Clash of the Champions 14: Dixie Dynamite
Date: January 31, 1991
Location: Georgia Mountains Center, Gainsville, Georgia
Attendance: 2,000
Commentators: Jim Ross, Dusty Rhodes

Another one of these and it’s from a pretty bad era for the company. Unlike the one later this year, this show looks atrocious on paper. This is the first one in WCW rather than the NWA so I would expect a few changes. Also Dusty is the booker again so expect the Dusty Finish to abound. The main event is Scott Steiner vs. Ric Flair for the title. I’m not exactly riveted either. Let’s get to it.

After a quick look at the top two matches we get a very 80s opening. You can tell the arena is tiny. I wonder if AJ was there.

National Anthem.

Dusty talks a lot and won’t shut up.

Sting/Lex Luger vs. Doom

Luger is of course US Champion here as he more or less always was. I love that old Sting music. And then again the same can be said of Doom’s music. They’re the tag team champions here in the longest reign in the history of the belts. Ron Simmons and Butch Reed if you weren’t familiar with that. This isn’t announced as a title match but the referee holds up the belts. I guess it is one then.

Reed vs. Sting to start us off. Sting overpowers Reed which is rather impressive. Even in an armbar he shouts to the crowd. Notice what he’s doing there: he doesn’t let the crowd get taken out of it, even in a rest hold. That’s a very nice thing to do. Luger in now as Dusty talks a lot. Ross says in about 5 seconds what it took Dusty 30 to say. We hear about Wrestlewar a little bit where Luger is defending the title.

Simmons vs. Luger now and Ron can’t take him down with shoulders. You can see Simmons wanting to shout his catchphrase. Luger dominates him with power. How often do you see Doom losing to power stuff? Luger walks into a hot shot though and the champions take over. After a break it’s still Doom in control.

Simmons puts his head down though and Luger manages to get a knee/kick in to put Ron down. Simmons gets the tag though to bring in Reed who hits a dropkick of all things to take down Luger. Dusty talks about football to waste even more time. Luger finally takes down Simmons but Reed drills him with a top rope shoulder block to take him right back down. The problem is that it took him right down into his corner. Well isn’t that always the way?

Sting comes in to clean house but Dan Spivey runs out of the crowd to take down Luger. Spivey was Luger’s upcoming opponent at the PPV if I didn’t mention that. Sting doesn’t seem to care and beats up Doom on his own. Reed hits a shoulder to Simmons by mistake and he stumbles into the referee. The referee gets up in time to see Sting get thrown over the top for the CHEAP DQ.

Rating: C. Well it was fun while it lasted but I’ve never been able to stand that over the top rule. This was kind of a backdrop for the Spivey vs. Luger match but that didn’t exactly work. It was ok I guess but the match didn’t really go anywhere and the titles never felt like they were in danger at all.

We unveil the winner of the WCW’s Sexiest Wrestler award. It’s Z-Man. Next.

TV Title: Z-Man vs. Bobby Eaton

Z-Man is champion here. They REALLY crank in chants for Bobby here. Either that or 2000 people can chant louder for Bobby Eaton than they can for Goldberg. Dusty talks about how great both guys are. I can see why Z-Man won the sexiest wrestler thing. Apparently Zenk had already lost the title at a TV Taping so this shouldn’t really mean much at all. This is live mind you so imagine his mindset.

Dusty’s voice gets REALLY old when he’s comfortable which he definitely is here. The problem is that he talks A LOT. Eaton works the arm a bit but goes up and Z-Man hits a sweet dropkick to send him to the floor. And then Dusty talks about how great Brian Pillman is for no apparent reason. He also can’t wait to remind us that he’s a former TV Champion either.

They start slugging it out as Dusty is getting harder and harder to ignore. We hit a test of strength as Ross says Terry Taylor is a tough guy. Oh dear. If this is the show I think it is we get another stupid moment in WCW history coming up very soon. As Dusty talks about getting hit in the head with a stick, Eaton goes up again and gets caught one more time.

Superkick puts Eaton down. Big backdrop and Eaton is in trouble. Who covers someone off a backdrop? Who does he think he is, Moolah? Eaton gets him down and manages to get the top rope knee drop but Z-Man gets to the ropes. Cradle gets two for the champion but he walks into a neckbreaker that gets two for Eaton.

You can see fans leaving for the concession stand. Nice to see a title match has them so enthralled. Z-Man gets a freaking back slide of all things to get the pin to retain. Eaton’s shoulder might have been up though so expect another match before the airing of Arn winning the title.

Rating: C+. This started out slow but it got a lot better once they picked up the pace a bit. Eaton is a guy that is straight up underrated in wrestling as he consistently put on great match after great match. This was fine for what it was, even though it would have been understandable for Z-Man to do next to nothing out there.

The replay shows that it wasn’t even close with Eaton completely kicking out before three. That was pretty bad.

Alexandra York (Terri) says that she has selected the newest member of the York Foundation (computer assisted heel group that more or less sucked) and we’ll see him tonight.

Fabulous Freebirds vs. Allen Iron Eagle/Tommy Rich

I don’t know who Eagle is either. This is Garvin and Hayes. The Birds are heels here but good luck getting a team called the Freebirds booed in Georgia. Dang it now I’m going to have Badstreet USA stuck in my head all day. Hayes and Rich start as we actually get a reference to the world title reign of Rich. Eagle is another Indian character.

The Indian character of course chops a lot. I’m stunned too. Garvin does….something and down goes Eagle. Eagle ducked his head like he was going for a backdrop and Garvin ran up to him to set for a DDT (finisher) but Eagle just fell backwards. Weird as heck  but whatever. We hit the chinlock as this isn’t much at all. Hayes punches him and it sounds great. Eagle forgets to sell and just stands there, making him one of the worst guys I’ve seen in a long time.

Dusty and Jim try desperately to say that Eagle was stunned from the move and it’s just funny as can be. Anyway, Hayes is ticked and beats the tar out of him on the floor with some hard stuff. When Michael Hayes is the ring general, you know you’re in real trouble. Dusty of course talks about being able to go down Badstreet and be ok because he’s tough.

Amazingly enough they manage to screw up something else with Eagle not realizing that Garvin is supposed to be doing a blind charge so Garvin has to throw up a knee to save the spot. Everyone comes in and we get an awkward looking kick to the guy before an awkward looking sunset flip sets up the tag to Rich that isn’t seen. The Birds DDT the heck out of Eagle to end it, thankfully.

Rating: D-. This is a horrible match, but it’s one of those matches where you can laugh at it very hard. The match is bad, don’t get me wrong, but Eagle was so bad that he was hilarious. There were at least 5 botched spots in a seven minute match. Let that sink in for a bit. It really was that bad.

Dusty talks to Paul E. Dangerously about the arm wrestling match tonight with Missy Hyatt and implies that Paul is gay. Dusty of course has more to talk about which is what he’s there for. Dusty’s comments here are flat out sexist but it’s Georgia so he can get away with it I guess. Somehow Heyman gets into I Have A Dream. Moving on.

Joey Maggs vs. Sid Vicious

What do you think is going to happen here? Sid brings his own paramedics with him if that tells you anything. Sid’s hometown of Anywhere He Darn Well Pleases is still great stuff. He’s a Horseman here too. A clothesline and powerbomb end this in maybe a minute. Sid was a bit of a nut but that powerbomb was sweet every time. The paramedics come out and we take a break. Back with Sid beating up Maggs some more on the stretcher. That’s kind of awesome.

Tony talks to Sid who says everyone fears him.

Ricky Morton vs. Terry Taylor

Here’s another one of WCW’s famous goofs. Terry Taylor is introduced as the Computerized Man of the 90s. That would be all fine and good except for one thing: That was his name once he turned heel. The problem is that the heel turn was that the heel turn hadn’t happened yet, completely giving away the ending of the match. Why did Capetta (ring announcer) even have that on his card? What sense does that even begin to make? Early 90s WCW is made fun of a lot, but it’s not really a secret as to why is it?

Taylor wants respect or something, also giving a good indication of the already spoiled heel turn. Robert Gibson is injured here which would eventually lead to Morton joining the York Foundation as well. Technical/feeling out process to start with no one being able to get a distinct advantage. Nice arm drags by Morton. They speed things up a bit but still no one can get an advantage.

We take a break as Taylor hits the floor to break the momentum. Back with Terry holding an armbar. Nice jawbreaker by Morton has Taylor in trouble though as they’re going back and forth rather nicely here. Dusty of course can’t stop talking long enough for Ross to talk about the match but it’s Dusty’s show so who cares? Alexandra York comes down now as we’re not sure who she’s here for. Apparently no one was listening to the intros either.

For no apparent reason we get an inset promo from York, saying that Taylor is indeed the newest member of the York Foundation and that her computer has told her how he’s going to win this. That was the gimmick of the Foundation: the computer would predict the outcome of the match, such as here where it says the time of the fall and what Taylor will win with. It’s as dumb as it sounds.

Morton gets a small package for two as Taylor turns heel and wrestles all evil and such. A bad bulldog gets two for Taylor. It amazes me that they had wireless so early in the 90s. Morton hammers away in the corner and gets a suplex for two. Dropkick puts Taylor down but a second misses and Morton hits the mat rather hard, allowing Taylor to steal the pin.

Rating: C. It’s ok and the early part is good but other than that this was kind of flat. Morton’s singles time was kind of awkward as he was definitely the better half of the team but he wasn’t someone people wanted to see without his partner. This was ok but nothing really all that special.

We get a preview of the Japanese women’s wrestling at WrestleWar. And 8 seconds is all we get of that.

We see Sting getting the Wrestler of the Year award which allegedly was totally rigged or something.

Dusty talks (naturally) about the Gulf War and praises the troops. The war had just ended or was about to end which messed up the Wrestlemania plans Vince had. How dare international politics and wars get in the way of Wrestlemania??? Didn’t Sadaam watch Superstars?

Ranger Ross vs. El Cubano

Ross is a military dude that would be gone soon after this and in prison for robbery, domestic violence, embezzlement and attempted arson by 1996. Somehow an evil masked Communist is looking like a good guy all of a sudden. Cubano is just a masked guy that is apparently Cuban. In an inset interview Ross praises the troops as well.

Apparently if you can see a guy’s face you can read their mind. This is of course according to Dusty. JR says that Ross (the wrestler that is) is a great role model for anyone of any color. Really? The color line was needed there? Cubano misses a top rope splash and Ross sends him to the floor. Ross runs to the ropes and dives over feet first in a plancha type dive. It wasn’t to hit Cubano or anything. That’s just how he left the ring. A rollup ends it maybe 8 seconds later.

Rating: N/A. The odd comments here were more interesting than the match. This went nowhere of course as it was a generic evil guy against Ross who was gone probably before the next PPV. Just a squash.

Ad for WrestleWar and Wargames.

Arn Anderson/Barry Windham vs. Renegade Warriors

The Renegade Warriors are the Youngblood brothers minus Jay who was dead by now. There are massive portraits of the Horsemen behind the ring on the wall. Yeah this isn’t going to be dominance at all. The Warriors jump the Horsemen to start and it’s a big brawl. Sweet merciful crap they look stupid though with their tights being more or less bright plaid.

Windham and one of the Warriors start this off. Arn’s eyes are flat out hilarious. When he gets freaked out you would think he was in a Three Stooges sketch with how freaked out he is. Dusty really likes to remind us that this is in color. Ok Chris is in the singlet. Arn takes him to the mat and works the knee but gets rolled up for two and Arn wants time out.

Off to Barry now and the Horsemen can’t get anything going at all here. Mark beats up Arn a bit. Oh I forgot: the Warriors are Mark and Chris. That might help a bit. Arn gets a spinebuster out of nowhere and the writing is on the wall now. Off to Barry who gets a kind of jumping DDT for two. Dusty rambles about putting your wife in a front facelock and something about a shotgun as Arn and Chris ram heads.

Atomic drop takes care of Chris but they botch Arn’s pump splash out of the corner as he never hits it but he more or less did here since Chris didn’t roll out of the way and barely got a knee up. Mark back in and it’s a big brawl all over again. He gets sent to the floor though and the Horsemen just destroy Chris with a lariat and the superplex for the easy pin.

Rating: D+. Just a long match that wasn’t interesting or anything as we needed seven and a half minutes somehow to show that the Horsemen are awesome over a glorified jobbing tag team. Nothing that terrible but it still wasn’t all that good at all. Too long as it should have been about half this long.

We get a clip of Vader vs. Stan Hansen from Japan which was a freaking war. They’ve having another match at WrestleWar. Hansen, tobacco flowing everywhere, says that it’ll be a real war between real men at the PPV.

Buddy Lee Parker vs. Brian Pillman

Parker is the guy that trained Goldberg and is widely considered to be one of the biggest jerks in the history of wrestling. In short, he was very short and according to Batista had a bad case of Napoleon Syndrome, meaning he hated being small so he tried to use his authority as head of the Power Plant to compensate for it, including telling Batista he had no future in wrestling for some reason. He was a jobber that thought he had meant something in other words.

This is really just a way to talk about WarGames which Pillman is in. He would be the ending of the match as Sid would more or less kill him with a powerbomb and they had to stop the match due to it. Crucifix gets two for Pillman. Even Parker’s basic offense looks bad. Dusty says he has a daughter named Cody. I’ll leave that one alone. Pillman gets a great plancha over the top to take down Parker on the ramp. Top rope cross body ends this squash (notice a theme going on here?) with barely a bit of sweat from Pillman.

Rating: D+. This was a squash but it was a bit longer than the other ones tonight outside of the tag match. Pillman looked great but since he’s in the main event of a PPV shouldn’t we expect that? A squash is fine but what’s the point of having a bunch of them on one show, especially a major one like this? This wasn’t much at all but Pillman’s flying was awesome stuff.

Join the WCW Fan Club!

It’s time to arm wrestle! This was part of the never ending until it ended feud between Paul E. Dangerously and various men as he was feuding with Missy here. Some country DJ is the ring announcer for this. Oh and let’s talk about the troops because that’s just what southern people do. Dangerously being billed as the Psycho Yuppie continues to crack me up.

This is one of the funniest moments in company history as Missy comes out in this big workout jacket but as she is warming up and Paul isn’t looking, Missy takes the jacket off to reveal a low cut top. Heyman’s jaw drops and Hyatt gets the easy win in like two seconds. Funny stuff.

Lawrence Taylor is chilling with the Horsemen at some bar in New Jersey, even though Flair is defending the title tonight in Georgia. This was odd and rather pointless indeed.

WCW World Title: Scott Steiner vs. Ric Flair

From what I can find, both Flair and Dusty (booking here) came to Scott and flat out said the title is yours, just say the word. Steiner was absolutely awesome at this point and he really was on the verge of shattering the glass ceiling and becoming the top guy in the world. However, he turned them down because it was pretty clear that as soon as his singles push went into effect, Rick was gone. He wouldn’t win the world title for nearly ten years.

Hiro Matsuda is here from NJPW because the first Superbrawl with Fujinami vs. Flair is coming up. El Gigante is here too. Flair won’t shake his hand which resulted in a brief feud between them. Flair has been champion less than three weeks here, getting it back from Sting earlier this month. This has TV time remaining which I’d almost bet anything on that playing into the finish.

Flair shows off his biceps and Steiner is like boy please. Feeling out process to start as you would expect there to be. Steiner counters a top wristlock and Rick gets in Ric’s face as he grabs the ropes. Dusty thinks Scott would like to go into WrestleWar as World Champion. You can’t buy analysis like this people.

Flair hits the floor a bit to buy some time as Scott has been on fire so far. A little more feeling out stuff results in Scott grabbing another armbar. This is some nice technical stuff so far. Flair goes for the knee and Steiner is like oh no you didn’t and clotheslines the tar out of him so Flair hides again. Surprisingly an atomic drop breaks up Steiner’s momentum. I’m surprised his balls can feel anything with all those steroids in him.

Rick shoves Ric’s feet off the ropes when Flair tries to cheat. Is there a reason for those portraits of Anderson and Windham to still be there? Steiner powers out of a cover as we take a break. Back with Steiner throwing the Figure Four on Flair. He’s no Jay Lethal though so he can’t get the tap out. How often do you see a face in control when you come back from a break?

In an awkward looking spot, Flair charges at Steiner but Steiner falls backwards and Flair goes over the ropes. In the awkward part Steiner is supposed to go over also but didn’t have the momentum so after he was stopped he jumped into the air and went over the top. We have ten minutes of TV time left. Flair goes in for the kill on the knee and yells at Rick a lot.

Figure Four goes on and Steiner is in trouble. As we wait for the inevitable reversal, I wonder why the ring ropes were blue, black and yellow. What kind of a weird combination is that? The hold is broken via rope so Flair puts it on again in the middle of the ring. Steiner easily turns is over and we’re back on now.

Flair goes to the floor and Steiner takes him down with a Steiner Line. Down to five minutes remaining. Steiner pounds away in the corner as his leg is ok now. Nick Patrick stops Steiner from punching and Flair a shot in to take over a bit. Ross takes a breath so Dusty talks for a minute or so about how much experience he has in the ring. Under four minutes and Steiner gets a bad sleeper.

Steiner clotheslines Flair over so they alter the rules again so that’s not a DQ with three minutes left. Knee drop by Flair as Steiner is in trouble. Two minutes left and Flair is in the stall mode. Steiner gets a sweet bridge up into a Tiger Bomb but doesn’t cover for no apparent reason.

Ric is on the floor with a minute left. Steiner Line has Flair reeling with 30 seconds left. Flair Flip out of the corner and there’s not enough time. Belly to belly gets two as the bell rings for the time. The whole TV time thing is bogus as we go off the air a minute and a half after TV time expires. Ah ok we needed to show the credits. That explains it. Heaven forbid we don’t know that Ted Turner is responsible for this.

Rating: B. This was good for what it was but with more time it could have been great. Like I said this could have been a title change if Steiner had given it the ok but he decided a tag team was more important. Anyway this was good stuff and it worked rather well considering Steiner didn’t have much big match experience at all. Fun match and interesting for the most part but the ending might as well have been announced at the beginning given how obvious it was.

Overall Rating: D+. Well they tried but at the end of the day there was too much weak stuff here to make this a really good show. The main event is solid but other than that there wasn’t much here at all. Far too many squashes and uninteresting matches for the first hour and a half setting up a good main event doesn’t make a good show though. 91 was really bad for WCW down the line and this was probably the best time for them in the year until the very end of the year. Pretty bad show but the main event is solid. That’s about it.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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

http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/news/223974/WWE-Developing-New-WCW-DVD-.htm

It’s because of the Count-Up isn’t it?

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

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

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

Buddy Landell vs. Brian Pillman

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

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

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

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

Iron Sheik vs. Mike Rotunda

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

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

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

Dutch Mantel vs. Doug Furnas

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

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

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

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

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

Harley Race vs. Tommy Rich

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

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

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

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

US Tag Titles: Midnight Express vs. Southern Boys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Z-Man vs. Big Van Vader

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

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

Fabulous Freebirds vs. Steiner Brothers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dudes With Attitude vs. Horsemen

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

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

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

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

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

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Mark Callous

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

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

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

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

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

Tag Titles: Rock N Roll Express vs. Doom

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

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

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

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

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

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

NWA World Title: Sting vs. Ric Flair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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

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

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

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

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

Freebirds/Bobby Eaton vs. Southern Boys/El Gigante

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

Freebirds vs. Southern Boys

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

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

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

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

Buddy Landell vs. Brian Pillman

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

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

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

Big Cat vs. Brad Armstrong

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

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

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

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

Z-Man vs. Brian Lee

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

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

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

Starblazer vs. Michael Wallstreet

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

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

The WCW Top Ten:

Tag teams first.

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

Singles:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Motorcity Madman vs. Lex Luger

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

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

Renegade Warriors vs. Nasty Boys

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

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

Vader is back.

Sid Vicious vs. Nightstalker

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

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

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

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

Missy Hyatt hypes an upcoming TV show.

We look at the Steiners attacking the Nasties earlier.

Steiner Brothers vs. Magnum Force

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ric Flair vs. Butch Reed

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember to like me on Facebok at:

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

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

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

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

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

Jim and Bob run down the card.

Southern Boys vs. Freebirds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buddy Landel vs. Mike Rotunda

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

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

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

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

Tim Horner/Brad Armstrong vs. Master Blasters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jackie Fulton/Terry Taylor vs. Nasty Boys

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

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

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

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

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

Bill Irwin vs. Tommy Rich

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

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

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

We get the WCW Top Ten.

World Champion: Sting

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

Tag Teams:

World Champions: Doom

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

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

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

LPWA World Title: Bambi vs. Susan Sexton

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

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

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

Maximum Overdrive vs. Steiner Brothers

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

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

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

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

Stan Hansen vs. Z-Man

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

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

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

US Title: Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger

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

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

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

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

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

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

WCW World Title: Sting vs. Black Scorpion

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

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

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

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

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

Sting says he’s confused to end the show.

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

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

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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

Wrestlewar 1990
Date: February 25, 1990
Location: Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
Attendance: 9,894
Commentators: Jim Ross, Terry Funk

We’re into 1990 now and Funk has stepped into commentary, so we need a new feud for Flair. That man would have been Sting who had been thrown out of the Horsemen on February 6. At Starrcade, Sting had pinned Flair to win the Iron Man Tournament and asked for a title shot. Flair snapped and turned the Horsemen heel again, destroying Sting in the process. That night, Sting legit hut his knee so his title match tonight (which he was supposed to win) was postponed. The replacement? Lex Luger, who has had more classics with Flair than should be legally allowed. Let’s get to it.

This show is called Wild Thing. The NWA had a habit of adding random titles to shows which have nothing to do with them for the most part.

Dan Spivey is hurt and may be out tonight.

JR and Terry run down the card.

Teddy Long says Spivey is indeed hurt and there will be a replacement for him tonight. There’s another surprise later as well.

Kevin Sullivan/Buzz Sawyer vs. Dynamic Dudes

Sawyer is insane and that’s about all you need to know about him. He starts with Ace and these people are a bit more receptive than the Philly crowd was in our last show. Speaking of last shows, this is the final major show that Sawyer was on for WCW if that means anything for you. Ace sends him to the floor and a brawl breaks out on the outside. Shane and Sullivan come in and the Dudes keep control with the arm work.

Ace comes in to work on the arm more but Sullivan gets a tag. He also gets in a fight with Sawyer, much to the Dudes’ amusement. That’s smart: why break up a fight when you can get a breather? Sawyer’s arm goes into the post so Shane cranks on it. Out to the floor with Sawyer taking over. Sunset flip gets two for Ace and there’s the tag to Shane. Buzz immediately takes him down and hooks a bearhug to take Shane to the mat.

Sullivan comes in and pops Ace, which draws him in so that Sullivan can throw Shane to the floor. Everything breaks down and Johnny botches a flying headscissors. Sawyer goes up and hits a big old flying splash for the pin. That’s the interim Raw GM and the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations for you. Funk called it the Jam Sandwich, which is something Brodus should use.

Rating: C-. Not much here as none of these guys was much to watch at this point. I’ve never been a big fan of Shane and Ace is just ok. He never was all that good as his size became an issue for him but he was too slim to be a power guy. Not a very good match with a total contrast in styles that didn’t work at all.

Norman the Lunatic, who is a goofy character that isn’t all there upstairs, hits on Missy Hyatt.

Cactus Jack Manson vs. Norman the Lunatic

Yes it’s Mick Foley and no he doesn’t mean a thing yet. He’s pretty much just thrown onto the card here, much like Cuban Assassin was last time. Jack jumps him to start but gets thrown to the floor with ease. JR: “This will not be a battle of wits. It may be a battle of nitwits.” Also Jack’s favorite color is light black and wants to be the foreman of the Double Cross Ranch.

Jack rams Norman’s head into the buckle and Norman says do it again. A quick bearhug goes on Jack but he’s soon whipped over the corner and out to the floor in a big crash. Headbutt knocks Jack off the apron but misses a charge into the post. Back in and Cactus rips at his face. Cactus pounds him down and it’s off to a chinlock. The electric chair drop puts Jack down but a splash misses. Jack tries a sunset flip but Norman drops onto him for the pin.

Rating: D. Yeah it was bad but Foley of course would get a lot more going for him. Norman is more famous as Bastian Booger and a lot of other bad characters in WWF. Jack was clearly going to be a guy that bumped like mad, but at the end of the day what sets him apart is that he made people care about him as opposed to guys like say New Jack.

Jim Cornette talks about how things change but some things stay the same. Tonight the Midnights have the Rock N Roll Express, which is something that never changes.

Rock N Roll Express vs. Midnight Express

This is another one of those matches where the starting rating rises up from a C to a B. These guys feuded for probably 6 years on and off and had more classics than you could shake a stick at. Why you would want to shake a stick at it is beyond me but you get the idea. Gibson vs. Stan gets us going. Lane dives to the mat and they counter each other a lot. Gibson counters a counter and drops a fist onto Lane’s head to take over.

Cornette gets in an argument with Nick Patrick and wants to box him. This is an old spot they did which always gets a big reaction. Cornette is dispatched quickly and it’s Morton vs. Lane now. The fans are into this too. Bobby gets knocked to the floor and Lane shoves him down as well. We never got a big singles match between those two and I think that’s for the best.

Lane vs. Bobby now and they speed things up. Nothing seems to be coming out of the shove from a few moments ago. Off to a test of strength and Morton is losing. He climbs up Bobby, stands on his shoulders, and jumps onto Lane in the corner. Gibson runs off Lane and the Midnights are knocked to the floor. Cornette tries to get in and falls over the top rope so Gibson knocks back down. Both Midnights are double clotheslined to the floor as well and it’s been one sided for about the first eight minutes.

Back in now and it’s Gibson vs. Lane but Lane still can’t get anything going. Morton comes in for a double elbow but gets sent outside. Never mind again as Lane goes into the post. Now it’s Eaton again and it’s a slugout. Terry gets into this and they both tumble to the floor. Outside Lane slams Morton and the Midnights take over.

Now we get into a much more traditional tag match which was popularized if not perfected by these teams, making this a fun match. Morton is sent to the floor and rammed into various metal objects. He manages a sunset flip but Cornette grabs the referee. Morton tries an O’Connor Roll but Lane makes a blind tag and hooks a neckbreaker for two. Eaton goes after the arm with a single arm DDT and into a hammerlock.

Lane comes in for a quick reverse chinlock before bringing in Eaton for a top rope elbow. Back to the arm by Lane. Man the Midnights tag in fast. Eaton works on the arm again with the hammerlock and the Midnights set for the Rocket Launcher. It hits the knees though and here’s Gibson. Everything breaks down but he’s still 2-1. The Midnights load up the Flapjack but Gibson rolls through for the pin on Lane.

Rating: B+. Oh come on it’s the Midnights vs. Rock N Roll. There’s practically no way that this can be screwed up. It’s a great speed match and they know each other so well that they’re going to have a good match through familiarity if nothing else. Fun stuff here but somehow not their best work together.

The Road Warriors have Sting armbands on and are ready for the Chicago street fight up next.

Skyscrapers vs. Road Warriors

Street fight. The Skyscrapers are almost a revolving door of members and in this case it’s Mark Callous and a masked man who is played by Mike Enos. The Skyscrapers have Teddy Long to counter Paul Ellering. Long comes in to fight Ellering and is knocked to the floor with one punch. Everyone is in street clothes. What street these would be normal on I have no idea but the thought is there.

The Warriors dominate to start and here comes Doom for no apparent reason. They’re in suits and Teddy goes to join them. Enos gets in some offense to take over (he’s just the masked man here but I’ll be calling him Enos to keep things clearer) but it’s pretty short lived. The Road Warriors shrug it off and Hawk hits a running clothesline off the apron to Callous. They get back in and this slows down even more. The Warriors throw Callous out and the Doomsday Device kills Enos easily for the pin.

Rating: D. I love the Road Warriors but they need the right kind of team to make things work. The Skyscrapers were never quite a team that worked, at least not here. They were good at destroying jobbers and small people but having brawls like this was never really anything worth seeing.

Doom comes in post match and brawls with the Warriors in a much more entertaining fight. This feud never really happened as the Warriors jumped to the WWF in June.

US Tag Titles: Freebirds vs. Brian Pillman/Z-Man

The Birds are challenging here. They get sent to the floor immediately and the champs steal their clothes and dance around as Badstreet plays in the background. Funny moment. The crowd is all over the Birds. They weren’t much in the ring but they were heat machines. Today is Flair’s birthday according to JR. We finally get going with Brian vs. Hayes. Brian knocks him around with a clothesline and Garvin fluffs his hair.

Speaking of Garvin here he is and he gets Z-Man. Z takes him down with a headlock but misses a dropkick. Garvin, ever the Rhodes Scholar, ducks his head and gets kicked in the face. Back to Brian for another headlock. Hayes comes back in and things are going slowly to start, implying that they have a lot of time to work with. Sunset flip with a great jump gets two for Pillman.

Z-Man works on the arm and goes into a Fujiwar Armbar to Hayes. Back to Garvin who loses any advantage that Hayes had gotten on Z-Man. Pillman comes in as the fans seem a bit distracted. Hayes comes in and hooks a sleeper (sleep hold according to Ross) as JR talks about Paul Boesch, the promoter of Houston Wrestling for decades, demonstrating this hold in the second World War.

Brian escapes and sends him into the corner but charges into a great left hand to put him down. Brian rolls through a cross body for two. Back to Garvin as this is going a lot longer than I was expecting it to go. Since Garvin can’t manage to keep Brian in one place he makes the tag to Z-Man. Z-Man puts the Z Lock (sleeper) on Hayes but Garvin comes off the top for the save.

Garvin hooks a chinlock as this match has gone well over fifteen minutes so far. Now they mix things up with a Hayes chinlock. After 18 minutes, we’re told this is a rematch from the finals of the tournament where Z-Man and Pillman won the titles in the first place. Z-Man gets a small package for two. Hayes is like enough of that and goes back to the chinlock. JR thinks Hayes looks like Alice Cooper. Terry wants to know if Hayes knows who Buffalo Bill is.

Hayes goes up and kind of steps off with no significant contact being made. Back to Garvin as this needs to end really soon. Who decided to give the Birds over twenty minutes? Top rope fist gets two for Hayes after a non-tag. Bulldog gets two as Pillman breaks it up. Back to the chinlock #4 but Zenk drops him with a DDT of his own. There’s the tag to Pillman and the fans care more than I expected them to. Pillman cleans house but Hayes brings in a title but Pillman comes off the top with a cross body as the title is being taken out to retain the titles.

Rating: D. Technically the match was fine but MY GOODNESS this ran long. It clocks in at almost twenty four minutes which is just far too long. Pillman and Zenk can easily go that long but the Birds were already through their whole set of stuff at about 10 minutes in. The solution of course? Go 14 minutes past that. WAY too long and if you cut this to like 12 minutes it’s probably an okish match.

The Birds DDT both champs post match.

The Steiners are all fired up and dedicate their match to Sting. Rick calls himself a big bad bully beater upper.

Tag Titles: Ole Anderson/Arn Anderson vs. Steiner Brothers

This was supposed to be Tully/Arn but he failed a drug test and was pretty much finished in mainstream wrestling so they brought out Ole in the finals part of his in ring career to fill in for him. Scott starts with Arn and the ring is quickly cleared by pure power. The Steiners are champions if that’s unclear. The Andersons try to double team and that fails as well. Rick and Scott go after the knee of Ole so Ole bails and almost says some very bad words.

Rick vs. Ole now and it turns into another brawl very quickly with the champs clearing the ring again. Rick hooks on a headlock to Arn and JR talks about Rick wanting to be an elementary school science teacher. Terry wants to know why he isn’t anyone’s favorite wrestler. Arn gets in a knee and goes up but has Rick waiting on him. For once a Horseman thinks better of it and climbs down.

Arn bails to the floor and both Steiners are in again. That’s been a habit of theirs tonight. Back to Ole with a headlock on Scott which goes nowhere. Arn comes in again and takes an atomic drop, allowing him to do his great selling of it. Figure Four is broken up by Ole who then comes in legally. For some reason Ole tries amateur stuff on Scott who easily suplexes him and tags in Rick.

The Anderson get an advantage for what must have been a good three seconds but Rick suplexes Arn to stop it cold. Ole tries to hit Rick in the head and that goes about as well as anything else has. The Andersons are brothers at this point for those of you that try to keep track of how they’re related. They go after Rick’s arm which is their trademark. Ole tries to hit Rick in the head which is enough for Rick to make the tag back to Scott.

Scott and Arm go outside and Scott accidentally clotheslines the post. You know Arn is going to go after that like Elvis on a pound of bacon. Ole comes back in and the arm work continues. For some reason the Andersons keep switching off from the arm to general attacks which never work. A Vader Bomb gets knees and there’s a Frankensteiner and a hot tag to Rick. In a fast ending, Rick punches them both down and a fast small package pins Ole.

Rating: C-. It’s not bad but again this was long and not that great. The Andersons were a lot stupider than you would expect from them here which is very Un-Horsemenlike. It’s much better than the previous one but it’s still long and boring. It was too slow and these guys didn’t click at all for the most part.

The Andersons get in a double team move on the arm of Scott post match to injure it.

Lex says he’s nervous but he’s going to Rack Flair tonight and win the title.

Flair says that he’s great and has Woman says that Lex needs to get his engine started, whatever that means.

NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger

Sting is with Lex while Woman is with Flair. The idea here is that Sting was supposed to get the title shot here but legit injured his knee which makes this out to be a “tragedy” according to the introductions. This is the main event and we have 45 minutes to go during Flair’s entrance. Chain wrestling to start with no one having an advantage. Flair shoves the referee and is shoved right back.

Flair agrees to a test of strength and down goes Naitch. Flair bails to the floor and says Wooo a lot. Lex knocks him to the floor again so Ric takes the walk. Luger chases him down and the beating continues. Lex is US Champion here. A gorilla press by Luger puts Flair down so Flair tries the chops. Those do about as well as they do against Sting and Lex is all fired up.

There’s a bear hug which Luger bends forward for a two count. Luger hits ten punches in the corner but Flair ducks a clothesline and Luger falls to the floor. Flair chops away outside and back in they go. Scratch that as Flair dumps him again and calls for Woman to get on the apron. With the referee distracted Flair sends him into the barricade and chops him down. Flair punches him back down to the floor as I guess he’s looking for the countout.

Back in for more than ten seconds this time and Flair drops a knee on the head. Another knee drop hits for two. Lex pops up for his comeback but misses a corner charge and is right back down again. This is one of those matches that’s hard to make fun of because they both know what they’re doing and have such great chemistry together that there’s not much they can’t do together.

Flair hooks a hammerlock and stomps on the arm. Lex starts coming back again so Flair pokes him in the eyes, which Funk calls the Achilles Tendon of big men. Luger gets caught in another hammerlock and when he tries to punch his way out of it, the referee stops the fist, allowing Flair to poke him in the eye again. Ric works on the arm even more but Lex grabs the throat to break it up. He throws Flair into the corner for the Flair Flip and we go to the floor.

Flair chops Lex again and Luger is all fired up. Back in and Flair is caught in a sleeper which puts him down. The champ gets his foot on the ropes and manages a belly to back to escape. Luger suplexes him right back and goes after the knee. He wraps it around the post and tries a figure four. Even JR basically says it’s awful as he spins the wrong way, making him look like he’s a nine year old imitating it.

Ric fights up and chops some more but walks into a powerslam for two. The pop on the kickout was big as the fans thought it was over. Flair still can’t get that the chops don’t work and Lex is all fired up. After a quick exchange outside, Luger backslides him for two. Luger punches him in the corner but Flair atomic drops him, hurting Lex’s knee in the process. Where are these knee injuries in matches against people not named Flair?

A pair of top rope axhandles gets two for Flair. Butterfly suplex gets two. Here’s a sleeper by Flair as he hasn’t gone after the knee much yet. That gets broken after awhile and NOW it’s knee time. We’re probably half an hour into this. Flair works on the knee in his usual manner as Sting comes back to ringside. Sting cheers Luger on enough for him to reverse the hold and it’s broken up.

He slaps Lex to fire him up and Flair bails fast. Out to the floor and Lex no sells a whip into the barricade. There’s a gorilla press and Flair goes up, only to get slammed down. Luger clotheslines him to the floor then suplexes him back in for two. There’s the powerslam which Luger earlier said would set up the Rack. Woman distracts Luger, allowing Flair to knee Lex in the back, crushing the referee in the process.

Lex clotheslines Flair down but there’s no referee. A superplex kills Flair dead again but the Andersons run in because there’s no referee. There’s the Torture Rack and the referee is back up, but the Andersons go after Sting. Luger drops the hold when Flair is about to give up, going to save his friend. The Horsemen keep him out there long enough for the count out and a HUGE boo from the crowd. Sting’s day was coming soon though.

Rating: A. See, THIS is how you book a screwjob finish. It made perfect sense for Lex to go out there, meaning that for once he wasn’t an idiot. They had the crowd into this and when you can do that during a forty minute match, that’s usually a great sign. It was an excellent match and the ending is about as perfect as it could have been. Luger would get a rematch the next month in a cage and then it was Sting’s turn.

The Steiners come out for the save. Good thing they couldn’t be out 40 seconds earlier to let Lex get the title isn’t it?

Overall Rating: B-. Still not a classic but it was a better show than Halloween Havoc for sure. The two later tag matches weren’t anything of note and you can always find a good Express vs. Express match. Still though, this was a good show overall and there really isn’t anything all that terrible on it. I’d highly recommend the clipped version or one with a fast forward button at the ready.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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

Clash of the Champions 11: Coastal Crush
Date: June 13, 1990
Location: McAlister Field House, Charleston, South, Carolina
Attendance: 4,100
Commentators: Jim Ross, Bob Caudle

This is right before the Great American Bash which is where Sting grabbed thr brass ring and got his first world title. The main event is Junkyard Dog vs. Flair and I have no idea why. Anyway, this is mainly a nothing show, but we also get some Steiners vs. Doom awesomeness so I can’t complain there. Let’s get to it.

The Southern Boys say they’re ready for the Freebirds.

The Birds respond by singing their own theme music.

Southern Boys vs. Freebirds

This is the Southern Boys’ (Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers) national debut. The Birds jump them which doesn’t work out all that well for them. Smothers and Garvin officially start us off. Smothers gets beaten down in the corner but breaks through and draws the Birds in for Steve to hit a top rope cross body to take them both out. Things settle down a bit and Garvin takes over on Armstrong.

Back to Hayes who works over the arm. This is a pretty basic match so far but nothing has been all that bad. Elbow gets two for Hayes and it’s back to the arm. The arena they’re in is on the campus on the Citadel whose coach won some award the day of this show so it’s nice timing. In other words, there’s not much to talk about here so I’m repeating what JR says. Armstrong finally breaks through to make a tag to Smothers and he cleans house. Everything breaks down and Garvin covers Smothers but Steve comes off the top with a flying headbutt and puts Tracy on top for the big upset.

Rating: C+. Great example here of what you do to start a show. They had a fast paced match with a hot ending and that’s all you need to do to start a show. I enjoyed it, even though there wasn’t much to it. That being said, at times that’s all you need to do and it was a very fine opener.

Tommy Rich vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

Bigelow looks strange sleeveless. Rich hammers away to start but runs into the size and power game. Tommy, who used to be world champion while Bigelow never war, works on the arm and gets a rollup for one. Bam Bam just goes off, tossing Rich all over the place and then choking past five for the DQ. Bigelow wasn’t in WCW long if I remember right.

Rating: D-. This was pretty much nothing but a way for Bigelow to look dominant. I don’t remember him in 1990 at all and I know he wasn’t on most of the PPVs later in the year at all. I’ve checked and this and Capital Combat were the only two major shows he was on all year. It was an NWA/Japan thing so he went to Japan for good for a few years until he went back to the WWF in late 92.

A man is coming. His name is Vader. He’ll debut at the Bash.

This guy will be as well: El Gigante. He has an interview with Gary Michael Capetta of all people. It’s in Spanish because Gigante can’t speak much English. I speak enough Spanish to understand it but thankfully they translate it.

Samoan Swat Team vs. Mike Rotunda/Z-Man

Rotunda is Captain Mike here which is post Varsity Club for him. The Swat Team is Fatu and Samoan Savage, who is better known as Tama from the Islanders. Rotunda vs. Fatu gets us going and the Samoan is knocked to the floor. Off to Z-Man who dropkicks Fatu to the floor again. Back to Rotundo who gets a cross body for two. The Samoans cheat to take over. Oddly enough they don’t have a manager which is rare for the wild savages.

Rotunda gets caught and beaten down. By the way, changing the last letter of his name is intentional. You’ll hear it as either depending on what year it is. Nerve hold goes on and Bob Caudle says it’s like hitting a mule in the head with a 2×4. Can someone call PETA? Rotundo gets beaten down on the floor but comes back with a double clothesline to take over. Z-Man comes in and misses most of the kicks that are sold anyway. Savage hits a Vader Bomb but the faces switch (WHAT?) and Rotunda steals a small package win.

Rating: D+. I’m in awe over that ending. One: Rotunda has shorter hair. Two: He’s in black, Z-Man was in white. Three: They don’t look alike. Four: FATU LOOKED STRAIGHT AT HIM FOR THREE SECONDS. The match was ok other than that though, and it was fine for the spot it had on here which was just a five and a half minute filler.

Video on Mean Mark.

Mean Mark vs. Brian Pillman

For those of you unfamiliar with Mark, I’ll save his reveal to the end of the match. Mark has Dangerously with him and jumps Pillman to start. He’s a big monster and that’s about the extent of his character. Oh and he’s mean. Pillman tries to use speed but Mark just kicks him down like he’s nothing. Crucifix doesn’t work at all and Mark stomps away. Off to a chinlock and Mark is so new he can’t even do that right. An elbow in the corner misses but Brian can’t get anything going. Mark knocks him to the apron but he skins the cat and hits a missile dropkick. And then they botch the ending off an Irish whip so Mark hot shots him for the pin.

Rating: D. Boring match here but it set up Mark for his US Title shot at the Bash. His finisher was the Heart Punch which is exactly what it sounds like. Mark would only appear like 5 times in the NWA before his final appearance at the Bash. He would be in the WWF in November as an unhurtable monster called Kane. That was just his first name. His occupation was an undertaker. He soon dropped the first name and just went by his job title.

US Tag Titles: Rock N Roll Express vs. Midnight Express

The Midnights have the belts. That Midnight song is just AWESOME. Eaton vs. Gibson to get us started. These two teams probably wrestled about a thousand times so they’ll have a decent match just by muscle memory. The problem here is that they’re getting old which makes that a little bit harder. They spend a few minutes working on getting to a lockup. Off to Lane who does a little better with his kicks.

Gibson kicks him in the head to knock him back down. Off to Morton and my goodness the hair gel bills in this match could bankrupt a small country. These two are called the cream of the crop by JR and I can’t say I agree. They’re moving fast here but somehow it’s still in first gear. Nothing here is anything interesting at all. Morton finally gets a rana to speed things up but the Midnights have a meeting instead of keeping things going.

Off to Eaton but Morton escapes the corner again and grabs the arm again. The Midnights can’t get anything going here. Morton tries another armdrag but Bobby punches him down to finally give the Midnights the advantage. Morton counters a superplex in mid-air but Lane breaks up a rollup. Everything breaks down and the challengers hit stereo rollups for stereo twos.

Things slow down again and Eaton hits a suplex to Morton before bringing Lane back in. Off to Eaton quickly but he misses a charge in the corner and Gibson comes in for probably the last tag of the match for his team. Morton and Eaton go to the floor as Gibson goes after the legs. Off to a sleeper instead but Bobby breaks it up which gets two for Eaton. Everything breaks down again and the double dropkick takes Eaton down. Lane breaks the cover up….and that’s a DQ. Seriously?

Rating: C. This was one of the weakest Express Collisions I’ve seen in a very long time. Granted it probably had a lot to do with them getting later into their mainstream careers. Not much to see here but the Midnights would lose the titles soon and they would be retired before too long, which was probably the right idea.

Doug Furnas vs. Barry Windham

Furnas is billed as the World’s Strongest Man. Windham is a Horseman. Furnas runs Barry down and JR is talking about football. Sunset flip gets two for Doug and Barry bails. Furnas kind of botches a backflip off the top and doesn’t quite get Barry up for a gorilla press. Clothesline gets two. Barry gets his knee up and takes Doug’s head off with a clothesline. JR can’t stop praising Furnas to get on to the match. Powerslam gets two for Furnas. They hit the ropes for a bit and Barry grabs a belly to back and puts his feet on the ropes for the pin.

Rating: C-. Decent power match here but nothing too great. Furnas went to Japan soon after this so he didn’t mean all that much. Windham was a Horseman for a few more years but mainly did tag team stuff. He has a really forgettable career around this time actually. Not much here but it was ok.

Sid (after being told to go by the director) says he’ll take out Luger.

Lex Luger vs. Sid Vicious

Sid jumps him to start and but Lex hits a clothesline and pins him in like 20 seconds.

World Tag Titles: Steiner Brothers vs. Doom

The Steiners had been unstoppable but Doom had shocked the world and won the titles at a PPV called Capital Combat. Doom has the old Ron Simmons’ music which is still awesome. The masks are gone too. Ron vs. Scott gets us going. Scott busts out something I’ve never seen before: a floatover fallaway slam. It isn’t really falling away either as he doesn’t let go. Both Doomers take one and the ring is cleared.

A Steiner Line to the back of the head puts Simmons down and it’s off to Reed. Scott throws him around too. I can easily see why they were thinking he was the heir apparent to the world title here. You know, except for the whole Sting guy. Rick comes in now but Nick Patrick gets in the way and Ron gets in a right hand. Rick is like cool man and hits a belly to belly to send Ron flying.

Now it’s Rick’s turn to beat up Doom on his own. Reed FINALLY goes to the eyes to take over. They go back to the Doom corner and Rick fights back out of it with ease. On the floor Doom gets it together and takes Rick down via a clothesline. Simmons beats on Rick back inside and you can really tell that Doom isn’t that experienced yet. While Scott is with the referee Rick gets tossed to the floor. Reed comes in and drops a middle rope elbow for two.

Reed misses a running knee into the corner and Rick hits a double axe off the middle rope. Back to Scott and things speed way up again. Everything breaks down and Teddy throws in a foreign object. Scott takes Simmons down with a superplex but Reed clocks him with the object. Rick covers Simmons at the same time and it’s a double pin, but Scott was legal so Doom wins it.

Rating: C. These two could have good matches every time they went out there and this worked well enough. Doom would hold the titles longer than any team in the history of WCW, now losing them until February of the next year to the Freebirds who lost them to the Steiners before they won them from Doom. And yes that’s accurate.

JYD says he’ll win.

Paul Orndorff says he’ll beat Anderson.

Paul Orndorff vs. Arn Anderson

I don’t remember Orndorff around this time at all. He’s a face and Anderson is by definition a Horseman. Anderson is TV Champion but this is non-title. Slow start with Paul working on a headlock. Make that a sleeper. Now it’s a figure four. You know that’s going to get a pop in the south. After the leg is slammed into the post, Anderson hooks the spinebuster to break the momentum.

Orndorff gets a sunset flip and pulls the trunks down which thankfully is on a different camera side. Off to an abdominal stretch. Arn finally gets caught grabbing the ropes and we go to a chinlock instead. Orndorff comes back with punches and things speed up a bit. It’s still not all that interesting though. Anderson gets the knees up but Orndorff reverses a small package for the pin.

Rating: D. Just a dull match here but I’ve never liked Orndoff’s stuff at all. Well his stuff with Hogan was good but his WCW stuff always bored me. I think it’s more that he had one incredible feud and that was about it for him. Boring match and Orndorff never got the title I don’t think.

The Horsemen say that they’ll win the main event tonight and Flair will keep the title. This was pretty rambling though.

NWA World Title: Junkyard Dog vs. Ric Flair

JYD gets a full jazz band intro. He takes Flair down with a right hand and is trying to keep this basic, which is probably smart for someone of his intellect. There the on all fours headbutt. A punch puts Flair on the ramp and we get a Flair Flop. Back in a few chops are no sold. A punch in the corner gets the same result. Now a knee drop is no sold. Ok we get it: he has a hard head.

Now they stand around for awhile because that’s been done a few times already in this match, so let’s do it again. Dog punches him again and there’s Flair Flop #2. Ole distracts the referee so Flair hits JYD in the head with a chair. Guess how much it’s sold. The answer would be NONE. Flair jumps into a punch and this is really quite bad. Flair hits a knee to the back…and then gets slammed off the top. He pounds away and the Horsemen run in for the DQ.

Rating: F+. This was just bad. I have no idea what the point in making JYD look so strong was but it didn’t really work at all. Flair didn’t get anything more than a few chops here and there and it made him look awful. This didn’t work at all and the champ looked like a joke. He would lose the title in a few weeks, but man at least make him look strong beforehand.

Sting and his boys clear the ring and Sting stalks Flair to the back.

After a break, Rocky King yells about the Horsemen. Thankfully someone intelligent sounding (Sting) talks quickly and says he wants Flair. Their title match hadn’t been announced yet. He suggests the Bash for the shot and says he’ll beg if he has to. The Horsemen come back and it winds up being Sting vs. Flair in the ring as everyone else is held back. Sting pounds on Flair as the credits roll.

Overall Rating: C-. Not the best show ever but I’ve seen a lot worse. The problem is that the wrestling is ok, but it’s not really interesting. You had a bunch of matches on here that ran about five minutes and that really isn’t enough to get some interest going for things. This didn’t really set up the Bash. Almost all of these people were on the PPV but their matches weren’t announced here. Not much to see but it’s nothing horrible.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002882482782

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samoan Savage vs. Steve Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mod Squad vs. Brian Pillman/Tom Zenk

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

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

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

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

Cactus Jack Manson vs. Mil Mascaras

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norman the Lunatic vs. Kevin Sullivan

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

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

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

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

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

Road Warriors vs. Skyscrapers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tag Titles: Doom vs. Steiner Brothers

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

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

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

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

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

We see Sting getting destroyed again.

The Horsemen are like yeah we’re awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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

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

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

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

Freebirds vs. Road Warriors

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

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

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

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

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

Doom vs. Eddie Gilbert/Tommy Rich

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

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

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

Midnight Express vs. Dynamic Dudes

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

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

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

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

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

Super Destroyer vs. Steve Williams

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

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

Steiner Brothers vs. Skyscrapers

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

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

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

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

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

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

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Brian Pillman

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terry Funk vs. Ric Flair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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

Halloween Havoc 1989
Date: October 28, 1989
Location: Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Attendance: 7,300
Commentators: Jim Ross, Bob Caudle

Back for three more WCW shows, this time all from the earlier days, as in 1989 and 1990. This was a good year for the NWA but this show is more about furthering/ending already existing feuds. The main event is a tag team cage match with Sting/Flair vs. Funk/Muta which should be good. Other than that there isn’t much to mention so let’s get to it.

Mike Rotunda vs. Z-Man

There’s no intro and we’re immediately at the intros. This is the full version too as it’s from WWE 24/7. There’s music playing during the match for no apparent reason. Oh good it stopped. They fight for a headlock to start and Z-Man takes over quickly. He knocks Rotunda to the floor and the stalling begins. The fans are all over Rotunda for being from Syracuse. Remember that we’re in Philly here so they’re going to be crazy.

Rotunda gets back in and is immediately dropkicked back out. This time he cheats to take over which hardly ever fails. Now it’s Z-Man being sent to the floor but he gets a sunset flip for two coming back in. Mike hits the floor again and this is getting boring quickly. Z-Man works the arm and takes him down with an armdrag into the armbar. Jericho must have studied this match.

Z-Man hooks a chinlock but Rotunda sends him out to the floor and rams him into the barricade. Rotunda stalls back in as the fans keep up the Syracuse Sucks chant. A suplex brings Z-Man back in for a delayed two. There’s an abdominal stretch which is one of Rotunda’s signature moves, as is grabbing the ropes. Now it’s a chinlock by Rotunda but it doesn’t last long. Clothesline puts Z-Man down but he comes back with a dropkick. Z-Man sends him into the corner and Rotunda comes out with Christian’s spinning cross body which is rolled through for the pin for Z-Man.

Rating: C. Not a great match or anything but it was fine for an opener. The clipped version of this is down to like four minutes so you can really get an idea of what you were getting when you bought a home video from the NWA. Z-Man would hook up with I think Brian Pillman soon after this to become US Tag Champions and would also pick up the TV Title over the next year or so. Rotunda was repackaged as a sailor or something soon after this.

Bruno Sammartino, the guest referee for the main event, says this will be something difficult and unique.

Samoan Swat Team vs. Midnight Express/Steve Williams

The Samoans are Samu, Fatu (the Headshrinkers) and Samoan Savage, more famous as Tama. It spills to the floor before much contact is made and we get a staredown like West Side Story. Now they stare at each other in the ring. Ok so it’s Lane vs. Savage to start us off. Savage is the only Samoan not in white so that helps. He gets knocked to the floor where Bobby hits him and it’s ANOTHER staredown on the floor.

Off to Bobby who works on the arm. Here’s Samu and Bobby beats up the Headshrinkers. Guess what’s next? You guessed it: a six man staredown. Samu chops Lane down and we’re actually told how the Samoans are related: they’re brothers. That’s helpful as if you’re smart enough to be able to remember that family tree, you deserve an honorary degree from the university of your choice.

Dr. Death clears the ring and we reset things a bit. JR plugs Starrcade which was awful. It was a round robin tournament instead of a traditional show and it failed completely. Doc (Tor Death) runs over the Samoans and JR talks about football. Fatu comes in and it’s Bobby to work on his arm. Lane comes in and fires off his kicks but gets kicked down by Samu who is a lot more athletic than he looks.

Back to Williams who runs over more people then continues the chain of tags with one to Eaton. The Samoans come in and ram their heads into Eaton as this match is getting very long. They take him to the floor and crotch Bobby on the railing. Back in a sunset flip gets two for Bobby. Savage hooks a nerve hold and things slow down a lot. The Samoan manager, Oliver Humperdink, has some FREAKY eyes.

Bobby tries to ram some Samoan heads together and they’re like boy please. A headbutt puts Eaton down again as he’s in big trouble. Lane comes in without a tag which just makes more trouble for Eaton. Fatu hits a sideslam and it’s the nerve hold again. Eaton escapes and literally falls into the corner for the hot tag to Williams. Williams throws the Samoans around like Giant throws around cruiserweights. Everything breaks down and Lane puts I think Samu down with a superkick. Cornette gets up on the apron and Lane is rammed into him which allows Savage to steal the pin.

Rating: C+. It’s ok but did this really need 18 minutes? The Samoans were a pretty awful team at this point but as faces in the WWF they got way better. The Midnights would turn in about a month as they ended their annoying feud with the Dynamic Dudes and annoyed the Steiners for a few more months as well as winning the US Tag Titles.

Gary Hart says Terry Funk and Muta will be ready. They’re the J-Tex Corporation and whoever J is will be there tonight.

Tommy Rich vs. Cuban Assassin

Rich is allegedly on the comeback trail. JR basically says he’s nothing which makes me wonder why I’d want to watch this. Nothing to talk about so I check my e-mail to kill some time. Rich hooks the arm and the fans chant boring. Assassin comes back with jobber offense but misses an elbow so it’s back to the arm. We talk about how the cage tonight is electrified which is far more interesting than what’s going on in the ring.

Rich headbutts him which does nothing at all so Assassin high knees him to the floor where he stomps on the head. This is going nowhere. Remember that this is in Philadelphia so imagine how the fans are reacting here. Assassin goes up and gets crotched. Rich FINALLY ends this after about 8 hours with a Thesz Press.

Rating: F. I’m often asked what the worst kind of shows to watch are and this is a fine example of it: the boring kind. There was no reason for this match to exist, NO ONE was interested in it, and they weren’t even trying to do anything interesting. They were laying around for most of the 9 minutes or so that this was on and using as basic of an offense as possible. There’s no need for this and it cripples anything good the show had going for it.

The Freebirds say they’re great and that’s about it.

Tag Titles: Fabulous Freebirds vs. Dynamic Dudes

The Dudes are Johnny Ace (yes, THAT Johnny Ace) and Shane Douglas on skateboards. The Birds are champs but for some reason Hayes doesn’t have his belt with him. The Dudes have Cornette with them. This is Philadelphia, so of course the fans are confusing. The Dudes are the faces but the fans hate them while the Birds are the heels but worshiped for their showmanship.

It’s a long feeling out process to start with even more stalling as Hayes starts with Douglas. A bad neckbreaker puts Hayes down and Shane gets booed out of the building. Double tag brings in Johnny to face Garvin. Ace is huge so he’s kind of awkward at the fast paced style. Garvin takes over with an armbar and it’s off to Hayes vs. Shane again. The Dudes work over Hayes’ arm before clearing the ring via a double dropkick (not really as Ace’s missed by about 8 inches) but they were trying at least.

The Birds are cheered even more as Ace takes Hayes down at will. The fans cheer for the DDT, which is the finisher of both Birds. Ace sends Garvin to the floor again and the match comes to another halt. Ace tries a rollup but gets kicked off into a BIG right hand by Hayes with an even louder pop. Garvin kicks/knees Ace in the head to the floor and the fans erupt again. This is just strange.

Out on the floor Hayes clocks Ace and the Birds are in total control. Ace gets in some right hands to kill the crowd. Hayes hits a running clothesline in the corner and starts playing face for the crowd. The DDT doesn’t work and there’s the tag to Shane. A double knee sends Hayes out and the Dudes set for their finisher, which is a double team slingshot belly to back suplex. Hayes hooks the foot though so Garvin can fall on Ace for the pin.

Rating: D. You know how Ace is always made fun of for his in ring career? There’s a reason for that: he simply isn’t that good. I haven’t seen much of his Japanese stuff so I can’t comment on it, but if it’s at the same level as his American stuff, there’s nothing to see in it. The crowd here was really strange as Shane Douglas isn’t someone you often hear booed in Philly, but he certainly was here. Bad match too.

The Steiners say they don’t need strategy against the new team of Doom. Rick is still crazy at this point.

Steiner Brothers vs. Doom

Doom is still in masks here and the Steiners throw them to the floor very quickly. Woman brought in Doom to fight the Steiners because she turned all evil and devilish. Scott clotheslines I think Simmons down and drops a knee for two. Doom bails to the floor again as the Steiners keep control. Off to Rick who takes Simmons (I’m guessing on these guys by the way) with a chinlock. Ross summarizes Rick in one statement. Rick has a new bulldog tattoo on his arm. JR: “Why didn’t you get a wolverine tattoo Rick?” Rick: “Because I wanted a dog.”

Scott comes in with a middle rope clothesline for two. This has been totally one sided so far. Simmons gets in what we would call a Stunner and it’s off to Reed. Back to Rick who gets beaten down for a few seconds but a knee lift is enough to bring in Scott. A quick gordbuster gets two for Scott and it’s off to Simmons again. This is Doom’s debut by the way. Simmons charges at him so Scott snaps behind him and kills Simmons with a German that would make Kurt Angle jealous.

Reed pops Scott in the head to slow him down and a double ax puts Scott down. Doom double teams a lot with stuff like a double elbow. Off to a chinlock by let’s say Simmons. Rick has finally had enough and tries to come in but that just lets Doom throw Scott out. Back in a sunset flip gets two for the Big Bad Booty Daddy. Neckbreaker gets two for Reed and he’s getting frustrated.

Simmons comes back in with a powerslam for two. Scott’s beating continues and a spike piledriver gets two so it’s back to the chinlock by let’s say Reed. Scott fights up and gets an elbow to bring in Rick. House is cleared and Scott is back up almost immediately with a Frankensteiner to I think Simmons. Woman gets up on the apron and in the distraction, she loads up Reed’s mask with something. A headbutt with that is enough for the pin on Rick and the huge upset.

Rating: D+. A boring match, but Doom wasn’t anything good yet. They would get MUCH better over the next few months and would go on to beat the Steiners for the world tag team titles, which would go on to be the longest reign in the history of the titles. There’s your trivia for the day. Bad match though, which is an odd result when you look at it on paper.

Luger says this is a big match and he’ll win.

US Title: Lex Luger vs. Brian Pillman

This is in the middle of Luger’s huge title reign while Pillman is the young fireball that no one can keep up with. They go to the corner to start and Lex looks irritated. Lex tries to keep things slow and throws Pillman to the floor. Brian comes back in with a slingshot clothesline and knocks Luger to the floor with a dropkick. Baseball slide takes Luger down and as they come back in, Air Pillman is teased but Lex heads to the floor.

Lex gets in some kicks to take over but Pillman comes off the top with a spinning cross body. Off to the arm and Pillman has a small advantage. Lex tries to power out of it but Brian takes him right back down with the armdrag. Luger is clearly getting frustrated here so he comes back with more power striking. Crucifix gets two for Pillman and it’s back to the arm. The idea of it isn’t to get a submission but rather to frustrate the champion which is working here.

Brian goes up but misses his splash attempt and Lex takes over again. He’s all fired up and yells at the fans who seem to like him as much as Pillman. A clothesline to the back of the head puts Pillman down and Lex is all fired up. Suplex gets two and Brian is thrown to the floor. Luger brags too much and walks into a sunset flip for two. A big clothesline puts Lex over the top and out to the floor as Brian makes his comeback.

There are ten punches in the corner and an atomic drop to boot. A top rope sunset flip gets two. Pillman hits a jumping back elbow and Luger is in trouble. Air Pillman, the springboard clothesline gets two as Luger got knocked into the ropes. All Pillman at the moment but he misses a missile dropkick and both guys are down. Pillman tries to speed things up but walks into a Hot Shot for the pin and Luger retains.

Rating: B. Luger wasn’t the guy you wanted running a match, but if you give him the right guy to work with such as Pillman here, look out because you’re likely to get a great match. Pillman’s flurry at the end was great but he went too fast and tried to do too much and the more experienced champion caught him. That’s a nice little story and it worked well here, giving you a great match.

The Road Warriors say they like being the underdogs. When were the Road Warriors EVER underdogs? They say they’ll tear down the Skyscrapers tonight.

Road Warriors vs. Skyscrapers

The Skyscrapers are Sid Vicious and Dan Spivey. They’re the Brothers of Destruction of their day and literally tower over the Road Warriors. The Warriors quickly clear the ring and it’s Animal vs. Spivey at the moment. The Skyscrapers are the favorites here because they’re undefeated. I’m not sure I’d buy that but whatever. Off to Hawk and they collide to no advantage.

Hawk ducks a Sid clothesline and hits one of his own which knocks Sid to his knees, shocking the taller one. Sid misses a shoulder block and Hawk tags in Animal. Expect a lot of the words “And no one moves”, because selling isn’t much of an option here. Animal powerslams Sid and he rolls to the floor. Hawk and Sid have a test of strength and Hawk goes down but channels his inner Hulk to fight up.

Hawk busts out a freaking monkey flip and a clothesline which doesn’t take Sid down. Off to Animal vs. Spivey and Animal knocks him around a bit. Spivey knocks him into the corner and it’s off to Sid vs. Hawk. Hawk takes him to the mat but Sid NIPS UP and clotheslines Hawk (in the ribs) to the mat again. Sid hits what we would call the Eye of the Storm for two.

Back to Spivey and the move of the match, the clothesline, takes him down again. Spivey shrugs it off and hits a suplex for two. The guys are all gassed now and it’s really obvious. Hawk reverses a suplex into one of his own but still can’t make the tag. We get the unseen tag to Animal and the beating on Hawk continues. Bird Boy gets a boot and a clothesline (of course) to bring in Animal and everything breaks down. Teddy brings in the metal key for Spivey to hit Animal for the DQ. The key is some thing that was related to Norman the Lunatic but wasn’t quite ever explained I don’t think.

Rating: D+. The match sucked but the idea here was that it was fun. This was a big clash of the titans and that’s all it needed to be. They pounded on each other and barely sold a thing, but do you really need to? Sometimes just a battle of the titans is all you need and that’s what you got here. Bad match, but very fun. Then again I’m an old LOD fan so this is a sweet spot for me.

The LOD clears the ring post match.

Ole Anderson says he’ll never throw in the towel, which is the only way to lose the main event. Flair and Sting say just about what you would expect them to say.

Sting/Ric Flair vs. Great Muta/Terry Funk

This is the Thunderdome Cage Match. It’s an electrified cage and Bruno Sammartino is refereeing. You know he gets a big pop in the northeast. This is a combination of two feuds: Sting vs. Muta and Flair vs. Funk. The latter was the top feud of the summer with the former just a step behind. When it’s likely that Sting is the worst wrestler in a match, you know you’ve got some talent in the ring. You win by having your opponent’s team throwing in a towel and it’s Ole Anderson and Gary Hart as the towel bearers.

This isn’t a regular cage but rather a Cell type one. There’s no roof but it slants in and that’s the electrified part so no one is getting in or out. Funk tries to escape because he’s a little nuts. Something catches on fire so Muta spits Green Mist to put it out. Ok so it’s Flair vs. Funk to get us going. Flair chops away and Funk is in trouble early. Everyone comes in and Muta goes after Bruno which doesn’t work at all.

Flair throws Funk to the floor which isn’t a DQ because it’s a cage of course. Off to Sting who takes it to the space between the ring and the cage. Back to the Flair who slams Funk down and rolls forward, slapping Muta in the process. Awesome. Sting comes in with a perfect dropkick and the announcers blast Ultimate Warrior (Sting’s old partner). Off to Muta who is thrown back into Funk with ease. Muta is undefeated and I think TV Champion at this point. JR’s next sentence: “Suplex by Sting on the undefeated television champion of the world.” Thanks JR.

Sting and Flair have dominated so far. Everything breaks down and they head out to the floor. Muta and Sting wind up in the ring with the Great One taking over for the first time. Funk stomps on Sting outside and I think the tagging part is gone. Muta and Funk double team Sting in the ring with a bunch of elbow drops but Flair comes back in for the save. Muta misses a high kick and Sting bulldogs him down.

Funk takes one as well and Flair is standing on the apron again. He comes in to break up a double team though and climbs the cage with Funk. Sting suplexes Muta and now everyone but Funk is climbing. Muta goes up high enough that his feet are above the top rope. He might have gotten electrocuted also. Flair chops Funk so hard that Funk starts climbing the cage.

Flair chases Funk and in a SCARY spot, Funk is hanging from the top of the cage while Flair chops him. Funk’s knee is caught in the cage as Sting slams Muta. Everyone but Funk is back in the ring now and Muta is tossed out. Muta goes under the ring as Funk climbs up again. Sting goes after him as Flair puts the Figure Four on Muta. Is there any need for Bruno in this match?

For no apparent reason, Flair lets the hold go. There was no Funk or anything anywhere near him and he just let it go. Muta gets a HARD kick to Flair as Sting swings on a rope like Tarzan but crotches himself in the process. Muta hooks a modified Indian Deathlock on Flair and hooks a bridging neck crank at the same time. Funk tied Sting to the cage and goes in to spike piledrive Flair.

Sting finally gets loose, climbs even high and DIVES onto Funk. He would have been three feet above the top rope for that. Muta climbs up and Funk has a bad leg. You can feel Flair smiling from here. There’s the knee crusher as Sting goes after Muta. Muta goes for the moonsault but Sting crotches him. Figure Four to Funk and Sting splashes him from the top. There’s a second splash and Bruno clocks Muta. Ole punches Hart which sends the towel flying and that’s good enough for Bruno to call for the bell.

Rating: B. It’s good but it’s definitely not a classic. With Muta and Funk climbing the cage for absolutely no apparent reason and having no point for Bruno being in there, it’s kind of a puzzling match. It’s not bad but at the end of the day, there’s not much of a point to a lot of this. Fun match and it gets awesome at times, but it’s not something worth going out of your way to see.

JR and Caudle wrap it up.

Overall Rating: C. That’s exactly what you call this show: average. It’s not a bad show but there’s absolutely nothing on it worth seeing. Pillman and Luger have a good match but they would both have better ones. 1989 was a good year, but it ran out of steam after a great Clash in September. This and the horrible Starrcade put a bad ending on probably the best year the NWA ever had from an in ring perspective. Nothing to see here, but it’s certainly not a bad show.

Remember to like me on Facebook at:

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