Monday Nitro #60
Date: November 4, 1996
Location: Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Attendance: 7,568
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Bobby Heenan, Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko

We’re into November now and World War 3 is in three weeks. Well 20 days but you get the idea. Ok so it’s really 15 years ago plus a few months but we’ll be here all day if we get into that. Anyway after last week, there’s not much to go on so hopefully we really get things going tonight. Let’s get to it.

Sting is in the rafters. DiBiase, Vincent and Giant are in the crowd and looking up at him.

Tonight we start a tournament for the new WCW Women’s Title.

Eric isn’t here tonight, but rather in Portland trying to get Piper to sign a contract. Remember that. It becomes REAL important in a few weeks.

We get a clip from Havoc where Piper yells at Hogan. Tony says the fans have demanded it, including over the internet. Tonight a word is promised about the signing.

Marcus Bagwell vs. Brad Armstrong

Sting leaves before the match starts. Man even he hates Buff. Riggs it at ringside too. Random question but where have the Steiners been? Are they still out from the car wreck thing? Bagwell does the clap thing and to his credit, the crowd is doing it with him. Technical match for the most part as they’re on the mat a lot. One thing that’s unrelated to the match: there are fans in the front row leaning over people (nice guys) to try to see themselves on a screen. I guess there are monitors or something by the entrance. That helps a lot as far as the videos they play.

We take a break (in the opener? Between Bagwell and Armstrong?) and come back to Armstrong hitting some armdrags (with his strong arms I guess) to frustrate Bagwell. Bagwell hits him in the face and the brawl is on. The fans are getting into this too. A dropkick puts Bagwell down and he gets tossed to the floor. Bagwell does just the same, hitting a dropkick and a clothesline to put Armstrong on the floor. There’s a dive to the floor and Brad is in trouble.

The NWO is in the crowd. They seem to be in the same place we saw them earlier so presumably they’ve been there the entire time. Why we’re looking at them and should be surprised to see them eludes me but a lot of what WCW did eluded me. Ok now they’re leaving. A tornado DDT gets two for Armstrong. There’s a gutbuster for Bagwell and what looked to be a forearm to put Armstrong down. We get the same ending from Fall Brawl 95 with Johnny B. Badd vs. Pillman where they both hit cross bodies and Bagwell lands on top for the pin.

Rating: C+. Marcus Bagwell vs. Brad Armstrong got 15 minutes and a commercial on Nitro and IT WAS GOOD. I’m in an alternate universe here. Brad was almost always at least watchable but Bagwell was a tag team guy and the same wrestler he was five years earlier, so why in the world did this get so much time? I’m not sure but it worked pretty well.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Ice Train

We’re reminded of the NWO watching Page last week. Page whispered something to Nick Patrick before this starts. The NWO (Outsiders) are in the crowd watching again. Train easily overpowers Page to start and knocks him to the floor. Page is starting to look a lot like he would during his main run. The Outsiders leave. Page guillotines him on the top and hits a top rope clothesline to take over.

Tony says Teddy has become a role model for young people all over the world. I can see the tag team matches being made on playgrounds all over the world. Sunset flip (and a bad one at that) gets two for Train. Larry says Piper vs. Hogan would be the biggest match of the 20th century. I never thought I’d say this, but Larry has been in bigger matches than that would be. Pancake puts Train down for two.

Swinging neckbreaker gets the same and a huge kickout, sending Page onto Patrick. A powerslam and two splashes get a slow two. Page gets knocked to the floor when the Outsiders come in and destroy Train with the title belts. Patrick is on the floor with Page. The champs leave and the Cutter ends this.

Rating: D+. This was more angle than match, which is something you can usually say about Teddy Long’s clients’ matches. It’s cool to see the Outsiders doing something to pull someone up and it certainly worked with Page. Was there a kayfabe reason why Patrick never went on medical leave? I never got that.

Cruiserweight Title: Dean Malenko vs. Scotty Riggs

Dean vs. Psicosis is announced for the PPV. The bell never rings so technically this is just a big prematch exhibition. Riggs has a bad shoulder coming in. Tony: “Well he’s trying to win. That’s a good sign.” Well what else would he be there for? A pottery class? Syxx pops up in the crowd as Riggs hits the post shoulder first. Riggs doesn’t seem to mind as he turns on the jets and sends Dean to the floor. There’s a plancha and back in a top rope double axe gets two. Scotty goes up again but Dean falls against the ropes and Riggs crashes onto the apron. Bagwell throws him back in and Dean gets an easy pin.

Rating: C. Not a bad match here and it foreshadows the troubles that the Males would have. Ok so maybe foreshadows is too big of a word given that they would only last like 3 weeks but you get the idea. Dean looked good here as did Riggs, and that ending fall looked awesome and painful at the same time. Decent little match.

We get a clip from last week with Mongo helping steal a win for Benoit.

Hector Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit

Hector is Eddie’s older brother and possibly even more talented. He’s also a dead ringer for Eddie if you just glance at him. I’ve often gotten them confused until I took a good look. Flair has had his surgery and Anderson is out with a back injury. On Saturday, Benoit said Sullivan is no longer the man he used to be. Sullivan pops up and says he’ll hurt Benoit in Baltimore. He’s actually talking about a house show.

Hector speeds things up and hits almost a Vader Bomb from the top rope out to the floor onto a standing Benoit. Benoit’s shoulder is still taped up. Hector works on the arm and mixes up the attack on it, because Hector Guerrero is smarter than most wrestlers. He goes to take the tape off and we take a break. After an NWO t-shirt ad, we come back to Benoit hitting a knee to put Guerrero down.

He draped Hector over the top rope with a release suplex and Guerrero is in trouble. Benoit works over the ribs and hooks an awkward abdominal stretch. Hector is basically crouched down and Benoit is bending over. Benoit hammers him down as Tony hypes up how amazing the second hour is. There’s the explosion. Hector grabs a small package for two. Guerrero speeds things up and uses a rolling tumbleweed style cradle for two. Woman breaks it up which isn’t a DQ. Benoit grabs a rollup via the distraction and uses the ropes for the pin.

Rating: C+. Another long match which again works. Benoit could move better this week which is a nice perk. Hector wouldn’t be around that much I don’t think so this was really just to avenge Eddie I guess. Nothing that great but they were moving well out there and the psychology worked so big points for that.

We look at Giant and Jarrett from last week. The Horsemen and Jarrett are in the aisle and Jeff says he’s the lead horse right now. Was he ever officially inducted? Benoit protests and says business pertaining to the Horsemen will be dealt with by a Horseman. Jarrett talks about getting WCW together as Sting watches. He just kind of goes on and on while we look at Sting.

The announcers talk about Sting.

Lee Marshall is in Florida for next week’s Nitro.

WCW Women’s Title Tournament First Round: Reina Jubuki vs. Madusa

Jubuki is Akiri Hokuto under a mask. Reina takes over quickly to start and chokes Madusa down. Another female Japanese wrestler comes out and watches. Her name is Zero apparently. Sonny Onoo rants like a heel Japanese man would in pro wrestling. Madusa hits something like what we would call the Stratusphere but Jubuki hits a release suplex and missile dropkick for two. The American grabs a quick German to pin the Japanese for the win. Too short to rate but it was way better than most modern female matches.

Michael Wallstreet vs. Chris Jericho

Wallstreet takes it to the mat quickly but Jericho works on the arm and then grabs a headlock. He tries to speed things up and Wallstreet fires him through the ropes. Tony calls the attorney of Nick Patrick a Schyster. I have a feeling there was a wink in there somewhere. Wallstreet pounds away as the announcers debate what the name Lionheart means.

Off to a chinlock and after awhile we look at the crowd. I can’t say I blame them as things got really boring all of a sudden there. Jericho comes back to break up the boring chants which were coming quickly. Missile dropkick sends Wallstreet out to the floor. Jericho gets sent into the post but as they come back in he grabs a quick small package for the pin.

Rating: D+. Nothing special here at all but they didn’t have much to go on. Jericho needed the ring time at this point and putting him in there with a veteran like Wallstreet was a good idea. This wasn’t all that bad but it’s nothing interesting at all. Basically just a way to make sure people remember who Jericho is.

Patrick and his attorney are here again and Jericho says there’s nothing wrong with the neck and that Patrick works for the NWO. Somehow this turns into an argument about Jericho’s dad playing in the NHL. Teddy comes out to yell at Patrick too. The attorney brings up Teddy being suspended while he was a referee like 8 years ago. Jericho cuts him off and says that’s the past, what Patrick is doing today.

We get a video from last week with Luger chasing after Sting to end the match with Booker.

Lex Luger vs. Booker T

Before the match we get an inset promo from Luger saying he’ll be waiting for Sting whenever he’s ready to talk. Luger grabs a delayed vertical suplex to start and seems to be more focused than he was last week. An elbow puts Booker on the floor and we take a break. Tony promises that if anything happens during the break, we’ll see it on replay. There’s no replay, so I guess we can assume that they just stayed in the same place during the break.

Powerslam gets two for Lex. Booker grabs a release Stun Gun to take over. Lex gets thrown to the floor where he takes a kick to the ribs from Sherri. Booker works on the back out on the floor. Back in the ring a hooking kick puts Luger down again. Side kick results in Booker crotching himself and Lex makes his comeback. He hits a powerslam and calls for the Rack but Booker grabs the rope. There’s a side kick to take Luger down and Colonel Parker is here to hug Sherri. An enziguri puts Lex down but Parker gets on the apron for some reason. Booker yells at him so Luger rolls him up for the pin.

Rating: D. This was a chore to sit through. The problem basically was that I don’t think anyone thought Booker was going to get a decisive win here so it was just kind of waiting around until the end of the match. That’s a very boring kind of match to watch and I stopped this whenever I could to do ANYTHING else. It wasn’t bad but it was very uninteresting.

Sting is still watching.

Eric Bischoff calls in and says that things are going well with him and Piper, but there’s no match signed, due to attorneys and agents interfering. He won’t say what’s wrong but he’s going to talk to Piper in Toronto next week. This goes on for awhile. Remember this segment. It becomes very important later.

Remember last week where we saw part of the Hogan vs. Piper showdown from Halloween Havoc but it was clipped for time? Well here’s the FULL version! That eats up ten minutes.

Here’s the NWO to end the show. Hogan demands a spotlight so he feels like he’s in California. Here’s a clip from Santa With Muscles, as we’re actually playing the “my B-movie is better than YOUR B-movie” game between Piper and Hogan. Hogan, as Santa, beats up some goons/thieves in a mall. Back in the arena, Hogan talks about the Cable Ace Awards or something and threatens to come to the ceremony and steal Ted Turner’s award. Is there a point to this at all? Hogan says Piper is scared and hiding out with Savage somewhere. He poses to end the show.

Overall Rating: C. Well it was better than last week due to the matches and wrestling being a lot better, but at the same time, nothing happened here. That’s the problem with having a main event like the big battle royal as everyone of note is in there and there might be a few other matches on there, most of which are just midcard matches. Things pick up speed soon enough though.

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Monday Nitro #59
Date: October 28, 1996
Location: America West Arena, Phoenix, Arizona
Attendance: 6,300
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko, Mike Tenay, Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan

We’re FINALLY done with Halloween Havoc and the big reveal: Roddy Piper is back. Hogan and he literally talked until the show went off the air last night and neither really said anything. Tonight we begin the road to World War 3 which wasn’t a world title match for Hogan because he took that show off I guess. Hogan vs. Piper wouldn’t happen until Starrcade where the ending was pretty stupid. Oh and the Outsiders are tag champions now. Let’s get to it.

Larry is in a sport coat and a Superman t-shirt. He and Tony talk about Piper arriving last night. The still of Hogan’s face is GREAT.

TV Title: Steven Regal vs. Juventud Guerrera

Sting, in white facepaint, is watching from the rafters. Oh here we go. Some NWO fans come in with signs and the fans all react. Juvy and Regal hit the mat and wait for things to calm down. Syxx pops up in the crowd with a mic. The match basically stops and Syxx says he’ll be Cruiserweight Champion. Now the match gets going again as Syxx gives Sting a recruitment speech. Juvy snaps off a rana and a dropkick. He loads up the 450 but Regal moves. The Stretch ends this quickly. Too short to rate, especially with the match just stopping for about 45 seconds for Syxx.

Tony is about to interview Regal but talks about Sting first. Sting gets up and walks away.

We get some stills from Luger vs. Anderson last night.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Mike Enos

I don’t like Enos’ chances. Enos slaps him almost immediately and they go to the floor. Page sends him into the barricade to take over. Back in a Batista Bomb gets two. Top rope clothesline hits an we’ve got Outsiders. Page points at them so Enos can take over. Enos points at them and maintains control. I guess he’s better at time management than Page is. Enos points at them again and hits a powerslam again. He loads up a Bulldog powerslam but takes too long, letting Page hook the ropes and counter into a Diamond Cutter. The Outsiders seem pleased as Page gets the pin.

Rating: D. Eh it’s just a three minute match so how bad can it be? This would start the angle that made Page a star which I’ve been mentioning for months. See? I’m not crazy. Enos had signaled that the running powerslam was his finisher, which is impressive since I didn’t know he had one. You learn something new every day.

Stills of Dean winning the Cruiserweight Title last night from Rey.

Dean Malenko vs. Jim Powers

There’s a player from the Suns in an NWO shirt. Psicosis comes out to watch the match. Powers controls to start with headlocks but Malenko uses the technical stuff to get us to even. They go to the mat and Powers grabs an armbar. Dean is a heel here if you’re not familiar with this period. Off to a chinlock as Nick Patrick has a sore neck and argues with Teddy for awhile. Powers makes a brief comeback with an atomic drop and clothesline for two. A right hand gets two. Knee lift puts Dean down and a powerslam gets no count because Patrick is arguing with Teddy. Dean rolls Powers up for the pin.

Rating: D+. Nothing to see here other than to continue the Patrick is a bad referee and is feuding with Teddy Long storyline. I don’t remember what Patrick has against Long but I guess we’ll get to it soon enough. Powers is fine at what he’s doing which is just easily jobbing to people, but he’s pretty boring. Granted that’s his job so it’s hard to complain.

Still of the Dungeon vs. Horsemen last night. The Horsemen won but Benoit and Mongo got laid out. Sullivan and Woman had words but we don’t know why yet.

Jeff Jarrett vs. Ricky Morton

Memphis explodes! Jarrett controls early but Ricky works on the arm. Morton hits a spinning crossbody out of the corner for two. Jarrett suplexes him down and Tony plugs World War 3’s ticket info. Top rope cross body is rolled through for two but Jeff hooks a neckbreaker to keep control. Figure Four is rolled up for two. A knee crusher sets up the Figure Four and it’s over.

Rating: C-. Again not bad but just there to get Jarrett on TV. He was so painfully uninteresting at this point and I don’t think anyone cared about him at all. They basically did the same thing with Hennig like a year later and it actually worked. Jarrett didn’t get over as a serious guy until he ditched the country music, but that was years away.

Giant, with the US Title which isn’t his, says he had Jarrett last night but Flair saved him. He runs down the Horsemen, saying that Jarrett will be chokeslamed soon. Jarrett says bring it on. He says it after Giant leaves but he does say it. Jarrett also becomes the probably 58th person to say WCW has to unite to face the NWO.

Amazing French Canadians vs. High Voltage

High Voltage starts off fast and beats up every French Canadian in sight. Rage vs. Oulette start us off. We launch fireworks to remind the fans that the show is two hours long, because the wrestling match going on doesn’t tell them that the show is still going. Savage isn’t here tonight. The foreigners take over and hit the Rougeau Bomb onto Kaos and then load up the Quebecers’ Cannonball finisher before the Nasties run in for the DQ. Too short to rate but it was just there to give the Nasties two teams to beat up.

The Nasties yell about Hogan and swear revenge. They don’t belong to WCW, just like Sting and Piper. They’ll always be Nasty though.

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Jimmy Graffiti

Graffiti jumps him and hits an electric chair drop for two. Rey comes back with a springboard moonsault for two. A rana takes Graffiti to the floor but Rey is sent into the railing. Graffiti gets up on the apron and hits a flip dive to crush the more famous one. Chinlock by Graffiti but Rey casually gets up, speeds things up and hits West Coast Pop for the pin.

Rating: D+. All of these matches have pretty much been interchangeable tonight. Nothing has lasted more than about 4 minutes and nothing has been really interesting. Everything has been focused on what happened last night and it’s really slowing things down. The matches haven’t been bad, but they’re all coming and going with nothing really happening at all.

Lee Marshall is in Grand Rapids, Michigan to hype up the show.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit

Please give them more than four minutes. We have like 40 left in the show not counting commercials so it’s not like they don’t have time. Benoit is all taped up from the beating last night. After a break we’re ready to go. Mongo and Debra come out just a few seconds into it, apparently to watch out for the Dungeon. We get an inset interview from Jimmy Hart and Kevin Sullivan who say there’s something about Woman which is going to be revealed soon.

Eddie is banged up too so the match consists of them both trying to get going but every time they do something physical they have to stop and lay on the mat for a long time. Benoit goes after Eddie’s bad ribs. Back in and Eddie is in agony. Benoit hooks on a seated abdominal stretch but since he’s hurt, Eddie fires off an armdrag which really injures Benoit.

Back to that stretch after some more slowly moving around. I don’t remember what caused Eddie’s injuries but I think it was a match with DDP. Wikipedia says I’m right so there you are. Eddie wakes up and pounds away in the corner but he has to pause again. He hits something that looks like a flying headbutt and both guys are down. Woman offers a distraction and Mongo pops Eddie in the ribs with the briefcase so Benoit can steal the pin.

Rating: C. This is a hard one to grade. As far as a match, it’s dull due to having to go very slowly. However, it would have been REALLY stupid to have them go out there and fly all over the place after we saw at least Benoit get mauled last night. I’ll go with right in the middle because the match made sense, but it was still kind of boring.

Nick Patrick and his attorney have an “interview”, which means the attorney is rude and spins things. It’s Jericho’s fault apparently. Jericho comes out and calls BS, saying Patrick is NWO. The attorney suggests Jericho needs anger counseling. Teddy comes out and blasts the attorney so the attorney threatens a slander lawsuit. This just goes on and on for like 4 minutes.

Booker T vs. Lex Luger

This would be a very different match a few years later. There’s no Stevie or Colonel Parker with Booker. There must be a LONG segment planned to close the show because we have well over 20 minutes not counting commercials, so it was probably about 9:30 when this match started. Colonel Parker has a quick promo, saying his gaffe last night (came in with the cane, Hall stole it and clocked Stevie with it for the titles) is all just blown out of proportion.

Lex takes over to start with pure power and sends him to the floor. Booker takes over back in and Sherri yells at the basketball player outside, saying he can help Booker win. Booker gets knocked to the floor again and things slow down one more time. Lex pounds him down in the corner and is acting more aggressive than usual. Lex hits a forearm and we take a break.

Back with Booker holding a chinlock. Wow a match getting over ten minutes. I don’t know how to handle this. Booker takes over and hits some of his basic stuff as Eric seems to drool over the idea of Piper being WCW. The Hangover misses and Lex calls for the Rack, but Sting pops up in the crowd and stares Luger down. Lex jumps into the crowd and runs after Sting for the countout loss.

Rating: D+. This was an elongated version of what we had going on earlier. Nothing to see here but they had a lot of time so they let them go for awhile. The problem is Booker wasn’t ready to do this yet so the match was pretty boring. It’s not that bad but it was again there just for the ending.

Eric talks about Piper calling WCW and asking for five minutes to confront Hogan. Here’s the whole segment from last night which basically says that Piper is as big a star as Hogan and Hogan is terrified. They talk forever and Hogan keeps backpedaling. Why Giant didn’t destroy him is still beyond me. This goes on for about ten minutes. The line of “If they didn’t hate me so much do you think they would have loved you so much” is pretty dead on though. They cut off the ending due to time.

Here’s the NWO to offer a rebuttal to last night because they didn’t talk enough there. Hogan gets a spotlight and says he told you so. As for Savage, he respects him due to carrying the burden of WCW. Hogan implies sex with Liz I think. After about two or three minutes he addresses Piper. He lies about what we just saw (classic heel move) and says Piper is scared. DiBiase says Hollywood is going to entertain us now so Hogan poses to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. I really wasn’t feeling this one. Everything here was kind of a big recap show for Halloween Havoc. Nothing at all was advanced in the main event as the whole ending was just a quick thing from Hogan which goes nowhere. I still don’t get why they went with Hogan vs. Piper in 1996 and then in 1997, but it made them a fortune so it’s really hard to question them. It doesn’t pick up for about three weeks though.

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Monday Nitro #58
Date: October 21, 1996
Location: Mankato Civic Center, Mankato, Minnesota
Attendance: 4,034
Commentators: Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, Mike Tenay, Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko

It’s FINALLY the last show before Halloween Havoc which took forever to get to. The main event tonight is Benoit vs. Savage which should be good, although it probably won’t be up to their capabilities due to the whole Liz thing from last week. This should be a better show than last week’s which was nothing all that interesting. Let’s get to it.

We open with talking about Savage and the Liz tape from last week. Larry reiterates that WCW needs a leader.

Chris Jericho vs. Bobby Eaton

Should be good. Tony says Sting is here and has a match scheduled with JL. Syxx and NWO Sting are here. After a break we’re ready to go. Patrick is referee and is still hurt. Jericho speeds things up to start and hits a dropkick and shoulder block to control early. Eaton comes back with a bad powerslam for no cover. Jericho hits the springboard dropkick to put Eaton outside. If Jericho wasn’t so pale I’d think he was the Cheetah Kid from last week.

Eaton works on the arm back in the ring. They slug it out and this match probably needs to end soon. They’re just not clicking out there. Jericho sends him into the post and they hit the floor. The Canadian’s elbow hits the post but Eaton misses a shot and stumbles up the aisle. Back in and Eaton hooks a swinging neckbreaker for no cover. A top rope kneedrop mostly hits for two. Jericho hits something like a jumping superkick and then a missile dropkick for the pin.

Rating: D+. Really surprising here as the match didn’t click at all for the most part. The ending was a lot better but other than that they looked totally out of sync. Jericho would get a lot better and I don’t think Eaton would be around much longer after this. Jericho would get Syxx on Sunday.

Jericho says that in six days he’ll get the first win over the NWO. He actually would, but it wouldn’t be until World War 3.

Video on Mysterio and how awesome he is.

Dean Malenko vs. Jimmy Graffiti

Graffiti is more commonly known as Jimmy Del Ray of the Heavenly Bodies. Graffiti takes over early and looks pretty stupid in his shirt with the word Graffiti on it and jean shorts. A Batista Bomb gets two for Graffiti as does a superkick. Malenko comes back and knocks him to the floor where he lands on the top of his head. Fake Sting is watching this and filming it. This prompts Tony and Larry to discuss if Rey has joined the NWO.

Dean hits a clothesline in the corner and a suplex but the Cloverleaf is broken up. Graffiti gets in his bit of jobber offense and they both go to the floor off a Malenko cross body. Back in and Graffiti tries something resembling a dropkick but gets caught in a powerbomb kind of move. The Cloverleaf ends this clean. It gets the Power Pin of the Week which is a sponsorship thing despite it not being a pin.

Rating: C-. Just a long squash here as Graffiti was never any threat to Deano Machino. I really don’t know why they brought in Del Ray of all people but he was fine for a jobber role I suppose. Dean would get the title back from Rey on Sunday before losing it to Ultimo Dragon at Starrcade.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Craig Pittman

We get a montage of Diamond Cutters before the match. Teddy is with Pittman here. He really didn’t have a good group of guys around this time. Teddy and Patrick get in an argument about 2 seconds after the bell rings. Page rams Pittman into Long to take over quickly. This has all the makings of a squash. Page pancakes him down for two. Pittman kicks out and shoves Page onto Patrick, injuring the referee’s back to a big pop. Out to the floor for a bit where Pittman works on the arm. Code Red (cross armbreaker) goes on but Teddy distracts the referee for no apparent reason. Diamond Cutter ends this.

After the too short to rate match, Teddy is accused of being NWO. He yells at Patrick and Patrick says it was Teddy’s fault, which is true.

Tony talks to Nick who says he didn’t hear Page give up. He’s accused of being the NWO referee again and he says it’s Randy Anderson again.

We look back at two weeks ago where Flair was attacked to write him off TV for his legit shoulder injury. We also see Jarrett challenging the Giant for Havoc.

Ron Studd vs. Jeff Jarrett

Flair comes out to watch this match. He gets in the ring before it starts and tells Jarrett to strut. The fans aren’t all that thrilled. Flair struts and gets cheered, so they do it again. Ric shakes Jarrett’s hand and that’s that. The match actually starts now and Studd is a giant. Jarrett manages a suplex and a bad figure four ends this.

Jarrett says it’s time for WCW to band together to take out the NWO. Also Giant won’t be able to chokeslam him. Flair comes up and says that he’ll be back to get his revenge for his injury.

Hour #2 begins. The announcers talk as usual.

Lex Luger vs. Roadblock

Roadblock weighs about 400lbs. He goes right after Luger and that doesn’t work all that well for him. A clothesline sends Roadblock to the floor and he’s rammed into various metal things. Back in Luger slams him but can’t hit the jumping elbow. In an inset interview, Anderson says that time is running out on Lex and he’ll make him quit Sunday. A kneedrop gets two for Roadblock. Luger starts Hulking Up and calls for the Rack but drops the big guy twice. The third time works and Roadblock insta-taps.

Rating: D+. Just a basic power match for a hero to show off like Luger did here. Roadblock was another huge guy that did practically nothing while the other guys would beat him up and it was supposed to be impressive. I think Luger would beat Anderson on Sunday in one of Anderson’s last big time matches.

Buy the NWO Shirt!

Lee Marshall is in Phoenix and Nitro is there next week. Why did they keep doing that? I still don’t get it.

Harlem Heat vs. American Males

Eric talks about the Braves beating New York tonight, which he says needs to become a tradition. It’s a jab at Vince so Heenan cracks up. Eric says this is non title but Patrick holds up the titles anyway. More WWF jabs as Riggs vs. Ray starts us off. Power vs. speed here with the power team taking over, hitting a World’s Strongest Slam to put Riggs down. Bagwell comes in and we talk about Savage a bit.

Marcus throws Stevie over the top but it’s momentum or whatever despite Bagwell THROWING HIM OVER THE ROPES. We take a break and come back with Booker getting worked over by Bagwell. Booker powerbombs him down and the Outsiders are here. The NWO wants Nitro apparently. Stevie pounds away and since that’s the extent of his offense it’s back to Booker. The Hangover misses and here’s Riggs again. Everything breaks down and Riggs goes after the Heat’s managers, allowing the Harlem Side Kick to end him.

Rating: D. This was really boring as the Heat seemed completely uninterested. The Males would be split up next month as Bagwell would turn heel for the first of about 8,000 times. This wasn’t much of a match and it wasn’t very good, primarily due to Booker having to do all of the work for his team.

Faces of Fear vs. Fantastics

The Fantastics? REALLY? They brought these guys out of mothballs? Don’t get me wrong: they were my favorite 80s NWA tag team so I’m not complaining, but this is late 1996. This falls under the category of Greg Valentine. This would be their only WCW match too. Fulton chops away at Meng and he’s like dude….no. The announcers talk about Savage some more and they’re not sure if he’s here, despite him being scheduled for the main event.

A double dropkick puts Meng on one knee and the announcers say that the Fantastics have no chance in this. Eric keeps telling us the Braves score because that’s required for some reason. Fulton tries to fight back and Eric laughs when he punches and kicks. A piledriver kills him dead but Fulton makes the save. The double headbutt hits and Eric is all happy because Sting might be here. Hot tag brings in Rogers and he gets in some offense but his cross body gets caught and a big boot from Meng ends this.

Rating: D-. I love the Fantastics, but I have NO idea what they were thinking bringing them in here. They looked old and pale and the Faces of Fear destroyed them. It was a total squash and Eric was burying them on commentary. It’s not like they were a regular team either. This was their only match in WCW and I think Rogers would go to ECW for awhile. I don’t get this one at all.

Remember that Liz video that Eric was afraid messed Savage up? Let’s watch it again, because that’ll get Randy’s head straight right? Liz still loves him is the point of this. Eric says he has more footage for later.

JL vs. Sting

And it’s the NWO Sting. The whole NWO comes out to watch. A few fans are fooled for a bit but it becomes clear what’s going on pretty quickly. The NWO comes out of the crowd sans Hogan. Total squash and the Deathlock looks to end it in like a minute, but the REAL Sting comes out. He’s in all black and has white facepaint. The match is thrown out.

Sting debuts the Death Drop and he destroys the Fake Sting. The NWO lets this happen so everyone thinks Sting is NWO. He hooks the Deathlock and the NWO comes in. DiBiase offers him a spot on the team and the whole team tries to tempt him. Eric is WAY too intense about this. I get that it’s supposed to be serious but he gets all melodramatic about it.

Hall asks a legit question: what does Sting have to show for carrying the WCW banner this whole time? Sting talks about the Fake Sting and says the real version may or may not be in their price range. The only thing for sure about him is that nothing’s for sure. He leaves and you can hear the money being printed from here.

Chris Benoit vs. Randy Savage

Eric has left to try to flag down Savage. Here’s Savage but he’s all in black and they’re “street clothes”. I’m not sure what street people walk down looking like that but I don’t think I want to be there. Eric apologizes and rolls some tape. It’s from the 3 Ninjas movie set with Hogan hosting things for lack of a better term. Hogan talks to the director and says he has a lot of things he needs to do and that it can’t go over budget.

The NWO takes over production of the film. Giant is the new director, Hogan is producing and Liz has a cameo. Hogan makes Liz say she loves Randy. Hogan is in a wig here and it’s really not working for him. This is really bad. Hogan sends Liz to his trailer with Giant escorting her. Hogan comes into the trailer and yells at her. He and Giant talk a bit more to end this.

Back in the arena Savage isn’t sure what to do. There’s no match of course. Savage says it just occurred to him how fragile friendships and relationships can be. Business and marriages can be fragile too. Life is also fragile and with that Savage leaves. Eric calls him back…and that’s it.

Overall Rating: D-. Really weak show here, which is the second in a row. Havoc sucked and the Savage vs. Hogan match was a big reason why. It wound up being a comedy match and Savage was just fine after the last two weeks of him being all mopey and depressed. This built up the PPV a bit but overall, there wasn’t much here. At least we don’t have to hear the words Slim Jim’s every 8 seconds now.

Here’s Halloween Havoc if you’re interested:

http://forums.wrestlezone.com/showthread.php?p=2182496#post2182496

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Monday Nitro #57
Date: October 14, 1996
Location: Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, Tennessee
Attendance: 6,930
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbyszko, Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan

We’re in Lawler country tonight as the seemingly never ending build for Halloween Havoc continues. Thankfully with this set of two I’ll be doing we’ll get to that show so we can get to November and Eric joining the NWO. The show tonight is nothing all that significant but we’re getting closer to 1997 which stuns me that we’ve gotten this far. Let’s get to it.

We open with a recap of Savage getting destroyed while Liz was held and forced to watch.

Dean Malenko vs. Brad Armstrong

Armstrong beat Dean on either Saturday Night or at a Clash. There are NWO fans holding up big signs on the non-camera side, because the fans behind them don’t need to see right? Nick Patrick and his neckbrace are refereeing again. There’s an NWO chant. Brad speeds things up and sends Dean to the floor. Malenko is heel still here. Into the ring again and Dean hooks something like a seated abdominal stretch.

The announcers talk about Sting being gone for awhile already. Man they had no idea what was coming did they. Brad gets some two counts, including one off a nice Russian leg sweep. Belly to back gets the same. Dean gets a SWEET rollup into a three quarter nelson for the pin. Armstrong got caught.

Rating: C-. Fairly uninteresting mat based match here but I’ve seen far worse. Brad and Dean worked a more technically based style here and while it’s good, it doesn’t do much for the audience. That being said, they were more interested in the NWO stuff than the match, but that’s modern wrestling for you. Nothing great but it was fine.

The NWO gets here.

Jim Duggan vs. Mr. Wallstreet

This is a rematch because this is the feud the world is dying for right? The idea is that Nick Patrick screwed Duggan out of a win in the first match so this has a different referee. Duggan uses power to start as Larry blasts Hacksaw every chance he can. Wallstreet comes back with a clothesline for one and then goes to a chinlock. Larry talks about the amount of water in the average human’s brain for no apparent reason. Leg drop by Wallstreet and it’s off to a chinlock again. Wallstreet jumps into a boot and Duggan tapes up his fist. Wallstreet gets it away but the three point clothesline ends him.

Rating: D. What in the world was this on TV for? It wasn’t a bad match or anything, but it’s IRS vs. Jim Duggan in 1996 on national TV. I don’t get it at all but I’d assume it’s because Duggan is one of Hogan’s buddies. Not a horrible match, but for the life of me I don’t get it. This was a rematch on top of that. Why did it need to be on Nitro? Isn’t that what Saturday Night was for?

Hugh Morrus vs. Jim Powers

The inexplicable kind of push of Jim Powers continues. Tony thanks “Mr. Lawler” for promoting the show. He’ll be at the flea market on Thursday, which is where the USWA had a lot of their shows around this time. I’m legit surprised by that. Powers slams him down and gets a cross body for one. Morrus rolls to the floor and I’m still wondering why Powers is getting TV time.

Back in and Morrus remembers he’s against Jim Powers and takes over. Suplex gets two. Flair isn’t here tonight. Morrus seems really bored out there and I can’t say I disagree with him. Flair’s shoulder injury is worse than previously thought. It would result in him being stripped of the US Title I believe. Powers gets a sunset flip for two.

A knee lift puts Morrus down as Teddy is complaining about Patrick’s cadence of the count. Oh yeah it’s bad as it takes four seconds to count one. Powers gets a small package and there’s no count because Patrick is holding his neck. A belly to back sets up the No Laughing Matter for Morrus’ pin. The count was fine there. Teddy gets in Patrick’s face post match.

Rating: D-. I get the idea of Patrick being crooked and not counting properly and all that. That’s an old standard angle and it works fine. But why in the world are they using it on Jim freaking Powers? I don’t get it. He’s JIM POWERS. They couldn’t use this on anyone else? Was this really the best option they had? Not the Steiners or someone like that? I don’t get it.

Greg Valentine vs. Lex Luger

Again I don’t understand why Greg Valentine kept getting time on this show. He’s fine in the ring, but why him of all the people that were available? Luger has taped ribs due to the attack by Anderson last week. Valentine goes for the arms instead. That’s what we mean by lack of psychology. Thankfully he wakes up and punches Lex in the ribs to take over. Luger can’t suplex him because of the injury.

Valentine works on the back as Anderson is watching in the back on a monitor. Greg works on the back as DiBiase and Vincent are standing in the crowd watching. Hogan has demanded to make an announcement tonight. Valentine works on the back some more. I’m glad the arm work only lasted a few seconds. Tony and Larry want to know where Sting is because they need him.

Luger’s back is rammed into the corner and it’s been all Valentine for the most part here. They collide and both go down. Lex starts his comeback and hits the forearm smash for two. Valentine gets an elbow up and puts his feet on the ropes for a rollup. As he’s arguing with the referee the ribs heal enough for the Rack to get the submission. At least he was wincing during the hold.

Rating: D+. Not a horrible match or anything but it was almost eight minutes long. Just like in the previous match, I don’t get it. WCW made some curious moves at this point but at the same time you can’t say that the results didn’t work so the complaints would be at a minimum here. Actually they’re not even complaints but rather questions.

Tony talks to Nick Patrick and tells him that the fine against Randy Savage will be $500 instead of $1 million. Also Savage has to miss the first five matches (not said if that means the first five Nitros or not) of 1997. Patrick says WCW will be hearing from his lawyers. Tony shows us a clip from NWO Saturday Night which was the NWO segment where they would beat up jobbers in an empty arena. They had their own referee in a ski mask and it looked a lot like Patrick. He says it looks more like Randy Anderson, who is about 6 inches shorter than Patrick.

Mike Enos vs. Randy Savage

Hour #2 begins during Enos’ entrance. There’s no Bischoff for commentary. Oh ok he’s going to interview Savage during the entrance. Eric intercepts him and there’s a TV monitor wheeled in. Savage says if Hogan is here, let’s do Halloween Havoc here tonight. Eric wants to talk about Liz and Savage says don’t go there.

We look at a video message from Liz sitting on a swing in front of a tree. She says she’s sorry and that she was doing things to get his attention when she thought she was doing them out of anger. Savage built her this swing apparently. To the best of my knowledge, the fans can’t see any of this. Liz asks him for forgiveness and says she’s made a lot of bad choices. The worst was siding with Hulk so he could hurt Savage. Liz needs Savage and begs him not to leave her alone. She feels the same way about him today as the day she said I do.

Back in the arena and Savage looks stunned. Eric says he didn’t know another way to do this. You know, because locker rooms don’t exist right? Savage doesn’t know what to say and has a great look on his face. Eric won’t shut up and leave him alone so Savage walks out and heads into a conveniently waiting limo. No match with Enos obviously.

Eric is on commentary now. The announcers debate whether or not it was a good idea to tell Savage about the message.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Cheetah Kid

Cheetah is allegedly Rocco Rock in a mask but I’m not completely sure on that. Oh there’s no way that’s Rocco. He’s ripped and much darker skinned. Ah apparently Cheetah Kid is a character Rock used to play when he was starting out. That makes much better sense. Apparently this is a local guy from Memphis getting a tryout. Works for me. Eddie flies around a lot but gets caught in something resembling an Angle Slam for two.

A nice powerbomb gets no cover for Cheetah. This is really just a tuneup for Eddie before his match with DDP at Havoc. Eddie gets sent to the floor and Cheetah hits a springboard dropkick as Eddie is on the apron. Cheetah goes up and gets crotched so Eddie can hit the rana off the top and the Frog Splash for the pin. Not enough to rate but Cheetah wasn’t bad at all. I’m curious as to who he was.

Video on Jeff Jarrett.

Lee Marshall is on the road and talks about how great it’ll be next week in Minnesota. Ok then.

Big Bubba vs. Jeff Jarrett

Since this is in Tennessee Jarrett is very popular. Eric makes fun of Jarrett’s country singer gimmick and says it’s about wrestling here. Bubba gives him a chance to run and Jarrett doesn’t seem interested. We do a Memphis level stall as both do various kinds of taunting before Bubba grabs a headlock. Now we’re talking about the WWF for awhile and the AWA. Oh it’s Hogan who said he made both of those companies. Well the AWA collapsed after he left so maybe he didn’t make it but he kept it alive for awhile in a way.

Out to the floor and Bubba keeps control. Jimmy Hart gets in some shots and Jarrett glares him away. Off to a chinlock so Bubba can talk to Jeff a bit. He hits a solid big boot to put Jarrett down. The announcers get bored so they talk about the NWO for awhile. Big right hand gets two for Bubba. He misses a charge into the corner and Jarrett hits an atomic drop but goes after Hart before the Figure Four. Bubba hits a spinebuster and smacks the referee. Jimmy slides in the Megaphone which is dropkicked into Bubba’s face for the pin.

Rating: D+. This was a Memphis match for the Memphis crowd which doesn’t do a thing for the TV audience. That being said, they’ve had the last few months of shows booked for them so I can’t complain about something like that. Jarrett would be the replacement for Flair soon and would get into a feud with McMichael soon enough. He wouldn’t get over or anything, but who cares about that.

Jarrett is announced as the replacement for Flair.

Harlem Heat vs. Faces of Fear

This was supposed to be for the titles but the Heat said no so it would be a guaranteed title match against the Outsiders. Meng vs. Booker starts us off and Meng hammers him down quickly. Here are Benoit, Mongo and Debra for no apparent reason. Oh that’s right they’re scouting the Faces of Fear for the PPV. Stevie comes in and hammers on Meng but after missing a dropped elbow it’s off to Barbarian.

Stevie hits a bicycle kick to put Barbarian down. Come on people, learn your racial stereotypes. He chokes away and brings in Booker to give some variety to things. Hook kick gets two. Meng breaks up what was presumably the missile dropkick and Barbarian hits a belly to belly superplex. Back to Meng who hits a Batista Bomb for two. A double headbutt has Booker in trouble but Meng won’t cover.

Booker gets a bad looking sunset flip and the Outsiders are here. They’re in the front row this time and the match comes grinding to a halt again. Everyone stops to look at them on the floor and I think it’s a double countout. Knowing this show there was a pin in the ring and we just didn’t see it but whatever.

Rating: D. Total clash of styles here and it didn’t work well at all. Everyone was pretty much just killing time until the Outsiders came out for the match to end. I’m going to assume it was a no contest. I guess it makes sense for this not to be for the titles but it wouldn’t have hurt anything I don’t think.

Eric talks about Savage and how Hogan is going to be in trouble at Havoc.

Here’s Hogan for the final segment of the show. The rest of the NWO complete with Liz comes out behind him. Current total number of males in the NWO: 8. Hogan thinks Savage could at least come out here and fight. He talks about being in Hollywood filming the next 3 Ninjas movie and can push whatever button he wants on Savage. Hogan calls Liz an actress and she tries to slap him but fails.

Here come the Nasty Boys in NWO shirts. Hogan calls them family and says if they need anything just to let him know. Knobbs has the contract and says there’s a screwup in it because the decimal point isn’t right. Hogan hasn’t signed it and says the Nasties shouldn’t have the shirts on yet. There’s the beatdown for the Nasties. Hogan says this is just a little bit of what will happen to Savage at Havoc. He says Liz wanted him when she and Savage were married. Liz is coming with him to Hollywood to finish his movie.

The NWO takes over the broadcast booth again to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. Not their best show here as it feels like we’ve been building up to Havoc for six months at this point. The whole Savage vs. Liz thing is interesting but it’s nothing that was going to go anywhere since Savage would join the NWO early next year anyway. Thank goodness the next show is the last one before the PPV because it needs to move on to WW3 already. Weak show but not awful.

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Crockett Cup 1988
Date: April 22, 1988/April 23, 1988
Location: Greenville Memorial Auditorium, Greenville, South Carolina/Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
Attendance: 4,400/6,300
Commentators: Jim Ross, Tony Schiavone

It’s the final one of these and this is by far the most complicated of all. As usual the tournament was scheduled to have 24 teams, but there were a bunch of messes involved in it, which I’ll get to in a minute. This is another two night tag team tournament for the sake of having a two night tag team tournament. The NWA is in trouble to the WWF at this point, but Ted Turner would be coming in for the save soon. Let’s get to it.

First off, the brackets. There are two teams with byes listed, which is the result of a lot of storyline stuff. If you’re not interested in why there are byes, skip ahead to the brackets themselves. Lex Luger and Barry Windham were world tag team champions as faces, but two days before the tournament, Windham turned heel and joined the Horsemen, giving Anderson/Blanchard the tag titles. Windham also took the spot in the Horsemen that Luger had been kicked out of, starting a huge feud. That’s one team gone.

The reigning champions of the tournament, the Super Powers (Nikita Koloff/Dusty Rhodes) were taken out because Rhodes was suspended from the company for 120 days because he hit the boss with a ball bat (also causing him to be stripped of the US Title). Since he was gone, Nikita had no partner so he was given a world title shot on this show as well. There are two teams gone.

Sting and Ronnie Garvin were scheduled to team together as one of the teams automatically in the second round. However, during another of the non-tournament matches, Garvin was injured by Kevin Sullivan so Sting was paired with Lex Luger and they would go on in the tournament. So to sum up, we’re down two teams of the original 24 to make it 22, meaning that one team is automatically going to the semi-finals after one win.

So you got all that?

Here are the brackets. As usual, the team in parentheses is the team that the winners will face in round 2.

Johnny Ace/John Savage
Brad Armstrong/Tim Horner
(Midnight Express)

Cruel Connection
Sheepherders
(Midnight Express)*

Ivan Koloff/Dick Murdoch
Mighty Wilbur/Jimmy Valiant
(Lex Luger/Sting)

Chris Champion/Mark Starr
Twin Devils
(Powers of Pain)

Rocky King/Nelson Royal
Tiger Conway Jr./Shaska Whatley
(Road Warriors)

Green Machine/Terminator
Italian Stallion/Kendall Windham
(Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard)

Bye/Bye
Bye/Bye
(Bye/Bye)**

Joe Cruz/Ricky Santana
Al Perez/Larry Zbyszko
(Fantastics)

Varsity Club
Ron Simmons/Steve Williams
(N/A)***

Ok so on to the asterisks.

* – Since there weren’t enough teams to have a first round, the winner of Sheepherders/Armstrong/Horner gets the match against the Midnight Express.

** – Anderson/Blanchard are in the spot where the winner of the second round match goes on to the semi-finals.

*** – For some reason the Varsity Club and Simmons/Williams are already in the second round. The winner of that faces whoever comes out of the three teams above them in the third round.

So you got all that too? Let’s have some bad tag matches!

Also remember this is the home video version, so there’s A LOT of clipping.

Crockett Cup First Round: Mighty Wilbur/Jimmy Valiant vs. Dick Murdoch/Ivan Koloff

Wilbur is a very fat hillbilly. He and Koloff start us off. There was no intro or anything like that so we’re really thrown into things quickly here. Wilbur throws them around with ease and it’s off to Valiant who dances a lot. Valiant takes over and it’s off to Murdoch. Koloff comes in and Valiant no sells a lot so it’s back to Wilbur. They’re clipping some here I think but it’s done better than usual. Murdoch hits a knee to the back of Valiant and the Sickle ends this.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Ron Simmons/Steve Williams vs. Varsity Club

Steiner/Rotunda for the Club here. Williams tries to wrestle Williams and he gets punched in the face for his efforts. Williams runs through both opponents as only he could. He was the Brock Lesnar of his day so expect some high impact dominance. After destroying Steiner for fun it’s off to Simmons who is no slouch either as far as power goes. Off to Rotunda again who is the talented member here.

Simmons keeps up the football power style but he gets caught by a cheap shot from Steiner to give the Varsity Club the advantage. A lot of Simmons getting beaten down is clipped here which is probably good due to the sake of time. Oh yeah there’s some clipping as we go from Rotunda hitting Simmons to a shot of the crowd to a big brawl. Simmons is sent to the floor and Kevin Sullivan gets a shot in on him, giving the Varsity Club the countout win.

Rating: D+. Not bad here but the clipping takes away however good it could have been. The Varsity Club reached some pretty high levels on the heel totem pole in the next year and you could see it starting with this one, as they were totally outmatched but used numbers and cheating to advance. Could have been a lot better with time and no clipping.

That’s all we see of round one but the brackets are really confusing so I’ll wait for round three before I update the brackets. Nothing of note happens in round one so you’re not missing any upsets.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard vs. Italian Stallion/Kendall Windham

The Horsemen are tag champions. Windham is Barry’s real life brother but he and Stallion are jobbers. Kendall looks like Magnum TA, almost the point where I’d believe he was copied from his look. Stallion is a big power guy. Anderson shrugs off some offense and pounds away on the arm and ribs before bringing Tully back in. I keep thinking that when they cut to a shot of the crowd that they’re clipping but it’s just an NWA thing.

Off to Windham vs. Anderson and there’s the spinebuster (has a name here) and we’re clipped to Windham fighting back. Stallion comes in and we’re clipped again to Stallion making the comeback. And never mind as he ducks his head in front of Arn and since that’s just stupid, the DDT sends the Horsemen on to the semi-finals due to a bye. Too short and clipped to be rated.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Road Warriors vs. Jive Tones

The Jive Tones are Whatley and Conway. Animal runs over Whatley and things break down quickly. Animal is all like oh please and throws them both off the corner at once. Hawk comes in and just mauls people. Animal just shrugs them off again and brings in Hawk who hits a dropkick (one footed but whatever) and a top rope clothesline ends Whatley. Total squash.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Fantastics vs. Al Perez/Larry Zbyszko

The Fantastics were US Tag Champions at this point. Perez vs. Rogers starts us off. I like the Fantastics so this should be good. Rogers tries to speed things up as is his custom but Larry slips in a knee to break that up. Larry tries a backdrop but Rogers lands on his feet (SWEET) and it’s off to Fulton. Fulton and Perez speed things up a bit and Perez is in WAY over his head here. The heels take over on Fulton and we’re told we’re ten minute in as Fulton gets the pin on Larry off a very fast small package. Again, not long enough to rate.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Sting/Lex Luger vs. Dick Murdoch/Ivan Koloff

Sting is still very new on the national stage so Luger is the veteran here, despite having been in the big time less than two years. Luger runs over Koloff and must have done so for awhile because the opening has some clipping. Off to Sting who is as over as free beer. They have Magnum TA with them also so who do you think the popular team is? Sting escapes the corner but Murdoch takes him down by the arm.

Sting gets beaten down in the heel corner and Ross says don’t bother hitting Murdoch in the face because he won’t care. He gets knocked to the floor and Murdoch adds a chair to the back of Sting. Back in and Sting fires off a quick Stinger Splash to break things up. Everything breaks down and Sting reverses a slam into a small package for two that we’ll call three.

Rating: C-. Not a horrible match here but the clipping hurt it a lot. That’s the same thing that you can say about the whole show for the most part as it’s hard to get into a match when you keep clipping things up and taking out so much from each of the matches. Also, it’s not like there was any doubt as to who wins here, but that goes for almost all tournaments.

Crockett Cup Second Round: Sheepherders vs. Midnight Express

Big brawl to start and I think they’re all heels here. I can never remember when the Express turned face but it was huge at the time. Eaton gets double teamed and goes to the floor with Luke. Everything breaks down and Eaton pops Butch with the tennis racket for the pin. This was a mess.

That’s it for the first two rounds so here are the quarterfinals.

Midnight Express
Lex Luger/Sting

Powers of Pain
Road Warriors

Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard
BYE

Fantastics
Varsity Club

Jimmy Garvin vs. Kevin Sullivan

This is a Prince of Darkness Deathmatch, which means blindfold match. Clipped to them stumbling around until they get their hands on each other in the corner. Garvin keeps trying to point while the fans cheer him. Now logic would ask why he would do that if Precious is outside and he can presumably hear her. Also, if anything goes, why not rip the mask off? The idiocy of the match is that they keep stumbling around without any contact. And there’s a small package (move of the night so far) from Garvin for the pin. Horrible on all levels.

Rick Steiner and Ronnie Garvin come out for the beatdown and save. Ronnie takes a spike to the chest which would be the injury that kept him out of the tournament.

Up next is the final of the Bunkhouse Stampede, which aired on a PPV of the same name in January. The match is clipped here but I’m not watching it again so here’s the full version from the PPV.

Bunkhouse Stampede

Dusty Rhodes, Tully Blanchard, Ivan Koloff, The Warlord (wearing a Lifeguard shirt for no apparent reason), Arn Anderson, Lex Luger, The Barbarian, Animal.

Dusty gets a big entrance of course with all his accomplishments listed. Did I mention he was booking at the time? Seriously, ONLY DUSTY had anything listed about him, including the match he won to qualify here, his world title reigns, his US Title reigns, and his TV Title reigns. No one else got anything but their normal entrances. This could get bad fast. All eight are in there at once. There aren’t any weapons like promised or anything.

Remember, it’s a battle royal in a cage where you have to throw them over the ropes or through the door. My goodness this is idiotic. Apparently it’s unheard of for someone to win three straight Bunkhouse Stampedes. That could be because this is THE THIRD ONE! Wow Dusty lowered some IQs. Everyone is in some screwed up street clothes of some kind and this is just idiotic.

Apparently the referee has to determine if a guy goes over the cage or through the door, since that’s overly complicated I guess. Wow shoving people OVER A CAGE looks stupid. See, when it was a regular battle royal, IT MADE SENSE. Blanchard and Anderson work together of course. Barbarian, Warlord and Koloff are in the same stable mind you so they’ll likely work together. Koloff and Dusty climb the cage due to idiocy.

I’m watching people try to throw PEOPLE over a cage. Does that sound stupid to you or is it just me? How hard would it be to throw someone that is fighting back over a cage wall? Because to me, IT SOUNDS IMPOSSIBLE. Also, there are a lot of people walking around on the top ropes which is just freaking stupid too. No one is out or anything yet.

Arn saves himself from being thrown out the door as I realize how much this sounds like a really bad comedy sketch. Koloff is bleeding. Winner gets half a millon dollars. Not sure if I said that or not but I don’t want to stop the tape long enough to go back and read it. I feel sorry for Ross and Caudle trying to make this sound interesting or intense or whatever it’s supposed to be.

Luger and Dusty just go off as we’re supposed to believe that a guy that is built like Dusty is supposed to be in the same kind of condition as a stallion like Luger. Right. Oh yeah, and keep in mind this whole cowboy southern thing is in NEW YORK CITY. They continue to try to make this sound good and it’s just failing. Wow this was ten days before I was born and 12 before Hogan lost the world title to Andre. Holy crap that’s weird to think about.

Still no one out and we’re almost 15 minutes into this. It’s mainly just people in jeans hitting people with belts and boots. Yeah it’s riveting in case you can’t tell. Dusty’s arm is bleeding from being worked over with a belt. Make this stop please. Animal tries to shove Anderson over the top. I want to break this match.

Koloff, like an idiot, although at this time he’s one of two former world champions in there somehow, climbs over the cage to get away from Animal and gets knocked out to take us down to seven. Oh sweet mercy kill me now. So let’s just keep the camera on Koloff FOREVER as we see the EPIC DRAMA of him standing up. Animal and Warlord fight to the door and Warlord gets knocked to the door. Animal gets kicked in the head by Barbarian and it knocks both guys out in a stupid looking spot.

We have Dusty, Luger, Anderson, Blanchard and Barbarian left. Blanchard gets put in the Rack which at least hurts him. Some fan shouts about how freaking gay this is. Thanks for that. Luger takes a Gourdbuster and the Horsemen try to throw him out. Since Luger didn’t have any gourds on him though, he was fine and stays in.

Anderson, Luger and Blanchard fight by the door and they all go out after like three minutes of fighting. Arn at one point stood on the third step and choked Luger. Yeah he deserved to lose. So we have Barbarian vs. Dusty. Any bets on who wins here? Barbarian gets some brass knuckles and pops Dusty with them. Barbarian hits like three of his top rope headbutt finishers but Dusty fights back baby!

They climb to the top rope for the epic move known as the OH NO THIS MATCH MAKES NO SENSE SO LET’S CLIMB UP SO WE CAN HAVE A REASON TO GET THROWN OVER THE CAGE! Yep, Dusty wins by hitting the elbow to the head and we’re done. Earl Hebner is the referee here but would be in WWF in 12 days for the famous twin angle. Dusty gets a big bronze cowboy boot. Give me a FREAKING BREAK!

We hear about Dusty was considering retiring before this but came back “for the people.” So he was about to leave and came back for the people. So apparently by coming back for the people, he just had to come up with a PPV for himself and put himself over in it. Sure why not.

Rating: F. There was a cage match with a battle royal going on. This was a MASSIVE love letter from Dusty to Dusty. This was all about getting him even FURTHER over and making things look even stupider. Somehow Dusty was the wildcard and the favorite at the same time. He’s US Champion already but was going to retire. I give up. Just a joke of a main event and a show.

Crockett Cup Quarterfinals: Powers of Pain vs. Road Warriors

This is the only match shown from this round. Barbarian vs. Animal gets us going and Animal sends him to the floor with a powerslam. It goes to the floor and the Warriors take over again. Hawk throws the wooden steps at Barbarian and kind of hits him. Paul Jones, the Powers’ manager, freaks out about it to no avail. Hawk vs. Warlord now and Hawk takes over, hitting a middle rope punch for two.

Double teaming by the bad guys take over and Hawk gets beaten down a bit. There’s a big boot to put Hawk down for two. There’s a powerslam for the same. This is kind of winding down I think. Bearhug time which is required in a power match. Hawk kicks him low to escape a full nelson but Barbarian comes in again for a bearhug of his own. There’s some heel miscommunication though and Hawk takes Barbarian down with a clothesline. There’s a hot tag to Animal who cleans house. Animal accidentally clotheslines the referee and everything breaks down. Animal pins Barbarian, Dusty Finish, Powers of Pain win. Blow me.

Rating: D+. The match was ok and then we get a bogus finish to tick off the crowd. It was about Animal hitting the referee by mistake so the Warriors get disqualified. This wasn’t much of a match but considering the circumstances, this was better than it could have been. Either way, it was nice to see a full match.

James J. Dillon vs. Midnight Rider

This is a bullrope match and Rider is Dusty under a mask, but the idea is he’s NOT Dusty which everyone, namely Dillon, knows. You win by pinfall here. Dillon is a manager and part time wrestler and if he wins here then the Rider is unmasked. If it’s Dusty, he’s gone for a year. Why not just write it on a freaking wall then? They’re in street clothes here and Dillon is busted open pretty quickly. Rider uses Dusty’s moves and it’s kind of a wink wink situation. A top rope cowbell shot ends this squash.

Post match another huge masked man comes out after the Rider and the heels beat Dusty down. Steve Williams comes out and gets beaten down as well.

Crockett Cup Semifinals – Sting/Lex Luger vs. Powers of Pain

Sting starts us off with the Warlord and they botch a headscissors spot. Sting gets beaten down again but comes out of the corner with a spinning cross body for two. Magnum goes after Paul Jones and hits him with the riding crop because he’s a mean person. Barbarian dominates a test of strength but Sting manages a monkey flip off the ropes, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Off to Lex and the good guys are in total control here. We’re at five minutes in and I think it’s been clipped at least a little bit. Barbarian takes over with a powerslam and a BIG boot to rattle Sting’s brain a bit. Everything breaks down again and the fans really don’t care. Know how I know that? The cameraman decides to put the camera on them and show us how boring they are. Warlord picks up Luger but Sting dropkicks Luger’s back so he falls on Warlord for the pin.

Rating: C. I’ve seen worse here and the crowd (while looking bored) at least made some decent noise. At this point and coming into the semi-finals you could clearly see what was going to be the finals and probably the winner. Nothing too bad here and you could see the great teamwork from Sting and Luger that would be around for years and years to come.

Crockett Cup Semifinals – Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard vs. Fantastics

This should be awesome. Rogers vs. Blanchard to get us going and as usual the Horsemen don’t start out that well. Double teaming puts Blanchard down and the Fantastics dance a bit. Off to Arn vs. Fulton as the champions take over. Fulton is sent into the post on the floor and rolls back in to get beaten up by Blanchard a bit more. Fulton’s tights are half down.

The heels naturally cheat because they’re Horsemen and that’s what they do. Anderson comes in and pounds away even more, but it’s Fulton with a facejam and there’s the hot tag to Rodgers. The Fantastics hit double dropkicks all around and the Rocket Launcher hits Anderson but he’s illegal. Teddy counts it for two anyway and Tully makes the save. Anderson pops in with JJ’s shoe and that’s enough to pin Rodgers.

Rating: C+. Short but it’s still pretty easily the best tournament match of the night so far. The Horsemen vs. Luger/Sting is something you really can’t screw up and I don’t think they will here. Not a classic or anything like that but it’s still a pretty solid match. There was clipping but that’s the nature of the beast on this show.

NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Nikita Koloff

Flair runs his mouth a bit and ticks Nikita off. Great heat on the champ too. Barry Windham is here and is even more hated. Barry heads to the back after the entrances and is embraced by the Horsemen. Technical stuff to start and Nikita grabs the arm to start. We’re clipped a bit and Flair has no idea what to do to a muscle dude like Nikita. He finally gets an atomic drop out of the corner and Nikita is finally down.

Koloff fights back and works on Flair’s knee, wrapping it around the post and then slapping on the Figure Four. Out to the floor with Nikita still in control. Flair’s chops and strikes have no effect on Nikita and he’s mad. Nikita bites away in the corner and accidentally pokes the eye of the referee. Flair throws him over the top so Nikita kills him dead with a middle rope Sickle for two because Tommy Young was blind. He hits the Sickle again but he goes flying over the top rope. Back in Flair grabs a rollup for two and a backdrop for Nikita gets the same. And then Flair throws him over the top for the cheap DQ. I really hate that rule.

Rating: D+. The Nikita push was long since over due to his wife dying and him not being as roided up, but there was still enough heat here to make it watchable. That being said, the ending was really weak and hurt the match more than it was going to recover from. Not exactly the Flair vs. Windham classic from last year is it?

Crockett Cup Final: Sting/Lex Luger vs. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard

The winner gets a million bucks. Tully vs. Luger to start which is fine for me. Off to Anderson quickly and it’s all Luger with him even busting out a dropkick of all things. Anderson makes a tag while on the floor which doesn’t count because it, you know, illegal. Off to Sting vs. Tully and even Magnum gets in a shot which just feels right. All sting/Luger for the first few minutes here.

Back to Lex and Anderson with some stuff clipped I think. Luger works on Anderson’s arm just like he’s an Anderson. Gee it’s like he learned something during his time in the Horsemen and is incorporating it into his offense now. What black magic is this??? Back to Sting who works on the arm again but the Splash misses in the corner. Back to the fresh Tully who throws Sting over the top for a not-DQ because Dillon had the referee. See how much a manager can help?

Spinebuster puts Sting down and draws some WOOs from the crowd. Not sure I get that one. It turns into a standard tag match now and Sting grabs a Stinger Splash out of nowhere but messes up the Deathlock so Anderson is able to make the save. There’s your tag to Luger and everything breaks down. Magnum trips Anderson and the distraction is enough for Luger to roll him up for the pin and the tournament win.

Rating: C+. Just a regular tag match here for the most part but the crowd carried this a lot. Sting against the Horsemen just felt right which is why I never quite got him being part of them later, even when they were faces. The crowd wasn’t as burned out as you would expect as this was the second night of the tournament which helped A LOT.

There’s a ceremony post match.

Overall Rating: D. I’ve seen worse, but by the end of the tape (just two hours) you’re going to feel worn out. There’s just way too much tag team stuff and REALLY bad non-tournament matches to make this work at all. It’s better than the previous two but that’s not saying much. I’m really glad this one got discontinued because I can’t stand watching them.

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Monday Nitro #56
Date: October 7, 1996
Location: Savannah Civic Center, Savannah, Georgia
Attendance: 4,300
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Eric Bischoff, Larry Zbyszko, Bobby Heenan, Mike Tenay

Please let this be more interesting than last week. I don’t think I can take another one of those shows. This is another build to the Halloween Havoc PPV show and hopefully we’ll get some followup on the Liz in the NWO hotel room stuff from last week. The main event is Flair vs. Savage (it’s been a few months so I don’t mind as much) and another Benoit vs. Steiner match for some reason. Let’s get to it.

We open with a clip of the end of the show last week. I don’t think we saw what was in the package that Vince brought in, which he seemed a bit nervous about.

We get a clip of Harlem Heat winning the tag titles back from Public Enemy on WCW Saturday Night.

Harlem Heat vs. Public Enemy

Nice to see them get this out of the way quickly. And this is non-title……why exactly? The new champions don’t even get an introduction. That’s a very odd way to start a title reign isn’t it? This is about respect or revenge or something like that. The Heat takes over pretty quickly but Patrick is knocked to the floor and is down as we take a break. Back with Liz trying to get in Savage’s dressing room. She walks in but Randy is gone.

Back to the match as Rock is in a camel clutch. Harlem Side Kick gets a very delayed two. Off to a chinlock after Sherri cheated a bit. This isn’t the most interesting match in the world. Rock gets double teamed down in the corner again. The NWO is in the arena. I don’t think I see Hogan in there though. The match of course stops and they have a microphone. The Outsiders threaten Harlem heat and make Slim Jim puns.

During this whole things it’s almost all chinlocks and rest holds. Larry wants to know how they got on WCW’s frequency. That’s a really good question actually. The NWO shuts up as Booker misses a middle rope elbow and both guys go down off a clothesline by Rock. Public Enemy takes over until Colonel Parker interferes and Rock falls off the top onto the table. The Heat goes after Grunge’s bad knee with a chair and they drop a top rope knee onto the chair onto the bad knee for the pin.

Rating: D. Boring match in the first place which is dragged even further down because of the Outsiders stuff. I’d still like to know why this wasn’t non-title. I mean, the Heat wins and they look pretty dominant doing it, so why not add on something like a title stipulation to make it more interesting? Not much to see here but part of that is due to the match stopping cold because of the Outsiders.

A limo arrives and Jeff Jarrett has jumped ship to WCW.

We get a clip from Saturday Night of Nick Patrick fining Randy Savage one million dollars. No word on if it was ever paid or not, but I remember this moment as it aired.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Jim Powers

After a basic power man opening by Powers, we get a quick promo from Page about Eddie. Nothing too special, but it’s nice to hear them actually talk about their upcoming matches. Cross body gets two for Powers. He tries a full nelson but Page escapes and the Cutter ends this. Quick match.

Page roughs up Teddy Long post match but just shoves him.

Here’s Macho Man to a big ovation. He brings out….oh for crying out loud he brings out a racecar driver. This is what you would expect from it to be. I still don’t care. The NWO car wrecked so Savage declares victory for WCW. So uh….about that ex wife possibly joining the evil team stuff? Can we talk about that or anything like that? Nope, it’s still racing chat.

Savage takes like two minutes teasing how high he finished in the race. He finished 10th and this is supposed to be a big deal. Savage talks for four minutes and doesn’t talk about Liz AT ALL. It’s all racing crap and I’m tempted to fast forward. Oh and he’ll beat Hogan. Liz FINALLY comes out and Savage won’t talk to her. Well there was really a point to that.

Faces of Fear vs. High Voltage

High Voltage is Rage and Kaos. The Tongans jump them and it’s Meng vs. Kaos to start. Jarrett will wrestle tonight. The Horsemen are in the aisle since they’re against the Faces of Fear at Havoc. Total dominance here as Rage is beaten down. Powerbomb gets two. A slingshot into a big boot (nowhere near as cool as it sounds) ends this.

Rating: D. Nothing match here but it was a decent enough squash. High Voltage was never worth anything but Kaos was Rick Steiner’s pick to be one half of the tag champions at one point for no apparent reason. The Faces of Fear got a mini-push until the end of the year and got the title match at Starrcade. Just a squash here.

Glacier vs. Mike Wenner

What a great jobber name. It’s pronounced Winner. Glacier has the weird lights like Sin Cara has at the moment. He takes Wenner down with the leg sweep and goes for the arm. The fans think this is boring and I’m not going to argue with them that much. Glacier hits an over the top rope dive and a spinning kick ends this. Total and complete domination. He wouldn’t be on Nitro again until December.

Glacier does martial arts until the second hour starts.

Eric announces Jarrett as part of the NWO. Where did he get this information?

Jeff Jarrett vs. Hugh Morrus

Jarrett hadn’t been on TV in the WWF for about 8 months so this wasn’t exactly the biggest shocks ever. Eric keeps telling us that Jeff is in the NWO and I still don’t get where he got that from. Heenan asks Eric where he went last week and Eric brushes it off. Morrus takes over after about a minute and Jeff misses an enziguri. The announcers are blasting him every chance they get. I think it’s something about Jeff wanting a shot in WCW and Eric saying no, so it must be the NWO that brought him in.

Jarrett takes over with a great dropkick for two. Powerslam gets two for Morrus. The announcers want to know where the NWO is because they usually have their members’ backs. Maybe because no one ever said he was in the NWO? Morrus misses a top rope elbow and Jarrett wins it with the Figure Four.

Rating: C-. Eh this was just ok. Jarrett would be around for about a year before he headed back to the WWF to be a really annoying country singer which he would be for another year before he got his hair cut and turned into a male chauvinist pig. This was just a basic introduction to Jarrett which was fine.

Tony talks to Jeff and says he’s part of the NWO because he got out of a black limo. I’m serious. That’s their rationale for saying that Jarrett is in the NWO: the color of his car. Jarrett talks about Hogan bragging about how he made promoters like Verne Gagne and Jerry Jarrett (Jeff’s dad, big time promoter in Memphis back in the territory days), and says that Hogan didn’t make either of the Jarretts. He goes on an old guys are awesome rant and tells the NWO to stick it.

Buy the NWO shirt.

Renegade vs. Arn Anderson

Renegade still had a job at this point??? He was an Ultimate Warrior rip-off (same mannerisms, look, style, Hogan talked about him being the Ultimate Surprise etc) and he squashed Anderson for the TV Title in 95. The problem was he made Warrior look like Shawn Michaels in the ring. Anderson controls to start and breaks up a sunset flip. Renegade is looking like the jobber that he should have been.

The fans chant for the DDT as Eric sings WCW’s praises, in this case that of Harlem Heat. Anderson works on the arm while Eric kind of bashes the other announcers for bailing on him. You know, like he did to them last week but we’re not supposed to remember that I guess. Renegade gets a shot in and Tenay suggests that Jarrett might be the swinging point for WCW. Oh dear. Eric still doesn’t trust him. Handspring elbow by Renegade but the second is broken up. DDT ends this.

Rating: D+. Squash here and that’s fine. I still don’t get why Renegade has a job at this point but I guess there’s a logic to paying him a bunch of money somewhere. Nothing to see here and the Ultimate Warrior doing a cartwheel elbow is pretty stupid when you think about it. Nothing match and nothing to see here.

Anderson hammers on him post match until Luger makes the save.

Lex Luger vs. Dave Taylor

Why did Luger go to the back and come out again two minutes later? Luger says in an inset promo that he wants the TV Title back and that he’ll be ready for Anderson. The match is just what you would expect: Taylor gets in a few shots and then the Rack ends it. Basically a workout for Luger.

Anderson jumps Luger with a chair as Luger is leaving.

Chris Benoit vs. Rick Steiner

Scott is injured but is here with Rick anyway. Steiner goes right after him to start and pounds him down with ease. I still don’t get why this mini-feud is even happening. Belly to belly gets two. Off to a chinlock and we talk about an Olympic silver medalist talking about joining WCW, which wouldn’t happen. Another suplex has Benoit holding his neck and head, which makes me wince a bit given what we know now. After a two count we take a break.

Back with Benoit in control with a chinlock but he goes to the corner and pounds away when the cameras are back on. Scott goes after Nick Patrick a bit and Patrick freaks. An NWO limo arrives with Hogan inside with Giant. The match isn’t that important I guess. Hogan says watch this place because he has business to take care of. Benoit had Rick in a chinlock at the time so at least he was smart enough to think through it.

Eric rants about Jarrett some more and Benoit hooks another chinlock. Rick wakes up and hits a huge Steiner Line but Benoit just gets mad because of it. He chops Rick so hard Rick’s headgear falls off. FREAKING OW MAN! Swan Dive gets two. Benoit jumps into a suplex and then a DDT gets two for Rick. The top rope bulldog gets….two? Since we were having a decent match, here’s Debra to make sure it gets screwy. Mongo goes for the briefcase but Rick steals it and waffles Mongo with it (great looking shot) and then hits Benoit for the pin.

Rating: C+. Without the shenanigans and distractions, this would have been a pretty solid match. Rick certainly wasn’t much in his later career, but when he was on he was on pretty well which was the case here. Benoit was so hungry at this point and you could tell how awesome he would be if they gave him the proper push, which unfortunately never really happened.

US Title: Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair

After Savage’s entrance, the NWO is shown in the back and Hogan tells the Nastys to watch his back. He wants to talk to Savage on his own. DiBiase has the NWO contracts for the Nastys. We cut to the back and the NWO is standing over Flair who is out cold. Vincent takes the US Title belt with him. There was a sound resembling a lead pipe shot before we cut there. Liz is there and looks terrified. I think this was due to Flair needing legit shoulder surgery.

Liz is stalked into the arena by Giant who has the title. Hogan jumps Savage and beats him down with a chair. This beating goes on for like 7 minutes as Heenan shouts a very good question: WHERE IS THE REST OF THE LOCKER ROOM??? Trash is thrown into the ring and they do his outline in spraypaint. Hogan declares Liz and Savage null and void because he owns her mind, body and soul. Something about a contract is mentioned. Hogan says he’s going to destroy the broadcast booth and here’s an NWO monster truck. WHAT AM I WATCHING???

Overall Rating: C-. Better than last week for sure, but this show is crawling towards Halloween Havoc about as slowly as you possibly can. Most of the card is announced and they’re building things up, but the problem is everything is pretty much set and there is n’t much to have as far as matches on Nitro goes. Not a great show, but WAY better than last week’s.

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Monday Nitro #53
Date: September 16, 1996
Location: Ashville Civic Center, Ashville, North Carolina
Attendance: 5,000
Commentators: Bobby Heenan, Larry Zbyszko, Tony Schiavone, Eric Bischoff

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. We’re done with Fall Brawl now and Sting is public enemy #1 in WCW, even though he showed up in WarGames and proved that he was innocent. The card is nothing special tonight but we do have a debut of a pretty big name which we’ll get to later on tonight. Let’s get to it.

Is there a reason why Hogan, the NWO leader and top heel for over two months now is still in the red and yellow and the first three pictures you see in the intro to a WCW show?

We open with some shots from last night with Larry and Tony talking about how it was all about Sting. At the end of the show, Liz came out to save the beaten down Savage and got her dress spraypainted.

Tony apologizes to Sting because we were supposed to know he was in Japan. Larry says if Sting is so sensitive he should get another job.

Apparently there were NWO guys at the entrance handing out papers with their logo on it.

Cruiserweight Title: Rey Mysterio vs. Juventud Guerrera

The announcers are talking about Sting as soon as the bell rings. Rey grabs a weird looking backbreaker hold and Juvy grabs a DDT. The NWO wants their own TV show now. Glacier debuts tonight. GLACIER DEBUTS TONIGHT! Well kind of as for absolutely no apparent reason his debut match was on some Sunday show instead of here. WCW never thought things through.

We’re 90 seconds in and there has been absolutely zero nothing said about this match or the guys in it. I mean that literally. They have talked about everything else. Not even saying that was almost it on a two count. At 95 seconds, we start talking about the match with Juvy whipping Rey in. They speed things up and Rey kicks his head off with a spinwheel kick.

Scratch that momentum as Juvy takes over again and goes up for a springboard dive, only to see Rey dropkick him in the stomach to the floor. Rey hits a springboard rana as we take a break. During the break, we get an NWO t-shirt ad. Back with Juvy getting two off something we didn’t see. A springboard spinwheel kick and a baseball slide send Rey to the floor and an Asai Moonsault puts him down again.

Back in a springboard 450 gets two. Well he’s no AJ Styles. Top rope rana gets two…and here’s an NWO rally instead of the match. Back in the ring (that place with that wrestling stuff), Rey counters a top rope powerbomb into a mid-air rana (SWEET) for the pin to retain. We saw that move by about 4 seconds. I can’t wait for them to mess up something like that which I’m sure they will for the sake of nothing of note at all.

Rating: B. Oh come on were you expecting something other than a fast paced and fun match with these two at a combined age of 42? The lack of talking about it got annoying but that’s to be expected. Either way, very fun match even if the crowd didn’t care about Juvy. These two would have more classics.

Mongo and Benoit say how they should have been in WarGames instead of Luger/Sting so tonight they’ll take revenge on them. Now that sounds like something a Horseman would say.

We get a video on Glacier who talks in this. His Georgia accent ruins the image. I get why I never heard him talk other than this. Well not for several years at least. He talks about going to Japan to train and being taken in by an old master who is his sensei. His mask is a tribute to gladiators or something. This goes on WAY too long, clocking in at almost two and a half minutes. The accent absolutely killed this.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Ice Train

Train shoves him around a bit as I begin to think of a really bad tag team in the form of Ice Train and Glacier. They do a weird spot where it looks like they’re supposed to collide but they stop like an inch ahead of each other to eliminate all of the momentum. Weird. Page hits a top rope clothesline to take over and there’s a discus punch. Discus lariat follows it up but Page won’t cover.

The Cutter is countered and Ice gets a belly to belly to put both guys down. Train gets going with a spinebuster and powerslam for two as Teddy Long, Train’s manager, gets on the apron. Now let’s cut to the back for a shot of “fans” in NWO gear taking over the merchandise stand. While this is being shown, THE BELL RINGS AND WE HAVE A PIN.

Yes, they actually missed the end of the match to show “fans” putting caution tape around the merchandise stuff. Who won? Not mentioned. What did he win with? Not mentioned. We didn’t even cut back immediately and the stuff in the back kept going on even longer. Apparently Ice Train had a full nelson and Page grabbed Teddy Long’s towel to throw it in for a forfeit on Train’s part. We see that on a replay, but that’s beside the point. We didn’t see enough to rate it but it was fine.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the point where wrestling has officially stopped meaning anything. The match wasn’t much, but the company decided that showing people in the back (not wrestlers mind you, just “fans”) were more important. This is what the Attitude Era would become defined on over the next few years and would become the foundation of what Sports Entertainment was. We aren’t focusing on wrestling and competition anymore. We’re focusing on drama.

This kind of thing gets on my nerves. It’s one thing if there’s something of note to show, but this is saying to the wrestlers “Yeah, we know you’ve trained for years to do this and we know you’re working hard out there, but we have something more important than you to put on screen.”

If this was Hall and Nash beating people up or something, that’s one thing but that isn’t what’s happening here. It’s fans taking over a merchandise stand and it’s the second match this has happened in. Is there ANY reason this couldn’t have waited another two minutes? No, there isn’t and everyone in WCW is cool with that, which is why people stopped watching (in part): it stopped being about wrestling. This will become huge later on when we eventually hit the late 90s.

Anyway the fans take over the stand and put up NWO stuff.

Sean Waltman, formerly known as the 1-2-3 Kid, is in the front row and his release from WWF is acknowledged.

Konnan vs. Super Calo

Konnan is sent to the floor so Calo hits a flip dive (mostly) to take him out. Tony invites Mike Tenay to sit on his lap. Ok then. Back in Konnan hooks a top rope butterfly superplex before hooking a backbreaker kind of hold for a bit. We go back to the floor and Calo tries another spinning dive but leaves it short again, more or less slapping Konnan instead of landing on him.

Konnan takes over again and drops Calo with the Scorpion Death Drop. Here’s something you don’t see something every day: Calo hooks a headscissors/ankle rana off the top and Konnan lands on him. This is a really sloppy match. A missile dropkick to the floor mostly misses as does a regular one in the corner. Konnan drops him with what would later be called the 187 (fisherman’s brainbuster) for two and a powerbomb into a victory roll gets the same. The Power Drop (Razor’s Edge into a sitout powerbomb) gets the pin.

Rating: F+. The plus is for the speed of the match, but there’s no excuse for a match having this many misses and mistakes out there. Calo never got over at all for the most part despite being on TV pretty often. This was a horrible match from an execution perspective and I don’t think they knew if it was a squash or not.

The 1-2-3 Kid says he’s here because Nitro is hot. He asks Tenay who won WarGames and Tenay isn’t impressed. Waltman seems surprised the NWO won. Total “I’m in the NWO but I’m not saying I’m in the NWO” promo.

Hugh Morrus vs. Brad Armstrong

Nothing of note in the first minute. I have no idea why this match is happening. Armstrong takes over with a dropkick and we talk about Liz last night. Larry thinks Flair went through her alimony from Savage and dumped her. Tony: “How do you know how much she had?” Larry: “No matter how much she had, Flair could spend it.” Preach it brother! Morrus takes over and hits No Laughing Matter (moonsault) but makes a very casual cover, allowing Armstrong to quickly roll him up and steal a pin.

Rating: D+. What in the world was this? I really don’t get this: it’s the most random wrestling match and ending I’ve ever seen. It looked like a squash but we get that ending? It didn’t go anywhere or anything, so what was the point here? It wasn’t bad or anything, but why did it happen? I don’t understand this at all.

Hour #2 begins.

Here’s Savage for an interview. We get some shots of last night where the NWO beat Savage down and left him laying. Savage says he’s ready for Hogan and that’s all he’s got left.

The NWO arrives, including the fake Sting. They’re going to beat up someone tonight.

Randy Savage vs. Scott Norton

This starts in the aisle with Savage being all crazy again. A knee to the back puts Norton back on the floor and it’s Crazy Macho again. There’s the double axe off the top to the floor and we talk about the NWO wanting to beat him to death next week because there’s going to be no WCW guys around as they’ll be in Japan. Eric talks about how Sting was in Japan promoting the tour that he (Eric) set up but he didn’t realize it was the impostor last week. That’s either foreshadowing or really stupid.

Norton takes over with power and it’s the traditional Randy Savage beating. That’s more or less one third of what he did around this time: get beaten up, get disqualified, or hit one move, a slam and the elbow to end it. Savage takes over and we go to the floor with Norton getting sent into the barricade a few times. Norton gets slammed on the floor but grabs a DDT for two back in the ring. There’s the shoulderbreaker and Macho goes to the floor. He avoids being sent into the post and then WHACKS Norton with the chair for the DQ.

Rating: C. Pretty fun brawl while it lasted and it accomplished the goal that it needed to get through: making Savage look like a crazy lunatic that could kill Hogan if given the chance. They managed to kill the heat on the match because we needed to have Hogan vs. Piper for some reason. Anyway though, this was more fun than I expected.

Glacier vs. Big Bubba

Let’s get this over with. Glacier has his infamous overblown intro which cost thousands of dollars per time I believe. Bubba doesn’t get an entrance and it’s snowing in the arena. They have the blue lights ala Sin Cara/early Kane matches too. Glacier fights like a Power Ranger. Bubba finally gets in a punch and a big spinebuster but Glacier pops up and fires off a bunch of kicks because that’s all he knows how to do. A big spin kick ends this. More or less just an exhibition by Glacier.

Sting (the real one) is here and Eric says this wasn’t expected. This is a very famous moment. He wants to explain last week. Last Monday, he was on a plane coming back from Los Angeles. Important note to this: his back is to the camera and he won’t turn around. He talks about how Luger hasn’t come to see him and he’s tired of all the doubt. The fans are kind of booing him here.

That brings us to Fall Brawl where he was going to tell Lex to his face. Luger didn’t believe him there either. After everything he’s done, how dare no one believe him after everything Lex has done over the last year. That’s a really good point. He’ll stand by all the wrestlers and fans that stood behind the Stinger, but as for everyone that doubted him, you all can stick it. From now on, he’s a free agent. He’s going to pop in when you least expect him. With that, he walks out of the ring and leaves. That’s the last time he would speak on camera for about 16 months.

Ric Flair/Arn Anderson vs. Chris Jericho/Marcus Bagwell

Think this is going to get any attention from the announcers? Before the Horsemen come out we cut to the back where Liz is too scared to come to the ring with them. Before the match starts, Waltman stands up in his chair and holds up a box with a button on it. He presses a button and a ton of leaflets fall from the ceiling with NWO on it. Bischoff says Waltman is the 6th one (Hogan, Hall, Nash, DiBiase, Giant, Fake Sting makes six without him but I guess math is too hard for WCW).

After a break the papers are still falling. We at least get a bell. Arn vs. Jericho gets us going. The Canadian takes over with a dropkick for two to start as we’ll be lucky to hear 5 words about the match. Spinwheel kick puts Arn onto the floor as the papers keep following. Eric admits that he’s the Executive Vice President of WCW and admits he agreed to give the NWO their own TV show if they won last night or they wouldn’t fight. That would wind up being a segment on Saturday Night that was done for comedy.

Flair comes in to chop away at Bagwell but Buff (not yet Buff but who cares) fires back and it’s about what you would expect. The Horsemen double team a bit as there is zero heat on this match. Flair is crawling around on all fours outside and is mad about the papers. I’d be mad too if the fans kept throwing the papers at me. Anderson gets a spinebuster on Jericho for no cover. Tenay starts questioning Eric’s decision and it’s covered up well by Bischoff. It’s interesting to look for the hints to the swerves that would come.

Jericho gets beaten down by both guys and Heenan enjoys it way too much. As the Canadian gets his leg worked on Horsemen-style, we cut to the back where Giant is arriving and Waltman is with them with a small boom box. At least it’s split screen so we can see the match, as boring as it is. And there goes the splitting. They play a tape of “Sting” running his mouth about not trusting anyone. After about a minute of that, back to your regularly scheduled match.

Hot tag brings in Bagwell and he’s still Marcus so no one cares. They tried forever to get people to care about him and it didn’t work ever with him as a face. Woman interferes to allow Anderson to knock Bagwell out dead with a DDT. The Figure Four goes on and Bagwell gets beaten by the rare pin in the submission.

Rating: D. Not an entertaining match at all. It was ok but with all of the distractions going on in it, there’s only so much you can get out of it. The papers and then cutting away from it for about a minute took way too much out of it. To be fair to the bad ideas though, the match wasn’t going to be interesting no matter what they tried with it.

Buy this Horsemen t-shirt for $22! This is back in the days of $30 PPVs. That would be the equivalent of about a $35 t-shirt today.

Chris Benoit/Steve McMichael vs. Lex Luger

No Sting for Luger to tag with. Benoit start with Luger and I guess they’re still going with the idea of the other Horsemen being upset about not being in WarGames. There’s the snap suplex. You know for a guy that went through WarGames last night and passed out from the pain of a double submission, Luger looks pretty good. Mongo comes in for his usual boring stuff.

A forearm/elbow gets two for Benoit. We’re told that more or less EVERYONE ON THE ROSTER other than Savage is going to be in Japan next week. Heenan: “QUIT TELLING EVERYONE THAT!” Listen to Brain. He knows his stuff it seems. A double clothesline puts both Benoit and Luger down as we’re waiting on the screwy finish. Luger makes his comeback and Racks Benoit but here are Flair and Anderson for the DQ.

Rating: D+. Another weak match here but it was around to set up what the lack of Sting means for Luger and for just the big beatdown post match. Not a horrible match again, but at the same time they were really just wasting time here until the ending and everyone knew it, which is one of the most boring kind of matches you can have.

During the beatdown, Eric gives us the word that Waltman is officially to be called Syxx.

Outside the NWO is watching Nitro in a limo. They hear that no one will be here but Savage next week, so they’ll beat him up. Thanks Eric.

Overall Rating: C-. The wrestling was terribly boring here but they have like six weeks before Halloween Havoc so they have plenty of time left. Not the worst show ever but it was really more about transitioning things, including the start of the REALLY big part of the NWO angle, which is saying a lot. Sting’s speech is huge and the rest is just there.

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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.

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.

Great American Bash 1988
Date: July 10, 1988
Location: Baltimore Arena, Baltimore, Maryland
Attendance: 13,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Tony Schiavone

This is a bit more like it and it’s a traditional PPV. If you’re a fan of long matches, this is the show for you. There are five matches and the shortest is just under sixteen minutes long. The main event is Lex challenging Flair for the title as Luger is the hottest thing in the world and the question is how is Flair going to escape. Notice I said escape and not win. Let’s get to it.

The opening video is a bit too upbeat for my tastes. The name of this show is the Price of Freedom. Did George Bush produce this?

World Tag Titles: Sting/Nikita Koloff vs. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard

No entrance for the champions. Koloff has a full head of hair and it’s not working for him at all. Sting has burst onto the national scene with his classic at the first Clash so the crowd is white hot. They clear the ring quickly but the Horsemen are all like BRING IT ON. Sting nails a dropkick to send Arn to the floor and then hits a plancha (remember this is 1988) and takes Anderson out.

They’re the official starters and it’s off to Nikita for some arm work quickly. Koloff fakes Anderson out and hits Sickles on both Horsemen but doesn’t cover until late and Arn gets his foot on the ropes. Those idiot Lithuanians. Sting comes in and it’s back to the arm. The Horsemen try to double team Sting with stereo top wristlocks but Sting is like screw that and backflips out of it. He was so fast and so athletic back in the day that no one could touch him.

Tully comes in and finds his arm being yanked on too. Nikita works him to the mat with ease and gets some two counts. Tony and Jim talk about the continuity of the challengers being great which is a surprise. It’s so nice to hear guys talking about the match and analyzing it instead of having them rant and rave about stuff that has nothing to do with it. Blanchard misses a charge into the corner and goes into the post shoulder first.

Anderson manages to slap Tully’s boot but that doesn’t count. I wonder what you actually have to do to have a tag count. That’s an interesting question. Anyway back to Sting after a fake tag (he did the clapping thing) as Tully still can’t get out. We’re 10 minutes into this and it’s been all Sting and Koloff, which is an old formula in the NWA and I’d bet we see it again in Luger vs. Flair later.

Koloff and Blanchard go to the mat and Anderson FINALLY gets the tag but Nikita rolls to his own corner to further frustrate Arn. Koloff takes Anderson to the mat quickly but the Horsemen get in some shots to the knee to FINALLY slow things down. That lasts about five seconds as Koloff and Blanchard collide and go to the floor together. Nikita suplexes him in for two but JJ makes the save. Koloff tries to drill him but clotheslines the post instead and there’s your match changing moment.

You don’t have to tell Arn twice that someone has a bad arm so he sends Koloff’s arm into the post again and Tully pounces. Off to Anderson for the hammerlock slam (called vintage by JR). There are five minutes left and that should tell you what the ending is going to be right away. Koloff fights up but gets caught in a DDT for a pop. That’s still a very popular move at this point but it only gets two here.

Tully and Arn keep working on the arm but they can’t seem to pick which arm that it’s supposed to be. Blanchard hooks on an armbar and we have three minutes to go. Arn tries a Vader Bomb but jumps into knees and the hot tag gets a big pop. We’re under two minutes and Sting is dominating. Sting dropkicks Tully and hits the splash but Arn makes a tag to kill the crowd dead. The one minute mark brings a sleeper to Arn but Tully tries a top rope sunset flip which Sting blocks. Sting hits the splash and gets the Scorpion on Blanchard but time runs out and it’s a draw.

Rating: B-. Solid stuff here but with five minutes to go everyone knew it was going to be a draw. Also the first 10 minutes or so are mainly armbars but Sting was such a popular and charismatic guy that he was able to carry the whole thing through to that point. Nikita helped as well as he knew how to work a crowd like few others. Good opener though, although I’m not sure if they should have kept the titles on the Horsemen or not.

US Tag Titles: Fantastics vs. Midnight Express

The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers) are champions and if they win they get to lash Lane and Eaton 10 times and they get to lash Cornette as well. Jim will be up in a cage above the ring though which is funny stuff as he’s legit scared of heights. I’ve always liked the Fantastics so this should be good. Cornette is in a straitjacket as well.

Cornette freaks out as only he can do, getting in such lines as “THIS JACKET HASN’T BEEN TAILORED!!!!” and then trying to bribe the referee with 5,000, 10,000 and finally 15,000 dollars. The referee turns him down so Cornette says “WHAT KIND OF CRACKPOT ARE YOU? YOU’RE AN HONEST MAN! BOBBY HE’S AN HONEST MAN!!!” Cornette gets in the cage and has one of the best terrified reactions you’ll ever see. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I’M GOING UP IN THE AIR!!! MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!” Hilarious stuff.

Ok so now there’s the bell as all of that was just pre match fun. Bobby Eaton vs. Bobby Fulton gets us going. Fulton tries a cool move by sliding between Eaton’s legs but pulls him down into a sunset flip position for one. Eaton takes him to the mat with a headlock to take over but a headscissors sets up a rana to put Eaton right back down. The fans are all over Cornette who I think is having a heart attack.

Lane comes in and fires off some awesome kicks to send Fulton out to the floor. Lane’s martial arts were always good. Rogers comes in and beats up some Midnights to take over again. We hear about the Maryland State Athletic Commission, which no one has ever heard of before and is foreshadowing for later tonight. Eaton pops Rogers in the face but a blind tag brings in Fulton again and everything breaks down. The champions send the Midnights to the floor and dance a bit.

The focal point is mainly the arm of Lane and Rogers backflips out of a backdrop but a blind tag brings in Eaton for a bulldog. This is a total chess match with both teams trying to top each other. Stan takes Tommy’s head off with a slingshot clothesline and it’s back to Eaton to destroy him a bit more. Swinging neckbreaker gets two. Lane comes back in and fires off some kicks to send Rogers into Eaton for a Low Down backbreaker.

Tilt-a-whirl backbreaker gets two as Rogers is in the ropes. Cornette is still sitting in the cage and is freaking out. We’re at about eleven minutes which JR and Tony tell us more than once because I guess we need to know it really badly. Rogers finally gets in a shot but Lane is in to break it up. He misses a kick by what must have been a good six inches (or half his foot, whichever you prefer). (I’ll now pause for you to roll your eyes at what might be the worst joke I’ve ever made).

Fulton tries to come in illegally which doesn’t work because most faces aren’t good cheaters. Sunset flip gets two for Rogers but Eaton takes him down quickly. Top rope legdrop (Eaton’s is great) hits for a tag instead of a cover. The Midnights keep up the beating but a Rocket Launcher eats knees as we hit fifteen minutes. It’s finally a hot tag to Fulton and everything breaks down. Double teaming puts Fulton onto the floor and he takes a slam out there. Down goes the referee and Stan has a chain or something. Eaton winds up with it and pops Fulton with it for the pin and the titles and a face pop.

Rating: A-. Don’t let anyone tell you the 80s weren’t the best time ever for tag team wrestling. This was for the midcard titles and it was a great match. It’s totally awesome as both teams work together so well and you got a great match out of it as a result. This was what they did on all kinds of house shows and the scarier part is that the Rock N Roll matches with the Midnights were probably even better regularly.

The chain is found post match but it doesn’t matter as Eaton slipped it into Fulton’s tights. That’s genius. Post match Cornette takes a lashing with a belt anyway.

Cornette rants to Bob Caudle about the torture he just went through.

Road Warriors/Ronnie Garvin/Jimmy Garvin/Steve Williams vs. Kevin Sullivan/Mike Rotundo/Russian Assassin/Ivan Koloff/Al Perez

This is the Tower of Doom match. Sooo…..how in the world do I go about explaining this one? This was a one off concept (thank goodness) that is kind of like WarGames meets Doomsday Cage (Uncensored 96) meets Triple Cage (Slamboree 2000). You have three cages: one is a taller version of a regular cage. Above that you have a smaller cage and above that you have a cage that at most two people could fit in at once.

The idea here is every two minutes, each team sends in a man. Now the logical thing would be to put them in at the bottom, but instead they’re starting at the top via huge extended ladders. The idea is you have to climb down the cage and out the door. The catch is that Jimmy Garvin’s chick Precious is in the bottom cage and has the keys.

The entire point to this match is that Sullivan wants Precious who keeps turning him down. I’m not sure if it’s been introduced yet or not, but there was something about papers he had that she didn’t want being seen and he called her Patti as if he had known her before so maybe they were married before or something but the whole insane story was dropped with no explanation after Garvin got hurt and Precious, his real wife, left wrestling. That’s wrestling for you though.

The rest of the people aren’t there for any particular reason. The Varsity Club and the Road Warriors were feuding I think but they were more there as heavies. Williams would join the Club soon after this and end that run. Ronnie is there because he’s part of Garvin’s family. They stand around forever to wait on everything to be secured.

Ivan Koloff vs. Ronnie Garvin to start in a clash of former world champions. Keep in mind they’re up there by the lights so the fans can’t see a thing. Rotunda is up there already (not in the cage but waiting outside of it) along with Williams to go in next. There’s no room for anyone to do anything up there so it’s really boring to start. After two minutes the trap door will open but it’s only for ten seconds so there’s a chance of having a 2-1 situation.

Garvin and Koloff chop each other a lot and the cage shakes. I’m scared of heights so this is terrifying for me. We randomly cut to a not very hot chick in the crowd as the horn goes off for the two minute interval. The door is open for like 40 seconds as Garvin goes through and there’s some powder thrown. Ok so Garvin is in the second cage by himself and has to wait there now. Williams is getting beaten down 2-1 and Animal and I think that’s Perez who are coming in next.

Williams fights both guys off as the cage keeps shaking. I need some Tums. The horn goes off and Garvin gets down to the regular cage, Williams and Koloff get into the middle cage and it’s Animal vs. Rotundo and Perez on top. Precious lets Garvin out so it’s officially 1-0 Team Garvin but 3-2 in the cage itself. Hawk and the Assassin are up next but not quite yet. Animal takes over on the heels and the fans actually get into it.

Koloff gets beaten down also and there’s the horn. Perez makes it to the middle cage as does Animal. No one makes it to the bottom cage so it’s Animal, Koloff, Williams and Perez in the middle while Rotundo, Hawk and the Assassin are up top. Jimmy Garvin and Sullivan who are more or less the captains are left. Williams slams Koloff and JR is practically in the cage to suck him off for it.

Another horn goes off and it’s Perez and Animal in the bottom cage, Koloff, Hawk, Assassin and Williams in the middle and Rotundo, Jimmy and Sullivan up top. Now remember that just because all 10 are in, it doesn’t mean the horn thing ends because the trap doors aren’t staying open. Animal escapes to the floor and Williams puts Koloff in a Figure Four. Ross is saying how intense and insane it is and while it’s overkill, this is still pretty nuts.

There’s a horn and Rotundo finally makes it out of the top. Assassin makes it to the floor as is Koloff. Perez makes it out to the floor. Hawk comes down to the bottom and is in a handicap with the Russians. Ok so the Russians and Road Warriors are feuding. That’s why they’re in this. Hawk takes them both down with a clothesline while Garvin and Sullivan fight up top. Williams vs. Rotundo is going on in the middle. I’ll give them this: they’re staying on a wide shot at least some of the time and you can see most of everything which is a nice touch.

Precious is still in the bottom cage remember. Hawk escapes, but that leaves it 4-2 (Jimmy/Williams vs. Russians/Sullivan/Rotundo). Williams makes it to the final cage but Garvin and Sullivan don’t care about moving but eventually go down. Williams and the Russians escape so we’re left with Rotundo/Sullivan vs. Jimmy Garvin, who thankfully isn’t in those small white trunks anymore.

The horn goes off and Rotundo gets out of the entire cage while Garvin vs. Sullivan are left in the middle. A big brawl breaks out on the floor with the other 8 guys because Garvin vs. Sullivan is pretty boring without Precious involved. Garvin works on the leg a bit and then they slug it out. The horn goes off and they both go down to the bottom and Sullivan goes right for Precious who kicks him away for Jimmy to save her. Garvin works on the knee some more and hits his brainbuster finisher but can’t get the door unlocked. Sullivan gets up and shoves Garvin out to give Team Jimmy the win.

Rating: D. The match is a total mess, but by comparison to something like the Doomsday Cage Match, this is a masterpiece. It makes almost no sense but at least once you get into the match you can follow it. There’s one really stupid part which we’ll get to here in just a second if you haven’t figured it out already. It should have been WarGames, but this isn’t a total disaster I guess.

Now we get to the big problem: since Garvin was thrown out, Precious is locked inside with the man that wants to either rape and/or murder her. Yeah they didn’t really think that one all the way through did they? Sullivan drops to his hands and knees and crawls over to her as Jimmy and Hawk try to climb up the ladders for the rescue. Sullivan gets her jacket off and pulls a rope or chain out of his trunks and chokes away until Hawk FINALLY comes in to half kill Sullivan with a clothesline. Garvin gets Precious out as you have to wonder why in the world the Garvins EVER agreed to let her be in there in the first place.

Oh and one other thing about it that makes it more bearable than the Doomsday match: YOU COULD SEE IT. They were in the middle of the arena and it was well lit. Why that was such a stretch for 96 is beyond me.

Bob Caudle fills in some time while they take the cage down.

US Title: Barry Windham vs. Dusty Rhodes

Barry is defending here and this is Dusty’s rematch after being stripped of the title for beating up Jim Crockett. Windham used to be Dusty’s friend but turned on him to join the Horsemen and take Luger’s spot so there’s heat here. Barry charges in but Dusty lifts up his elbow to scare him away. Dusty sends him to the floor quickly and Barry needs time out. Barry drops an elbow on the back of his head but Dusty pops up for a gorilla press to take over.

A DDT puts Barry down again as Rhodes controls to start us off. Rhodes hits a top rope cross body for two after the earth stops shaking. Dusty pops both Windham and JJ with elbows and the crowd explodes. The fat man was indeed popular and no one can take that away from him. Five minutes in now and Barry pounds away. I miss the NWA telling us the time gone in a match as it helps keep track of where we are and wasn’t just for time limit endings.

We go to the floor and Windham’s piledriver is reversed. Barry pounds away in the corner and we go outside again. And never mind as Dusty leans back on the rope (amazingly it doesn’t snap like a twig) to slingshot Barry out to the floor again. Barry grabs his finisher, a claw hold, after JJ interferes. We’re currently at 90 seconds of the US Champion having his finishing move on Dusty but Dusty is gyrating. Make that two minutes of nonstop claw. Dusty manages to stand up, climb the ropes (which doesn’t call for a break from Tommy Young) and signal for an elbow but Windham takes him down again.

We’re at 3 minutes straight now and Dusty hasn’t been past his knees in about two minutes of that. Imagine if Cena stayed in the cross armbreaker for three minutes. The internet would form into a missile and kill him all at once. Total time in the Claw: four minutes and five seconds before an elbow breaks it up.

Let me repeat that: the old man (Dusty is a veteran at this point and in his early 40s) just lasted over four minutes in the finishing hold of the young unstoppable US Champion who won the title with that very hold. I’ve heard of killing moves dead before but Dusty took the Claw, shot it, buried it, turned it into a chicken, plucked it, cleaned it, put it in batter and sold it to a man named Sanders.

Dusty is immediately fine and tries a Figure Four but gets caught in the Claw again. Dusty was out of the hold all of 8 seconds. This one only lasts 46 seconds as they go up to the corner again. Barry tries the superplex but Dusty shoves him off and takes out the referee. Dusty slams him off and hits the big elbow but there’s no referee. Ronnie Garvin of all people comes out and kills Dusty dead with his Hands of Stone punch finisher as he turns heel. The Claw is academic as Dusty is dead and Windham retains. Garvin would be gone in only a few months and would be in the WWF by December.

Rating: D+. That claw in the middle was just so ridiculous. I mean seriously, Dusty lasted practically 5 minutes in it overall and was just fine until a punch comes out and stops him cold? I mean how weak does the Claw look now when a right hand, the most basic move in wrestling, ends Dusty faster than five minutes of a claw? How many matches have you seen that are shorter than five minutes? Imagine a single hold lasting that long. Crazy.

Garvin is with JJ and Gary Hart, another heel manager. There appears to be a suitcase of money handed to Garvin. See, why is that so hard? Someone did it because of money. Why is that such a hard concept anymore?

NWA World Title: Lex Luger vs. Ric Flair

That would be written a few dozen times over the years but this is one of the first times. Pretty basic story here: Luger was a Horsemen, lost his US Title to Dusty at Starrcade and then said he was going to be on his own and got thrown out of the Horsemen and was replaced by Windham, his best friend. This is his revenge/shot at awesomeness. Flair is in white which isn’t something you see often.

Flair is in white trunks with yellow pads and Luger is in yellow trunks with white pads. Uh…deep? Very slow paced start but they have a lot of time. This has TV time remaining which sounds really odd on PPV but it’s the truth. Flair is sent to the floor and takes a walk in front of the State Athletic Commission. Luger leapfrogs him and adds a gorilla press for pain.

The champ hits the floor again and yells at a fat boy in the crowd. There’s always one of them out there. I think the real money in the NWA was in coaching physical fitness, not wrestling. Back in Lex grabs a half test of strength and guess how that goes. Gorilla press puts Flair down again and it’s off to a bearhug. There’s a suplex and Flair’s back is being destroyed. Lex’s big elbow hits but a second misses.

That does a total of nothing as Lex hits a hip toss and we’re back on the floor again. Flair sends him into the railing and takes over. We’re over ten minutes in now as Flair puts him down again. Flair starts in on the ribs which takes away the Rack I think. Lex fires off a clothesline for two and Flair goes up. This time it’s different though as Lex shakes the rope and Flair is crotched. Another clothesline gets two as does a slam.

A very long sunset flip gets two. Now we get to the second half of the match as Flair goes after the knee. We’re 15 minutes in and Flair cannon balls down onto the leg. There’s the Figure Four (wrong knee of course) but it only lasts for a few seconds. Lex somehow gets up and clotheslines Flair to the floor and it’s the momentum that sent him out there as the rule is adjusted again. Granted that was almost always how it was called.

Flair chops away but Super Lex isn’t hurt at all. That was another constant: chops never worked on Lex. Sting was about the same too. Luger hits another gorilla press but the knee gives out after it hits. Lex, ever the genius, tries a knee drop and misses. He deserves it for such a boneheaded move too. Flair goes up and this time is slammed down. JR says that’s the fourth gorilla press for Luger. And people say Cena is repetitive.

An atomic drop is no sold by Lex. If there’s ever been an anti-steroids ad, I give you exhibit A. We’re at twenty minutes so this is almost done. Flair is sent to the floor again but it doesn’t last long. They collide and both go over the top where Flair screams that his leg is hurt. Lex goes into the post and Dillon sends him into it again.

Now we get to the interesting part: Lex is busted open. Remember that. There’s barely any blood but the announcers make it clear that Lex is bleeding. And here’s the Maryland State Athletic Commissioner to get the referee’s attention. Lex puts him in the Rack and there’s the bell.

Rating: B. Good match here but the Starrcade one blows this out of the water. The ending is pretty stupid as I’m sure you can see what’s coming a mile away. Lex would face Flair about a thousand more times for the title but he would never get the big win, which is what stopped Lex from becoming the mega star that he was supposed to become. Let’s get to the part you all know is coming.

The match is stopped because of the cut. The fact that no fan has ever heard of the Commission and that you can’t see any blood is ignored.

The faces come out to raise Lex’s arms but it means nothing.

Overall Rating: B-. It’s a pretty good show but the ending is pretty weak. I don’t get the point in not switching the title here and having Flair get the title back at Starrcade. The rest of the show is pretty good stuff although the Tower of Doom is pretty stupid. The second tag match is very good and the rest of it is solid enough. Worth seeing but don’t watch the home video as it hacks the thing to pieces.