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Episode 56: Bash at the Beach 1994
32 Plays2 years ago
WCW's beach-themed show gets a new title as the company itself enters a new era with the arrival of Hulkamania at Bash at the Beach 1994! It's Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair in a match that's sold as champion vs. champion even though it, well, isn't. Meanwhile, Vader and the Boss - I mean, Guardian Angel - are back at it in a rematch of one of Al's favorites, Dustin Rhodes teams with the very trustworthy Arn Anderson, Ricky Steamboat faces a wonderfully insufferable Steve Austin, and Michael Buffer makes it through his over-the-top match intro for the main even through an effort of sheer will. For all this, plus a couple wooden birds WCW left out in the sun too long, let's go to the ring!
Music by Michael Gary Brewer at https://www.instantmusicnow.com/
Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/letsgo2thering , or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LetsGo2theRing/
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Transcript
Hulk Hogan's Impact and WCW Beginnings
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, did I lose you? No, I'm here. Oh, okay. Sorry. I was just getting by. It was just such a sudden cut of all stuff. Oh, sorry. No, yeah. Okay. I'm just, I'm a little spooked because the last time we did a 1994 show that really, really heavily featured Hulk Hogan with Starrcade 1994. And that was the one where we lost power three times. Oh yeah, I remember that. So hopefully that doesn't repeat itself tonight. The first are good.
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:53
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Let's Go to the Ring, where we take a look at the good old days, and not so good old days, of World Championship Wrestling, series by series. I'm your host, Bob Moore, and charging down the entrance ramp and leaping over the ropes to join me is Alec Pridgen. It's good to know where your priorities lie, Al. Yeah, of course.
00:01:23
Speaker
Well, at least there wasn't a plate glass for you to go flying through this time. Like, I thought it was more than one episode because I screwed up on the intros. I've had enough issue with glass in my real life, so I'd rather avoid that if possible. It's become a little bit too real now, the humor's gone. I really do feel for poor Marty and Eddie after my own personal experiences. Yeah. Even if mine was nothing like that. Well, how's it going otherwise tonight, Al? Going good, how about you?
00:01:50
Speaker
Ah, doing alright. It's interesting to be getting into the Hogan era now and actually getting into it by literally the start of it. Yeah, yeah. We were discussing this offline that this series is going to be very fascinating because it actually has the start, the major shift, and the end of Hogan's run in WSW all in one series, which is just... I don't think you could have actually planned that. No, no. That's just one of those really interesting coincidences that happens in life.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
Beach Blast 1994 and Hogan's WCW Debut
00:02:22
Speaker
So yes, tonight we are taking a look at Beach Blast 1994, Hulk's WCW debut. Sadly, this is not the WCW debut of Marvel's Jade Giant, but instead former WWF stalwart, Hulk Hogan. Admittedly, I would not have liked Ric Flair's chances of surviving a match against an angry Bruce Banner, so that's probably for the best.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, Hulk Hogan's more of an orange giant, I guess, at this point. Yeah, yeah. Copper tone sort of color, yeah. Not quite the Red Hulk, but on his way to getting there, he has the mustache. That's true, he does, yeah. It's like it's when you see the Hulk mid-transformation. True. Yeah, he's stuck between normal human and Red Hulk. That's what he's at.
00:03:06
Speaker
Well, we talked about this quite a while ago on our Starrcade 1994 episode, but since it's been over 40 episodes since then, which still boggles my mind, maybe we ought to cover it again.
Hogan's Transition from WWF to WCW
00:03:17
Speaker
As the subtitle notes, this is the WSW debut of one Hulk Hogan. After a very successful run in the WWF that began in 1983, Hogan dropped the WWF title to Yokozuna at King of the Ring 1993, courtesy of an exploding camera, and parted ways with the WWF.
00:03:35
Speaker
He had some matches in New Japan Pro Wrestling, continuing a program with the Great Buddha that he'd actually begun while he was WWF Champion. But by 1994, Hogan was filming Thunder in Paradise, a show that boldly asked, what if we basically did Knight Rider, but the car was a boat and the Hoff was the Hogan? I don't know if that's a lateral move or an upgrade in most regards.
00:03:58
Speaker
We definitely need to do an episode or two of that sometime. Yes. The show was filmed at MGM Studios, just like WCW during this period. So, knowing a golden opportunity when they saw one, Eric Bischoff and Rick Flair, who Bischoff credits as instrumental to making the deal, got in touch with Hogan and talked him into signing up with WCW. Per Eric, on his show, 83 Weeks, at the start of his tenure as executive producer, WCW had been damaged by the Watts racial comments controversy,
00:04:28
Speaker
and it had been a money loser for its entire run with Turner. So he'd been told by WSW president Bill Shaw that they had to find a way to turn a profit, or Turner would have no choice but to close WCW. Bischoff says he knew not all wrestling fans would even want to see Hogan in WCW, but his goal with Hogan was actually mostly about the business side. If they proved that they could attract a known star like Hogan, they could get more interest from sponsors, licensing, advertising, and the like. Okay.
00:04:56
Speaker
He says they hoped that they could at least break even on the cost of Hogan's contract or pay-per-views, but if they got even close to that and approved the sponsorships and advertising situations for the company, they'd be happy.
Bash at the Beach 1994: Attendance and Pay-Per-View Success
00:05:08
Speaker
So, did Hogan make a difference? Bash of the Beach 1994 was held on July 17th, 1994 at the Orlando Arena in Orlando, Florida. Later, the Amway Arena and now nothing as it was torn down in 2012.
00:05:26
Speaker
in front of 14,000 fans, 9,111 paid. That's recorded as a sellout. Now the arena is recorded as holding around 18,000 fans for pro wrestling, but I'm not certain when in its existence that figure is from. And the figures for basketball change a lot, from about 15,000 in 1989 to over 17,000 in 2008. In 1994, the basketball attendance is shown as 15,291.
00:05:53
Speaker
So I really doubt that we get significantly more than that for wrestling at the time. So long story short, I buy that this was at least close to a sellout. Yeah, there's shots early on, and they did the crowd reveals that it doesn't look great, but at the same time, it is early in the show, so it's possible people were still sort of filing in. Yeah, this is a company that once famously told everyone the wrong start time for a show. Oh, yeah. What was it, Bunkhouse Stampede, I think? That's the way, Dusty Spolly. Known internally, yes.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, so I think like as you get shots later in the show, it looks pretty darn full. So aside from like occasional people stepping off to take bathroom breaks or the like, so it feels pretty legit. Yeah. Bash of the Beats 1994 earned 230,000 pay-per-view buys, which is more than 100,000 more than any of the prior shows in 1994 or all of 1993. Oh, wow.
00:06:48
Speaker
In fact, WSW has only gotten 200,000 buys or greater four times at this point, all of them back in 1989 or 1990. That's Halloween Havoc 1989 at 215,000, Wrestle War 1990 at 210,000, Great American Bash 1990 at 235,000, and Halloween Havoc 1990 at 200,000. So at least from that perspective, it certainly looks like signing Hogan was actually a good business decision.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah. Hard to argue with that. Hard to argue with numbers. Yeah.
Pre-Show Matches and Build-Up
00:07:21
Speaker
Prior to the pay-per-view, there were a couple dark matches. We had Molly McShane with Ron Diaz beating the Sassy Boys, Fez Watley, and Fast Eddie with Ron Bennington in a handicap match where McShane was the only actual wrestler, the others being comedians or radio personalities. And then we had Brian and Brad Armstrong beating Steve Karen and Bobby Eaton in a tag team match.
00:07:46
Speaker
We'll get to see clips of one of those matches on the pay-per-view, not the one I would prefer, mind you. Yeah. Uh, Fez Watley, that has to be a reference to Pez Watley, right? That would be an amazing coincidence if it wasn't, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, Hogan made a difference in the numbers, but did it lead to a good quality show?
Ric Flair vs. Hulk Hogan: The Epic Clash
00:08:06
Speaker
To find out, let's go to the ring.
00:08:11
Speaker
Since the beginning of time, people have dreamt of the unfathomable. The dreamers have turned into champions and the champions to immortals. Tonight, WCW brings you the unimaginable.
00:08:30
Speaker
two champions, 12-time WCW champion Rick Flair, and five-time champion Hulk Hogan. When these two worlds collide, a new universe will emerge with only one ruler, one champion. Live from Orlando, Florida, the match of the century as WCW presents
00:09:01
Speaker
We've heard that Match of the Century thing another time. It was Hogan and Piper, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which they then, as I recall, later redubbed Match of the Millennium. Yes. Which would have been great for the Millennium Final show they did. Oh, yeah. A few years later.
00:09:18
Speaker
A massively over-the-top opening video package talks about dreams of the unfathomable. Building up the match between 12-time WSW champion Ric Flair and 5-time organization-emitted champion Hulk Hogan. Interestingly, they kind of treat this like the buildup to a title versus title match, talking about how there's going to be one champion like there wasn't just one champion already. But Hogan had already lost the WWF title when he left. Guess he's just iconic enough of a WWF champ that you kind of just pretend that he's still champ?
00:09:49
Speaker
I guess so, yeah. As we'll cover the other show, there's some very strange confusion about how much time has passed between matches and everything, so yeah. Yes, definitely.
Hogan's Promo Style and Set Design
00:10:00
Speaker
But yeah, let's face it, if he'd gone back, Vince probably would have just handed him the belt again anyway, so might as well be WWF champ. True enough. I will admit, I kind of love this video package. All it needs to be an actual Hogan promo itself is him saying brother and some kind of comment about doing dog battles or causing an earthquake of the body slam.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. It closes up with the wonderful Flexing Wave logo. I adore this series logo. Yeah, it's like the right level of campy and serious. Exactly, exactly. The set tonight is another quite nice beach design complete with sand castles and quite faded wooden birds. A cockatoo and a parrot.
00:10:41
Speaker
Did somebody leave those out in the sun too long? Yeah, because the parrot is like a dull orange color. Yeah, it's really weird.
Show Opening and Celebrity Appearances
00:10:48
Speaker
She'd be like a bright red, you would think normally. Yeah, it looks like those were not treated very well. They just had them backstage in Turner storage or something. And we're like, oh, those look vaguely beachy. I would have chosen seagulls rather than a cockatoo and a parrot, but whatever.
00:11:04
Speaker
Well, Bob, they spent so much money getting Hogan that they really couldn't afford decorations. They just went down to Pier 1 and got some. What do you guys got in the back? You're going to throw out anyways. Host Tony Schiavone welcomes us to the show alongside Mean Jean Okerlund and Bobby the Brain Hienan. It's always good to see Hienan.
00:11:23
Speaker
Gene claims that the fans are hanging from the rafters, but that Hienan isn't happy. Hienan says he will be happy once Flair beats Hogan and the fans are chanting Loser at Hogan. Tony notes that Shaq is here too, which gives a massive cheer from the crowd. Hienan pretends not to know who Shaq is. Tony throws to Darren Norwood, who does a respectable, if quite country, version of the national anthem, and appears to have taken fashion inspiration from Brad Armstrong's America jacket.
00:11:52
Speaker
He definitely win all of the night if this is a different podcast. Yes, yes, very much so. During this, you can catch sight of Hogan's co-stars from Thunder in Paradise, seated in the front row of the crowd. I know it's in this part. We can definitely see Linda, and I think it's the two kids there as well. Yeah, I think so. At least Nick Hogan gets highlighted at some point during the night.
00:12:13
Speaker
Now the dark haired girl in the front row is from Thunder in Paradise. Correct, yes. Yeah, I remember you and I started watching this show and it starts getting over the crowd and both of us are like, man, that girl in the front row looks really familiar. Where did we know her from? And then both of us were like, oh, duh, Thunder in Paradise, right? Yeah. I don't want to watch both those dumb movies they did, so I shouldn't recognize her right away.
Sting's Injury and Match Changes
00:12:35
Speaker
A bit oddly, we go from the national anthem right back to the host discussing the show, as Tony notes that originally Sting was scheduled for a match for the TV title, but he was injured by sensuous Sherry. Heaton sarcastically says, that's a shame, as we get a video of Sherry, unconvincingly dressed as a man, raking Sting's eyes with her nails before being run off by Hulk Hogan, who was sitting right by the ring and really could have gotten up there to stop that. But I guess he figured Sting would see the obvious attack coming a mile away, never having worked with dear trusting Sting before. No, no.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. He takes a while to really intervene and help, but then he really milks his intervening. This is true. He does like the super delayed atomic drop where he like holds her up there for like, feels like 10, 15 seconds and then drops her on his knee. Admittedly, she weighs probably like 100 pounds less than anyone else he's ever done that on. Oh yeah, yeah. So probably pretty easy. No, for sure, yeah.
00:13:28
Speaker
That's got to be a little bit hard when you're used to, you know, wrestling much beefier dudes and have to do a move like that where you do a quick lift on a much lighter person. OK, remember, don't throw her into the stratosphere. Right. Right. Yeah. I have to say, Sherry's fake mustache and goatee in this bit that she's wearing look very green arrow. Oh, yeah. Either that or like a French painter.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, I get a real DB Cooper vibe from her as well. That mysterious face. Possibly importantly, Flair took the opportunity to boot Hogan in the knee a bunch of times in that clip as well until Mr. T made the save. Gene claims that Sting has a scratched cornea and Hienan says we should keep an eye out for him. Classy Hienan, as always.
00:14:20
Speaker
I was trying to find anything about why Sting's not on the show. Obviously, the kayfabe reason is the iron g, but why randomly pull Sting literally the day before the show? It's very odd. Imagine, because he works a match with Flair before the injury angle, so it's not like... If you feel like he was actually injured, like he had a injury, they would have done a thing where he's scheduled to fight Flair and he's attacked on the ramp or something.
00:14:45
Speaker
Okay. But working like a full like 10, 15 minute match while injured would be really, really weird thing to do just to write them off for the fake eye injury. So I don't know. I've not heard anything on that. Yeah, either. I didn't find any comment on exactly what was going on there. Gene shills the hotline run by Chris Cruz and Mike Tenay at the moment, as no one has yet realized that Mike Tenay can do commentary. Yeah. He's not ironed quite yet. Yes. He's telephone Mike Tenay. Yes. 1-900-909-9900.
00:15:15
Speaker
Heenan jokes that Shaq's more than a foot shorter with his shoes off, as Tony throws to our first match. Our first match is Johnny B. Bad versus Lord Steven Regal with Sir William for Regal's WSW World Television Championship. The referee for this one is a short-haired, mustached Nick Patrick that I really genuinely thought was Mike Atkins for a second. I can see that.
00:15:41
Speaker
Johnny B. Badd is being a replacement. Capeta is not really built up. He obviously, he's a guy that on the previous show, for instance, challenge for the US title. So it's not like completely surprising he'd be thrown a title match. Right. But there's no story like it's not like him and Regal are also feuding. Stings out. We need a challenger for Regal. Johnny B. Badd's perfectly acceptable in that role. Yeah.
00:16:04
Speaker
bad comes out in a red and white cape and sets off some sparklers before firing off the bad blaster, dooming everyone else for the rest of the night to pick up glitter around the ring. And as you noted, the color pattern on his jacket is exactly the Eddie Guerrero one. Guerrero must seriously have just gotten this cape and made that into a coat because it is exactly the same. He is the same guy that did wear an American flag jacket in Mexico. When we first saw him, he'd borrow someone's jacket idea.
00:16:33
Speaker
Tony, spotting all the glitter that's been spread by the Bad Blaster jokes that it's gonna take a year to clean the place up, and I don't think that's too much of an exaggeration, honestly.
Johnny B. Badd vs. Steven Regal
00:16:42
Speaker
There's a lot. Oh, yeah. Regal has his usual awesome cape, but you can briefly catch a glimpse of him in a very colonial-era outfit complete with white wig in his entrance video over his shoulder. Yes, yeah.
00:16:57
Speaker
Bad overpowers and outwrestles Regal to start, and Regal's back ends up covered in glitter. But Regal repeatedly uses the hair to take Bad down for several two counts, so Bad also ends up glitter covered. They trade one count off a Regal monkey flip. Regal and Bad trade throws and takedowns until Regal gets fed up and lands several forearms. Henan cautions him about getting into slugfest with former boxer Johnny B. Bad.
00:17:23
Speaker
Bad counters a front face lock by flinging Regal arm first to the mat, and Regal retreats so Sir William can check his shoulder. Back in, Regal lands hard strikes as Hienan mentions that he and Jean Okerlund were in a movie. That would be Time Master, which also featured Pat Morita and Michael Dorn. It's about a kid traveling through time to stop fight managers from destroying Earth.
00:17:48
Speaker
Bad works the arm with arm locks, wrist locks, and hammer locks, and Regal lands strikes when he can, getting a brief break with a doubled knee and drop kick before Bad goes right back to the holds. We get a quick shot of Thunder in Paradise star Chris Lemon in the crowd, covered in confetti. What's less dignified, Al, that or him starring in Firehead? Ooh, wow, that's a tough call. I'm thinking Firehead just because... Yeah, me too. Because in Firehead, he's not even the guy playing Firehead. Right, yeah.
00:18:18
Speaker
He's like, he's Firehead's buddy. So, yeah. So, truth be told, doesn't the fact that he's not known as Firehead make it a little bit better, actually? I don't know. For me, if you're going to be called Firehead, you should at least be Firehead. Might as well do the crime if you're going to do the time, basically. Exactly. And for a diamond, you know, for a dollar, yeah. Regal boots bad in the head, but bad lands a dropkick for one. The crowd is very behind bad.
00:18:43
Speaker
Bad flying head scissors, back body drop, and he lands the kiss that don't miss, but Regal falls out through the ropes. Sir William comes over so Bad dives onto both of them. Back in, Bad sunset flips Regal, but William gives Regal a handhold with his Brawly until Patrick kicks it away for two. But Regal squirms free and rolls Bad over for the three count and the win.
00:19:07
Speaker
I felt like maybe that last spot was supposed to go a little bit smoother, but it also does look kind of realistic how Regal struggles into that, so I'm not really sure. Yeah, he makes a point of getting his shoulders under that leg, so when he leverages them over, he's got this full body weight against him. With Regal, I can honestly see him thinking, oh, this will look really nice and real if I kind of make this more of a struggle than the graceful flip that we sometimes see, but I can also see it just being, oh, no, they just didn't have their timing quite right, but he made it work. Yeah.
00:19:37
Speaker
I think the problem viewing it is we're so used to that constant pin exchange and situation like this where they roll over back and forth multiple times and they have the flip and everything. So going from one pin and forcing another, it feels abrupt. Yeah. Yeah. So that's probably part of it. Rigo gets out of the ring, but Sir William gets to the apron so bad, brings him into the ring, back body drops him and stomps on his bowler hat.
00:20:05
Speaker
It's funny, but even knowing that Sir William's the same guy as Bill Dundee from Starrcade 1986, it wasn't until I saw him here without the hat and the glasses that normally kind of disguise him that I could really make the visual connection. I already knew it was that guy, but then you see him and you're like, oh yeah, it really is that guy. Yeah, I get that. Thoughts on this one? I thought this was a good match. It's real competitive, which I like.
00:20:32
Speaker
Does the tendency for these real scientific matches to be really one-sided or in the other? Because it's easy to tell a story of one guy controlling someone the whole time or long tons of time with armholes and you know various stuff like that. I liked how competitive and back and forth they were with this. It's one of the matches I think that really elevates both people.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yes, definitely. Because bad has his whole thing is his whole vibe, I guess, is his big flashy offense. So seeing him really hold his own in a grappling sort of contest like this is nice. Well, at the same time, Regal gets to really show a striking ability mixed in with the technical ability together. So both of them get a nice sort of showing there. Yeah, they kind of do go a little bit into each other's specialties. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:21:21
Speaker
It's also a match that's really helped by the crowd. They get nicer actions for everything. Everyone seems to really invest in what's happening, which is funny because, again, they were doing what we told the day before that it's going to be a Sting match. So there could be a concern. We lose the audience by pulling Sting away. Yeah, Bad at the very least wins them over really quickly if they weren't here that or they're just like, oh, well, it's trying to be bad and we like him anyway.
00:21:46
Speaker
Oh yeah. It's not surprising to see him here, but it's nice to see him. Is there a situation he's put in like this to still get it very well? Yeah, it's nice that he wasn't damaged by it. As you noted with the finish, it can go either way how you view it. On one hand, like I said, it could look pretty real because he has a floor block being rolled over, sort of repositioned himself. So he's got his full weight and then pressed down on him. Or he could look at his and they didn't didn't quite get position right, but they eventually got there.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think at the very least it's a good cover. Yeah, no pun intended there. Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. I know it's a classic 80s and in the 90s wrestling thing, but it's weird the level of that Sir William gets beaten up. Contrasting that to last year's match where he is the direct reason why Eric Watts doesn't win the match. He literally strikes Eric Watts, so I get Eric Watts beating up Sir William, but.
00:22:44
Speaker
Sir William never actually really interferes other than doing the Umbrella spot, which arguably Bad doesn't even see, to be fair. The level he like pulls his guy in and beats that crap out of him is like, he was a little heelish, even though I know it's not meant to be. Yeah, I think the idea is supposed to be like Sir William is getting in his face because he actually climbs up onto the apron to confront Bad. Yeah, that's fair. But yeah, still, yeah, you're like, I would understand this a little more if he had actually hit you or something like that.
00:23:10
Speaker
The finished part with Nick Patrick kicking the umbrella is right out of the Earl Hebner thing, where he loves to kick people's arms off the ropes. He goes, whoa!
00:23:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I think I'm generally in agreement. I thought this is a nice solid first match with good energy and personality from both guys and some really nice exchanges and big stunts, which got good crowd reaction. The only thing that kind of holds it back for me is that bad works regal's arm for quite a while and regal sells it well. But there's no point where the hurt arm seems to stop regal from doing something. That's fair.
00:23:43
Speaker
And also Bad needs just a bit more variety in his arm work. He keeps going back to the same wrist lock over and over, but at least he is really energetic about it. Yeah. Maybe a case of Enrigo putting the match together and Regal really pushing, you know, he should really work the arm, build this up. And when it comes to the extra match, he just doesn't know a lot of holds. Yeah. Like you said, they're kind of touching into each other's specialties and Bad just doesn't seem to have that much variety in his arm holds anyway. So not a major problem though. No, that's fair.
00:24:13
Speaker
I still felt this gave the show a nice, really hot opening, and it clearly got the crowd charged up. It was a quite nice match with a surprising finish. I really liked it. Yeah, it's good. Coming off of the sort of heelish, underhanded way that Regal retained his title, this would of course be the start of a feud rather than the end of a feud, which would build up to bad challenging him for the title once again at the next review, which is Fall Brawl.
00:24:41
Speaker
As Tony starts to speak, Hienen lets him know that he has to go check on something regarding tonight's card and he'll be back later. Tony tells him to wait a moment and talks about the celebrities and dignitaries that they've got tonight. Behind him, a quite good Hogan impersonator mugs for the camera. Tony says the Hogan Flair match has drawn attention and Hogan is prepared. Hienen agrees that he's prepared and says that he hopes it worked in exactly the manner one would say that if they actually meant they hoped it didn't work.
00:25:12
Speaker
Tony throws to the ring, where Mean Jean Okerlund and a lady in a sparkly dress introduce Antonio Inoki, who was midway through his second term in Japan's House of Counselors. Jean presents him with a plaque in honor of his contributions to pro wrestling and calls for and gets a standing ovation. But suddenly, Regal re-enters the ring.
00:25:37
Speaker
Am I led to believe, my eyes here, that this man from overseas is receiving a plaque for being an honorable wrestler when a noble Englishman like myself who's been elected into the House of Lords and has beat everybody that you have to offer doesn't get an award? Am I led to believe right? You'll have your day, Sunday Regal.
00:25:59
Speaker
I put an end to one legend in this country and now you have to fly legends, supposed legends in. I've just come back from Tokyo where I defeated each and every one of the supposed great stars in Japan.
00:26:11
Speaker
I didn't see this man anywhere to be found. Are you kidding me? He is a legend in Japan and all over the world. Listen, beating Muhammad Ali, beating the late great Andra the Giant doesn't wear with me. I am far superior to you, and it's a bloody good job you're retired right now. Else, I'd have to give you a lesson just like I give Zabisco. Hey, young man. I'm telling you something, how do you listen?
00:26:41
Speaker
Inoki shouts at Regal, takes off his jacket, and goes after him, but Regal quickly ducks out of the ring and yells threats while Sir William urges him to retreat. Interesting little segment here. This is building to a match as an upcoming clash of the champions between Regal and Inoki. It's too bad that they couldn't get that match on this show because an Inoki match is one heck of a huge deal.
00:27:03
Speaker
Bischoff doesn't actually address the timeline in 83 weeks, but he notes that they picked Regal because they knew he could work the Japanese style and wanted to make him a key person that they could have represent WCW in matches in Japan. Good call, yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
As Regal accurately noted, he had just come back from one set of matches in Japan, though he's less accurate about beating everyone. And indeed, Regal would have further matches in New Japan in later 1994 and in 1995, including challenging IWGP champion Shinya Hashimoto, who we saw face Scott Norton at collision in Korea. Correct. I could see that being an interesting match. Hashimoto was quite good, as I recall. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:27:42
Speaker
Incidentally, Regal would also team with Scott Norton while he was there. All told, it's a good little bit of build here to what seems like it'd be quite a fun match.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think in this case, it's a little bit more forgivable because it's such a notable match. Right. You got Antonio and Noki for a match. This isn't just, you know, a match that you can normally see on TV. This is a special occasion. It's a little weird that we're doing the match on TV instead of on here, but at least it is a clash of the champions that they're building towards. Yeah, not a not a normal show. So, you know, there's there's that. But.
00:28:23
Speaker
If timing worked out and if some of they did this match at fall brawl, you use the class of champions to have them in a competition. Do the same presentation ceremony at class of champions. Exactly. And then you have a month or however much time passes between the shows to be able to fall brawl. So people are going to really pay to see a no key match. Yeah. Presumably they just couldn't work out the timing that way to both get a buildup and get a match without doing it at this schedule. But I haven't really seen someone address the timing specifically. Gotcha.
00:28:53
Speaker
The other thing I love with this promo is Regal with a straight face basically claims that he's never heard of Antonio Anoki at first. Yes. And then very much reveals that he has clearly heard of Antonio Anoki because he talks about the Muhammad Ali match and about him fighting Andre the Giant and all this stuff. Yeah. You're just like, OK, Regal. Right up there with him claiming that he didn't break a sweat beating Eric Watts last year when he was pouring with sweat.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yeah. I think my favorite part is the fact that he's still covered in glitter. Yes. With the sweat. It's like, I am the better man than you, Enoki. Sir William, couldn't you have picked those off backstage? He had a few minutes. I think my one critique, I would be not joking. So Okra Land, he goes to Enoki with the plaque and he said, oh, we can get some translation for this.
00:29:45
Speaker
The translator never ever seems to talk to Inoki during the segment at all. I genuinely wasn't sure if that was a translator for Inoki or if Gene was saying something like, can someone give me the translation in my earpiece for what's written on the plaque? Oh. Like the plaque's written in Japanese and... Hmm, maybe. I get the impression he was gonna show it to Inoki and that's why the translator guy walks over closer like he's gonna read it.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that was just another dude that, because in no case seems perfectly understand regal. And when you hear him shouting at regal, he does seem to be speaking English. Well, I think we were having a waste of the first time. It's not even necessarily that he understands regal fully, but he can read by language like anyone can. So regals, you know, he's got his fist up, he's got his dukes up, as they would say. But yeah, that's just kind of weird. It's like, let's get translation for this. And then they don't ever translate.
00:30:37
Speaker
We cut back to the commentary table, and Jesse Ventura has replaced Bobby Heenan. Tony praises Inoki as a legend, and Jesse notes that he's wrestled Inoki in Tokyo before. Our second match is Vader with Harley Race versus the B- I mean, the Guardian Angel. Referee for this one is Jimmy Jett, and commentary now is Tony and Jesse.
00:31:03
Speaker
This has been a long-running feud. It really goes back to almost the end of last year and then going through this point. It's surprisingly a long-lived feud.
00:31:13
Speaker
this originally started back when he was still the boss. There's a match where he's not the referee, I think he's the enforcer for a match involving Flair and Vader. And then of course he gets physical and they beat him up and all this stuff happens. And then they have the angle where after he is matched with Vader, he uses the nightstick. Backstage he basically has his gimmick taken away.
00:31:37
Speaker
They basically do, like, Bockwinkle is the angry police commissioner and bosses. It really is, yeah, yeah. Rogue cop that went too far. Give me your badge and your gun. In this case, it's give me your badge and your right stick. Yeah.
00:31:49
Speaker
There's a match or two after this on Saturday night where he has to wrestle without his boss giving him his outfit or anything. He just curve wrestles his Ray trailer. But he scouted during these matches by the Guardian Angels, or at least probably by someone playing Guardian Angels. I can't imagine they got a legit person there just to stand there and go, ooh, you're really cool.
00:32:09
Speaker
For anyone who's not aware of this, we are not talking about people dressed as angels in white with wings and halos and everything, that type of guardian angel. We're talking about the Volunteer Crime Prevention Organization. Correct, yes. They wear red jackets and berets. Just to make sure I realize, oh, we probably should clarify that.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah. So they then do a promo where the guardian angel or someone representing the group says that because of your, your love that come into law and order, we're recruiting you to be a new member of our group. And so now now on Ray trailers, a guardian angel. And, uh, from what I understand credit to trailer, he actually did go through their training program. Oh, that's true. Yeah, I did hear that. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's commitment to your gimmick right there.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah. So he, he was more living as gimmick than a son of a slaughter was with his fake military back. That's good. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. And of course this all was actually happening because the WWF was a might upset at WCW calling him the boss and having him basically blatantly dressed as the big boss man just in black instead of blue. Yeah.
00:33:16
Speaker
It is a little funny to me that they decided to go to this Guardian Angel thing instead of just turning him back into the perfectly acceptable Big Boba Rogers. Yeah. That he was before NWSW, but... I think they didn't want to change the gimmick that much. They wanted like a law enforcement thing. I will say it's funny looking back at it, because go back to the original Big Boss Man thing, because the gimmick is he's a former prison guard.
00:33:37
Speaker
Which I know is a form of law enforcement. It's kind of like being a cop. But I think there's this idea that, like you ask people at Big Boss, they're like, oh yeah, that guy, he was a wrestling cop. I'm like, well, not really. Yeah, it's not quite the same. Yeah. They treat him like he's making arrests and that kind of stuff as far as his gimmick goes to. Now, to be fair to WSW, maybe the boss was actually a cop and the boss man was a prison guard. And that was, I don't think they ever actually say. No, that's true.
00:34:08
Speaker
Although if he's the boss, then how is Dick Bockwickle the police chief? Well, he's his own boss, right? Maybe Dick Bockwickle's the president. Oh, gotcha. He dresses the type, so yeah. Brace yells at Angel, so Angel decks him, but Vader clubs Angel from behind, beats him down, and hits a spin kick of all things. Yes. Tony sounds absolutely stunned calling that.
00:34:35
Speaker
It kind of reminds me of the scene in, um, turn of the Jedi, when they're doing the race through the forest on the speeder bikes and the log just comes and hit you. Yes. That's true. It's like running up full speed. Here's this log flying at you like that. Yeah. Angel fires back with strikes and several easy looking slams, even walking with Vader on his shoulder and tears off Vader's mask.
00:35:00
Speaker
We get a shot of Hank Aaron, Antonio Inoki, and WSW President Bill Shaw in the crowd. Jesse bizarrely suggests that Regal was criticizing Inoki over Pearl Harbor. Yeah, um... First, no. And second, no. And third, Regal is English. Yeah. Not American. I mean, I'm sure they weren't super pleased with that happening either, but... Right, the Bridge for Audio Awards of Pan, that's kind of a non-factor. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:30
Speaker
Not as worth World War II reference on a show, but still, yeah. Angel keeps landing strikes in and out of the ring, but race comes over, so Angel decks him again, only for Vader to hit what Tony calls the Vader Bomb, but it's the double forearm shot. Vader takes over with punishing forearms and tries a second rope sunset flip. Holy crap. Yeah. Angel drops on him. The crowd is super loud for this. They are, yeah.
00:35:58
Speaker
Vader leg hold, then a cross face, and he rolls Angel over for two, and swears on the kick-out. Vader hits the second rope, Vader Bomb. Tony calls it another version of the Vader Bomb, which I believe is Tony Schiavone for, oops, I got the earlier move name wrong. Yes, yes it is. Vader moonsault, but it hurts him too when he can't cover. Jet checks on Vader, and Brace climbs up top, but Angel flare-karmas him down. That's ironic. Yeah, I love it.
00:36:28
Speaker
Angel disposes of Race and Vader, but on a shoulder block, Vader stumbles into Jet, knocking him loopy. Angel checks on Jet, and Race hands Vader a telescoping baton, but Angel disarms Vader, only for Jet to recover, see the baton in Angel's hands, and Vader slumped in the corner, and disqualify Angel. Now Jet, you know what happens when you assume. Yeah. Angel argues angrily with Jet and appeals to the crowd, and Vader clotheslines him from behind and gets out of the ring, retreating with Race.
00:36:58
Speaker
Angel springs right back up and goes back to arguing with Jet and getting the crowd to support him. Jesse supports the ref's decision, and Tony praises Angel for not having actually used the baton. Thoughts on this one? A really fun, hard-hitting match for me. As we discussed before over these two interacting, they seem like they legit like to work with each other because they're both bigger guys that really could move more than you could think.
00:37:23
Speaker
Well, I can't really picture Rachel doing a moonsault, which admittedly is the peak of things you can do with that size. It's still impressive his general mobility he has. It is really fun watching these two guys work together because...
00:37:36
Speaker
Vader doesn't really have to hold back, and likewise, Bray slash Angel can do the same thing. Because I think with Vader, he gets a lot of flack for, you know, legit beating up people. And I get that mindset, this whole idea of that, you know, thrusting is a sport, but you gotta be careful. And obviously, there's the one incident where he maybe goes a bit too far without hurts a guy.
00:37:56
Speaker
But he's also a guy that takes a lot of pretty strong beating, but he's used to that working that style in Japan. So it's not like some of the wrestlers were. He loves just beating you up, but then, you know, we'll take bumps for you. I do like that we got to see the moon salt, because I love the moon salt. That's so amazing. So beautiful. Yeah.
00:38:16
Speaker
That leads to my only real critique with the match, which is that so Vader does his actual Vader bomb and then does the moon salt. And again, they do the sell the injury thing, but it seems really quick that Guard Angels recovered from both those moves in sequence. And he does his running slide out of the ring and start to pick them up. I feel like they just did not give this match enough time. Oh, yeah. If you gave this like one to two minutes longer, I think you would have gotten more proper selling out of out of Angel on some of those spots.
00:38:46
Speaker
Well, no, yeah, I don't, I don't think it was like a personal slider thing. Cause again, these two guys sitting like they were friends, it's not time went up at all. But yeah, I feel like if you're going to take both those moods, which are his finishers, he one matches separately with both those moves different. Yeah. It's weird that he goes right to again, who's who's run and slide. Yeah. I know it's like a saying he does, he does the slide and punch you while you're on the ropes thing. I feel like maybe it's a sort of an autopilot thing. He's like, Oh, I should just move now. But not thinking.
00:39:16
Speaker
You know this guy is 450 pound man, they just flatten me. Maybe I should walk to the outside instead of running like I started. But to your point, there's definitely an issue of time with this, which is kind of a shame. Obviously, as anyone listening to the show knows, I don't love DQ finishes. That said, I can at least appreciate when they're done well.
00:39:37
Speaker
The idea that they basically got Angel in trouble for a thing he had done previously, but in this one case didn't do, is it's a creative way of doing this finish. Because it allows you to do more with the two of them. I guess my only real critique other than the sort of brush to the end bit is that we don't get to see a powerbomb. And if it didn't match that, a powerbomb is just kind of sad. But the Moon's Salt makes up for a lot of that. Yes.
00:40:05
Speaker
Vader and Angel are so much fun together, and they seem to bring out the best in each other. They pounded the ever-loving crap out of each other, but also mixed in some cool strength spots and some really unusual stunts. Like when's the last time you saw Vader do a spin kick? Yeah. Never. That's when. Yeah, right?
00:40:23
Speaker
The DQ finish, I did not like. It flies in the face of just about every other wrestling match ever, where if the ref didn't see the hit, it didn't happen, no matter how many guitar pieces are left behind, and no matter how loud of a clang the ref heard behind his back.
00:40:38
Speaker
But otherwise, this was a really intensely fought and terrific example of the best sort of big man match with two highly motivated and energized performers that seem to quite enjoy working together. These these guys thus far, whenever we've seen them working together, have been great. And I'm very much looking forward to more of this feud. Absolutely.
00:41:00
Speaker
I think the only thing that's missing for me from the ending is Vader after he knocks down Guard Angel taking the baton and like talking to the camera like, oh, that's where I laugh at or something like really rubbing it in that it heats his baton. If it was Steve Austin or something like that doing it, they had the more snarky style than you would have gotten that I think where Vader doesn't, I think, tend to think that way. Oh, I know. Yeah. It's wishful thinking. Yeah, they've been a fun bit. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
00:41:28
Speaker
We would, in fact, get at least one more match in these two. Slight wrinkle on it, though, because it's actually a triangle elimination match. That ends up being one of the big matches on Fall Brawl. Okay. As for the third person, I'll get to that later. Tony asks Jesse for his thoughts on Hogan vs. Flair, and Jesse says Flair will take it. Tony shills the wrestling hotline as we cut backstage to see the hotline's crews in T'Nay get ignored by a passing Terry Funk. Great advertising there. Oh yeah.
00:41:59
Speaker
Tony throws to a video package covering the feud between Dustin Rhodes and Colonel Robert Parker, Terry Funk, and Bunkhouse Buck, which shows both the Good Buck match and the Boring Buck match, as well as Funk's excellent endless promo from Slamboree, where he says like, you can't get me off the stage, I'm never leaving.
00:42:20
Speaker
And it's his attack on roads with a branding iron. I had forgotten the bit where Buck repeatedly failed to set roads properly for a spike pile driver. Yes. It was good on Terry recognizing that that was not going to happen. It's such an awkward thing, because Buck has him in the pile driver position, and everyone's about to do it, but they're not quite set right. So then Fung just sort of jumps down from the second rope. But then I guess Buck really thinks they're going to go for it again. So let's up again.
00:42:47
Speaker
I try to funk this sort of look and sort of pokes. Like you are not, you are not getting him up high enough. This is not safe for us to do. Yeah. Yeah. So he sort of pokes, uh, road with the breading iron while he's awkwardly held upside down and then it is or drop them there, let them down the ground. Amazing that they thought that was the spot they should put in the video package. Yeah. Is that a rib on them or is that like the best thing they really thought they had? Okay.
00:43:13
Speaker
So apparently Rhodes has now asked for Arne Anderson's support and Arne has agreed. Jesse says he couldn't have picked a better partner. Tony then throws to footage of a quote, very special match. That being the Sassy Boys versus Molly McShane, guest referee by Jimmy Hart. McShane being the actual wrestler won. Jesse says he's pretty sure Tony could have beaten the boys and Tony asked Jesse to be his tag partner. Jesse says that Tony should ask Lois, Tony's wife, as she'd be better and Tony cracks up.
00:43:44
Speaker
So I had to reach out to them this. These two guys, they healed basically in a match. They have a syndicated show out of Atlanta, but they were expanding to more territories, which included Orlando.
00:43:57
Speaker
So I get, as a local attraction, hey, here's those two DJs, you know, they'll promote the show and, you know, because they'll be on the show. Makes sense. That's basically the man cow thing from Spring Stampede 2000. Right. Which is why I'm so glad that we didn't actually get this one on the show. Right. But then if you're only doing it for a live crowd and it's not really meant for broadcast. Why are you showing us it? Why are you showing it? Yeah.
00:44:20
Speaker
Maybe they figured people in Atlanta would want to see that they were on there too, because like you said, they have a show in Atlanta. But yeah, that's all I can think is. For me, there's only one reason to show a dark match on your show if you made a point of not putting it on the main show. And that is if it involves the parka. I would have accepted also Brad Armstrong's America jacket.
00:44:42
Speaker
I don't think time had ever quite worked out, but Brad Armstrong versus LaParca. Oh my God. Is that our dream match or what? That's right up there. That's right up there. That's got to be up there with our personal dream match. By the way, I shouldn't fail to mention Brad Armstrong's tag team partner in that match was Brian Armstrong. Yes. Who I believe is the one that later goes on to be known as the Road Dog. Correct. Because there's Scott Armstrong, which is the referee dude. Referee, correct. Yeah.
00:45:11
Speaker
Match 3 is Bunkhouse Buck and Terry Funk with Colonel Robert Parker and Meng in an absolutely badass suit versus the Natural Dustin Rhodes and the Enforcer Arne Anderson in a Grudge tag team event. Referee for this one is Nick Patrick. Just a note, I'm going to have to be very careful with this one.
00:45:36
Speaker
with funk and buck. Yeah. Do not mix up their first letters. In fact, I think I'm going to call funk Terry for the duration. I was going to say that we have an idea. Yeah, it's funny. I just now notice for you my own notes that I wrote Terry Funk and bunkhouse bunk. At least you mixed it up in the good direction. Yeah, I did the less profane way.
00:46:02
Speaker
I literally, I can't believe I did notice that. I've been working on it for days. I never caught that much. Nice. Autocorrect isn't because I obviously didn't catch that because it's a real word. Yeah. So yeah, they, they address a bunch of it, but essentially what happened is.
00:46:14
Speaker
They do the heels try to recruit a face for the group angle, knowing Dustin Rhodes' Western background with University of Texas and all that with his father. They try to recruit him to join the group. He, of course, he's a white baby face, so he says no. So he creates this long sequence where he fights bunkhouse buck on two occasions, which, again, one good and one not as good. The latter, which involves Terry Funk showing up and beating him up sort of kind of
00:46:42
Speaker
So that would then lead to him needing backup. He approaches our Anderson. Arne knows how the TV drama works because he's asked on WWE Saturday night. It's your Saturday night worldwide. I forget which he's originally asked to be his partner. He goes, well, I'll let you know on cost of champions. Yes. Arne knows exactly how to promote shows. Yes. So it's on that show. They both come out and do a promo where he agrees to be his partner on this match.
00:47:12
Speaker
As usual, Buck looks really cool in his full cowboy duster getup, but then he takes half of that off in the ring and looks less cool. Yeah. Rhodes and Anderson come out to what I assume must be Arne's theme. It's a slow guitar riff rather than the natural. Natural.
00:47:27
Speaker
Tony thinks this may be the most important match of Rhodes' career, despite him having already had title matches and this being for nothing. Jesse takes the opportunity to note that he himself once wrestled Terry Funk to a one-hour draw in 1976.
00:47:43
Speaker
Arne and Buck start, and Arne repeatedly shoves Buck away, but Buck challenges Rhodes, so Arne tags Rhodes. Rhodes beats the crap out of Buck, so Terry tags in, but Rhodes knocks him so loopy he almost goes after Meng. I would not like your chances against this version of Meng, Terry. He is dressed to kill. Yes. Literally.
00:48:05
Speaker
Terry and Buck both try charging, but Rhodes easily counters both, and while Patrick's getting Buck out of the ring, flings Terry over the top rope. Then while Patrick's checking on Terry, he flings Buck out the same way. Jesse somewhat justifiably complains about Tony's double standard not criticizing Rhodes for that.
00:48:25
Speaker
I forget which game it was, but one of the W2K games might have been an earlier one. They had what they called them. They were like the full control ultimate control grapples. Thank you. Yeah, that's what they're called.
00:48:38
Speaker
where you pick a guy in a certain position like a suplex or like a body slam and you can sort of walk and drop on the ropes or throw him at everything. The way he has him up and then sort of walks over the ropes and then dumps and reminds me of how that worked because you would carry him over a body slam and just sort of casually drop him over there.
00:48:59
Speaker
A Terry crawling headbutt finally stuns Rhodes, but also Terry, so he tags Buck, who ducks a Rhodes crossbody so Rhodes bounces off the mat, sails under the bottom rope, bounces over the dangerously positioned steps in the center of the apron this year, bounces off the floor mats, and finally lands on the entrance ramp. Holy crap, man.
00:49:21
Speaker
The distance he clears is impressive. It's absolutely amazing. I think there's one other one he does against Steve Austin one time that's even better. But this was seriously impressive, the amount of momentum he gets going there. It's absolutely crazy. You cannot say for one second that Dustin did not give his all for this show. Yes, that's true. It reminds me a lot of when they introduced that ragdoll physics in gaming. Yes. And you get blown up in the toss and your legs would flail, arms full independently.
00:49:50
Speaker
Absolutely incredible spot. Yes. Terry rams Rhodes into barricades amongst the glitter as Anderson accidentally distracts Patrick. Back in, Buck and Terry trade off wearing Rhodes down with hard strikes and holds with added leverage from each other and earn two with a Terry reverse neckbreaker and one with a Terry pile driver as Anderson saves. Rhodes occasionally stuns one or the other but not for long enough to tag Arne and it gets pounded to the mat.
00:50:17
Speaker
He finally fights free with repeated bionic elbows and gets one with a clothesline, then flare Karma's buck into Terry to get time to tag Anderson. The crowd absolutely erupts. Until Anderson suddenly DDT's roads and you can hear the hearts rip out of the crowd.
00:50:37
Speaker
With Patrick distracted by Meng, Anderson drags Terry on top of Rhodes and leaves like he was never tagged in, and Patrick counts three to give Terry and Buck the win. Buck holds Rhodes' arm for Anderson to stomp repeatedly on it, and Rhodes swears very, very loudly. Yes.
00:50:55
Speaker
Buck, Anderson, and Terry all join in beating up a Screaming Rhodes as Parker and Meng hold Patrick back until Doug Dillinger, Randy Anderson, and Greg Gagne of all people, enter to break it all up. Tony questions if Aaron was bought off. Thoughts on this one? It's an interesting match because it is basically a handicap match, but the story disguises it as a tag team match. So the first time you get the normal reaction is where you just follow the natural team of events.
00:51:26
Speaker
and then are certainly surprised if you don't know the rule about not trusting on anything. Yes, this is true. Obviously, if you don't have to trust on anything, you know it's coming. So it's interesting watching again when I rewatch because obviously you're looking for details. You're looking for did Arne set up his betrayal early on. They do little things here and there that would
00:51:47
Speaker
be actually hurting Roadblock and like is helping him. There's nothing real obvious which is I think a credit to him. There's nothing like where he really goes out of his way and does something that our answer wouldn't do just so it would hurt Dustin.
00:52:01
Speaker
He does the normal like tag spots of, oh, I accidentally distracted the ref and that kind of stuff. Yeah. The one thing I noticed was whenever he runs in for the distraction, he always goes right to Patrick rather than lunging like for the other guys and being stopped by Patrick. Yeah. I don't know if that was an intentional reference or if that's just, you know, how it happened, but.
00:52:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's one point where Terry and Buck-Us-Buck are beating him up in the corner and Arne runs in. Instead of trying to break that up, he simply runs and gets the ref's attention. So the ref leads him back to the corner. But again, it's like it's not super obvious, but it's just like if you're watching, yeah, he seems to be more interested in getting Patrick's attention than in actually trying to save his buddy. Yeah.
00:52:45
Speaker
There's a lot of times where they, again, they tease Ken Rhodes get to the tag and, you know, he's so close, but he's not quite there. Classic, you know, tag team formula. There is one point where he does get out and he could easily have gone over to tag Arne, but Arne like cheers him on and he's like, yeah, yeah, go and do it. Like he's, he's like, yeah, he's encouraging us to stay in the ring. Yeah. He's not like, Hey, come over and tag me. He's not doing the quick come to get me. He's like, yeah, you got it. You go. You're good. You're good, man. You got this covered.
00:53:13
Speaker
And plus they do at the very beginning, Arden does not actually do any damage to the opponents. He just shoves them a few times and then they do the, no, we actually want to face this guy, which again, feels totally legit for a tag match. But you look at it again the second time, you're like, Oh, he intentionally avoided doing any damage to the people that were actually his buddies. Yeah. The worst thing he really does is again, encourage, encourage roads to beat them up a bit. But you know,
00:53:40
Speaker
And that's more harmful to roads ultimately, so. Right, right. And it was a thing that I don't think Terry Fung could really be offended by that. He's crazy, so.
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah, I thought this was a quite enjoyable match with a tremendous twist finish. It was excellently done. Like like you noted, there's there's just not really clear signs of it coming. And yet it's also being quite honest that if you look back earlier in the match, you know, he doesn't do harm to the other side. And the points where he interferes are just twisted ever so slightly towards the interfering with roads to where you can think, oh, maybe that's not an accident. Yeah.
00:54:17
Speaker
It feels like they're actually being honest with the viewer that you could ascertain beforehand that Arne is not actually on Rhodes' side, but without really lamp shading it. For sure, yeah.
00:54:30
Speaker
Rhodes got to look great in this match, fighting off two guys until that amazing spot with him sailing out of the ring. And then he played face and peril quite nicely, with Anderson doing all the normal sort of stuff that you see a normal tag partner doing until he suddenly betrayed Rhodes, got him pinned, and participated in an absolutely brutal post-match beatdown as only a frequent member of the Four Horsemen can.
00:54:52
Speaker
I particularly like that Parker and Meng successfully kept Patrick distracted for the entirety of Arne's entry and exit from the match at the end, so it was actually reasonable that Patrick might not have known Arne ever got tagged in, and therefore thought that Rhodes was still the legal man. Right. I do have just a question about this finish, though. So assuming Nick Patrick breaks away and sees Arne attack Dustin with the DT, does Dustin win via DQ even though it's his own partner attacking him?
00:55:22
Speaker
I mean, it's a participant in the match attacking another participant in the match. So I don't think that's an EQ at all. Yeah, I'm not sure of it. Yeah. Yeah. Because to your point, they make a whole show of him not seeing him do it, but I think to your point, I think more to the point, it's still, as he said, they, they don't see the tag at all. So it doesn't know, Hey, you're a legal man. Why aren't you in the ring? Cause
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah, it like it does seem to answer the one question you would have with that finish, which is, wait, if Patrick saw the tag, then he should think that Arne is the legal man and like they should lose by count out instead of which I mean, they could still could have still done that could just be like, oh, I'm walking up the ramp, you know, got me out. I don't care. But I think they actually did successfully hide that from Patrick enough that he could genuinely count the pinfall. Yeah.
00:56:10
Speaker
Yeah, and it helps that that finish, which I think was quite well done, topped off an excellent performance by Rhodes, who got to look very, very strong, even in a losing fight. I've had lots of fun with this one. Yeah. Next show is Fall Brawl, which, of course, is the war game show, for better or worse.
00:56:29
Speaker
We get a big war game match involving all the people in here plus some other people. War game becomes a family affair in which Dusty comes out of retirement for one match to team with Dustin. That's nice. Alongside the nasty boys. That's less nice.
00:56:44
Speaker
Yes. They would end up facing, uh, the stud table, which of course wrestler wise is Terry Funk, bunkhouse buck and Anderson now. And going back to the original way or game matches worked, the manager takes part as the fourth person on the heel side. So yeah, Pearl Parker is the fourth man in the match. Am I remembering correctly on super clash? Wasn't it that we actually saw him in his wrestling days?
00:57:08
Speaker
Yes. And you recognize, I had to point out to you that it was Tim and Bunk as Buck and his no-rusting gaze as well. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And the weird, why is this the main event of the show match? Yes, that was odd. That's interesting. So we got that team up again. Exactly.
00:57:26
Speaker
We cut to Mean Gene on the ramp, and he dubs that disgusting and despicable. He tries to talk to Anderson, but Anderson won't talk to him now, instead inviting him to a backstage party later. Okerlund expresses his disapproval and throws back to Tony, who is now with Bobby Heenan and Hank Aaron. Aaron gets big cheers from the crowd, and says that he's enjoying himself and he's pulling for both Hogan and Flair in the main event. Heenan jokes that Hank will be running for president, and Hank laughs and agrees that he's a great politician with an answer like that.
00:57:56
Speaker
Tony, thanks, Aaron, for joining them. And Aaron says he's sure everyone is having a great time. Hank Aaron just comes off as a tremendously great guy in this segment, just having a fun evening. It reminded me of the bits on the early Slammorese, where they had the legends on the shows, and some of them were just having a grand time. Obviously, with the exception of the two legends they talked to after the hardcore match. Yes. Which you were not fans of what they just saw. Yeah, the worst possible time to decide to talk to Vern, Ganya, and Luthas. Yeah, exactly.
00:58:26
Speaker
I love little moments like this. Yeah. And of course, as we discussed, Hank Aaron is very integral to WWE history. Yes. As the guy that got the guy that made all these weird rules at the first beach blast show fired for justifiable cause. Yes. Once Aaron is gone, he and in jokes that he was a so so hitter. Tony impressively no sells that one and advertises fall brawl.
00:58:51
Speaker
Tony asks Hienan's opinion on Rhodes and Anderson, and Hienan says that Anderson should beat up the whole Rhodes family, and is pretty sure that Dustin has a broken arm, so Dusty ought to bring the pickup truck and take Dustin home. Tony praises Dustin for fighting so hard against two men in that match.
00:59:08
Speaker
Tony builds up the upcoming matches, Steamboat vs. Austin for the US title, Pretty Wonderful vs. Jack and Sullivan for the tag titles, and Hogan vs. Flair for the world title. Then throws to Jean with Sherry and Flair, who wears an excellent purple and silver robe.
00:59:26
Speaker
All right, Tony Schiavone, I'm with Century with Sherry, and the WCW Heavyweight Champion of the World with a big smile, a big grin on his face, Ric Flair. How about double A? How about it? Is he back? I guess he is. Dustin Rhodes, what you gonna do when double A runs wild on you?
00:59:45
Speaker
You've got other things to contemplate tonight. The biggest match of your career, Ric Flair, there is no doubt about it. Standing by on the wings to challenge you for this title is none other than Hulk Hogan. I walked in the door.
01:00:00
Speaker
They said Nature Boy, S.R.O. standing remotely to see Hogan and Flair go at it for this. I said, boys, that's just the way to Hulkster and the Nature Boy want it. We want it sold out. We want it live. We want it worldwide. Dignitaries from all points of the world are here and
01:00:25
Speaker
Hey, Garrett, hey, big shot, Keelanio, they're all here. But you know why? Because the greatest of all time is gonna walk that aisle. And tonight, the immortal one becomes history rights, the Jewish one. That's right, Gene Okaland. For years and years, you've been saying to be the man, you've got to beat the man. Ric Flair is always the man. Ric Flair has nothing to prove.
01:00:53
Speaker
You Hulk Hogan are the challenger. You Hulk Hogan are the one that has a failing career. You Hulk Hogan have to beat the man to beat the man. We are living the right. Kiss stealing, wheeling dealers, winners and champions of the WCW. Thank you very much, Ric Flair, champion.
01:01:20
Speaker
And a very lovely sentry with Sherry. Let's get back to ringside. I love that Flair takes a moment out to praise Arne for excellent horsemanning. Yes. Anytime that wrestlers talk about a match that they weren't in, I love it. It makes everything feel so much more connected.
01:01:39
Speaker
After that, this is a quick but great promo to build up just how big Flare versus Hogan is, and to give it a sense of global attention. I would actually have liked this to be just a tad longer to really get to epic craziness, but for the time it got, it had massive energy, and I absolutely adore the ending with Sherry joining Flare to do some woos. The two of them built off each other's energy really well. Oh yeah. Is it me, or is the first realization of Shaquille was really odd?
01:02:06
Speaker
bit. Yeah. It was like Shaq heel. Yeah. It's like it's two words. Like you, I really enjoyed that. He did reference the last match. Obviously it's orange, so it's a given, but it's still a nice thing to see. Yeah. Every now and then you'll get a show where people are constantly talking about each other's matches. I always adore that. Yeah.
01:02:26
Speaker
I will say it's really a good showing for Sherry here because she's underrated in this role, especially when she's working with Ric Flair. It's easy for a lot of people, no matter how good you are, to struggle to keep pace with Ric Flair in a one-on-one situation or one with one situation like that.
01:02:47
Speaker
Like you're following a flare promo. There's not like a big drop off or like, oh, now she's speaking. She's really good at this video. She really, she seems to like pick up the energy and just, and just carry it forward quite nicely. She has great emphasis as well. See if the side is, you are the, you are the, the failing career.
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah. Ouch, by the way. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I agree. I think she does a terrific job here. And like you said, it's, it's easy for a lot of people to kind of like disappear in a promo segment if Flair's part of that promo segment, but she, she doesn't at all. She, she's really stands out as well and carries forward that energy and just, and blends in nicely with, with what he's doing. And you know, they even finished the promo together. So it's, it's a really nice touch.
01:03:29
Speaker
Yeah. Now for me, there's only one knock against this promo. And that is the fact that Rick Flair refers to the WCW. Yes, that he does. That really must be a care from his like two year stand in the WWF. True. Yeah. This is relatively recently after his return. So Flair, you know better. Yeah. Right.
01:03:50
Speaker
So she went from being sensational Sherry in WWF to sensuous Sherry, which I think it was like a brainstorming session with the writers like, what can we call her that sounds like sensational, but won't get a suit? Could we worry of Vince knocking at her back door because of the boss over here? Yes. Also really like her elaborate eye makeup.
01:04:12
Speaker
Yes, it was funny when we were watching the promo at first, I remember thinking that just some of her hair had fallen across her face because it's black eye makeup and it's the same shade as her hair, basically. Yes. So I thought it was just a strand that was stubbornly clinging to her face and then realized, oh, wait, no, that's that's actually makeup. Yeah, there's like a little of a twisty curl at the bottom. She has a real like kiss thing going on with this makeup I noticed. Yeah. Or it's almost like the anti-venom where it's white on black like that.
01:04:43
Speaker
Our fourth match is Ricky the Dragon Steamboat versus Stunning Steve Austin for Austin's WCW United States Heavyweight Championship. The referee for this one is Randy Anderson and our commentary team is Tony and Hienan. These two were longtime rivals and in fact they mentioned a commentary that Austin lost the TV title to Steamboat in previous year.
01:05:06
Speaker
So it's one of those things, at this point, all you gotta do is say, hey, D. Voss and this guy you hate because, you know, he's been on the U.S. Championship for like quite a few months now. I think he won it like in December, 92. They got a nice sort of run to this. You gotta say, hey, this guy you hate is going to fight his old rival again and his old rival again has beaten him for the title before. So it's a natural sort of thing. So you don't need a lot of buildup for this.
01:05:31
Speaker
Yeah. And these two guys are both good enough to be able to pull together a lot of emotion in the ring. Like I said, drawing on their history and just on the fact that Austin is so insufferable as a evil. Absolutely amazing. It's very good at his job. Yeah. Dragon statues now frame the entryway for Steamboat's entrance, emitting steam, which is awesome, but does look a little bit odd next to the faded wooden birds in the beach set. A little bit, yeah.
01:06:00
Speaker
Steamboat does a fire-breathing act for the crowd, and he then jokes that he's a human Bic lighter. I sponsor the show, hopefully. Oh, no, if they were a sponsor, their logo would be on the mat and all of the turnbuckle pads, and Tony would reference them like every other second as we learn from Western Union's Lamprey, please help us, we need the money. Yeah.
01:06:23
Speaker
Austin is out next, and he's getting closer to his later look with the black trunks and vest, but he still has gold trim on the vest and hair. He has tight-spried dragon slayer. Just a nice little dig of the knife still. Oh, I thought I was a fan of the 1981 film. He might be. You never know. Yeah, yeah.
01:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. This is a transitional period for people that don't recall studying Steve Austin as much back when he was more clean shaven. Yeah, the saved by the bell tights and everything. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But they were only going for a brick flare thing, which is, you know, it's not a bad thing to emulate. Don't be wrong. But yeah, giving him multi-colored robes and all this stuff. And this is post-Hollywood bond breakup. So he's broke out on his own here.
01:07:09
Speaker
And yeah, it's interesting to see because he's got essentially his fancy, frilly, Stunning Steve Austin jacket just down to a vest, which obviously we lose a lot of those frills over the years and become leather instead of sequined.
01:07:23
Speaker
Absolutely fascinating to see his look develop over the years, right? Like you, you see him go from this long haired saved by the bell pants type of thing to then like the Hollywood blondes era when the hair is getting shorter and shorter and he's going towards, towards having like vest and things. And then this look, which basically is the stone cold look plus a little bit of hair and some sparkle. Yeah. And then, yeah, then he'll go to the stone cold look by just basically losing the sparkle in the hair. Absolutely.
01:07:52
Speaker
Absolutely fascinating to see him develop over the years in that regard. Yeah, for sure. Austin attacks while Steamboat's back is turned and strikes the leg, but Steamboat boots him away and walks the top rope while holding Austin's arm, jumping off to strike the arm. Hammerlock slam. Austin gets some cheap shots, but Steamboat knocks him off the second rope, and he dangles from the ropes outside, so Steamboat beats him up.
01:08:16
Speaker
Steamboat works the arm with arm bars and strikes and Austin uses the hair to escape and fakes a knee injury. He didn't suggest that they give Austin a 20 minute break and Tony almost degrees before realizing what he didn't say. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what? It's a wonderful moment. Austin rolls outside and Steamboat chases a now glittery Austin and slaps on a sleeper hold.
01:08:39
Speaker
Austin tries to run Steamboat into the turnbuckle, but Steamboat shoves him into it and rolls him up for two. Austin sneaks in a kick to the crotch. He then blames Austin's trick knee.
01:08:51
Speaker
Austin repeatedly clotheslines Steamboat and he spills out to the floor, so Austin suplexes Glittery Steamboat back in for two. Steamboat flips over a back suplex and hits a double-handed choke slam for two. Back to the arm bar, and Steamboat senses the crowd getting a bit restless, so he yells that'll break the arm and immediately gets cheered. Then switches to knee strikes on the arm.
01:09:13
Speaker
The camera ends up behind the commentators. So Tony points out the brain and he points to Tony as the other part of the anatomy. Tony clearly struggles to hold back laughter until we change the cameras. That's it. Yeah, it was a great moment. Yes. Because he is so, so fast on draw with that one. That was always his thing. I think he didn't makes a habit of trying to crack Tony up when they're on camera. And this is why the moment spring just almost gets him. It's great. It's very close. Yeah.
01:09:44
Speaker
Steamboat runs into Austin on a leapfrog, catches him, lowers him safely, and rolls over for two. I think that was a botch, but Steamboat recovered so fast from it. It's really impressive work.
01:09:57
Speaker
Steamboat earns two with a slam, but Austin slams him, knee drops him, and rubs his face on the mat, mocking him between strikes. Steamboat beckons for more, absorbs several strikes, then catapults Austin to the turnbuckle for two, but Austin gets two with a swinging neckbreaker, then eight two-counts and one one-count after smashing Steamboat's face to the mat hard.
01:10:18
Speaker
I like with that segment that he actually, he really changes up the way he's pinning him between each of the pinfalls. So he's like really trying everything he can to get this guy to stay down. Yes. Austin chokes Steamboat on the ropes and jumps on his back, then waves Steamboat's hand at the camera. Moments later, I swear you can hear Austin tell Steamboat, let's finish strong. I think so, yeah. Yeah.
01:10:42
Speaker
Just a little bit too loud there, Austin. Steamboat counters a charge with a stun gun, and they brawl outside. Back in, Steamboat double chop gets two, and Austin repeatedly hurls him over the top rope, but Steamboat skins the cat back in so Austin can't get himself dequeued. Steamboat gets two with roll-ups and a flipping pin.
Steamboat vs. Austin: A Wrestling Showcase
01:11:02
Speaker
Austin tombstone pile driver countered by Steamboat, countered by Austin, and finally again by Steamboat, as the crowd loses their minds.
01:11:10
Speaker
So amazing spot. Just incredible how smoothly they managed to do that. I didn't think that Steamboat could one up the walk up the body during the tombstone pile driver spot from his match against Rude. But this absolutely blows that out of the water. Yeah, it's quite good.
01:11:28
Speaker
Austin shoves the ref in the way of a top rope move, but Steamboat avoids him. Steamboat begs the ref not to disqualify Austin and cross bodies Austin, but Austin rolls through for two, then puts his feet on the ropes for the three count and the win. Austin beats it to the boos of the crowd as Steamboat sits stunned in the ring and finally, dejectedly makes his own exit. Heaton claims Austin accidentally got his feet hooked on the ropes there. Tony says, maybe it was that trick knee again.
01:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, right. Thoughts on this one? This is a really strong match. Again, it's they do a great job of being very competitive because there's a tendency you could get, especially with the going for real sort of cowardly heel, like Austin turns into, especially by the end, a tendency to make them just serve always on the back foot. Like they, you know, they can do a low blow to get advantage, but they can't hold it because they're just not, you know, not as good as the face.
01:12:24
Speaker
But in this one, obviously, Steamboat ultimately has the advantage. That's why he has to cheat to win. But he fights Steamboat really not valiantly because it's his personality, but really strong throughout the match. It's even contest in a lot of places. He feels like a capable performer. He doesn't feel like he's beneath Steamboat as far as his fighting ability. Yeah. Even at the point where
01:12:48
Speaker
That amazing two it's a reversal spot it's not simply just hang over tombstone and team but we're versing it here versus the back and the team but just versus again yeah exactly they're both perfectly capable of pulling off that reversal yeah right like i say each show good amounts of variety to body work and how they can strike as well which is nice.
01:13:10
Speaker
It's interesting to this point in career because we have this and we had the previous month match with Steamboat. I think it's Steamboat and Flare if I have the timeline right on this one.
01:13:19
Speaker
on Spring Stampede. Yeah, a couple months ago, but OK, yeah, but the earlier she had recent show. You can see Steamboat sort of evolving his offense a bit in a match. That's the one where he sort of hints at heel aspects because flair is getting cheered so much by the to the hometown crowd. Yeah, he starts doing the really aggressive Steamboat to the point that Tony says, I think he was going to hit him with a chair there and you're like actually able to buy it.
01:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, like in this match, they're surprised when they see the double-handed choke spot, but he definitely does that in that flare match. And likewise, he's doing a lot more strikes, sort of vicious strikes, like, you know, down the ground and striking the side. So it's not just like the chops to get space or close lines to knock him down. It's neat to see or seeing his style evolve to what wrestling does eventually come into a lot more in the upcoming years. Yeah. Even if he doesn't necessarily get to take part in all that, unfortunately.
01:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely feels like this is an evolved Ricky Steamboat that, like I said, he's got a little bit more viciousness to him, but not in such a way that you actually take him as a heel versus Austin. No. It just feels like he's that ticked off at Austin, basically, in this one. Exactly, yeah.
01:14:27
Speaker
Austin's really great here as well. He plays cowardly, but they want to get to the advantage. He's super full himself. The bit where he knocks down steamboat and it goes instead of going for a pen or even going for pushing more offense, he goes and celebrates on the on the ropes of the crowd and boo. He starts like mocking steamboats like martial arts. He poses and stuff. He is an absolutely wonderfully insufferable jerk in this match. It's great.
01:14:55
Speaker
For him, there's definitely evolution as well. I've had mixed feelings towards his stuff, like his single stuff, because we, again, in the previous show it was him and Muda, which I didn't like as much as this one, unfortunately. I can see, you can get, you can see him evolving from a sort of less exciting sort of technical wrestler, which obviously, people forget he has this technical wrestling experience, because people think of Stone Cold, you know, just punching and punching and punching. He has the neck injury and just can't do that anymore. Yeah. Right. People kind of forget he could do that.
01:15:24
Speaker
It's the balance of how much is just you being a really fun, hateable character, but not integrating that into your style, like two, two separate things. Not to compare Austin to, to buff Bagwell, but he's a example of someone that never fully integrates his persona as much into his wrestling as he would hope, for instance.
01:15:46
Speaker
I like that you can see his growth this way. He's really put it all together. Yeah. And obviously it helps working a match with Steamboat, but he's no slouch in this match at all.
Steamboat's Career Reflections
01:15:56
Speaker
Yeah. This is kind of like you're, you're seeing the developed Austin post Hollywood blondes having enough distance from that that he's been able to take the elements of his Hollywood blondes character that he liked and keep them, but then make it a deeper and more well-rounded character. Exactly. Yeah.
01:16:13
Speaker
I also like the way they sort of built the ending up. Even though it is still, the heal gets a cheap pendant to win. I like the way that they sort of build that. He was trying to get disqualified. I do question a little bit. I get the ideas. Okay, so Steamboat's feet didn't hit the floor, so it's not disqualification. I feel like you can, you can go after intent there.
01:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, it would have been nice if they had Steamboat also visibly ask Anderson not to do it at that point. Yeah, it feels like when they do it without that moment that it is a legit loophole. If you just skin the cat, if you hold on to the ropes, it's not as qualification, apparently. Yeah.
01:16:52
Speaker
And maybe, I mean, I can see that if the idea of the DQ is the guy is probably injured, we need to call the match. Then I can see that being the case. But like you said, you can probably judge from intent as well. But yeah, I think it comes off as Anderson's being patient with Austin until he just finally can't take it anymore. And that's what Steve has to jump in and say, no, no, no.
01:17:12
Speaker
I do. I do love during that moment, by the way, when Steamboat is just about to jump in and beg him not to DQ Austin, that Anderson is yelling at Austin. Austin is fully acknowledging everything he did and basically saying, yes, I should be DQ. Yes, I should be DQ because he wants that. Yes. But it's just like he's you watch him and it just looks absolutely amazing him just nodding his head as Anderson's threatening to DQ. Yeah.
01:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, so as much as I really wanted to see Steamboat win the title here, because it's his biggest Steamboat and he works hard and deserves it, I get appreciated at least that they subverted the idea. Because you think after all these times of trying to get disqualified and escape with the title, unfairly he would then lose, like it all backfires. But then he gets a cheap roll up and wins. Yeah, it's a really good finish. It is, yeah. Yeah, this was an excellent match, as you would very much expect from these two.
01:18:05
Speaker
Steamboat is full of fire for this one and Austin is so tremendously smug and punchable. I do feel like the arm work maybe goes on a little bit too long, Steamboat surprisingly doesn't vary his holds too much, but to his credit Steamboat does really wrench on the arm bar throughout and when he detects the crowd getting restless he ups the intensity and changes things up.
01:18:26
Speaker
Aside from that though, lots of good striking, great counters, and some excellent and surprising stunts that triple counter pile driver, my goodness, made this a really fun watch. I love the finish too. It evades the cheap DQ and cheap distraction finish, moving past both those possible disappointments into a good, solid, if heelish pinfall. Very, very good match.
01:18:50
Speaker
One other thing I would say is we discussed this with the Steamboat Rude match. There's a thing that you don't see as much in modern wrestling, for better or worse, because, you know, pool debates all the time. There's little pauses to let the audience see something happen. So like in that pile-dover spot, for instance, it'd be easy in the sense
01:19:11
Speaker
to do that quickly. Like, he reverses, oh, reverse back, and it'll, from the mindset of, let's really throw a message there on his head, because we'll reverse it like three times in a row quickly, then we'll know what's going on. But what they do here is they reverse it, they make a show of sort of kicking their legs and their body around, and then the reversal over is a little bit slower, but still fast enough to save lives. You can't go too slow with a reversal like that.
01:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's just exactly the right speed where it seems fast, but you also have time to acknowledge what's happening. Exactly. The crowd can go, oh, no, Austin, get the powder. Oh, yeah. Steamboats can get the powder. Oh, no, Austin, you know, it is little touches like that. Steamboat has matches that maybe some people don't do anymore, which is unfortunate. That is one of my favorite spots that we have watched in our show. Just absolutely amazing.
01:20:05
Speaker
Unfortunately, this is a very historically notable match for all the wrong reasons. So what happens is at the next class of champions, there is a rematch between Austin and Steamboat. See what actually does win the U.S. title of that match, which is great, but unfortunately he injured his back in that match. And he forged away, seems like it could be a temporary retirement, but fortunately is not a temporary retirement. This leads to him not wrestling another match at pay-per-view again, at least, until 2008. Yeah. Which he makes them rack.
01:20:36
Speaker
It's a really impressive comeback after a long layoff for the tag match and a singles match against Chris Jericho in the WWE. Yeah, additional age and ring rust should work against him and just doesn't seem to. Yeah. So yeah, unfortunately, this is the last time we're going to see Steamboat in the series because of that.
01:20:54
Speaker
Which is a shame, I kind of, see with all the guys, we'll talk about, you know, wrestlers that missed a storyline, like, or an angle because of injury, like, you know, Triple H being hit right before the invasion storyline happened, for instance. Crispin wiles the same way.
01:21:09
Speaker
I'm genuinely curious. The ender didn't happen. What happened with Steamboat hanging around into 96 and 97? Oh my gosh, yeah. I really want to see what that'd be like. Wouldn't we get a Steamboat in Hogan fighting for the title? I could genuinely see Steamboat being just a fascinating character to
01:21:28
Speaker
to have involved in that angle on WCW's side. I can also see a really interesting edge case given his harsher edge that he's trying to bring to the character with these last couple appearances, like you said at Spring Stampede. I could genuinely see them saying, hey, why don't we play with the idea of
01:21:45
Speaker
nWo steamboat, you know, he finally gets fed up enough with flares antics or something like that, that that causes him to snap. I don't know how you do it exactly. But yeah, like I could actually see that's the one way you could maybe make Ricky Steamboat heal and make people actually buy it. Yeah, that's that's interesting. That was that way.
01:22:05
Speaker
But yeah, even if you did the more obvious and probably honestly better approach and had Steamboat as a WSW stalwart during that, there's so many fascinating possibilities. Yeah. I think Steamboat versus Hogan would be neat, but Steamboat versus Kevin Nash would be quite cool too, actually. You have Steamboat and Flare, for instance, teaming up to challenge the outsiders. Yeah, yeah. The tag titles, yeah.
01:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's some genuinely fascinating possibilities. It's such a shame that because as you noted, he's like developing his character to to be able to work with what wrestling is becoming while not losing the heart of his character. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's it's such a shame that we don't reach the point when wrestling has this this harder edge that that he seems to have foreseen was coming in and be able to adapt himself to.
01:22:55
Speaker
So, unfortunately, that creates a vacancy, or at least a question about vacancy for the US title. If Dean Bo is injured and can't wrestle, what's gonna happen with the title? Well, for all you'll find out and probably not be happy. If you're me, you won't be happy. Story for another show.
01:23:14
Speaker
Tony calls
Promos and Tag Team Dynamics
01:23:15
Speaker
up more footage of Cruz and Tine talking to folks for the hotline, in this case, pretty wonderful. Paul Orndorf and Paul Roma. 1-900-909-9900. Hienan asks Tony to pick a winner in the tag title match. Tony picks Jack and Sullivan as they're unpredictable and it's impossible to defend against them. Hienan says, it's easy to defend against them, you just put them in the straight jackets that they're used to wearing.
01:23:40
Speaker
Tony throws to Mean Gene Okerlund, who is at Colonel Robert Parker's party in the back.
01:23:49
Speaker
Hey, wait a minute, I've got credentials. I've got credentials, I can go anywhere. What do you want in here? I want to talk better. This is a private party here. As you can see, we smoking cigars, drinking beer, and drinking some champagne. Hold this glass up for me, geez. Watch this hunger right here. We're going to pop the top here, boy. Whoo!
01:24:17
Speaker
Hey, I'm not that Arm Anderson.
01:24:19
Speaker
Number one man right there, brother. A real gentleman. That's the man I want to talk to. Anderson. He's our star. Let me say one thing. We was coming back from the ring and his kid leaped over. He leaped right under the top of the railing and he came up to me. He dropped to me and he had me like this. He said, why did you do that? Why did you do that for Dustin Rhodes? He's such a great wrestling entertainer. And I kicked him away from me and I said, his daddy was too.
01:24:55
Speaker
You know, it's very few time you make a agreement with a man and you can trust him and his honor. And I won't say this, I want a toast right now. I want everybody with their glass in the air to toast one of the most honorable facts.
01:25:17
Speaker
That is the most disgusting thing and honest to God I've ever seen. Gene Oakland, less than a year ago, I was laying in a hospital bed in England. Beat, I trust you Colonel. I'm sure it's all in order. I know you do. I was laying in a hospital bed. Beat has to death.
01:25:37
Speaker
right down the hall for me was my constituent beat half to death. And I thought, for what? I'm not a crusader. I'm not gonna lay up here beat half to death to represent what I think is right. I'm gonna do what I think is right. Dustin Rose, I told you, if you wanted me to be in the match, you would have to take the old on Anderson.
01:25:59
Speaker
The old line Anderson, who would smack his granny in the mouth for 50 cents, you said fine, whatever it takes. Well, Dustin knows you got him tonight. You made a pact with the devil, and the devil called his marker in a little bit. Thank you, gentlemen. Apparently, friendship and trust doesn't mean anything. In this cesspool, let's get back to you. Ladies, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
01:26:26
Speaker
Quite a nice chaotic atmosphere to this segment. You really gotta cross the feel of the group celebrating while happening to have an interview, rather than putting on an interview while supposedly celebrating. Yeah, I can see that. It's a subtle difference, but they manage it well. I'm sure it was pretty distracting to be cutting promos while people are hooting and hollering and interrupting and dumping champagne all over Arne and his pretty expensive looking glasses, which he rescues very quickly from the liquid.
01:26:53
Speaker
But Arne managed to keep his focus and deliver a neat promo, fully admitting that he's decided not to fight for what's right, but just pursue money. Mm hmm. Excellent heel work here. Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting to hear Arne pull in the aftermath of his legitimate fight with Sid Vicious at a hotel in England. Oh, that's true. I was thinking that's what he referenced. Yeah, I checked the timeline and that's that's exactly the time that it would have been happening is about a year prior. OK, there you go.
01:27:20
Speaker
And yes, that's the one that reportedly ended with the two stabbing each other with scissors, Sid being stabbed four times, Arne 20, and both blessedly surviving. Yeah. I do imagine that's the sort of thing that would make you think a lot about your life. I'm not sure I would have referenced that actual event in a promo myself, but it did let Arne pull in legitimate emotion.
01:27:39
Speaker
That's a good thing. He would do a lot later as well. He'd bring his own actual issues. He wants to be honest with people. Yeah. Rather than just being on his character and saying, well, here's the story of why I'm upset or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you can see him thinking, well, everyone kind of knows that this happened. So I might as well do something with it.
01:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's not overt, like that terrible moment with Eric Bischoff. Yes. Dude, that was like, you get your scissors, Sid, and the crowd has no reaction. He thinks, oh, maybe they didn't hear me. So he says it again. And it's like, nope, the audience is not people that care about that or possibly know about that story. Yeah, I was wondering about the way that they keep interrupting. I feel like it's almost like a rib. Yeah, I can see that.
01:28:24
Speaker
I mean, Parker's thing is understandable. He's just going to show him the money, walking by. But then, yeah, Terry Funk actively pouring champagne on him is like, you guys are just trying to see if I can't get this promo, but I'm our Anderson. I can get to this promo. Yeah. But yeah, I love how quickly he snatches the glasses off his face because those things appear to be gold. Yes, yeah. I don't think he wanted it all drenched. No, he did not. It was a fun chaotic sort of promo there, wasn't it?
01:28:55
Speaker
I will say it's kind of funny as you discussed for the match, this is like a special, yeah, that was a special like tag team grudge event or whatever they called it, but no stakes. So, I mean, and they're celebrating just beating up Dustin Rhodes.
01:29:08
Speaker
Yeah. Now, I mean, I will say I feel like it makes sense in their perspective because they not only beat him up, they appear to have perhaps broken his arm and stuff. So I keep saying we may have gotten rid of our opponent, you know. So for heels, that feels legit. It felt less legit when Tony said, oh, it's probably the most important match of Rhodes's career. But from these guys perspective, they dealt a severe blow to Rhodes. This is a real victory for them. I can see that. Yeah, I'm with you.
01:29:38
Speaker
Our fifth match is Pretty Wonderful. That's Pretty Paul Roma and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff versus Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan with Dave Sullivan for Jack and Sullivan's WCW World Tag Team Championship. The referee for this match is Nick Patrick.
01:29:55
Speaker
This is not especially an interesting case of how much things contain a different time and which thing we really get with our format where we go show to show in the series rather than shows in chronological order. Yes. So on the last time we featured people, we had Paul Roma as the newest member of the Horsemen, teaming with our Anderson as a face team to try to win the titles.
01:30:19
Speaker
And here we are at this point. Uh, he's now a heel and he's seen it with completely different and none of this force and stuff going on. Speaking of time the past on the previous show, pretty wonderful was in the dark match against the same people that were in the dark match on this show, Brian and Brad Armstrong. Oh, okay. So in about a two months band time, they've gone from opening dark match, sort of prove you guys have a proper tech and chemistry and can work together off TV to challenging for the world tag team titles. Okay.
01:30:49
Speaker
definitely a glow up as they say. Yeah. The other story of course is that it was supposed to be Kevin and Dave Sullivan, challenging for the WWE tag team titles, but in kayfabe positive reality, Dave Sullivan is injured and thus Cactus Jack comes in and they have that really good match where they fight everywhere and win the tag titles off Nasty Boys. Yeah. The shockingly good match against the Nasty Boys, as I recall. Uh, yes. Given their pedigree, it was a very realized surprise.
01:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, some offense to the guy, I guess. But can you imagine that match with Dave Sullivan instead of Cactus Jack? I don't want to know. I really don't. Or this match for that matter. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't want to do that. Yeah, no, no. I'm sure he's a lovely fellow in real life. I've never. Yes. I'm looking personally against him, but no, I don't see him.
01:31:40
Speaker
As far as the storyline, typically between the teams here, Pretty Wonderful's little stick is where big, good-looking guys and you guys are weird slubs, you know, when it used to be a druid, I think. You were hiding out in an island off of Florida. But here's us, we're so great, and Jax, a wheat tree champion, not you guys. Orndorff comes out in a nice black and gold robe, and Roma has a red and silver jacket.
01:32:06
Speaker
Ordorf's robe is just super glittery, though not as much as the floor still is. True. Tony complains about Arne and company celebrating with champagne after trying to break a guy's arm, and Hina agrees that that is wrong. They should have had caviar as well. Nice. I love Bobby Hina. He's so good. Jack and the Sullivan's are out next. Kevin Sullivan is billed as formerly residing in Singapore, now Daytona Beach this time.
01:32:34
Speaker
Okay, that's a big commute. Yeah, yeah, just a bit. Brother Dave, the former equalizer, wears a Hulkamania shirt. Orndorff and Roma out wrestle Kevin and Jack in turn, pausing after each move to brag. That's no good, Jack Mudders. Soy bites Roma.
01:32:53
Speaker
Roma still brags as he dodges Kevin later, so Jack headbutts him despite Orndorf's attempts to warn him. Orndorf in to land nasty strikes to Kevin, but Jack uses his own body to shield Kevin from a corner-to-corner whip. Roma tries the same to Orndorf moments later, but Kevin just switches corners, and Jack knees Roma, who, credit to him, sends himself absolutely skyward on that. He does, yeah. Pretty wonderful retreat outside.
01:33:20
Speaker
Back in, Orndorff lands nasty strikes to knock Jack out of the ring, but outside, Jack and Kevin knock him flat. Orndorff ends up near the steps, and Jack at first seems like he'll dive at him, but either Orndorff ends up out of position, or Jack decided diving over the steps is a bad idea, so he just rolls Orndorff back in. I feel like it's the ladder. Yeah.
Pretty Wonderful's Match Highlights
01:33:41
Speaker
You can see he's sort of gauging, and he's like, uh, no.
01:33:45
Speaker
Yeah, though it is actually surprising to see a stunt that Cactus Jack decides is a bad idea. Yeah. Tells you how crazy those steps' location are. Mm-hmm. They land heavy strikes on each other with the only hammerlock coming from Jack, astonishing Heenan. Roma and Orndorff trade in and out, gradually wearing Jack down and making sure to keep hold of him even on tags. But eventually he escapes and tags Kevin, who charges across the ring with an, eeeeh! Funniest noise ever.
01:34:16
Speaker
and rams both Orndorff and Roma into the turnbuckle a few times, then double stomps Orndorff for two. Kevin and Jack trade off working Orndorff's arm as the crowd starts up a wave. Hienan sarcastically praises them as only 14 years behind the times. As wrestling references go, that's pretty decent then. Yeah, that's true. It's right on time.
01:34:38
Speaker
Orndorff escapes with an eye rake and tags Roma. Everybody into Brawl, and Patrick and Tony get mixed up as to who the legal men are, so Orndorff gets two with a pile driver as Dave puts Kevin's foot on the ropes. Kevin actually already reached another rope, but clearly wasn't supposed to, so he quickly takes his foot back down. Yeah, that confused me a bit. I was like, wait, what's going on for that one? Yeah, I think he thought he was further from the ropes than he was, so... Oh, okay.
01:35:03
Speaker
Roma takes over and Hienen is just praising his agility for springing up to the second rope when he slips off. Bad timing there. He does quickly recover at least.
01:35:14
Speaker
Roma and Orndorff trade off, sometimes without tags, and earn two counts with a Roma top rope elbow drop, Orndorff wobbly kneed forearm drop that mystifies Tony, and a Roma elbow drop. But Kevin dodges a swan dive splash and tags Jack as Roma tags Orndorff. Jack beats the crap out of Orndorff, and Kevin disposes of Roma, who visibly throws himself out of the ring. Yes, I see that.
01:35:37
Speaker
Jack hits the double arm DDT to Orndorff, but Patrick is dealing with Roma and Kevin. Dave accidentally distracts Patrick further while trying to call his attention. So Roma trips Jack from outside and holds his legs as Orndorff pins Jack for the three count and the win. Roma and Orndorff pose with their new belts. They have a nice synchronized pose there too. And Hienan is happy, but says he hopes there won't be a new champ in the next match.
01:36:06
Speaker
I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but WSW has taken to using beach themed CG to go to and from replays and the like, and I love them for it. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah, they have like a shark go by at one point of surfboard at another point. I think the spinny beach ball coming back from this replay is particularly fun. Oh, yeah, that one. That's good. I appreciate it. Like they've done a great job on this series so far, much like Spring Stampede of having the set design and all the graphics and everything be very on
Crowd Anticipation for Hogan
01:36:33
Speaker
theme. Yeah.
01:36:34
Speaker
I'm a little disappointed that they dropped the commentary's dressing for the beach, though. Yes, that is true. That's something we missed from the previous years. Yes. Thoughts on this one? It's a good match, but there's a few key problems I would say. I don't think the styles of these two teams meshed as well as I think on paper it sounded like they would. Orndorf has this real deliberate deception of his weird dancy wobbly knee thing.
01:37:01
Speaker
It's very deliberate, old school style, which I think works, I think it works with high-energy opponents. So it works well when he's fighting someone like Mudafringe in that match we got with him in 95. I will say, you mentioned this on the last show, calling on that match as a positive. I went back and listened to our commentary on that match, and you were not very in favor of that match at the time. I can change. I'm allowed to evolve, the person. That was just an easy example I had for that, I think, is really what it is.
01:37:30
Speaker
And Roma, we got him last show. He didn't do anything bad, but he's very middle of the road for the most part, I'd say. With the exception of the part where he tries to climb up the top rope without looking at it and slipping into his credit recovery.
01:37:46
Speaker
Genuinely, genuinely, that followed a genuinely nice spring up onto the second rope. He made that look easy and did it great. I wouldn't have even noticed it if it wasn't for the fact that he didn't chose that exact moment to say, that Roma, so agile. He was like, oh, just poor diving.
01:38:06
Speaker
they sort of tried to mix with each other a bit. Like you got a lot of striking, I thought with Orner, which was fine, but it's the whole thing didn't quite come together as much as I would like it to.
01:38:19
Speaker
There's very slight miscues here and there, like, or just question about what's going on. Like, you mentioned that with Cactus Jack where he's going to jump off and it doesn't. Yeah. There's those things here that there's never a real bocce moment or obvious like giveaway bits. But again, there's the part with Palermo where he takes like a punch and throws himself over the ropes. Like he's expecting a bigger strike or something. Yeah, it feels like there's just a few moments, not many, but just a few moments in this match where they're visibly not on the same page as each other.
01:38:47
Speaker
This kind of style clash match works when there's a real clear distinction and like one side is like either really fast style like if you have tactical wrestlers like we have Demolinko for instance is a great example of this and we'd have these cruiserweights that when they're kind of fighting back they can do these good flips and run real fast and all these real fast counters or you get the real explosive people and I didn't quite get as much as I thought from this. I don't think this is a bad match it just
01:39:16
Speaker
The problem is this match goes almost exactly as long as the Steamboat Austin match. And it's just not as much interesting content. Yeah.
01:39:25
Speaker
The timing of the finish was a little off too because for it to work, Nick Patrick has to not see Paul Roma and originally he's just standing up on the floor. Very visible if you look straight ahead for the pin like you should be doing for as a referee. He then drops down below the apron out of sight after he would have clearly been seen.
01:39:46
Speaker
Yeah, true. It's not a major thing. I think what they're trying to do is just sort of show that they can get a sneaky pin, which is kind of the theme of the show in a lot of ways. Again, the timing is just a little off and just very slight miscues throughout. The biggest issue is that they kind of lose the crowd during the match.
01:40:04
Speaker
Which I don't think is 100% their fault. And it's not that they're being critical of the match, but I'm not saying that it's a bad match and that's why the crowd doesn't care. I think the issue with the show, at least as far as the crowd is, when you saw Steamboat counter, as you mentioned, in the previous match.
01:40:21
Speaker
is so much of the crowd is really here to see Hogan. I mean, obviously they enjoy parts of the show. They pop for big moments or they boo for characters and such, but the fact that there's no Hogan siding at all, you're not even like a backstage promo. This is true. Yeah.
01:40:37
Speaker
crowd gets Antica's they want to see Hogan if they've done a promo like say between the last match and this match where Hogan does his usual hoganism and talks about he's gonna win brother and yeah Jack and all that stuff even a short promo would have appeased a crowded bit and they go okay we know we gotta watch this match then Hogan's coming out
01:40:55
Speaker
You've attracted a new audience, but you haven't quite fulfilled their expectations yet. Yeah. The other thing I'll say is, well, I'm not the biggest fan of pretty wonderful this as a whole. I think they are the right team to be champions going forward because the audience they're really getting with Hogan and, you know, the Hogan affiliate people is used to the sort of classic cocky heel tag team thing that dynamic.
01:41:22
Speaker
I think this live crowd doesn't know quite what to make of Sullivan and Jack, which maybe is another factor in how they react to it as a whole. I think it's our move going forward to have these sort of classic cocky heel characters there as champions for whoever the next popular team is to come and win the belt off them. That's fair enough, yeah. Yeah. Right team for the right time.
01:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think I generally agree that this felt a little long for the variety that it had. It did have some nice twists and turns to it, though. I liked the inversion of types that they had here. I actually didn't feel like they had too much of a clash of styles. Instead, I felt like this one, much like I now forget which match we talked about earlier on it.
01:42:04
Speaker
Oh, uh, the Johnny be bad and regal match. You were mentioning how they kind of adapt to each other's styles a bit. I kind of felt that with this one too, that you notice, uh, Orndorff and Roma doing a lot more striking than they normally do. And Orndorff in particular look great. Like really, really vicious forearm shots in particular, though Roma also to his credit has like one part where he just like stomps the everloading crap out of someone in the corner, as I recall.
01:42:30
Speaker
I believe I believe that shack. Yeah. Yeah. So they did tell a good story here of both teams going beyond their comfort zones. And Orndorf and Roma probably ultimately being the better team, but just being too arrogant for their own good time and again.
Hogan vs. Flair: A Dream Match
01:42:43
Speaker
So I didn't really feel like I had as much trouble with the clash of styles. And I just, I definitely agree that it was, it was maybe a few minutes too long. It gets a bit repetitive. Yeah. The ending is a little bit too busy, but it does largely work.
01:42:58
Speaker
I'm not sure if it was planned or a lucky accident, but I like that Dave on a crutch kind of ends up in Kevin's way as they're both rushing to try and stop it. I think that's intentional. Yeah. So it nicely explains why Kevin can't make it on time. Yeah. I think overall I did like this and I enjoyed pretty wonderful as he'll work, but there's just not quite enough move variety for a 20 minute match. That's all. I agree with that. Yeah. Make this 15 minutes and I think you got a real winner. Yeah. Like I could see that.
01:43:28
Speaker
Going forward, the champs would continue to be facing the new teams of WCW. In this case, they would be fighting the Laze tag team with Marcus Bagwell, Stars and Stripes. Nice. Which is Marcus Bagwell and the Patriot, Del Wilkes. Yes. Before his more famous run in WWF, Challenging Bright Heart. Now I have to take place at Fall Brawl.
01:43:49
Speaker
Unfortunately, on the other side, the now former champions implode on each other due to a lot of issues going between Dave Sullivan and Kevin and Jack, which leads to a Loser Leaves WCW match on Fall Brawl between Kevin Sullivan and Cactus Jack. I wonder who's going to lose, he says knowingly.
01:44:14
Speaker
Tony talks up Hogan vs. Flair, and says he's wanted to see this for years, as the match fans have always waited for. He has Henan his thoughts, and Henan says, one way or another, it'll be a new era. He says whichever way it goes, people will claim they knew it would go that way, but he says if Hogan beats Flair, it's a fluke.
01:44:35
Speaker
Tony says everyone at WSW is thrilled to have Hogan here and Hienen quickly denies that. Hienen continues ranting as Tony tries to promote the match. This is so good. I'm just going to play it. OK.
01:44:48
Speaker
We are thrilled to be bringing you the match that everybody wanted to see. Hulk Hogan, the Hulkster, and the millions of Hulkamaniacs all around the world, waiting for his return to the ring against the man who has been the standard in world championship wrestling, the Nature Boy, Ric Flair. You know, this is the match I've always wanted to see. Not Hogan and Flair, but I've always wanted to see Hogan made a fool of.
01:45:12
Speaker
And this is the man to do it. It's just a shame. It's just a shame that I have to sit here and watch these humanoids cheer Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan should have a broom in his hand, sweep in this arena. That's what he should be doing. And you should be very proud. You should be very happy that we are at ringside, able to call the greatest match in the history of professional wrestling.
01:45:36
Speaker
You'd rather be here than doing a World Series, than doing a Super Bowl, than doing a Stanley Cup. Well, so would I. Because I'm going to love it. When Hogan walks out of this building tonight, and 20-some thousand people are chanting, loser, loser, loser, I'm going to feel good inside. Then I'm going to go to Buck Snort, I'm going to hang around with Terry Funk, Arne Anderson, and I'm going to have myself a glass of the bubbly. How do you like that, Shavani? And you can go home and have your little warm cup of Ovaltine and a cookie.
01:46:06
Speaker
I love the Ovaltine in a cookie line. Yeah. Absolutely epic work from here and there. Just great. Tony throws to Michael Buffer for our final match. Only six matches on this show, thank goodness. Yeah. I love it when they give me a reasonable number of matches on the show as opposed to like 14. Oh, man, that was that show. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's our third Spring Stampede 2000 reference tonight. Yeah, I think so.
01:46:36
Speaker
leave scars, man. It does. Our final match is Hulk Hogan with Mr. T and the mouth of the South Jimmy Hart versus the nature boy Rick Flair with Sensuous Sherry for Flair's WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The referee for this batch is Randy Anderson.
01:46:55
Speaker
So two things happened in the early part of this year that are very important. One, Hulk Hogan announced he was going to come to the company. So the second thing is that Rick Flair had become a heel stat. Yes.
01:47:08
Speaker
As such, they did an angle where he would unify slash get rid of the WCW International title fighting Sting at a previous class of champions to become the only champion WCW. And top of that, they set this angle that Sherry might be helping Sting, but then she turns on him to make sure you know that Flair is definitely the bad guy here as champion.
01:47:32
Speaker
Because as we noted before, there's an interesting dynamic with the heal on faces in that match with Ricky Steamboat and Flare. Flare getting cheered by a lot of people. This is sort of the, we respect you cheering even while he's healed. But they gotta make sure they don't get any of that because we need the pure adulation for Hogan. I don't even mean that sarcastically, you need that for the story. You need the worst possible person character-wise to fight Hogan so you get the proper action.
01:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, Hogan is a superhero face, so you need a supervillain for him to face, yeah. Exactly. At this stage in Hogan's career, you can't do the shades of gray approach, really. No. They're about a year from trying that, yeah. Yeah, you get there. You get there, but at this stage, not there. They do tease how Hogan's appearance earlier in the company.
01:48:18
Speaker
Colonel Rob Parker, when he's putting up his opponent against Flair on a show before this, teases a like, I think it's a six foot six or six or seven for a blonde world champion. Right, right. And you're like, oh, that Hogan is that Hogan and then it's Barry Windham. Yeah. Which was a good match. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, they didn't well for Barry Windham, but it's funny that they were teasing that beforehand. The one question they have outside of kayfabe or I guess in kayfabe rather is why Hogan me like a tell shot?
01:48:49
Speaker
I always say the answer is he's Okogan, you want the biggest match possible, but I guess just being a champion somewhere else means you gotta fight for their top belt in the company immediately with no warm-up matches at all. I'm sure you're fine.
01:49:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, I mean, obviously, like you said, outside, it's, I think Bischoff is feeling like they're in a bit of a desperate situation. He needs to do the biggest possible thing he can with Hulk Hogan right away to see if they can get a good return on this investment and attract the sponsors and everything that they were planning on doing. But yeah, in kayfabe, I guess the idea is we are acknowledging his prominence as a fighter.
01:49:24
Speaker
that this is a world traveled fighter who has won multiple world titles. We're not mentioning where, but we are mentioning he's a multiple time world champion. He's still only half players total or less, which is kind of amusing. Yeah, it's like already at 12, isn't it? Yes. I feel like I can buy that that it looks like they signed this as this is a big fight. Right. The premise in and out of character is that we are bringing this guy in explicitly to challenge for the world title.
01:49:54
Speaker
No, yeah. I totally get business sense why they did it. I think all things being equal, if business was going better for WCW and they could have had time to wait, you could have built up some strong heel and say so-and-so is the number one contender for Flair's title, even knowing you're never going to have the match. Probably got to prove himself in WCW, you want to say. So he's going to fight, say, Vader or someone else.
01:50:19
Speaker
and beat them, hopefully not Vader, because I like Vader. True. But someone like a Vader caliber guy and Hogan wins them a contender and then you build up, oh no, Flair has two, three months of, oh, now Hogan's coming for my title. I'm going to blah, blah, blah. All the stuff you recently crammed in a short amount of time with this signing and right to title match just for a little more time. So I get why they did it. At the same time, it would be nice if they could have built up to Hogan and Flair more. But at the same time, and a lot of wrestling fans, mine at this point,
01:50:50
Speaker
that I've had to build up for 10 years. So I can't fully fault them for doing it. I want to say build it up more, I get why. Yeah, I guess that is the legitimate question is how much build do you actually need for Hogan versus Flair when Tony rightfully points out this has been a dream match for fans for close to a decade? Yeah.
01:51:10
Speaker
Which is why it's so shocking that they don't really get that when Flair comes over the WWF. It's kind of a difference in the company's approaches, right? That WCW is willing to acknowledge, at the very least, that Hogan is a multi-time world champion, has had this legendary career, even if they don't quite say where it is and all that stuff. Where when Flair comes over to WCW, they acknowledge that he is currently champion, but they don't necessarily tell you just how storied a career this man has had.
01:51:39
Speaker
They don't get as big a reaction as they're hoping for, I think. Yeah. In a way, you could probably argue that there's parallels to what the WWF did in Hogan's second run of the company, because people forget his first run when he said heel. With Face Hogan in 83, they go very quickly from Hogan is redoing the company to Hogan fights Iron Cheek and wins the title.
01:52:01
Speaker
So they're somewhat guilty of the same thing, but it's more noticeable on this one because this first match in the company is, boom, right for the title. I'd pay for a few. And to be fair, even for that, that's him coming in off the strength of him becoming famous nationwide for his role in Rocky III. And again, it's him coming in as an already known quantity. Exactly. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing with Hogan that he has done that multiple times, come in already in a strong position, not needing to be built up, really.
01:52:31
Speaker
Yeah, of course the irony too is Hogan is fired by Vince's dad for doing Rocky III, which then makes him the big star, which gets him this immediate comeback. So the thing that gets him fired gets him this biggest promotion as well. Yeah. Life is just weird that way sometimes. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Special game sports, yeah. Michael Buffer introduces the match and calls out one of the executives of the WCW.
01:53:00
Speaker
Commissioner Nick Bachwinkle. There's a bit of a delay, so Buffer just introduces him again. I'm guessing that they were trying to wrangle all the people backstage, because there's quite a lot of people that have to come out for this. Yes, that's probably what it is. Buffer introduces Shaq next, and he gets big cheers. Shaq, of course, was playing for the Orlando Magic at the time, so it makes sense that the crowd is quite a bit in love with him. Yes. He is there to present the belt to the winner. Flair comes out first, despite being champion.
01:53:30
Speaker
He is accompanied by Sherry, who gets a silvery strand from the entryway caught on her arm, so just does a really nice pose with it and drops it behind her. Good improv there. That was really good, yeah. Yeah. You can tell when someone is a veteran and is like, they're not caught up garb I think with that. It's a nice touch. Yeah, that was just great. Flare gets a lot of cheers, but also quite a lot of boos too. I think folks are reacting to him as a heal, but also as a WSW stalwart. Yeah.
01:53:57
Speaker
Hogan's entrance to new theme, American Made, gets a roar of cheers, though you can definitely hear some boos mixed in as an undercurrent. So again, lots of folks treating him as the face or just excited to see him, but then others reacting to him as an intruder into WCW. Yeah, I noticed throughout the show a couple of times.
01:54:15
Speaker
There's these two guys in suits and ties. During the first match, they're visibly cheering for Rigo when he comes out. And there's a point with, I believe it was Steamboat. They had like, disapproving faces out and they crossed their arms when Steamboat was by. They're being the, let's cheer the heel guys. They're the ECW fans. Yes, exactly. There's a bunch of them in the crowd.
01:54:39
Speaker
There's another dude in the front that I think later shows on the Seventh Day God created brick flare sign or something like that. Oh yeah yeah yeah. When Hogan impersonator guy shows off his Hogan action figure and stuff, he keeps reaching out like he's going to try and snatch it away and stuff. He doesn't actually do it, which is probably good because the Hogan impersonator guy looked quite large, but... Yeah, I want to think about that guy. He's back! Heenan says, like he's in Poltergeist.
01:55:05
Speaker
We see a little kid who later emerges as Hogan's son, Nick, in the crowd, as well as a different Hulk Hogan lookalike from the earlier one. That one is almost a dead ringer, I swear. Yeah. The guy, the red shirt. The red shirt, yeah. Looks like the look that he had around when he was doing No Holds Barred. Yes, yeah, that's it.
01:55:26
Speaker
Hogan tears his shirt, high fives Shaq, and soaks in the cheers. Spotting a Hulk rules sign in the crowd, Heenan says, not for long. Buffer goes way, way over the top, building up the batch. I'm just going to play it. Oh, please do.
01:55:46
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, just a few days, the world will celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in the history of the 20th century. Man's first steps on the surface of the moon. Tonight, a quarter of a century later, just miles from the very site where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were catapulted into outer space to meet their destiny. Tonight,
01:56:10
Speaker
Two of the greatest stars in the world of professional wrestling are about to collide. Ladies and gentlemen, from Orlando, Florida, let's get ready to rumble. I think that little pause in the middle there is Buffer realizing what he's saying as he's reading his cue card and doing a mental double take.
01:56:39
Speaker
Yes. What are you making me say? I'll be 100% with you. I was really tempted at one point while we watched in this, that segment to give him MVP for making it through that line without cracking up had to be so hard. So hard. I mean, yeah, he, he, he gets a good, good vote for me. And like credit records too. You were in that what 25,000 you get per show or worse. I'm just thinking about that too. Do you think Jimmy, Jimmy Hart wrote that?
01:57:08
Speaker
Oh, that could be. That really feels like Jimmy Hart thing. You can't possibly accuse WSW of not hyping this batch to the moon. Ah, I'll show myself out. Buffer does quite extended introductions of the competitors as well and those accompanying them and notes that tonight Hogan must put up or shut up.
01:57:37
Speaker
He also claims that Hogan has been out of wrestling for three years. No, that would be three months. Yeah. Where the hell does that number come from? I don't know. And they say it over and over. Yeah. So, yeah, he didn't. He he just felt a lot about that. He's been away for three years. There's no way you can keep up. Yeah. To be clear, Hogan last fought Tatsumi Fujinomi at New Japan for a wrestling 94 battlefield in April of 1994. So that's three months ago.
01:58:06
Speaker
Even leaving that aside, he lost the WWF title at King of the Ring 1993 only one year ago, and had several house show matches before leaving the WWF, and even if for some reason you ignore that, I don't know why you would, he had loads
Hogan's Triumph and Future Challenges
01:58:19
Speaker
of WWF matches earlier in 1993, including two, admittedly one was very short, at WrestleMania IX, and was the main event match of WrestleMania VIII in 1992, which is still only two years ago. Yeah.
01:58:31
Speaker
You could maybe, maybe argue it's been two years since he was a regular performer, as he doesn't have a ton of matches in 93 and 94, but to claim he's been away from wrestling entirely for three years is patently ridiculous. Yeah. You can't even claim that they're not acknowledging the time that Hogan was somewhere other than WCW, because Hogan has never been in WCW. Yeah, yeah, right?
01:58:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's one thing with like WWE now and Cody Rhodes where they kind of yada yada pass the time between when he left and has come back now. Right. But yeah, there's no there's no point where he was really part of WCW. It's not like they're ignoring a three year period where he was in WF because he was in there way longer than three years. Right. Yeah. They're specifically ignoring past WrestleMania seven for some reason. Yeah.
01:59:21
Speaker
Did they see the Hogan warrior match at WrestleMania six? And they were like, that was the whole Kogan we want to remember. I don't know. It's like, it's so weird. Yeah. It's like the act like that match, which with theory was the past, the torch situation for Hogan and warrior was like, like he was going to go away for a while and, you know, come back like a year later, which he didn't do obviously. Yeah. It's like they're acting where they remember he just cuts off there.
01:59:45
Speaker
And even that, I think you'd have to say four years then. To true. So they actually pick the wrong year. They, they act like his career ended when he fought Sergeant Slaughter. I can't, I can't imagine that that's the match that Hogan wants them to tie his career back to. I would think not. No, not at all.
02:00:02
Speaker
Yeah, why they thought that claiming that perhaps the most famous pro wrestler in existence at the time, or honestly, probably still, had been out of wrestling for three years, when it was patently obvious he had not, was a good idea, is beyond me. So much a reason why you want him, because he spent 10 years building up his name value and legacy and notoriety in WWF as, you know, Hogan brother, vitamins and all that stuff.
02:00:31
Speaker
So then act like that didn't happen, or at least some of that didn't happen. And the stuff that you're denying is stuff that would make him even more attractive as an opponent because he's officially a world-traveled wrestler now. You're denying his work in Japan. Yes. Which, by the way, you just highlighted people working in Japan earlier in the night. Yeah. It's so weird. Yes.
02:00:56
Speaker
Hogan easily overpowers Flair to start, so Flair accuses him of hair-pulling. Hienen praises Hogan so that Hienen will feel even better when Hogan loses. See? Hienen gets it. Flair dodges a lock-up and struts and woos, so Hogan cheekily does the same to a big cheer from the crowd and a glare from Flair. Flair repeatedly uses the hair to take Hogan down, but Hogan eventually resists and does the same to Flair. Hogan pulls out a cross-arm breaker.
02:01:26
Speaker
Sort of, yeah. It's not super smooth, but it's not bad. No, no. I'm prepared for trying it, yeah. Flare levers him onto his back for one. Flare repeatedly runs outside to hide behind Sherry whenever Hogan gets the advantage, so Hogan finally shoves her aside and chases him, only for Flare to ambush him with strikes. Hogan fires back, but Sherry grabs his leg from outside, and Flare knees the leg, then chops Hogan out of the ring. Heart saves Hogan from a Sherry chair shot.
02:01:53
Speaker
Back in, Hogan wins a slugfest, but Flair turns a collapse into a double leg takedown for one. Hogan clotheslines Flair for two, but Flair puts on a reverse chinlock that turns sleeper. Hogan's arm stays up on the third check. Hogan beats Flair up, in and out of the ring, but glittery Flair dodges the leg drop and Hogan hurts his leg.
02:02:13
Speaker
Flair goes for the figure four, and Hogan rolls him up for two, and kicks him away twice more, but Hogan is limping badly. This is the point where Hienan also claims that Hogan has not wrestled for two or three years. Hienan, you were there at King of the Ring 1993.
02:02:30
Speaker
Right. Inan was working with the RubyF until the end of 1993. Yes. When he left because he wanted to let her schedule for health reasons and then for his kids. And then when he realized that working at WSU would be a short drive from where their school was apparently. And he had to do less work and get paid lots of money. So yeah, overpowered him.
02:02:54
Speaker
Flair hits a tremendous stalling suplex on Hogan. Yes, yes, yes. Heenan yells. Hogan no cells. No, no, no. Heenan yells. That's all right. Hogan hits the big boot for two, but Sherry flings Anderson into the steel barricade, then clocks Jimmy Hart with her shoes, so presumably he'll be in the hospital until at least 1998. Yes.
02:03:17
Speaker
Flair chop blocks Hogan and Sherry hits a top rope splash. Doug Dellinger arrives with new ref Nick Patrick, as Flair slaps on the figure four leg lock. Hogan drags himself backwards and grabs the ropes. Flair takes his time breaking, earning a lecture from Patrick, so Sherry takes off her stocking and chokes Hogan with it, then breaks his eyes. Flair works the knee and mostly hits a back elbow, and he and Sherry go up top, but Hogan dodges Sherry's splash and Flair karma strikes.
02:03:46
Speaker
Hogan clotheslines Flair and clubs Sherry down. Sort of. Yeah, Sherry kind of looks like maybe she was a bit out of position. I kind of think that was maybe intended to be a double clothesline. Yeah, the way it looks like. Yeah, they're supposed to be spaced with Hogan in the middle. He hit him both at the same time. Yeah, does with what he can, basically. Yeah, it's funny. He has a little spin and sort of hits her on the side. She falls. Yeah. Maybe laugh. Hogan puts the figure four on Flair.
02:04:12
Speaker
Sherry to the apron and Hart warns Hogan so he breaks the hold and shoves her off the apron into Mr. T's arms, but she throws an object as Mr. T takes her away. Flair slugs Hogan with the object and hides it for two. Hienan audibly swears on the kick out. Hulk up, punch, punch, punch, whip, big boot, leg drop. Please, no, oh no, I'll do anything, Hienan begs.
02:04:39
Speaker
to no avail as Hogan gets the three count and the win. Hogan celebrates with heart as the crowd cheers wildly, fireworks go off, Shaq hands him the belt, Mr. T rejoins the team, and Heenan absolutely despairs. Heenan demands Tony tell him he's having a nightmare, but Tony shows no mercy, telling him it's real. Hogan does his posing to the various sides of the crowd as Chris Lemon holds Nick Hogan up in the crowd.
02:05:06
Speaker
We cut to Tony and Hienan for the replays, and Hienan just sits there moping, refusing to talk, as Tony tries to get him to call the replay, so Tony calls it instead. A dejected Ric Flair fan, at least gets his On the Seventh Day God Created Ric Flair and Hulk Who sign on camera, so at least you got your moment, buddy. There you go. Thoughts on this?
02:05:26
Speaker
I thought it was a pretty fun match. It's definitely a lot of it's a spectacle, I'd say, for better or worse. There's a lot of good technical work between both men, to be fair. I'll give Hogan credit for trying the armbar. Again, not the smoothest thing in the world. But yeah, you know, I now give credit to Vader doing the Sunset Flip. He really did that real well, either. So, fair is fair. Credit for trying different things.
02:05:52
Speaker
As you know, Hogan's work outside of the US, he did try to do more of that overseas in Japan. He tried to be more of a serious, hard-hitting wrestler there, which is a weird dynamic where he played two different versions of himself in different continents.
02:06:06
Speaker
The thing I liked about this is I've forgotten how much Flair really gets in here. Yes. Ultimately the story is still Flair can't keep Hogan down. So it's never a point where at any point Hogan and Flair are equals. That's never in question. As much as I don't like it, it worked for the story of Hogan again being the conquering superhero that all the kids are going to buy his phone fingers and everything. Even if I don't necessarily like it, I totally get why this booking is like this, at least at this point.
02:06:35
Speaker
This feels closer than you would expect to like a Flair versus Sting or a Flair versus Luger rather than a straight Hulk Hogan match. Yes. Yeah, it's definitely a very different Hogan match than if you went right in from WBF. Right. I think a lot of that credit goes to Flair. It definitely feels like a Flair match that Hogan is working a lot of time and then ultimately still goes to the Hulk Hogan spots.
02:06:59
Speaker
My one real critique of the match I'd say is I think they do just about every trick in pro wrestling as a heel against Hogan in this one single match. Didn't save anything for future. No, not at all. I mean, you have Sherry constant interference, choking, you have ref bumps, you've got the Wrestling Bios says the brass knuckles that look like brass knuckles, we'll call them brass knuckles. Yes. Credit to him for that wine because it's funny.
02:07:26
Speaker
when you even have the celebrity interference as well because you have Mr. T being involved in that. Think of Mr. T, he's both a good and really bad ringside enforcer. He's of no use at all when Hogan is getting kicked in the balls or being attacked on the outside or when Jimmy Hart's being attacked on the outside. He's really only there for the one spot to catch Sherry and even then he misses her throwing the object because that's part of the story.
02:07:55
Speaker
Yeah. Unfortunately, you know, there's some people that you bring in that do a good job of like doing their role constantly on the outside. And there's some people that you bring in and that seem to just like remember their one spot and do it. Yes. And it seems like at least in this case, you know, Mr. T is more of they told me one spot, I'm going to wait for that spot and I'm going to do it right. And he does it right. He does. Yeah. But yeah, you're just kind of like you could have been doing a lot more over the course of the match where up until that point, they kind of more leave it to Jimmy Hart.
02:08:24
Speaker
It has to be hard to get beat up by Sherry. He gets hit by the most lethal weapon in Pro Wrestling, the high-heeled Jew. Yeah, it's known to take out a wrestler's eye on multiple occasions in the coming years. Thank goodness he wears sunglasses. I mean, imagine what would happen if he didn't. That's very true.
02:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think my big issue is just that they did everything you could possibly do against Hogan, leaving nothing there for rematch. They're basically treating this Hogan Flair match as, here is the Hogan Flair match you're going to get. Yeah. Here's everything you possibly want to see.
02:09:02
Speaker
which if it really is the only one you ever get, then fine. I would have no real problem with that. But they do go on to do a feud. So it's less of a problem for this match and more of a problem for the matches that are gonna come afterwards.
02:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's a question of long-term versus short-term thinking. Yeah, yeah. Which I can, again, going back to what Bischoff had said, I can kind of see why WSW might not be into long-term thinking at this point, if they were really in as dire straits as he kind of says. But it doesn't mean it's a great idea necessarily.
02:09:34
Speaker
The other reason that that happened is when you want to do something for so long and so many ideas is built up over time, someone has to be there. It was a reason, like you have to, you need an R and Anderson guy to go, wait, you're going to do this spot and this spot and this spot. And just like read down the checklist. Like, I mean, Sherry uses like everything that she has on as a weapon throughout this match. Her shoes, tears, dog, and throat or her body. In fact, they do the successful splash and the successful splash in the same match.
02:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, it does feel like they're throwing literally everything out there, which does help it become such a huge spectacle, but at the same time, it's probably going to be a negative in the future. Colleen Havoc is their next big match. Yeah. What can they do in that match? They didn't do this one already.
02:10:20
Speaker
This had an absolutely epic feel as both guys boosted by a very excited crowd performed with tons of energy and charisma. I really appreciate that they both pulled out some unusual spots, particularly Hogan's expanded holds and Matt wrestling versus his usual sort of match. Yeah. It felt like both guys realized that this match was very important and needed to match people's hopes. So they went the extra mile and that's appreciated. Yeah.
02:10:47
Speaker
They built a good solid story to mixing the Hogan tropes and flare tropes quite well. It does at times feel a bit cut together as I felt like I could tell when it switched from Hogan match to flare match and back. But it nicely blends the two different styles of performance without devaluing either one. True. This was a dream match for a lot of people and putting this on was absolutely huge for WCW. So it needed to be good and it was.
02:11:13
Speaker
Yeah. This wasn't just a typical Hogan match with Brick Flair in it. Right. They put a lot of time into this. Hogan, to his credit, does work really hard in this match. By the end of the match, his hair is all sweaty. Yes. He doesn't, you know, it doesn't half a** it. It shows that
02:11:33
Speaker
At the very least, at this point in time, you know, he's got, I'm sure, a very juicy contract with the very limited dates and yada yada. He's not going to just serve rest on his laurels to use that cliche in this match. I think I think Hogan realizes that this is the match above all matches where he has to absolutely prove that he was worth that contract that he got. Yes. And so he really does pull out all the stops, whereas Jesse Fincher would say pull out no stops.
02:12:03
Speaker
Yes, but no, he he really does does work quite hard in this match. And I got to give him credit for it. And of course, like not discounting flair at all. And a player does an absolutely amazing job of selling like mad for this man and doing a lot of really high energy spots, putting on a good show, like you said, pulling up perhaps too many tricks and everything, but but still really, really go into town on making this the most exciting match he possibly can.
02:12:33
Speaker
As I sort of alluded to, Hogan with his nice contract has more limited dates than a lot of guys do, which you can get that kind of work. I don't necessarily fall too far as long as you work hard. The next pay-per-view fall brawl, there's not another Hogan match.
02:12:47
Speaker
Fall Brawl is about establishing who the number one contender will be for Hogan at a later show. Okay. So that leads to the, they mentioned after the second match, the triangle elimination match, which involves three men, the guardian angel, Vader, and the man called Sting. Oh, okay. So maybe we'll get that Hogan Sting match after all. We cut backstage where Hogan and Hart walk through the arena halls, Hart holding the belt because I guess Hogan is tired.
02:13:17
Speaker
Fair enough. It's a very belt. That is fair enough. Yeah. It is interesting. This show is the one time I've ever seen the WSW big gold belt and thought it looks small when Shaq was holding it over. Oh, yeah. He has a line versus like it looks like a cuff thing on. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Hogan says hello to Brutus Beefcake and Hacksaw Jim Duggan, who looks great, actually, is in terrific shape. Yeah. He just taking that backstage. Hey, Hacksaw.
02:13:46
Speaker
Back to Tony and Hienan, and Tony continues to try to get Hienan to talk. Tony praises Hogan's determination as Hienan glares at him. Backstage again, Hogan takes the belt with a holy moly. Yeah, that's how I'd react if I got to hold the big gold belt too, I think. Yeah. He proclaims himself the one world champion, and they kind of hold the shot on him for too long. So he just goes, yeah, and all right, as he walks the rest of the way down the hall to the interview room. Yeah. Could have maybe cut one more time, guys.
02:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. Jane Okerlund and many many many wrestlers and other people wait for him there.
02:14:24
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, I have been down the road with this man, and they used to say back in the prohibition days, the good old days are back, and believe me, Hulk Hogan, congratulations, WCW Heavyweight Champion. You have done it again, my friend, what a day. Will you know something, Mean Jean? Everything that was old is now new again, brother, and I told all the Hulkamaniacs, how'd you like to go on one long ride?
02:14:49
Speaker
And they said, yeah, brother, we'd like to go. I said, well, that's cool. Just as long as the holster's driving, brother, in tonight, Orlando, all the way around the world, all the way to New York City, brother, Tokyo, Japan, Africa, Asia, it all points in between. Hulkamania is running more powerful than it's ever been. Jimmy Hart was watching my back. Mr. T, the maniac mugger, was roaming the crowd. Shack attack, who was hanging on the belt, was shaking his head all the way through for Hulkamania.
02:15:15
Speaker
I had George Foreman on my Hulk of Home, brother, giving me beat by beat instructions. And all I got to say is that I pity the fool, brother. I feel sorry for Ric Flair because as the thousands of Hulkamaniacs were stuck in the arena, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, one of my number one Hulkamaniacs, the hacker was stuck in the crowd. Great, proud to be here. Thanks for coming out, man.
02:15:36
Speaker
Pillman was there, Johnny B Bad was there. We were rocking and rolling the place. And what is the WCW gonna do now that Hulkster still rules? Well, I got a great idea. I'm certain that these fans here are gonna partake in a little food and drink tonight.
02:15:53
Speaker
Brian, great to see you. Brutus the Barber Beefcake. Brian Fillman is here. Bill Shaw, president of World Champion. The Guardian Angel. And what about the contingent from Japan? Saito, Anoki, and dignitaries from all over the world. Hammering, Hank Aaron is here.
02:16:10
Speaker
Shaquille O'Neal, I've never seen a turn out like this in my life. Well, brother, Flair was caged in, dude. The Shaq attack told me that all I had to do was stand there and lay the brother up, lay him from one corner to the other. And then as if he tried to make his escape, Mr. T was there to bend him in a big old pretzel. And if we bend him in a ball, Shaq was gonna slam him. And as he bounced off the floor, Hammer and Hank was gonna knock him back into the ring, brother. So Rick Flair.
02:16:35
Speaker
You had no choice, brother. You had to face Hulkamania. You had to feel the power in me and Gene. Can you imagine now with all those little maniacs in the WCW, with the Shaq attack, with George Foreman, with everybody wearing the headbands hiding their dome, with everybody ripping the shirts off, brother, with my shirts being torn all around the world. Can you imagine the pythons, the power I'm gonna have when I step in that ring again with my next opponent, brother?
02:17:01
Speaker
And I'd like to know who that's gonna be, because I've got a feeling there are gonna be a lot of them standing in line. I just feel sorry for the next dude. Ric Flair walked out on profile too many times as far as I'm concerned. I told the brother to leave his limo running, fill the Learjet up with gas, because as soon as we get done partying, me and all my brothers here at the WCW, we're flying all the way back to Venice Beach, and we're gonna be riding Tiger Sharks this weekend, dude. What are you gonna do?
02:17:28
Speaker
Well, I'm going to be there to do it and be part of it. Ladies and gentlemen from Orlando, Florida. Objective Darryl's I'm from G. No. Yes. This was absolutely bonkers. Yeah. Hogan basically plays word association with everyone he sees around the room or saw earlier in the night. It feels like Hogan is doing double the crazy Hogan promo because he didn't get to do one before the match.
02:17:52
Speaker
It does feel like that, yeah. That's probably where he would have put the bit about turning flair into a pretzel or a ball for Shaq and Hank Aaron to deal with otherwise. Absolutely, yeah. But it gives the show a really weird but high energy ending. I would have liked just a touch more anticipation of who Hogan will face next, but Hogan does at least bring the point up so it's not entirely backward looking. Yeah, true. I just hope the tiger sharks were some kind of jet ski, not literal sharks you never quite know with a Hogan promo.
02:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, there's a one where he talks about paddling through all the red tide and, you know, to get to the creases. Yes. Yes. Which is definitely not recommended. Don't do that. Yeah. Don't do that. Yeah. Did you catch Hogan praising somebody's hairstyle as we got, by the way? Yeah. I wonder who he was talking. Close by are Jim Duggan and Brian Pillman at that point. So maybe it's one of them. Yeah. I think it's probably Duggan, but I'm not really sure. That's so funny.
02:18:45
Speaker
Oh, by the way, try not to get too distracted watching Brian Pillman, who spends most of the promo standing dead center on the screen smiling awkwardly like a kid whose mom pushed him to the front of the crowd and who has no idea what to do when he ends up center stage with a camera right on him. One birth I want to mention that is there. He's mentioned briefly in that as well. B. Brian Blair is there.
02:19:07
Speaker
Oh, okay. I think he's the first, he's the first Brian that Brian Pillman. Yeah. Brian. Nice to see you. Yeah, exactly. Brian Blair is most known as one of the killer bees in WVF, but he was also Hogan's very first opponent when he was in wrestling school. Interesting. Yeah. It's understandable that if Hogan's big show, he invites him there. That's kind of cool. Yeah.
02:19:30
Speaker
I love the low-key nature of Axedip Duggan's debut in WCW. He's just hanging out shirtless backstage. He was just oiling up for his not match he had that night, I guess. What I guess is really funny about that, contrasting the, I guess, Hogan hyperbole, to use that phrase properly, and like reality. He's talking so much about like how Shaq is going to like, you know, it's got to slam the ball that is Rick Flair's body.
02:19:58
Speaker
This brief period where you could see Shaq, he's sitting there. I don't think he's bored, but he's like sitting there. He's not like cheering or like acting really excited when they cut to him. He's just sitting there. He seems interested, but yeah, yeah, I think a little bit of it is. I think he's concentrating on remembering where he's got to go and what he's got to do to get the belt right at the end of the hatch. Probably like it looks like the guy unused to actually playing a role, playing a role. Yeah, yeah, no, I got you.
02:20:28
Speaker
It's just funny, he's like, yeah, you know, Shaq's gonna come in and stop you, brother. I'm like, yeah, I saw Shaq. He didn't think he would do it a whole lot. Okay. If anything, Shaq said he was gonna be impartial. Though he does high five Hogan before the match. Yeah, so yeah.
02:20:43
Speaker
It's fun, but it is a weird thing. You get a whole show of buildup of Hogan vs. Flair with me, the match of the century. It's the greatest match of all time. And it happened, and it's a big dynamic thing, and everyone cheers. The number walks to the back, and there's a long period of time where just talking after the show seemingly is over.
02:21:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little reminiscent actually of the really early Starkades. I was thinking that too, yeah. Yeah, so it is kind of actually, it's a weirdly WCW thing for this former WWF guy to be coming in and doing. I remember like the very first one, isn't it? Flair wins the title from Harley Race, has a promo in the ring, that's short, but then they have like a good 13 minutes of additional promos from him and a whole bunch of other people.
02:21:27
Speaker
You have to show I think and then go to talk to him in the back. Yeah. And then appear to run out of time because Gordon slowly is like halfway through a line when it cuts.
Reactions to Hogan's Promos
02:21:34
Speaker
Yes. He was like, okay. Yeah. And then to your point, some of the reasons why the Hogan thing is prolonged because he is to Hogan promo was in a short period of time. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So what's that hook? Probably, like I said, the whole idea that Mr. T was going to like Ben flair and do a ball and then be bounced by Shaq and then
02:21:52
Speaker
hit with the bat into the ring by Hank Aaron. It's definitely something he would have done before a match. Yeah. Like, you know, player, you can't run from the match brother. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You and I are familiar with Hogan promos. Yeah. But imagine if you're a WCW fan and just have genuinely not watched much or any WWF, you're familiar with the idea of Hulk Hogan. You know that this is a big performance. You've heard of him, but you've never seen him. A big deal that he's. Yeah, of course. So you've never watched a Hogan promo before. And then you see that you're like,
02:22:21
Speaker
What is going on here? Yeah. It's basically weird. It's a lot of people's reaction to win, but four years from now when Ultra Warrior shows up. Yes. And start doing his weird cryptic nonsense. He was like, what's going on? Who is this guy? Who are you? What is going on? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Hienan shakes off his mopiness to say that Flair has won the title time after time and he will not just disappear. Hogan has started a war that General Schwarzkopf couldn't win.
02:22:50
Speaker
and Flair will hunt him for the rest of his life. Heenan storms off. Tony thanks everybody and signs off with, wrestling is cool again. And Bashed at the Beach 1994 is done. It is funny that the least cool guy in the show says wrestling is cool again. Uh, yeah, fair. I like Tony, but fair. I do, yeah. Yeah.
Show Review and Era Transition
02:23:11
Speaker
Overall thoughts on the show then?
02:23:14
Speaker
As a whole, it's a pretty strong show. It's got a real strong opening match, it's quite adorable. They do little teases of other stuff with the Inoki segment. You have promos throughout that both relate to previous matches like Fleur to the Arrhenasen match and his turn, and then building up the Hogan match.
02:23:33
Speaker
The only match I didn't really love was the tag match, and even that, again, is not terrible. Edge is a question of how you'll feel about the sort of meshing of these two teams and how they unfortunately have to work against a crowd that, like I said, is really antsy. They really should have put a Hogan promo somewhere in here. The Jack and Sullivan one, you mean? Yeah, sorry, I'm sorry.
02:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, if they put a Hogan promo at some point, like after the Arne promo, for instance, that sort of got the crowd, give them a little taste of what they're going to get. And then they would have been less. Yeah. And once we would have gotten a shorter Hogan promo at the end, because he would have had so much insane stuff built up over.
02:24:11
Speaker
It's like, you know, like a the hose, a bunch of wires gotta come out right away. Because that needed a pressure release valve, yeah. He really did, yeah. But yeah, I mean, as a whole, there's good matches throughout. Like I said, Bad and Regal's good, Vader and Angel's good. I enjoyed the not really tag team match, the Dustin Narn one, because it wasn't really a tag match.
02:24:31
Speaker
T-mode Awesome was really good. I even enjoyed the spectacle of the Hogan Flair match. Again, the only issue being I think they kind of used every trick they possibly could. I'm not sure where they can go from here storyline-wise and I guess match-wise, really. What are the tricks if you're not done? As a whole, it's quite enjoyable. I found this such an easy watch.
02:24:55
Speaker
There's only six matches, all of them good, I would say overall, just I agree with you on the one that's a little bit weaker than the others. But there's just such a sense of energy and excitement across the night with a really, really hot crowd for the majority of the show. There's no real points of slowdown or struggle other than maybe that world tag title match feeling a tad long.
02:25:18
Speaker
I would also maybe have considered shuffling the order slightly if I were them to intersperse the three shorter matches from the start between the three longer matches from the end. Yeah, I see that. But that's a really minor quibble. Just would have broken things up a bit more.
02:25:34
Speaker
promo content was very strong. There's actually not that many of them, but they all receive a good amount of time and excellently delivered. They're also nice and varied. We get Regal challenging Enoki in the ring, Orange promo while he's getting champagne dumped all over him in the back, Flare with a more normal interview setup, and Hogan celebratory promo amongst a crowd. So it's nice to see the different settings and feels for each one rather than them all being in the same setting.
02:26:00
Speaker
Yeah. Well here, just to increase our count, go back to Spring Stampede 2000. Yes. Let's just cut back to the same interview area with the tarp up there. And give them 20 seconds. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
02:26:15
Speaker
It'll come as no surprise that I love the commentary. We got Tony and Hienan and Tony and Jesse, two teams I really enjoy. And in both cases, they did great jobs. I expected the change outs between Jesse and Bobby to bother me, but they actually did a good job of just slipping those in so it felt natural. And we don't have a weird secondary set of hosts discussing things between the matches this time. Oh, yeah, that's true. We've reached the traditional commentary team with an interviewer now, which feels much smoother.
02:26:43
Speaker
The show's setup and presentation was also excellent. I can't recall much in the way of technical or camera problems this time offhand, and the beach set and the expanded use of graphics were great.
02:26:54
Speaker
There's a point where they end up on the outside, like they're following them, fighting the outside. And whoever's the cameraman, I don't think it's Jackie Crockett. He's staying on the floor and pointing up at the action, which means he's pointing the camera right at the light, bright lights coming down. Fair enough. Yeah. So there's points where I'm like, Oh, could you maybe look at somewhere else? But they are right at the lights, please. Okay. But that's, that's like a few minutes as part of the whole show. Yeah.
02:27:20
Speaker
Overall, this felt really professional and fun. The only minor knock is the weird, faded look of the wooden birds, but again, minor quibble. Overall, this was a really important show for WSW, and I think they nailed it. What's to come, particularly in December of this year, may take a bit of a tumble, but for the first night of the Hogan era, WSW put on a very good show that's just plain fun.
02:27:45
Speaker
So this is the last show in WCW for Jesse Ventura. There's long thinning issues between Hogan and Ventura. Some legit, like there's apparently an old thing where Ventura was trying to unionize the wrestlers and Hogan less interested in that. In his defense, he has a great deal and why should anyone else have a great deal, I suppose. Not the best answer, but that's when we're looking at it.
02:28:10
Speaker
Less validated, there's a whole thing with Ventura about how he feels that a lot of success he could have gotten had he not gotten that weird like blood poisoning issue we had and he had to retire. It was sort of a jealousy thing, earned or unearned between the two of them.
02:28:26
Speaker
So they were still bulk taping to save money, because especially now they spend a bunch of Karing Hogan and his friends. They would tape WSW Saturday Night and Worldwide at the MGM Studios, and then be breaks between the shows. Apparently, Pena he would ask, Vittu was backstage taking a nap between when he was needed to do commentary for one of those shows and the next one.
02:28:48
Speaker
He was ratted out as being, like, lazy on the job, apparently, was the mindset. Because he was taken out when he was not needed on camera, which doesn't seem like a bad idea. And a lot of people pointed him to Hogan there. I'm not sure who's really a fault here, but that's what the story's told. Okay. So basically, pretty much right after Hogan comes in, like, within two weeks of this show happening, the incident happens, and he's fired for backstage issues, as they say, and the tour is gone for forever, basically.
02:29:18
Speaker
in WCW. He's other places. Yeah, he still exists. Yeah. Yeah. And he works at the rest of the company. Hogan didn't Thanos snap him out of existence. No, no, no. Yeah. That's that's interesting because I'd always just assumed because I think a couple shows prior to this, you start having this trade back and forth between him and Hienan. Yeah. I always assumed that was just kind of phasing him out. I think I may have been the intent. But just happens faster than they. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha.
02:29:45
Speaker
The goal would probably be more like what happened with Hienan, unfortunately in 2000, where they take him off of Nitro because they want Mark Madden of all people on there. I can't even say his name without grabbing my teeth a little bit there.
02:30:00
Speaker
but they also didn't release him. They didn't fire him. They didn't put him on worldwide and like Saturday night and he, he still had all the same thing he would do. Just not on the main show. Gotcha. I can understand that was probably what the plan was, but then things escalated very quickly for right or wrong or better or worse with the two of them. Okay.
Match of the Night and Podcast Outro
02:30:20
Speaker
Uh, match of the night and MVP then. So Al, what is your match of the night?
02:30:24
Speaker
Again, this is a pretty strong show. I could make a case for the first match being quite good. Same thing with the Vader guard angel match. I think if that had gone to more inclusive finish and wasn't quite as awkward at the end where they did a match finish and then did the whole story on dq thing at the end, I think it would be easy one to pick a match that night for me.
02:30:46
Speaker
The handicap match slash tag match was really good in a lot of ways. And even the main event, like I said, obviously, if you listen to any of these shows, you know, I'm not a Hogan fan by a long while. Uh, but I thought the two of them worked really well together and really at least in the middle parts of the mass gave you the sort of stuff to do. I was more likely to pick a Hogan match than I was actually thinking going into this like, Oh yeah, sure. Hogan match, whatever. But it's Hogan flare and they both work real hard.
02:31:12
Speaker
Ultimately, for me, I have to pick Steamboat and Austin. Even though it has a heel cheating to win, they tell a great story throughout the match. And again, that part of the story is that. So it's not a bunch of a cheat. OK. For me, this was also between Austin versus Steamboat and, in my case, Hogan versus Flair. Fair enough.
02:31:34
Speaker
The former, I agree, I think is better as far as match quality and certainly no slouch in the character department. But I am actually going to give it to Hogan versus Flair on this one. That's fine. It features some absolutely incredible crowd interaction and Hogan and Flair both put on a great show in the ring going beyond what they actually needed to do. It's also very important to the company. So taking a bit of the Mullins theory of Match of the Night from Starrcade 1997 here,
02:32:00
Speaker
This show does not exist without this match. That's true. So it is quite literally the match of the night. Yeah. Note that this is a much better match than Hogan versus Sting from that show, though. Yeah. Plus, when do I give match of the night to Hogan? I got to take opportunities where I can. I've had fair, yeah. MVP.
02:32:22
Speaker
Okay, so let's see real quickly. Regal for his match quality and his Dooketh promo while having just worked a match and covered in glitter. That's a perfectly fair choice. Vader and Angel both doing their part really well in their match are perfectly good choices. Dustin's real stand out performance is really nice.
02:32:41
Speaker
I can almost see it for the subtlety for the reveal and the sort of healers after the reveal with Arne Anderson honestly being a good choice. If he has slightly more ring work to do that might have helped with the case. Obviously I know for the story that makes sense but he doesn't. But it'd be an easier pick if he has more of that thing I'd say.
02:32:59
Speaker
Obviously, Steamboat and Austin are both really good in their roles. Steamboat has a little easier time because he's playing the confident, serious face against the most punctual man in wrestling at this point. Obviously, The Miz is not a wrestler yet, so he's not there yet. And Marcus Bagwell is still Marcus, not Buff. True, yes.
02:33:19
Speaker
And again, Flair's promo is really great. Flair gives a lot to Hogan, but Flair also does a lot of stuff he doesn't really do. He really goes out for this match. And to be fair, like I said, Hogan works really hard here in his bonkers, his help promo at the end. A bit of like three promos with the content is quite enjoyable.
02:33:39
Speaker
As much as I often lean to Steamboat and understandably so because he's amazing, I actually will give it to Steve Austin because for me, his role, he's so good at this role. And like I said before, he really combined his strong character work with his matchwork. It's all combined into the full package here. And again, not a lot of Austin in WCW. So to your point with Hogan, I definitely give Austin credit when I can. Yeah, absolutely.
02:34:10
Speaker
I am going to give this to Ric Flair.
02:34:13
Speaker
Not only did he do a very good job with his promo and the main event tonight, he also did just about the most selfless thing he possibly could for the company here by recruiting a major star specifically to win the title from him. Yeah, that's company loyalty right there. Recognizing we need something and how I can help is by going down to the new guy and by actually helping to bring the new guy in so that I can lose to him. Yeah, that's that's kind of amazing to think about.
02:34:45
Speaker
I'm giving Ric Flair MVP for similar reasons to why I chose my match of the night that I think this show does not happen without Ric Flair doing what he does. Yeah. Oh, I don't want to mention that absolutely in the ranks for MVP is Bob Heenan. He's so good in this show.
02:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Bobby Heenan has one of his best performances. It's right up there with his famous like Rumble 92 call, where he's just such a relentless Ric Flair cheerleader the whole night and absolutely distraught as he's like, you can see the end coming during this match and just absolutely amazing work by this guy.
02:35:25
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Bash of the Beach 1994. If you've enjoyed listening to us tonight, you can find us on Twitter or Facebook as let's go to the ring. Links will be available in the episode description. Follow us for episode announcements and other show details, and share your own thoughts about each show as we go through.
02:35:43
Speaker
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02:36:07
Speaker
Next up, Bash at the Beach 1995, an event so hot they had to put it on the beach. If the show's already hot, shouldn't you put it someplace cold so the audience doesn't roast? Yeah, put in the shade. That's what the shade is for. How about Bash at the Beach 1995, an event so hot they had to put it in Antarctica. Yeah. I suppose that might be a tad chilly in the normal wrestling outfits though.
02:36:31
Speaker
Yes. This is the only bash of the beach that is legitimately a bash at the beach. It is literally on a beach. Yeah, it's fascinating. This is Bob Moore for Alec Pridgen and wrestling is cool again. Good night, everybody. Happy wrestling.