Summerslam 1996
Date: August 18, 1996
Location: Gund Arena, Cleveland, Ohio
Attendance: 17,000
Commentators: Mr. Perfect, Jim Ross, Vince McMahon

Well it’s certainly a new era in the WWF. For one thing, Shawn is the undisputed biggest star in the company right now. Bret is on hiatus, and a loud mouthed guy from Texas is flipping people off and cursing a lot. It’s like there’s a growing Attitude or something going on. Eh nothing will ever come of that. I remember this show really well but actually have never seen the main event all the way through.

When I was watching the show live I taped it and for some reason never watched the main event. I guess the tape messed up or something like that, but I’ve never seen all of it so this will be virgin territory for me. This is the night of the first Boiler Room Brawl which is by far and away the most famous match on the show. I have fond memories of this show, so let’s see if they’re justified.

Dark Match: Yokozuna vs. Steve Austin

Austin won the KOTR earlier this year and with his post match promo, instantly became one of the hottest things on the planet. Yoko weight 660 here and would be gone pretty soon. It really is sad to see someone that had undeniable talent reduced to this, simply based on the fact that he couldn’t control his weight. This is a very short match, maybe three minutes or so.

Austin tries to knock him down and can’t, Yoko takes over and goes to the corner, and then in one of the most infamous botches ever, the ring ropes break and Austin just pins him. I’ve never heard anyone say that was planned and based off the announcers’ reactions, it wasn’t planned. Yoko was clearly surprised when that happened, so I’d guess that was all unplanned. Like I said, Austin just kind of rolled him up for the pin afterwards.

Rating: C. This is very hard to grade so we’ll call it average I guess. N/A would probably be a much better grade actually. It’s way too short to tell if it’s good or bad, but it wasn’t terrible and it was on free TV, so how can I complain about bonus not awful wrestling?

We get a very well done intro talking about monsters that wear masks and the heroes that fight them. That’s a really cool idea as both heels wear masks which is a nice connection to make. This was one of the better packages I’ve seen in a long time.

Savio Vega vs. Owen Hart

No real point to this match other than to have a fast opener which there’s nothing wrong with. Apparently both are good with martial arts. I think I missed that memo. Owen has a cast on his hand from an injury that I don’t remember happening. He’s doing the Orton thing as he’s been hurt forever apparently. Cornette isn’t there as he’s with Vader for the main event instead. Savio keeps going for the arm which is very basic yet quite intelligent strategy.

Ross wants to know how Owen passed a pre match physical. Are we supposed to believe that when matches are made on the fly that everyone has pre match physicals? Come on JR give us more credit than that. We go split screen to see Vader warming up for the main event as Vince says that Owen should feel slighted by being ignored by his manager. Why is it that every time someone throws a kick they’re instantly a martial artist?

Anyone else find that to be WAY too broad of a generalization? I certainly do for one. Savio doesn’t seem like much of a martial artist to me and neither does Owen, not in the slightest really. Vince continues to stir the pot saying that Stu isn’t as proud of Owen as of Bret. With talk like that, it’s no wonder he was almost a career heel. Owen has an armbar on Vega for a decent while and he bites Owen to escape. That’s either cool or just freaking stupid and I’m not sure which it is actually.

Clarence Mason, who is the lawyer for Cornette, starts walking towards ringside but no one is sure why. It turns out that he’s more or less staging a coup of Camp Cornette, but that was a bit off in the future. He was worthless to say the least. I’m pleasantly surprised with this match. It’s not mind blowing but it’s certainly not bad at all. I’d even go so far as to say it’s good.

A long match with faster guys is usually an excellent combination. It has one of the critical points that I think makes matches great: I’m not sure who is going to win. That uncertainly factor can work wonders for matches as it gives you a reason to want to see the ending. That’s what makes a match successful or any entertainment for that matter: you want to keep watching it because you’re not sure what’s coming.

They do a belly to back off the top but Savio’s head slams against the cast. Owen plays possum and slams the cast into Vega’s head before putting the Sharpshooter on him. Clarence comes in to celebrate but Owen isn’t sure why he’s there. Not a fan of the ending but this was a good match. On the replay you can see that the referee would have obviously seen the cast shot.

Rating: B+. Like I said I’m not a fan of the ending, but this was a very solid match in my eyes. It was up tempo, there was some storytelling in there, and I wasn’t positive who was going to win. It was a good way to set the tempo for the show and it’s given me high hopes. Based on this match alone, this show is better than last year’s.

Bradshaw comes out and beats up Savio with whom he was feuding with at the tiem in a decent but completely forgotten feud.

Todd goes into the boiler room to talk to Mankind, who says Taker shouldn’t come in here and that he’s ready for battle.

Tag Titles: Smoking Guns vs. New Rockers vs. Godwins vs. Bodydonnas

Again I ask, is it really that hard to get the tag titles on the show? New Rockers are Al Snow and Marty Jannetty, but Snow is known as Leif Cassidy at the time. This has elimination rules which automatically makes it better as it more or less gives you three matches for the price of one. Skip has a neck brace for no apparent reason. Dang the copyright for getting rid of Don’t Go Messin With A Country Boy. JR is given the task of explaining the tag title scene this year. Good luck good sir. You’ll be needing it.

Sunny as a cowgirl is incredibly attractive to say the least. Billy shouts about something unintelligible. She should have been one of the biggest names ever. Not just because of her looks either as she just had a great presence about her. You could see she just knew what to do in front of a camera. That’s a talent that no amount of looks can buy you. Yep, the champions are heels here, I guess along with the Bodydonnas and maybe the Rockers.

This is starting off very slow as would be expected until get the comedy idea of having the Guns fight each other. This lasts about 8 seconds as Zip comes in. He gets tripped and pinned very fast as I think Skip’s neck injury was legit. It seemed way too convenient and pointless to have them out there and eliminated so fast, so I’m assuming his neck really was hurt. I think they were faces or at least tweeners actually, which surprises me. Rockers take over on Hank.

This doesn’t last long as Hank realizes he’s fighting the freaking New Rockers and beats them up with relative ease, pinning one of them after the Slop Drop, bringing it down to the Guns vs. the Godwins. Due to the rules being the way they are, any way this ends means the titles can change hands. Not sure if that makes sense but it’s mid 90s WWF stuff so I’m just going to go with it. Billy just will not shut up and I’m sick of it already.

They beat on Henry for a long time until Billy being the brains of the team sets for a corner splash but screams first, leading to him getting caught. This allows for the lukewarm tag that no one could care less about. Apparently Bill Clinton is turning 50 today.

Hillbilly Jim goes after Sunny which allows for the double team to end the match and the Guns keep the titles. Afterwards Sunny talks about how great she is and offers a gift to the arena unveiling a massive poster of herself, which I’m certainly not complaining about.

Rating: B-. Eh, it was a pretty bland four team match but it let the Guns keep the belts with relative ease and it filled in some time on the card. It wasn’t particularly good, but it certainly did the job it was supposed to: title defense that took up some time and made the champions look good. That’s as good as it can get I guess.

British Bulldog vs. Sid

Not entirely sure why they’re fighting but I think Sid is feuding with all of Camp Cornette at this point. No Cornette with him though as Jim is with Vader. Sid says his usual insane stuff that goes nowhere at all. Again, why was he so freaking popular? Vince thinks Psycho Sid is crazy. Nice one there Vinny Mac.

Vince thinks fans are the same all over the world. Does he sleep through the Canadian shows? After Ross says don’t expect a lot of technical stuff from Sid he breaks out a headlock takeover and various suplexes, the last of which is countered into Davey’s suplex. Clarence Mason comes down to be pointless. Yes we have two big power guys here, laying on the mat with headlocks. I give up.

We see Vader warming up in the back with Cornette. They get it right here for the most part though by showing this while Sid is out on the floor rather than in the middle of action. Powerslam to Sid but Cornette comes out to yell at Mason. A second powerslam is blocked into a chokeslam and powerbomb by Sid to end it.

Rating: D. Boring match that did nothing at all but further the horrible Cornette vs. Mason feud for control over his stable. Once Mason took over the stable died completely. This was just a quick match that had nothing at all going for it and no one cared at all, or at least I didn’t.

Quick video on Shawn.

Goldust vs. Marc Mero

This is stemming from Goldust hitting on Sable a lot in the past few weeks. At least there’s a reason for them to fight. That’s a nice lesson that the writers today need to learn: it’s very possible to have a decent feud with even the most basic of stories. Running in to beat on someone isn’t really a storyline. That’s the common issue that starts “feuds” anymore and that just doesn’t get it done most of the time. Mero says that he’s going to win.

Goldust has been calling Sable mommy or something like that. That was never really explained which I think is the best move. Vince says that Mero and Sable are special people. I’m guessing it means he slept with Sable. JR hints at something called the Wild Thing. It’ll end the match. Naturally in a Goldust match it starts with random stuff from him that inspired the character that is known as KB. I’ve always found Mero to be overrated but he’s doing pretty well here.

Who would have thought that Goldust would still be active 13 years later? Ahmed Johnson, the IC Champion, is out with an injury and they’re not sure what’s going to be done about the belt. It’s vacated very soon if I remember correctly. Correction it was vacated earlier in the week. Mero would win it in a tournament in about a month or so. Goldust takes over for awhile until Mero is beaten down pretty badly.

Mankind comes out for no apparent reason as he and Goldust were working together for no apparent reason. Mero goes into the corner and comes off with a….well he jumped off and…it was kind of like….well he just jumped backwards and hit Goldust. This was of course very risky since it was from Mero. We’re told that Pillman is interviewing Sid on the Superstar line. Have to love that they’ve gotten over Sid nearly killing him in the War Games match in the early 90s.

The fans and commentators are just bored out of their mind but the classic ten punches in the corner gets them going a bit. Mero finally gets in the air a bit and wakes the people up somewhat. After beating Goldust up, they completely screw this up as Mero debuts the Wild Thing, more commonly known as a Shooting Star Press. Now, Mero just debuted a new big move that was clearly a finisher. So the logical thing would be to have him get the pin with it right?

Apparently not as Marlena is on the ropes for all of 5 seconds, which added to the two count is enough for Goldust to kick out. Yeah, that’s great. Let Goldust just kick out of it. If you’re going to do that, have the two count and THEN Marlena up on the apron so the count stops and Mero goes after her. Just don’t kill the move’s credibility that quickly.

They show the double screen of Mero doing and talk about how great it was. Goldust hits the Curtain Call for the pin. I just don’t get that. What’s the point of debuting a huge move like that and have him lose? Goldust tries to kiss Sable but Mero beats him up pretty well for it.

Rating: C+. This just has me shaking my head. It made the Wild Thing look weak here to have Goldust simply kick out of it, as well as just have Goldust beat him clean maybe 90 seconds after it. The wrestling was fine, but I do not get what the point was of the Wild Thing.

Sunny and Farrooq come out, as Sunny’s stable now consists of two cowboys and a black supremacist/gladiator. Does that sound like the beginning of a bad joke to anyone else? Two cowboys, a gladiator and a gold digging woman? Either a bad joke or a cheap B movie. His blue helmet just looks so stupid.

He’s out there yelling about not being the IC Champion. To make even more sense, he lost the tournament in the finals to Mero of all people. Simmons desperately needs to get in the Nation of Domination. Sunny says she gets what she wants and she wants the IC Title. Does that mean she’s going to be in the tournament?

We see a recap of Lawler vs. Jake Roberts. Now this was a very interesting and intense albeit short feud. The idea is simple: Roberts is a recovering alcoholic and Lawler is making fun of him for it, even having a big bottle of alcohol in the corner with him for the matches and offering Jake a drink. Lawler, as a heel, has a huge fear of snakes. Some of the this is actually really disturbing as Jake has a bad issue with alcohol, which means I don’t think it should be used as an angle.

Before the match, we’re introduced to the World’s Strongest Man, Mark Henry. Oh dear. He comes out to Luger’s music of all things so you know this is going to be bad. He can’t even get the headset on right to do commentary. For a guy like Vince that is obsessed with musclemen, this is just a big orgasm, complete with pyro for Henry.

Jerry Lawler vs. Jake Roberts

He’s been on commentary 10 seconds and I’m already annoyed with him. Lawler has a bag of his own but we don’t see what’s inside yet. He’s also rocking a Baltimore Ravens jersey, which is considered cheap heat but to me that’s just pure awesomeness. For an Indians fan like me, this is just fun. Sandy Alomar is there and he says he’s left tickets for the Modells. He brings Jake’s partners, the Jim Beam twins.

He insults Jake’s wife as Henry is cracking up at the jokes, despite being a face. They point out that Henry was injured in the Olympics, as Lawler says that he’s dumb enough to bronze a gold medal. Henry is just awful on commentary. His comebacks are that of a 6th grader. Lawler is just doing one liners here as is his trademark. I never realized how tall Jake is but he’s about 6’5 which is taller than Orton and HHH.

Harvey Whippleman is the referee so Lawler is the most normal person in the ring. Lawler shows what’s in his bag: a massive bottle of alcohol. Henry shows that he’s a long term heel, saying that he’s afraid of snakes. Roberts wraps Revelations, the big yellow snake, around the King. Wouldn’t that be a foreign object? Ross sounds like he’s giving moral support to Henry which is just stupid sounding. After about 7 minutes of stalling, they finally make contact.

However in this case, I’m ok with the stalling as it makes sense here. Vince talks about how Jake is a veteran. I’d think Lawler has more experience actually. Lawler steals a soda from the floor and throws it at Jake. Henry of course is concerned about the fan’s drinking tonight. My goodness he’s terrible at this. Ross suggests that Henry learn the DDT. Yeah that’s a big negative. Lawler hits Roberts in the throat with a bottle to pin him with the tights.

The ironic part of Perfect being on commentary was that he was a huge alcoholic too. After the match, Lawler pours whiskey down Jake’s throat. He gets another bottle to do the same, but Henry, the face, stops him. This got really quite intense, but it was better in ROH when Raven did it to Punk, with Dreamer’s help.

Rating: C-. This was all about the angle and not about the match at all. The match itself would probably be an F, but the angle is very solid. It’s a real life angle that can actually work out. The sad part was how Roberts fell apart with alcohol and drugs in the future as has been well documented.

Backlund is campaigning to be President.

Recap of Taker vs. Mankind. Nothing here that needs explaining.

Boiler Room Brawl: Mankind vs. Undertaker

The way you win here is to come to the ring and claim the urn from Paul Bearer, who will be standing in the ring for the whole match. This is an odd match as Taker comes into the boiler room and immediately stats looking for Mankind. The big problem at first is you can’t see anything. The lighting is terrible and it’s a lot of lurking in the shadows and stuff, which is fine but not for a wrestling match.

Everything is way too dark to really get anything going. The commentators are talking about how Mankind could be anywhere. Now we get to the weird part: as soon as Mankind sneaks up on Taker and beats him up, we lose commentary. It’s not like the audio dies, but they just stop talking. It’s really weird to have a match like this with no audio at all other than the wrestlers themselves and whatever sounds they make while beating on things.

As for the match itself, it’s mainly the two of them hitting each other with random objects, which is fine as it’s just a big brawl in an odd place but the chemistry they have is perfect with each other, making this very fun. We get random things from the announcers, but it’s like a word between all three of them a minute. I’m assuming there’s closed circuit or something in the arena. The video goes out momentarily too but Vince says they’re sorry for it. Ah there it is.

This is mainly just weapons use, which is ok but can only go on for so long. Mankind launches some steam at Taker, which may or may not have been scalding. The crowd pops huge for Taker getting a pipe to the balls for some reason. This is really starting to show how important commentary is to a match as it would help a lot here. Running knee to the area near Taker’s head into a steel door would hurt horribly I think, if nothing else it would hurt Mankind’s knee.

Taker is getting his head handed to him like never before, which seems to happen in every match he competes in against a big time heel. Mankind’s incoherent babbling is a very nice touch. More technical difficulties as I’m pretty sure the fans are watching on closed circuit as they boo the heck out of it. This is the longest its been out for, although we pop in long enough to see Taker being slammed. We’re back now and Mankind has a ladder.

When I say ladder, I mean an old wooden one, not the kind in ladder matches. Here’s where we get the most seen spot of this match, with Taker pulling Mankind off the ladder and him falling onto a bunch of pipes and pieces of metal and wood. Oh, apparently it was a big box. As Taker goes for the door, a thought occurs to me: when Taker was looking around for Mankind just after coming in, why didn’t he just turn around and leave?

The rules just said once they were both in the first to get to the urn in the ring wins, so why not just turn and run? Probably because it wouldn’t be much of a match if that’s what they did I suppose. Big shot with a fire extinguisher which is always cool. They get through the door which is good as this match was in bad need of a change of venue. Mankind does something very smart and barricades the door. That’s actually a brilliant move when you think about it.

The dumb part comes when he stands there to help barricade it. Isn’t the point of blocking the door to be able to run from it? It’s weird seeing wrestlers standing in the hallway as these two fight. Mankind throws hot coffee on Taker, which could be fake I suppose. After about 20 minutes they’re in the arena. The good part is that it doesn’t feel like this has been going that long, which to me says it hasn’t been boring.

Ah good we have TV monitors there to show the people what was going on during the earlier part of the match. That’s nice of them. They fight even more trying to get into the ring. This is a great touch as it’s just more brawling and I like that after this long there’s no real leader. In a sick looking spot, both are on the apron and Taker slings the ropes back and Mankind slams down on the concrete. Taker gets in the ring and takes the knee, but Bearer won’t give him the urn.

Mankind takes him out with the claw as Bearer is laughing. He slaps Taker as JR screams to stop that. Taker crawls to Paul, reaching up for the urn. Bearer slams him in the head with it and hands Mankind the urn for the win. This was huge at the time as Taker had always had Paul Bearer with him. As they leave, Bearer says he’s Paul Bearer and you’re not. Well I’m glad he can say his own name. Maybe next he’ll know his phone number.

We get a single gong which I thought was a mistake but the lights go out and druids start singing. They head to the ring I guess to help Taker. What was it like when they got to the arena? I’m trying to imagine them asking where their dressing room is. The druids carry him out in more darkness.

Naturally, he’d be back soon but feuding with Vader over the WWF Title #1 contender spot, eventually taking the belt at Mania. This would in turn lead to what was likely the biggest angle of his career, as in less than a year, Bear would mention the name of the man called Kane.

Rating: A-. This was a very good fight. The angle was huge at the end, but I think the brawling in the boiler room went on a bit too long. Coupling that with the lack of commentary and it’s just below a classic. This at the time was one of the most brutal matches ever, but what they would do in the summer of 98 blew this so far out of the water it’s unreal. Still, this was great.

In Your House promo.

Vader and Cornette, who is still a bigger name than Mark Madden as he’s on Summerslam here cutting a promo just before the main event, say that they’re going to beat up Shawn and take the title.

WWF Title: Vader vs. Shawn Michaels

Vader had been built up as unstoppable all year and had pinned Shawn the previous month in a 6 man tag. The opening/formula is exactly what you would expect: Shawn starts off hot by throwing all kinds of high risk stuff and punches at Vader and they work for a long while. However, soon Vader takes over after landing a power bomb on the floor. Granted that’s the same move that nearly killed Mick Foley, but we can let that slide I suppose.

Shawn is just getting the tar beaten out of him here so he’s following the Bret Hart formula of start hot, look good getting beaten up, and then make your comeback. Shawn has some mini comebacks and Vader counters with a thumb to the eye. There’s something funny about that to me. Perfect drops the term go home, which means to end the match. That doesn’t happen at the moment of course though as that would just suck for a main event.

Shawn skins the cat which to me is one of the most athletic moves you can do along with the nip up. He gets caught though and Vader just throws him which is a cool looking move. Perfect just hates Shawn to say the least. Shawn keeps trying to come back with punches and clotheslines but they just don’t work. In an odd spot, he slides down to try a sunset flip but Vader puts his foot on Shawn’s chest. Shouldn’t that be a pin since Shawn’s shoulders are down?

He finally takes Vader down with a big clothesline. I think Shawn botches a move as he has Vader down to the elbow but he pulls up and just kind of lands next to Vader on his feet. I think he was trying to make it look like a big stomp but it just missed totally. I wonder why it wasn’t the elbow at that moment. They go to the floor and brawl again, but this time Vader picks up Shawn and drops him over the railing chest/ribs first.

Vader slides into the ring for the count out win. Wait, what the heck? Yes, Vader wins by count out that quick. The female fan at ringside is SCREAMING at Shawn to get up as apparently Becca has made her way to Cleveland. Cornette is ticked off and shouts into the mic that it’s not over yet and demands to keep going. Shawn is called a coward and agrees to keep going of course. Vader beats the tar out of Shawn but a powerbomb is countered by a bunch of punches.

Shawn finally gets the elbow but Cornette throws in the racket. Shawn catches it and beats the heck out of Vader, which is merely Shawn returning the favor for Cornette beating on Shawn earlier in the match. Vader wins by DQ. And so ends Summerslam…again with Shawn leaving to fight another day. Apparently it doesn’t though as Cornette is talking (stop the presses!) again.

Shawn of course accepts one more restart and they’re at it again. Shawn is killing him to start but gets caught. In between the ref goes down and there’s no one to count the pin. Also, Vader gets up from SCM. They set for the Vader Bomb but Shawn moves as the big man goes for the moonsault. He hits a moonsault from the top of his own onto Vader to get the pin. Perfect is ticked off and leaves the announce booth. He comes back all of three seconds later. Shawn poses us out to end the show.

Rating: A-. This was another very good match, but the triple ending just kind of left me scratching my head. It would have been fine had they just done a standard match by giving Vader a ton of time to beat on Shawn, ending with the moonsault to win in. Either way, this was a fine version of David vs. Goliath with Shawn looking like the giant killer at the end of it all to send the fans home happy.

Overall Rating: A. This show was AWESOME. It was the polar opposite of that excuse for a show we had last year. Every match is at least good with some solid angles, brutal matches and good technical stuff. I really liked what I saw here tonight and yes, this certainly lvies up to the hype. It’s certainly in the running for best Summerslam to date and perhaps best ever, but at the moment I’ll have to go with 92 just ahead of it. Still, excellent show and a big recommendation.

Slamboree 1994
Date: May 22, 1994
Location: Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan

This show is designed around being a Legends Reunion, meaning we have a lot of old guys having matches that few people want to see. We’re also having the WCW International Title match between Sting and Vader which wasn’t supposed to happen but I’ll get to that later.

This is the last show in 1994 for me so I’ll have a solid wall set up to go from as I try to get going on the WCW years. This is also the last show before Hogan’s arrival and complete turning around of the company from bad with young guys to bad with old guys, so take that into consideration. That being said let’s get to it.

Keep in mind that this is a month or two after Mania X and the ladder match, so that’s what they’re trying to match.

We start with the Legends to drive home the theme here. We have Ole Anderson, Masked Assassin, Penny Banner, Red Bastien, Tully Blanchard (big pop), The Crusher, Don Curtis, Terry Funk (not here), Verne Gagne, Hard Boiled Haggerty, Larry Hennig, Killer Kowalski, Ernie Ladd, Wahoo McDaniel, Angelo Mosca, Harley Race (great heat), Ray Stevens, Lou Thesz, Johnny Weaver, Mr. Wrestling II and Tommy Young. They’re just introduced and nothing more. This was in Philly, a WWF town, so few cared. Gene throws it to the wrong guy as Jesse isn’t there.

Bockwinkle wants Sting out here. Sting is ROCKING a red suit. Not bad at all. So Sting lost the title to Rude in Japan (remember this is the International Title, the replacement for the NWA Title which was withdrawn from WCW in September) but in that match Rude broke his back and had to retire.

Because of this they said that a belt shot from Rude and coming off the top meant he should have been disqualified so Sting is still champion. Sting says he lost and wants to earn it against Vader tonight and the match is made.

TV Title: Johnny B. Badd vs. Steve Austin

Hat Guy is here, apparently cheating on Paulie. Well they’re improving here: only 13 minutes before the first match starts. Austin was more or less the hottest thing in the world at this point so of course he would be jobbing to Duggan two months into the Hogan regime. And three minutes in we have a sleeper. Badd counters with a jawbreaker which is amusing for some reason. Sherri is at ringside which would start the dumbest story in history as she loved Parker after taking a shot to the head.

At least Heenan is sober here. They’re doing a technical style here and it’s working pretty well. We hit a more basic style and it’s working fine. Badd could go at times, especially when he had a good opponent and Austin would certainly qualify as one of those. We hit a rest hold twelve minutes in. That’s far more like it.

You can tell ECW has been around as the chants are going insane with chants. They have the lights dimmed to hide the fact that the upper areas and a good deal of the lower areas are empty. After some heel interference by the manager we crank it up and the fans get into it really fast. The bell rings early on a two count so everyone is confused. Badd hits his top rope sunset flip for two. He goes for a belly to back but Austin kicks his foot off the ropes for no apparent reason.

They botch the heck out of the pin as I think Austin was supposed to reverse into something and use the tights but it looked like Badd just laid there and let himself get pinned. Good match but a bad ending.

Rating: B-. They went hard and fast out there and it worked rather well. The ending hurt it a lot but other than that this was fine for an opener. Austin would hold the belt a bit longer until Steamboat took it from him. Badd was getting laid by the opening spot as he was in it for like a year.

Wahoo McDaniel and Ernie Ladd are here. Wahoo admits to selling Indian blankets. Remember, this is in ECW’s town. Wahoo looks more confused than Stu Hart usually did.

Dusty is in Hollywood, as you can tell by the really big sign behind him. Apparently he’s doing a promo in the middle of a field/hill or something. He says nothing at all.

Tully Blanchard vs. Terry Funk

Blanchard comes out to what would become Jericho’s face music. There’s something wrong with the sound as you literally cannot hear the announcer. And Funk, who has been missing all night, comes out to something sounding like a slapped together Magnificent Seven theme. Now keep in mind this is in the….GORDON SOLIE IS ANNOUNCING!!! Anyway, they decide to have Funk in ECW’s town. Guess who the INSANELY over face is in this match.

Funk stands in front of Hat Guy. And of course we start on the floor. See, now unlike Heroes of Wrestling, Blanchard is in solid shape here. Also he’s not completely obsolete anymore. They haven’t been in the ring yet. Solie just throws out that he was in Miami back in 75 when Funk won the belt. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to crack open a beer with him and listen to him tell stories?

I think this is no rules which would make more sense here. Funk piledrives Blanchard through a piece of wood, which isn’t as great as it sounds, and Blanchard’s head comes nowhere near it. The fans chant WE WANT BLOOD. This is an intense match which is impressive as the old guys are having a more interesting match than the others were. There goes the referee of course and it’s chair time.

Blanchard is bleeding. Funk tries to piledrive Tully from the middle rope onto the chair but he winds up just landing on the chair so it looked like a really messed up powerbomb which is likely best in the end. Tully hits the referee for the DQ but I think it’s just a double DQ. The fans certainly isn’t pleased. Funk takes Hat Guy’s hat to end it.

Rating: B+. Fun. That’s the only way to describe this match. These two went out there and had fun and that’s all you can ask for. Yes that rating is likely high but this match was a blast. I can’t ask for more than that from a match with no point other than having two legends. The wrestling was quite good here too.

Flair, in a Hawaiian shirt, is feuding with Robert Parker’s stable and he’s got a mystery opponent tonight who is 6’7 and a former world champion. Considering the only person on the roster at that point fitting that description was Barry Windham, the opponent was obvious to everyone with a brain. Flair is the actual world champion here and not the International Champion. Yeah it was stupid back then too.

Larry Zbyszko vs. Steven Regal

Regal is TV Champion here but this is non title. Regal had been insulting America on Saturday Night and Larry got tired of it and punched him. There’s an anti-WWF sign in the crowd, saying WCW dominates WWF. At this time, not really but whatever. Both were rather uninteresting. Apparently Regal reads books on how butterflies fly. Why does Heenan know that? We’ve walked around for about a minute and a half and now we get contact.

It was a leg trip and it leads to more stalling. And then we repeat that. Ok seriously we’ve had three minutes go by and there have been two leg trips. Freaking DO SOMETHING! And now Regal is killing time on the floor. We hit some decent chain wrestling that lasts all of 10 seconds as I guess that’s just too much for them. Regal’s face is better than just about anyone else’s ever. There’s some great technical stuff in there but the constant stalling and standing around is hurting it a lot for me.

Regal uses a move that we would refer to as a Tazmission, which naturally gets a BORING chant from the ECW crowd. Regal goes for a butterfly suplex but Larry backdrops him over and gets a pin out of it. They would switch the title the following Saturday, so this being non-title makes something close to sense. You have to remember Saturday Night was like their Nitro at the time.

Rating: B-. This was solid from an in ring standpoint, but the stalling was freaking STUPID. It sucked the life out of this for me as it was like having commercials almost. It’s a standard thing for both guys, but that doesn’t make it right.

Funk is in the back and says he didn’t come out earlier because he’s THE legend, not a legend. He talks about Philly and clearly wants to say ECW but can’t do it. Funk isn’t leaving apparently.

Gordon Solie is here to induct people into the Hall of Fame. Lou Thesz is here to give out the plaques. He gets booed. That’s rather pitiful. WCW refused to think this one out apparently. In a town like Philly, WHY WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT LEGENDS???

They do an actual presentation thing for everyone complete with presentations and clips and music. Solie is a guy you could just listen to all day. He gets a nice reaction but people aren’t sure whether to boo or cheer.

The Crusher is next. He gets a small but positive reaction.

Third is Ernie Ladd, who isn’t even in a suit. Always thought he was overrated.

Apparently there’s an actual Hall of Fame in Atlanta. WWE needs that.

Next is Masked Assassin #2. Something you might not know: two things actually. He owned Deep South Wrestling and also is the father of one Nick Patrick. More or less they say he never did anything but he was around for a long time.

Fifth is Ole Anderson. Now keep an eye on him: he might try to kill the company on the way to the ring. Don’t underestimate him. He could pull it off.

Finally is Dick the Bruiser who they more or less say is their dead wrestler of the year. This guy was legit scary looking.

The fans were cordial at least. Fifteen minutes was a bit too long though.

Colonel Parker says nothing at all.

Dustin Rhodes vs. Bunkhouse Buck

It’s a bullrope match where there’s a cowbell on it and you win by pinfall. I tend to hate these matches, and the participants aren’t helping. This feud went on forever and it never was entertaining. More or less this is an excuse for Dustin to be able to wear jeans in a match. The fans want Funk and they let everyone know about it. Dustin works on the knee as I wonder why in the world Buck kept a job for so long.

And Buck ties Dustin to the post for no apparent reason. Apparently Dustin has a small circle in his pocket. Make your own jokes. This more or less consists of let’s beat on each other with a bell and have no one care at all for almost 15 minutes because my daddy was booker forever and I kept a job for a long time because of him. The fans want blood and Funk. A heel mistake and a bell to the head ends this. And Funk finally comes down to beat on Dustin.

Rating: D+. Do they think anyone cares about Rhodes vs. Funk at this point? It was a big feud in the SEVENTIES. This of course went on for months after this and no one cared. It lasted almost another year and never once was interesting but then again it’s WCW so there we are.

Red Bastien and Ray Stevens are here. I don’t care either. Bastien trained Warrior and Sting.

WCW World Title: Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham

Windham is a mystery guy but it wasn’t shocking to anyone at all with a brain. Parker comes out to what would become Arn’s music. Yep, no one is surprised and there’s no way he’s winning. Buffer does the big match intro and gets the referee’s name wrong. They mention that Flair won the title from Windham which is true but it’s not this title, nor is it the way they imply. He won with a figure four pin. Yeah that’s rather odd indeed.

Jesse is on commentary now instead of Bobby for no apparent reason. Figure four is put on. This is their usual boring match for this time period. They used to have 90 minute matches that went to a draw. They talk about what a fighting champion he’s been, which was thrown out the window so he could turn heel and job to Hogan twice. Hogan more or less threw out everything that had been going on and made it a lot worse without delivering anything for about two years.

That couldn’t happen today though? Nah of course not. Parker goes down thank goodness. Flair GETS THE MOVE OFF THE TOP AND GETS THE WIN! HOLY CRAP! It’s a cross body in case you were wondering.

Rating: D+. This was just boring. No one thought Windham would win or even had a prayer, period. That almost always cripples a match and it certainly did right here. He was just out of shape at this point and no one cared, which is why this fit so freaking perfectly I think.

Don Curtis and the Crusher talk to Gene. I’d bet less than 100 people in there know who Curtis is.

Dave Schultz, a big time hockey fighter, is refereeing the tag title match.

WCW Tag Titles: Cactus Jack/Kevin Sullivan vs. Nasty Boys

It’s a Broadstreet Bully match, meaning hardcore. Nasty Boys are the heel champions here. Naturally this is just a big brawl which is what the Nastys were good at. Now THEY would have been good for ECW. It’s good that Foley is here as he’s the only one with a good deal of wrestling talent. In a very funny and smart spot, Cactus comes at Knobbs with a trash can and Knobbs gets his hands up. Jack’s solution: throw it at his feet.

That’s thinking as you go which is what made Foley great. They’re trying to top Spring Stampede I think but Sullivan’s suckiness is preventing that. Sags gets a table to a HUGE pop. To keep things NASTY, he gets tired carrying it. This is nowhere near as intense though and there’s a lot more walking around doing very little.

In a nice finish, Schultz does his standard thing of pulling the shirt over the other guy’s head and punches him as Cactus hits him with a hockey stick for the pin and new champions. Maxx Payne hits Sags with a guitar for general purposes.

Rating: B-. This was a good fight, but it’s the sequel to a great fight. This felt like it was trying to be a great fight. That being said, it was still very fun. Jack vs. the Nasty Boys was fun as Jack was just as insane as they were but he could think. This was fun and again, since this is the only match like this all night, it stands out far more and looks better than it would if there had been this almost in every match, ala ECW.

Gene is with Lou Thesz and Verne Gagne. Holy crap indeed. I’d pay to see them go at it. Gagne more or less says he hated the tag match and that it wasn’t wrestling. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Thesz talk. He says it’s not his style but it was fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

WCW International Title: Vader vs. Sting

This falls under the category of matches that it’s really hard to mess up. The title is vacant actually here so Sting could leave with an extra title reign. At least the explanation made sense. Do you really need an explanation on this one? It’s Sting vs. Vader for typing out loud. They do their usual greatness with Sting starting fast but then Vader just beats the tar out of him.

This is a rare occasion where it was pure formula stuff but they made it work every time and to me that boiled down to one thing, and it’s what I’ve always said makes a match great: you didn’t know who was going to win. Think about Hogan vs. Flair or Hogan vs. DiBiase or any other big face or heel rivalry that isn’t considered great. The thing is, most of the time you know who is going to win. Now take a look at Rock vs. HHH or Rock vs. Austin.

The winner was much harder to predict, which made it much more fun and interesting. As for this, it’s your traditional good match with Sting doing a lot of stuff to hang with Vader, namely making Vader punch himself out, ala Rocky vs. Clubber Lang. Finally Sting gets out of the way when Vader goes for more offense than he should. A missed Race headbutt and a big splash, and keep in mind that Sting is the only guy of his size that could rival Van Dam for leaping ability, from the top ends it and that ends the show.

Rating: B. Dude, it’s Sting and Vader. This is by definition a good match. See what happens when you give talented guys time on the card and a chance to just go out there and have fun? YOU GET A GOOD MATCH!!! Learn this WCW.

Overall Rating: B+. This was a VERY fun show and I had a great time with it. There isn’t an actual bad match on the card which is always a plus. They thought this one out and it came out well. The right match ended it as they knew Sting’s match would be better than Flair’s. Of course the good wrestling would go out the window in a month when Hogan showed up and changed everything but that’s Hogan for you. Good show and worth seeing.

Starrcade 1993
Date: December 27, 1993
Location: Independence Arena, Charlotte, North Carolina
Attendance: 8,200
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Jesse Ventura

This is a rather interesting show for a few reasons. First and foremost other than the main event, it’s one of the most awful shows you’ll ever see. Second of all, the main event was changed due to a near murder. Sid vs. Vader had been built up for months but then Sid got into a drunken bar fight with Arn Anderson and stabbed him, getting him fired from the company and causing him to be gone from mainstream wrestling for over a year. A side effect of this was that WCW had filmed MONTHS of footage with Sid with the title. This footage was now worthless so it was lost. I love stupid people wasting their time. Let’s get to it.

Oh I forgot: if Flair loses tonight against Vader he has to retire. We open with a retrospective of Flair’s life and career, ranging from the plane crash up through today with sound bytes from his career playing over them. Then we see clips of Vader just ending people left and right. They made this feel epic here which was the right idea.

Vader arrived early and had a workout. Flair isn’t here yet. Race is driving Vader’s car which is appropriate considering the first Starrcade with Race vs. Flair was ten years ago. Gene is at Flair’s house with him. Are they playing Nintendo and eating pizza? Flair says goodbye to his family in a NICE house. David is the oldest looking 14 year old I have ever seen. This is actually kind of a touching moment as they’re making it out to be a huge match. Gene and Flair have a weird moment as they get in the limo together. I guess this is reporting? Flair is very somber here and there’s almost a Rocky theme to it.

Marcus Bagwell/2 Cold Scorpio vs. Paul Roma/Paul Orndorff

They’re not Pretty Wonderful yet. Also the faces have Teddy Long managing them for no apparent reason. Teddy gets Manager of the Year before the match starts. The Pauls have the Assassin with them which was a pairing I never got at all. The Pauls jump them early which fails completely as the guys that look like Halloween candy (orange and black tights) send them to the floor.

Bagwell and Roma start us off and Bagwell gets a cross body for two. This is another one of those shows that happened on a Monday which is one of those signs of the time which always takes time to get used to. Off to Marcus as the fans really don’t seem to care. We hear about the tag title match later: Nasty Boys vs. Sting/Hawk. People have nightmares about that one for reasons we’ll get into later.

Scorpio vs. Orndorff at the moment as this is really just a match. There’s no heat or drama or anything like that. The problem is no one cares about the Pauls and they were just two guys that were out there in tights doing wrestling moves. That doesn’t make good heels in the slightest, so of course they were two time tag champions as the division did nothing at all.

Bagwell takes over on Roma as we hear about him being rookie of the year which was two years ago somehow. More arm work by Scorpio to Roma as Roma yells at Teddy. The commentators just stop talking for awhile, my guess due to being sound asleep. Roma works on Bagwell’s back as nothing is going on here of note. Elbow gets two. Off to Orndorff who gets a suplex for two.

Oh look: they’re both stomping Bagwell at the same time. Literally, that’s the most exciting thing in the entire match up to this point. Powerslam gets two for Roma and he goes up top for a missed splash. Scorpio comes in and beats on both guys but can’t get the 450. He beats on Orndorff with various stuff instead but Assassin pops up with a loaded mask and headbutts Scorpio dead, letting Orndorff fall on him for the pin.

Rating: F+. It’s the biggest show of the year and this is their idea of an opening match? TERRIBLY not interesting as just about all Pretty Wonderful matches were. Bagwell would float around in boring tag teams for years before turning heel in like 96 and becoming “interesting” in the form of Buff Bagwell. Awful opener as the fans simply did not care in the slightest and the lack of any form of emotion shows it. Technically fine, but a shining example of just stupid matchmaking.

Flair and Gene are still in the limo and they talk about how it could be the last time. Gene is one of Flair’s best friends. There’s a line that sounds odd for some reason. Flair is really reminiscent here instead of being fired up. There’s nothing but seriousness and somberness in his voice here and it’s really weird compared to his usual raving lunacy. Flair says he has to win because who else would say woo?

Shockmaster vs. Awesome Kong

Kong is a big fat dude in a mask. His partner, King Kong, is with him. Shockmaster is Tugboat and the guy that is more famous for falling flat on his face. This is one of his final appearances I think. The Kongs jumps Shocky in the corner as this is a battle of the big men. It’s one of those matches where basic moves are allegedly more effective due to their size. Cross body by Shocky sets up a slam and a fast count and we’re done in maybe a minute flat. The guy he pinned had tights that said King so who knows if that was the right guy.

We hear about the dark match for some reason before we run down the rest of the card. British Bulldog can’t wrestle for some reason so The Boss (Big Bossman) is replacing him against Rude for the International Title.

Flair’s limo gets here. He and Gene part ways and that’s about it.

TV Title: Steven Regal vs. Ricky Steamboat

Regal is champion. Dragon has the lizard man thing going on here. I miss something I think as I hear Jesse talking about Princess Diana strapping on some boxing gloves and fighting Sarah Ferguson. Ok then. We hear about the 15 minute time limit and they stall incessantly. You figure out where this is ending.

This is one of those matches where more or less nothing happens the entire time and it’s all REALLY basic stuff, which is described as methodical. They exchange some covers and it’s very clear where we’re going here. Off to a headlock as Sir William, the manager of Regal, makes fun of various fans at ringside. Sunset flip gets one for Steamboat and we hit a leg lock.

Top rope chop gets two. Probably an average of 45 seconds are passing between moves here. There’s just nothing to talk about in between them. Armbar by Steamboat as I think you’re getting my point here. We’re ten minutes into this match allegedly which looks a bit like 8 to me but then again I’m just a guy watching this on a version with a timer on it. What do I know?

They start messing with the clock as we’re down to four minutes left about 52 seconds after the five minute announcement. Headscissors by Steamboat gets him nowhere. There’s another 57 seconds minutes so Steamboat chops a tiny bit faster. Out to the floor a bit which has nothing going on again.

Under two minutes now as this really needs to end. Technical stuff abounds and you know that’s going to be good with these two. Minute left as Ricky gets a butterfly suplex for two. They head to the floor as the fans FINALLY wake up a bit here. And then the cross body misses and we’re out of time after thirteen minutes. Brilliant there guys, brilliant.

Rating: D-. The technical stuff was good but at the same time the idea of doing the same match they did every week with Regal at Starrcade is just freaking stupid all around. He held the title for what seemed like forever and this was more or less the standard operating procedure for his entire reign.

Tony and Jesse talk about Flair for a bit.

Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne vs. Shanghai Pierce/Tex Slazenger

The not Cactus Jack team is more famous as the Godwins. Their theme music sounds like the train level on Turtles in Time. Jack is just past his awesome run vs. Vader so they threw him in a random tag team to give him something to do. The Godwins are Texas boys and therefore are about what you would expect. To give you an idea of the sizes here, Jack is the smallest of these four.

Payne vs. Pierce (in a mask. Got it) starts us off. Jesse gets the future hog farmers confused which messes up my writing a bit. Off to Jack and Tex with Jack getting a nice pop. Now of course when Hogan came in, Jack was dropped in favor of guys like Jim Duggan and Honky Tonk Man, but they’re CLEARLY better talents than Jack right? Naturally he’s the most talented and best guy in the match so his parts are the best.

We’re in brawl mode quickly as the Texas guys can’t get anything going. Payne hammers on the future Mideon but a bulldog saves Tex. Sunset flip gets two for Payne and a belly to back puts both guys down. Jack comes in and beats the tar out of Pierce and it breaks down again. Cactus Clothesline puts him and Pierce on the floor for a bit as the faces stand tall. Payne no sells a double axe off the top and throws on his Fujiwara Armbar finisher which is broken up. Jack back in and heel miscommunication sets up a double arm DDT to end Pierce.

Rating: D. This was a little under 8 minutes long and the Texans were on offense less than 30 seconds combined. Somehow though this wasn’t a squash even though it met all the qualifications for one. Jack and Payne would split soon and Jack would float around the tag division for awhile as he more or less mastered the semi-hardcore brawling style that made him famous before heading to ECW in 94.

Some racing guy with a mullet talks because this is WCW.

US Title: Steve Austin vs. Dustin Rhodes

Austin is challenging and this is 2/3 falls. We do get the Natural theme song though so that’s a plus….I think. Jesse keeps making jokes about the Hooters girl at ringside, saying you can’t call her the Natural. Funny stuff. So weird to see Austin being this young and with hair and in white boots. Feeling out process to start with a lot of technical stuff and Austin getting sent to the floor.

Still waiting on anything to really get going. We hear about Rush Limbaugh and my head begins to hurt again. Austin hits the floor for about the third time already as this is really boring stuff. What a great theme to have all night long. Tony rattles off stats about Austin’s TV Title reign and impresses Jesse. “How do you know all this stuff?” Tony Schiavone just got asked that question. Mark down the date and time.

Out to the floor AGAIN and Austin is sent into the crowd like a luchador. Back in and Dustin pops him with a right hand and Austin sells it like he got shot. Back to the headlock now as things were starting to get interesting. This is what I’m talking about when I say this company had no idea how to use various people. You have a young (turned 29 9 days before this show) Austin and you stick him in there with Dustin, who works the same slow, boring, methodical (read as lays around a lot) style that only suits old school fans and sucks the life out of matches every single times. Very annoying.

They slug it out again and talk about how one of these guys is going to dominate WCW for the next ten years. Well Austin certainly did dominate them after April of 98 so I guess Tony is right there. They slug it out even more and Austin gets a belly to back to put both guys down. Remember what I said about this being boring? Here’s another instance of that.

Middle rope elbow misses for Austin and Dustin channels his inner papa. Dustin gets a powerslam for two as we’re still in the first fall. Austin is sent into Parker and it counts as being thrown over the top. Oh joy. The Colonel is out apparently as we have a thirty second rest period. Rhodes doesn’t seem to care as he sends Austin into the post to bust him open a bit. Colonel is taken out.

And there go the lights. Literally, the lights go out other than a spotlight, drawing the biggest pop of the match sadly enough. Dustin hammers away a bit as Jesse uses the term dark match in a different context. They go into the corner and the lights come back up. Austin takes some punches in the corner but comes out with something like a spinebuster and a handful of tights to win the title which he held until August.

Rating: D+. And somehow they manage to get a boring match out of Austin. Dustin is a guy that no one cared about but because his dad was famous he kept getting pushed. Goldust was the best thing that ever could have happened to him. Weak match as the first fall was weak and the lights made them look stupid as always. Somehow this is one of the better matches of the night so far.

The announcers talk about Boss vs. Rude a bit. They say that the title is an officially recognized world title, so if you’re ever curious, Rick Rude was a world champion.

WCW International World Title: The Boss vs. Rick Rude

As I said earlier, it’s Big Boss Man in black. Short version, it’s the physical NWA World Title belt without the lineage because of a bunch of ridiculous stuff. The International Board is a parody of the NWA Board. The titles would be unified in a few months at a Clash of the Champions. This is billed as a super match. Boss beat Rude before which is why he was picked to get this match.

After some big match intros we’re ready to go. We stall/jaw at each other a lot before they stall even more in a long lockup. The referee keeps getting in between these guys that think it’s 1990 again. Over three minutes in and we FINALLY have something other than stalling: right hands. Boss Man takes over a bit and gets a HUGE backdrop and a boot to put Rude down.

Boss fires some stiff shots in the corner and we hit the floor. I know it sounds like this hasn’t been on that long but we’ve been at this over six minutes and I think I’ve put in every single move they’ve done. Literally that’s how slowly they’re moving. Rude gets tied up in the ropes upside down facing the audience. Some punches by Boss and we hit the last thing this match needed: a bearhug.

I know Flair vs. Vader was the only thing that mattered here but dude, can you at least try to give us one other good match? The annoying thing is that they’re not even that bad. They’re just DULL. Rude bites him and they slug it out a bit. Boss takes over again but misses that running shot when Rude is on the ropes in a 619 position and a sunset flip ends him. I give up.

Rating: F+. Yet ANOTHER boring match. I mean they had 10 minutes out there and they could have fit the offense they had in maybe 3 of them. This whole show has been like that: boring matches with TONS of stalling despite having more than enough time to get something going. At least there are only two more and one is great.

Tony tells Jesse he’s a good looking man. As random as it sounds.

Tag Titles: Sting/Hawk vs. Nasty Boys

This wouldn’t be the one I was talking about when I said great. HUGE pop for Sting. Great place for your second most popular guy right? Allegedly before the stabbing this was going to be Flair/Steamboat trying to win the titles. There’s a pairing you don’t often see. Missy Hyatt is with the champions here. I’d assume Animal is injured or something here. The Nasties pose a lot before the match to waste time.

Sting vs. Knobbs to start us off and it’s time to stall. Finally we get going with brawling to start. After the champions are sent to the floor for a bit it’s off to Sags vs. Hawk. Jesse says Hawk’s hair looks like a Los Angeles Ram without the helmet. He chops away in the corner which gets him nowhere as the Nasties take over. Shocking no one that pays attention, Hawk no sells it and sends them to the floor.

We stall a bit to change the pace again. Hawk hammers on Sags and throws some of the worst punches I’ve ever seen as his hand is so clearly open it’s absurd. Hawk gets an enziguri for two of all things. Thankfully Sting comes in to take away the sloppiness. And of course he’s in there for thirty seconds. Hawk works on the arm of Knobbs as does Sting. Crowd is only kind of into this.

The bird man gets sent to the floor and into the post. Missy gives him a slap that Stephanie would be jealous of as Knobbs hammers away again. Off to an armbar again as this hasn’t been terrible actually. It’s not anything great but it’s not a horrid match I guess. Jesse says a slam by Knobbs was bad. When Jesse Ventura is criticizing your in ring work, you might suck.

Back to the armbar and Hawk slaps the mat. Since this isn’t Philly though that means nothing yet. Tag to Sting doesn’t count so Hawk fights them both off on his own. A lot of these moves are missing. There’s a tag to Sting as we hit the fifteen minute mark. Sags tries an elbow drop to Sting to break up a cover and while it looked like it hit him Sting doesn’t seem hurt by it. Missed spot I guess.

The Nasties try to leave which fails of course. Back in and Sting’s big splash off the top eats knees. Knobbs tries I guess a leg drop but it comes off like a backsplash from the middle rope. That’s what I’m talking about by the sloppiness. Sting plays Ricky Morton for awhile now and goes to the floor for a bit. Off to the abdominal stretch by Sags as the crowd is more into this than they’ve been into anything else all night. Granted that’s not saying much but still.

And now for a change, Knobbs uses the stretch. We get to ten minutes left in the thirty minute time limit. Sting gets a sunset flip for two and it’s off to Sags for the third abdominal stretch in about 2 minutes. Now it’s time for a chinlock because that’s the next logical rest hold. Suplex gets two so we go back to the same hold. I guess they got tired in between.

Abdominal stretch #4 goes on as again we have the problem with the match being that it goes on WAY too long. Five minutes left as Sting breaks the hold. Something gets botched as we get a splash by Knobbs off the middle rope but it’s pretty clear that wasn’t supposed to hit. They repeat it and this time Sting gets a boot up to set up…nothing as the Nasties try their finisher. That of course fails as it’s hot tag to Hawk. Stinger Splash hits and it’s time for a Doomsday Device. Missy runs in for the DQ which looks completely unplanned. The announcers and Sting/Hawk look totally confused.

Rating: D. Again, this match suffers from one major problem: it’s HALF AN HOUR LONG. On top of that it has a bad ending which like I said I don’t think was exactly planned to go that way. It’s certainly not the worst match in the world but at the same time there is a lot here that doesn’t work in the slightest. The whole rest hold marathon hurt it a lot as well.

Please……let this main event be the BEST MATCH EVER. It has to be to make this show worth anything.

WCW World Heavyweight Title: Ric Flair vs. Vader

Title vs. career here. Race is Vader’s manager and is carrying the belt to the ring. Vader is basically a killing machine that has injured everyone he’s fought so this is something close to David vs. Goliath. Flair’s pop is one of respect to say the least. It’s the purple robe tonight. This has a 45 minute time limit for some reason. This is in the day when a retirement match would have meant something so there’s a far more serious tone to this.

Flair is only a ten time champion here so he’s still a young legend. To say the crowd is one sided is the understatement of the year. Vader easily overpowers him to start of course so Flair tries to make him run around. Finally though Vader gets his hands on Flair and let the pain begin. Race shouting YOU WANTED HIM FLAIR is great stuff. We hear about Flair’s record at Starrcade which is pretty remarkable to say the least.

Big gorilla press puts Flair down as they’re taking their time here. The first five minutes or so have been better than anything else that has happened all night. To the floor for a bit as this is completely one sided. Vader pulls a Sting though and misses a splash into the railing. Flair fights back because it’s all he can do to keep his career alive but Race pops him to take over. The fans nearly erupted over a 5 second flurry of offense from Flair. They’re that hot.

Back to the beatdown as Vader hammers away. STIFF clothesline takes Flair down. You could describe every move of Vader’s as stiff as a board to put it mildly. Flair gets some chops in but Vader just pops him in the head to take him back down. Middle rope clothesline puts Flair down but Flair gets out of the way of a splash and gets a shot off the top.

Flair manages to get three straight shots from the top and takes Vader down. Vader shrugs it off and takes Flair down, busting open his lip. Middle rope suplex puts Flair down but Vader can’t pop up immediately. He’s slowing down a bit which is an important point to the match. Splash misses though but it’s not like Vader cares. Flair is sent to the floor and Race kicks him square in the head.

Back in a splash misses but the second doesn’t so Vader just hammers away. Flair gets up and straight beats Vader down with nothing but right hands. Awesome sequence here as it’s all heart and Vader can’t stop it. Flair goes for the knee and gets a chair shot in as Race tries to interfere. More punching down follows as the story here of Flair having to give up his usual stuff and fight for everything he’s got is great.

Chair (as in the unfoldable kind that you sat on in elementary school) to the head and Vader is in big trouble. Flair hammers him down again but collapses due to exhaustion. Time to work on the knee and he even manages a strut. Crowd has been going nuts for about five minutes straight now. Figure Four is casually blocked and the crowd goes silent again.

Vader Bomb misses and here they come again! Somehow Flair gets the Figure Four on Vader and the champion is in trouble! Vader gets to the ropes but Race is freaking out so much that the referee doesn’t see it. Flair is all fired up even when the hold is broken. Twenty minutes in and Vader gets a big boot to slow things down.

Vader hammers away on the mat as he’s spent. Moonsault misses and Race goes up when Flair covers. The headbutt hits Vader which is reminiscent of the star destroyer hitting the Death Star in Return of the Jedi as everything falls apart. Flair hammers away and grabs a single leg (kind of botched) and rolls up Flair to win the title and send the crowd into insanity.

Rating: A. Great match here as Flair and Vader both told the story of Vader not being able to beat Flair and Flair having to resort to the bare basics to keep his career alive. This was ranked #1 on the Starrcade countdown which is probably one spot too high (Magnum vs. Tully is still one of the sickest wars you’ll ever see) but this beats anything else for second place. This is reminiscent of Mania 14 with HBK vs. Austin as we knew Flair was winning but the fun part was the journey getting there.

Tony says Flair’s career goes on and on and on which makes me laugh given what Flair is doing today.

The announcers point out the psychology of Vader hammering on Flair as much as he could but got caught in a simple move to win the title as Flair finally got a chance to clear his head and used his basic wrestling skills to win the title. Brilliant story told in the match.

Vader is in the back and is MAD. He gets in Race’s face and tears lockers down so Eric runs off.

Flair comes out to the arena again for a curtain call as this show has only run about two and a half hours.

Gene is with Flair’s family and Flair pops up to say how awesome this was. As usual he’s very humble as a face, saying how his family being here meant a lot. His wife doesn’t talk much. Sting comes in and praises Flair. Steamboat comes in and says Flair is awesome too.

Overall Rating: D+. The problem here was that other than the main event, this show was either terrible or really boring. They seemed to be setting up ONLY Flair vs. Vader as a good match which is an idea I’ve never agreed with. The show comes off as really boring for the most part and a lot of matches leave you saying “that’s it?” or “what was that?” The main event is must see for a lesson in how to tell a story in a match but the rest isn’t worth seeing in the slightest.

Clash of the Champions 29
Date: November 16, 1994
Location: Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florida
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan

We’re in 1994 here and almost a year before Nitro. Hogan is of course world champion and has recently retired Flair. We’re also in the days of the 3 Faces of Fear which would evolve into the Dungeon of Doom soon which was rather successful if you think about it from an odd angle. Either way this wasn’t a great year for the company so let’s get to it.

The opening video is of course about Hogan vs. the Faces of Fear. He recently unmasked Brutus Beefcake, revealing him to be the Butcher in name change #85 or so. The main event is a six man tag with Mr. T. as guest referee for no apparent reason.

Heenan says that Hogan is done and is booed out of the building.

After running down the card we’re ready to go to….Gene who talks about the Hotline for a bit before Meng and Colonel Parker come out. Apparently he has a tag title shot lined up for Bunkhouse Buck and Arn Anderson which they lost.

Tag Titles: Stars N Stripes vs. Pretty Wonderful

Stars N Stripes are Bagwell and the Patriot, Pretty Wonderful are Paul Roma and Paul Orndorff (holy Yoda line Batman and holy combination of two awesome geek series) and this is mask (Patriot’s) vs. title (Pretty Wonderful’s). The camera is a bit low so you can’t see over all of the fans. These teams traded the titles over the last two months or so. After a lot of stalling it’s Bagwell vs. Orndorff to start.

Roma comes in quickly and ever the genius, wrestles like a face. By that I mean he’s climbing the ropes and flipping off of them, jumping over Bagwell, using cross bodies and dropkicks. How many heels do you know that wrestle like that regularly? Anyway the challengers clear the ring quickly. Heenan thinks Patriot is Al Gore.

Paul vs. Patriot at the moment. Blast it this is one of those teams that I have to specify with. Orndorff vs. Patriot at the moment. How in the world was Roma a Horseman but not Orndorff? Patriot takes him down with an armbar and Orndorff isn’t sure what to do. Off to Roma who shows off again with three backbreakers without putting Patriot down. Thesz Press gets two for the masked dude.

The champions try a double hot shot but the cameraman falls over so we don’t see what happens. I know it’s just an accident but when do you ever see that? Orndorff drops an elbow on Bagwell as they’re legal at the moment. The fans chant USA for four American wrestlers. Off to Roma who has a REALLY high dropkick. Powerslam gets two. Sunset flip by Bagwell gets two on Orndorff.

Roma and Patriot hit the floor as this match is needing to end rather soon. Thankfully it does but even a simple pin doesn’t go right for them. Orndorff suplexes Bagwell and lays there with him, but doesn’t let him go. Roma goes up for a splash off the top ala the Powerplex but Patriot makes the save. Orndorff just stayed in the position and gets pinned, but Tony screws up the count, making it seem like the titles change on a two count and generally confusing the TV audience. Either way, new champions.

Rating: D+. Orndorff got a push at this point for some reason which I’m SURE wasn’t because he was one of Hogan’s buddies but whatever. The tag title situation never really was interesting at all at this point but they were trying….I think. Harlem Heat would rise up soon to half save the division but they tried at least.

TV Title: Johnny B. Badd vs. Honky Tonk Man

I know I know, just go with it. Badd is champion here. Honky, ever the Memphis man, stalls to start us off. He works on the arm of Badd as we talk about Honky’s hair. Now Badd works on his arm for a change of pace. This is a rematch from Halloween Havoc where someone thought them having a draw was a good idea for no apparent reason.

Badd catches a kick and Honky hops around so Badd messes up the hair. Why is this airing? For the life of me I don’t understand. Honky takes over with the falling fist for two so we hit the chinlock. That lasts only a few seconds and it’s time for the Shake Rattle and Roll. That goes nowhere as Badd gets him into the corner for multiple punches. Million dollar kneelift gets two. Down goes the referee and Honky pops Johnny with the guitar, only to get caught and we’re done.

Rating: F+. Honky Tonk Man is one of the worst investments in the history of this company. For the life of me I don’t get the point of having him around as he hadn’t meant anything in about 6 years at this point. Badd wasn’t any good yet but in a few months he would get awesome in a hurry. Terrible match here though.

The 3 Faces of Fear (Brutus Beefcake called Butcher, Earthquake called Shark and Kevin Sullivan who is rarely called) say that they’re Hogan’s worst nightmares. This is the least intimidating group I’ve seen in years. Avalanche has a brother named Tropical Storm Gordon. How do you even respond to that?

Harlem Heat vs. Nasty Boys

These two fought at about 5 PPVs in 1995, which says a lot more when there were only 9 or 10 PPVs that year. This is a street fight. The Nasties are faces here……I think. Ok maybe it’s not an official street fight but one in name only. Booker vs. Knobbs starts us off. The Nasties clear the ring and the fans get in the face of Stevie on the floor. Off to Stevie who gets shoved around by Sags. This is another boring match already.

Knobbs works on Booker’s knee as this is a ridiculously boring match. THANK GOODNESS we take a break as even Bobby wants to take one. Back with….a shot of the video screen. Heenan is gone apparently. Booker gets a big kick to Knobbs and Bobby is back. Stevie pounds away as Tony says this is everything they expected. They had really low expectations then.

Booker, by far the most talented guy in the match, comes in and misses an elbow off the middle rope and Sags comes in to hammer away a bit. Everything breaks down as there’s a phone involved somehow. Booker tries to call someone on it as Stevie is beaten within an inch of his life. Apparently it’s Sister Sherri who has been their boss all along and her distraction allows Booker to get the Harlem Hangover on Sags to end this.

Rating: F+. Other than Sherri looking surprisingly good in leather, this was a total mess. The Nasties were another team that existed because they were buddies with Hogan and that’s about it. Anyway, weak match here as expected although it at least had a major storyline development in it.

Ad for Starrcade on a Tuesday. Well Sunday was Christmas Day so their backs were to the wall on that one.

Dustin Rhodes vs. Vader

This is a pretty big match actually as Vader is #1 contender and Rhodes is about the level of Kofi Kingston at the moment. At the same time though Dustin has one of the worst theme songs of all time. Look up a song with the line “They call him the natural” in it and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Naturally we talk about Dusty Rhodes because we have to do that once a show to meet a quota I guess.

Vader shoves him around with ease to start as anyone would expect him to do. Dustin spears him down and hammers away to a BIG pop. Vader was hated at this point and was easily the best heel since Flair but Hogan beat him at two straight PPVs with ease. Dustin rips the mask off and gets a cross body for two. All of this is high impact and fast paced with the crowd getting louder with every move.

Clothesline takes Vader to the floor and the beating continues. Dustin drills Race (Vader’s manager) because he can. Back in the ring and Vader hammers away even more, drilling him down in the corner. Other than a few shots in the opening this has been ALL Dustin. Dustin gets a pretty freaking nice snap suplex on Vader who bails to the floor to try to get a breather.

And then it all comes crashing down as Vader just rams into Dustin to shift momentum again. Vader hammers him down and pounds away. A missed splash in the corner lets Dustin get a rollup for two and so ends Dustin’s offense at the moment. Dustin manages to avoid another splash and gets a powerslam out of nowhere for two. Another Thesz Press kind of move puts Vader down but the referee is bumped.

Bulldog is countered as Vader throws Dustin over the ropes. No DQ though since the referee was down. Vader Bomb gets two as Dustin gets his foot on the ropes. Another Vader Bomb gets the same result as Race curses more than a fleet of sailors. Dustin is more or less dead here. Vader slams him down and tries a shoulder off the middle rope but Dustin pops up with a powerslam out of nowhere.

They slug it out and Dustin HAMMERS away but he can’t put him down. Ok maybe he can with a top rope clothesline. Dustin puts Vader on the top rope and wants a superplex. Realizing that simply isn’t going to happen he DDTs Vader for two off the middle rope instead.

Bulldog hits but Race gets in for the distraction. A splash to the back sets up a wheelbarrow drop (picture a German suplex but grabbing the legs instead of around the waste and slamming Dustin down face first instead of suplexing him back. Look up a wheelbarrow suplex and instead of doing the suplex slamming him forward) Dustin is dead and it’s finally over.

Rating: B+. WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THIS COME FROM??? This was an awesome match to say the least which got me totally into the concept that Dustin could pull this off when this should have been a squash. Vader could sell far better than he’s given credit for and Dustin took advantage for every bit of it. I was ready to say “and that does it” at least five times and had to keep erasing it. Find this match and check it out as it’s very good and a total surprise. Absolutely brutal fight with Dustin going move for move with Vader for about twelve minutes.

Vader sets to beat up Dustin even more until Duggan comes out for the save. Vader would take the US Title from Duggan at Starrcade

Hogan, Sting and Dave Sullivan (cue Pretender joke) say they’re not afraid of the 3 Faces of Fear. We get more references to the tropical storm, which is ok to make fun of I guess. It only killed 1150 people and caused over a billion dollars of damage in 2011 dollars. Nothing you can’t work into a bunch of references to it in a wrestling show right?

US Title: Jim Duggan vs. Steve Austin

Duggan beat Austin for the title in 35 seconds at Fall Brawl because the writing was clearly on the wall that DUGGAN was the future of the business, not this guy named Austin that had recently started fighting authority and legends and was swearing a bit while wearing black. Yeah some people are still stunned (get it?) to this day that this company ever made a dime. Duggan goes after Austin who stalls a lot. And never mind as here’s Vader to return the favor from earlier and end this with Duggan winning by DQ in less than a minute. Duggan saves himself with the board.

3 Faces of Fear vs. Hulk Hogan/Sting/Dave Sullivan

Mr. T is referee here for no apparent reason at all. He’s in something like a nightcap as my head hurts again. The Faces of Fear come out to what would become Eddie Guerrero’s music which is way too perky for them. All three non-Faces of Fear are in yellow and red because they want to eat this week or something. We even get a reference to Hogan retiring Flair in the intro by Buffer. That’s rather amusing.

Hogan jumps Taskmaster (Sullivan) to start us off. Off to Sting who actually hits that big jumping elbow of his. Everything breaks down as shocking no one, Sullivan can’t do anything. Actually there is one thing he can do: get injured, which he does here. His arm gets messed up and he has to leave, making it a handicap match. Hogan vs. Avalanche at the moment and Hogan can’t slam him for now.

Off to Hogan vs. Beefcake which wound up being the main event of Starrcade for no reason involving intelligence. Avalanche comes back in again and Hogan still can’t slam him. Sullivan comes in and hammers away which gets him nowhere as Hogan fights off the Boston Midget. Earthquake throws on the bearhug as Sting hasn’t been in for a very long time now.

We get the usual Hogan vs. Quake match that we got a few thousand times around 1990. Powerslam sets up the missing elbow and there’s your hot tag to Sting. Sting has to fight three guys off and ultimately gets caught in a splash in the corner as it’s apparent Hogan is going to get the big save at the end. Avalanche drops a big leg on Sting to be funny.

Off to Sullivan vs. Sting now and that sounds so lopsided it’s unreal. Hot tag to Hogan so he can fight Butcher. The Megaphone gets involved in there somehow and Hogan pins the wrong guy (Sullivan) to finally end this. Mr. T goes down and it’s a big fight. T would fight Sullivan at Starrcade. This also set up Sting vs. Avalanche and Randy Savage got involved somehow also.

Rating: D+. Just a main event tag match here but the problem is that at the end of the day, the top heel is Brutus Beefcake on a team of three. How excited am I supposed to get about this match? No one wanted to see it other than Beefcake and Hogan, which would become a running theme with various people being substituted in for Beefcake for like a year.

The 3 Faces of Fear beat down Hogan with a sleeper going on him for like 2 minutes. The announcers play it up like Beefcake shot him in the head with a shotgun or something because NO ONE has ever been in a sleeper for over a minute right? Various faces come out to try and help but it takes security and cops to break it up. Hogan is “in serious condition” to end the show.

Overall Rating: D-. The only thing keeping this from being a failure is the shockingly awesome Rhodes vs. Vader match. Other than that, it’s WCW in 1994 and that simply wasn’t very good. At the end of the day, Hulk Hogan vs. a heel Brutus Beefcake does not work. They wanted this to be something epic but it just wasn’t there. Hogan booked this company into a lot of trouble around this time and 1995 made things even worse. Thankfully I’m mostly done with that era though, as I don’t think I could take much more of it.

In Your House 13: Final Four
Date: February 16, 1997
Location: UTC Arena, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Attendance: 6,399
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross

Well we’re in between the Rumble and Mania and DANG if it’s not a weird time in the WWF. There is no world champion at the moment but we’ll get to that. To begin with let’s recap the Rumble which should explain a lot. Three things happened there: Vader beat Taker with help from Paul Bearer, Shawn got the WWF Title back from Sid, and most importantly Steve Austin won the Royal Rumble in a stunning shock.

OR DID HE???

Well yes but he shouldn’t have. Your final five men were Bret, Taker, Vader, Austin and the fake Diesel (Kane). Mankind and Terry Funk were fighting on the floor which had the attention of the referees. During this fight, Hart eliminated Austin but no referee saw it. Austin got back in, eliminated Vader and Taker just after Hart eliminated Diesel. Austin took out Hart and the referees turned around to see him alone in the ring.

Austin is declared the winner and therefore the #1 contender. HOWEVER, Gorilla Monsoon doesn’t like this so he makes a match for this PPV which he dubs Final Four. Austin, Hart, Taker and Vader, the final four men in the ring in the Rumble, would have a match at the PPV for the right to go to Mania. Ok, that’s all well and good. However, there was a special Thursday edition of Raw where Shawn forfeited the title, citing a knee injury and a lost smile.

That night he had been scheduled to face Sid in a title match, so instead of just naming Sid Champion, the four way match at the PPV was now for the title with the winner facing Sid the following night on Raw for the title. Did you get all that?

That leads us here. Also on the card we have Furnas and LaFon (don’t ask) challenging for the tag belts as well as Rocky Maivia defending the IC Title that he took from HHH on the same Thursday Raw against HHH in a rematch. This is your last PPV before WM 13, so it better rock. Let’s see if it rocks or just Flex Kavanas.

Marc Mero vs. Leif Cassidy

We open with this, as in just after the recap we hear Sable’s music begin. You can tell the camera people either don’t care about this match or are just really stupid as Mero is in the ring and his pyro is going off before we even see him for the first time.

Sable has got her classic look down now: long blonde hair, one piece black leather outfit, big earrings and sunglasses. Just…dang. Anyway, Cassidy is already in the ring so how good are you expecting this match to really be? I actually like Cassidy’s stuff better than Mero’s. Let that sink in for a bit. Your psychology for this match is Cassidy works on Mero’s knee. Mero is your face here…I think.

Actually it’s more like Sable is the face and Marc is hers but that’s neither here nor there. Snow really can carry a match when he’s allowed to. It’s not something anyone cares about though as it’s Leif Cassidy vs. Marc Mero but Snow (Cassidy in case you didn’t pick up on that) is handling this very well.

Everything he does makes sense and has a point to it. There’s no noticeably stupid moves anywhere which is a very nice break. He goes after Sable though and Mero rescues her. After this he hits like three moves and no sells the knee injury to hit his shooting star press to win it.

Rating: D. If I could split this up into two ratings it would be an F for Mero and an A for Cassidy. Mero was just awful out there. He was on defense for probably 80-85 percent of the match, slams Cassidy’s head twice, hits a bad Samoan drop and his finisher to win while no selling the whole point of the match. Snow on the other hand was crisp, solid, and logical. You’re facing a high flier, keep him on the mat.

That’s smart wrestling and something that makes sense to do. He even threw in a figure four, which to be fair was the absolute worst I’ve ever seen but he was at least trying. I was impressed with him but Mero was just awful. Sable of course was the highlight with her looks, but it was close.

Now we get a double shot of weirdness. To begin with, immediately after that match, Honky Tonk Man comes out. Now, that’s not incredibly weird because based on the reaction I would assume that he’d been around a bit lately as the announcers and the crowd don’t seem stunned by his appearance.

I know he had an angle coming up that had either already started or started tonight but we’ll cover that later. The really weird part comes when he’s about to get into the ring.

We cut to a video package recapping Shawn’s forfeiting the title which shows the entire speech, Gorilla’s announcement of the title being on the line in the Four Way, and then we go to an interview with Sid. Just comes from nowhere and while it would usually be fine, why have HTM come out and then show it? He didn’t even get to have his music end.

As for the speech, here’s my take on it: you can believe him or not, and I personally think that he was at least half telling the truth, but he’s made it clear that the knee was nowhere near as bad as he implied. He had a minor surgery that could have waited but he says he very well may be retiring because of it. All I know is this: for a long stretch in that interview you could hear a pin drop in the audience.

People were on the verge of tears because Shawn might have to go. You can like Shawn you can hate Shawn you can be indifferent to him as I am for the most part, but the people loved him and that simply cannot be denied. What I believe however is that he simply didn’t want to lose to Bret at Mania 13. It was very clear that was where they were going with things, but Shawn just didn’t want to do it so he backed out.

Anyway, Sid says he’s taking the title tomorrow.

Flash Funk/Bart Gunn/Goldust vs. Nation of Domination

Flash’s entrance takes a ridiculous amount of time as he and his ladies, who are sexy in an odd way, just have to have a full dance sequence in the ring. As his illustrious partners make their way to the ring, we get a recap to explain this “feud”. Apparently all three of our jobbers have been unfairly beaten by the NOD thanks to their gang mentality. The Nation makes their entrance and look like the NWO.

I kid you not, there are 9 people in this stable. A checklist: 2 white rappers, Clarence Mason, D’lo Brown, Farrooq, Crush, Savio Vega and two guys who were apparently actors hired to look like the NOD was bigger than it really was, which is actually a good idea. That’s a huge freaking stable and their coming through the crowd and rapping their own music was genius.

This match goes under 7 minutes so this is going to be a relatively short review. Basically here all that happens is a six man tag. It’s as simple as that. This is a basic 6 man tag match. It’s not great and it’s not bad. It’s just your standard run of the mill 6 man tag. Faces start strong, heel takes over, you get a face comeback and the heels win. There is however one sick spot in it. Funk is getting double teamed by Savio and Farrooq.

They send him into the ropes for a double clothesline but he grabs their arms and in one motion backflips over them to land a double clothesline of his own. I was very impressed by this move as it just looks sick. Finish comes when Crush drops a leg on Bart to let Farrooq pin him.

Rating: C-. Now stop me if you’re heard this one before: a cowboy, a pimp and a man that is of the homosexual persuasion walk into a bar. Seriously we have those three gimmicks against a group modeled on the Black Panthers. How over the top can you get? And Vince has the nerve to wonder why the NWO was destroying him in the ratings at the time? Give me a break.

In the back Doc is with Steve Austin. He talks about how Austin hasn’t beaten any of the three men he’s in the ring with. Austin says he did at the Rumble and there’s a conspiracy against him by everyone in the company with any kind of power.

IC Title: HHH vs. Rocky Maivia

This is the rematch from three days prior as Rocky shocked the world and took the IC title from HHH. Helmsley has gotten to the best heel music I can remember in a long time as he comes out to Beethoven’s Ode To Joy now. DAng that’s some sweet music for a heel. He’s also dropped the random woman valet which helps a lot as well in my eyes. He’s becoming much more deadly in the ring and the HHH character is coming soon.

Man HHH is a twig at this point, maybe cracking 245 soaking wet. Rocky was still a rookie at this point but you could see the star in him just begging to get out with a gimmick change. HHH was on the verge of stardom but not as naturally. Early on the botch a baseball slide spot but HHH does a great improvised spot where he turns it into a drop toehold. This is a pretty good match so far with some good one liners from the King.

HHH is so rich he takes taxis to drive in movies. You could see the chemistry that these two had even this young in their careers. They knew how to get the best out of one another and that’s not something that can be taught to you by anyone. The commentators do a comparison of the people that trained both men to kill some time. JR mistakenly says that was a nice slupex by HHH so you can see him starting to slip even 12 years ago.

HHH and Hebner do their usual thing of Earl not being willing to be intimidated by HHH. HHH hits a perfect jumping knee to the face which might be the best he’s ever done. This is a very good match as it’s hard hitting and has a lot of near falls. However, they of course ruin it with the finish. Goldust whom HHH was feuding with at the time comes and stands in the aisle allowing Maivia to hit a German suplex to get the pin.

Post match Marlena gets choked out by some big woman/man with black hair that would come to be known as Chyna. Goldust says “throw her in jail.” They did a decent job of implying she was just a fan but the replay of it kind of gives it away.

Rating: B+. This was a very good match and if it had a finish could have been great. These two just put on great matches together no matter what and this was no exception. Rocky would go on to have a nice little reign with the title while HHH would go on to do nothing over the Summer but would starting hanging out with Shawn Michaels and that creature that just interfered in a little thing that would come to be called DX.

Promo for Mania airs.

Kevin Kelly interviews Vader who says he’ll be taking down all three men tonight. Paul Bearer says the same thing.

Tag Titles: Furnas/LaFon vs. Owen/Bulldog

This was a strange match. The story is that the champions have been arguing a lot lately and at the same time they lost in a Survivor Series match to these same two guys, resulting in this tag match. Now I know nothing about the challengers at all but to be fair I really hadn’t seen much of them. These guys were actually good. They were great movers out there and had some great technical stuff.

The person that stood out the most though was the referee. He was just flat out bad here. He kept taking forever as he kept wanting people out of the ring etc. and while that’s fine to try to keep going, he took it way too far. Whenever there was a cover he’d check the two partners before he went to make the count. That’s a waste of time and looks bad. Also during the match the champions kept fighting, eventually seeing Bulldog intentionally clothesline Owen hard.

Now once that happens it’s like a new match starts. The second match is far superior to the first one. Once they change gears, things get very good very fast. There was a ton of near falls and I actually believed that there would be new champions on more than one occasion. I knew who was going to win and I still believed otherwise. That my friends is compelling wrestling. The champions get hit with everything but they keep getting up every time.

Finally the end comes and it is just strange. Bulldog gets one of the guys up for the powerslam and Owen hits the guy in the head with a Slammy right in front of the referee for the DQ. What in the world? Why would you do that when your partner was about to hit his finisher which people didn’t kick out of? They fight even more afterwards with Smith throwing down the title and then even breaking the Slammy. He finally leaves with his partners.

Rating: B-. Just like in the opening match this was a tale of two matches and two separate grades. The first half was just flat out bad. It wasn’t interesting and I was wanting to just fast forward through the match and get to the end. However once Owen and Bulldog got done fighting the thing turned into a great tag match.

The ending just made no sense at all and was just to further the Bulldog/Owen angle which mostly ended with the debut of the European Title later on that month in which these two faced each other for the title.

Doc is with the Deadman in that back who says he has rediscovered his edge which makes me expect the Rated R Superstar to pop up.

WWF Title: Undertaker vs. Vader vs. Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart

Lawler keeps asking what lucha libre means (the Spanish announcers keep saying it) and JR says rough wrestling for some reason. This is actually an over the top rope battle royal but you can also be eliminated by pin or submission, which is a very interesting twist. I’m not sure if I like it or not. It takes away Vader’s weight advantage but why would you try to pin someone when you can just knock them out of the ring?

Bret of course gets a prematch interview. He says nothing can stop him from taking the title tonight. Bret’s jacket really is cool. JR says that even Wrestlemania wasn’t this exciting. Suuuuuure. Starts off with both singles feuds being renewed. Very quickly Vader and Taker figure out that going through the ropes is legal. Everyone just beats on everyone with them trading partners which further supports my orgy theory from earlier.

Leaving the ring was critical here I think as it opens up a lot of alternative possibilities for these guys which is certainly a good thing. Vader gets cut BAD around his left eye. Like it looks as if it fell out and there’s just a hole there that’s shooting blood out of it. I finally found where it was and it’s not pretty. Within a few seconds he takes a chair to the face and he hits his eye on the stairs, right on the corner.

They fight all over the arena and all fight each other at least once and in some cases twice. That’s what makes this match work as well as it is: you can keep the fighting fresh. Austin even breaks out a top rope clothesline which never stops making my head shake given how bad his knees got later in his career. After that we cut to the floor where VADER HAS BRET IN A SHARPSHOOTER. What the heck???

Those things happen within a few seconds of each other. DAng I need my medicine after seeing that. Sadly enough it was a better one that the one Rock would use later in his career. We’re at 12 minutes and no one is out yet. That’s another thing that’s making this great is all four are in there for over half of the match so far. It’s more or less Bret wrestling Austin and Taker fighting Vader now.

Bret sets Austin for a belly to back suplex and Austin BACKFLIPS out of it. Man alive Austin was the cat’s meow before he got hurt. Vader’s eye is freaking sick right now. This whole thing is absolutely brutal and it’s a great match so far. We’re at fifteen minutes and it’s still all four guys in there. Just as I finish typing that Austin is thrown out as Bret Hart uses what we would now call the FU to eliminate him. Bret Hart used an FU. Sly can never see this moment.

His orgasm would flood Missouri. Taker gets knocked to the floor so we continue our orgy match with Bret and Vader getting it on for awhile. I will now pause to attempt to erase such a mental picture. Ok I’m back now as Vader goes to the top in a dumb move. Why would you do that when being knocked to the floor eliminates you?

Bret stops him and lands a superplex from the top rope which is freaking insane given A) how long they’ve been going and B) the fact that Vader’s gut needs its own zip code. Taker breaks up the sharpshooter on Vader which makes no sense at all and even the announcers question it. Austin comes back out and beats up Hart some more to pretty much secure the fact that he’ll be winning this.

Vader again goes to the ropes for a Vader Bomb but Taker sits up and hits an uppercut to the little Vaders to eliminate him so we’re down to Bret vs. Taker. Austin is still around after a chokeslam and for some reason he stops the tombstone. Taker and Hart both go for Austin but Taker is too slow.

He turns around and is clotheslined out to make Bret the champion again. Sid comes out for the staredown after Taker storms off. Sid says let’s do it right now as we go off the air in the middle of the showdown. I like that ending as it leaves us on a cliffhanger for tomorrow’s show.

Rating: A. This was a very fun match and the key to it was you knew there was going to be a new champion at the end so you had to watch all of it. Another key was that no one was eliminated until over half of the match was gone. This kept things fresh and made you want to stay until the very end to see how everyone went out. The leaving the ring was key as well as it allowed three separate one on one matches to occur throughout the match. Great match indeed and very fun.

Overall Rating: B-. First two matches were pretty bad but the other three more than made up for them. By the middle of the main event I was hooked. The second half of the show was great with another solid Rock/HHH encounter, a solid and surprising tag match and a great main event. Overall this show started slowly but kicked it into high gear at the end. Not great but certainly fun, this is worth a watch someday but don’t make it a top priority.