Monday Nitro #67
Date: December 23, 1996
Location: Macon Coliseum, Macon, Georgia
Attendance: 4,900
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Mike Tenay, Larry Zbyszko

It’s the go home show for Starrcade and one of the last shows of 1996. I can’t believe I’ve actually gotten this far in this series. Anyway, as usual the wrestling isn’t the focus here but then again, it isn’t supposed to be on a go home show. I’m looking forward to next week’s show a little bit more though because of reasons we’ll get to next time. Let’s get to it.

We open with a clip of a match from 5 weeks ago where Benoit beat Eddie with a nice sunset flip.

US Title Tournament Semi-Final: Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero

There’s no Woman. Winner of this gets Page on Sunday for the title. They start off fast and Benoit takes him down with a shoulder block. Eddie comes back with chops in the corner as Tony can in fact confirm that Benoit is back from Germany. Gee thanks Tony! Taskmaster says that he’s the real chess master and that he’s got Benoit in his trap. Page joins commentary. After cutting away from the match for the Sullivan promo, we cut to the announce table to watch Page sit down.

Benoit hooks a headscissors on the mat but Eddie reverses into a headlock. Eddie keeps that headlock for awhile despite Benoit’s best efforts to get out. Page talks about the Guerreros: Hector, Chavo, Mondo, Harpo, Zeppo and so on. They go to a test of strength position on the mat with Benoit on top. Eddie gets a rollup for two as we take a break. Back with Eddie getting LAUNCHED onto the top rope in a huge Stun Gun.

A big belly to back gets two for Benoit as he yells as Eddie about who he is. He says he’s not Sullivan for some reason. A big powerbomb gets two. Off to a chinlock as Page is doing very well on commentary. He sounds like he’s having a blast. Eddie grabs a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker out of nowhere and loads up the Frog Splash but Benoit stops him and hits a superplex to put both guys down. A delayed cover gets two.

Benoit pounds him down but Eddie gets all fired up. Benoit drapes him across the top rope and covers for two but he grabs the ropes so it’s broken up. They go to the corner with Benoit trying a belly to back superplex but Eddie knocks him off and jumps off into a spinning Frog Splash to go to Starrcade.

Rating: B+. This is the best match I’ve seen on Nitro in a very long time. Eddie and Benoit of course has classic after classic and this was a very good one. The Frog Splash at the end was great and Benoit was feeling it with that high impact stuff. Very good match and an awesome opener. Eddie would win the title on Sunday.

Here are the Horsemen for some talking. Anderson says that a focused Benoit wouldn’t have lost. Last week he had to sit through a beating from Sullivan because he was the one sitting on a couch when the husband got home. Anderson goes on a rant against Benoit but Debra decides to cut him off and say no one likes Woman. She has plenty of friends that Benoit can have an affair with. Benoit says he doesn’t appreciate being told things like that because he was one of the ones that helped reunite the Horsemen. He actually tells Debra to talk to the hand as Mongo comes in to stop him. Flair has to play peacemaker.

Here’s the NWO with Hogan, Vincent, Ted and Liz. We get a spotlight on demand and Hogan says he smells Piper Mania. He’s the biggest star in the world, Hollywood loves him, Piper is a coward, etc. Tony says Piper isn’t here tonight. Now I know a lot of you would expect me to rant and rave about how stupid it is that WCW would have the go home show without the face in the main event of the biggest show of the year there, but at this point, why would you be surprised? It’s late 1996 and Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper is the main event. Hogan poses to “entertain” the people.

Trailer for Marked Man, which somehow proves that Piper is a bigger star according to Tony.

Tombstone vs. Lex Luger

Tombstone is 911 from ECW. This is your standard monster vs. hero match as Lex gets overpowered but then growls a lot and comes back. The Rack ends this quick. Not quite a squash but close enough.

Giant comes in post match and Lex hammers on him a bit. He gets Giant in the Rack but the NWO comes in. Lex drops Giant and runs.

Here’s a video from last week where there were two Stings. We also get a clip from the ending of the show where the WCW guys jumped Sting and that proves he’s NWO in WCW’s stupid minds.

JL vs. Rey Mysterio

The match is discussed for all of 4 seconds as we talk about how WCW needs a leader. JL sends him to the floor as JL misses a dive. Rey hits a rana off the apron to pop the crowd but Tony doesn’t even stop talking about Starrcade. Springboard legdrop gets two for Mysterio. Rey tries a rana but gets caught in a sitout powerbomb for two. Mysterio comes back with a moonsault press for two. Top rope rana sends JL to the floor and a suicide dive takes both of them out. West Coast Pop misses and JL tries La Magistral for two. JL goes up but Rey hits a super rana for the pin.

Rating: C+. Not bad again here but the focus being on Hogan vs. Piper for the most part got annoying. By that I mean it got annoying about an hour ago. At this point it’s expected every time there’s a match. Rey was so fun to watch at this point before his knees turned into something that is jealous of pudding’s toughness.

Rey comes up to the announce table and says that Sting is WCW. He was defending himself because Rey jumped on him last week. Since that’s logical and common sense though, Larry and Tony basically brush Rey off. We even get the Holding Out For A Hero tape from last week. Larry and Tony swear up and down that Sting is NWO. This company deserved to go out of business with how stupid they were. In another WCW gem, here’s this exchange. Tony: “Rey we’ve found that tape.” Rey: “Would you please play….” Tony: “WE ARE LIVE WITH THE SECOND HOUR OF MONDAY NITRO!!!” I give up man. I just do.

The NWO has sworn that Piper is here.

They REAIR Hogan’s promo from earlier. I rarely do this but I fast forward through this.

Glacier vs. Buddy Lee Parker

Glaicer kicks a lot, chops a lot, then kicks a lot more. He hits his Cryonic kick which Parker kicks out of for no apparent reason. A second one finishes this.

Amazing French Canadians vs. Public Enemy

Tony keeps hyping this as the holiday edition but there’s nothing other than a few decorations on the set. The Canadians sing O Canada in French. Tony and Tenay say it’s the wrong words, because apparently FRENCH Canadians should speak English right? Public Enemy jumps them and let’s get this over with. Naturally it’s not really a match as the Canadians are sent to the floor.

They manage to double team Grunge a bit though as the announcers talk about Hogan vs. Piper. I can live with it in a garbage match like this. We get to an actual match with Jacques beating on Grunge. The Canadians get a table set up but Rocco makes the save. Public Enemy finally says screw it and breaks the table over Jacques for the DQ. Total mess rather than a match so no rating.

We recap Bubba joining the NWO last week.

Konnan vs. Big Bubba

Nick Patrick is referee and he doesn’t have a neck brace anymore. Bubba beats Konnan down to start but then goes after Jimmy. This allows Konnan to dive through the dives to take Bubba out. He dropkicks him into the steps and then stands around like an idiot. Patrick takes forever to count so Bubba can come back in and get in a right hand.

The match grinds to a total halt because Bubba doesn’t seem interested in hurting Konnan at all. This results in a lot of slow choking which kills the crowd after a hot start. There’s a smother and Bubba claims Jimmy hit him, so Patrick throws him out. Konnan makes his comeback and throws Bubba over the top for the lame DQ.

Rating: D-. This started fast but oh my goodness this stopped dead after about 90 seconds. Bubba was so pathetic on offense and the whole thing died once he took over. Konnan wasn’t a great guy in the ring but he was trying harder here than Bubba, which really should summarize things for you.

Lee Marshall calls in.

TV Title: Steven Regal vs. Dean Malenko

Dean takes him down to the mat but Regal is like tut tut and takes over. They go into a test of strength position and both nip up to try to escape it. This was before Regal got addicted to everything on the planet and could still be awesome in the ring. Regal takes over with a cravate on the mat. They’re still pushing the idea that heavyweights are vastly superior to cruiserweights so Dean is a big underdog.

Sonny Onoo comes out and is quickly ejected so there wasn’t much of a point to that cameo. The crowd is pretty much dead for this but the match is fine. Off to a headscissors on the mat as Regal keeps control. Regal shifts over to the arm and into a modified abdominal stretch. They go to the corner and Dean hits a dropkick to take Regal down as Regal comes out of the corner.

Both guys are down now so Regal hooks a full nelson. Regal now goes for his 8th body part, taking out the knee. Dean reverses his half crab into a Texas Cloverleaf attempt but Regal grabs the rope. The American hits a release German to the Englishman to take over. A brainbuster hits….and there’s the time limit. Gah that gimmick gets old but at least they didn’t announce it.

Rating: C. The match was pretty boring for the crowd because it’s heel vs. heel. On the other hand though, the technical stuff was really fun as you had two guys that could pretty much do anything in the ring. The array of submissions got a little old but at least it never got boring, which is a rarity on Nitro half the time.

Rick Steiner vs. Jeff Jarrett

The fans want Sting but they get a Steiner powerslam to start. An elbow hits Jarrett as well as Jeff is in trouble early. He comes back with a middle rope clothesline as the announcers talk about how high the buyrate is going to be. Here’s the NWO Sting (with Heenan actually realizing it’s the fake one for once) to try the Death Drop on Jarrett. Steiner hits Fake Sting with a clothesline and Jarrett pins Fake Sting to end this. Why would you cover him? Why would the referee count it? Why am I surprised?

Here’s the NWO to close the show. Hogan talks about how he got a verbally written letter from Piper, admitting that Hogan is the icon. Piper’s music plays….and it’s Bischoff dressed as Piper. He does a bad Scottish accent and talks about Wrestlemania. Bischof insists that a referee get out here as Tony says wrestling has reached a new low and refuses to call this stuff.

Eric lays down for Hogan and gets pinned with one foot. He bows down to Hogan and here’s the real Piper, after probably half the audience has left because they were told he wasn’t here. He has a full band with him. And the NWO runs in to beat him down and end the show. Sting watches from the rafters.

Overall Rating: D+. This show is rapidly going downhill. The matches have stopped meaning much of anything, the announcers have reached levels of stupidity that I didn’t think existed (which would be crushed in the near future) and the PPVs they build to would get worse and worse, starting with a bad Starrcade coming up on Sunday. The shows are still watchable at this point, although they’re getting weak in a hurry.

Here’s Starrcade if you’re interested:

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Starrcade 1996
Date: December 29, 1996
Location: Nashville Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee
Attendance: 9,030
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Dusty Rhodes, Bobby Heenan

Since I want to get my third straight year of WCW complete, here’s the final show of 1996. The main event here is Hogan vs. Piper which shouldn’t be too bad since they were in their primes a mere 11 years ago. I never quite got why this was supposed to be the biggest match in the world but it’s WCW so why am I looking for logic? Other than that there isn’t a ton here but it’s Starrcade so let’s get to it.

The opening video is all about Hogan vs. Piper of course. The announcers talk about it to no end as well.

J Crown/Cruiserweight Title: Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon

The J Crown is a collection of 8 light weight titles from around the world that Dragon held. This is 8 titles vs. 1, which does a good job of making the Cruiserweight Title seem important. The Dragon is covered in belts here. This is more or less a dream match as they’ve been built up as unbeatable the whole time. Also, one of those 8 belts is the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship, meaning that there is a WWF Title being defended on a WCW show.

As always, Heenan kisses up to Sonny Onoo which is one of his trademarks for some reason. Tenay joins them for commentary. How did he go from being the Professor to what he is now? We go to the mat almost immediately as it’s a feeling out process at the moment. Tenay makes an interesting observation and says there is no challenger here. That’s true to a degree and sounds cool for some reason.

Dragon taps but that doesn’t mean anything yet. Sonny suggests he can hold his pants up with the 9th belt. We hear about a match recently where Malenko tried to fight a heavyweight and, GASP, he did quite well. Why didn’t more guys do that? Loud USA chant as the xenophobia runs wild as always. Dragon uses the STF(U) which causes a bunch of jokes from the announcers that aren’t funny.

Dean’s speed really is underrated. He moves around very well for his size which definitely isn’t your traditional cruiserweight look. Dragon dives through the ropes after faking Malenko out of his shoes. Octopus Hold on Malenko which Dusty thinks is an abdominal stretch but whatever. Tenay says Dragon’s name actually means Final Dragon, meaning the final protégé of Bruce Lee. If that’s true, Dragon was his protégé when he was 6 and a half years old, which is assuming he was his protégé on the last day of Lee’s life.

Malenko finally gets a break as he takes Dragon down and works the knee. Handspring elbow misses and Dean DRILLS him with a powerslam. Powerbomb by Dragon gets two as the crowd is getting into this quickly. Jumping Tombstone gets two and a HUGE pop for Malenko. All Dean here as he gets another two count. Asai Moonsault gets us back to even.

Both guys are down on the floor for a bit. Back in and a top rope moonsault misses, injuring Dragon’s knee. Cloverleaf is hooked and of course Sonny interferes. They do a very nice pinfall reversal sequence and then Dragon hits a Tiger Suplex (the arms are hooked like Cattle Mutilation but he does a suplex) for the pin. HUH? That makes NO sense from a booking perspective. The crowd was WAY into this to put it mildly and the ending just sucked the life out of the place. Dragon would lose the J-Crown in less than a week in Tokyo.

Rating: B+. GREAT opener here but Dean desperately needed to win to make it work. He would get the Cruiserweight Title back in like three weeks so that didn’t matter either. This was a weird booking decision all around and it just didn’t do anyone any favors. We got a good match out of it though so I guess there’s that.

Someone else is coming to the NWO. If I remember right, it was Norton. Yeah this was mentioned on PPV.

WCW Women’s Title: Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

Speaking of meaningless things, this was around for like 7 months with the winner here being one of two people to hold it ever. The other title match was in Japan after one of these two vacated it and then the title just disappeared. Lee Marshall is on commentary here for no apparent reason. Madusa is doing the whole patriot thing here and it gets as much of a reaction as you would expect it to.

Hokuto was actually in the tournament twice, once under a mask and once not. That should go to show you how deep in talent this division, which is a stretch in its own right, really was. Madusa gets stuck in a Sharpshooter for all of 3 seconds. Hokuto bits Madusa’s foot. Yeah this is pretty weak. Madusa/Alundra Blayze more or less was American women’s wrestling until Sable started getting in the ring.

There is almost nothing to talk about regarding the match here in case that didn’t come off clearly. Dusty says Akira’s hair is nappy, which would likely get him fired today and here it’s glazed over. Madusa hits a DDT which Tony of course thingks is a DDT. It’s amazing how many moves he snapped off that I’ve never even heard of at last year’s Starrcade and now he doesn’t even know basic stuff. That’s Bischoff for you.

This is boring as the announcers try very hard to not talk about T&A which is really what Madusa was known for since she was huge in both areas. Sonny blasts Madusa with the American flag behind the referee’s back and a brainbuster ends this bad match.

Rating: D. Is there a reason for the whole Japanese push here? I don’t really get that but whatever. This would have been bad no matter what the ending was, as this was just not interesting in the slightest. I know Bischoff was obsessed with Japanese wrestling, but dang dude not everything, such as joshi, needs to come over.

Piper, high as a freaking kite, goes on a huge rant about how they’re both icons and how there are other icons. This is less coherent than a Warrior interview. He can’t carry a piano in a parade and has six kids. Piper thinks Gene is Roseanne and makes a Jewish joke before hopping away on one foot. To say this was out there is a drastic understatement.

Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Rey Mysterio

Was there a sale on Japanese workers tonight or something? This should be a great match but three of them in a row? Really man? We hear about Liger having brain surgery of all things earlier in the year. Rey is in WAY over his head here as he’s only been in WCW for a few months while Liger has been here on and off for years. Total beatdown to more or less zero reaction.

Dusty talks about the Figure Four for some reason despite it having no bearing on this match at all. Liger hits a powerbomb on the floor as this has been more or less one sided the entire time. He hooks a surfboard which is one of my all time favorite submission holds. Rey shakes his head all over and you can’t tell which way his head is going.

Crowd is DEAD here by the way. This is rather odd as this has been a rather hard hitting match but I guess it’s the lack of caring of the whole international guys and their style but still this is weird. Granted the one sided thing isn’t helping anything. Dusty talks about his old partner Dick Murdoch who must be watching this tonight. Dusty is such a great friend that he didn’t realize Murdoch died six months before this.

They crank it up again and Rey hits a HUGE moonsault to the floor to wake up this hick crowd. These Tennessee crowds hate anything that isn’t on the mat and doesn’t have a wacky finish like Lawler would book. This high flying stuff is totally pointless to them and you can tell by their reactions. Rey tries to drop a dime and misses to NO change in reaction. Liger Bomb ends it to nothing of course. As Heenan puts it: Japan 3, US 0.

Rating: B-. Solid match here but the booking of Rey getting destroyed was weird. The crowd really brings this down which isn’t something I complain about too often but it’s the problem of having the good old boys crowd like this and it just did not work at all. They decide what they like and if it’s not the same thing they’ve seen for 50 years they will sit on their hands and give the guys nothing.

Jeff Jarrett vs. Chris Benoit

This is No DQ and is somehow part of the eternally awful Horsemen vs. Dungeon of Doom feud which never got any resolution. Not because of the NWO or anything but rather people just didn’t care and it died. Benoit is the heel here because he stole the wife of Kevin Sullivan (Woman, which happened both in real life and in storyline. The line that sums it up is that Kevin Sullivan booked his own divorce) and might be thrown out of the Horsemen for it. Yeah, Benoit stole a single woman while Flair came out at Wrestle War 89 to fight Steamboat with over 20 of them and Benoit is about to be thrown out for Jarrett, who Flair has given a seal of approval to.

To show you how much people can’t stand Jarrett, he’s the face in the storyline, has RIC FLAIR saying how great he is and is the home state boy. He promptly gets booed out of the building in favor of Benoit. Jarrett is in his old school semi-male stripper outfit which is gray on the back and white on the front. This is a far more technical and ground based match so the people seem to be alive for this one. Benoit yells at him and holds up four fingers to a face pop which the company doesn’t want but whatever.

It breaks down into a fight and we hit the floor. Woman gets involved and Jarrett gets crotched, giving Benoit the advantage. This is one of those matches where you shouldn’t try to factor in the storyline but you have to and it cripples it. The match isn’t bad I guess but at the same time it’s really nothing special given the parties involved.

Jarrett goes off but Woman stops him with her fingers into the eyes and Arn Anderson is here. He walks by Benoit which is supposed to be an insult to Benoit I guess. Cue the Dungeon of Doom and they go after Woman. Taskmaster is here and blasts Benoit with a wooden chair. I think Anderson knocked Jarrett out because when everything is clear Jarrett is on Benoit for the pin.

Rating: D+. Decent little match but the angle was just completely awful. Why are they fighting? Aren’t they kind of both Horsemen? Ah wait: Jarrett just hangs out with them and their leader has endorsed him forever but he isn’t a Horseman. Benoit is bad for stealing Woman from his heel husband which was the whole idea of Hogan vs. Savage in 88/89 but whatever. This feud SUCKED and of course went on for like a year since Konnan and Hugh Morrus are such huge issues for guys like Anderson and Flair right? See what I mean by it’s annoying?

Anderson won’t talk to Gene to explain anything because that would be nice. Neither will Jarrett. Benoit and Woman won’t either and here’s Mongo to HUGE booing. He’s a heel here so at least they got that right. He runs down Benoit to an extent and then the extent is gone. Debra gets the loudest heat of the night which is a bad sign. I think the idea is that Benoit’s affair is breaking up the Horsemen….somehow…..and the Dungeon is happy. Flair wants to replace Benoit with Benoit but Arn is remaining loyal to Benoit, even though he doesn’t want to. They managed to screw up the HORSEMEN. Are you getting how bad this regime really was?

Video on Sting as we’re not sure where he’s going. I still can’t believe that this thing lasted a year before his next match.

Tag Titles: Outsiders vs. Faces of Fear

I remember when this was announced and I was 8 years old. Even then I thought it was some kind of a joke. Nash gets a big pop because he’s Nash and this is Nashville. It was on a sign. Even I’m not that corny. That NWO music really is sweet. I thought of that and then remembered the line so there must be something to the catchphrases. The champions come out first which is odd.

Faces of Fear are Meng and Barbarian and part of the Dungeon of Doom. Meng and Hall start us off as I continue to marvel at Barbarian’s ability to get work. The fans chant Razor to be funny and then Nash, the big man comes in. I say big even though Hall is taller than both of the Faces but whatever. Clubbering commences on Nash and this isn’t very interesting since there is NO chance the titles are changing here.

Racial stereotypes are enforced as a double noggin knocker does nothing. More or less dominance by the challengers so far but Nick Patrick is the referee so expect a screwy ending. Barbarian hits a Jackknife on Hall and takes about a week to cover him so Nash won’t have to run. Syxx steals the Megaphone from Hart and runs him off.

Barbarian knocks Hall out with a nerve hold and Patrick won’t do anything about it. Naturally more of the hold makes him Hulk Up to a face pop. Nash comes in to another face pop and kicks Barbarian in the face, proving that his foot is harder than Meng’s head. Jackknife ends Barbarian.

Rating: D+. No drama at all and the dynamic was all screwed up since WCW refused to accept that these guys were faces at this point. I mean really though, the Faces of Fear? They’re the best challengers you could find? That’s what killed this match: no drama. When I was 8 I knew this wasn’t happening and I know it even more now. Not horrible though.

DiBiase and Hogan say they’ll beat Piper. Seriously is this 1987? Hogan does a huge rant about Piper’s kids and drops in brand names like Campbell’s Soup and Coke. Holy product placement Batman! This is like two and a half minutes long.

US Title: Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddie Guerrero

This is a tournament final for the title Flair had to vacate due to his shoulder injury. Page was on the brink of the push of a lifetime, but is still a heel here. That would change in less than a month as he would begin the monster face push that had it not been for Sting, could have made him the dark horse to take the title off Hogan at Starrcade the next year. That’s how hot he was in 1997. Eddie is still the nice guy and has about as much personality as Todd Grisham at this point.

Page has fans here and for once WCW got the idea. These two feuded earlier in the year over the Battlebowl Ring which went nowhere. Page had gotten help from Hall and Nash which he hadn’t asked for as they try to get him to join. Get what he was about to do to become the huge face? There’s no belt or anything as Giant still has it. The three commentators really are too much. Dusty can’t believe the fans are yelling for DDP.

This is a pretty basic match and the crowd is silent AGAIN. Nice pescado to put DDP down. Heenan has mic issues or something and is gone. We get more confusing commentary as Dusty raves about how the Diamond Cutter could be hit from anywhere but then says you have to soften the guy up for it. Yeah that makes sense. Heenan is back and this is a pretty decent back and forth match.

I like Heenan’s jokes about Mrs. Guerrero’s chili. That stuff must be awesome. Frog Splash misses and Eddie might have hurt his knee. Page uses something like a Jackhammer for two. It was more like a powerslam and in one motion though which made it fairly cool looking. Very good back and forth match so far here and the crowd simply does not care for the most part which is really depressing.

Page says Diamond Cutter time but Eddie gets knocked to the floor and Page is down in the ring. Cue Outsiders and a Razor’s Edge for DDP. Frog Splash ends it as he didn’t see anything since he was down on the floor. Eddie has the belt even though we were told it was stolen by Giant earlier. The NWO runs in again and beats him down, stealing the belt AGAIN, setting up Syxx vs. Eddie next month in a ladder match.

Rating: B. The match was good, but I would have liked it a lot more if DDP had lost clean. The NWO was the focal point of the company, but like Nexus there needs to be some stuff they’re not involved in that actually matters. This was more overkill by them as they were the only thing that mattered at all and it would start to wear on people. This was a rather good match though as both guys were working hard with some near falls that almost got people caring. Good match.

Ad for Souled Out which was very different to say the least. We’ll get to that later.

Lex Luger vs. The Giant

This is the next to last match and the second biggest on the card. Tony declares that 1996 will be the year that Luger arrives. You know, other than the rookie of the year or the world title reigns he had. This has been building up for a long time so this is a legit showdown and it really does wake the crowd up for the first time since the opener. A long lockup results in punching and shoving.

Luger punches him then gets shoved across the ring. Giant ENDS him with a running clothesline and it’s heel (the popular kind) dominance. Giant kicks him in the ribs and launches him through the ropes in a cool looking spot. He works on Luger’s back and it’s one sided for the most part. Can someone give Dusty something to play with so he’ll BE QUIET?

Luger makes a short comeback with a double axehandle but the slam of course doesn’t work. They tease the Rack but it goes nowhere. Giant goes for a running dropkick and misses, drawing no reaction at all. They say this match has been brutal. I wouldn’t got that far but it certainly hasn’t been very good. Luger finally puts him down with a neckbreaker but gets launched onto the referee who of course lays there to take it.

There’s the slam and Nick Patrick comes down. Luger gets him up but Patrick kicks him in the leg. Sting walks through the crowd and the Rack is on again. SYXX comes down to kick Luger now. Sting comes in and throws the bat down before talking to both Luger and Giant and leaving again. Low blow and about four bat shots end Giant to a HUGE pop. This is the first official loss for the NWO and it only took Luger, Sting and a ball bat to do it.

Rating: D. This was just bad. Luger didn’t do anything here other than the Rack which lasted all of a second. Giant didn’t do anything of note and even with the crowd being all poppish over this, the whole thing never went anywhere. This is supposed to start Giant’s face turn because Hogan and the Outsiders wouldn’t come out to help him but no one wound up caring since Hogan beat him at the next show.

Tony saying this is the turning point of Luger’s career really is funny.

Roddy Piper vs. Hulk Hogan

This is the Match of the Decade. No wait….make that of the CENTURY. What did they expect here anyway? Hogan hadn’t had a good match in years and Piper was crippled for the most part. Hogan has Liz, DiBiase and Vincent with him. The belt, which is about 13 years old, is billed as being 95 at this point. Ok for those of you that have heard the whole 1905 thing, there’s an explanation for that since it’s wrong.

The original championship (not the belt but the title itself if that makes sense) was made in like 1947 in Iowa. That was the NWA Title, as in National Wrestling Alliance. It became the only world title when the National Wrestling ASSOCIATION Title, which hardly anyone has heard of but was from 1905, was unified with it when Thesz beat someone that means nothing.

Eventually the NWA World Title belt was made (as in the one Kane currently holds. Well not really but that design) for Flair in the mid 1980s because he was supposed to be a larger than life character so he had a larger than life belt. That was still the NWA Title but eventually was used as the WCW Title due to a way too complicated sequence of events and lawsuits.

Eventually it became the WCW Title and had nothing to do with the NWA Title anymore as it is now the old style that you can see at shows before 86 in what became WCW. The title that Hogan holds here (the WCW World Title) has been in existence for about six years at this point and the belt itself (Big Gold Belt, as in the design Kane has although not that belt in particular since that is the World Heavyweight Championship and was invented in 2002 as the original Raw World Title) a little over ten, but hey, saying it’s 91 years old sounds better right? Welcome to the wonderful world of title lineages.

Anyway back to the match. Hogan heads to the floor as the bell rings. Vince and Liz leave and it’s just DiBiase. Hogan slaps Piper on a break in the corner as that is the only offense in about two minutes so far. The bald one runs to waste more time. Lots of punching and kicking here and Hogan stalls again. DO SOMETHING! Hey look it’s a headlock!

It’s pretty much all Hogan here, much like he would do the next year against Sting. Neither guy can do much more than a Tough Enough rookie could do here and it’s just bad. Hogan runs AGAIN for like the third time so far. Piper finds a belt somewhere and whips Hogan with it. He goes after DiBiase to let Hogan take over again. Baldie goes after the hip as this is just horribly boring.

DiBiase interferes again and both guys just fall down. This is just bad. Both guys are far too old and neither can do anything at all other than punch. Piper throws in a suplex to officially classify this as a wrestling match. We get it: Piper has heart and a FIRE inside. Legdrop misses and here comes the NWO. Giant picks Piper up for a Chokeslam and just holds him there for like 10 seconds. A fan comes in and everyone beats him down.

Piper gets out of the chokeslam I guess just because Giant forgot what he was doing. Sleeper goes on to NO reaction again and Hogan goes out clean. It takes forever but the fans finally get that Hogan just lost. The Outsiders run out before Piper can get his belt. Ah never mind: this was non-title. See, the interesting thing is that WCW NEVER mentioned that the title wasn’t on the line. Imagine if Cena vs. Batista at Mania had been non title. To say there would have been an uproar is an understatement.

Rating: F. This was AWFUL as both guys are old and can’t move so of course they get the equivalent of Wrestlemania. The non-title thing is bait and switch to the core and it ticked off a LOT of people. They had a rematch at Superbrawl where Savage turned NWO and kept the title on Hogan. This was just flat out bad and everyone knew it would be.

Hogan chases down Giant and he and the Outsiders yell at the big man. Giant says where were you when I needed you. We throw in a line about Hogan still being champion even though he lost.

Overall Rating: D-. For a regular show, this isn’t bad at all. For the biggest show of the year, this is a disaster. There are 8 matches on this card. The first three mean nothing. Truly, they meant nothing. Just over three weeks later the title was back on Malenko and the other two mean even less. I had already forgotten Jarrett vs. Benoit by the time I got to this point.

The tag title match was a token defense. The US Title was ok but it meant nothing since it led to the far more important DDP face turn. The final two matches are ok at best but again are just table setting for Souled Out. The wrestling is ok in a huge stretch and other than that this was horrible. Didn’t like it when I was a kid and can’t stand it now.

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Clash of the Champions #26
Date: January 27, 1994
Location: Riverside Centroplex, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Attendance: 3,200
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan

This is the first show after Starrcade where Flair as a face won the world title. Tonight the main event is Vader/Rude vs. Flair/Sting in an elimination match, which should be pretty good at least. Other than that this looks like a pretty lackluster show. This was a pretty decent time in WCW’s history though but things would really start to click in about a month. Then Hogan would kill it so there we go. Let’s get to it.

Standard intro video which is decent enough for what it’s supposed to do.

Gene opens us up just in front of the entrance and gets an announcement in his earpiece. He can’t believe what’s going on. It’s bad news. It’s a nightmare. It’s BOBBY HEENAN! The fans are more or less shocked but break into a WEASEL chant. This was a pretty big move actually so it’s hard to complain. He left WWF because Vince doesn’t offer medical insurance, while Turner did. Heenan had a bad neck and left so he could get it fixed.

Pretty Wonderful vs. 2 Cold Scorpio/Marcus Bagwell

This is back when Scorpio was still awesome. Pretty Wonderful is Paul Orndorff and Paul Roma. This is a #1 contenders match. The Pauls have a masked manager called the Assassin, who later owned Deep South Wrestling and whose son is one Nick Patrick. Brain: I know who the Assassin is. Would you like to know? Tony: Of course. Brain: It’s the guy in the mask! I love Bobby Heenan. I truly do.

It’s nice to see Brain just jump in here and not be confused or anything. I guess he’s only on drink #1. Hot Shot by Roma to take down Bagwell. Interestingly enough Heenan is looking at what’s going on in the ring rather than on his monitor. I don’t remember any other announcers ever doing that. I still can’t get over Orndorff having a job in 1994. He would have kept one even longer had it not been for a neck injury.

I also don’t get how Roma stayed around as long as he did. What were they thinking when they made this guy a Horseman? We get a new commissioner tonight, and I’m pretty sure I remember who that is. Orndorff jumps into Scorpio’s boot and it lets Bagwell get the hot tag and clean house. After Scorpio goes to the floor we get a weird ending: Orndorff puts up his boot for Bagwell’s head to be rammed into. Bagwell blocks and in goes Roma’s head, for the pin. Yeah that’s how they won the match. Weird.

Rating: C-. Total run of the mill tag match here but it wasn’t awful. This could have been on any show other than a PPV and at least it had something of importance on it. The ending sucked which hurts it, but the other 12 minutes or so were fine. This was acceptable, which is a good term for it I guess.

Ah ok a replay shows that it was Orndorff’s knee and he had slipped something into it. That helps a lot.

Ron Simmons vs. Ice Train

Student vs. teacher here with no entrances for either guy as the bell is ringing when we come back from a break. Simmons is a heel here…I think. Yeah he is. Ice Train is a rather large man but he had little talent. Naturally I was always a fan of his. Train keeps using a 3 point stance before all of his moves. He hits the buckle, Simmons rolls him up with the trunks being held and it’s over.

Rating: N/A. Was there a point to this that I just completely missed? Simmons would be gone soon.

You can talk LIVE to Bobby Heenan after the show. Pay no attention to the *all programming is pre-recorded thing at the bottom of the screen.

Here are Steve Austin and Robert Parker. Austin is in a cowboy hat and suit jacket, much like JBL. He’s US Champion and managing Parker in his match with Flying Brian later. Austin does a funny Southern accent with a cigar in his mouth. Parker talks about a dog or something like that.

There’s a new commissioner, and it’s Nick Bockwinkle. You know, because SO many people know who that is right? Almost no reaction either, as he was from the AWA in the north so he’s perfect to introduce in Louisiana. This was just dumb, so of course they kept him on for almost two years until he legitimately forgot the name of the PPV he was on and they fired him because of it. And that’s it for this segment.

TV Title: Steven Regal vs. Dustin Rhodes

William Regal vs. Goldust for you young kids out there. Also, GORDON SOLIE is replacing Tony on commentary here. To anyone that has been a fan for a long time, you just smiled more than likely. Solie is clearly past his prime here as he makes some noticeable mistakes but hearing him get fired up is still great with that voice that sounds like an old aunt but he’s into things ever time, making him great for nostalgia if nothing else.

Basic feeling out process here to start as Solie talks about the body parts, including an argument with Heenan about how many vertebrae there are in the arm. Dustin works the arm and Regal does some solid selling. Keep in mind that this is Regal before he went insane on drugs and alcohol and doesn’t have a big gut and could MOVE. To prove my point, Regal nips up to get out of a wristlock. See what I mean?

Dustin does some nice stuff to outsmart Regal as this is a very technical/mat based match so far. Solie talks about the time issue which is definitely hinting at the ending already. I still can’t get over that it’s Bill Dundee as Regal’s manager. Regal gets a cobra clutch which gets him nowhere. This is a very basic match but that doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. Solie says the eternally stupid line of “they’re all the same size on the canvas.” No, not quite. Dustin is still taller than Regal, no matter what position he is.

We hit five minutes left and Regal continues to dominate. Make that four minutes. Nothing at all is happening here as we have nothing but Regal putting holds on Dustin. Dustin finally does something and it’s still not that good. Down to three minutes now as Regal stalls. Dustin of course keeps going after him while he’s on the floor, wasting like 40 seconds in the process.

Sunset flip by the British dude doesn’t work and here comes Dustin. Lariat takes him down with two minutes left. One minute left and Regal is on the floor again. Yep they’re doing that ending. Rhodes goes for the Bulldog and it gets one as the time runs out, mercifully ending this.

Rating: D. There’s a reason we don’t see more wrestling like this: IT’S BORING. That’s what this boils down to: this was boring. There was nothing at all going on here as it was mainly them just laying on the mat for about 10 minutes, Regal hiding for three and a half minutes, and maybe 90 seconds of actual wrestling. What’s the point in watching this if that’s all we’re going to get? Bad match and just boring.

Aaron Neville, some singer that no one cares about so naturally he got a bunch of singing gigs with the company. Yep, this was pointless.

Ad for Superbrawl, which for some reason was never released on VHS. I’ve never gotten that.

Maxx Payne/Cactus Jack vs. Nasty Boys

Missy Hyatt is managing the Nasty Boys, and you can make your own jokes about her knobs and how they sag. Cactus was getting more and more popular around this time, so of course he was cut as fast as possible. And there are no Cactus and Payne. They come through the crowd after a break and it’s on. It’s weird hearing Solie do commentary on a match with these guys in it.

Total brawl of course to start us off. Cactus elbow crushes Sags on the floor. We get to the point where we finally have a traditional tag match which surprises me. Sags hits a top rope cross body but Payne rolls through for two. Knobbs allegedly was a wrestling champion in the army and Payne was an amateur champion. Sure why not? NICE Double Arm DDT to Knobbs for two. Stupidly enough like a second later they just have Payne drop an elbow on Knobbs and Jack gets the pin.

Rating: D. Given who was in there, this was the best they were going to do, period. Jack was getting better every day out there but the other three have never really gotten anywhere else. This wasn’t much at all, as the matches they would have would get better when they were wild brawls. Those were rather good, unlike this.

We recap Pillman vs. Parker, which more or less is Pillman and Austin got split up (they committed the crime of being popular and talented) and Austin went with Parker while Brian went face. This somehow got a massive chicken suit involved.

Brian Pillman vs. Robert Parker

The loser has to wear a chicken suit….this weekend. Yeah for no apparent reason the chicken suit thing isn’t for about 3 days. Brian throws out KFC on his way to the ring. Parker is in regular tights which is rather disturbing. Pillman goes after Austin on the floor and gets caught because of it.

Parker runs, Pillman hits him. Repeat that about 5 times until the Boss (Big Boss Man) stops Parker from running again. And let’s repeat that just to make sure it was emphasized enough I suppose. Austin runs in and beats up Pillman as anything resembling a wrestling match is purely coincidental. More interference gets two for Parker until Boss runs off Austin, causing a rollup to beat Parker.

Rating: C-. It was entertaining, but this was just too much repetition. They kept doing the same thing over and over again which didn’t help things very much. We don’t need to see the same stuff that often to make it work, which is something that they just couldn’t get here for some reason. Entertaining though.

Ric Flair/Sting vs. Vader/Rick Rude

Sting and Rude are feuding over the International Title (WAY too long of a story to get into, but in short they had the physical NWA Title belt but weren’t part of the NWA, so they made this instead) and Flair vs. Vader is for the world title. It’s weird hearing Bobby cheer against Flair. This is under elimination rules for no adequately explained reason.

Bockwinkle is on commentary here just to continue the lack of getting it that WCW had with their authority figures until Bischoff arrived. Sting and Rude start us off and we get a feeling out process. Bobby: “We’ve got four world champions in this match and another on commentary that I managed. What do you do Tony?” Tony: “I play video games.” Total WTF moment there. Can you imagine him playing Madden or something?

Vader comes in and just annihilates Sting. Vader gets a sunset flip OFF THE MIDDLE ROPE. That was perfect looking too, which is just freaking scary. I know he’s good but at times he’s almost terrifying with what he could pull off. The mask comes off and suddenly I can see the 4 inches of his face that we’re covered. I never got the point of that mask but whatever.

Flair comes in and just beats the crap out of Vader, putting him down. Even Sting couldn’t do that earlier. If anything happens during the break we’ll show you. Since nothing is shown from the break, I would assume they stood around while performing life-affirming skits involving saying no to drugs or perhaps a song and dance routine from South Pacific. Rude is beating up Sting when we come back.

Flair comes in for the save and we get to see Rude sell an atomic drop which is worth the price of admission (this was on free TV so that’s a pointless statement) alone. Vader Bomb hits before it was called that but Race says go up again. Middle rope suplex gets almost no reaction which is odd. Top rope version gets about the same. Hey, did you know Flair was in a plane crash? Didn’t think telling us that in EVERY FLAIR MATCH EVER was enough clarification.

Vader goes after Bockwinkle, probably because he had to watch one of his matches back in the day, and I guess Flair and Vader got counted out. Flair had to be helped out. That leaves Sting vs. Rude which is almost always fun. This is just a standard 8 minute match between these two. It’s good but at the end of the day, so what? Sting gets a Rude Awakening on Rude but gets two because it’s just a neckbreaker. BIG splash from the top by Sting gets the pin. RVD has nothing on Sting from the early 90s when it came to jumping.

Rating: C+. It’s ok but this got over 20 minutes worth of time and all it really boils down to is a double countout and a clean pin for Sting. It’s not bad or anything, but the lack of meaning or drama hurt it a lot. Sting was better than Rude and he beat him clean. What’s the point in watching that? The pairing was big though and it fit for a show of this magnitude so I can give it points for that. This was fine for what it was, but it’s not particularly good.

Overall Rating: D. This just didn’t do it for me at all. This was a BAD period for WCW but things would pick up soon after this. For one thing, Dusty Rhodes got fired as booker and one Ric Flair took over. His first act: rehire Ricky Steamboat and have him just own everyone, setting up a clash between them that was rather good. And then Hogan showed up and got rid of all that so guys like Orndorff and Duggan could get pushed over Austin and Steamboat. Sure why not. This wasn’t much of a show and it just shows how bad the time period was for them. Not worth seeing at all really.

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Clash of the Champions 25
Date: November 10, 1993
Location: Bayfront Arena, St. Petersburg, Florida
Attendance: 6,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Jesse Ventura

We’re still in 1993 here which means things are pretty bad. The main event is Flair vs. Vader for the world title. We also get a second world title match with Rick Rude vs. Hawk for the WCW International Title which is something I’m not explaining in depth again. As you know, WCW in 1993 sucked so it’s probably going to do it again. There are five title matches out of seven total matches tonight. Let’s get to it.

Gene opens us up and tells us to call the Hotline to vote for Manager of the Year.

WCW International Title: Hawk vs. Rick Rude

Well at least it can’t get much worse after this one. It’s a power match to start and neither guy can get an advantage so far. Jesse brags about being on Rude’s tights as Rude is sent flying into the corner. Hawk wants a test of strength and Rude does what every heel does in this situation. He hammers on Hawk and that doesn’t do much.

Hawk doesn’t feel like selling tonight so he hits a suplex for two. They haven’t used anything that wasn’t taught on Tough Enough yet. Rude jumps into a boot in one of the most telegraphed shots I’ve ever seen. Out on the floor now and they brawl to the ultra lame double count out.

Rating: F. The match was boring, they had one move that wasn’t a shove, punch or kick and the ending was lame. What are you expecting out of this? Just not an interesting match and I have no idea why they kept giving Hawk these singles pushes as he never seemed like someone that was any good without Animal.

The Equalizer vs. The Shockmaster

Equalizer is more famous as Dave Sullivan in 1995. In short he makes David Otunga look like Kurt Angle. If there is anything good and holy in this world, this will be short. Equalizer jumps him to start and pounds away. A belly to back suplex gets two. Rude and British Bulldog might be fighting in the back. Can we go see that instead? Shocky starts no selling stuff and gets the bearhug which he drops down with for a quick pin. Thank goodness. This was nothing but it was a short nothing so it wasn’t as bad as the opener.

Colonel Parker isn’t nominated for Manager of the Year and he doesn’t care. He’s dropped Sid and picked up Steve Austin. I’d think that was an upgrade for Parker. He swears he has a restraining order against Sid and that Sid is nowhere near but Gene says he say him earlier today. Parker bails.

TV Title: Johnny B. Badd vs. Steven Regal

Johnny is mostly a face and is gay here. He’s also not that good yet and is challenging tonight. Badd gets the crowd going so yeah he’s full on face now. Regal isn’t sure what to do with him. Jesse thinks Regal would never cheat because he’s English. Badd speeds things way up quickly and gets a bunch of two counts to frustrate Regal. Jesse and Tony debate British royalty. You can never accuse Jesse of keeping things boring.

They speed things up again as Jesse implies Badd cross dresses. Badd really likes that headlock as he’s on his third one of the match. Regal takes him down with technical stuff but Badd speeds things up again to frustrate Regal. Regal can’t get anything going at all so far. He finally gets some European uppercuts to put Badd down for two. Butterfly suplex gets two. The thing earlier with Rude vs. Bulldog was Bulldog challenging for the title which hasn’t been accepted yet.

Regal gets caught by a big right hand and Sir William is mad. Steven is out cold but Sir William puts the foot on the rope. Badd yells about it but gets rolled up with a handful of tights (despite there no being many tights there to pull in the first place) for the pin to retain. He held that title seemingly all the time around this era so that’s no surprise at all for the most part.

Rating: B-. Fun match as Badd was moving out there and Regal was all befuddled over it. Once Badd got serious around a year from now he got totally awesome and had some great matches with guys like Brian Pillman. You could see flashes of brilliance in him at times and this was rapidly approaching it. Pretty fun match.

Steve Austin vs. Brian Pilllman

For some reason the Hollywood Blondes, an awesome tag team, were split up and this is the grudge match. Colonel Parker was responsible for it by getting in Austin’s ear and is with Austin here. Austin jumps Pillman who doesn’t get an entrance. It’s a brawl on the floor to start with Austin losing control quickly. A headscissors in the ring puts Austin down and he begs off.

We go out to the floor again and Austin pounds him down. It’s so weird to see him this young and fired up. They go out to the ramp and Pillman tries a top rope splash but goes into a boot. They brawl into the ring and Austin gets something like a Stun Gun for two. Parker is worried about Sid so he keeps looking around. Austin throws on a half crab and uses the ropes. Wouldn’t that take pressure off the hold and therefore off the knee? I’ve never gotten that.

Pillman gets an elbow to the jaw to put both guys down for a bit. Steve goes up but gets crotched. Pillman tries a superplex but counters, sending Pillman appropriately flying to the mat. He manages to catch Steve coming off with a dropkick and gets a victory roll for two. A DDT gets the same as this is getting good. That means it’s probably about over too. The crucifix, a signature move of Pillman, gets countered by something like a Samoan Drop by the non-Samoan Austin.

Brian gets a cradle for a VERY close two. The fans are a bit quiet but screw them. Pillman avoids the Stun Gun but Parker pulls his feet down as he goes for something, allowing Austin to get the easy pin which might have included a handful of tights because that’s what old school heels like Austin use.

Rating: B-. Another fun match but these two needed more than ten minutes on a Clash. This could have been a huge feud over like the US Title or something but Dustin Rhodes wasn’t about to let go of that thing at this point. Austin would get it at Starrcade but this feud was long over by then. I never quite got white but I’ll chalk it up to WCW was stupid.

We go to the Battlebowl Control Center which is just a place to talk about the match and the buildup to it. Go check out my review of it if you really want to but it sucked so there isn’t much reason to do so. Orndorff says he’ll win it. Sting says he’ll win again.

US Title: Dustin Rhodes vs. Paul Orndorff

For the life of me I don’t get Orndorff’s constant pushes. He’s challenging here and has The Assassin (masked guy, started Deep South Wrestling and is Nick Patrick’s dad) with him. Dustin has his fat papa with him. The old guys (and the Assassin might be fatter) get into it pre match. The commentary is all about the old guys because the wrestlers in the ring having the match mean nothing.

Orndorff tries to cheat to start but that doesn’t go all too well. Dustin puts on a headlock on the mat while the old guys play keepaway on the floor. Jesse makes fat jokes. Orndorff grabs a hammerlock and Assassin yells encouragement. Something tells me this is going to be a very uninteresting match. Dustin counters into a top wristlock and down goes Paul. They go to the mat again and now Dustin is working on the leg.

Now it’s off to a chinlock in case those leg locks were too exciting for some viewers. Back to the armbar by Paul as Dusty is coaching. Orndorff hits a suplex and drops an elbow and BACK TO THE CHINLOCK. My goodness are they as bored as I am here? Backslide gets two for Dustin as does a lariat. Orndorff takes over again and mixes things up by putting a knee in the back on his chinlock. Dustin gets a clothesline for two. There’s nothing going on between these moves. Bulldog is blocked and Paul tries his piledriver. After a bit of boring stuff, Dustin small packages him for the pin.

Rating: F. I’m sorry but what was the point of this? It was about 11 minutes of nothing but chinlocks and rest holds. None of the arm or leg work ever went anywhere and the whole match was incredibly boring. No one was interested in the match either, which is true for the majority of Dustin’s run in WCW. Goldust was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Dusty and Assassin get into it post match and Orndorff can’t pick Dusty up for the piledriver. Dustin makes the save and somehow Dusty has the US Title at the end of it.

Keep voting for Manager of the Year.

Tag Titles: Sting/British Bulldog vs. Nasty Boys

The heels have Missy Hyatt and the belts here. Sting vs. Knobbs starts us off in a big brawl. Smith and Sags are on the ramp and Rude sneaks down to give Smith the Rude Awakening. Hawk comes out to chase Rude off and it’s more or less a handicap match now. All of that was pre-match. Oh great. Smith is more or less out so Sting officially starts with Knobbs.

Sting beats them both up and is in there with Sags now. He can’t keep the advantage though because he keeps going over to check on Smith who is still down. Sting gets a cover but the referee is with Missy, as so many others probably have been. The Nasties start double teaming and Sags throws him over the top which isn’t a DQ because the referee is still with Missy.

Knobbs suplexes him back in for two. It’s bearhug time as Smith is actually on his feet now. It only took him five minutes off one neckbreaker. Now THAT is some selling. Sting gets out with a belly to belly but Sags breaks up the tag again. Back to the chinlock by Knobbs as this is needing to end. Sting breaks it up and there’s a double tag to Sags vs. Smith. Smith cleans house and seems to be perfectly fine. He hits a bunch of double team moves including a double DDT. Smith throws Sting onto both of them and hits a falling slam (not a powerslam) to Knobbs but Sags drops a top rope elbow on him for the surprise pin.

Rating: D+. Not much here and the kind of clean pin was a good thing for the champions to get here in a match they probably should have lost on paper. The match was boring though as Sting dominated the whole time and then got caught in chinlocks galore. It wasn’t a good match or anything so the whole thing was pretty dull overall. Sting is always worth seeing though, especially for his big fans like myself.

Colonel Parker is talking to Flair and says Austin wants to face the winner of the main event for the world title.

WCW World Title: Ric Flair vs. Vader

Flair is challenging. Remember that this is the WORLD Title rather than the International Title. By the way as I’m sure you realize, this is the Starrcade main event a month before Starrcade. Buffer gives us some big match intros. We come back from a break and see Flair putting Race in the Figure Four but leaves himself wide open to a splash, giving Vader an early advantage.

It’s all Vader to start and he hits the Vader Bomb about a minute in. Flair isn’t in purple tonight so he’s not quite his best. He shrugs off some punches and chops away and stomps Vader down in the corner. And never mind as Vader does that standing avalanche thing and the pain continues. We go outside where Race gets some payback for earlier. Vader misses a splash against the railing and Sting is smiling somewhere.

Flair goes up AND HITS THE SHOT ON VADER!!! Maybe it’s something about jumping to the floor. Flair is all fired up inside now and chops Vader down which is something that you didn’t see ever. On the other hand you often see Vader kicking people in the face which is what he does here. A middle rope elbow misses and Flair gets a sloppy Figure Four. Race however reaches in to rake the eyes and break up the hold.

Jesse thinks it’s insightful that Race is a better second on the floor than Fifi. Vader suplexes him and gets a splash for two. He’s getting mad and even cusses a bit which is a bit more extreme in 93. We get our second Flair Flip of the match and our second Flair shot off the top of the same match. Vader clocks the referee by mistake and Flair goes up again. This time he jumps into Vader and is put up top again.

A superplex off the top hits but both guys are down. Vader is up but won’t cover. Instead he sets for the moonsault but Flair moves, even though Vader would have missed by a foot or so. Flair covers for the pin and the title??? And it’s a Dusty Finish because of the clothesline that took the referee out.

Rating: B. These two know how to make something epic and they did it here with limited time. They would have a better match at Starrcade but they had almost twenty extra minutes so that helps a lot. Not a classic like the rematch but this set up the Saturday Night match which was supposed to set up Sid vs. Vader but that fell through so there you are.

Austin comes out for the beatdown but Dustin makes the save. Flair wants a tag match and promises Sid as his partner. Parker says ok.

Overall Rating: C. Shockingly not a horrible show as the 93 date would imply otherwise. It’s not a classic and there’s nothing worth seeing but it’s miles better than the horrible Battlebowl show which was a Vader love fest. The opening hour is bad but the main event is a bit better, namely with the Battle of the Blondes and the main event. Not worth seeing though.

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Clash of the Champions 24
Date: August 18, 1993
Location: Ocean Center, Daytona Beach, Florida
Attendance: 8,903
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Jesse Ventura

Since I only have six of these to go in total, I think it’s time for an old fashioned marathon. I’ll knock these out as fast as I can so I’ll finally be done with this series. It’s only taken me a few years so we might as well get it done. This is from late 93 which is about as awful as WCW ever got, if you can possibly fathom that. The main event is Vader vs. Davey Boy for the title. Let’s get to it.

The opening video talks about a Flair For The Gold with the WarG……..OH MY GOODNESS IT’S THIS SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh we’ve got something VERY special coming up later on. You just wait.

Brian Pillman is injured so Steven (William) Regal is replacing him in the tag title defense.

Tag Titles: Steven Regal/Steve Austin vs. Arn Anderson/Paul Roma

Anderson vs. Austin to start. Arn’s white trunks seem to grow every year. Austin pounds him down as Jesse complains about Regal being part of the blondes now. The Horsemen take over to the audience’s delight. Austin gets launched over the top but it’s momentum or whatever. How does that even work? YOU THREW HIM OVER, so why isn’t it a DQ? They brawl to the floor for a bit and Austin brings Regal back in.

Roma, the biggest excuse ever for a Horsemen, and that includes Mongo, comes in and works on Regal’s arm. He speeds things up but Austin trips Roma (who looks a lot like Ricky Steamboat in the long white tights) to give the champs the advantage. Both guys take turns on Roma as this is going nowhere. Austin goes into the buckle but Roma doesn’t tag because he’s an idiot.

Austin gets him into the corner so Anderson, allegedly the best tag wrestler ever, tries to come in. Roma gets the required rollup but there’s no referee of course. Roma hits Austin’s Stun Gun and both guys are down. Regal breaks up a tag and we get the “face makes a tag but it doesn’t count so the heels change without one and it does count” deal. Roma gets a dropkick and there’s the tag to Anderson. The place ERUPTS too. Everything breaks down and a miscue by Regal’s manager lets Arn grab a rollup for the pin and the titles.

Rating: C-. This was already better than any match on the previous Clash. Austin would go on and start a US Title feud in a few months while the Horsemen faded away. This was during the Disney Tapings era, so the Nasty Boys had already been filmed as champions. The titles would change at Fall Brawl, which is another reason why this was an awful time for the company. They would tape MONTHS worth of shows in advance and that was it. All the mystery was gone and no one gave an effort because of it, which is stupid. Imagine if that had happened to Punk in 2011.

2 Cold Scorpio vs. Bobby Eaton

This should be SWEET. On top of that we get the Midnight Express theme. Scorpio is one of my old favorites and he’s young and awesome at this point. Eaton is heel here I guess. Scorpio gets a nice spinning sunset flip for two but Eaton clotheslines him down. Scorpio runs the corner and hits a top rope cross body and grabs an armbar. A regular cross body misses and Bobby takes over.

Eaton hooks a hammerlock down onto the mat. This hasn’t exactly been the high flying spectacle I was expecting. Even Jesse points out that this isn’t what he expected. Scorpio counters and sets him into a superplex position. Instead of using that though, while standing on the top he jumps up and dropkicks Eaton to the floor and adds a plancha. Cool sequence. Eaton hits a neckbreaker back inside to take over. Top rope elbow (why not the Alabama Jam?) gets two. And never mind as Scorpio takes him down and the 450 (called a 360 by Tony) sends both knees into Eaton’s chest for the pin.

Rating: C. I love Scorpio so I’m not going to complain much about this. Good match I guess but they didn’t really hit a level that I was expecting. To be fair though Eaton was just a jobber to the stars and the match wasn’t bad or anything. Just kind of disappointing I guess. Scorpio would get a two week tag title reign later in the year.

Max Payne vs. Johnny B. Badd

Payne stole the Badd Blaster (a confetti cannon) and shot Badd in the face with it so Badd’s face is burned and he’s wearing a mask. This is mask vs. Norma Jean, which is what Max calls his guitar. Max jumps him and drops an elbow into the boas. Jesse: “Right into the boas Tony!” Johnny fires back with punches but the cross body is ducked. This is power vs. speed.

Payne rips off the mask but Badd is wearing another one. Tony’s total lack of shock kills the surprise. There’s a hammerlock slam which is supposed to set up his Fujiwara Armbar finisher but Badd escapes with a small package. Well he did say he used steroids didn’t he? Payne misses a middle rope splash and Badd steals the pin. Well that was nothing. Too short to rate.

Badd says he’s going to unmask on Saturday Night. He’d look the same.

It’s time for A Flair For The Gold, which is Flair’s talk show. THIS IS IT!!! This has an actual set which looks like a living room. Flair comes in through the door and has Fifi his French maid walk around a bit. He brings out his guests, Sting and the British Bulldog. They’re here to talk about WarGames and the place is WAY into this. Flair was a face at this point and was as popular as he’d been in the 90s.

Sid and Harlem Heat, three of the four opponents for WarGames show up. They want to know who the mystery partner is. Sting says the line of “prepare to be shocked, because our partner is none other than THE SHOCKMASTER!”

And here it is: the absolute dumbest, stupidest, worst and completely lowest point for WCW. An explosion goes off (remember this is LIVE) and a wall bursts open. Shockmaster falls over part of the wall, knocking off his glittery Stormtrooper helmet. He tries as hard as he can to put it back on (after revealing to anyone paying attention that he’s Tugboat/Typhoon from WWF, making him a total failure anyway) and finally gets back on his feet.

The whole segment is a total joke now as the fans don’t know what to make of this. Bulldog and Harlem Heat are dying of laughter and try to hide it but you can here the covered laughter very clearly. Shockmaster finally gets it together and with Ole Anderson providing the voice, he says Sid has ruled the world long enough and asks if Sid wants a piece of him. Now keep in mind the voice: he sounds like a cross between a really bad Power Rangers villain and the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin. On top of that, he says Dusty Rhodes will be on their team in WarGames. It would actually be DUSTIN, not Dusty. And it’s over.

I mean WOW. What people seem to overlook is how bad this was going to be no matter what. Answer this: what exactly is a Shockmaster? It sounds like a static electricity prevention thing you would see in a store labeled As Seen On TV. Second, it’s Fred Ottman under the mask. When did anyone ever see the “Sailing Superstar” and think this guy deserved a huge push? Third, it’s a glitter covered Star Wars helmet. Just add all this up and think about how bad it would have been WITHOUT the famous part. Now add that in and look at what you have. My goodness it’s amazing that they stayed in business.

TV Title: Ricky Steamboat vs. Paul Orndorff

Orndorff is champion. Tony and Jesse crack up laughing about what we just saw. This gets big match intros too. Interesting trivia note: the TV Title is the belt that would become the Cruiserweight Title but with a different nameplate. And there go the lights. It looks like a late 80s show now with most of the crowd being covered in darkness. Feeling out process to start as they fight over a top wristlock. Steamboat bridges out of it and that looked AWESOME.

Steamboat misses a dive and lands on the ramp where Paul takes over. A top rope elbow to the head gets two. A slam gets a bunch of two counts and it’s the second chinlock of the match so far. We hear about Flair vs. Sting for the NWA Title this coming Saturday night which is almost an afterthought here. Steamboat sends him into the buckle and a top rope chop gets two, as does a regular one.

A big chop sends Orndorff to the floor but again it’s not a DQ. Steamboat busts out a huge dive which gets a nice reaction. Ten years later it would have gotten a huge pop. Orndorff tries a bunch of covers and Jesse hands him the TV Title for some reason. He drops it and tries the piledriver but Steamboat reverses and here’s a sweet pinfall reversal sequence. Top rope cross body is rolled through for two. Orndorff tries to slam Steamboat and apparently he never watched Mania III because in the same ending, Steamboat rolls through into a cradle for the pin and the title.

Rating: C. Eh not bad here but slower paced than most would like. It could have been a lot worse though, which is the right idea. Steamboat was in the role of veteran that people really respected and could still pull out a good match when asked to, namely due to pure raw talent. Good match but nothing great. At least it got the title off Orndorff though.

Orndorff piledrives him on the belt on the ramp post match.

Harley Race and the Kongs (two very fat guys in masks who were worthless) say that they’re coming for Flair and Sting.

Sting/Ric Flair vs. Colossal Kongs

Sting clears house on his own, easily slamming both guys like it’s nothing. Race freaks out, shouting about how it’s impossible. It’s a big brawl and Flair goes to the floor with one of them. Sting casually beats one of them up, hits the Stinger Splash and a top rope splash for the pin as Flair beats up Race. Total and complete domination.

Sting and Flair say they’ll renew their feud on Saturday for the title.

Rick Rude/The Equalizer vs. Dustin Rhodes/???

It’s a mystery partner. This feud has gone on for about 5 months now and has yet to get interesting. It’s mainly Rude vs. Rhodes but Rude brought in the Equalizer to equalize things. He’s more famous as Dave Evad Sullivan and is AWFUL. Rhodes’ partner is going to come out in some car that the fans can win. And it’s Road Warrior Animal. Rude panics and yells at him as Hawk comes up from behind. He’s the real partner. Not exactly a point to the switch but whatever.

The fans are fired up and it’s Hawk vs. Rude to start us off. They go to a test of strength which Hawk easily wins. Off to Equalizer who gets dropkicked to the floor almost immediately. Hawk tries his neckbreaker and Equalizer falls down, drawing some laughter from the crowd. Rude comes back in and we hit the chinlock but Hawk counters into an electric chair position for a Doomsday Device with Dustin playing Hawk.

Rude beats Dustin down and swivels at Hawk. Some heel miscommunication allows the tag to Hawk and it doesn’t count for no apparent reason. Hawk launches Rude at Equalizer and everything breaks down. As the referee is putting Rude out, Equalizer goes to slam Dustin. Hawk comes off the top to shoulder block both of them down and Dustin gets the pin.

Rating: D. Pretty boring match here and I really don’t get what Hawk adds to anything here. To be fair though, it’s not like he ever meant anything after about 1991 anyway. Not a terrible match but they needed something more interesting than Dustin vs. Rude. The US Title would FINALLY go to Dustin soon after this.

WCW World Title: Davey Boy Smith vs. Vader

Buffer says the DQ rule is waved, but doesn’t mention that he means if Vader gets disqualified he loses the title. Also note that this is the WCW Title and not the NWA World Title. They would be unified next year thank goodness. Race is Vader’s manager. After a break they get into it on the ramp with Bulldog being clotheslined down. Smith shows off INSANE power with a delayed vertical out there.

We go back into the ring but Smith’s slingshot splash gets knees. They go to the floor quickly and Vader accidentally splashes the railing ala Sting. A slam gets two back inside. Vader slows things down and goes after the knee. Samoan Drop puts Smith down and a moonsault misses. Smith gets a sunset flip for two. A splash onto the back puts Smith down and he’s in trouble.

Time for a chinlock to eat up a few moments. Davey manages to come back and hooks a crucifix, which was one of his finishers but it only gets two here. Vader pounds him down in the corner and goes up again, only to get crotched. Back inside it’s Davey’s turn to pound him down. Vader gets in a boot though and the Vader Bomb gets two. The champ comes off the top but jumps into the powerslam, knocking down the referee in the process. Smith tries another powerslam but Race pulls the leg and Vader falls on top for the pin.

Rating: C-. Decent power match but I wasn’t thrilled with it. Smith’s style wasn’t all that great to mesh with Vader’s. It took someone with more speed or just an all out brawler for that to work, and it really didn’t click here. Still though, this was a decent main event, but the lack of star power really hurt things.

Cactus Jack makes his return with 15 seconds left and takes Vader down. The reaction is there but the time isn’t so we’re done.

Overall Rating: D. Not their best work but you have a classic comedy moment to check out so it’s worth something for that. This era was just awful for the company but brighter days were coming soon. The problem in short was that the stories just weren’t interesting and the two titles were a bad idea at this point. To be fair though, a lot of that can be blamed on the NWA. Not the worst show ever, but other than Shockmaster it’s not worth watching.

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Clash of the Champions 23
Date: June 16, 1993
Location: Norfolk Scope, Norfolk, Virginia
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Jesse Ventura

GAH I can’t get away from this time period in WCW can I? This really is an awkward phase for the company as they were really transitioning from the NWA days to their own world. The problem was that no one knew what their own world was. Hogan would show up in about a year though to at least give the company direction.

This is a mere three days after Hogan left WWF in case you were wondering. The main event is Flair and Anderson vs. the Hollywood Blondes for the tag belts so there you are. Let’s get to it.

Flair is back. Orndorff is hurt. Good to know.

Ron Simmons vs. Dick Slater

This was supposed to be Simmons vs. Orndorff but the injury stopped that. Simmons is over as all goodness. I’m skeptical about a guy named Dirty Dick. Who in their right mind decided to book Orndorff as a champion in the mid 90s? Simmons is a former world champion and Slater is Slater so what do you think is going to happen here? Orndorff botches interference and there’s your powerslam for the pin.

Rating: D. Nowhere near enough time to be anything here. It was supposed to be a big title match I guess but at the end of the day, Dick Slater was a joke to say the least and against Simmons it was going to be domination and that’s all it ever could be.

We go to Larry and Eric who talk to….Michael Buffer??? They’re interviewing the ring announcer for crying out loud. Oddly enough he comes off like he knows what he’s talking about instead of like he’s reading generic lines off a script. Most interesting indeed.

Steven Regal vs. Marcus Bagwell

If you’re not familiar with them go with their last names. For the life of me I can’t get over that Bill Dundee is Sir William. Seeing Regal in something resembling shape is amazing. Seeing Bagwell as a guy without an attitude is even more amazing. He’s the rookie wonder at this point so this was a big match for him. He’s in some joke of a tag team with Scorpio at this point. Oh and there’s an NWA Title match tonight.

They’ll be gone in less than three months. Jesse says rugby is tougher than football. And to think I would have voted for him for President. Regal has barely been here at all so Bagwell might be more known. Oh dear. They announce that on Saturday a woman will be in Cleveland looking for Cactus Jack.

If you ever want to see what might be the dumbest storyline in WCW history, and let that sink in for a minute, look that one up. Scratch that about Regal. This is just his first live TV match. Regal gets a rollup out of nowhere to get the pin….to a big pop? Well that was different.

Rating: C+. Uh, yeah. This was over before it started and I barely remember it happening to be honest. I know that’s weird to say but it was almost over before it even started in my mind. It certainly wasn’t bad, but at the same time there wasn’t much here. Decent stuff though.

Maxx Payne has stolen the Badd Blaster from Johnny. Oh dear. He says he wants respect. And Payne blasts it in his face. Aww poor Johnny looking all screwed up now.

There was supposed to be a match here but now Payne wins by forfeit. Z-Man, one of the most interesting cases ever, comes out to beat up Maxx for what he did. Z-Man is the guy that worked for WWF in the late 80s, actually opening Mania 3 with Rick Martel in the team that would become Strike Force after he left. He more or less was fine one day and quitting the next, allegedly over money. He was ok in WCW but would likely be gone soon after this. He winds up tapping anyway.

NWA World Title: Barry Windham vs. 2 Cold Scorpio

This could be bad but it could be good. Windham was just holding the title for a little while before Flair got it back in about a month. Jesse asks what kind of name Scope is. Jesse brings up that he was in the Navy and Norfolk is a naval town so he’s happy here. No one believes Windham has any chance of losing here as Scorpio was young, talented and over so of course the NWA can’t let him have the belt. That’s Flair’s belt dang it.

Jesse wants to know who Jordan is betting on tonight. That’s a great line. Scorpio kicks out of a leaping, and I use that term loosely, DDT. Hey! Wanna know how Badd is? Call the Hotline and find out! Yes, we’ll not only give out private medical records, we’ll charge you for them! Windham punches the heck out of Scorpio and this is pretty one sided.

Fans are into it though so that works. In a very cool move, Scorpio is on the apron and hits a slingshot, note that it’s not a springboard, 450. Scorpio’s comeback is very good but in the end he gets caught just like you would expect him to. The Leaping DDT ends it.

Rating: B. This was way better than it should have been. When Scorpio wasn’t fat and was actually motivated, he could go with anyone and that’s what he did here. Solid match all around although the ending sucked to a fairly large extent just out of boringness.

Bischoff is with Sting, Dustin Rhodes and Davey Boy Smith who are in a big six man tonight. They talk to the people they don’t like. Simple and not very effective. Sting gets a huge pop.

Vader/Sid/Rick Rude vs. British Bulldog/Sting/Dustin Rhodes

This should be train wreckish. Vader is world champion here in case you were wondering. Sting is as over as is humanly possible. It’s bordering on scary. Sting and Rude start it off and the heat is great. Apparently Rude stole the US Title and won’t give it back. Oh I remember this: there was no champion for like four months and WCW saw nothing wrong with this at all.

Sting is beating up all three guys at once. That’s just amusing. We have Sid vs. Bulldog now, which would have been a showdown in 1992 WWF to say the least. In a cool looking sequence, Dustin just beats the living tar out of Vader and beats him down. Now I haven’t seen this since it aired, but I would bet anything on the heels winning, just based on WCW’s booking. It’s been about 6-7 minutes of domination so the other team will win in the end. I mean the heels have had NOTHING.

Ah there we go: Vader beats up Goldust. Those two followed each other over the years for some reason. They feuded in WWF and were the mystery opponents brought in to fight Austin at a Cyber Sunday. The Vader Bomb hits but it means nothing yet. Dustin is taking a beating here, meaning he’ll be fine soon enough.

Yep, I didn’t even finish that line before his comeback. See how predictable this company is? LET THE SCREW UPS BEGIN! Race hits Dustin with the briefcase that the US belt is in and Rude gets the pin. Yep I was right again.

Rating: D+. This was your standard main event level tag match. It’s not like anything was settled here and it’s not like it was anything great. Decent enough stuff though I guess. It set up the later matches and showdowns if nothing else, but it was way too predictable.

Tag Titles: Ric Flair/Arn Anderson vs. Hollywood Blondes

I have NO clue what that music the challengers are coming out to. This is Flair’s first match back in WCW. The Blonds really were underrated. Buffer does the big match intro and this is 2/3 falls. Flair gets a solid but not incredibly loud yet LONG pop. The Blonde have over 100 title defenses? Apparently this is for the NWA tag titles also. Oh that’s right they’re unified at this point. Oh wait that’s not right.

It’s just that no one cared about the NWA. That’s right. They’ve had 100 defenses in just over three months? That’s most impressive. This had actually gotten some build with the rather funny Flair for the Old segment setting this up. Good night Flair is over. How could they not just run Flair vs. Sting and made a boat load of money? See Hogan, Hulk. Flair gets a massive pop and it’s Flair vs. Austin. If this was five years later, the money for that match would have financed a small country.

To my complete and utter shock, Anderson works on the arm. This is very solid stuff here with the faces dominating for the majority of the match but not all of it which is a nice perk. Anderson is beaten down with the champions working on the knee. Flair gets the red hot tag even though nothing is going to end here. Flair gets the pin on Pillman off a quick shot. This is formula tag stuff but it’s working well.

Jesse points out how bad it was of the challengers to go 2/3 falls as they would be champions otherwise. Jesse is absolutely right. They’re working on Arn’s knee quite well so they’re thinking this one out I guess. Flair gets another hot tag and goes for the Figure Four on Austin but here’s Windham for the DQ.

And it’s a Dusty Finish as even though they won two straight falls, the titles can’t change hands on a DQ. Paul Roma runs down for the save. Oy vey. Windham says he’ll be ready for Flair. The match wound up sucking as NO ONE bought Windham as a world champion.

Rating: B+. If this has a clean finish it’s an A- minimum. Just a great old school tag match between two great teams. It’s nearly twenty minutes too so it got a lot of time and it paid off. WCW did manage to realize when they had a good match ready to go and could let them just do it and that’s what they did here.

Overall Rating: B. This was a good show I thought. They set up the Beach Blast PPV pretty well although it had a month to go so it wasn’t all ready yet. It’s fun to be able to see the build and the payoff for it though as I’ve reviewed the PPV as well. Either way this was solid stuff with some good matches, although the show does drag a bit at times. Still worth checking out though.

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

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

Corny intros us.

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

Galaxian #2 vs. Z-Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian Pillman vs. Cactus Jack

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

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

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

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

Anderson Brothers vs. New Zealand Militia

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

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

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

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

Z-Man is named wrestler of the week.

Cornette runs down Peoria and that’s about it.

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

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Clash of the Champions 22
Date: January 13, 1993
Location: The Mecca, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jesse Ventura

Well this is it. This is the 9th level of torment. It’s the absolute greatest form of torture in recorded history. This, is WCW in 1993. I’ll wait for your hearts to start beating again. WCW was great at times, but when they were bad sweet merciful crap they were bad. This is some of their worst. The main event is an 8 man cage match pitting the evil team against the good team. That’s not a simple way of putting it. That’s what they say in the opening video. Let’s get this over with so we can move on to something more pleasant like a root canal.

Tony and Cowboy Bill Watts open the show as Watts talks about the old days because having the actual boss on TV was something that WCW thought was a good idea for no apparent reason at all.

Van Hammer is hurt and off the main event tonight but there’s going to be a replacement named Vinnie Vegas for the arm wrestling contest that Van Hammer is in. No mention is made of him not being in the main event. The arm wrestling thing is big news though baby!

Erik Watts, Bill’s son, has been arrested. Dang they’re not hiding anything here are they? Bill: Erik has always been like my son. Maybe because he is your son you stupid, stupid man. Erik is suspended tonight. He happens to be here for an interview though and the booing is really loud. He was supposed to fight Cactus Jack and can barely talk. Erik was a guy that was supposed to be awesome, but only his dad thought that. He was absolutely terrible so Bill put him on the upper midcard because he could.

Ross and Ventura open the show and talk about the main event like sane people would do. This was one of JR’s last major shows so Eric was about to take over.

Cactus Jack vs. Johnny B. Badd

Cactus, a heel, gets a noticeable face pop. Badd is rather effeminate tonight to put it mildly. This stems off of Starrcade 92 where they were Lethal Lottery partners and they brawled to lose the match. Jesse points out that there are signs for Cactus Jack everywhere and it makes him wonder what is wrong with these people.

Naturally Cactus makes it a brawl (aww why not MAKE IT A WIN?) but Badd wrestles him which works far better for him. Oddly enough he’s a brawler by nature who is wrestling to his advantage. That says a lot about Jack’s brawling abilities. Small package gets one for Badd. Top rope sunset flip doesn’t connect and Cactus drops an elbow for the pin and a BIG pop.

Rating: C. This was confusing to say the least as Cactus had gotten very over all of a sudden and WCW wasn’t exactly sure what was going on with it. Not a bad match but it was a very quick match so it’s not like you could say much about it at all. Fun little match though and the face pop is interesting if nothing else.

There’s a new NWA Champion and his name is the Great Muta. He won it at the WCW/NJPW Supershow III which I recently reviewed.

We get more or less a music video of 2 Cold Scorpio which shifts into a PSA and then back into a video. And hey he’s in the ring. Oh never mind it’s a highlight video now. I won’t get tired of Scorpio in the ring though so this is fine by me.

2 Cold Scorpio vs. Scott Flamingo

It’s an ECW preview match here as Flamingo would change species later as he turned into Raven. Scorpio spins out of some stuff and we have an early standoff. He likes to use a lot of cartwheels. We head to the floor early with Flamingo taking a flying shot to the back. Back in with Scotty getting a nice running dropkick before a dive over the top to the floor, taking out the Cold dude.

Small package gets two for Scorpio but he’s in trouble so far. We hit the chinlock as they need a bit of a break. Scorpio speeds things up a bit again and hits the Tumbleweed for two. A spinning legdrop in the corner sets up the original 450 to end this though. Far better than you would expect.

Rating: B. This was just four minutes but DANG it was a good four minutes. Scorpio is a guy I’ve always liked and this was no exception at all. He looked great out there and Flamingo was no slouch either. They were both MOVING out there in a match that would have been a good Cruiserweight match about five years later. Good stuff.

What the heck? This show was supposed to suck remember.

Video on Thundercage which is the main event tonight. In essence it’s Hell in a Cell. We hear about how Rude is out with an injury and Team Vader needed a replacement. Cactus and Orndorff had a match with the winner getting the spot. Jack took out Vader’s manager and got jumped during the match by Vader, more or less pushing him to the brink of a face turn without actually going the other way. Later in the night Cactus drilled all of them with a shovel. Dang I want to watch Halloween Havoc 93 and the Texas Death Match now. If you don’t get it, Cactus in 93 was AWESOME.

Brad Armstrong vs. Chris Benoit

This is more or less Benoit’s debut. He had a one night appearance back in a tag tournament but that’s more or less forgotten here. Armstrong is an incredibly solid wrestler that most people haven’t seen much of which is a shame. We hear about how Benoit survived the Dungeon so they know he’s good. To give you an idea of how good Armstrong is, he’s not only keeping up with Benoit but he’s even beating him to a degree in technical style.

To the surprise of no one we’re on the mat with more or less a test of strength going on. Benoit powers up in a bridge and Jesse is impressed. Armstrong does the same thing as this is good stuff so far. Some moron shouts boring and is promptly booed out of the building. Armstrong gets a nice reversal to send Benoit to the floor. Back in Armstrong hits some more dropkicks and back to the arm. Basic stuff but well done so far.

Benoit gets the suplex drop onto the top rope as he’s pretty firmly in control at the moment. Benoit gets a running springboard clothesline (think the dropkick that Jericho does and the cross body that Christian does) to Armstrong on the apron to take us to the floor. It’s very clear that this is pre-steroids for the pre-Crippler. Snap suplex gets two.

Armstrong gets a knee in but it gets him nowhere as Benoit hooks a backbreaker to get himself out of trouble. Diving headbutt misses though and here comes Armstrong. And never mind as Benoit hooks the Dragon Suplex out of nowhere (full nelson suplex) to get the pin. Sweet bridge on the pin.

Rating: B. I really liked this one but then again when you have two talented guys out there this is what you get. Nice little story being told as Armstrong was able to beat Benoit with basic stuff but once they cranked things up Benoit was far too much for him. It shows that Benoit can turn on the jets and blow people away, which is a good sign for him in this impressive debut.

We get some clips of the Rock N Roll Express in Smokey Mountain Wrestling which is pretty much brand new at this point. They’re going to be at Superbrawl which is one of WCW’s first steps into cross-promotional. We see them beating the Heavenly Bodies for the Smokey Mountain Tag Titles. Ok so we don’t see the title change and the clip just kind of ends. Ok then.

Jesse is in the ring to do his arm wrestling thing. This was a worked tournament thing he did which went nowhere. Van Hammer, the winner of the tournament, is hurt though so it’s Tony Atlas vs. Vinnie Vegas, more commonly known as Kevin Nash. Nash is allegedly left handed so we’ll use the left arms. Atlas sounds like he’s in labor and Nash wins after a LONG contest that the fans aren’t exactly thrilled with.

Back from a break with Vader’s challenge to Sting for the White Castle of Fear. This is just Vader standing in snow instead of the official video which is Sting in a helicopter and going to a party with more or less S&M, an orgy and midgets. It was indeed weird but it was WCW in 1993 so there you go.

Larry Zbyszko talks about the tournament for the #1 contender spot to the US Title. The finals turned out to be Dustin Rhodes vs. Ricky Steamboat but since Rude was injured the finals became for the title instead of the title shot with Rhodes winning the belt. We get clips of all four first round matches, none of which are anything special at all. We throw in clips of the semi-finals just because they can.

Wrecking Crew vs. Johnny Gunn/Tom Zenk

One of the Wrecking Crew is a dead ringer for Animal and upon further review yeah it’s his brother. Gunn is Tom Brandi who some of you may have heard of but if not he’s not worth looking up. Rage starts for the Wrecking Crew against Z-Man. This is power vs. speed with speed clearing the ring to start. HUGE dive by Gunn to take down both guys on the floor. That was sweet looking!

Heel miscommunication gets a rollup for two for Gunn. The Wrecking Crew takes over with basic power stuff as this isn’t much at all. A facejam by Gunn brings in Zenk. We get a really awkward spot as Fury was supposed to charge out of the corner into a backdrop but he just stopped, making Zenk look like an idiot. I mean more of an idiot than he typically does.

The referee ducks a clothesline and the Wrecking Crew continues to take over. Z-Man (they use that name and Zenk interchangeably) gets a boot up to block an axe handle off the middle rope and Gunn comes in. Forearm/clothesline takes down Fury who has been in there forever. And then a shot to the back of Gunn results in a move called the Wrecking Ball where Fury gets Gunn over his shoulder and Rage jumps off with a forearm smash to end it.

Rating: D. This was really rather weak and definitely the worst match of the night so far. This wasn’t anything special at all with the Wrecking Crew more or less disappearing after this and Zenk/Gunn never meaning anything at all. Pretty weak match that went nowhere at all but at least it was only about six minutes long.

Larry Z talks to the Hollywood Blondes and their title match against Steamboat/Douglas up next. They aren’t called the Blondes yet but it’s coming.

Sting comes out and accepts Vader’s challenge. Simmons and Rhodes, his partners tonight, say they’re not worried.

Vader’s team says they’re ready for a handicap match. Race says they’ll get back at Cactus Jack eventually, which resulted in a really stupid angle which resulted in a really good match. They beat up Barbarian because he’s Jack’s friend to make it 3-3 because they’re very stupid.

We get highlights from the first two SuperBrawls to give us a reason to buy the third one. The show wound up being not bad. This eats up a few minutes. Ok make that several minutes.

Steamboat and Douglas say they’ll keep the titles. They’re the Unified Tag Champions which was something far too complicated that crippled WCW in the second half of 92 but hey, whatever the NWA says goes right?

Unified Tag Titles: Shane Douglas/Ricky Steamboat vs. Steve Austin/Brian Pillman

Both teams are in the ring when we get back. The time limit is thirty minutes here instead of the usual hour which allegedly is going to cause faster pin attempts. Steamboat and Austin start us off and do I need to explain to you why this is awesome? Steamboat and Douglas send the Blondes to the floor almost immediately as this is going to be fast paced for sure.

Steamboat won’t shake Austin’s hand so Austin pounds on him. Off to Pillman and we unleash the chops. Shane comes in off the top as we talk about Bruno Sammartino for some reason. The champions tag in very quickly and Pillman hurts his knee on a leapfrog attempt. Stu Hart trained him though so of course he’s faking. He tries a springboard cross body but gets the heck powerslammed out of him by Shane for two.

Shane works on Austin’s arm as the future bald man is in trouble. Brian breaks up a pin as this is completely one sided. Steamboat throws Pillman onto Austin and Stone Cole is in trouble. Finally the challengers take over off a suplex and some double teaming. They work over Steamboat’s back with a slam on the floor. Steamboat manages a sunset flip but Austin has the referee.

Ricky drills Pillman to put him into the steel but Austin saves the tag with a suplex for two. Steamboat counters a body vice but his back is hurt pretty badly at this point. Pillman sets for his springboard clothesline but down goes Austin as Steamboat ducks. A double chop STILL can’t bring in Douglas but Ricky gets a belly to back to Pillman to put both of them down.

FINALLY the hot tag brings in Douglas and the beating is on. That’s good as the roof is now off. Dropkicks and clotheslines all around as Steamboat is amazingly up after about three seconds. Belly to belly out of nowhere drills Pillman but Austin (illegally) comes off the top (screw you Bill Watts) but it only gets two. Austin is finally like screw this and drills Shane with the belt for the DQ and a bunch of blood. Big heel beatdown follows and they leave with the stolen belts. They would get them for real in a few months.

Rating: B+. Fun match all the way around as they played the NWA formula to the letter here. You can often tell how good someone is when they can have great tag matches and this is a great example of that. They put on a great show here and the whole thing worked very well. Fun match and more or less the first of the Blondes great matches.

We see a clip of Vader winning the world title back from Ron Simmons and messing up his shoulder. Jesse brings out Race and Vader who say Vader is awesome. Simmons comes out and says he’s going to get his title back, which of course he never did. The fight is on with Simmons THROWING Vader down in a spinebuster. That was awesome looking.

Simmons goes after Race but Vader destroys Simmons and reinjures his shoulder with some shoulderbreakers on the floor. Sting and Rhodes come out for the save as it looks like it’ll be 3-2 in the main event.

Sting/Dustin Rhodes vs. Vader/Barry Windham/Paul Orndorff

This is the Thundercage match which like I said is more or less the Cell without a top but it comes up at an angle so it’s more or less impossible to climb in and out. Sting vs. Vader is always awesome so this is going to be good. You can’t be disqualified but you have to tag in and out. Sting and Orndorff start us off. Ok so only Vader is chilling on the apron. Ah there it is as the former tag partners in Rhodes and Windham start us off.

Everyone not named Vader is in street clothes here. Off to Sting vs. Vader which is one of those feuds that always worked very well. Sting hammers away and the Splash hits in the corner but Vader doesn’t go down. Sting pounds him down into the corner and the fans are WAY into it. Everyone but Dustin comes in as he more or less lets Sting fight everyone off on his own.

The numbers catch up with Sting though as Vader goes up and half kills Sting with a shoulder block. A splash misses though and Sting sends him to the floor. Is Dustin allergic to HELPING HIS PARTNER or something? Off to Orndorff who hammers away on Sting. Windham comes in now as Rhodes has been totally worthless in this. Vader gets a corner splash on Sting who might have been in there seven minutes straight now or so.

FINALLY Dustin comes in and since he’s a cowboy he can beat up anyone. And here’s Cactus Jack with bolt cutters to break in and hit every heel in sight with a boot. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a face turn. Orndorff goes for the Piledriver on Dustin but gets popped by said boot and Cactus falls on him for the pin. Sting’s music plays for some reason.

Rating: C+. The cage here meant a grand total of nothing. They beat Sting up pretty well but Dustin did nothing for the most part. Not a bad match and the crowd was way into it, but dude the whole cage aspect was completely pointless here. It set up Sting vs. Vader….somehow and I guess advances Jack vs. Orndorff which someone thought was a good idea. Anyway not bad but kind of a head scratcher.

Cactus says he’s in over his head but not as much as Orndorff is. He’s getting into that zone of his on the mic here.

Overall Rating: B. This was light years ahead of what I was expecting. You can kind of see how odd it is in the main event as Sting vs. Vader were about to feud or were feuding I guess but it was still pretty confusing. The NWA was clearly getting on their nerves here and when Flair came back the NWA’s days were numbered. That being said, this wasn’t horrible at all but it was a bit confusing and odd at times. Still though, good wrestling overrides that so definitely a good show.

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Clash of the Champions 21
Date: November 18, 1992
Location: Macon Coliseum, Macon, Georgia
Attendance: 7,500
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jesse Ventura

Egads 1992 WCW. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of. After the summer ended and the NWA decided to take control of the company again because they wanted their 9 seconds in the sun again, things went way downhill in WCW because the big bad NWA decided they needed to reset everything because it was getting too good. They had set up a massive tag tournament to crown official tag champions and it was the sole focus of television for a long time. This is WCW after it because they had to restart everything. Let’s get to it.

The opening video is just about the matches tonight. This looks bad.

We see the weigh-in for the battle of the sexes match later. This results in seeing Paulie in his underwear. Madusa and Dangerously fight of course.

Tony is with Bill Watts and I still hate him. Why couldn’t they just have a character rather than the actual boss in there?

Teddy is with Michael Hayes who introduce the show I guess. Oh ok there’s a bounty on Erik Watts and they want to get it. The Freebirds that is. In an unrelated note, Brian Pillman is hurt and is at ringside.

Yep there he is on crutches with a knee injury. He can’t fight Brad Armstrong who isn’t happy. Pillman beats him up with his crutches and is disqualified before the match starts. The match starts anyway and goes for thirty seconds with Pillman winning due to Armstrong being hurt. Pillman was turning heel if you didn’t get that.

We get a clip from Halloween Havoc where Dangerously went on a huge rant against Madusa because she was a woman and fired her in a semi-famous bit. Madusa kicked him in the face to wild cheering. We get workouts from both of them, including a funny bit where Paulie fights a jobber and punches him, turns around so Austin can hit him, and then pins him.

We also see a showdown between Dangerously and Madusa where Paul runs his mouth so much that the rest of the Dangerous Alliance leaves him and he makes Madusa cry. She goes off on him and he runs for his life. Hayes is with Heyman and apparently he’ll have an arm tied behind his back. This anti-women thing is great from Paul as you have to wonder how much was legit. Paul: the only sacrifice women make is when they’re 16 and in the back of their boyfriend’s car. WOW.

Arn Anderson/Bobby Eaton vs. Kensuke Sasaki/Erik Watts

Ok so this is a bounty match. Watts is AWFUL and everyone hated him but they kept pushing him anyway because his daddy was the boss. They also gave him a big story with a bounty being on his head. Whoever hurts him gets $10,000 from Paulie. Eaton and Watts start us off.

Watts can’t do anything here as would be the case for his entire run. There’s one heck of a drinking game in there as you take a shot every time Watts does something that isn’t quite a wrestling move but was supposed to be one. You’ll die of alcohol poisoning in minutes. Anderson comes in and something tells me his thought process is “why do I have to deal with this garbage?”

Sasaki comes back in and is oddly enough a face here. That’s not something you see very often at all, at least outside of Japan. He’s not much better than Watts as he botches a monkey flip from Eaton. Sasaki is compact and very strong. I like that old school WCW ring skirt as it’s the first one I remember from when I was a kid.

Anderson might have a bad knee. He’s barely in there at all so maybe there’s something to it. Watts is back in now and he’s just bad. It’s not his fault mind you as he needed to be in some indy company for a few years just to get experience. He wasn’t ready for this exposure and his nerves made him a lot worse. Watts gets an STF on Eaton to end this.

Rating: D-. Yeah this was bad. When Kensuke Sasaki is the best guy on a team, you know something is bad. This was pretty weak for the vast majority. Wait…that would imply there was a good part and that certainly wasn’t the case here. Watts was just awful but like I said it’s not his fault. This was a bad match and it didn’t advance anything. Oh and Bobby Eaton and Arn Anderson, two of the best tag team wrestlers ever, had to job to these guys. That’s sad.

Teddy Long and his new protégé say that they’ll knock out Scotty Flamingo. It’s Johnny B Badd if you were wondering.

Flamingo is with his trainers, Vinnie Vegas (Kevin Nash before he meant anything) and Diamond Dallas Page, say that Flamingo is ready. Flamingo’s more famous name: Raven.

Johnny B. Badd vs. Scotty Flamingo

This is boxing with three two minute rounds. Why do we get so many boxing matches in wrestling companies? Why can’t one in ring competition be enough? Round one starts with Badd pounding the face of Flamingo. Keep in mind that Badd was a very legit amateur boxing champion so he knows what he’s doing here. Flamingo cheats with wrestling stuff when the Vegas Connection (the more famous guys’ tag team name) and Badd just destroys him with basic boxing stuff, including a BIG knockdown to end it.

Between rounds the heels fill Flamingo’s glove with water which makes it more or less lethal. Flamingo can barely get up to fight as he’s been destroyed so far. Badd peppers him a bit more until Page gets up on the apron and Flamingo gets one big right hand with the loaded glove and that’s enough for Flamingo to win. No rating due to it being a big comedy angle.

We preview Starrcade 92 which is another Battlebowl. They air a clip from last year’s show where Sting got his head handed to him for the whole night before pulling out the miracle win. When I say clip I mean about five minutes worth. The show is on Monday too.

They do the first match’s draw here, and it’s Cactus Jack/Johnny B. Badd vs. Dan Spivey/Heavy Metal Van Hammer. What a coincidence that Jack and Hammer are feuding at this point too.

There’s a wrestling rap album. As in an album of rap songs about wrestling. Oh dear.

Cactus Jack/Tony Atlas/Barbarian vs. Ron Simmons/Too Cold Scorpio

Ok so Simmons is world champion and is feuding with various guys because they wanted to make Simmons seem like he had something to do while making the WCW Title a midcard title so that guys like Great Muta and Chono, NWA guys, could be the REAL focus of the show. Simmons vs. Barbarian was the WCW Title match at Halloween Havoc. Let that sink in for a bit.

This is Scorpio’s debut and the good guys sprint to the ring with the announcers having no clue what Scorpio’s name is. This match with having only one white guy in it is Watts’ attempt to make the company believe he’s not racist and of course he made the black dude worthless and the title a joke until Sting saved it. Jack is legit injured here so he was a manager for the most part. Somehow injured he was miles ahead of the guys he managed.

Atlas looks like a freaking tank here. There was supposed to be some guy named Robbie Walker as Simmons’ partner. Considering this is Scorpio when he was young and in awesome shape and totally mind blowing, I think he upgraded. Yeah he’s 27 here as is Jack so both guys are young and just awesome. Scorpio misses a moonsault completely and kicks Jack in the head so he has to tag.

Jack and Simmons now as Barbarian was in there all of 10 seconds. Remember: Jack is badly hurt here but he’s the only credible guy on his team. Ah, it’s the #1 contender: Barbarian. Yes that Barbarian. It’s weird hearing them constantly saying “Simmons’ partner” because they really don’t know who he is. Atlas comes in and is just old. He’s still ripped though so that helps.

Barbarian beats on him a bit but then Jack has to be the one to get kicked in the head. Hot tag to Scorpio who blows the roof off the place. He was SO far ahead of his time it’s not even funny. Barbarian misses the big boot to Simmons which kills Atlas and with Simmons holding the other two off, Scorpio unleashes the 450 which is more or less the national debut of it and you can’t hear Ross’ commentary (which is more or less him losing his mind) over how loud the fans are. Naturally that gets the pin.

Rating: B-. This was to do two things: further the Simmons vs. Jack’s team feud and the bigger one: make 2 Cold Scorpio look AMAZING. To say the very least regarding the second one, JACKPOT. The fans loved him as more or less he was a 240 pound Rey Mysterio and keeping in mind this is 1992, this was completely revolutionary stuff. Awesome debut and everything worked like a charm. Match sucked when him or Jack wasn’t in there though.

Jesse talks to the newcomer and Simmons, who says he’s ready to overcome the odds. He introduces his new partner who says he’s ready for anything.

Tom Zenk and Johnny Gunn go into a clothing store and women mob them. This could not be any more pointless.

A clean shaven Rick Rude says he’s going to even the score with Sting. This is part of the King of Cable tournament which was apparently over the stuff the ropes were made of. Such a shame they didn’t tell us that until after the finals.

We talk about the World’s Strongest Arm Contest, which was a legit arm wrestling tournament. Van Hammer wound up winning the thing and that’s about it.

Dangerously says he’s a man.

Paul E. Dangerously vs. Madusa

This has a five minute time limit and Hayes is with Dangerously. He’s billed as the Psycho Yuppie. He has an arm behind his back too. A person with blonde hair and covered from head to toe runs in and Paul shatters his phone over her head. And as anyone could tell, it’s not Madusa but rather a jobber that was paid off I guess. Paul figures out what’s going on and you would think the Psycho theme started playing or something as they’re terrified.

She comes in and beats the tar out of Paul. This was her only thing she ever really did but it was a far cry from Chyna who was actually interesting when she did these things. All Madusa so far as would be expected. They go back into the locker room as Paul tries to run but she carries him back on his shoulder. Their chests are the same size apparently. Who is that good for actually?

Hayes trips up Madusa with two minutes to go so Dangerously can get in some cheap shots. He goes up top and hits a double axe but she’s up almost immediately. Let the pain be distributed as it’s all Madusa of course. And there go his clothes. He runs away for the last fifteen seconds or so. He was never seen in WCW again. Not going to rate this as it wasn’t a match and was a lot of just comedy stuff that went nowhere. Also, is there ANY reason to not have Madusa beat him here?

We look at the King of Cable tournament, which apparently IS about cable TV. I hate this company at times. The semi finals are Dustin vs. Vader and Sting vs. Rude, which is tonight.

Vader and Race reaffirm Vader’s awesomeness.

King of Cable Semi-Finals: Sting vs. Rick Rude

Larry Zbyszko, Hiro Matsuda and Ole Anderson are judges in case this goes to a 20 minute tie. Rude is US Champion at this point. He looks so odd clean shaven. Rude attacks early with lots of neck stuff to set up the Rude Awakening later on. Sting works on the ribs which I guess can work as they’re related to the back for the Scorpion. Far more Sting than Rude here.

Jesse talks about the thought process here as Sting needs to impress the judges while also trying to get a win which is rather true. The idea here is that Sting is trying to keep the advantage and just ride the time out which isn’t really a face thing to do but it’s a way to win.

Sting, like the idiot that he is, goes for the Stinger Splash against the railing and as usual it MISSES COMPLETELY. Why would you go for a move that has never hit once? Even Flair has gotten his shot off the top to work once or twice. Rude takes over and hooks a camel clutch at the halfway point. Jesse says Sting is ahead so far. He was usually honest which is rather refreshing.

Things slow WAY down with Rude on offense. Lots of chinlocks and lots of big heavy strikes. He was never a power man but he hit really hard. Rude tries to cannonball down onto Sting but misses and here comes Sting again. Under five minutes to go and it’s still Rude in control with a bearhug now. Less than four minutes left now as you have to go with Rude at this point.

I love how they’re not even trying to hide the fact that this is going to a draw. Everyone knew it but they don’t even bother suggesting that someone could get a clean win. Sting is in big trouble here with two minutes to go. He slams Rude off the top though and here comes the painted one. A cross body off the top gets two. Sting gets the Splash and goes for the Deathlock as time expires. The judges give it to Sting 2-1 with Larry voting for Rude. I’m not sure on that but I can see it I guess.

Rating: B. This was very different as they had to mess around with the style out there due to the judge aspect but it worked very well I thought. These two feuded for well over a year and it was no different here with it being pretty solid. This is another great example of psychology as they had to try to impress three people and survive. This worked very well I thought with Sting and Rude always meshing very well.

Tag Titles: Ricky Steamboat/Shane Douglas vs. Dustin Rhodes/Barry Windhams

Don’t worry about which titles these are. More or less they’re the WCW Titles and that’s all we’re going to go into it. Shane vs. Dustin to start us off. Notice here that the NWA stuff is going on last and is the featured contest even though it has less star power and is a lower match on the card overall but goes last anyway because it’s the NWA part. Most fans and definitely the majority of casual fans wanted to see Sting and have no reason to watch now. That’s bad booking and can probably be blamed on the NWA.

This is going to go rather slow as it has some time to work with for once. Oh Barry and Dustin are champions here if I forgot to mention that. Steamboat vs. Windham now in a battle of a future vs. former world champion. They go to the floor and Barry is being a bit more aggressive than you would expect from a face champion. Sweet goodness Steamboat can throw a chop.

Shane looks so out of place here but he’s holding his own here for the most part. I was right about the time prediction as this is going rather slowly. That doesn’t mean it’s bad as we’re getting some nice teamwork here. Barry vs. Shane at the moment. Shane misses a cross body and eats rope so it’s off to Dustin who wrestles away. Dustin and Ricky don’t like to strike that much.

Lots of tags by the champions. They work on the arm and tag in and out probably five times in a minute. The idea there: don’t let one guy get winded at all. Smart tag wrestling there. All champions here as Shane is in a lot of trouble. This is definitely an old school style going on here and it’s a bit hard to sit through in long stretches. Hey it’s the NWA though so it has to be great right???

Off to Steamboat finally and we get an issue as Dustin accidentally headbutts Steamboat in the groin on a leapfrog but Dustin won’t cover him because it wasn’t fair. Windham is TICKED about this so he tags himself in and covers for two. Atomic drops and a lariat get two but Dustin breaks up his partner’s cover because he’s hurt. He even pops Windham and Barry turns into Shane’s belly to belly to switch the titles.

Rating: B-. This one is hard to call as it’s technically great but at the same time it’s rather boring at times. The ending helps it a lot as there’s a lot of thinking here as you have the titles change because one guy doesn’t want to cheat to win and one says win at all costs. This was a good match but it’s one of those matches that isn’t for everyone at all.

Dustin leaves so Barry yells for him which is kind of funny sounding. Barry pays him back for the punch and hits a jumping DDT to leave Dustin laying. Oh and a superplex to.

After the last break Jesse is with the new champions but Barry runs in to crack their heads with a chair.

Overall Rating: C+. This was ok. I wasn’t sure what to expect here and while there are a ton of issues with it, it still comes off pretty well. The idea was to put a focus on wrestling but the problem was that the stories absolutely sucked for the most part. That’s fine, but at the same time you need to have something to work with. This was a bad era for the company, but mainly because the NWA wouldn’t get out of the way. Not a bad show but certainly not for everyone.

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Clash of the Champions #20
Date: September 2, 1992
Location: Center Stage Theater, Atlanta, Georgia
Attendance: 500
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jesse Ventura

This is the next to last one that I have to go and it’s a theme show. This is a show dedicated to WCW being on the Superstation for 20 years. Yeah you know that whole “longest running weekly episodic show?” It’s not even close. WCW/all it’s other names was on the air on Saturday Nights at 6:05 for roughly 28 years straight. Raw hasn’t even hit 19 years yet. Even when Vince took over for a few months in the mid 80s, it was still called World Championship Wrestling. Anyway let’s get to it.

The show opens with an old clip of Andre the Giant from probably the 70s. He has an interview tonight, which was his final American appearance.

The opening video is in the form of a scrapbook with various people that used to be big stars. This is always cool to see.

Tony and Missy are outside like they’re at a red carpet. Gordon Solie is here too and hello Andre in Princess Bride attire. Ron Simmons, the world champion, arrives. Now Bill Watts gets here. He’s followed by….HANK AARON??? I know he’s around every now and then but it’s still cool to see him. Bill Shaw, the legit president of WCW (who had no idea how wrestling worked) is here too. Jim Barnett, a promoter, is here, as is Bob Dhue (another legit boss) and BRUNO SAMMARTINO!!! He kind of bashes WWF by saying that he’s glad to be in a real wrestling company. Sting arrives on a motorcycle.

We go inside now and Robb Pitts, an Atlanta City Councilman, gives Bill Watts a proclamation. The Assassin in his mask in the background is an amusing sight. Dusty pops up and says some catchphrases. Assassin, Thunderbolt Patterson and Magnum TA are here too.

TV Title: Ricky Steamboat vs. Steve Austin

Austin is champion. This is the leftovers of the Dangerous Alliance angle which should have gone on at least another year but hey, it’s WCW so why let things go well? Austin is mentioned as a member of it here but I’d have thought it was long gone by then. The national anthem is sung after their entrances. It’s done by an 11 year old and Johnny B. Badd. That’s an odd combination. Oh ok he’s just walking her there.

This is no DQ, which means moves off the top are allowed. Also, Dangerously will be in a cage outside the ring. Steamboat also has bad ribs. Austin goes right for them but it’s mainly striking to get us going. Ricky grabs a headlock to take over and they go to the mat. The cage is now up in the air. Also you can vote on whether or not the top rope moves should be banned or not.

Still in the headlock and Austin taps but it doesn’t mean anything yet. Austin escapes and goes right for the ribs with a hiptoss and elbow drop. See how easy it is? Back to the headlock by Ricky as they’re kind of filling time here. They go to the corner and Austin steps onto the bottom rope with Steamboat on the middle rope, kind of like for a really low level belly to belly superplex. However, instead of that he throws Steamboat forward over his head so that Steamboat lands face first and ribs first on the mat. Cool move.

Steamboat can’t do much now due to the ribs so Austin locks on an abdominal stretch. Ricky starts his comeback and a middle rope cross body gets two. Austin takes a slingshot into the buckle for two. A tombstone gets two and the crowd is getting way into this. Austin gets two on a rollup with tights. Ricky blocks a superplex but jumps into a punch to the ribs. Shoulder block gets two for Ricky. He skins the cat but a BIG elbow sends him to the floor. In a sweet move, Steamboat slips under the ring and comes out the other side for the top rope cross body for the pin and the title.

Rating: B-. I liked this one a lot and they got the crowd into this. When a crowd of 500 people can be heard that clearly you can tell you’ve got something good going. It helps when you have this kind of talent out there. This would be a bigger feud in the next few years and over a bigger title as well, which is the idea. Then Steamboat got injured and someone decided that Austin wasn’t marketable. Idiots.

Here are some clips from the old days, in this case from Mr. Wrestling #2.

We get a video on some of the great tag teams that have competed here on TBS. We see stuff from the Assassins, the Briscoes, the Freebirds (probably from the 70s), the Road Warriors and the Rock N Roll Express. These are just like 20 second clips so there isn’t anything to say here. Roddy Piper is on commentary in the Warriors clips and sounds BOMBED.

Video on Halloween Havoc 1992.

Michael Hayes tells Terry Gordy (not seen) that his men Arn Anderson/Bobby Eaton (seen) will kill him.

Arn Anderson/Bobby Eaton vs. Dick Slater/Greg Valentine

Arn and Valentine start us off. Slater and Valentine clear the ring and it breaks down very quickly. We get to Slater and Eaton with Slater in control. A Russian legsweep and feet on the ropes get two. This is heel vs. heel. Off to Anderson who gets caught in the corner and double teamed. This isn’t really working and I have no idea why they’re going heel vs. heel here. Slater works on Arn’s leg and Valentine hooks a Figure Four which Eaton breaks up. Spinebuster gets two on Greg and it breaks down again. Larry Zbyszko comes out and hits Greg with a cast by mistake and a middle rope Alabama Jam ends this.

Rating: D+. What an odd match. Having four heels (and good ones at that) out there made this into an “I can out heel you” contest which isn’t something I recall seeing. The problem is you’re not going to get anyone cheered out there and I really don’t get the point of it. Just an odd choice.

Bruno Sammartino has an interview and flat out says that he’s glad to be back in a real wrestling organization, unlike that other place he’s been with for the last ten years.

Teddy Long is in the VIP Room and instead of talking to Gordon Solie or Andre, he picks Bob Armstrong. They just didn’t get it at times. Now let’s talk to Thunderbolt Patterson. Dude, ANDRE THE GIANT IS SITTING NEXT TO YOU. Patterson actually says he’s glad to be alive to be here.

We get a quick statement from Mr. Wrestling #2 from Hawaii.

Ted Turner thanks us for 20 years. You have to give him this: he stuck with them as long as he could.

Bill Watts vacates the Light Heavyweight Title due to champion Brad Armstrong being injured. A tournament is promised but it never came. We go to Brad on a crutch who says he’s disappointed because he has to step down. He thinks he’s a failure and Brian Pillman, the opponent for later, comes out. He says it’s a disgrace because he’s supposed to get the title back but Armstrong is claiming an injury. Armstrong’s dad should be ashamed of him and Brad doesn’t know what to say. Pillman slaps him, officially turning heel.

Here’s a singles version of the same kind of montage we saw earlier for the tag teams. Way too many to name here but if they’re a big name they’re here. There are a lot of smaller named guys too. It sounds like it’s set to the Sting music when he came out at Starrcade 97.

Video on Ron Simmons, the WCW World Champion.

WCW World Title: Cactus Jack vs. Ron Simmons

Dig that old Doom music! Ole Anderson is referee here for no apparent reason. This is power vs. brawling of course so Ron tries to wear Jack down. Jack actually speeds things up and hits a flying headbutt to take over. Out to the floor and Ron is like yeah go ahead and jump. Back in and Cactus takes over using his evil ways. Simmons pounds him down in the corner but he charges into a punch.

Cactus Clothesline and they go to the floor. Swinging neckbreaker out there puts Simmons down and they go back in. Three clotheslines get a two count for Jack and it’s off to the chinlock. They trade headbutts and down goes Jack. Two three point shoulder blocks take Jack down again. Back to the floor and Cactus manages to drop his apron elbow to the floor which is one of his major moves. And Simmons is up again in like 4 seconds. Back in the ring, Simmons hits the spinebuster and powerslam to retain. Literally after the elbow, Jack had zero offense and the match was over 20 seconds later.

Rating: D+. I don’t get that ending at all. This was a pretty major feud for awhile, including Jack managing I believe Barbarian for the world title match at Starrcade. The rest of that match wasn’t anything of note either as Ron was pretty much like “yeah keep hitting me.” Really strange match, which is kind of a theme for the last two of them.

Masahiro Chono won a tournament in Japan to win the NWA World Title over Rick Rude. This would result in Chono and Muta getting time on WCW TV, because the NWA thought people cared. We get some clips of the match which looks pretty good.

Rude issues a challenge to Chono for a rematch.

Cactus Jack says he’s in pain but he has someone to help Barbarian and this someone knows Simmons very well. It’s Butch Reed.

Butch Reed/Barbarian vs. Dustin Rhodes/Barry Windham

Jack is on commentary here. Barbarian starts with Rhodes. The Texans cheat and fire off a bunch of double dropkicks to clear the ring. Barbarian is an interesting guy as he always had jobs. Think about it: he was around in the mid 80s, then got a pretty long run in WWF then this quick WCW run then he went back to WWF for a few months then was in WCW for the Faces of Fear. That’s pretty impressive for someone that was never anything more than a lower midcard guy.

Reed gets pounded on in the corner but Dustin misses a charge and falls to the corner. Cactus’ evil laugh is downright CREEPY. The monsters lure Windham in and double team Dustin some more. Cactus: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can fool Barry Windham all of the time.” It’s funnier when he says it. A clothesline puts Rhodes down and Reed pounds away on him.

Off to Barbarian who beats on Dustin even more. Standard tag team formula here and that’s perfectly fine. It still works so why mess with it? Reed comes in for a reverse chinlock as Jack says he’s playing a part in a plan but won’t elaborate on it. I don’t think that ever went anywhere. Dustin manages to get a clothesline but takes one of his own. There’s the double tag Windham comes in and speeds things up. He hits the superplex on Barbarian but goes to stop Reed instead. Everything breaks down and Barbarian kicks Barry’s head off for the pin.

Rating: C. This was fine. Barry and Dustin would go on to win the tag titles (the WCW versions, not the NWA titles, meaning that the team they beat still had tag titles because the NWA is stupid) in about a month. Barbarian and Reed would help Jack against Simmons then just kind of fade away.

Jack tells Simmons to be ready.

Here’s a video on the main event. It’s a Survivor Series style match with Sting captaining the Steiners/Nikita Koloff vs. Vader/Jake Roberts/Rude/Super Invader. Sting and Vader are obvious, Jake came in to feud with Sting as a HUGE signing that went nowhere. Koloff is feuding with Rude over the US Title, and the Steiners are Sting’s friends. Super Invader is Hercules of all people under a mask. He’s Harley Race’s goon so there are your eight men.

Sting/Nikita Koloff/Steiner Brothers vs. Rick Rude/Super Invader/Jake Roberts/Big Van Vader

Remember, elimination rules. Hercules is HUGE here as he must be on the good steroids. Rick vs. Vader gets us going. Vader pounds him down as only he can but walks into a SWEET belly to belly. Off to Koloff vs. Invader now. Invadercules takes him down and it’s off to Rude for our first rivalry pairing. Scott comes in as does Invader. No one has really stayed in long enough to get anything going other than the opening pairing.

Scott calls for the Frankensteiner but Rude makes a blind tag and takes Scott down before the Frankensteiner can hit. Roberts comes in to do nothing so it’s off to Vader who pounds Scott down in the corner. He whips Scott in and Jake isn’t paying attention so he gets knocked to the floor. Scott grabs a tilt-a-whirl on Rude, setting up double tags to Roberts and Koloff.

Nikita beats up everyone but Rude knees him in the back, allowing Jake to roll him up for a 4-3 advantage. Off to Sting vs. Invader and that kind of bulldog move that Sting does ties it up. Vader comes in to fight Sting but Sting tags out to Rick. There’s a BIG suplex to Vader. I could watch the Steiners throw people around all day. Rick goes up but jumps into a powerslam. That’s scary power. Vader just held him for awhile because he could. A middle rope splash only gets two. The crowd is way into this.

Off to Rude who puts on a front facelock. Rick powers to the corner but Jake came in for a distraction so the tag doesn’t count. Back to Vader who jumps off the rope but also gets caught in a powerslam by Rick. The Steiners try a Doomsday Device but Rick can’t hold him so it’s more like a regular top rope clothesline. But wait, since Bill Watts is REALLY FREAKING STUPID, that means Scott is disqualified.

Rick and Vader go to the floor and Rick backdrops him out there. Rick Rude comes over and hits the Rude Awakening on Steiner and only Vader beats the count back in. That makes it Sting vs. Roberts/Rude/Vader. He gets Roberts first and there’s the Splash but Rude breaks up the Deathlock attempt. Sting does what he can but he’s still against three guys. The bulldog gets two on Rude. He hits a slingshot suplex but Vader comes off the top with a splash on both guys for no apparent reason, drawing his own DQ. Jake pulls Rude over for a tag and Jake easily DDTs Sting for the winning pin.

Rating: D+. Bill Watts is really stupid. The problem with the top rope thing is it completely takes away the excitement that you can get from things like that. Watts wanted an old school, mat based style which is why he pushed the Miracle Violence Connection so hard. The problem with that is NO ONE ELSE LIKES IT. But who cares about something like that right? I mean, it’s TRADITION AND THE NWA BABY!!! The match was nothing special and was pretty dull due to the people being eliminated through such stupid means.

We hear the results of the poll about the top rope being reinstated: 88% want moves off the top to be legal again. Think that happened? Of course not.

JR says we’ll take a special look at Halloween Havoc, but it’s the same commercial we’ve seen three times already. Oh wait this has some extra stuff in it. Well at least it’s different. This announces that it’ll be Jake vs. Sting in Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal, which is WCW’s version of Raw Roulette. Naturally they didn’t rig the wheel so they got a Coal Miner’s Glove match, which was AWFUL. The announcement is in the form of a REALLY badly acted skit in I think a bar or something where Jake challenges him.

Overall Rating: D+. This was a weird show. The set looking exactly the same as WCW Saturday Night (it was on the same set) gave this a really weird dynamic. It’s not bad or anything but it felt more like a special edition of Saturday Night rather than a big time show. It did some setting up of Havoc but not much really. Oh and before I forget: Scott Steiner would win the TV Title shortly after this and would tease turning heel, but the Steiners would be in the WWF before Christmas.

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