wants him here.

Here’s Jarrett who says someone forgot a piece of video in that package. He’s talking about Victory Road which Jarrett will never forget. We also can’t air the main event of Turning Point 2006 when Jeff no showed there too. That brings out Hardy for another pull apart brawl. Bully Ray jumps Hardy and it’s time for their match.

Jeff Hardy vs. Bully Ray

Ray gets in a chain shot and we go to a break almost immediately. Back with Hardy hammering away a bit and hitting a Whisper in the Wind. Twist of Fate is countered and Ray hits a big boot to take him down. Ray pounds him down and a big elbow drop gets two as does an avalanche splash. He hammers in with some crossface shots but a charge gets feet in the corner. There’s a Matt screaming legdrop for two. Twist of Fate and Swanton give him the clean pin at 9:42.

Rating: C. It wasn’t that good of a match, but for a return by Jeff this was a decent enough performance. They kept Hardy to what he does best (selling) and only had him hit high spots. This wasn’t that bad for the most part and for a meaningless match, it was a good way to get Jeff back into the ring with someone he’s familiar with.

Jeff is being interviewed post match and Jarrett comes through the crowd to blast him. Immortal sets to put him through a table but Anderson makes the save.

Roode says this is another obstacle in his way and he’ll go through Joe tonight.

Robert Roode vs. Samoa Joe

Roode has a new entrance as well. Winner gets the shot against Storm next week. They take turns beating each other down in the corner and Roode gets a neckbreaker for one. Crossface is countered as Joe heads to the floor. Joe hooks him into some chinlocks on the mat but Roode fights up and hits the spinebuster.

They slug it out and Roode gets the best of that because he’s the good guy. Blockbuster gets two but Joe escapes the Payoff. Death Valley Driver gets two for the fat boy. MuscleBuster is countered into a crossface but Joe escapes. Joe goes after the knee but Roode snaps off a fisherman’s suplex for the pin at 7:00.

Rating: C. Not a bad match again but nothing of note. Was there ever any doubt that Roode would win? I have no idea why they’re using Roode vs. Storm so quickly. That could be BFG next year or Lockdown or something but instead, we get it next week at a show that has already been taped. Nice to see them having this huge match after such great build right?

Storm comes out for the post match staredown.

Here’s Bischoff (older version) for the big showdown with his son. As he’s coming to the ring, it’s announced that next week that we get Hardy/Anderson vs. Ray/Jarrett. Eric calls out his boy and is all happy because he’s sure Garrett is going to apologize. Garrett says nothing and Eric gets testy. Eric keeps shoving him and saying to apologize until Garrett grabs him with a fist pulled back.

That brings out Flair because he has to be out here for some reason. He rants and raves for a bit until Garrett hits him. Eric hits him low and Garrett gets beaten down. Remember, this is what is ending the show. My goodness. Flair and Eric stand tall to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. This was boring. That’s the only way to describe it. The matches were all just ok, the main event for next week was built along with some other stories but it was nothing interesting, and the focus is right back on Bischoff and Flair and whatever their drama of the week is. I don’t know who they think they’re drawing to the show with a 62 year old vs. the non-wrestling son of an executive, but I don’t think it’s too many people. Bad show this week.

Results
Rob Van Dam b. Christopher Daniels via DQ when Daniels hit Van Dam with a toolbox
Gail Kim b. Tara – Eat Defeat
Eric Young b. Robbie E – Crucifix
Jeff Hardy b. Bully Ray – Swanton Bomb
Bobby Roode b. Samoa Joe – Fisherman’s Suplex

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/kbwrestlingreviewscom/117930294974885?sk=wall

Crockett Cup 1986
Date: April 19, 1986
Location: Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana
Attendance: 3,500 (Afternoon), 13,000 (Evening)
Commentators: N/A

Here’s the first of a set of three rare shows I’ll get to eventually. This is a 24 team tag tournament that was held every year from 1986-1988. This year has sixteen teams in the first round and the winners of those eight matches would face eight teams that had gotten byes. As you may have guessed, some of these teams were thrown together because we needed teams to fill in the brackets. There are also two non-tournament matches. Thankfully this is the home video version so a lot of the 23 match card (see why it was split into two sessions?) is cut or clipped. Let’s get to it.

Again bear in mind that this is the home video version so a lot of the bracket is missing.

Here’s the first round. The winners will face the team in parentheses.

Wahoo McDaniel/Mark Youngblood
Bobby Jaggers/Mike Miller
(Road Warriors)

Sam Houston/Nelson Royal
Batten Twins
(Midnight Express)

Fabulous Ones
Fantastics
(Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard)

Guerreros
Sheepherders
(Rock N Roll Express)

Barbarian/Baron Von Raschke
Manny Fernandez/Jimmy Valiant
(Ivan Koloff/Nikita Koloff)

Terry Taylor/Steve Williams
Bill Dundee/Buddy Landell
(Dino Bravo/Rick Martel)

Italian Stallion/Koko Ware
Buzz Sawyer/Rick Steiner
(Ronnie Garvin/Magnum TA)

DJ Peterson/Brett Wayne
Black Bart/Jimmy Garvin
(Tiger Mask/Giant Baba)

See what I mean about thrown together teams? It’s no wonder this show is clipped.

The full title is Jim Crockett Senior Memorial Tag Team Tournament. Yeah it’s the Crockett Cup.

Crockett Cup First Round: Mark Youngblood/Wahoo McDaniel vs. Bobby Jaggers/Mike Miller

This is joined in progress with Wahoo pounding on I believe Miller. Expect to hear “joined in progress” and “clipped to” a lot in this. Off to Youngblood and it’s at this point that I realize there’s no commentary on this. Not even voiceovers. Something tells me this is going to be a lot harder to keep track of.

Youngblood gets beaten down and we’re cut to Jaggers holding him in a chinlock. Youngblood gets a shoulder block to put both guys down and it’s hot tag to Wahoo and everything breaks down. Wahoo chops Miller down and pins him with a big elbow drop (his finisher) to advance on. This was about 2 minutes of an 8 minute match. Expect a lot of stuff like that on this review.

Crockett Cup First Round: Sam Houston/Nelson Royal vs. Batten Twins

The twins are named Bart and Brad and that’s all I’ve got on them. Royal vs. let’s say Brad starts us off. And that’s enough of that so after about 8 seconds we’re off to Houston in trouble as the twins double team him. One of the twins misses a charge and hits the post but Houston can’t tag out. Jumping back elbow gets two for the one that didn’t hit the post. Lukewarm tag brings in Royal but its back to Houston quickly. At least the fans recognize him I think. The bulldog ends let’s say Bart quickly. This was about a minute out of 8 that the match ran.

Crockett Cup First Round: Jimmy Valiant/Manny Fernandez vs. Baron Von Raschke/Barbarian

We open with Jimmy dancing around like an idiot with the big beard against Baron’s evil paleness. Baron looks old and slow here in 1986. Off to Manny and we’re clipped to Barbarian hitting him in the back but missing a dropkick. Back off to Baron who can’t even throw very convincing forearms. Valiant gets a hot tag which Manny could make due to Baron being old and slow. Sleeper goes on Baron but things break down quickly. Some heel managers get involved but Manny hooks a sunset flip on Barbarian for the pin. About 2-3 minutes out of 11.

Crockett Cup First Round: Terry Taylor/Steve Williams vs. Bill Dundee/Buddy Landell

Team Mid-South here against I guess you would say Team Memphis. Joined in progress with Landell locking up with Taylor. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of these pairings so I apologize for how fast some of these matches seem. I’m just over ten minutes into the tap and we’ve seen this much. Clipped to Taylor in trouble as the fans chant for him. This is pre-Red Rooster so he’s got credibility. Dundee throws on a sleeper but Terry hooks a jawbreaker to escape. Hot tag brings in Williams who easily beats up both Tennesseeans. Oklahoma Stampede kills Landell dead at about two minutes out of twelve.

Crockett Cup First Round: Sheepherders vs. Hector Guerrero/Chavo Guerrero

The Sheepherders are the Bushwackers as CRAZY heels. Believe it or not there’s a match later on with them in it that Meltzer gave five stars, so they weren’t exactly the same team. Joined in progress with Butch pounding on Chavo but the guy with a famous brother escapes with speed moves. Off to Luke who pounds away even more but gets caught in a sunset flip for two.

Moderate tag brings in Hector and the announcer says we’re at ten minutes in. Abdominal stretch goes on but the Herders won’t quit cheating. Butch is knocked out of the ring as the flag bearer (Rip Morgan) is dropped for a BIG pop. Not that it matters as a double clothesline to Hector ends the Guerreros at just under three minutes shown of about 11. I’m sorry for the lack of ratings but at 15 minutes into the tape I’ve gotten through a two minute intro and five matches. What can I really do here?

Crockett Cup First Round: Fantastics vs. Fabulous Ones

Ok by sheer talent in the ring this has to be good. The Fabulous ones are Steve Keirn (Skinner and the current owner of FCW) and Stan Lane (future member of the Midnight Express). The Fantastics are Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rodgers and are probably my favorite NWA tag team. Fulton vs. Keirn to start and this goes fast. Clipped to Keirn hammering on Fulton. This lack of commentary is really pretty interesting.

A hot shot puts Fulton down but there’s no cover. Clipped to his comeback and Fulton’s tights being pulled down. Lane comes in for a superkick and we’re clipped again to both guys going down off a Russian legsweep. Hot tag to Rodgers gets a big pop as he hammers away on everyone in sight. House is cleaned and an O’Connor Roll pins Lane. WAY too clipped to have any kind of idea if it was good or not.

Crockett Cup First Round: Buzz Sawyer/Rick Steiner vs. Koko Ware/Italian Stallion

Ware is obvious and Stallion is a jobber to the stars. Sawyer is a bit nuts so he fits in perfectly. Ware vs. Sawyer to start off the latest clip-a-thon and I have no idea who the favorites are here. Sawyer is sent to the floor twice and wow he’s already back in. HOW FAST IS THIS GUY? Stallion comes in and works on Steiner who I didn’t recognize in regular trunks. I think he and Sawyer are the heels. Clipped to Ware in a bearhug by Steiner and it’s off to Sawyer. He misses a splash and Stallion comes in. We’re at the 15 minute mark so Sawyer hits a powerslam for the pin. Maybe two minutes shown.

Crockett Cup First Round: Brett Sawyer/Dave Peterson vs. Black Bart/Jimmy Garvin

This is the last match of the first round. Bart is a big fat cowboy and I don’t know much about their opponents. Bart hammers on Peterson and bumps around fast as Peterson isn’t that good from what I can tell. Off to Sawyer as they work on Bart’s arm a bit. Clipped to Garvin in control and then a hot tag to Sawyer. Bart drops a leg and a Garvin brainbuster ends this. The whole match was about 6 and a half minutes.

Now we’re onto the second round and most of the teams from here on are at least knows pairings. Here are the brackets.

Road Warriors
Wahoo McDaniel/Mark Youngblood

Sam Houston/Nelson Royal
Midnight Express

Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard
Fantastics

Sheepherders
Rock N Roll Express

Koloffs
Manny Fernandez/Jimmy Valiant

Terry Taylor/Steve Williams
Dino Bravo/Rick Martel

Ronnie Garvin/Magnum TA
Buzz Sawyer/Rick Steiner

Black Bart/Jimmy Garvin
Tiger Mask/Giant Baba

Crockett Cup Second Round: Midnight Express vs. Sam Houston/Nelson Royal

We start at the beginning with Houston vs. Condrey. Man Cornette is loud. Off to Eaton and the Midnights are moving in this one. This has been all Express so far. Houston gets in a knee lift and it’s off to Royal and his huge trunks. Everything breaks down quickly and Eaton hits a shot off the top to Royal for the pin. The whole thing (unclipped!!!) was under two minutes.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Magnum TA/Ronnie Garvin vs. Buzz Sawyer/Rick Steiner

Ronnie vs. Sawyer to get us going but it’s off to Magnum quickly. Magnum works on Buzz’s arm but we’re clipped to him working on Rick’s arm. Go figure. Sawyer comes back in and goes nuts on him with all kinds of pounding away. Off to a chinlock and also off to Steiner. We’re clipped to a bit later in the heel beatdown and a DDT by Sawyer for two.

Magnum grabs a small package for two as well as a backslide. He finally gets the hot tag to Ronnie who throws some punches and tags right back out. Magnum hits the belly to belly on Steiner and in 1986 that might as well have been a bullet to the head. Again, way too short. Is a full match over three minutes too much to ask?

Crockett Cup Second Round: Road Warriors vs. Wahoo McDaniel/Mark Youngblood

Animal pounds on Youngblood and it’s off to Hawk quickly. Total dominance so far. Wahoo comes in to chop Animal some but enough of the powerful veteran. Let’s get the skinny guy in again! Hawk kills him with a shoulder block and after a few punches from Youngblood, the middle rope clothesline ends this. Total squash according to the clipped version.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Ivan Koloff/Nikita Koloff vs. Manny Fernandez/Jimmy Valiant

The first thing we see is Nikita in a leg lock. This is getting really boring because there’s not enough to gather anything from at all. We’re on the 12th match and I’ve watched about 35 minutes of this tape. Think about that for a minute. Wrestlemania 17 had 11 matches. Ivan gets a tag in and gets caught in the wrong corner. How was he a former world champion? Off to Valiant as Ivan’t crotch takes a beating.

Clipped to the five minute mark with Fernandez missing a dropkick to bring in Nikita again. Clipped to Manny in a bearhug as Ivan comes in again. Hot tag brings in Jimmy who cleans house and hooks a sleeper. Everything breaks down (that should be the name of this show) and Nikita gets a Sickle for the pin. WOW IT WAS OVER THREE MINUTES SHOWN!!!

Rating: D+. This was just ok as the Koloffs who were usually a good heel team came off looking like clowns here who hit one big move to win the match. I wasn’t huge on this one but a lot of that is probably due to Valiant. He had no room on a show outside of Memphis as he was just a crowd favorite rather than anyone talented in the ring. That being said, his pops were huge and I get why he’s in this. I just don’t like him.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Dino Bravo/Rick Martel vs. Terry Taylor/Steve Williams

Bravo is hurt, forfeit, no match.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Rock N Roll Express vs. Sheepherders

Oh pardon me: the New Zealand Sheepherders. It’s a big brawl to start and Luke has to bail quickly. Clipped to Robert sending Luke into the buckle and bringing in Ricky who cleans house. Clipped again to Butch pounding Ricky down to the shock of no one that knows anything about 80s wrestling. We’re at the five minute mark (when I say that it means that’s what the announcer says) and we’re clipped to Robert coming back in.

Gibson misses a charge into the corner and we’re clipped into even more of a beating on him. It’s weird to see an Express match without having Morton in there getting beaten down for the majority of it. Hot tag brings in Morton and there’s a double dropkick to Butch. The Flag Bearer comes in for the attack but Morton gets caught with the flag for the DQ to send the Sheepherders to the third round.

Rating: C. Pretty fun match with all four guys being all over the place here but in a good way. This was meant to be more of a fast paced match with the Express being dragged into a brawling style where they were in over their heads. Not a great match or anything, but these teams could have had a decent match if given the time.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Tully Blanchard/Arn Anderson vs. Fantastics

We actually get an opening bell and it’s Blanchard vs. Rodgers. They slug it out and we’re clipped to Rodgers holding a headlock. Off to Arn and he doesn’t do very well either. Clipped to Arn hammering away on Fulton as he becomes the Fantastic in peril. Fulton is sent to the floor and into the barricade. Not that we need to care or anything as we’re clipped to the hot tag to Rodgers. Arn grabs the Gordbuster but Fulton makes the save. We get the dropkick into the back of your partner as he’s slammed for the pin. Another short one.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Giant Baba/Tiger Mask vs. Black Bart/Jimmy Garvin

That’s Tiger Mask II, as in Misawa. Clipped to Tiger being faster than anything anyone has seen in America ever up to this point. Tiger grabs the arm and speeds things way farther up than this audience is used to with a baseball slide. Clipped to Baba hammering on Garvin after some heel double teaming. Clipped again to the heels working on Tiger Mask. Baba comes back in and destroys them all because that’s what old giants do. A big boot gets the pin on Bart to end what appeared to be a long squash.

That takes us to the third round. Here are the quarter-final brackets.

Road Warriors
Midnight Express

Fantastics
Sheepherders

Koloffs
Terry Taylor/Steve Williams

Ronnie Garvin/Magnum TA
Giant Baba/Tiger Mask

Crockett Cup Quarter-Finals: Road Warriors vs. Midnight Express

We open with Animal beating on Condrey. The Midnights are in different tights than earlier. This might be in the evening session. Animal runs him over a few times and hits a dropkick to the stomach. Clipped to Condrey trying to have a pose down with Hawk for no apparent reason. Cornette gets up on the apron for some double teaming which doesn’t work at all and the Midnights hit the floor.

Hawk takes a piledriver from Condrey and actually stays down for a few seconds! Oh scratch that as he’s back up and hammering away again. Clipped to a Rocket Launcher attempt but Hawk pops up and slams Eaton. Eaton gets beaten down for awhile and it’s off to Animal. The Midnights cheat some more as Animal catches Condrey in a powerslam. The makes Cornette pull the leg and it’s a DQ to send the Warriors to the final four. We got about 5 minutes out of ten here which is the most we’ve seen so far.

Rating: C+. This was getting pretty good while it lasted and the ten minute version would have been a pretty solid match. That being said, the clipped version is still pretty good and these are teams that seemingly would have been able to have good matches if they had the time to work with, but you can say that for almost any talented team.

Crockett Cut Quarter-Finals: Ivan Koloff/Nikita Koloff vs. Terry Taylor/Steve Williams

Taylor and Ivan start us off with Taylor working the arm. Taylor controls early and we’re clipped to Williams coming in to work on the arm. Doc (Williams) is in yellow and red here. We get the always cool gorilla press with reps from Williams to Ivan. Clipped to Taylor working on the arm. Ivan finally figures out he’s a bad guy and goes to the eyes so he can bring in Nikita.

Nikita vs. Williams at the moment in what is a power wrestling fan’s dream. Both of these guys are just scary strong. Koloff tries to pose so Williams dropkicks him to the floor. Clipped to a two count for Ivan and a tag back to Williams. We hit the fifteen minute mark of a twenty minute time limit with Doc slamming Ivan off the middle rope for two. Clipped to a powerslam getting the same result.

There’s the hot tag to Taylor and in Soviet Russia, house cleans you. He beats up both Russians but Ivan catches him with a knee/boot and various other power heel offense. Taylor is sent to the outside and they almost break the railing when he goes into it. Two minutes left. Ivan stomps on Terry and it’s back off to Nikita for a bear hug. A minute to go. Doc comes in anyway but Taylor keeps kicking out at 30 seconds to go. Taylor grabs a small package (this is a family show!) and time runs out with no real urgency from anyone.

Rating: C+. This was about ten minutes shown out of twenty which is something I can live with. This wasn’t bad and was probably the best match of the night so far. What a shock: a match that gets more time than any other one on the show is also the best one. Nothing too bad here but it wasn’t a memorable match or anything.

The double elimination means whoever wins in Garvin/Magnum vs. Baba/Tiger Mask is in the finals.

The Koloffs plus Krusher Khruschev (Smash from Demolition) beat down Doc post match.

Crockett Cup Quarter-Finals: Sheepherders vs. Fantastics

Big brawl to start and the Fantastics clear the ring. Clipped to Butch hammering on Fulton until the Fantastics dropkick everything in sight to send them to the floor. Clipped to Butch hammering on Fulton. I’ve seen this before it seems. Out to the floor for more dropkicking and it turns into a brawl. Fulton is beaten down on the floor and can barely move. Rodgers is ticked off because of it.

Clipped to Luke beating on Fulton but the flag bearer messes up, resulting in Luke going into the flag. There’s the hot tag to Rodgers and Butch is busted open. The cameraman and referee are taken out and now Fulton is busted as well. The flag bearer tries to cheat again and one more time it doesn’t work. The future Wackers get the flag stick in the ring and beat on Fulton with it but as is the case in wrestling, they get beat on with it as well. Another referee comes down to wake up the first and it’s another double DQ. That means the Road Warriors are in the finals as well.

Rating: B. Meltzer gave THIS five stars? It’s a fun brawl and WAY violent for its time, but the clipping must have killed it because this wasn’t a classic or anything resembling one. It’s good and the most fun match on the show so far, but if the full version was 15 minutes, this was the low half of it. My mind continues to be blown by his ratings at times as this is one of the matches better than Savage vs. Steamboat? Really?

Crockett Cup Quarter-Finals: Tiger Mask/Giant Baba vs. Magnum TA/Ronnie Garvin

Tiger Mask vs. Garvin starts us off but we’re joined in progress again. Garvin works on the leg and it’s off to Magnum vs. Baba. Baba runs him over a bit until we’re off to Tiger again. Magnum gets a suplex and we’re clipped to him being caught in a front facelock. Sunset flip gets two for Magnum and it’s back to Baba. Garvin comes in to get smacked around a bit by the Giant and everything breaks down again. Baba’s arms are frighteningly skinny. Tiger hits a dropkick and senton on Magnum. He goes up for the cross body but jumps into a belly to belly for the pin out of nowhere.

Rating: D+. From what I could see here this wasn’t that good. They were all faces which hurt things a lot. The ending wasn’t bad but the match was still pretty dull. This sets up another all face final which isn’t going to do this show any favors. Nothing great here but that’s just the way things have been going all day tonight.

Garvin/Magnum vs. Road Warriors in the final.

UWF North American Championship: Jim Duggan vs. Dick Slater

Oh great we’re going to get this one in full. Duggan is champion and that’s the top title in the Mid-South company. Jim Ross does the introductions which isn’t something you see every day. This REALLY could have gone on earlier in the tape and it would have helped a lot. Duggan takes over with power and we’re clipped to Slater coming back in after being knocked to the floor.

Duggan throws on a headlock and this match is already boring. He hammers away with his usual array of stuff, which is to say a lot of punches. Slater punches back and we head to the floor. Duggan is thrown into the barricade which falls over under his weight. Off to a chinlock as I begin to look for some traffic to play in to cure my boredom. Slater hooks a neckbreaker and we’re clipped to him missing something off the top.

Duggan starts hammering on him again and does his stomp to appeal to the patriotism in all of the fans. How that stomp is American I’m not sure but Duggan is on a different intellectual level than I am. The referee gets bumped (meaning kneed in the back by Slater) and Slater drops a top rope elbow for two. Duggan gets tied up in the ropes, but when the referee tries to pull him off, Duggan escapes with the three point shoulder block to end it.

Rating: D-. This was horrible. Duggan was a popular guy in Mid-South and would be a huge star in WWF, but without any kind of story or anything like that, this was just boring. It’s almost all punching and when Dick Slater is the more interesting wrestler in your match, you can tell you’re in a lot of trouble.

NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes

They fight over a top wristlock to start and Dusty’s manager Baby Doll is already getting on my nerves with her screaming. Now they chop it out in the corner and Dusty takes over to start as you would expect. A bunch of right hands sends Flair running and Baby Doll is a very old looking woman. Back in Flair tries a leapfrog and walks into an elbow to the head to put him down.

They fight over the arm again as we hit five minutes. There might have been a clip in there somewhere because it doesn’t seem like we’ve been at this that long. They go to the floor for a few seconds and somewhere in there Dusty got busted open. Dusty fires back by crotching Flair on the post. Now I know we have a clip as they’re slugging it out until Flair grabs a sleeper.

Dusty sends Flair into the corner to counter and we’re clipped to them on the floor and Flair blading very obviously. We don’t see what the shot was that caused it but who needs that? You can hear the referee say Ric’s cut too. Flair gets caught in the Tree of Woe which goes nowhere. Dusty gets two off a clothesline at the fifteen minute mark. We saw about 5 minutes out of ten between the 5 and 15 minute announcements.

Off to a sleeper which Dusty doesn’t crank on at all. Flair grabs the rope about 10 times but the hold isn’t broken. Isn’t touching it the same as grabbing it? Dusty hooks his awful Figure Four as there’s no crank on it at all. You see that a lot in his holds. They clip out the hold to just Flair grabbing the rope. Are you serious? Flair goes up and yeah you know the drill. Dusty tackles him into the referee so there’s no count on his small package. Flair hits Dusty in the head with Dusty’s own boot for two at the 20 minute mark. Flair goes after baby Doll so Dusty hits him with the boot and that’s a DQ.

Rating: C. The curse of the clipping strikes again because this looked like it was a pretty good match but we didn’t get to see the middle parts of it which is where most of the good stuff came from. This has really been a problem but for the love of all things good and holy, can we please see the full match in the final? It’s all that’s left.

Side bar: why is a boot considered a foreign object? He wore it into the ring and kicked Flair with it on multiple times. Why is it illegal when there isn’t a foot in it and presumably the shot would be weaker as legs are usually stronger than arms?

Crockett Cup Finals: Road Warriors vs. Magnum TA/Ronnie Garvin

All faces here. The winners also get a million dollars. Animal and Magnum get things going. We get some surprisingly quick stuff until Magnum takes over with a dropkick. Animal takes him down with a top wristlock and they trade arm work on the mat. Off to Hawk who puts on a chinlock….and they clip this match too. ARE YOU SERIOUS???? The whole show is about one freaking tournament and you give us a total of ONE MATCH THAT ISN’T CLIPPED??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

A middle rope splash misses and Garvin gets a small package for two. Off to Magnum who doesn’t have as much luck with Animal who stomps away on the US Champion. Off to Animal again and it’s chinlock time. Powerslam gets two as Magnum is in trouble. Magnum grabs the belly to belly for two as Hawk saves. Hot tag to Garvin and down he goes almost immediately.

Garvin tries an abdominal stretch on Hawk but punches Hawk instead. The problem with this is he punches Hawk so hard that he breaks his hand. I’m not sure if this is kayfabe or real but it doesn’t really matter either way as Animal hits a pretty weak clothesline on Garvin and gets a quick pin for the tournament win and the million bucks.

Rating: D+. Apparently Garvin’s hand was broken coming in. Imagine that: Ronnie Garvin does something stupid like HIT A GUY IN THE HEAD WHILE HE HAS A BROKEN HAND. Garvin’s team deserves to lose after that. This match was pretty boring and the ending didn’t help things at all. Nothing to see here other than the end of a long and boring show.

The Warriors get the check to end the show.

Overall Rating: D-. OH man where do I begin with this one? The problem with this show comes down to one thing: four and a half hours. That’s the amount of ring time that this card would have had if the matches all got their full time shown. Now imagine that being put down into a two hour tape. That includes the time dedicated to the entrances, the graphics between matches, and the ending. Based on that alone, I think you know why this isn’t anything worth seeing. The other two tournaments can’t be this bad. I mean, it’s not possible. Without the clipping this would have been bad anyway.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/kbwrestlingreviewscom/117930294974885?sk=wall

Clash of the Champions 6: Ragin Cajun
Date: April 2, 1989
Location: Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana
Attendance: 5,300
Commentators: Jim Ross, Michael Hayes

Where do I begin with this one? First and foremost, this is on the same night as Wrestlemania 5 in a final attempt to sabatoge the WWF. The problem was that this ran against Savage vs. Hogan which if my memory is right was either the highest PPV buyrate ever or the second highest. The main event from WCW (NWA but we’ll keep things simple here) is Steamboat vs. Flair II in a 2/3 falls match with Steamboat defending his newly won title. Let’s get to it.

Also, 5,300 people in the Superdome? That place holds over 75,000 for football.

We see a lot of legends at a dinner or something last night. Big names like Muchnik, Thesz, O’Connor, Funk and Funk among others. Jim Herd talks about protecting the integrity of the NWA or some jazz like that. Turner had recently bought the company I think so the NWA’s days were numbered.

Terry Funk will be replacing Hayes for commentary on the main event.

We run down the card through a long video package. Or maybe this is just an opening video in general. This goes on a bit too long.

National anthem.

Midnight Express vs. Samoan Swat Team

Dangerously manages the Samoans here. This is his second team to beat Cornette and run him out of the NWA after the Original Midnight Express lost a loser leaves town match at Chi-Town Rumble. This version of the Samoans would become the Headshrinkers and are Samu and Fatu (Rikishi). It’s Samu vs. Lane to start us off and Samu misses a cross body. Lane’s gets two.

Off to Eaton who hits a missile dropkick and it’s back to Lane who controls. The Midnights are the faces here. Cornette pops Fatu with the tennis racket but doesn’t get caught so we keep going. Fatu comes in for a few seconds and it’s back to Samu again. We get heel miscommunication and the Samoans have a meeting on the floor. Hayes uses Monsoon’s line of saying this is a main event in any arena in the country. Except this one.

Back to Eaton vs. Samu and Eaton out moves him quickly. Samu is like screw this wrestling stuff and starts using power to take over. The Midnights tag in and out quickly. I didn’t even notice Eaton going out. The Midnights cheat but they’re good guys so they can get away with it here. Back to Eaton and this has been all Midnights so far.

The heels finally start cheating like good evil Samoans and Eaton is in trouble in the corner. Off to a chinlock/nerve hold as Eaton is taking a good beating. Fatu hits the kick to the face but it’s in the corner so it doesn’t look as good. Eaton avoids a shot and it’s hot tag to Lane. They double team the Samoans and ram their heads together which starts a fight between the Samoans.

Cornette hits a Samoan (you can’t tell them apart from behind) with the racket and Dangerously pops Lane I believe with his phone, allowing the Samoans to take over on Lane for a bit. Back to the nerve hold which eats up awhile. This is a long match as we’re approaching twenty minutes. Another Fatu superkick gets two. Lane finally avoids a middle rope headbutt and it’s a double tag to bring in Samu and Eaton.

Eaton hammers away but tries a double noggin knocker. Take a guess as to how that goes for him. Just guess. Lane gets back in and everything breaks down. Lane sends Fatu to the floor and the Rocket Launcher hits Samu. Cornette and Heyman get into it on the apron and the phone goes flying. Fatu clocks Eaton with it for the pin.

Rating: C+. This was ok but it wasn’t a classic or anything. The Samoans weren’t nearly as difficult to do anything as Rikishi would become but they were still something different than the Midnights were used to. Also with this being more about the managers than the teams, it became a bit harder to have heat out there. Still though, nothing bad.

Great Muta vs. Steve Casey

Casey is a jobber and Muta is one of the hottest acts in American wrestling at this point. Muta does a trance/meditation thing to start as Hayes makes fun of Oklahoma. Casey shows why he’s a jobber by charging at Muta. You deserve that mist you get you schmuck. Handspring elbow (Muta invented it) hits Casey and we hit the chinlock. Casey goes for the arm for a short arm scissors but Muta gets bored so he kicks Casey in the face.

Casey heads to the floor to clear his head but Gary Hart, Muta’s manager, rolls him back in so that Muta can hit a hard dropkick off the top. JR compares Muta to Sting which would be the feud that made Sting into a great in ring guy to go with his charisma. Muta hooks some freaky leglock and then a nerve hold. Casey tries something else so Muta hits a spin kick to kick Casey’s head off again.

Off to another nerve hold and this is starting to go too long. Casey gets what is probably the highlight of his match by hitting a clothesline to take Muta down. He hits a dropkick but Muta swats the second one away. Casey grabs his foot so Muta hits another SWEET spin kick to send Casey to the floor. A pescado and the handspring elbow on the floor continues the dominance and the Muta Moonsault (a quick one that stays low) ends this slaughter.

Rating: C+. It’s just a long squash but Muta was REALLY good back then. When he got to fight Sting for months on end, it was pure gold because Sting was actually able to keep up with Muta in the ring. As for this though, it was total dominance and Muta’s calmness throughout the match is a really great addition to his character as he knew he was better and didn’t sweat Casey at all, because he had no reason to.

Junkyard Dog vs. Butch Reed

This is an old Mid-South feud and New Orleans was a big Mid-South town so the fans are probably going to be way more into it than they should be. JYD has a band to bring him out. As in tubas and horns and such. It’s a very New Orleans style intro. Reed was in a singles push at this point and was kind of almost maybe sort of considering being put in the Horsemen to the point where he even held up four fingers at one point. That wouldn’t happen of course but he was probably the top candidate for it. He has Hiro Matsuda here though.

JYD takes over to start and Reed is on the floor quickly. Back in and Dog does his all fours headbutts to send Reed right back out. Dog hammers away some more until Reed pounds away to take over. This is almost all kicking and punches. Off to a chinlock by Reed and Dog makes his comeback. Both guys go down off a double clothesline. Reed goes up for his top rope shoulder but Dog gets his foot on the rope. Dog sends Reed into Matsuda and botches a rollup for the pin.

Rating: D. This was so boring that it almost put me to sleep. Ok not really on the sleep thing but it was very dull. It’s your standard 80s kick and punch match which means it wasn’t interesting at all. Reed would go on to form Doom after this though while Dog would flounder for awhile before fading into obscurity.

Bob Orton vs. Dick Murdoch

Ross is way too excited for this match. They start on the mat with Orton firing off some fireman’s carry slams. You might almost say he’s adjusting Murdoch’s attitude. Murdoch puts on an armbar and the old school nature is very clear very quickly. Orton kips up to get out of it. Can his son do that? Dory Funk Jr. and Pat O’Connor are watching from the crowd. Murdoch has a wristlock on again and by that I mean he has it on for awhile.

Now it’s Orton with an armbar. Murdoch is the face here. I didn’t really know that either until Ross mentioned that the fans loved him. We’re still in the arm stuff here. Muchnick, Kiniski, Thesz and I believe Buddy Rogers are at ringside also. Five minutes in and the arm stuff is finally over. Orton pounds away but Murdoch is waking up in the corner. A dropkick puts Orton down and they brawl a bit more. Both try their finishers, but Murdoch has his foot tripped during the brainbuster and Gary Hart (Orton’s manager) holds the foot for the pin. Think of Mania 5 and the finish might sound familiar.

Rating: D. This was boring. The match is just under ten minutes long. 5 were spent in arm holds, 3 were spent brawling and 2 were spent on the finish. That doesn’t make for an interesting match at all. Murdoch and Orton were both old at this point and it was obvious that no one was interested in seeing this match other than maybe a bit for Murdoch.

World Tag Titles: Varsity Club vs. Road Warriors

It’s Rotunda/Williams here and the Warriors have the belts. Hawk vs. Rotunda starts us off. Mike isn’t in a good mood as he lost the TV Title to Sting the day before on TV. Off to Animal who cleans house including a powerslam to Williams. Hawk comes in and doesn’t do as well. I always thought Animal was the better of the two. To prove me right, Animal comes in and runs through both of them again.

The Varsity Club (Williams I think) pulls the top rope down and Animal tumbles to the floor. Off to a bearhug but Animal manages the tag. Teddy Long (referee) doesn’t see it so Hawk has to go out. This is important because at the same time, Rotunda comes in with no tag and Long allows it. Remember that. Williams comes back in and takes the leg out from Animal as JR explains the football strategy at play there.

The beating goes on for awhile longer with Animal getting close but not being able to make the tag. You’ve seen the same thing a million times before. It’s a good thing they’re letting Animal stay in there this long as when Hawk gets tired, he gets bad in a hurry. There’s the hot tag and Hawk cleans house. Everything breaks down and Animal accidentally tosses Long. Doomsday Device hits and Teddy won’t count. Williams comes in and rolls up Hawk and Teddy dives in for the absolute fastest three count you’ll ever see for the title change. His hand didn’t go above his shoulder on any of the counts.

Rating: D+. Pretty dull match here but the ending got Teddy out of being a referee and turned him into a manager. I think he took over the Skyscrapers just after this. The Road Warriors wouldn’t get close to the titles anymore after this and would leave for the WWF about a year later. The Freebirds would get the belts in a little over a month before a team called the Steiner Brothers took them in November.

The Warriors and their manager rant about the cheating.

Ranger Ross vs. Iron Sheik

Ross is a military themed guy and he repels from the ceiling. Sheik does the national anthem bit before the match and then jumps Ross before the bell. Ross gets beaten down and both guys get abdominal stretches. Ross gets a standing Mafia Kick but Rip Morgan, Sheik’s flag bearer, comes in for the DQ. JYD makes the save. This was nothing and I don’t think it led anywhere.

Flair says he’s ready and he’s awesome and all that jazz.

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

Steiner and Gilbert are champs here. Sullivan and Spivey are Varsity Club. That would break up later in the year. This is a rematch from yesterday on TV where the Varsity Club won. Oh and Missy Hyatt is with the champions. The challengers jump them to start and Spivey lets Gilbert up at two which even Hayes criticizes. The big beatdown is on and it’s all Varsity Club here.

They’re out on the floor now and Spivey rams Gilbert’s back into the post. Off to Sullivan now which only lasts a bit. A flying clothesline gets two for Spivey. Tree of Woe (not named that) to Gilbert but Sullivan tries it again with the second time failing. Here’s Steiner who beats up Spivey and hooks a belly to belly for two. Everything breaks down and Gilbert pops Sullivan with Missy’s loaded purse for the pin.

Rating: C. It’s really short because we have an hour long main event. This went nowhere because the time killed it but it wasn’t anything all that bad while they were in there. For no given reason (literally) the titles were vacated soon and weren’t won by anyone until a tournament in February, about 9 months later. This was fine.

NWA World Title: Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair

This is 2/3 falls with a 60 minute time limit. As usual, Flair comes out with women while Steamboat has his son and wife. The son is in a dragon costume. The belt looks good on Ricky. Then again that belt looks good on almost anyone. Except Ronnie Garvin but that goes without saying. Flair has the always awesome black robe here. I miss that thing. Terry Funk is on commentary instead of Hayes which is the very beginning of the next world title feud once this ends.

They hit the mat quickly and MAN are they fast down there. Steamboat gets a very hard chop and the fans are buzzing over it. Flair works the arm as they’re going slow to start. The difference between this and Orton vs. Murdoch: this is going to go somewhere else. I have a feeling the other one wouldn’t have if they had 40 minutes to work with. Flair hits the floor and says come out here.

Steamboat grabs a headlock and they chop it out. By that I mean they hit each other so hard you can hear the skin slap every time. Steamboat speeds things up and it’s back to the mat with the headlock. Dropkick gets two for Steamboat. We’re ten minutes in now. The US and TV title matches might be on but we’re not sure. For some reason they were scheduled later. Neither will wind up airing but they’re nothing of note anyway. Sting and Luger both retain over Rip Morgan and Jack Victory respectively.

Back to the mat now and Steamboat controls with a front facelock. Flair tries to fight back but gets chopped down for two. They have a ton of time here so they’re definitely in slow mode. Flair heads to the floor and there’s the Flair Flop outside. We get an explanation of how the other title matches will air on Saturday’s TV show if necessary. I like that and the reason being is they wanted to make sure this gets the full time limit if they need it.

We’re 15 minutes in and they chop away hard. Steamboat puts Flair down with a double shot for two. Flair blocks a splash with knees and goes to work on the ribs. Butterfly suplex gets two. Steamboat keeps kicking out as Flair has a test of strength grip while Steamboat is on the mat. They chop it out but Steamboat misses a dropkick in a nice bit of psychology. Steamboat counters a Figure Four attempt into a small package but Flair reverses into one of his own for the first fall at just shy of twenty minutes.

Back with the second fall after a brief rest period. Steamboat takes over quickly and hits a top rope chop to the head for two. Funk says this is like his brother vs. Brisco. Now that is a compliment. Flair misses his knee drop and Steamboat goes after the other leg. He drops SIXTEEN elbows on it and slaps on the Figure Four (ON THE CORRECT LEG!!!). Flair finally grabs the ropes but he’s in trouble.

Flair avoids another Figure Four but gets caught in a Boston Crab at what sounded like the 25 minute mark. He gets to the rope again but he’s still in big trouble. Flair fires a few shots off but we go down into the backslide reversal spot which I’m sure you all are familiar with. They hit the floor and Steamboat goes into the railing. We’re at thirty minutes now and Flair suplexes Steamboat over the top for two.

Abdominal stretch time by Flair and he even rolls Steamboat up for two while still holding onto it. Steamboat gets beaten on a bit more until Flair goes up top, only to get crotched and superplexed for two. Out of nowhere Steamboat grabs a double chickenwing hold (think the position for the Glam Slam but he holds Flair in place) for a submission to tie us up at a fall apiece.

After a quick break Flair is spent but Steamboat gets poked in the eye so he can’t follow up at the thirty five minute mark. There’s the second Flair Flop in about a minute. They chop it out but Flair grabs….something that we can’t see since the camera angle was really bad for a bit. It was a leg move whatever it was. The Figure Four goes on quickly but Steamboat grabs the ropes even faster.

Steamboat fires back even more chops and Flair gets taken down as he tries to do the Flair Flip in the corner and run up the other corner spot. Flair rolls Steamboat up and puts his feet on the ropes for two. We have twenty minutes left in the time limit. Flair works on the knee even more and there’s the Figure Four. Steamboat taps like crazy but that doesn’t mean anything for a few years.

The hold is finally broken and Flair goes up top again for a cross body for two. Steamboat tries to slam him but can’t hold him due to the leg work. We have 15 minutes left. Steamboat’s cross body gets two as does a sunset flip for the champion. Flair throws on a sleeper which is the logical idea here, although I don’t ever recall it winning a match in this situation.

Steamboat manages to send Flair into the corner and out of the ring to get a break. We hit the 50 minute point as JR makes fun of the WWF by saying they’re not coming out to music and posing. Flair goes after the knee again but Steamboat chops away. Just because irony is fun, Steamboat poses after coming out to music. The NWA doesn’t do that right? The champ lowers his head and Flair pops him in the back and hooks a suplex for no cover.

We have six minutes left and Flair goes up for no apparent reason. After the legally required slam, it’s time for the screwy (but legal) finish. Steamboat goes back to the double chickenwing but his leg gives out. It’s almost like a tiger suplex at this point and Steamboat pops his shoulder up at the last minute to have Flair pinned.

Rating: A. Hard to argue with this one as it wasn’t an iron man match so the time limit was just there to give it a cap on the ending. Everything makes sense and the psychology flows very nicely with both guys having the injuries from earlier in the match come into play later on, especially in the ending. This was great stuff and while you could probably cut out some of it, it’s still good stuff.

HOWEVER, we have an issue. Flair’s foot was in the ropes during the pinfall, meaning we have an unclear finish. Steamboat is in the back and sees it and exactly as you would expect from him, he’s totally calm about it and says Flair has a legit complaint and needs to talk to someone about it. This set up match #3 at Wrestle War which is allegedly the best of the trilogy, although I’ve always liked Chi-Town Rumble best.

Overall Rating: B. When you have a three hour show and one hour of it is spent in a very good match, it’s hard to say this isn’t a good show. The question then is how good is it. The middle of the show isn’t that great but it’s not the worst show you’ll see. Steamboat vs. Flair is always worth seeing, but I think this might be the least interesting of their series, which might be because the title didn’t change. Still though, good old fashioned NWA stuff here before they got silly.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/kbwrestlingreviewscom/117930294974885?sk=wall

Monday Night Raw
Date: March 25, 2002
Location: Bryce Jordan Center, State College, Pennsylvania
Attendance: 15,550
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

Well as you know there’s usually a reason as to why I do these random Raws and in this case this is the first ever WWE Draft. Tonight we split the roster in two to have Raw and Smackdown as independent (yeah right) shows with different owners (Flair on Raw, Vince on Smackdown) in the system we’re used to now. This was also 8 days after Mania so we’re still kind of transitioning to the new year. Let’s get to it.

Linda introduces us to the concept of the Draft where tonight we’re only going to have twenty picks, as in ten each. There’s a world title match tonight with HHH vs. Jericho vs. Stephanie so none of them can be drafted. Also Austin is undraftable uh…..because he’s bald. That’s as good an explanation as any (the official reason is he had it in his contract. How was that contract written? “In the event that the roster becomes too big to sustain one roster and must be split in half under a concept called the Brand Split I get to not be drafted? Imagine those negotiations. In reality he was having a contract dispute and wasn’t signed).

Taz vs. Mr. Perfect

Hennig had made a comeback here at age 44 where he still looked solid out there. He would be gone in like three months after getting very drunk on a plane. He would be dead in less than a year which is mind blowing. Hennig says he’ll be the perfect pick and sounds a bit shall we say buzzed. Jazz and whoever winds up being world champion can be on both shows apparently. Perfectplex but Taz gets the ropes. They collide in the corner and Taz grabs the Tazmission to end this QUICK. Taz says Hennig was JUST ANOTHER VICTIM. He was getting popular around this time too but his neck gave out and he had to retire.

Rating: N/A. Way too short but competitive enough. Perfect was still rather good and looked exactly like he did in his prime. Shame his personal life was more or less a disaster because he could have been used as a solid midcard guy.

The owners are both in their war rooms going over their plans. Vince has the first pick.

After a break we’re ready for said pick. We get a brief speech and the #1 overall pick is The Rock. Can’t say that’s a bad way to go. Hard to believe he more or less had a year left. Rock comes out and Vince runs down a bunch of stuff Rock can’t do anymore, namely catchphrases he can’t say. Rock stops him from leaving and proceeds to make fun of Vince, leading the crowd in a huge anti-Vince chant. He’s just absolutely awesome here. This was rather funny. Rock does one last IF YA SMELL since it’s his last night on Raw which is a nice touch.

We’re back and it’s time for Flair’s first pick. With nothing special to say, he picks the Undertaker who was in a big feud with Flair around this time. Wow it’s weird to think about Taker being on Raw. He throws some stuff and we get a nice little graphic with Taker’s stats on it. Rock got the same.

Vince is furious and Angle comes in to complain. Taker does the same and threatens Vince. It’s very weird to think that Taker started on Raw but he would be on Smackdown in about 4 months and has been there since.

Edge/Diamond Dallas Page vs. Booker T/Christian

These were both singles matches at Mania where both faces won. Edge was getting very hot very fast at this point and probably would have been world champion within a year had he not gotten hurt. Christian has the awesome entrance here with the high pitched singers saying AT LAST YOU ARE ON YOU OWN! I love that. It comes complete with Alberto’s current pyro. Christian cost DDP the European Title recently as well. Oh and Angle cost Edge a match vs. Booker.

The Draft Lottery is plugged even though most of the picks meant nothing. Edge and Booker start us off. This is another very short match where the Canadians go to the floor and DDP gets a Diamond Cutter on Booker. Christian with a save and Edge misses a spin kick by a mile but Christian doesn’t sell much of it, which I think was intentional. Axe Kick kills DDP for the pin.

Rating: N/A. This was another very short one although it was better than the first match. Nothing all that bad in here but when a match barely breaks two minutes it’s kind of hard to say if it was good or not. With such little time how can they get anything going at all? This wasn’t bad but it wasn’t very good either.

Angle lists off a ton of his accomplishments to Vince in an attempt to be the #2 pick which is rather funny. Vince wants the NWO though, which apparently is drafted as a unit. Vince takes Angle as the second pick after some nice psychology from Angle, but Kurt ticked about not being #1.

Flair immediately hits the stage and says he’ll do everything he can do to get Austin on Raw, which he would do. Flair takes the entire NWO (Hall, Nash and X-Pac) in a surprise. Vince is FURIOUS but vows to get Austin. Angle talks to him a bit and Vince takes Benoit who was still out injured. Oddly enough when he came back he started on Raw before moving over to Smackdown.

The NWO yells at Flair. Pac, who has been there since Thursday (literally) is now their mouthpiece. Hall says you don’t blow us off so Flair makes his #3 pick, who is designed to look after the NWO: Kane. Ok then. In other words on Smackdown we have Rock, Angle and Benoit. On Raw we have Nash (injured), Hall (fat), Waltman (overrated), Taker (AWFUL at this point) and Kane (you know the drill here). Which show would you rather watch?

Trish Stratus vs. Ivory

Ivory is back and this is some kind of a small grudge. Yeah there’s nothing to talk about here. Trish wins in about two minutes with Stratusfaction. No rating either. Totally worthless.

Vince comes out again and gets the chant Rock invented earlier. He takes Hogan, who is incorrectly listed as a 7 time WCW Champion. Ah apparently they’re including the Bash at the Beach title here. Vince doing Hogan’s air guitar is rather funny.

After a break, Flair comes out to take RVD who brings the IC Title with him.

Vince is mad about losing the IC Title so Angle suggests a match between him and RVD for the title tonight so Angle can bring it Smackdown.

Rock is walking around backstage and Hogan comes up to him. The bald one suggests a handicap match vs. the NWO. Well what kind of a huge face would Rock be if he said no?

Vince is here to make his next pick (5th overall if you’re keeping track) and he picks Billy and Chuck who are the tag champions.

Tough Enough 2 commercial. I had my first kiss while that show was going on in the background.

Somehow the boot of the week is a chair shot. No one accused WWE of making sense all the time.

NWO vs. Hulk Hogan/The Rock

This is Nash’s first match in the company I think since his return. Ah scratch that as I’m wrong actually. It was one of his first though. Hogan and X-Pac start us off here which is a RIVETING match indeed. And Hogan throws him to the floor immediately in a nice power display. Hall comes in and fails also so we switch to Nash. Amazingly all Hogan seems to do is punch.

Hot tag to the Rock and we CRANK it up. We shift from an 80s style to a 90s style and it’s much more interesting. Cold tag to Hogan and the crowd just dies. Pac makes the save as it’s all breaking down. He breaks out the knunchucks and here comes Kane since he’s the guy taking care of the NWO and he clears house, giving the NWO the win.

Rating: D. Weak match but Rock was interesting. This wasn’t much at all and with five minutes how big of a match can it be? This is the last match on Raw for Hogan and Rock? This is the best they can do? That’s hardly a good sign. This was really rather weak all things considered.

Vince comes into Flair’s office to yell about various things. Flair takes Booker. Vince takes Edge. Flair takes Big Show. Vince takes Rikishi. They’re going that fast. So in other words: Nash, Hall, Waltman, Taker, Kane and Big Show vs. Benoit, Rock, Angle and Edge. Who do you think wins in the long run here? Keep in mind that the NWO guys would all be gone in the second week of July, this is looking one sided to say the least. Come to think of it, a year after this Rock and Edge were gone too. Help is on the way however, as between now and August WWE would debut guys named Lesnar, Orton, Cena, Batista and Mysterio. Like I said, this was a transitional period for the company. Oh and Shawn came back in the fall too.

Jeff Hardy vs. Billy Gunn

This is during the gay era for Billy and Chuck, culminating in a mind blowing ending when they were about to be married but the minister was Eric Bischoff with a prosthetic face on, pretending to be a senior citizen aged preacher. It legitimately got me. Another two minute match but Jeff getting a singles run was a new idea back then. Matt and Chuck fighting on the floor cause Jeff to miss the Swanton. Lita TOTALLY botches a rana on Rico but Jeff gets the pin on Billy anyway.

Rating: N/A. I’m really getting tired of these short matches. That botch was a sight though. Her legs didn’t even get close to around his head. Moving on.

Flair picks Bubba Ray Dudley so Vince takes D-Von. They actually were going to try to make Bubba a serious challenger, even giving him a world title shot on Raw and giving it time. D-Von became a preacher with a deacon named Batista. I think the latter was a bit more famous.

European Title: Rikishi vs. William Regal

As Regal is coming to the ring, some HUGE muscle guy comes in and beats the living tar out of Rikishi, hitting a spinebuster and a SICK fireman’s carry spinout facebuster. You may know the move as the F5 and the guy as the current UFC World Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar. I told you this was a transitional period. No match obviously.

Jazz is a witch in New York.

Vince tries to get Brock but it’s not his pick so Flair takes him. Great to see that D-Von pick working for Vince. Vince takes Mark Henry. I actually laugh when I think of the comparison between those two. Flair takes the European William Regal so Vince takes Maven, the Hardcore Champion. Flair takes Lita. Those are the last two picks. Let’s stop for a minute here and go pick for pick and look at these selections with Vince’s coming first.

#1: Rock vs. Undertaker. That’s a tossup I guess as Rock was bigger at the time but Taker is better long term.
#2: Kurt Angle vs. NWO. Do I even need to make fun of this one?
#3: Chris Benoit vs. Kane. Vince wins this based on in ring work alone.
#4: Hulk Hogan vs. Rob Van Dam. Have to go Vince here again as RVD was never really that important in WWE. Close one though given the money Hogan probably commanded.
#5: Billy and Chuck vs. Booker T. Comedy team vs. future world champion. Hmm I wonder.
#6: Edge vs. Big Show. Vince gets another one.
#7: Rikishi vs. Bubba Ray Dudley. Everyone loses.
#8: D-Von Dudley vs. Brock Lesnar. Actually you could make a case for Vince winning here as like I said Batista debuted shortly after this as D-Von’s enforcer. On paper though it’s really Flair in a landslide as Brock was a once in a lifetime find.
#9: Mark Henry vs. William Regal. Flair wins again.
#10: Maven vs. Lita. Eyebrows Huffman vs. a great rack. Flair finishes strong.

Vince has the better core and I think wins pretty easily here, especially since Brock was on Smackdown within 8 months. Also Raw wound up being boring as HECK soon after this.

Vince makes fun of Flair picking Lita because it’s going to be awful and a cesspool.

Intercontinental Title: Rob Van Dam vs. Kurt Angle

Angle grabs a German immediately. Dang Angle was good back then. RVD makes a short comeback to some very solid cheers. He sets for the Five Star but Angle hits the floor. And then Angle pulls the referee in front of the dropkick for the DQ. Edge comes down for the save.

Rating: N/A. Dude we can’t have these two get TV time? Are you kidding me? Where is the time going in this show considering how fast they’re making picks?

Stephanie says she’s going to win the title.

Undisputed Title: Stephanie McMahon vs. HHH vs. Chris Jericho

This is a triple threat and if Stephanie is pinned she’s out of the company. Jericho sends HHH to the floor and Stephanie lays down for Jericho but HHH makes the save. HHH won the title 8 days before this mind you. Totally boring match as the two wrestlers have to be on pins and needles so Stephanie doesn’t get exposed as being NOT A WRESTLER.

Stephanie slaps Jericho for some reason and they argue. Jericho goes for the Walls as this match needs to end. We know HHH isn’t losing so quit teasing us about it. HHH knocks Jericho down and stalks Stephanie. Pedigree is set up but Jericho hits a dropkick to stop it. Jericho grabs a title and a chair and through some odd stuff both HHH and Jericho get belt shots. Stephanie comes in and covers Jericho for two. She does this weird thing of lifting her leg on covers.

HHH gets caught in the Walls but Stephanie jumps on Jericho’s back. Pedigree gets two on Jericho and Stephanie makes the save. Spinebuster ends her and she’s gone….for four months until she became Smackdown’s GM. Security literally drags her away.

Rating: D-. Just horrible stuff here as HHH and Jericho more or less did nothing while this was about Stephanie all over again. What a shock right? She was the focus of just about everything for a good while and this would only get worse in 03/04 when Smackdown was ALL about her and Vince and their stupid feud for power. This was a glorified house show main event though and was really quite stupid.

Overall Rating: D-. Just a bad show overall with the main event being the only thing to break 8 minutes. The picks are odd at best and stupid at worst with nothing really making that much sense at all. This was a bad show and the whole thing would just get worse as the year went on with Raw becoming the HHH show and no one really paying attention to how awesome Smackdown was. Oh and Shawn would come back and be instantly pushed to the top of the roster because he’s Shawn and a 4 year layoff is easy to come back from right? Bad show but huge for historical purposes.

Remember to like me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/kbwrestlingreviewscom/117930294974885?sk=wall

Clash of the Champions 9: New York Knockout
Date: November 15, 1989
Location: RPI Field House, Troy, New York
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Gordon Solie

Here we have a two match show: Flair vs. Funk II in an I Quit match and Pillman vs. Luger for the US Title. Luger was awesome in 89 and Funk was his crazy old self (yes he was old back then too). That being said, for a free TV show is there anything else you really need? In short, no. These old Clashes are usually very hit or miss but as almost always it was based on the card. This looks good so let’s get to it.

The opening video is about Flair vs. Funk which is about pride and not the title.

Freebirds vs. Road Warriors

The Birds were world tag team champions here but had already lost the titles at a TV taping before this aired. This is non-title anyway so it doesn’t matter. Hayes vs. Hawk gets us going and Hayes gets too cocky which catches up with him. Yeah I’m stunned too. Off to Garvin and he gets his head taken off by a dropkick. Off to Animal and similar things happen. We’re more or less in a squash so far. Animal misses a charge and the champs double team him a bit. After about 90 seconds of that, Hawk comes in and tosses the referee and it’s a DQ. The fans boo that out of the building.

Rating: D. Wow this was pointless. Somehow everything I said in there too over five minutes. I have no idea what they were going for here, especially with the title change airing later in the week. Doesn’t this make the champs look weak going into their title defense? Either way, the Steiners would get the belts and hold them for a very long time so no one remembers this anyway.

Funk lists off various things that he and Flair disagree on. Gary Hart, Funk’s manager, says do it for Texas.

Time for a vote of who the most popular wrestler in the NWA is. Gee I wonder who it’s going to be. To the shock of no one with anything resembling knowledge about this era, it’s Sting. There’s another award for Wrestler of the Decade. This is actually voted on by the PWI Editors and all that jazz and allegedly Hogan lost a fair vote to Flair. I’ve heard multiple rumors that this was rigged and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true.

Woman, the manager of Doom, shows off her cleavage and says Doom is awesome. She promises a surprise for Rick Steiner later tonight.

Doom vs. Eddie Gilbert/Tommy Rich

Doom is Ron Simmons/Butch Reed in masks. They would take the titles from the Steiners in the summer of 1990. Gilbert tries an O’Connor Roll and can’t even get one. The Tennessee guys work on Ron’s arm and it’s off to Reed now. I think Rich/Gilbert are faces here. After a brief control segment by them, Doom realizes they’re a real team and not a pair of thrown together guys and starts taking over. This is one of those matches that needs to be a lot shorter. What is supposed to be a hot tag to Rich and everything breaks down, allowing a middle rope modified Hart Attack to pin Rich.

Rating: D. This was another bad match. Doom would get a lot better but they needed better opponents at this point. Rich would join the York Foundation in like a year which would be his last grasp at anything of note. This was nothing though and Doom would get a lot better rather soon.

Time for Jim Cornette’s talk show segment with his guests the Steiners. This is important for one thing: Scotty has been using a move and Cornette wants a name for it. Rick talks about watching a movie the other day and he came up with a name for it, and for the first time ever we hear the name Frankensteiner. They talk about their match later and Doom for a bit but this was all about naming the move. They make fun of Woman a bit also.

Midnight Express vs. Dynamic Dudes

The Dudes are Shane Douglas and Johnny Ace Laurinits (Yes the one from Raw) as skateborders that are straight out of the 80s. Both teams have Cornette as their manager so he’s in a neutral corner. Basically he was starting to manage the Dudes but was still under contract with the Express and they signed the match without him, putting Cornette right in the middle.

It’s the Lane/Eaton version and they try to convince Corny to come to their corner but he turns them down again. Douglas vs. Eaton to get us going. Is there a tag team fetish tonight? They fight over the arm to start and it’s off to Lane quickly. Shane works on his arm as well and we’re in a technical match to start us off. In something you’ll almost never see, Cornette calls out Stan Lane on his hair pulling. This is surreal to watch.

Ace comes in and the idea of seeing the current version of him in trunks is very wrong. In a NICE touch and a fine example of the difference between today’s announcing and the old version of it, Solie is going over the upcoming house show schedule but says they’ll get to that in a minute because he doesn’t want to miss this action. We go to a headlock and they go over the rest of the schedule. See now, WAS THAT SO HARD??? It took about 30 more seconds and the wrestling gets played up stronger as well as the announcements getting more focus. Everything wins.

Shane avoids a superplex from Bobby and gets a rollup for two. Off to Ace and he’s just not that good. Lane takes him down and the Express takes over to a big pop. The Rocket Launcher gets knees and everything breaks down. With Shane getting a chain from somewhere, Jim comes in to grab it after it fell on the floor. He turns on the Dudes though, getting the crowd way into it and Eaton steals the pin as the Express is back together.

Rating: C. Not a bad little tag match here and the idea is that it burned off two angles: the Dudes being the new team of Cornette and the Express getting back together for their one final run. Nothing great here and the dudes weren’t all that good but this was ok and the fans were way into it so that’s all that matters.

Super Destroyer vs. Steve Williams

Destroyer is Jack Victory in a mask. Destroyer jumps Williams early and here’s Norman the Lunatic (Bastian Booger) as Santa Claus. Williams takes over quickly and gorilla presses him with multiple reps and then a clothesline to the floor. Back in the Oklahoma Stampede (powerslam) ends this. Total squash.

Norman gives Doc (Williams) a teddy bear afterwards and Norman gets a hug. Cute.

Steiner Brothers vs. Skyscrapers

It’s Sid and Dan Spivey. Rick vs. Spivey to get us going and Rick is like HAVE A GERMAN BOY. Back in Spivey hits a tombstone (keep that in mind) for two as Scott saves. Everything breaks down and Scott comes in with a Frankensteiner to Spivey and a fallaway slam to Sid. The fallaway slam was botched and Sid would be out for months with an injured lung. His replacement on the team was a guy from Memphis. He hung around for a year and then would leave for the WWF where he would wear a trenchcoat and come out to funeral music.

The tall dudes aren’t sure who is legal at the moment so it’s Sid vs. Scott now. Off to Spivey who beats Scott down for a bit until the Steiner Brothers remember that they’re the Steiner Brothers and beat down the tall dudes like they’re nothing. Hot tag brings in Rick, although I’d question how hot a tag can be in a five minute match. Doom runs in and it’s a DQ. During this, two things happen. First of all, Simmons runs in and immediately Scott snaps off a picture perfect Frankensteiner to send him outside. I’ll get to the second thing in a minute.

Rating: C-. This could only be so good as the Steiners were untouchable around this time and would take the tag titles that rightfully belonged to them in about three days. The tag division was awesome at this point and would keep getting better, namely because the Steiners were totally awesome.

The Road Warriors run out to even the odds and the fans ERUPT. A big brawl takes us to a commercial.

Post break the two good teams talk about the Iron Man Tournament, which was a round robin tournament held at Starrcade between three of these four teams. The Skyscrapers were out so the Samoan Swat Team took their place. The tournament wound up sucking and the Road Warriors won. It did however contain one of the two (the other being in 96 on Nitro) meetings between the Road Warriors and the Steiners which could have main evented a PPV. They all cut promos but for some reason the New York Knockout logo is on the screen instead of them.

Oh yeah the other thing that happened: Woman’s bodyguard Nitron debuted and did very little. He later played Sabretooth in the X-Men trilogy.

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Brian Pillman

Lex is a heel here but he’s having such awesome matches and is so scary as an athlete that he’s getting over as a face despite being heel recently. We talk about the singles Iron Man tournament which has Sting, Luger, Flair and Muta. Things start off very fast and Pillman fires off some dropkicks and Lex heads out to cool his head. This is a rematch from Halloween Havoc where Luger had to cheat to keep the belt. Back in and Luger can’t get anything going as Pillman has everything planned out.

A missile dropkick gets two for Brian. Out to the floor and Lex goes into the post as this has been all Pillman. More chops put Luger down and back inside we go. The champ FINALLY gets something going with a belly to back and momentum shifts. Lex is in his zone now and he sends Pillman out to the floor. He starts working on the back with a slam on the floor and a suplex back in for two. See how easy psychology can be?

Powerslam puts Pillman down but after Lex poses too much Pillman grabs a rollup for two. Things speed up a bit and Brian hits a clothesline to put Lex down. Top rope cross body, Pillman’s finisher, takes Lex down but the referee went down as well. Pillman hammers away even more but Lex cracks him in the head with a chair and since all referees are deaf and blind, it’s enough for the pin for Lex to retain and draw a bunch of booing.

Rating: B. Good match here as both guys worked hard out there. Pillman looked great at first and it’s a nice ending as Lex has to cheat to win. That’s the right idea at times and I think it works pretty well here. Lex would lose the tournament in the last match to Sting but would keep the US Title for about 11 more months.

Luger beats him down post match until Sting comes out for the save. Luger wants a showdown and Sting is all like BRING IT ON but Lex is scared of Sting in dress pants (and to be fair it’s a weird look on him) so he bails. Sting chases after him and gets in a single punch but Lex runs more. They wouldn’t have their big showdown for about 15 months with Sting winning the title at SuperBrawl II.

Flair talks about how he’s going to still be champion after tonight and this company is great. Tonight it’s an I Quit match and for two legends like them, that’s humiliating and the end. The loser has to retire and to Funk’s credit, when he loses here he did in fact retire for the rest of the year and didn’t wrestle in WCW until 1994. He wrestled in ECW a lot and in Japan some, but I guess that’s a good result for a Funk retirement.

Terry Funk vs. Ric Flair

I Quit match remember. This is non-title but Flair has said he’ll forfeit the title if he loses. Funk has Gary Hart with him and offers him a chance to walk out before the bell. Funk is sent to the floor and is all mad. I mean more than usual that is. Flair whips him around a bit and we head out to the floor with Ric hammering away. Into the ring again and they hit the mat for a bit.

They almost go onto the announce table and are fighting on the apron now. Flair chops him but falls down as Funk is still standing. We head back to the floor and it’s all Funk. He pounds away back in the ring in the corner and says to Flair to say it but Flair grabs an atomic drop to take over again. Funk slaps Flair so Flair chokes him. They’re back on the floor again and Flair pounds him into the crowd.

Back inside now and Flair demands that Funk say I Quit. Funk gets in a shot and a swinging neckbreaker as he yells about the attack (Funk piledrove him onto a table to start the feud) and his bad neck. Piledriver still doesn’t get a yes. Another one on the floor hits and Flair is practically dead. This is a nice touch as Funk is the crazy brawler and Flair is in WAY over his head. Funk sets up a table (back when that’s a HUGE deal) but Flair fights back with hard chops.

Ric is all fired up and Funk staggers around like there’s something wrong with his inner mind. He gets crotched on the railing and the little Funkers aren’t happy. Funk’s selling is really quite good. Now it’s time for the knee and the fans cheer. Flair was indeed popular back in the day. This is fired up Flair, almost like you would see in the Vader match about four years later.

Funk tries to leave up the aisle and Flair tackles him from behind and is all like “you wanted this and now you’re getting it.” In something you won’t see that often, Flair suplexes Funk over the top and onto the apron. There’s the Figure Four and after fighting as long as he can, Funk actually says he quits and it’s over.

Rating: A-. Not much to complain about here as the transformation from wrestler to fighter/crazy man by Flair was a great sight to see. Once he got going, Funk was trying to survive instead of win which was a very cool thing to see. This match worked and is well worth seeing, if nothing else for the storytelling in it. And to see Funk quit, which you’ll likely never see again.

Flair demands a handshake and gets one but Gary Hart, Funk’s manager, jumps him and Muta/Dragonmaster run in for a double beatdown. Here’s Sting (who never put his shirt back on I guess) for the save. Sting puts Hart in the Scorpion and Flair puts Muta in the Figure Four. Luger comes out and hits everyone with a chair to set up the big beatdown. Well every face that is. Luger breaks the trophies (which were in the middle of nowhere next to each other) to end the show.

Overall Rating: A-. Keep in mind that this was a free TV show. You had to very good matches and the rest of the show certainly isn’t bad. It’s just kind of there. For a free show though and a TV special, this is something that I’m totally fine with. It set up Starrcade (where there were literally no non-tournament matches) well even though the show sucked and it blew of Funk vs. Flair and turned Funk face. Good stuff and one of the best Clashes.

Unforgiven 2004
Date: September 12, 2004
Location: Rose Garden, Portland, Oregon
Attendance: 10,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

It’s 2004 and we’re in the single brand PPV era. This is a Raw show and the main event is HHH vs. Orton since Orton rose to the top of the show and won the title from Benoit at Summerslam. Since someone is getting some traction as a face, we better crush him quickly. Other than that we also have Jericho vs. Christian in a ladder match for the vacant IC Title and the winner of worst match of the year. Let’s get to it.

The opening video is about how Orton has turned back against Evolution and HHH in specific so tonight it’s payback time.

Batista/Ric Flair vs. Chris Benoit/William Regal

Regal got a small push around this time as he feuded with Evolution because Evolution hurt Eugene. Benoit vs. Batista gets us going and the Crossface is attempted less than a minute in. Benoit uses his technical stuff and has Batista all confused. Off to Regal who tries to brawl and tosses Big Dave around with a suplex. Batista gets his hands on Benoit and brings in Flair. Let the wooing begin!

Benoit is like cool man and chops it out with Flair and the Canadian gets the better of it. Back to Regal and the beat down the old wrinkly man. Flair Flop and Regal drops a knee on his head. Benoit and Regal hammer away on Ric for a bit. He probably owes them money. Benoit goes for the knee again and takes an enziguri for Flair Flop #2. Off to Regal vs. Batista now and Regal is in a fighting move.

Batista takes down Regal and lets Flair get the glory shots in. Well that’s better than a Regal money shot I guess. Belly to back gets two. This crowd is silent. Batista comes back in and he’s really not that good at this kind of stuff yet. Back to Flair and it’s Figure Four time. Benoit comes in to break it up like any good partner would do. Batista beats on Regal a bit but Regal rams into him and it’s hot tag Benoit.

Flair comes in at the same time and Benoit is all fired up. The crowd doesn’t seem to care about anyone but Regal. That tends to be a problem in the Pacific Northwest. Is there an Atlantic Northwest that I’m not aware of? Benoit busts out Rolling Germans on Flair and the Swan Dive drills Flair. Crossface goes on Flair but Batista picks Benoit up like he’s a small Canadian wrestler and Batista is a big power lifter. Regal sends Batista into the post and then into the crowd. The Canadian counters the Figure Four into the Crossface and we’re done.

Rating: B-. Solid opening tag match here that got a lot of time to work with. Regal was fired up here and with him like this I could see him having a bit of a stronger push if they kept him serious. Not a classic or anything but they did enough here to make a good match without much to work with other than Evolution hurt a slow guy and it’s revenge time. Good opener though.

Trish and Christian argue over who gets to use Tomko tonight. Pay no attention to the fact that they have different matches tonight and Tomko isn’t in one of his own. Trish whispers in his ear and Tomko leaves with her. I think that was a breakup also. There’s some mystery chick that is trying to jump Trish which is why she wants Tomko there.

Women’s Title: Victoria vs. Trish Stratus

Trish is champion and Victoria is in this weird stage where she’s dancing and such and it didn’t fit her at all. JR thinks Victoria is the stronger of the two. And this man is in the Hall of Fame. The fans think Trish is a sl** and Jerry disagrees. Jerry wanted to give Trish a pre-match physical since she had been injured. JR: “She had a broken hand. What were you going to have her do? DON’T ANSWER THAT.” Victoria keeps taking over but can’t keep the advantage.

Tomko saves Trish from a dive and Victoria is mad. She gets sent into the post and that changes things around quite a bit. Trish pounds away and chokes a bit for two. She channels her inner Dan Severn and uses the modified abdominal stretch that he used during his limited time in the company. Things slow WAY down as Trish hooks on a chinlock. Victoria makes her comeback and hits her side slam and and standing moonsault (with shake) for two each. A headbutt puts Trish down…and Victoria dives on Tomko. That’s enough for Stratusfaction to end this.

Rating: D. And most of that is because Victoria looks good in little flesh colored shorts. This was really boring and I don’t think anyone cared. For some reason this was to set up the post match stuff because the company thought someone wanted to see it. What is that you ask? It’s the worst match of the year. Here it is.

The mystery woman comes in to save Victoria from a beating and a DDT puts Tomko down. After a brief chat with JR and Jerry, Tomko says he wants to fight the mystery woman right now. Here she comes and even JR says it’s the worst kept secret in wrestling as to who that is.

Tyson Tomko vs. Mystery Woman

There go the clothes…and it’s Steven Richards. Yeah and everyone knew it so this is hardly a secret. And he’s wearing a bra, panties and plastic chest enhancements. Tomko destroys him and asks if Richards wants to be a girl. The fans know it’s garbage and it’s not even really a match. Tomko chokes Richards a lot and the fans aren’t paying attention at all. Tomko slams him and that’s the first non-stomp/choke move of the match. Here’s a neck vice and the fans just die. Richards no sells punches and Tomko calls him a sissy, making Steven grabs his balls. Tomko’s that is. Richards stops to look at the bra and a rack neckbreaker ends him.

Rating: J. As in just no. No way, not working, nothing of value. Next please. This is why we got tired of individual brand PPVs: stuff like this got six and a half minutes. Let that sink in for a minute.

Buy the Chris Benoit DVD which we’ll never mention again three years from this date!

We recap Christian vs. Jericho. In short, Edge was injured (shocking I know) and had to forfeit the title. Jericho got in his face so Christian made the save and a ladder match was announced for this show for the title.

Intercontinental Title: Christian vs. Chris Jericho

All outside parties are banned from ringside and it’s a ladder match remember. The fans chant CLB and Christian is in green tights for some reason. Basic stuff to start with these two being their normally awesome selves. Jericho grabs a ladder and throws it at Christian but only hits another ladder. Jericho takes over and hits a running enziguri. Out to the floor and Jericho misses another ladder shot.

And now let’s go into the crowd because there are a ton of ladders out there right? Back to ringside and Jericho chokes on him with a cord. Christian busts out an Unprettier (Killswitch) on the floor which today would probably be an injury angle for Jericho but here it just knocks him out. To give you an idea of what midcard finishers mean, Jericho keeps Christian from even climbing the ladder after taking his finisher on the floor. Imagine that today.

Christian is sent face first into the ladder and JR talks about barbecue sauce. I don’t get how he manages to tie those things together but whatever. Christian puts the ladder on the middle rope and slingshots Jericho into it face first. This is more about beating on each other instead of the title and climbing. Speaking of which, Jericho throws the ladder at Christian to put him down again.

Jericho channels his inner Shawn and rides the ladder down onto Christian, mainly hitting the back and the knees. Since selling isn’t allowed in this match, Jericho gets hung upside down, almost in a Tree of Woe position in the corner. Christian goes up but Jericho flips him off instead of climbing to slow him down. Jericho tries a Lionsault onto Christian onto the ladder but only gets ladder.

Jericho sends him into the ladder and the fans try to get into it. Christian goes up and hangs up there but still can’t pull it down. Instead he crashes, allowing Jericho to go up and be shoved off too. Christian goes up and gets caught in Jericho’s signature Walls on the Ladder spot. Christian falls off and Jericho still can’t get it as Jericho’s tail bone lands on the ladder. FREAKING OW MAN! Captain Charisma brings the big ladder in and Jericho tries on a regular one.

Since he’s an idiot in this match, Christian touches the belt and then stops to look at Jericho. Both guys go flying off after Jericho shoves the belt so Christian has issues getting to it. And then Jericho climbs up to get it in a very pedestrian ending. This would give Jericho the record for most Intercontinental Titles ever, a record he still holds to this day.

Rating: C+. This was a pretty boring ladder match actually. Ladder matches automatically get some bonus points because they’re ladder matches but this was far less about drama for the belt and more about trying to have big spots. Not a particularly good match and most of the time it just got boring. They were trying though and the spot near the end where Jericho fell on the ladder was impressive.

Todd tries to talk to Kane but runs into Lita instead. Lita talks about how she wants Shawn to kill Kane. Kane pops out of his locker room and grabs her by the hair. It’s now a No DQ match. Kane also forces a kiss out of her.

Jericho talks about how proud he is to be champion and the record holding champ. Edge pops up and says that’s my belt.

Mania 21 is in LA.

We recap Shawn vs. Kane. Kane is all crazy and evil and Lita is carrying his baby which was the result of a night with Kane to keep him from killing Matt. Guess how well Kane kept up the end of the bargain. This resulted in a forced wedding because that’s how wrestling works. Kane got an open contract to face anyone he wanted at Unforgiven and planned to get a world title shot but Lita stole the contract and signed Kane up to face the returning Shawn Michaels. Oh and Kane put Shawn out in the first place.

Shawn Michaels vs. Kane

Lita is here against her will. Shawn fires away at Kane and the Big Bald gets beaten to the floor. See, this is why Shawn is great: you can throw him into something like this and it works very well as can anyone question Shawn being in there? Shawn heads to the floor but jumps into an uppercut back inside. Kane misses an elbow due to Shawn moving even though it would have missed by a mile anyway. Out to the floor and Shawn dives over the top to take Kane down.

The lack of a story is hurting it here as it’s just a match with no backstory or anything like that and that’s the meat of any wrestling match. Shawn gets slammed through the table and he bumps like only Shawn can. That only gets two back in the ring because an upper midcard match has to go longer than 5 minutes. A legdrop also gets two. Off to a chinlock to waste some time. The move known as the Punjabi Plunge gets two.

Back to the neck vice which lasts a little longer this time. Shawn finally gets something going and drops Kane with a DDT. Both guys are down so Kane sits up and Shawn nips up almost at the same time. Out to the floor again and a step shot busts Shawn open. Shawn tries to speed things up and knocks a chair out of Kane’s hands but gets knocked down again.

Kane misses a big boot to the post and Shawn sends his head into the steel. Shawn fires away with his usual stuff back in the ring and drops the elbow for no cover. Michaels starts shaking like Terry Funk and it’s time to stomp the mat in an attempt to surprise my opponent. And never mind as Kane kicks his head off for two. Top rope clothesline looks to set up the chokeslam but Shawn hits Kane in the Little Balds.

A big chair shot puts Kane down but Shawn can’t follow up. Since it’s a No DQ match we also have no countouts so the laying around is pretty pointless with no drama at all. Lita steals the chair from Kane and the distraction lets Shawn…miss Sweet Chin Music again but the third attempt hits and it’s good for the pin.

Rating: C. This got almost twenty minutes and while it was a good brawl, I’m not really sure what this proves. Shawn, a bigger star than Kane, beat Kane and that’s it. There’s no story or retribution or anything like that. It was an entertaining enough match but all it really does is advance Lita and Kane a bit more. It would take Gene Snitsky of all people to turn Kane face again.

Video on Shelton Benjamin. He isn’t on the show or anything but here’s a video about him.

HHH talks about how Orton was nothing until he met HHH and how Evolution was about the best, meaning him. Orton is good, but not as good. This takes about two minutes and it takes that much time to say HHH is awesome and Orton needs to be beaten.

Raw Tag Titles: La Resistance vs. Tajiri/Rhyno

Conway/Grenier here. Conway vs. Tajiri starts us off and Tajiri speeds around a lot to take over. Off to Grenier who hits the floor to avoid a Gore. Tajiri comes back in and takes over with a semi-botched tornado DDT. Conway beats on Tajiri and the fans just do not care. Off to a reverse chinlock as the fans chant USA for a Japanese comeback. Rhyno comes in and beats on both French dudes a bit.

This match needs to end like five minutes ago. It’s just boring but you could say that about every tag title match in this period. We hear about Rhyno looking everywhere for a partner as he walks into a double flapjack for two. The flag goes into Conway’s balls but a Gore only gets two. And there’s a flag to the face of Rhyno for the cheap pin.

Rating: F+. This had zero point in being on PPV. It wouldn’t even be a good Raw match, mainly because it went on way too long, getting almost ten minutes. La Resistance would be the heel team of the year for awhile as no one cared at all and it went nowhere at all. The tag division sucked BAD around this point and this is a fine example of it.

We recap Orton vs. HHH which I’m sure you get by this point. They were in Evolution together, Orton won the title, HHH got mad and threw him out, this is the match. Oh and Orton spat at HHH. This gets the music video treatment.

Raw World Title: HHH vs. Randy Orton

HHH has the white boots on this time. I miss this version of Orton. Here he’s young and chisled and has elbow pads and isn’t orange and covered in tattoos. They get something resembling big match intros as both guys are checked for weapons and they get the rules read to them. Feeling out process to start and they look at each other a lot. Orton spits at him again and I guess the bodybuilding phase is over.

Orton fires away and drops HHH on his back (a backdrop if you will) and hammers on him even more. Time for the chinlock and Orton looks ticked off while he’s holding onto it. And now that the hold is broken: more punching! They head to the floor and JR calls it no man’s land, and “HHH owns a lot of land in no man’s land.” If this show hadn’t bored me into a numbness already, I’d rip that apart.

HHH gets in a shot to the knee and JR follows that one up by saying he thinks Orton is quicker. Back in HHH goes for the knee as he channels his inner Naitch. The leg goes into the post and the Game works on the knee. By that I mean he spends a LONG time working on it. Off to a Figure Four and Trips puts the pressure on it. The hold goes on for a few mintues as the boring nature of this show continues. The crowd isn’t into it at all either.

The Game finally gets caught in the ropes and Hebner breaks it up. Orton counters another try at the hold and both guys are down. HHH is busted off….something. Orton goes back to the old faithful right hand and a Piper poke to the eye. They trade sleepers and HHH goes up for the dumbest move in wrestling (jumping into the boot). Randy goes up as well and hits a cross body for two.

Backbreaker gets two for the champion. The knee injury is coming and going. Orton loads up the RKO but gets shoved into the referee. Pedigree is countered into the RKO but there’s no ref. Here’s Flair who has the same looking hair as my ex stepmother but down he goes as well. Batista comes in and goes into the post.

A low blow puts Randy down and Coach comes out to referee. There’s a right hand for him but Orton walks into a Batista spinebuster to put him down for two. Pedigree is countered and there’s an RKO for Coach. Flair brings in a chair and takes an RKO too. A low blow gets rid of Batista but HHH pops Randy with a chair and a Pedigree onto said chair gives HHH the title back.

Rating: B-. Good match but the ending really hurts it. Everything went insane and the Evolution team standing tall was already old but here it is again. Batista would hit the hot streak of a lifetime soon after this though and would finally take the title off HHH for good. Oh and that Cena guy won a title too. The match was long though and the leg selling by Orton was so hit or miss that it got annoying.

Overall Rating: D-. There’s some good stuff on here but OH MY GOODNESS this show is boring. This show just keeps going on and on and there are moments where you want to pound your head into a wall to give you something interesting like a concussion. The matches aren’t bad but nothing is really great and there is so much awful on it that it gets pulled down and pulled down deep. Very boring show and nothing worth seeing at all.

Chi-Town Rumble
Date: February 20, 1989
Location: UIC Pavilion, Chicago, Illinois
Attendance: 8,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Magnum TA

This is a one off show with the first match in the Steamboat vs. Flair trilogy. Steamboat is the first guy Flair brought in after he took over as booker from Dusty who is on his way to the WWF. The Horsemen are mostly broken up but Hiro Matsuda is managing various people who used to be on the team. This is a very forgotten show so let’s see if there’s a reason for it. Let’s get to it.

Jim and Magnum talk about the card.

For you visual learners out there, here’s a video about the matches (there are only seven) tonight.

Michael Hayes shouts a lot and says a lot of people are shouting and says he feels like Pete Rose. He sounds like he’s plugging a PPV instead of talking about his opponent, who hasn’t been mentioned yet.

For you card carrying members of the IWC, Dave Meltzer is in the front row on camera all night.

Michael Hayes vs. Russian Assassin #1

It’s Jack Victory under a mask. You’ll be hearing that name later tonight. They exchange overly long headlocks to start and a Russian sickle misses. Hayes takes over and stops to play to the crowd because he’s not that smart at times. Must be that Freebird Hair Cream getting into his brain (WCCW joke). Hayes works on the arm but stops to strut. JR calls it the patented strut. How do you go about getting that patented?

The armbar lasts way too long and the Russian fires back with a knee. Hayes was a lot better at working a crowd than he was in the ring. You can’t have everything though I guess. Most of a Russian Sickle gets two. That’s like the Russian version of the Samoan Drop. The Assassin’s manager, Paul Jones, messes up a cover by bickering even though Hayes is down.

Here’s a chinlock by the Assassin as the fans chant USA. That doesn’t last long so the Russian hits a Sickle for two and goes back to the chinlock. Hayes tries a comeback but gets hit in the back despite there being no back work on him in the first ten minutes or so. Jones chokes some and this needs to end. It’s not that it’s a bad match but it’s really boring. Hayes blocks a suplex into one of his own but an elbow misses. A charge in the corner hits the post and Hayes pounds away. DDT out of nowhere ends it with Hayes winning.

Rating: D. Oh man this was dull. Who in their right mind thought this deserved 15:48? The match was mostly laying around and it wasn’t interesting at all. Hayes is a guy that can get a great reaction out of a pile of dirt but he’s not a guy you want in the ring for almost 16 minutes. Not sure what they were thinking here.

Ricky Steamboat and his family talks about how important family is and he dedicates the match tonight to them.

Sting vs. Butch Reed

Sting is on the verge of shattering the glass ceiling but they’re a PPV away (about three months) from pulling the trigger and giving him the TV Title. That came at WrestleWar. Sting is in new clothes and is all fired up. He’s ready for Reed too. Magnum TA summed up Sting perfectly on the Starrcade DVD: “He had so much talent and so much charisma that he had no idea what to do with it all.” That’s as accurate as you can get with Sting in the late 80s.

Reed has gotten a solid push around this time too so this is far from a squash. He also has Matsuda with him as Reed was considered for a spot in the Horsemen before Arn and Tully left. Feeling out process to start and I have a feeling this is going to last for awhile. Sting speeds it up and Reed hits the floor because he has no idea what to do with the painted one.

Sting throws on a headlock and we hit five minutes. An elbow misses for Reed in the corner and it’s time for a beating. Ok or maybe it’s time for a wristlock. Teddy Long is the referee. Reed sends him to the floor to take over. This has the makings of a very long one here. We’re ten minutes in and Reed pounds away. JR keeps calling Reed’s punches soup bones. Is there some connection between Reed and Taker that I’m missing? And who puts bones in their soup?

Magnum keeps calling Matsuda an Oriental which would get him thrown off the air today. It’s time for a chinlock as they need a breather and Reed needs to call some spots to the rookie known as Sting. Sting fights back and tries a Vader Bomb in what would be ironic in about 4 years. It gets knees here but Reed misses a clothesline and is knocked to the floor. Reed takes over again and hooks a one armed chinlock. That’s not something you see every day.

Sting hooks a jawbreaker but is sent out to the floor again. That’s one of those moves that happens way too often in the late 80s NWA. Sting grabs a sunset flip but Reed grabs the top rope. Teddy breaks that grip so Reed grabs the middle rope. Teddy breaks that up too so that Sting can finally get the sunset flip for the pin. This was over twenty minutes long.

Rating: D+. The length hurts this one again as so much of it is made of armbars and chinlocks and moves like those that it never got interesting. Also having Sting not get to use any of his big moves kind of defeats the purpose of the match as it was there to give Sting a win. However he needed Teddy Long to make that work. I don’t get that at all.

Reed jumps him post match and is beaten up again.

Paul E. Heyman says that Dennis Condrey isn’t going to be here tonight and Jack Victory (told you you would hear that name again) is replacing him. In other words, Condrey was fired so this is a Loser Leaves the NWA match. I think that’s just the person that loses the fall though but I’m not sure.

Cornette’s Express says they’re not worried.

Midnight Express/Jim Cornette vs. Jack Victory/Randy Rose/Paul E. Dangerously

This was a pretty good angle with a pretty cool backstory. Ok so WAY back in the day, the original Midnight Express was Randy Rose and Dennis Condrey. They teamed for awhile (along with a third man named Norvell Austin) and were the original Midnight Express. They left Southeast Championship Wrestling where they got started and Condrey went to Mid-South Wrestling where he was put together with Condrey as the Midnight Express. This is the version that feuded with the Rock N Roll Express and is probably the most successful version.

Now here comes the interesting part. One day the Express was scheduled to go to California for a show. Condrey never showed up. No one is quite sure where he went but he wasn’t seen for years. One day he popped up in the AWA with Randy Rose and said they were the Midnight Express. At the same time, Eaton teamed up with Stan Lane to become the latest form of the Midnight Express.

So then the Midnights (Lane and Eaton) got crushed by the Road Warriors for the world titles. On TV one night Cornette got a phone call by someone making fun of them. Then Dangerously, Rose and Condrey ran out and it was Midnight Express vs. Midnight Express. Then Condrey left again and that’s why Jack Victory is here now. The feud never got as good as they were hoping but the Starrcade match was pretty great.

The person to take the fall here is gone and since Condrey is gone, is there any doubt as to who is taking the fall here? Lane vs. Rose starts us off and Rose goes sailing to the floor. Cornette comes in and drops an elbow so he can strut a bit. Off to Victory who doesn’t do well either so let’s try Rose again against Eaton. The good guys are dominating this. The heels mess up again and Dangerously clocks Rose by mistake. JR makes fun of it, saying it’s not like it hurt or anything.

Lane vs. Rose at the moment but it’s off to Eaton quickly. They go to the apron and Eaton goes crashing onto the railing to totally shift momentum. The railing is the old faithful way to change things. Dangerously comes in, pounds away a bit, ducks a right hand and runs away to bring Rose back in. Cornette wants Dangerously and the fans sound like they want to see it too.

Instead Rose gets his hands on Cornette and to his credit he takes a quick beating. Off to Dangerously now who is acting like a true heel manager, only coming in when his opponent is in trouble. Cornette gets in a single shot but Dangerously runs to Rose again. Jim finally gets in a tag to Lane who meets Jack Victory but Dangerously interferes to give the heels the advantage again.

The fans are all over Paulie here as Rose jumps to the floor to take Lane down again. Lane gets beaten on for a good while and is in a chinlock by Rose. There’s the hot tag to Eaton after some kicks to the ribs by Lane (his specialty) and a missile dropkick almost kills Victory. In a cool bit, Eaton walks Victory’s half out cold body over to Dangerously and grabs Victory’s hand to slap Paul.

Paul is dragged in to face Cornette and this is the part everyone has been waiting for. Cornette beats on him for a bit and it’s off to Lane vs. Rose again. Rose misses a splash but Victory saves the pin. Everything breaks down and a double flapjack is enough for the pin on Rose. That’s an old Midnight trademark so it’s cool to see that instead of the Rocket Launcher or cheating.

Rating: C+. Pretty decent match here and it’s always cool to hear that sweet Midnight Express theme song time and time again. The ending was never really in doubt and this eventually lead to Heyman becoming the top heel announcer a little bit after this. Still though it was a good match, although nowhere near the Starrcade one.

Flair says he’ll keep the title because he’s awesome.

TV Title: Rick Steiner vs. Mike Rotundo

This is the Starrcade rematch but the heat isn’t on it anymore as Steiner won the title. However there’s now the added issue of dealing with Rotundo’s Varsity Club’s teammates. Let’s go to Rick Steiner to see how he plans to deal with that. Rick brings in his brother as Scott Steiner debuts. Scott mentions that Rick is out there like he is (including talking to a puppet named Alex) because of a bad car wreck they were in a few years ago.

Rotundo is out there alone so Rick looks a bit odd having his brother there. Rick takes over to start, hitting what we would call an AA to frustrate Rotundo. This is going to be a very technical match. Mike gets sent to the floor again as Rick is controlling early but he hasn’t done anything major. Rotundo fires off a European uppercut but Steiner takes over again, this time with a headlock.

Steiner hits something but the camera is on someone in the crowd so we don’t see what gets the two count. We’re about six minutes into this and nothing has happened so far. Well at least nothing of note. They’ve been doing more than standing around for that whole time. Off to an abdominal stretch and Scott tries to get the referee to notice Rotindo’s cheating. They go to the mat and Rotundo hammers away with crossfaces.

Off to an armbar as this is a very slow paced match. It’s not bad but it’s slow. Rick hits a monkey flip to get a breather and a knee lift for two. A top rope splash (???) misses for the champ and we head outside. Back in and Rick snaps off a powerslam for two. And here’s Kevin Sullivan, talking about Rick’s dog in the back so Steiner goes after him. Back in Rotundo gets a suplex for two. Steiner pounds away in the corner with five minutes to go and there’s a sleeper. Steiner goes to the mat with it but loses focus with Rotundo on top so that Steiner gets pinned while holding on to the sleeper.

Rating: C+. Pretty creative ending there and it plays to the idea that Steiner isn’t all there but he’s trying. The Steiners would start teaming up soon after this and would become the best team WCW ever produced. Not a great match here but the pacing was good enough to give us something else that we didn’t see that often.

The Road Warriors say they’ll end the Varsity Club in their home town of Chicago.

US Title: Barry Windham vs. Lex Luger

Barry turned on Lex months ago to join the Horsemen and this is the revenge match. Barry is also champion. The champion says he’s going to beat up Lex. Matsuda is with him as well, as he’s been with every heel tonight. They exchange shoulder blocks and no one moves. Lex no sells a suplex and throws Windham around as only Luger can. Windham suplexes him back in but can’t grab the Claw. It’s gotten a bit stronger since Dusty stayed in it for about five minutes last show.

Lex’s eye is busted a bit due to right hands. Out to the floor again and Barry manages to punch the post. It busts open Windham’s hand and injures him to the point that the Claw is worthless. Oh please like that’s the case after last year’s Bash. A powerslam gets two. Barry is like screw it and goes for the superplex but Lex gets up at two. Barry isn’t sure what to do now so he goes for a belly to back and it’s the ending where Lex gets his shoulder up first to win the title.

Rating: C+. Pretty decent here but there were a lot of times on here where I wasn’t sure what the appeal of it was. Lex would go on for a huge run with the title, holding it nearly two years. Barry would be in the WWF by about Mania time so this was his last hurrah in the NWA, at least for a few years.

Barry piledrives him on the belt post match because he’s a sore loser and he wants Lex to be a sore champion.

Rotundo is all HAHAHA I’m the champion again! He lost it to Sting at the next PPV.

Tag Titles: Varsity Club vs. Road Warriors

The Warriors have the belts and it’s Sullivan/Williams on the other side. The Varsity guys are the US Tag Champions. The Warriors in their hometown with Iron Man playing and coming in as champions is a pretty awesome sight. Animal vs. Sullivan to get us going. Off to Williams and the question of who sells first comes up. Well so far that would be no one until Williams hits a powerslam and brings in Hawk.

Williams hits a gorilla press so Hawk takes his head off with a clothesline. The Warriors hit a clothesline on both sides of Williams at the same time. It gets two and you don’t have to ask JR twice to praise Williams for that one. Out to the floor and Sullivan hits a chair shot to the shoulder of Animal to take over. Williams busts out a leg lariat/kick to the face to get two.

Sullivan shows better psychology and works over the arm he hit. Williams does the same, I guess being influenced by Sullivan. Wow that’s not exactly something I was expecting. Lots of arm work follows as Animal stays in trouble. There’s the dreaded double clothesline, which is a huge compliment to whoever was in trouble beforehand because one clothesline is enough to keep the other guy down for the same length of time that a guy who was beaten down for awhile does. Everything breaks down and something gets botched, resulting in Hawk getting the pin off a top rope clothesline.

Rating: D+. Not much here but they tried at least. The Road Warriors were only able to do so much and they kept it short which is the right idea for them. Not a great match or even a good one, but like I said the Road Warriors in Chicago are always worth checking out as this was a solid reaction.

Luger, with a bandage around his head, thanks the fans and says he won’t let them down.

We recap Steamboat vs. Flair which was started in a tag match where Steamboat beat the tar out of him. They played up the family man in Steamboat vs. the womanizer in Flair which was an awesome idea. This of course resulted in Flair being stripped to his underwear because that’s what Flair is all about…..somehow. This takes about four minutes to get through.

NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat

Steamboat comes out with his wife and son. Flair comes out with a band, his theme song and six women. Never let it be said that he didn’t live up his gimmick. Matsuda is here again. Steamboat gets a shoulder block for a very fast two. In another nice move, Flair drops down for Steamboat to run over him but Steamboat drops down to grab a headlock. Flair hits the floor as he isn’t sure what to make of this speed.

Back in Flair fires a chop and Steamboat is like I can do that too and chops even harder. Steamboat grabs the headlock and takes Flair to the mat with ease. Flair keeps rolling him up for two counts. We hear about how they had different backgrounds, ranging from blue collar to white collar. They chop it out and MAN are those loud. Flair takes a double chop for two and bails for a bit.

Steamboat chops him to the floor so Flair slows things down again. A hip toss and headscissors get two. They speed things up and Flair takes him down with an elbow. Steamboat is all like HI YAH and chops him to the floor. Out to the floor and Flair takes over with his nefarious means. These shots are HARD. Things slow down and Flair takes over, dropping the knee for two.

Butterfly suplex gets two. They chop it out again and there’s the Flair Flip. Ric comes off with a cross body but Steamboat rolls through for two. The crowd is eating this up. Flair hits an atomic drop and grabs the Figure Four out of nowhere. A huge Steamboat chant breaks out and Steamboat is tapping, but we’re about four and a half years from that meaning anything in America.

Steamboat has been in the hold for about two minutes now but Flair gets caught grabbing the ropes and Young breaks the hold. Steamboat fires off even more chops but Flair hits a cross body to put them both on the outside. A suplex back in gets a few two counts for the champ. Belly to back gets two and Steamboat grabs a rollup for two. They do the backslide counter into the bridge but Steamboat stops in the middle with the butterfly suplex for two.

Flair keeps trying to come back and control but a clothesline and a chop takes him down again. This is incredibly fast paced. Top rope chop puts Flair down and the cross body hits but Young goes down as well. Flair gets a cradle with tights for no cover. Steamboat misses another cross body and Flair tries the Figure Four but Steamboat rolls him up for the pin as Teddy Long runs in to count the fall and give Steamboat his only world title.

Rating: A+. I’ve heard about how great these Flair vs. Steamboat matches are and this is my favorite of them. They did not stop for over twenty minutes and the result is a classic war where Steamboat outsmarted Flair at the end in a clean finish. Those are some of the loudest chops you’ll ever hear and it’s a great match as a result. Excellent stuff.

Steamboat wants his family out here and holds his son….who immediately reaches back for his mom.

Steamboat says he can’t believe it and the other faces shower him in champagne. Ever the pro, Steamboat praises Flair and says he’s got the first shot.

Overall Rating: B-. Well you have a classic main event and the rest of the card isn’t that bad on top of it. Nothing is really all that bad but other than the main event, nothing is going to stand out. That’s the point of a masterpiece though and I can’t call it anything other than that. Pretty good show but check out the main event for sure as it’s a great match between two masters.