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Episode 22: WrestleWar '90
31 Plays5 years ago
It's WrestleWar '90: Wild Thing! We're all set for an awesome show! Flair vs. Sting! The Road Warriors vs. the Skyscrapers! The Great Muta in action! Wait...Muta's gone? The Skyscrapers are two totally different guys now? Sting's injured? With absolutely nothing going right in the leadup, can WCW even pull together a watchable show, much less a good one? To find out... Wild Thing! 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
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, if you're keeping track, I am at page 10 of my 23 pages. I just went over to page two. All right.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello,
Wrestle War 1990 Overview
00:00:36
Speaker
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 I'm joined by one of tonight's participants in our mid-show world podcasting title match, Alec Pridget. I feel honored to be part of the crew that is challenging tonight. All right. How's it going tonight, Al? Good. How's it going with you? It's going OK. Going OK. Doing all right over here.
00:01:03
Speaker
Tonight we're covering Wrestle War 1990. Wild thing.
00:01:10
Speaker
WrestleWar 90 was held on February 25th, 1990, at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina, in front of 7,894 fans. Al, do you remember StarCades 83 through 86? How many people they had in the Greensboro Coliseum for those? Um, I don't have time in my head, no. It was around 16,000. Oh, wow. So, just about double.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's two or three parts in the show where you can see big empty areas in the arena. Yeah.
Music and Movie Trends Discussion
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah. So clearly not doing that well from a lie of attendance perspective, but we do have brighter numbers on pay-per-view where the show earned around 210,000 buys. That's better than Starkades 89 or 1990. Oh, that's not bad. Wild thing.
00:02:05
Speaker
Let's go to the ring. The song they do not sing. No, sadly, but they have an awesome song of their own. They do.
00:02:17
Speaker
Hey homeboy, gather around. Some serious stuff is gonna go down. On the Wrestle War diet, the kings of the ring. All come together and do the wild thing. Lex, Luca, the Stylers, they get your boy. Stinger, they all be doing that. Wild thing, yeah, they all be there with something to prove. Brimming with intentions to bust the move.
00:02:43
Speaker
Wow wow
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah. That was not the intro I was expecting when we first watched it. No, no, no, not at all. I think you and I were both expecting them to do the other song. Yeah, exactly.
Terry Funk's Return as Commentator
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, sudden generic rap song. We are definitely in the nineties. Yes. I love that point in films too, where like even movies that had nothing to do with rap would get a rap like outro song. Like Out of Family Values has that, I believe. Waxwork 2 does. And just like all of a sudden rap now. I'm like, wait, what? Yeah. It's like, this has nothing to do with anything. No.
00:03:13
Speaker
wow.
00:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, the opening video package of music is wonderfully terrible and it isn't much more than a few pictures of wrestlers and a nice bit with the title scrolling along with a bunch of small video clips. They are trying anyway. Host Jim Ross welcomes us to the show alongside co-host Terry Funk. Funk is wearing a tuxedo with an NWA corsage and a single long gold earring. Weird look, Terry.
00:03:46
Speaker
It's also worth noting that when we last left Terry Funk at the end of the 1989 show, he was coming out of retirement, quote unquote, you know, he hadn't actually retired at this point. Yes. And you know, a challenging Ric Flair.
Skyscrapers' Match Uncertainty
00:03:58
Speaker
And now here we are a year later, he's, I guess, back retired again.
00:04:01
Speaker
Well, hasn't he had at least one of one or two of his 79 retirements by the early 80s? I'm pretty sure his first retirement is the year I was born. So yeah, 83. So he technically has retired. He's just come out of retirement before last year's show. Yeah, his retirement they were referring to in the previous show is in most like the WWF. Right. Which means you don't exist. Yes. Funk says he wants to be known as Wild Thing and calls JR Jimbo Diddley.
00:04:30
Speaker
Terry Funk may be slightly more insane this year than on last year's show, so hide the tables, JR. Yes.
00:04:38
Speaker
JR tells us that Teddy Long has said that Dan Spivey is injured and can't participate in the skyscraper's upcoming street fight against the Road Warriors. Funk asks JR who he thinks will win the United States Tag Team titles match, and JR says he'll go with the champs. And Funk agrees. On the World Tag Title match, Funk says the Steiners have dedicated the match to Sting. Funk says that the World Heavyweight title with Lex Luger versus Ric Flair will be an event.
00:05:04
Speaker
That is a factual statement, I suppose. Definitely the whole show is an event, isn't it? It is. Yeah. J.R. throws to Gordon Soli with Teddy Long. Thank you very much, Jim. Yes, dancing Teddy Long is with me right now. Okay, hey, Gordon. Let's get it straight, okay? This is Chicago Street Fight. It's not dancing Teddy Long. It's Sugar Ray Long. So Paul Elleryn, get ready.
00:05:26
Speaker
well all right so you're ready in parlourings ready but what about this uh... situation is fighting well let me tell you something dangerous dance by me has been injured he won't be able to wrestle here tonight now he has been injured you know i wouldn't like to go and i've never told a lie in my life but i've had another wrestler to come in the night to take dangerous dance by this place now he'll just be in for the night i feel very confident with him i know that he'll be just like dangerous dance by me was right there
00:05:53
Speaker
But I've got another big surprise, and I'm not gonna tell you about that until later on, but it's a big, big, big one, Gordon. Are you absolutely positive Spivey's not here, and you're just doing this to throw everything off course? Hey, let me tell you something, Gordon. Like I said, I never lie, and I don't have any reason to lie. Dangerous Dan Spivey's injured, he won't be here, and that's a fact. Thank you so very much, and out of Gary Cappetta, in the ring if you please. Al, what do you think about changing the show name to in the ring if you please?
00:06:20
Speaker
That's very formal. Yeah. Yeah. We need a little bit more classical music for our intro, I think. Well, so with TV shows, when they get big, they sell versions to other countries. So if this show hits a big, we can sell it as a UK wrestling podcast. There we go. It's the UK version of the show. That's right. I can get a CQL from The Story M1 to host it. There you go. Plans are in motion. Yes.
Dynamic Dudes vs Sullivan & Sawyer
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, I thought this was an okay promo. Long is a fun character, but even if he is a heel, it was a little bit confusing why Soli thought that he was lying about Spivey's injury. I guess he thinks maybe Spivey's gonna sneak in after all. It's kind of tricky because they mentioned it by not being there like six times already. Yeah. In the show. Even though it's not the main event of the show, which is kind of weird to me. Yeah. And if they're like really driving this home for some reason.
00:07:13
Speaker
But so, Gordon Sawyer gives a good reason why he might lie about it and then tell you along with Bond saying, well, I have no reason to lie. Like, well, except for the one I just gave you. Yeah. I just got a very good reason you want to lie. But it seems like that should be like an entirely entirely verifiable thing. Right. I mean, he did not blend into a crowd. No, yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
And it's not like this is the first episode where we've had wrestlers injured that couldn't participate in the event. So you'd think that, you know, the front office would probably know, oh, Spidey's been injured, but Soleil still is expressing loads of doubt.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately this begins the secondary theme of the show, which is wrestlers are just not here for some reason, or matches can happen because of some reason or another. Yeah. There is some alternate reality where the show goes down exactly as planned. I don't know how though it turned out, but we'll cuss that more later if you go through. Alright. Yeah, I think they did do enough here to at least build up the possibility of some other nefarious act on the part of Long, so it served its purpose still. Yeah. Short but sweet. Yeah, it's just a little weird to bring up a commentary and then do an interview, also bring it up again to me. Yes, yeah.
00:08:21
Speaker
Our first match is Mad Dog Buzz Sawyer and Kevin Sullivan versus the Dynamic Dudes, Shane Douglas and Johnny Ace. The referee for this match is Nick Patrick. What a difference a year makes. So as of last year, the Dynamic Dudes made their big peer review debut, famously warning the ring with skateboards in hand and not underfoot because they can't write skateboards.
00:08:47
Speaker
So they have famously fallen on hard times leading up to this, the climax of which is at the previous Clash of Champions show, in which they've written a story where the dudes are taken on Jim Cornette as the manager. So now there's a question of can you trust Jim Cornette because he's also estimating the Manette Express at this point.
00:09:04
Speaker
So it all comes to a head at that show where the match between the two teams, Jim Cornette sitting at ringside, not supporting anybody, sitting's going to be impartial. And of course, it's Jim Cornette, so you know what's going to happen. He turns on the dynamic dudes, hitting them during the match and cost of the match. This is of course designed to mega push Jim Cornette as a heel, but it's basically the biggest crowd pop of the night.
00:09:30
Speaker
So people are 100% on board with him turning on his floor team. Yeah, the dynamic dudes were unfortunately not super popular. No. Though I do have to say, at certain points during the match tonight, they actually do get a fair amount of cheers from the crowd. No, yeah.
00:09:45
Speaker
I think they can work a match fine. It's just, they get this automatic response, booing. Right. And there's some people that are just not going to like them or what they do. If you watch the Clash Show, I posted the picture. There's a guy that literally flips Johnny Ace off right to his face. He's looking right at it. There's no way he missed that. Oh my gosh. It gets in the middle of his big comeback and he's got to be super pissed about that. Yeah. Probably now he's still about that guy. Yeah. He sees that guy in the sleep.
00:10:10
Speaker
So the other side of this match is another weird thing, as we've discussed a couple of times, there's a lull for the four horsemen where they're not around in a major capacity, and in fact been rebranded as the Yamashita Corporation. At this point in the company, the four horsemen are back, but all the same people that were in the Yamashita Corporation for the most part are still a group, and they're now feuding with the four horsemen.
00:10:34
Speaker
That's a little weird. Yeah. So at the previous Clash, there's a match with the full group, which is the Dragon Master, who's not as interesting as he sounds, unfortunately. Yeah, remember, we saw him briefly on StarKate89. Correct. He's one of the guys that comes out, and Buzz Sawyer is the other one that comes out. Yeah, Buzz Sawyer and also the great Nuda. They have a big match next to that, and the Clash is for that. Unfortunately, truly, before that match, the Clash, Gebuda decided, you know, I'm done with WWE for a while. It just leaves.
00:11:04
Speaker
This was clearly gonna be Buzz Sawyer and the great Nuda, as far as I can guess. Oh, okay. I get dynamic dudes. It's not a last-minute change, but it's definitely a clearly where that match was going, because you wouldn't have great Nuda at ringside and at dragon master wrestling. You could only have Nuda in this match if he was around. Right. So last year we got a match where Nuda's opponent didn't show up, and this year we have a match where Nuda himself doesn't show up. Okay. So we'll see what happens next year. Now, why is it...
00:11:33
Speaker
Kevin Sullivan and not Dragon Master. That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that one. Dragon Master was never a huge part of the company. I think he's always there to fill out the big matches, like six-man matches or just be a ringside. Yeah. I'm not sure where the Kevin Sullivan thing. He's around as a heel at this point. He's an off and on feuding with Norman Lunatic, which is the whole other thing to unpack. Yes. But yeah, I think it's just maybe he's a better choice than Dragon Master for a two-on-two match. Sullivan is good.
00:12:03
Speaker
No, yeah. I think Sullivan and Suarez, looking at the match, make a good duo. My only complaint maybe is that they're too similar. So there's no really distinction between the two of them for the most part. Sullivan did try to differentiate himself with the long green strand coming off his hair. Yes. That's very odd. I guess he went to the same stylist as Terry Funk. Yeah. Someone back there selling hair string. I mean, it made a good living for a while there.
00:12:32
Speaker
The stage design tonight looks okay, but the WCW logo is a tad weird. The W's are done pretty normally, but the C is constructed as a full circle with just the C portion done in gold. It's just kind of one of those things that you can't unnotice once you've noticed it.
00:12:50
Speaker
The dudes have abandoned their skateboards, not that it changes their entrance at all. No. JR says that they got a tremendous ovation. I mean, they got a few cheers, but tremendous? No. Ace does get the crowd clapping with him as the match starts up, though. We get a good line from JR as Funk points out that Sawyer and Sullivan's centers of gravity are very low. So is their character, JR says. A JR burn there? Yeah. Yes.
00:13:19
Speaker
Sawyer acts physically hurt by the crowds clapping. That was great. Sawyer and Ace start, and Ace uses his speed and agility to take the advantage. They mistime a flip spot so Sawyer obviously throws himself down, then Ace dropkicks Sawyer through the ropes to the floor and dives out onto him. The dudes get a pretty loud cheer as they fight off Sullivan and Sawyer. Tags to Douglas and Sullivan. Sullivan tries to whip Douglas into the turnbuckle, but Ace blocks it.
00:13:48
Speaker
Douglas outwrestles Sullivan and tags Ace, who briefly gets trapped in the heel corner but fights free. Sullivan and Sawyer argue, and Sawyer slaps Sullivan hard enough to rock him. Funk says Sawyer got the worst of that one. He clearly didn't. I guess he got the two mixed up, I guess. Sawyer back in and he beats Ace up, but charges, after making a sound like a cross between a creaky doorway and a dying whale. Yeah.
00:14:14
Speaker
only for Ace to dodge, so he hits the post's shoulder first. J.R. points out that the ring post bared the logo of their sponsors tonight, Rooze. Shoes for your feet, pockets for your stuff, as I recall. Sounds right, yeah. Rooze is still around, actually. Really? Their website even still mentions Rick Steiner. Nice. And the US Olympic track team, but who cares about them? Oh, yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
Douglas and Sullivan back in. Sullivan throws Douglas through the ropes and fights Ace, so Sawyer suplexes Douglas onto the mat and looks very pleased with himself. Ace accidentally distracts the ref, so the heels lay in more abuse. Sullivan throws Douglas back in, and Sawyer gets two counts off nice belly-to-belly and side-saltos suplexes. Funk points out how Sawyer really drives his opponent to the mat on those. I thought they looked great. He has really good suplex again then. Yeah, yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
Sawyer and Sullivan trade off beating Douglas up. Douglas gets a brief comeback with a sunset flip that mostly missed for two. Sawyer gives us a bear hug lying on the mat. Is there a more boring move in wrestling? I guess falling asleep, maybe? That's what I nearly did at that point. It gets him a two count. Later, a cheap shot to ace lets Sullivan hurl Douglas over the top rope. Sawyer lays in the kicks, then generously offers to help Douglas back in.
00:15:35
Speaker
Sullivan does a much more active bear hug and even carries Douglas over to the heel corner to stop a tag. But Douglas escapes another Sawyer bear hug and dives through his legs to tag Ace, who hits a slam and some drop kicks. One was pretty shoddy. Yes. On both heels. He tries a head scissors but just falls off as JR blames perspiration. It looked like a timing problem to me.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's really weird to me, for sure. Sawyer hits a snap suplex, goes up top, and hits a beautiful flying splash called the Jam Sandwich. Terrific arc and good hang time. Unfortunately, he lands awkwardly and pitches forward, but he gets the three count and the win anyway.
00:16:15
Speaker
Sawyer is clearly cradling his hand as he and Sullivan leave the ring. Patrick goes to lift his hand but backs off and just thrusts his own into the air to declare the win. And the replay clearly shows Sawyer's hand hit the mat hard and bent uncomfortably as he landed the splash. Yeah, like jams it down is really rough.
Dynamic Dudes' Future
00:16:33
Speaker
Looks really painful. Yeah.
00:16:36
Speaker
Thoughts on this one? I thought it was a decent old school meets new school match. It's probably the vibe they're going for. Sullivan and Sawyer are the old school burly bruiser guys, toss you around, hit you hard. The dudes definitely in concept are the fast, high-flying, energetic team.
00:16:53
Speaker
I don't know if they really deliver on that part, though, as a whole. I'm not saying that they're bad. It's just, I've seen other versions of this match. Like we know obviously it's admittedly hard to top, but we have the Andersons versus the Rock and Roll Express from back in the day, which is the more obvious version of that. And that's such a good match. Maybe it's not fair to compare this, but. That's peak version of this, I think. Oh, we are for sure. But yeah, you picture certain other teams
00:17:21
Speaker
throughout the years that do the fast paced offense, a little bit of acrobatics and everything. And the dudes are decent, but just do not hold up to other teams in that category. And honestly, we get a better version of that, I think on the same show later on.
00:17:38
Speaker
So it's kind of just more comparison to the deal with. Like you said, I did think Sorya had good suplexes and his character work was nice. Yeah. He really sells the crazy unhinged character. He seems to be pretty much on character wise the entire match, which is cool. Yes. Yeah, there's some wrestlers that are just always on. They tend to know where the camera is. They're muttering. You never hear them like call spots. Yeah. I think he's not the best at that, but he was really good at that.
00:18:03
Speaker
It's absolutely clear what his character was. If you had never seen him before, like, I don't think we really have, for the most part. Yeah, the only time we've ever seen him was coming out in Starrcade 89 for, like, 15 seconds. Yeah, the run-out of that match, yeah, exactly. Those are for his match with him. We got exactly what his character is from one show, which is a good example, yeah.
00:18:21
Speaker
The dude just lacked the flash to liven up the sections. And obviously that splash is... I rewatched that. I hurt my hand just watching. Oh my gosh, yeah. And the sad thing is it looks so good up until that point. He gets a tremendous hang time on it. And for being such a big guy, you don't expect him to do that at all.
00:18:44
Speaker
And then he does a tremendous job with it, but he just, something goes wrong on the landing. And I think he just like brings his hand down too quickly or it just happens to hit a little bit wrong. And it looks so, so painful.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah. It reminded me a bit of, um, Eddie Guerrero in his first match in WTF when he does the frog splash and jams elbow doing, and I'm sure like with Sur, he's probably done it a hundred times before then. No problem. Which is his one time. Yeah. Yep. All it takes is one thing being a little bit different and those are high risk maneuvers. They're called that for a reason. That's true. Yeah.
00:19:19
Speaker
I thought this match was a bit sloppy at points, but it was a pretty good opener. Douglas and Ace did get the crowd behind them pretty well, though their offense is mostly underwhelming and a bit bocce. Yeah. Sullivan and Sawyer added the very fun heel character work, and Sawyer in particular I agree was very fun to watch in this one. A good erratic sort of character just off kilter enough to work.
00:19:41
Speaker
He had some terrific suplexes too, and a great top rope splash, except for that landing, as we mentioned. Yes. I really wouldn't mind seeing more of him in the future. When he came out for the Starrcade 89 match, I obviously didn't see much of what he was doing, but looking at him there, I was like, oh, he's just generic henchman guy. Right. But he feels like a very developed performer here. Mm-hmm.
00:20:05
Speaker
But yeah, aside from the Matt Bear hug, I didn't mind this match. I don't think I'm gonna remember it much, except for the replay of poor Buzz Sawyer's hand hitting the mat wrong. Ow. Yeah.
00:20:17
Speaker
This would officially be the last tag team match for the Namek Dudes, who would break up officially after this show. Now, Jonny's would appear on the next show, Capital Combat, which we'll definitely discuss at a later point. Unfortunately, his match, along with the first two other matches on the show, for what a reason, were cut for time when they released the show on VHS. They needed time for Robocop. Yes.
00:20:42
Speaker
Douglas is so hard to track because he's in and out of companies like every six weeks at certain points in his career. I know he's back by 92 when he's teamed with Teamboat. I don't know if he hangs around after this or not. But he always has the sort of sad send off with him, a dude going out.
00:20:59
Speaker
Less than great style. At least they did get some cheers for the things that they tried. They definitely got a better reaction they did in that class show fighting the mini express. Yeah. It could be worse. If that was our last match, that would be the worst way to go. Yes.
00:21:13
Speaker
Unfortunately, this is also Buzz Sawyer's last match in WCW. And as far as I can tell, might have been his last match ever. Oh, man. Because unfortunately, his injury was pretty severe and he died in 1982. Oh, wow. Yeah. Man, that's a shame. I mean, obviously, it's a shame anytime someone passes on, but... Right. Yeah, it's one of those like...
00:21:33
Speaker
Oh, we just saw this guy. He actually was was quite good. And then you're like, oh, and we actually just saw probably his last match ever.
Norman the Lunatic's Comedic Interview
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to confirm any matches in time between this and 92. He would have been working territory, not a major promotion. So there's less records. Yeah, I hope we get to see him again. I enjoyed his performance. I'd like to see more of what he could do. He was very interesting.
00:21:59
Speaker
Missy Hyatt is with Norman, who is not Norman's Miley, but instead a large bearded man in hospital garb with a propeller beanie, upside down sting headband, big pink teddy bear with right side up sting headband, and I don't know, maybe a squirrel or woodchuck kind of stuffed animal hanging from around his neck. I'm not sure even he knew what it was.
00:22:22
Speaker
Thanks guys and I'm here with Norman the lunatic and Norman you have a match coming up with Cactus Jack Manson and I wish you luck. Oh thank you very much Missy. You know something Missy? You look a lot like my sister. Oh well thank you. She's a lot bigger than you though. Well I'm sure she's pretty. Well she's kind of pretty. You know if she was here I bet she'd give me a nice hug for good luck. You want to give me a hug? Okay.
00:22:53
Speaker
I hope that brings you some luck, Norman. Hey, you know, I bet if you give me a kiss I'll have all kinds of luck. Okay. You know what, one more. I'd have real good luck if you give me one more of those kisses over here. Well, I think the bell's ringing and let's go to the ring right now. I think I was just saved by the bell.
00:23:18
Speaker
I think it was actually Missy Hyatt who gave us our first ever Let's Go to the Ring on one of the Star Cades, too. I believe so, yeah. This was a fairly unnecessary segment. Yes. Norman says nothing of any real consequence and also does nothing to build up to the match. No. I think Norman's requests are supposed to come off as lovable, but they don't. I'll leave it there. Yes, that's a little creepy.
00:23:44
Speaker
Our second match is Cactus Jack Manson versus Norman the Lunatic. Referee for this match is Mike Atkins. So at this point, Kevin Sullivan is not a part of the varsity club because that's broken up and Kevin's all sorts of weird nonsense, which we'll have to cover in later shows. So he's found a kindred spirit in Cactus Jack Manson. Yes. I feel weird adding that because I know it's Cactus Jack, but I have to stop and add another word at the time. Felt the same way, yeah.
00:24:14
Speaker
The basic gist of this is that they're both mean, angry, bad guys and they hate Norman because he's quote unquote childlike and cute and I guess it's the idea and adorable. The same year that Norman Lunatek, originally Norman the Maniac I think, when he's a heel, shows up, the classic 80s film The Dream Team came out in which residents of a mental ward essentially, that's where to put it, I suppose,
00:24:40
Speaker
wander around the city and have their day of adventure. I don't know for sure that suddenly having this Norman the lunatic character is based on that, but it sure feels like it. It could be a massive coincidence, but it's like two months after the movie, suddenly he appears. So I don't know. He's certainly not a welcome face.
00:25:01
Speaker
Although he is the only one on the show actually promoting ruse. He's wearing one. That is true. That is true. Yeah. J.R. says that he's wearing one rue and one wrestling boot for speed. He doesn't want to be too fast. Yeah. No one run towards ropes and, you know, fly over them, of course. Yeah. Because definitely his problem is being too fast. For sure.
00:25:23
Speaker
This is very early Cactus Jack, so he's Cactus Jack Manson and has a very different look. Kind of a faded pastel vest with a tie-dye headband. Norman comes out with his sting headband on right side up and hands out his stuffed animals and some autographed pictures to the crowd. Funk says he has the head of a buffalo and the body of Roseanne.
Cactus Jack vs Norman the Lunatic
00:25:46
Speaker
I'm not sure who that's an insult to.
00:25:50
Speaker
Norman gets in and Jack attacks right away. Several strikes and a whip into an elbow earn him a two count, but Norman's kick-out throws him through the ropes. Back in and Norman clubs Jack and no-sells Jack's punches to his head. Norman uses headbutts and strikes into a bear hug. A few whips to the corners. One seems to knock something off one of the turnbuckles. And Jack goes over the turnbuckle and out of the ring.
00:26:14
Speaker
I noticed the turnbuckles were really, really loud tonight. They were. I'm not sure if something was off in their construction or what. Yeah, there's a later match, I forget which one were they. Someone got thrown into the corner and they found references that they might break the ring or something. Yes, yeah. It sounds like they might. It does.
00:26:29
Speaker
Outside, Jack tries to take advantage with an eye rake, but Norman counters a charge to send him over the barricade onto the cement floor. Jack drags himself back, but Norman headbutts him down and tries to ram him into the ring post, but Jack sends him into it shoulder-first instead. Norman's noises of pain, I noted, sound exactly like the noises Hulk Hogan makes when he's punching.
00:26:51
Speaker
So he does that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is similar to Cactus Jax as well, actually. That's true. Yeah. We got a lot of that at the Starrcade show. Yeah. Weird. Jack lands a nice apron dropkick and several more hits, including a nasty, hard knee strike. JR mentions that Norman's favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz and Funk confuses movie and move and calls it The Wizard of the Oz.
00:27:15
Speaker
Okay. That's actually not the reference thing, obviously, but many years later, one of The Miz's finishing move is called The Miserate of Oz. Yes. It was not, however, The Miserate of The Oz. Correct. Back in, Jack uses knee strikes, biting, and a chin lock to control, but his head butts rock him instead. A whip to the ropes and boot to the lower gut get Jack a two count.
00:27:40
Speaker
Funk says Norman's missing teeth should show kids that they shouldn't eat so much candy, as Jack works a reverse chin lock and camel clutch. Norman struggles a bit, but finally gets Jack lifted for an electric chair drop, and tries what I will generously call a splash. His feet barely leave the ground.
00:27:58
Speaker
Jack dodges it and gets Norman against the ropes for choking, then bounces off the ropes to leap on his back. Again, but Norman dodges and Jack eats ropes. Norman hits a headbutt, punches, and high back body drop. Jack breaks Norman's eyes and tries a pile driver, but as Funk openly mocks Jack's attempt, Norman back body drops him and just sits on him for the three count in the win. Norman celebrates as we get a replay of Norman dropping on Jack's face. Thoughts on this one?
00:28:28
Speaker
Jack does his best here. This is the match that Cactus Jack tries to make you think the Norman Lunatic is a really dynamic wrestler. He is 100% on board with the idea that I gotta make this guy look good. And boy, he is working alone on that one.
00:28:44
Speaker
Jack does, he does character work really strong here. And obviously he does, not his most painful bumping, he said that for later, and a lot, but he does some pretty unpleasant bumps throughout this match. To add intrigue. I feel like if it wasn't for a mandate on blood, he probably would have done that too. Bumped out the ring post and been bleeding to make people care about the match more.
00:29:09
Speaker
I'm not saying Norman is terrible. It's just he doesn't do much. So it's like he necessarily botches moves. He just has nothing to show for him. He's kind of standing there and Jack is bumping around him basically. Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
It reminded me of his favorite spot the Big Show used to do where he would get him down and for the next couple of minutes the heel would run off the ropes and drop kick him while he's on windy, like 10 neck he's going to get up. And it would deal with like three or four times. The poor heel is running back and forth jumping. He's just sitting there like, oh boy, it's so hard. Might fill out that. Norman's finisher looks unpleasant to take.
00:29:47
Speaker
little bit, little bit. Because it's not like other one, it's not like Finley's where he jumps and falls on their chest. Maybe it's supposed to be, but it's not. Yeah, it's also not like Finley's in that Norman looks like he would actually hurt if he landed on you. Well, Finley does jump at least.
00:30:05
Speaker
I don't know, there's other versions of the set-out one. Nick Bricacci used it a lot. His looked effective and also didn't look really unpleasant for the guy he's fighting. Yeah. So there's a middle point between those two, maybe. Yeah, this is definitely the Cactus Jack match. Norman is also there. Yes.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, short match here. Jack selling is definitely the best thing here. It makes the match much more interesting than it would otherwise be. He's just really lively with it, moving a lot and going wobbly rather than just leaving it as a quick reaction. It definitely does help build up Norman's power. Norman, like you said, is fine but doesn't really do much beyond some basic strikes and head butts. He did have a nice back body drop.
00:30:50
Speaker
The ending feels pretty sudden and not in a good way. Jack tries a move he just blatantly shouldn't be trying on a guy Norman's size and loses as a result.
Future of Norman and Cactus Jack
00:30:59
Speaker
It doesn't feel believable to me that he goes for the pile driver all of a sudden, especially when he'd only iRake the guy not gotten him really reeling. It could be a case of their match only has X amount of time and the ref talks to him and says, hey, you got to go to the finish. And he's like, OK, fine. I'll do this now. Just feels like there should be more to getting him to that point. But yeah. I can see that. I agree.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah, not much of interest to this one, but other than the ending, it was, it was okay. Yeah. So the odd duo that being hacked to Jack and Norman Lutek would have evolved in a six man match, a capital combat in which Norman Lutek, we teamed up with the road warriors because that makes sense. And kayak to Jack would be teamed up with Kevin Sullivan and Ben Bigelow, presumably taking Sawyer's place on that match. Oh, okay. And this match would also be cut for the VHS release.
00:31:50
Speaker
So if you didn't see Capitol combat live, which a lot of people didn't, I get the impression. And you only saw it on VHS, which was the way to watch at that point. You would have to wait to 2014 when the full version of the show was uploaded to WWE network to actually see those matches.
Jim Cornette's Midnight Express Promo
00:32:10
Speaker
The first like third of the show. Oh, go take that for what you will. Yep.
00:32:16
Speaker
We go back to Gordon Soli, who is with Jim Cornett and the Midnight Express. The Express wear very shiny black and red coats, and Stan Lane has some excellent early 90s sunglasses.
00:32:29
Speaker
right gentleman right now i'm with jim cornet midnight express of course the last time you met the rock-and-roll express you came out victorious however tonight things may change all lots of things change in life people change places change things change the berlin wall can tell them that preachers and politicians fall off their pedestal new ones rise up to take their place and a lot of things change in professional wrestling specially over the last couple years but some things never change the rock-and-roll express them in express still the greatest tag team match up in the history of professional wrestling
00:32:58
Speaker
some things never change we still hate to rock and roll expresses filthy stinkin' guts and some things never change today today right here at wrestle war we're gonna do everything we can to beat them to hurt them and to put them out of wrestling cause the midnight have faced the rock and roll more times than they've done hello dolly on broadway but we never get enough of beating those punks up some things never change we're still the greatest tag team combination in the history of professional wrestling always have been and always will be regardless of who says different
00:33:28
Speaker
Stan, what day is this? The day the music died. Rock and roll, you better watch it. Let's go back to the ring, please. A very polite version of our title there from Soli, again. Yeah, yeah. Terrific promo from Kornat, as always. He does repeat himself a tad towards the end of it, but the guy's also talking so fast he probably just traveled back in time. Yeah.
00:33:53
Speaker
I thought this was a great way of building up this storied rivalry. At this point, the Rock and Roll Express and the Midnight Express have fought so much that you really don't have to say anything more to build it up than we're fighting. The best part for me is Lane's ending line. The day the music died. Perfect and perfectly delivered, I thought.
Rock and Roll Express vs Midnight Express
00:34:10
Speaker
Well, it's because cornet in his typical motormouth style, because you're expecting a rhythm and then it stops and you get the good line at the end there. Yeah, it serves to highlight it very well. Exactly, it's a good punctuation. Excellent, yeah. Classic cornet, it's all you need really.
00:34:27
Speaker
I was thinking while I was listening to it though. Can you imagine how different the Fallout intro would be if Cornette was delivering it? Just with them talking about some things never change. Sorry, picturing him do the war. War never changes. I can never hear that, yeah.
00:34:45
Speaker
Now, just based on one line in a promo, is Stan Lane better than his doppelganger, Lex Luger? I don't know. We'll have to see Luger's promo tonight. That's true. No. Because I mean, I bet Luger could deliver an awesome, awesome single line in the promo too. That's true. Wouldn't have to be up all night studying. Yes.
00:35:07
Speaker
Our third match is the Rock and Roll Express. That's Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson versus the Midnight Express, beautiful Bobby Eaton and sweet Stan Lane with Jim Cornett. The referee for this match is Nick Patrick. Like cats and dogs, the two Expresses always seem to fight when they get near each other. Other than that, there's not much story here.
00:35:28
Speaker
Now, um, from something that Morton says during the match, it seems like the rock and rolls might've just recently returned to the NWA. They're, they're also like with Shane Douglas, they come and go so much. It's hard to get track. They returned in January. Okay. So that would make sense. Cause I know he says like, it's good to be back home or something midway through the match. Oh yes, absolutely. I noticed the rock and roll expresses entrance music has exactly the same intro as Johnny B bads will later.
00:35:57
Speaker
Yeah, it was weird. The two come out in different coats. Morton with a short denim jacket and Gibson with a long gray coat. I liked Morton's better myself. Yeah, I can see that. Your mama don't dance and your daddy don't rock and roll, Funk sings. Funk is a Kenny Loggins fan, I guess.
00:36:17
Speaker
The Midnights are out next, as JR and Funk build up this epic rivalry. Jim Cornette takes a microphone, but it doesn't get piped through the TV feed, so it looks like the crowd can hear his introduction of the Midnights, but we really can't. It does, however, cut in just in time for Stan Lane to intro Jim Cornette.
00:36:50
Speaker
A lot of wrestling pop culture references are seriously at least 10 years out of date when they're made. So it was pretty surprising to hear one that is actually still culturally relevant today. That's true, yeah.
00:37:04
Speaker
When I first heard this, I thought it was referencing Ivana and Trump's divorce, but that wasn't actually until 1992. Oh, interesting. So it's predictive. Obviously, maybe they separated. I don't follow that too much. I don't remember when there was a separation or I just know the actual divorce wasn't until 92.
00:37:23
Speaker
Now, I will say this is just after Trump technically hosted two Wrestlemanias. That's four and five. Oh, good point. So I wonder if that's an extra layer to this. Could be, could be. Little sniping between the companies. WrestleMania 5 was April 89, so that would be pretty close to this. It would have been after the last one, so yeah. I could see that. I could see that.
00:37:48
Speaker
Oh man, the mullets in this match. Oh, I know, I know. Eaton, Morton, and Gibson all have epic mullets. Even Lane's hair is pretty mullet-y at this time, just not quite a shining example of the hairstyle like the others. Now we talked about this while we were watching the mullet rankings. My best is Morton, then Eaton, Gibson, and Lane.
00:38:10
Speaker
I think I tend to like Morton's most, because Morton's is like the classic dirty mullet. Yes. Gibson's isn't bad, but I think Gibson drinks below Lane and Eton's. So it's probably Morton, Eton, Lane, and then Gibson. Oh, okay. I could probably flip the last two of mine, I'm sure. Yeah. But Morton is number one mullet in where you are. Yes, yeah. That is a terrific mullet.
00:38:39
Speaker
Lane, however, of course, wins in the Lex Luger resemblance contest. Yes. I will also note, if you go to the Wikipedia page for the Rock and Roll Express, it's a picture of them that seems to be fairly recent because they are noticeably older than they are in this show. And Morden still has a pretty good mullet. All right. Keep it alive, dude. Yeah, middle's going out, but the long there is still there, yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
It threatens to turn into a four-man brawl until Patrick establishes order, and Gibson and Lane start. They trade moves, and Lane complains that Gibson used a close-fist punch. The crowd disagrees, and Lane yells at them. They run the ropes, and Lane tries a flip, but Gibson stops and hits a fist drop, and Lane rolls out, where Cornette fans him with his tennis racket. I feel like that wouldn't really be that effective. Probably not.
00:39:28
Speaker
Lane and Cornette shove Nick Patrick around, but he shoves back, and Cornette challenges him to a fight, and Patrick agrees. Like an old-timey boxing matric. Oh my gosh, it was great. Cornette of course flees in moments, making him one of the very few wrestling personalities to ever lose to a referee. Yeah, sure. Morton and Lane in, and Morton sends Lane into a charging Eaton with an atomic drop.
00:39:52
Speaker
Lane decks Eaton, but Cornette makes peace. Eaton tries his luck with Morton, but eats several arm drags. He tries a test of strength, but Morton walks up his body and jumps off his shoulder to hit a charging Lane, while Gibson dives off the top rope to nail Eaton. Amazing spot. That was terrific. Yeah.
00:40:12
Speaker
Cornette trips Morton on a whip, but Morton shoves him into the ring and Gibson hits a double noggin knocker on the bendites and slugs Cornette. Lane does chest compressions on a clearly conscious Cornette. That's a scrap man. Funk says those won't work as Cornette doesn't have a heart. Ouch. So is he like a robot? Is that what you mean? I assume that Rick Blair got to him at some point and tore it out his throat. Yeah. And that showed the world that he had no heart. Yeah. That's the way we prove it. Yeah.
00:40:42
Speaker
The rock and rolls trade off against the Midnights until a Morton crossbody sends Morton and Eaton over the top rope to the floor and Lane slams Morton on the floor. Gibson helps Morton back in, but the Midnights destroy Morton, aided by a cornet racket shot. Lane lands his great kicks and a drop toehold to hold Morton for an Eaton elbow drop for two. Eaton's suplex, nearly a brain buster for two and a half. Gibson breaks up a pin off a Lane power slam.
00:41:10
Speaker
The Bendites take advantage of accidental referee distraction by Gibson to lay in more abuse, and Eaton taunts Morton and hits his great arm breaker into a hammerlock. Cornette verbally abuses a cameraman. Even when Morton gets a strike or two in, he just slumps exhausted. Eaton hits a top rope elbow drop for two, but Gibson breaks that up. Patrick warns Lane about using the rope, so Cornette sneaks in a racket shot, then pretends he was just using it to scratch his back.
00:41:37
Speaker
Sure, sure. Lane and Eaton work Morton's arm. Morton gets close to tagging a couple times, but the Midnights keep blocking. The Midnights eventually try their rocket launcher splash, but Morton gets his knees up as Eaton comes down. Wobbly, Eaton tries to grab Morton, but he rolls past to tag Gibson. Gibson runs wild on both Midnights with punches, slams, and dropkicks, and rolls up Eaton, but Lane breaks it up. Four-man brawl, and Cornette sneaks in a racket shot as Patrick's trying to restore order.
00:42:06
Speaker
Gibson kicks out at the last possible moment. Cornette screams for the midnights to finish Gibson. They go for a double flapjack, but Eaton seems to lose his grip. That gets tackled by Morton, as Gibson falls on top of Lane and cradles him for the three count and the win.
00:42:26
Speaker
I feel like there was a slight mistiming to the ending there, I think. I'd wager that Morton was supposed to hit Eaton to make him let go, not afterwards. So, whenever you want to match my final thoughts on it, I stopped at that point and ruined a couple times to get the timing of that right.
00:42:41
Speaker
And the best way I can view that is that Gibson seems to sort of push him away. It's not like a real forceful push, so definitely just him getting to the spot. But yeah, I had to actually watch that a couple of times to get the time because it looks like he can't let go for no reason and get speared, but he does actually- I totally miss that, yeah. I said I really had to look and catch that. I was like, okay. For me, the ending was the weakest part. I was like, I gotta make this work somehow.
00:43:05
Speaker
I got to see, like, just want to give it a fair shake. I'm like, okay, it works a little better the more I look at it. That would make sense. Yeah. If it's something that Gibson does and I just, I just never caught it, but okay. Yeah. Forgivable. Then it's not the most fluid that could be, but that's also a tricky spot. Yeah. Yeah. And if something was going wrong, it's not a spot you can actually like stop or pause for things to get situated again. Right. They're dedicated at that point. They have to go with it. Exactly. Thoughts on this one.
00:43:31
Speaker
I thought it was a really fun and chaotic match. I like that Cornette got a lot to do here throughout the match, especially early on, but he never really takes it away from the match.
00:43:42
Speaker
I believe I highlighted for the Bunkhouse Dead Peach show that I thought Eden and Koloff. It was the Eden Koloff match. Yeah. I thought that one was as interesting as it could have been, but Cornet was just so entertaining throughout. Right. For me, in that match, he had to accent it to make it interesting. In this case, they obviously don't need that help. It's the Rock and Roll Express and the Express. They can do it just fine.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's just all merging together into something great for as performance as the frosting on the cake. Exactly, yeah. If it wasn't there, it managed to be really good. That's the thing, I was wondering if they'd guess, yeah.
00:44:13
Speaker
I think we covered this a lot when we were watching the first time. There's a bunch of spots they do that look like basic setups to move when they do variations of them. Yes. Like they roll out and normally they DDT because that's a quick motion into the same sort of rotation, but they do the neck breaker out of instead and a couple of spots like that. Obviously the morning climbing up, the guy's spot was pretty impressive as well. That was so cool. Yeah.
00:44:36
Speaker
I think I might probably mention this one. It's not a match that does the same thing, but they do the person crawling on someone's leg to escape the corner spot. And so it's weird seeing full grown adults do it. I don't know. I mean, it works. It's obviously, it's just an escape. I'm used to like a slide or like a jump or something. It just sort of weird the crawling between a full grown adult's legs and you're also a full grown adult. I don't know. It was a very strange spot.
00:45:00
Speaker
Like I said, the finish looked off to me at first, but it makes more sense if I really looked at it more closely. Yeah. It definitely won that they could have done better. And you know, they probably do a similar spot in their match. It's probably why they did it. And maybe there's a better version of this, but overall the matches are really good. It doesn't really take that much away from me.
00:45:18
Speaker
Yeah, a wonderful tag match here, not that that's any surprise given the participants. We only got to see this feud once in our Starrcade run as a scaffold match, so this was obviously much better. Yes, yes it was. Lots of great double teams, innovative moves, and tag distraction antics, combined with great crowd interaction and an amazing heal manager in Jim Cornette, who is eminently punchable at all times. Oh, I know. He's so good.
00:45:43
Speaker
On the innovation front, I also like that they really did a good job of bringing in the history between the teams where it seemed like they were able to counter things because they knew each other so well. Yes. So it really pulled in the fact that these guys have fought so often, makes them spot.
00:45:59
Speaker
the things that the other teams are going to do, like when Morton gets tripped and he immediately gives chase to Cornette, not because he's angry about what Cornette just did, but because he knows that Cornette's going to try and like hand the racket to someone while the ref's distracted or something like that. Yeah. And he knows they've got to counter that. Exactly. Exceptional timing by all for most of the match, finding exactly the right moments for the midnights or Cornette to sneak in cheap shots as Morton, of course, sells like mad, interrupted only by very slight hope spots.
00:46:29
Speaker
Nice false finish towards the end with the bracket shot as well. I really thought that was gonna be it. Honestly. Yeah, I see that And like you said the actual finish maybe could have been performed a little bit better, but it does still work Yeah, the bit with cornet and Patrick was hilarious. Yeah, that was yeah So great mix of action and comedy in this match and I really really enjoyed it. Mm-hmm me too
00:46:55
Speaker
A cap of combat, the Rockin' Monks dress, would challenge the Freebirds in a strap match, while the Minute Express would go for the US Tag Team titles in the same show. We go back to Gordon Soli, who is with the Road Warriors and Paul Ellering. Ellering is not dressed for Safari today, wearing a nice suit instead. The Road Warriors have Sting armbands on.
00:47:21
Speaker
Thank you, gentlemen. The Road Warriors and Paul Ellering are with me right now. And in just a moment, you're going to be stepping into the ring in the Chicago street fight, and Teddy Long says that Danny Spivey's injured. That's right, Gordon Sully. But first of all, everybody's wondering, the Warriors, we've got our brothers in paint, armband on, to help us as if we need any help to kick the skyscraper's butt. Kill them all. Needless to say.
00:47:45
Speaker
We went back to Chicago, slept in the alleys, streets, near the gutter. And what do we do? We put 16 guys in the hospital just getting psyched up for this thing. Paul, he just got back from Hong Kong. And you know something? You got a surprise for us? None for you. Same old story. We win, you lose. Tell them, Paul.
00:48:06
Speaker
You know something we've gotten where we are today because we never underestimate our opponents Teddy Long. You could have Danny Spivey come out from anywhere. I realize that and not for a minute am I gonna forget it. We're ready for you and stick your nose in there.
Road Warriors' Over-the-Top Promo
00:48:21
Speaker
Now let's go back to the ring please. Oh my gosh.
00:48:27
Speaker
Hawk is easily the highlight here, going way, way over the top, claiming they put 16 people in the hospital just to get psyched up for the match. Yeah, I feel like that's what you call the police on them. Yes, probably. Ellering gets the storyline across fine and adds a little intrigue, questioning if there will be a sneak attack by Spivey. It wasn't much to his part, but he did what he could with it. As for Animal, so wait, they have Sting armbands on to help them, but they don't need help.
00:48:57
Speaker
is it?
00:49:12
Speaker
Someone starts normal volume, you can yell or get louder to add emphasis. Like right, someone yelled, you can get quiet at emphasis. In this case, someone started yelling, and so you have to yell even louder to get emphasis. Yes. I love Hawk's tone of voice in these promos, too. It's just like, I can't even describe how he talks.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's so unique that the like tone he uses He's not yet. You're doing his extremely weird. Well when he starts the brofist But but you can tell he's working towards something as a transition. Mm-hmm. Yeah for sure. I love the Same old story. We win you lose the delivered at your speed. He was trying to be Jim Cornette there.
Skyscrapers vs Road Warriors
00:49:58
Speaker
Yes
00:50:01
Speaker
Our fourth match is The Skyscrapers. That's Mean Mark Callis and The Masked Skyscraper with Sugar Ray Theodore R. Long versus the Road Warriors, Hawk and Animal with Precious Paul Ellering in a Chicago street fight. The referee for this match is Mike Atkins.
00:50:21
Speaker
A battle for supremacy occurred when Teddy Long brought in Sid Vicious and Dan Spivey, uniting them as the skyscrapers. Their goal was to take out the Road Warriors, the most dominant tag team in wrestling at this point. That's a pretty good goal to aim for, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then Sid Vicious got injured in November, right before Starrcade. Right, yeah, that's why they worked on there.
00:50:40
Speaker
So yeah, they skipped this arcade show entirely, replaced with the Samoans. So it was without him at enter for a while, they brought in mean Mark Callis to be his replacement.
00:50:51
Speaker
At the previous class of champions in early February, the duo of Dan Spivey and Mark Halas lost via DQ to their World Warriors. But in the process, they beat them up and seemed to injure them, which seemed to be a first, like a major in kayfabe. If you're shaking out this big team, you know, actually injure them, it's got to be something. Yeah, because they're not just winners in the tag division. Generally, they're portrayed as like super massive tough guys as well. So I can see that being a big angle.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's the crux of this match is that they have actually beaten them in a match, but they've also never been pinned by them, so it's kind of a trade-off, but they managed to injure them and seem to take them out temporarily. Then, of course, Dan Spivey abruptly leaves WCW just before the show, citing pay issues. Oh, geez. So he's not injured? No, he's not injured at all. He has left. Correct, he has left.
00:51:45
Speaker
Oh, that's funny. We'll turn later in the year for Starrcade. To give that terrible match an amazing promo. Correct. To sum up, we began with the tag team of Sid Vicious and Dan Tabayevi here to take out the World Warriors. Then we lost Sid Vicious and got a new guy who's good, but that's less name prominence than Sid. Yeah. I think he's better in the ring than Sid at this point, but it's not the same value as the name. And then you lost Dan Tabayevi. So you've got the worst way this match could actually come on pay-per-view, unfortunately.
00:52:17
Speaker
So, uh, mean Mark Callis is of course better known today as The Undertaker. Yes. He's about half a year from starting his run over in the WWF at this point, I believe. Yes. He debuts a Survivor Series 1990, is it? That is the one. The Mask skyscraper is Mike Enos, who was actually currently part of the AWA World Tag Team Champions. Thus, I imagine the mask.
00:52:46
Speaker
Yes, this is the unannounced, unpromoted, interpromotional match, yes. Oh God, we need a big guy come over and help us right now. Pretty much, yes. I guess Jack Victor wasn't big enough. Jack Victor is usually there, throw a mask on him, he's whatever you need to be. Yeah, pretty much. I guess he didn't quite fit that bill, so he's even bigger.
00:53:07
Speaker
Hawk and Animal come into Iron Man and a couple bikers pull out on motorcycles. So Hawk and Animal oddly ride on the backs of the cycles down the entrance ramp for like three seconds. Yes. It looks tough and all but it's over in a flash. Yeah. Ellering challenges Teddy Long to a fight and Long charges but Ellering dodges and decks him.
00:53:30
Speaker
The road warriors dominate with hawks flying shoulder block and big boot and animals clothesline and atomic drop. Doom, maskless now, wander down to ringside looking very sharp in tuxedos and sunglasses.
00:53:42
Speaker
They learned the ZZ Top lesson. Yeah. JR theorizes that Long has hired them as bodyguards. The skyscrapers briefly take over with strikes and choking, but still eat a huge animal dropkick. Calus drops Hawk on the top rope, and the skyscrapers double team animal, but Hawk marches over and catches Calus's punch. It looks really weird when Calus uses facial expressions here. I'm just not used to it. Yes. What is this emoting you speak of? Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
He's not necessarily bad at it. It's just like you're going to then spend, I don't know, a good 30 years never doing that. Yeah. It'd be like seeing Dan Lee Lewis in like a screwball comedy. It would make no sense to your brain. Yeah. Hawk clotheslines each skyscraper down. The brawling continues and Atkins tries to break up rope chokes. He realizes this is a street fight, right?
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah. Hawk and Kalis fight outside, and Hawk hits a clothesline off the apron, his great standing dropkick, and a hard straight punch. Kalis rams him to the barricade and chokes him with a rope. The masked skyscraper fights animal, but looks legitimately exhausted, and his punches have nothing. Yeah. The skyscrapers try a double clothesline, but animal ducks and clotheslines both down.
00:54:57
Speaker
Hawk dumps Kalis over the top rope, and he and Animal hit the doomsday device on the masked skyscraper for the three count and the win, as Kalis just decides to walk away instead of helping. How appropriate. Yes. Long charges the ring against the advice of his bodyguard, Doom, and Animal grabs him, hefts him overhead, and hurls him over the ropes into Doom's arms. Long didn't really seem to know how to go up for the move, so it was all Animal just muscling him up and over. Yeah.
00:55:25
Speaker
It's interesting, you can tell how much they work together on moves like that normally. Oh, yeah. Because Animal seems to not necessarily have a hard time, but he's struggling a little bit more than you'd expect, given how easily he lifts people like that in a match. Yeah. But they know how to go up for the move and Long doesn't. Yeah, someone generally, you'll run towards them and sort of elevate yourself and they be the middle, essentially. Long did not do that. And you'll hold still and Long is wiggling all over the place. Yeah.
00:55:55
Speaker
Doom doff their jackets and get into yell at the warriors, but turn to go, only to turn around and attack. Doom try to use fist loads, but the warriors get them. Hawk hits a power slam on Reed and dumps him over the top rope, then Dex Simmons to knock him out of the ring. Animal is the only one that got out of all that with his shirt intact. We lose Funk's mic for a few moments as he's discussing the end of the match. Thoughts on this one?
00:56:21
Speaker
Lots of punching. Yes. Lots and lots of punching. You're not ever in the street, by the way, or anything resembling a street, but I guess street and spirit maybe. Yeah. The match has a few interesting pie points. Animal Ramadunga's drop pick is nice, as weird as it feels in the middle of punching.
00:56:40
Speaker
It's one of those matches where, if it was a normal match, these spots would be fine but have no impact. Like, you know, the drop kick or the diving closing off the apron. Other than that, obviously, the doom position of the lights, which always look terrifying. Oh my gosh, yes. But it's the bigger the guy is.
00:56:54
Speaker
I rewatched that to make sure how close his head clapping was. It's a pretty tight tuck there. Yes. But yeah, it's just one of those matches. It's hard to keep interest because it's just these guys punching each other. And like I said, at this point, it's not even the group that originally came in to fight the Road Warriors. Right. You've lost all of the storyline build to it. Yeah. So this is just a match now.
00:57:17
Speaker
Can you talk about before, one of the previous shows, where the blow-off to the Mini Express versus the original Mini Express is only half because one of them actually has to leave the company. Right, yeah. And they throw, I think, Jack Victory, in this case, in a mask, and he's the masked express guy. Now, imagine if both of them left, and there's two different people fighting them. And that's this match. Basically, yeah.
00:57:40
Speaker
Uh, the somewhat cheap finish was Lotto, I think, because clearly there's no long-term plans for Mike Enos, the mass skyscraper. It's the one and done character. So it makes sense that he would lose. Yes. They'd obviously do want to have, take her, get taken out obviously. I'm sure in his part, he's like, wait, I don't take Doom's advice. I guess if you insist. I mean, I would really look forward to it, but.
00:58:05
Speaker
But so, yeah, him walking out, it's definitely the best way to protect him. He doesn't try to run it and he's countered. So it's the best way I guess you could do it. But it's a shame that after all this buildup for like three or four months, it's just what we get. I'm like, oh, okay. I kind of liked that they were able to have him do that because that guy's not his regular partner anyway. Why should he care? Yeah, fair enough. I mean, obviously it fits with his name too, but. Yeah.
00:58:28
Speaker
Is it turning that long and didn't seem bothered by it? Longest given up on this story. So I was like, well, that didn't work. Yeah. You seem to have no issue with Taker just, well, I'm Taker now, with me and Mark just sort of leaving. He just is. Yeah.
00:58:45
Speaker
Speaking of that, was it kind of weird for you to see him just like throwing through the ropes too? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then just landing on the floor like anyone else where normally, I'm so used to that, like clothesline over the top and he lands on his feet spot. Yes. He does a whole bunch of matches throughout his career. It's neat seeing him early in his career and just like, you can tell it's him when you look at him. Yes. But he's not doing almost any of the stuff that you know.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah. He's not doing the rope walk. He's not doing the clothesline out of the ring and land on my feet spot. He is doing choking, which was a big part of his early WWF run, but that's pretty much it. Yeah. I didn't get it. The biggest appointment for this front of the show so far with the Wrestle war is that we've had two matches with Johnny Ace and it's obviously our last one with him and he didn't do the ACE crusher. So I didn't make the RKO comparisons or diamond cutter comparisons. And we have one match with me and Mark. He didn't do the rope walk. Yeah.
00:59:39
Speaker
That's all I asked for, but no. Yeah, not a heck of a lot of complexity to the match, but Calus, Hawk, and Animal do give it all they've got here, I felt. And there's a few very nice, hard-looking strikes and vicious moves in the mix. The Masked Skyscraper is the weak link, I think, with wispier punches and not much in the way of character. Not that he really had much time to work on his character, being brought in, apparently, kind of on an emergency basis. Yeah.
01:00:07
Speaker
Doom's presence, I thought, added to the match, and their post-match confrontation with the Warriors was probably more interesting than the whole match. Yeah, I agree. Not a lot to this, but it was fine for just adding something a bit different between the standard tag matches. It's also fun as a curiosity to see part of Undertaker's brief WCW run.
01:00:29
Speaker
I enjoyed it, but more from the sense of, oh, that's really interesting to see him here and see how different he is. But as far as the batch goes, I could miss this one. Yeah, very much.
01:00:43
Speaker
Last time we had a Chicago Street Fight, it was mainly like four other stipulations. That was the, do you know the full name of that match? There was the Chicago Street Fight six man Texas barbed wire match. Something like that, yeah. So when we did that, you did mention that there is a Chicago Texas. Yes. I can one-up you for that. Okay. Technically two-up you for that. So first off, there is a now abandoned town called Chicago, Kansas. Okay. Which is a name of two different rock bands, which is kind of funny.
01:01:11
Speaker
But more interestingly, there's also at Chicago, Zimbabwe. Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah. There's a suburb in there. Okay. We had the international tag team show that won Starrcade. It's a shame that you couldn't have a entire street fight with a team from Zimbabwe. Yeah, they've challenged the Road Warriors. That would've been great. They're like, God, we'll challenge you to our favorite match, the Chicago Street Fighter. The Road Warriors are like, what? Yeah. We both are from Chicago. Okay. Yes. Dream booking. That would be hilarious.
01:01:43
Speaker
This would be the end of the skyscrapers, save for one night reunion at Starrcade, which, let's be honest, sucked.
Mid-Show Recap and Future Matches
01:01:48
Speaker
The promo was awesome, though. Yes, the match itself. If they just didn't do the match. I think that is, on a technical level, the worst match on all of Starrcade. It's really awful. Because there's like four moves and they're all messed up. Yeah, they bought almost every move in the match. I'm not sure there's one that they don't mess up, honestly. I feel like there's like one point where they punch someone and it works. Okay, there you go. And that's being very generous.
01:02:13
Speaker
I would say, as mentioned, the Road Warriors will compete in a capital comment and six-man match, which would be cut from the VHS release. Basically lost the time for 24 years. Yes, until the network released it. Interestingly enough, the mass skyscraper Mike Enes would actually join WCW in 1990. 1991 would be the tail end of the AWA, where he was working at this point. So he needed somewhere else to go to. So when he worked in the AWA, he was part of the time we called the destruction crew. That's a pretty good one.
01:02:42
Speaker
He comes into WCW with his tag partner from the DWA. They got him both in. Probably get it dirt cheap because where else are you going to go? And they became the Minnesota Wrecking Crew number two. Oh God. Yes. Not the new Minnesota Wrecking Crew. Minnesota Wrecking Crew two. I believe they actually were managed briefly by Ole Anderson. You're trying to give Mike Enos the, the Anderson's gimmick. Come on. Geez. Yeah. Not the best call. No.
01:03:13
Speaker
JR lets us know that we're at the halfway point of the show, and now the remaining matches are championship matches. Funk says that Doom and the Road Warriors are surely not done. The NWA is the best in the world, and it's a great night of wrestling.
Freebirds vs Pillman & Z-Man
01:03:28
Speaker
JR tells him to settle down, and Funk does not, doing a funny dance at the camera. JR and Funk break down the remaining matches, and Funk predicts that Flair will win the world title match against Luger.
01:03:41
Speaker
So our fifth match is the Freebirds, Jimmy Garvin and Michael P.S. Hayes versus Brian Pillman and the Z-Man. For Pillman and Z-Man's, I said Pillman like Z-Man. No, honestly, that works. I think that works. It kind of does, yeah. Pillman and Z-Man, yeah. For Pillman and Z-Man's, NWA United States Tag Team Championships. The referee for this one is Nick Patrick.
01:04:05
Speaker
So, as you talked about in the last show, which is confusingly main evented by the US tag title match. That was so weird. It still befuddles us to this day. The US tag titles are vacated storyline purpose by a month or so after that show. And they're just lost in limbo for a while. Cut to the beginning of 1990 and they decide they want the titles back again for some reason. I don't know why it took them so long to think of this.
01:04:30
Speaker
So they naturally from a tournament, you know, all these teams, but in surprise, the winners are, as you noted, Pillman and Tom Zink. Okay. So it's not, you know, the road warriors are the next press or anyone you would think could be that. Weirdly, they had a college champion just a couple of weeks before the show and Pillman and Zink do wrestle, but they don't hold the final of the tournament on that show. Huh. Yeah.
01:04:55
Speaker
on Clash of the Champions. They just wrestle someone else in a match to promote them before they win the titles. Okay. And I believe the Freebird were part of the tournament, but they don't actually fight Pillman and Zinc in this. So this is the first match for them. All right. There's no almost Freebird intro to Bad Street USA this time, so that must have been a flop last show. Hayes has one heck of a shiny coat, but it's not as good as last year. Yeah. Garvin has a fairly sedate leather jacket by comparison.
01:05:25
Speaker
Z-Man and Pillman do the generic babyface hand-slapping entrance, and Pillman tells his mom hello when he notices the cameras pointing at him.
01:05:33
Speaker
The Freebirds beckon some shiny-dressed ladies to the ring, but as they turn to take off their coats, Pillman and Z-Man quietly get the girls to leave and take their places, taking the Freebirds' coats. Pillman and Z-Man tap the Freebirds on the shoulder and slug them, then hit double back body drops. Hayes rolls out, and Z-Man sends Garvin out with a dropkick. And Pillman and Z-Man try on the Freebirds' coats. But Pillman can't figure out how to put Hayes' coat on, so he just drapes them on his shoulders.
01:06:01
Speaker
I forgot that, yeah. He works at it so hard. He just like gives up, drapes it across the shoulders, go with it. Yeah. It did look like, I don't know, pretty slick or something. It was probably hard to work with all the shiny material. Bad Street USA plays and Pillman and Z-Men mock the free bird struts. Funk says the free birds dance better but are uglier.
01:06:27
Speaker
The crowd chants, free bird suck! Pillman gets the better of Hayes. Tags and Z-Man gets the better of Garvin, but after a dropkick, Garvin dodges the second one. See, if that had been a top rope dropkick, Z-Man would have known it was impossible. That's true. Tag to Pillman, and he gets a crucifix pin on Garvin for two. Hayes fluffs Garvin's hair and JR jokes that he's checking for rats. Funk says Garvin might be hiding a weapon in there.
01:06:55
Speaker
Hayes in and he lands some strikes, but Pillman and Z-Man work on Hayes' arm. Hayes finally lands a hard, closed line on Z-Man and tags Garvin, but Z-Man and Pillman do well against him too. The crowd gets distracted by something, so Pillman works a wrist lock until they're paying attention again. It looked like Nick Patrick might have given him some advice there. He kind of walks by and clearly says something, and then Pillman starts working the wrist lock for longer. Oh, I noticed that. So I think he's like, hey man, they're not watching.
01:07:24
Speaker
Pillman counters a whip with a hip toss, knee strike, and headlock takedown for two, but Garvin tags Hayes for strikes and a sleeper hold. Funk mentions that the sleeper hold is extremely dangerous and tells kids not to do it. Pillman escapes, but Hayes counters a charge with a hard left punch. Funk calls it a right, and JR corrects him, but then jokes that Hayes might be ambidextrous. Awkward Hayes' second rope crossbody, but Pillman rolls through for two.
01:07:52
Speaker
Garvin gets two off a double team elbow, and the Freebirds trade off to wear Pillman down, until Garvin and Pillman knock into each other and both go down, and Pillman manages to make the tag to Z-Man. Z-Man fights each Freebird and builds to a sleeper, the Z-Lock. Actually, to correct you there, he didn't go for a sleeper, he gets a sleep hold. Yes. The deadly sleep hold.
01:08:13
Speaker
With some reason they call that all match. Yes. He actually does it even in Luger and Flair. Oh, really? This night he just continually calls that the sleep hold. Maybe it's like a patent thing. They're trying to patent that separately. Very confusing. Oh, okay. In any case, Z-Man's version is called the Z-lock. Huh.
01:08:31
Speaker
Pillman counters Garvin's interference, but Patrick ushers Pillman out. So Garvin jumps in off the top rope to hit Z-Man in the neck for two for Hayes, who throws Z-Man through the ropes. The Freebirds beat Z-Man up outside and inside the ring, and work some neck holds. Hayes tells Z-Man he should never have been champ, and tells Patrick that Z-Man wants to give up.
01:08:54
Speaker
Z-Man frights free and gets a nice power slam, but Haze dodges an elbow drop. But Z-Man counters a slam with an inside cradle for two. Garvin in, two count off a Garvin knee drop. Back to Haze, and Z-Man charges but eats a fast punch. They've gotta learn not to charge at Haze. Right? Yeah. Haze slips off the top rope as Z-Man tries to grab him, but quickly snap mares him down and elbow drops him for a couple two counts. I think that was a botch, but Haze covered it pretty well.
01:09:22
Speaker
Garvin in, and he gets a rear chinlock, then decks Pillman to stop a tag. Pillman charges in, but Patrick ushers him out, and Haze hits a top rope strike to Z-Man for 2 and 9 tenths. Pillman breaks up a pin off of Haze's bulldog, and Z-Man finally catches Haze with his own DDT. Tags to Garvin and Pillman, who springs in as Garvin yells, aww hell,
01:09:45
Speaker
Pillman rapidly lands a back body drop and several high-angle drop kicks, and a flying shoulder block to both. Z-Man got in during that, but did nothing. Maybe he got in early? Yeah, I rewatched that match. I was like, that's weird. In the ring, he keeps trying to move, and then nothing happens. Yeah, moments later, we get a four-man brawl, so I think he's supposed to jump in there. Mm, okay. That could be it.
01:10:08
Speaker
A four-man brawl, and Z-Man throws Hayes through the ropes, but Patrick ushers Z-Man out. The Freebirds hold Pillman and try to use a title belt, but Patrick stops Hayes, only for Garvin to ram Pillman into the camera instead. Great spot there. Garvin tries to DDT Z-Man, but Pillman recovers, climbs up top, and hits a crossbody on Garvin for the three count and the win. Annoyed, Hayes and Garvin hit DDTs to Z-Man and Pillman, then elbow drop and stomp on Pillman.
01:10:36
Speaker
Z-Man can't be bothered to sell at all as he just springs up and chases them out of the ring after a DDT. Come on, man. At least look groggy. To be fair, Freebird basically no-sell the entire match to beat them up. That is true. Thoughts on this one? It's a strong match, but it's a little long, I think. The main thing for me, I think, is they tell a pretty good story here.
01:11:01
Speaker
I mean, the narrative is pretty clear, and they really emphasize it in commentary. The Freebirds are a long-established team. They wrestled everywhere at this point. They're a unit. Everything is in sync with them. They pop in and out when they need to. Obviously, they use their conduit to cheat all the time. That's what heels do. Yes. In contrast, Pillman and Zinc are a relatively new team. So anytime they're working together, it's less that they're working as a team, and more that they're working as two strong individuals that will occasionally help each other out.
01:11:30
Speaker
Yeah. So it makes a nice narrative. It's funny, that almost covers the bot to present comes in early and doesn't actually do anything. Yeah, they don't really have tag stuff worked out yet. Exactly. Yeah, they could have said that in common. It might help. But that's, that's my inference there to try and cover anyways. The thing that's interesting to me, I like the idea that they can't get the one pin shot to work. So they just don't have the camera.
01:11:52
Speaker
The problem is that he just kind of no sells it and climbs the ropes like when they happened. Yeah. They kind of moved to the actual finish a little bit too quickly. Yeah. It would have helped if maybe they abused Z-Man a little bit more and then Pillman came in for the rescue. Yeah. He could have been like on the apron, maybe stunned or something like halfway over the rope or something like that. Pulling a Kevin Sullivan. Yeah, exactly. Or like what Cornette was doing when he was trying to sell being punched early and he's like swinging back and forth in the ropes as if anything was happening to him. Yeah.
01:12:23
Speaker
Like always, Pillman's crossbody is really good. It's notable though that because he has to go higher up because Garvan's holding Zinc, he doesn't hit him like chest first like he normally do and sort of roll into it. He's definitely higher up and it's kind of the flying version in the sense of what
01:12:42
Speaker
what Norman did, especially watching the replay. He comes in really high and it's less unpleasant than the Cactus Jack of it, for sure. But he definitely, when he lands, when he's in the ground, it's definitely higher up than you need to be in a crossbody. The negative for me was, like I said, the Freebirds kind of no-sell the match and immediately get their heat back. I get that they're going for another match with them, but it just felt too sudden.
01:13:07
Speaker
I would have liked maybe if Pillman and Zinc, again, showing their sort of rookie status, relatively speaking. Maybe they celebrated in the ring while the Freebird recovered, and instead of leaving the ring, and the Freebird attacked them once they recovered. Instead of just like, it's instant retaliatory. It feels like when you watch a match where something is like a surprise roll up, someone pops up and attacks them. Because that doesn't knock you out, it just held you down. The cross body is supposed to actually do some impact to you.
01:13:35
Speaker
And it's just, I guess it didn't. Yeah. I think to their credit, it does come after they've been in control for most of the match and we only had Pillman's hot tag segment. So it's not like they've taken a ton of offense at that point. Sure, sure. They've been in control for most of it. But yeah, I agree. The crossbody should probably keep Garvin at least down for longer than he's down. Yeah.
01:13:56
Speaker
Yeah, this was perfectly well-performed with some good holds by Z-Man and great flying moves by Pillman. It has some nice character work from the Freebirds. Nice quick haze punches, too. I like that gimmick for him. Yes. It's a pretty standard tag formula match at heart, though, and it gets slowed down quite a bit by rest holds during the extended Z-Man face imperil bit.
01:14:15
Speaker
Garvan and Hayes try drawing at the camera to make that interesting, but that only gets so far. They really needed to do more and really fight for position. And Z-Man just kind of lays there in the holds for most of the time. Yeah. You can be dynamic with whole long holds, like with the Regal match, Regal Simo match, for instance. There's always something happening in the ring. Sometimes it is just a res spot and you just sort of sit there. Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:40
Speaker
This is one of those matches that feels like it could maybe lose about five minutes and be better for it. There's a fair amount of repetition to it and that hurt my interest.
01:14:49
Speaker
All told, I think I would have been fine with this one if it had been the only tag match on the card. But it wasn't, so to me this needed to be more than it actually was. But I actually really liked the ending and they got creative with it and I thought it was fun. I just wish the rest had been a little bit more interesting going into it. But again, I feel like it's because I'd seen several tag matches on this show. Right.
01:15:13
Speaker
I just kind of needed them to do something more than just a regular tag match. But I agree, your points on the story, definitely. I mean, I agree they got their story across fine. There's nothing really wrong with how they performed this match. Yeah, I have a theory I'll discuss later on as to why I think the match is so long, but we'll get to that later. Okay.
01:15:32
Speaker
I don't know if it's actually intentional, but I'm getting a bit of a doubt here. So, Tom Zink comes out wearing plain white trunks and boots. Pillman comes out wearing plain blue trunks and boots. So first thought is, why are they matching as a tag team? Like the Freebird with their matching coats and pants and even their frizzy hair is kind of the same. Although they do wear different coats this time. Oh, that's true. But yeah, and generally speaking, they match really well. Yeah. However, if you think about it, the end of the way US tag title belts
01:16:02
Speaker
Besides having the lovely USA in red, white, and blue on the front of the gold plate, it has a red strap on it. Ah, so the red, white, and blue. Exactly. Oh, okay. If that was intentional, that was good on their part. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually, that's a cool idea. Yeah. I'll get them credit for that one even. I can't verify that was the intent. Yeah. The US tactile will be defended at capital combat. And now I can say who it's defending because, you know, I didn't want to spoil the match earlier.
01:16:30
Speaker
Now, what's interesting about that match, reading up on it, so originally, that was not the plan. The plan was to be Tom Zink and Brian Pillman against the Simone Swatt team at Capital Combat. However, what happened was, about three weeks out, and this is the point where they start pre-taping stuff to save money, it gets really bad in like 91, 92, but they started a little of this. By the way, about three, four weeks out, they're gonna start promoting and building up this match for Zink, bringing Pillman and the Swatt team.
01:16:58
Speaker
However, the SWAT team just didn't show up that TV taping. They weren't there. I guess it wasn't bad enough that they got fired or punished because they're still on capital combat. They were seeing a nothing match. But basically, they didn't show up and backstage people like Jim Hurdle, like, oh, well, they're not here. I guess my next press then. Okay. So my next press get a get a tag title match just by the team not showing up. That's kind of funny. That is interesting.
01:17:28
Speaker
We go right to our next match. Okay. So our sixth match is the horsemen, Arne and Ollie Anderson versus the Steiner brothers, Rick and Scott for the Steiner's NWA World Tag Team Championships. The referee for this match is Mike Atkins.
01:17:46
Speaker
As we'll cover more in the next match, Sting will go down with injury at Clash of Champions before the show at the behest of the Horsemen. And the Anderson would reform because earlier they kicked Sting out of the group and they put Ole and Sting's spot on the six-man match to have that show. So that's the reformation of the Anderson brothers.
01:18:04
Speaker
Yes. So they used the attack on Sting and the anger that the standards have towards them for it to get a world tag title shot at this. Okay. Also, as mentioned earlier, Great Muda probably left the company in January. So Orange is actually the TV champion as well at this point, because Muda dropped it to him on the way out, which is the second or third time that's happened in the history of just covering these shows.
01:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think aren't seems to come up in those sorts of situations a lot He's a good reliable guy that you can be like, okay. We need someone to have the title put it on him Yeah, it's kind of a shame that the details get no focus in this show. Yeah, they mentioned like one time in commentary He's also the TV champion. That's it. Yeah, I completely missed it. Yeah, we didn't wear the belt of the ring. So yeah easy to Funk brings back aren't and all these old Minnesota wrecking crew tag team name and it's still awesome
01:18:58
Speaker
The signers come out in their University of Michigan letter jackets with Rick also wearing a paper on which he's scrawled, Sting's Revenge, missing an apostrophe. Yes. He holds it up at Arne and Oldie, then sets it down to take off his coat. Amusingly, Scott seems to mistake it for litter in the ring and kicks it, but then realizes what it is and tapes it to the term buckle.
01:19:19
Speaker
It is also worth noting that later in this match, they mentioned that Rick Steiner has a career in education. Yes. Rick Steiner is actually on the school board in, I think it's Cherokee County in Georgia. I believe so. Yeah. Someone on the area. It's no manning a Shoney's, but hey, you know, do what you gotta do.
01:19:38
Speaker
Arne and Scott start, but Arne whips around to deck Rick, then rolls out to dodge a punch from Scott. Arne congratulates himself, but Rick taps him on the shoulder and slugs him when he turns, then rolls him in. Holy charges in, but the signers hit punches on both Andersons in stereo, sending both out of the ring.
01:19:55
Speaker
Back in, Arne tries to lure Scott into the Anderson's corner, but Scott's too smart for that. He takes down Arne with an atomic drop into Rick's raised boot, and later Ollie with a huge stalling slam and a nice slip under a grab into a leg takedown. Scott tags Rick, and as Ollie gets up, Rick's already in his face. A shocked Ollie tells Atkins to get the motherf- Get him back! As he realizes the camera's close enough to hear him.
01:20:22
Speaker
You know, I've made a swear. Just the fact he gets very close. Uh... Oli gets Rick into the Anderson's corner, but Rick punches free and the Steiners win a four-man brawl. Rick goes on all fours in the center of the ring, but Scott just walks around. I guess they haven't worked out their tag team pose yet. Yes. Tag to Arne, but Rick catches a leapfrog attempt, turning it into a lightning-fast power slam for two. Arne tries to lure Rick into the Anderson corner, but Rick plays around, moving in and scampering back.
01:20:52
Speaker
Arne can't get anything going against Rick, and we get tags to Ollie and Scott. The Andersons trade off against Scott, but he counters everything. Ollie does trick him with a feint to get a takedown. I like that they kind of did the same move to each other, but in two different ways. Scott's just so fast that he gets the takedown, where Ollie actually uses trickery. Yeah. They make a point of that, yeah, that you've got to smart them, essentially.
01:21:16
Speaker
Scott muscles Ollie up through sheer might for a suplex. That was almost all Scott on that one. Knee drop by Scott for two, and he tags Rick, who tries to stomp Ollie's crotch, but Atkins stops that. Ollie lets Rick push him into the Anderson corner, and they land knee strikes.
01:21:33
Speaker
Rick fights back, but the Anderson's start wearing him down, taking advantage of Scott's protests for some double teaming. Slam and elbow drop by Ole get two and a half, and Rick wins a slugfest, but Ole tags Arne and catches Rick's leg to stop a tag, but Rick stretches and makes it.
01:21:48
Speaker
I don't think I've ever seen the Anderson grab the leg fail to stop someone from making the tag. That was interesting. It is surprising, yeah. After a Scott elbow, Arne rolls out of the ring. Scott follows, but Arne ducks a clothesline and Scott hits the ring post. The Andersons work Scott's arm outside and inside with barricade smashes, a variety of arm holds, and a very nice Arne hammerlock slam. The timing was perfect on that.
01:22:13
Speaker
Normally, you can question like, wait, why don't they just move their arm before they hit? But he literally lets go like a split second before he drops Scott on the mat. So it's pretty impressive. Yeah. Scott gets the knees up on an Arne second rope splash, ducks a clothesline and hits the Frankensteiner, but he's too hurt to go for a pin. Both crawl for the tag. Arne tags Ollie and Scott tags Rick just as Ollie nails Scott.
01:22:38
Speaker
Rick wins a slugfest and hits Steiner lines to each Anderson, but Arne knees him from behind and they whip him to the ropes, but Rick knees Arne in the face and rolls Ole up for the three count and the win. Oh, I was not ready for that to end. Shock finish for me there. It was, that's pressing, yeah.
01:22:54
Speaker
I thought they were getting into the finish, but I didn't expect it to be like, oh, that's it. Yeah. The Andersons knock Rick out of the ring, and Arne holds Scott's arm for an only knee off the second rope. Scott's arm is badly hurt, and the Andersons escape as Rick comes back with a chair. Thoughts on this one?
01:23:14
Speaker
thing for me is it took a while to get going, because I have a real sort of slow start to this match. I don't know if that's intentional, like the heals being healed, but it didn't seem like it was getting to where it was going right away. Because it feels like it's supposed to be again, they're mad, they're trying to take out the Anderson's.
01:23:30
Speaker
and the answers are going to take advantage of their anger, but it took a lot of pick up from me. Even once that gets going, it seems pretty methodical, the whole thing. I didn't like this as much as I was hoping to. There's a number of reasons why, I think.
01:23:45
Speaker
My note was that it was never boring, but I think the problem was this match doesn't show you what the Stylers can really do. I feel like for me, the Stylers are working a match, put together, and run entirely by Arne and to probably a more radio stand Oli Anderson. And as part of that, you get brief bits of their oppressive power and their technical ability, but they can work, we've seen matches and they work really fast without being so fast you can't get track of it.
01:24:13
Speaker
It feels like when you see younger wrestlers and older wrestlers at times, and the young wrestler fully has to adapt and do what the older wrestler wants. Because realistically, the older wrestler can't pop up as fast with these quick moves and everything. So the match becomes their match, and you can feel like they're wrestling in slow motion sometimes, or like a half speed or something like that, you know what I mean? It's disappointing for me in the sense that I know stars can work a match with like, say, the Midnight Express, for instance.
01:24:38
Speaker
I feel like a match between them and the Steiners, even with the working on a limp spot and, you know, the heal control middle of the person in the match, all the usual tag stuff. I feel like it would be like one and a half times faster than this matches.
01:24:54
Speaker
There's nothing bad about the mattress for me. It's just, it wasn't what I was hoping it was going to be, I think. I don't want to blame us, but it feels like it's maybe because Ollie can't go the speed they need to. I don't know. Maybe I'm seeing more of this than was there, but it's a good match. Don't be wrong. It's not a bad match. It's just, I expected something else when it's the Anderson and the Steiners. No, it didn't quite get that for me. Think about it well.
01:25:21
Speaker
For me, I had much more positive feelings on it, I think. Fifth tag match on the card, but it was still really good. The Steiners and the Andersons worked very well together, and I thought they put on an exciting match with a really good mix of character and strategy. They made elements of the characters part of the match storyline here.
01:25:39
Speaker
The Andersons, the canny veterans, are constantly looking for ways to lure the eager Steiners into traps, but the Steiners are smart enough to catch at least some of them. It's not until, uh, Ole actually lets Rick push him back into the Anderson corner that they succeed in catching one of the Steiners. Rick and Scott, I thought, came off as really strong and no small part due to the shocked or shaken reactions that they kept getting from the Andersons. For sure, yeah. But the guys who come off as tough guys are treating you as something to be feared it means a lot. Oh no, I'd definitely agree with that one, yeah.
01:26:07
Speaker
I thought we got the usual excellent Anderson tag work and work on a body part, and the Steiner's pulled off some very impressive moves, particularly that muscle-up suplex by Scott. Very good counter-wrestling sequences, too, intelligently built. There's a huge amount of variety to this one, and I like that the arm work matters a lot. For one, that's why Scott can only use the Frankensteiner to come back. It doesn't use his arm, and for another, it factors into the post-match with him injuring his arm further in revenge.
01:26:32
Speaker
My only real complaint with it is that the ending just comes out of nowhere, which can be good, but it feels like this was just hitting the start of his final act when it suddenly just ends. Yeah, my other note for the match was sudden ending reeks of rematch. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, even though there's a pinfall, it doesn't feel like a satisfying ending. I wanted to see more of it and see something bigger for the end. No, I agree. So for me, it was a great match. I just wanted it to be longer.
01:26:58
Speaker
I think for me the problem was that it got to sort of what I expected to a certain extent the Anderson Steiner's match to be. But it took about five minutes of them. Like going for hold, stopping, going for hold, stopping. Goes out the ring, stopping. And I think it works in the story. Like I said, they're trying to get them in traps and everything. But I think they took a little long getting there just for me personally. I can see that, yeah.
01:27:20
Speaker
I think I just was enjoying the character work side of it so much that I was okay with the action being delayed, but I can totally see the opposite view on that. The two parts of the match you kind of felt were a little bit at odds, where for me, I was like, no, this is working. It's just interesting to me that you and I, you kind of liked the fourth match better than me, or the fourth tag match, the fifth match. And I liked this match better than you, I think. So we've kind of switched.
01:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're probably fairly even won the first watch, but then rewatching, I got more out of the Pinwin's Ink match. Yeah. And again, to be fair, this is the Anderson's and the Steiner's, so my expectations were also higher. That's true. Than a Pinwin's Ink match. If they'd had a better ending to this, I think this would have been in contention for my match of the night. But with the ending being below that, took it clearly below the other matches I was considering.
01:28:17
Speaker
Oh, the only thing that was mentioned that was weird, the pacing of the match is that, so they eventually do get to working Rick's arm, but then he escapes with the tag and they lock into Scott Steiner, injuring his arm, attacking them. That's kind of weird, they build up a ring and take his arm out. Oh, he escaped. Oh, this guy's arm is dead, I guess. Well, I kind of feel like, again, for me, that felt like them intelligently luring him into attacking them by the ring post. No, no, I get that. I just mean that the match is building up that they're going to take Rick's arm out. Yeah, true.
01:28:47
Speaker
It is also kind of funny to think about it. On the last year's show, apparently Rick had a legitimate injury, which is why they had to work in him being his army taken out, and now it's Scott's. Yeah, it's always the arm. It is, yeah.
01:29:01
Speaker
So Oli would wrestle a little bit more, but he tended to segway at this point back in a managerial role. I believe he wrestles like a three American bash, but he's not wrestling a capital combat, for instance. Speaking of which, the starting boys will be spending the tag titles at capital combat against Doom, who are now a maskless. Okay.
01:29:19
Speaker
So, despite that build we just got, it's not the Road Warriors and Doom at Capital Combat, as mentioned before, which is a little weird. Interesting, yeah. Yeah, you'd expect from this that it would be the Andersons versus the Steiners again at Capital Combat and Doom versus the Road Warriors, but that's not what happens. Nope.
01:29:36
Speaker
I think maybe that comes down to the pay-per-view schedule being different at this point in history Yeah, whether it's not a show every month or every other month. Yeah, that's like three months from now, right? May? May is the next show. Yeah, so it's possible and they most likely they wrestle a lot on the TV shows and That's where you get all the blow-off this stuff. But yeah pay-per-view is not where it goes. Okay
01:29:59
Speaker
JR tells us that earlier today, Gordon Solis spoke with Lex Luger, and we cut to a video of that promo. It's weird that all the promos so far have been supposedly live, but this one's pre-taped? Yeah, I was wondering about myself, actually. Yeah. Lex has an interesting outfit on as well. I think it's maybe a workout suit, but it looks much more like a race car driver's uniform. Yeah, like a pit crew guy, yeah. The Thurman Sparky Luger? Yes, there you go.
01:30:26
Speaker
It's nine minutes past four. On a Sunday afternoon, February 25th, here in Greensboro, with me is Lex Luger, challenger for the World Heavyweight Championship in just a couple of hours. What are your final thoughts? All the talking's over with, Gordon, but I've got a big case of the butterflies, but that means I'm ready. That's good for me. That's very bad for flair. I am the top physical condition of my life.
01:30:47
Speaker
That's very good for me. That's very bad for you, Flair. You try to tell me how to do my business. You try to take me out. That just made me all the angry. And that is very, very bad for you, Rick Flair. Because Gordon Sowell, there's one thing on my mind the last two weeks since I received this opportunity. And that is power slam the rack. Power slam the rack. Power slam the rack. And Gordon, that is one hold that no one professional resident has ever gotten out of. And Flair, you're in that move tonight.
01:31:14
Speaker
We're going to find out, Lex Luger, the total package going for the greatest total package in wrestling, the World Heavyweight Championship. And now back to Jim Ross and Terry Funk. I thought this was a capable promo from Lex. I think he did a better job of sounding legit than last year. I appreciate that he managed to sound angry, but coldly angry rather than shouting. It's kind of a nice, different tone. Yeah.
01:31:39
Speaker
I did find the power slam the rack part funny because it sounded like he was planning to power slam a rack, as he said it, faster and faster. Yes, yes. But really, the only complaint I have here is that Luger doesn't really mention Sting. It's just that he's received an opportunity. True. Yeah, that's very cool. I'm not exactly clear on where in their on-again, off-again friendship this falls, but it really seems like Sting should have rated a mention even if they aren't buddies. Otherwise, I thought it was a good build-up to the match.
01:32:08
Speaker
It's definitely a good Luger promo, which that helps the relative compliment, because it's not for promo per se, but yeah, I know I thought it was good. It is weird that it doesn't mention Sting. At this point, it was a fairly quick turnaround to make him a face. He's defending Sting here, but it's pretty recent, so I can understand that not being a natural thing. From the commentary, it sounded like it was like a really recent turn. Yes.
01:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, it just feels like, you know, he says, I received this opportunity. It feels like he should at least say, you know, and what happened to Sting was bad. Yeah. You know, something like that. To give you an idea of the timetable, the Class of Champions 10 Texas shootout where Sting is injured is February 6th. And this show is February 25th, as Gordon Sully noted as if he's in a hostage video and I said time and place for where he's at. That was very odd. So that's pretty recent. What do you think about his promo being pre-taped though? That's, that's bizarre.
01:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if it's because he's wearing that outfit and they didn't think that you could explain him being out of the outfit and ready to go. I don't have no idea why he's only supposedly pre-taped. Maybe he just took that many takes to get the good promo. I don't know. They're like, don't put like some wife. Yeah, it's funny as well that solely actually throws to funk and J.R. at the end of it, despite this being pre-taped. Oh, yeah, it's true. Yeah.
01:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, I remember we watched that. I was like, that is weird, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And yes, we go back to JR and funnily enough, even though we know this is pre-taped, JR acts like solely just through to him live.
01:33:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's very weird. K-fabe is real. Yeah. J.R. and Funk discuss the match, the figure four versus Luger's power moves, and Funk again says that he's going to go with Flair. This is an event, not a happening. That has to be a poke at the WWF's Gorilla Monsoon, who repeatedly called at least one of the WWF shows a happening. Oh yeah, that was a catchphrase practically, yeah.
01:34:05
Speaker
Funk says that these are the two best the NWA has at this time, facing off, and this is a chance to see one of the finest wrestling matches you'll ever witness. JR says, to be the man, you've got to beat the man, and throws to Flair and Soli, live. So Flair is live, but Luger wasn't? Correct. Flair has a feathery pink robe tonight and is accompanied by woman in a very sparkly pink dress.
01:34:31
Speaker
Thank you very much, Jim Ross, and right now I want to turn to the World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion, Ric Flair. Ric, earlier this evening I was talking to a lot of ringsiders and they're predicting you're going to lose tonight. Well, Gordon Soli, when your name is Ric Flair, you're standing with the most gorgeous creature on the face of this earth, and you have been the king of this sport for 10 years.
01:35:01
Speaker
six times then you fear no man and you pay no attention to anybody else's opinion except your own. Now woman why don't you tell the wrestling world and Gordon Sully what you think about Lex Luger baby? I think Lex Luger better get his engine started.
01:35:24
Speaker
that says it all because the one and only world's heavyweight champion is going to walk that aisle and lugar gear up big man because rick flair is coming your way thank you very much all right now let's go to gary capetta in the ring for the introductions of our next match
01:35:49
Speaker
I love at the end of the promo there when he is talking about being the champion, he very quickly undoes his rope so he can show the title belt. Just those little things that he's so good at.
01:35:59
Speaker
A short but good Flair promo, building up his arrogance even in the face of a challenger like Luger. In contrast to the norm, Flair seems pretty dismissive of Luger here, not really trying to build him up, but I think it still works well because it really made me want to see Flair get his comeuppance and have to come to respect Luger. And because of how far he takes it, he even basically outsources the part addressing Luger to woman instead. That's true, yeah. And based on her line, I guess it really was a racing suit that Luger was wearing.
01:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so. I think in the end I do wish he'd addressed Luger a bit more just because I like that part of Flair's character, but I see what they were going for with this and it does work.
01:36:38
Speaker
Yeah. Flair does what he needs to do here, which is to show that he's confident. He's not worried about anything coming his way. It definitely does make him want to see Luger beat him. Yeah. Which is important because, yeah, there are two weeks out from Luger being a heel. Yeah. The respectful Flair might not get them where they need to be for this match. You need to really want to see Luger beat the crap out of this guy.
01:37:01
Speaker
because otherwise Luger might not have people behind him enough because he was until recently a heel himself. Correct. So I can see on that angle, maybe that's why they didn't go for Flair's normal, you know, this guy's a great wrestler, but I'm better type of thing.
01:37:16
Speaker
Right. They had a similar thing when they had to rush to the Nikita Koloff match with Flair. And they had to super speed rush the super powers thing with Dusty Rhodes and make him a face after being anti-America soloing, yeah. I do love too that he says, I don't care about anyone else's opinion, then immediately ask women for her opinion. Yeah. Well, she's not anyone else. She's special. There you go.
01:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, I was kind of hoping when he was bragging about the fuel creature, I thought he was making it about himself and not about her. Oh, that would be hilarious. Yeah. I'm sure there's a promo where somebody does that. Probably. But yeah, there's gotta be. I was disappointed to get the natural end of that and not the funnier way of it.
01:38:00
Speaker
Our final match is the Total Package Lex Luger versus the Nature Boy Rick Flair with Woman for Flair's NWA World Heavyweight Championship. The referee for this match is Nick Patrick. Sting won the final of the Iron Man tournament at Starrcade 89 and actually beat Rick Flair who was the kernel champion in that match.
01:38:25
Speaker
Immediately afterwards, the Forest Men worry to him as a challenger, immediately rushed to have him join the group. Sting was happy to be part of the group, but he didn't renege on the title match that he apparently won by Pinning Flair.
01:38:38
Speaker
What makes you question more about the Road Warriors thing, because the Road Warriors won that tournament, although they didn't beat the Stiners in it, and then that just went nowhere. Yeah, so I guess it's maybe just that it's because he pinned Flair, it's not because he won the tournament, I guess. Yeah, that made more sense. It's just funny, the two from the same event, though, yeah. Yeah. When he wanted to actually use his Guarantee World Title match that he had won, the group kicked him out. That happens early on the Clash show, which leads to them taking him out of a six-man match where he's part of the Horsemen.
01:39:07
Speaker
The horsemen are having their match with the J-Tex corporation in the cage, which is a funny name in Italy. Yes. So Sting does a bit where he tries to be climb the cage to get in there and you know, people got a rush to stop him. There's some dispute of exact timing of this, but the story he's usually told is that they have to sort of pull him off the cage. And it's speculated that his landing there blows his knee out.
01:39:33
Speaker
Like it's just sort of off balance and all the weights on the one leg, not the other. It's not 100% clear if that's what it is. It could be, I've heard someone say it while he's trying to climb it happens, but either way, it's a pretty bad injury. Yeah. And it gets three weeks out from the show. That's really bad timing for them. Yeah.
01:39:50
Speaker
So they quickly rush the story now that looks Luger is Dink's friend, which he had been in the past. And now he's getting the world title shot. I guess because he's US champion and he's a top ranked guy. He's next in line. Makes sense. They frequently will say at least that that puts you in line for the title. Yeah, depending on what show you're watching, being the US champion makes you no more contender or a dozen. Yes. It either really matters or it means nothing.
01:40:16
Speaker
Now the downside is that because of all the shifting they had to do, Lex Luger is not having his originally planned match, which was the US title defense against Dr. Desti Williams. Oh. Yeah, I know, right? Not that I regret having this match, but man, that sounds fun. Yeah, having that match and having Sting Flair would've been great. Yeah. Can you imagine the Luger selling in that one? I know, right?
01:40:41
Speaker
That's probably why I think some of the matches like the U.S. tactile match are so much longer. Is this probably a 15-20 minute match in there? Right, we're missing a match. That is now cut. Yeah. And that time's divided up and maybe not evenly. Okay.
01:40:55
Speaker
We go back to the ring where Gary Cappetta announces that tragedy befell the NWA on February 6th when Sting was injured by the Four Horsemen. He brings out Sting, he is Sting this time, who is sans face paint but plus crutches and a very large leg brace. Sting goes up the steps which did not look fun for him, and soaks in the cheers and gives the Stinger a call. Sting will be a special observer for the match.
01:41:22
Speaker
Luger is out first. He is currently US champion, but that belt is not on the line here. Sting is shown going up the ramp. Once Sting's gone, Flare makes his entrance. Cool fog and lighting. During it, he and Woman are silhouetted at the top of the ramp and I thought that looked really cool. Oh yeah, it did. JR lists off Flare's accomplishments and tells us that it's Flare's birthday, but oddly reasons that that means that it's Luger's day to win. What?
01:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, you often give people gifts on your birthday. Yes. Yeah. Funk says Flair will win here, but also angrily notes that even though Flair beat him, he's not going to say Flair is better than him. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. And I love that Funk does not forget the storyline that happened between them. So that's cool. Yeah.
01:42:09
Speaker
We actually get to hear Nick Patrick giving the pre-match instructions to the wrestlers. Yeah. I can't recall another time that we got to hear those, do you? No, I can't think of any. The crowd does their best to drown it out with loud Luger chants. Flair tells Luger that he better be at his very best and Luger says he better shut his mouth and worry about himself. We get a nice intense intro there and it made this seem really special getting to zoom in and hear the pre-match discussion that added to the atmosphere.
01:42:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is the point where WCW is trying to push this like real sport aspect again. Yeah. As opposed to WWF getting more spectacle. Yeah. And about happenings and not events and all that stuff. I really liked that when WCW does that. That's, I think some of my favorite things that they do is anytime they can be closer to an actual sport in their presentation, I think it really works well for them and they tend to do a good job at that.
01:43:05
Speaker
Luger overwhelms Flair with his power for much of the opening and Flair decides to flee up the ramp. Luger just marches out and picks him up and sprints back to the ring carrying him.
01:43:15
Speaker
Flair tries a cheap shot with the ropes, but Luger no-sells and flexes, and Flair freaks out. Stalling military press by Luger, and Funk's change is picked to Luger now. Flair hits a cheap shot, but Luger gets another military press, but can't pin his Flair's onto the ropes. Luger no-sells a Flair chop, and Flair gets the best expression of resignation. Just, ah, crap. Yeah, Norman Krasner-esque.
01:43:42
Speaker
Luger military press and an elevated bear hug, which is fine because it takes effort. It's true. Luger lowers Flair into a couple two counts, but Flair jabs his eye. Luger recovers and hits punches that he sells louder than Flair. That's Luger for you. The crowd is screaming for Luger. Wow. Whatever they did to build Luger up in this, it worked. Yeah.
01:44:07
Speaker
Flair dodges a Luger clothesline, and Luger spills out to the floor. Flair uses chops, punches, and the barricades, and knee drops back in the ring for two. But Luger catapults him off, still strong. Flair works the arm, including hammerlocks with his feet on the ropes, and Woman finds a chance to choke Luger. Flair gets in some two counts with his feet on the ropes until Patrick notices. Luger finally gets his hand on Flair's throat and hurls him to the ropes so hard he spills over.
01:44:35
Speaker
monster cheers as Luger no-sells chops and chases Flair around and gets a sleeper hold. Sorry, sleep hold. Yes. Back in the ring, but Flair gets a foot up on the rope to force the break and counters a second with a back suplex. Luger counters an attempted suplex outside, smashes Flair's knee into the ring post, and utterly botches the figure four leg lock. Yeah, he does. Does not wrap the legs at all right. No.
01:45:03
Speaker
Flair quickly escapes and I'm pretty sure he just recognized the spot was going wrong and quickly moved the match forward. Luger gets close two counts off a power slam and a backslide. A Flair atomic drop hurts Luger's leg. Flair gets two counts off top rope diving punches, surprisingly enough, and a double underhook suplex, tries his own sleeper, and gets a roll-up for two. But Luger clotheslines him for two and a half.
01:45:27
Speaker
Flair attacks Luger's leg with shim breakers, kicks, rope drops, and a knee drop and gets the figure four leg lock. Flair uses the ropes to get a few two counts, but Sting comes back to ringside, cheering Luger on. Flair slaps Luger, but that enrages him, and Luger turns the hold over, but Flair goes with the roll and uses the ropes for pressure until Patrick forces a break. Sting tells an exhausted Luger to kick Flair's you-know-what, and slaps him to wake him up.
01:45:55
Speaker
Flair chops Luger, but he looks to sting and recovers. Karma catches up with Flair on the top rope, and Luger suplexes him from the apron for two and nine tenths. Power slam, and Flair slumps near the ropes, but woman slaps Luger. Luger grabs her hand, but Flair knees him from behind, and Luger falls into Patrick, knocking him out.
01:46:16
Speaker
Luger lands punches in front of the Sting's revenge sign, still out there since the Steiner's match, in a great shot, and casually clotheslines Flair out of the air on a top rope dive, but Patrick is still out. Luger's superplex, but still no ref. Arne and Ole Anderson run in, but Luger disposes of them and puts the torture rack on Flair.
01:46:36
Speaker
Patrick wakes up, but the Andersons attack the injured Sting with his own crutch, and Luger breaks the hold to save Sting. Patrick counts to ten while Luger fights outside, giving Flair the win by countout. I'm not really sure why Luger didn't just win by DQ for the blatant interference there. Right? I was winning them myself, actually.
01:46:55
Speaker
Luker tries to run back in, at first unaware that he's lost, but Ole and Arne follow him in, and Arne DDTs him. Sting goes for Ole with his crutch, and the Steiners charge down to chase the horsemen off. Funk plays up Luker's compassion for Sting. He gave up his chance at the world title to save a fellow wrestler. Thoughts on this one?
01:47:16
Speaker
it was a strong and long match with my, my central summary of it. The thing to bear in mind is, so the last show we had brick flare and rig of steamboat. Yes. Not the one that's generally called the greatest match of all time, although flare apparently called it that, which is
01:47:31
Speaker
Notable. And obviously we previously had Starrcade 88 with Luger and Flare. I like both of them. I think that made my ultimate Starrcade if we were to serve. I believe it made most of our ultimate Starrcade job. There's a lot of competition here for him. I thought they did a pretty good job with the time. Flare did a good job of really selling the idea that he can't take Luger out until he finally can. He really looks befuddled that all his attempts failing and Luger just no selling stuff.
01:48:02
Speaker
It looks good without devaluing flair, which is a tricky thing to do. Yes. You can no sell someone and make him look a crap, obviously. Right. It's pretty easy. Flair is so ingrained in people's minds that if you start no selling them, that means you're really strong now that he's weak. Yeah, and I like that.
01:48:19
Speaker
This is something Flair does a lot, but that he uses the chops to kind of gauge how far he's worn down the other wrestler. That's true. Early in the match, Lucre will just no-sell them, but then later in the match, they'll affect him more and more. That's true, yeah. Well, the more you wreck the chest, it goes from the normal to the red to the gray. Purple, yeah.
01:48:42
Speaker
Well, it was kind of long. I think technically the team of match was probably longer or the exact time in front of me. I think this was actually a tiny bit longer than that match. Oh, okay. Not by much. Yeah. And then they're pretty close in any case. And obviously it's not quite as good as that because as good as obviously Luger got the fan reaction as a face. So I'm not saying you can't be a good face because obviously he can, but he's just not the natural face of steam boaters, I think. Yes. And the technical skill as noted by the take it for attempt unfortunately going wrong.
01:49:10
Speaker
The mid-level figure four. I thought everyone overall looked good here, so that's good. The finish is a weird one for me. There's just so many moving parts to the finish, I think. You have to have the ref bump, and you have the hold, and then Sting come out, and then threaten Sting and him out there. I think it worked. They were not gonna have the tile switch here. It seems like they're sticking to the idea that Sting has to be player for this title. That's what we're building up to.
01:49:38
Speaker
We'll obviously see if we can recover a couple of combat, but that feels like that's where they're going. So I know they're not going to put on Luger pressure because he's already US champion. But that in mind is still a complicated way to get there. Yeah, I can see that. I don't think it's a terrible finish. I don't think it's one of the ones where a screwy finish like with, say, the road where he's resisting a dusty one and we're just kind of abruptly end because he attacks somebody. It's not one of those kind of screwy finishes. Right.
01:50:05
Speaker
It doesn't work completely for me, but it doesn't detract from the matches there. Okay. Yeah, for me, this was a great match. Luger and Flair do an absolutely tremendous job here with a high energy, very aggressive contest that felt heated from the start and never really cooled off at all. True. Luger has an incredible crowd connection here. They go absolutely wild for everything he does. And Flair is at his wily best.
01:50:31
Speaker
Sting's involvement toward the end brought this up further, and it was cool for me to see him cheering Luger on. There's a lot of little elements to the performance there that built up the personalities and story, too. Like Luger looking towards Sting after each chop laid in the match to kind of draw power from his encouragement. No, yeah, actually that.
01:50:49
Speaker
Aside from the countout not really making sense as opposed to a DQ, I didn't much mind the ending. It gave us some major character development for Luger, being willing to sacrifice his win to save Sting, so I don't think it hurts the match. It's a loss that makes Luger look even more heroic, and the Horsemen even more villainous. So, really great match, and really great characters, and really great story. That's two great Luger vs. Flare main events that we've gotten, this and Starrcade 88, and one thing that's really neat is they felt totally different to me.
01:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that. I thought they did a terrific job with this, especially considering they had, what is it, like two weeks to get this together? It's just about two, three weeks, yeah. That's very impressive what they put together here. So the following month, coming off of this, because of the way he lost, Luger was given another title shot at Capital Combat, which would be a steel cage.
01:51:41
Speaker
Meanwhile, the match that we were supposed to get tonight, we would finally get a Good American Bash listing. Okay. So we got to wait a while. I was ignoring the fact that this show happened, you know, 30 years ago. True. If you're feeling like this is currently happening, you have to wait a while, but you get there. Yeah.
01:52:00
Speaker
JR wraps up the show, calling Funk tuxedo Terry. Funk says that was an exciting match, and JR says that they saw another side of Luger giving up the title to save Sting. Funk tries to talk more about it, but the show fades to credits as JR hurriedly says, so long everybody!
01:52:17
Speaker
We get credits with pictures from the night on one side and the credits scrolling over them on exactly the same side, leaving space almost perfectly sized for the picture on the other side of the screen totally unused. That's true, yeah. That's so weird. Because WCW. Yeah, they had perfect space to show both things, but deliberately decided to obscure the pictures with the credits. I don't know. Anyway, Wrestle War 90 is done. Thoughts on the show?
01:52:46
Speaker
I thought it's a pretty strong show, especially considering how much was changed last minute. I mean, there's no Muda, so he's missing from a match. We have no Sting because of his injury, and then we have no Luger solo match because of the Sting's injury, and a couple other things throughout the show. So you would think with this many things going wrong, and mostly out of their control, people leaving because of pay or injuries they can't control, that would really hurt the show.
01:53:13
Speaker
I think it does in the sense that once you know all this, you can picture all the stuff that you want to see. Like as good as Luger Flair was, you know, get Sting Flair, and miss his appointing at some level. And obviously not getting a Dr. Dusty Williams Luger match would have been disappointing. With that in mind, they recover pretty well. Obviously the one point I'm sure you're gonna miss you with is that this is a very tag match heavy show for some reason. Just a bit. Just a bit, yeah.
01:53:40
Speaker
I almost wish they had, I don't know, maybe wouldn't make any sense, but if you could have not done the Masked Skyscraper thing, at least not having the rest of the match, and you'd turn the tag match of the Road Warriors into a singles match, maybe? Yeah. Pick, like, I know, Animal against Mean Mark or Hawking against Mean Mark. Yeah, I can see it. And then the ringside. I know you want the draw of the Road Warriors and to their match and all that, but I think that might have worked a little better.
01:54:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think the only match that's not good is probably the Norman Cactus Jack match. And that's not terrible. Yeah. There's some shows where the bad match is really bad. That one's just sort of disappointing. And you at least get the draw of early Cactus Jack bumping his **** off for this guy. So there's some value to it. It's not good, but it's not very long either, so. There's that point as well, yeah.
01:54:28
Speaker
So yeah, the worst stuff in the show is not terrible, and the best stuff is pretty high. The way we watch the show, we're going year to year with these shows, so we have to follow a show that had Rick Flair, Rick and Steamboat. So those are pretty big shoes to fill. And I think they did a pretty good job for it all. Yeah, considering how much you've mentioned that was going wrong leading into this show, it's amazing. I always felt like this was a really fun show. But with you telling me that, I'm like, this is terrific.
01:54:56
Speaker
They've done perhaps the best job that I've ever seen them do of coming back from near disaster. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. Yeah. We got a collection of good matches, some terrific character work, particularly in the Luger versus Flair and Midnight Express versus Rock and Roll Express matches, and some great unusual spots with cool move variants, a referee-manager fight, and a great use of a camera as an alternative weapon.
01:55:21
Speaker
The show features some really heated contests with a good mix of comedy too. Not every match is strong, but all are at least acceptable, and four of the seven are really good. I would have liked if they switched out a couple tag matches for something else or gave them something to differentiate their concepts more, but even if there were too many of those for my taste, most of them were great fun, and they mostly overcame the sameness just on the strength of their performances.
01:55:46
Speaker
mix in a hot crowd from any of the matches, and you've got a show that maintains a strong energy the whole way through.
01:55:52
Speaker
The promos were mostly fun tonight, and Luger and Flare in particular got across a ton of character that they carried forward into their match very well. It's a strong night for big rivalries and the intertwining of character and match. Many matches really effectively merge the characters and the match stories on this show, so it just feels more lively than on some others. It's cohesive. Everything works together as part of the whole.
01:56:17
Speaker
The announced team was great fun, too. Terry Funk was clearly out there having a fun time watching the show and saying whatever was on his mind. But he mixed it with some very insightful comments on the match tactics and move executions that elevated the matches. Felt kind of like a dusty commentary job, just fun to listen to. I think the one negative for me in commentary was there's a weird mean streak with JR towards Jim Cornette and some weird jokes about him. Yes, that was strange. Other than that, it's a good commentary, I thought, to show you.
01:56:46
Speaker
Yeah, other than that, JR did a great job keeping the show on track, and he interacted very well with Funk, with two having some excellent discussions about the finer points of the matches and stories. They seem to really be having a good time together, and that definitely helps the show's atmosphere. It's like the Tony and Dusty and Hienan team that you'll get on the later WCW. They're just clearly having a good time, and that helps you have a good time.
01:57:12
Speaker
Production was actually a little above average for WCW, which is kind of a backhanded compliment, but it's a compliment nonetheless. Yeah, still counts.
01:57:22
Speaker
We get a strange stage logo and some audio mishaps and a few camera shots with the wrong angle or zoom crop up, but most are minor and momentary problems on this one, and there were very few times where I felt like any of that distracted from what was going on. There's some really good shots too, whether planned out or just lucky. Production still isn't consistent, but I think it comes down as good on this show.
01:57:45
Speaker
Better hear that, yeah. Overall, Wrestle War 90 is an easy watch and a lot of fun. I got a new appreciation for some performers like Buzz Sawyer, and there are some famous matchups and even honestly kind of a dream matchup for me in the form of the Steiners versus the Andersons, though as I said in the match, I could have done with a lot more of that one. Not everything goes as well as it could, but the show still comes together great, and the highs very much outweigh the lows. Good show and an easy recommendation.
01:58:17
Speaker
Let's go on to our match of the night and MVP. So Al, what's your match of the night?
01:58:22
Speaker
There was some competition, not as much as I was thinking maybe, but I think ultimately for me, the most fun I had with the match was the Rock and Roll Express Manet Express match. Oh, okay. As good as the story they made of Flair and Luger last minute, and it was honestly surprising as the Pillman's Zinc match with the Free Bridge was. But I really don't love the Free Bridge that much, and I have no real connection with Pillman's Zinc as a regular tag team, so that surprised me. Yeah. If you're picking a Dark Horse match tonight, that would be it for me anyways. Cool.
01:58:51
Speaker
Yeah, for me, I was choosing between the Midnight, I guess, the Expresses match and Flair versus Luger. Sure. And for me, I came down very slightly on the side of Flair versus Luger. Okay. Flair and Luger were both great. The match had terrific crowd interaction and reactions, and the story did a great job of involving Sting and his injury.
01:59:12
Speaker
I appreciated that it felt different from the other Flare and Luger matches that we've seen, and it had exceptional intensity and good character work by Flare, Luger, Sting, and Woman to make it an epic main event, so very nicely done there. I like that you picked the Express match, though. I feel like both of those need to be honored. Oh, for sure. And I was hoping that you would actually pick that one so that we'd get to say both of them. Absolutely.
01:59:36
Speaker
So MVP for you, Al. So it was tricky. I was trying to figure out how I was going to do it with the Expresses. I thought if I could cheat and just pick the Rock and Roll Express as one. But I was like, try and be fair. I also seared lean towards Cornette. But ultimately, it came down to as much fun as Cornette was believing he was really good in the show. Yes. So this promo and everything. I felt if I picked him, it would be taking away from the people in the match. OK. So I had to go with the MVP for creative moves.
02:00:05
Speaker
Really strong selling. Happy Ricky Morton. All right. Yeah, Morton does a terrific job in that match. And that walk up Eaton's body is incredible. Yes. That was cool.
02:00:20
Speaker
For me, I had this between Luger and Flair. Sure. And I was leaning towards Luger, but I think I'm going to go with Flair on my rewatch. I started noticing some more little things. It was a really hard choice between them because they're both in top form tonight and really interact well with the crowd. But Flair's just perfect in that match.
02:00:41
Speaker
He brings out the complexities of his character and works his absolute hardest to make Luger look like a million bucks. A guy he can't ever get down fully and who legitimately terrifies him. I think the moment that clinched it, looking back, was that look that Flair gives after he chops Luger and it does nothing. That, oh crap, I know what's coming now kind of look. Flair's reactions to Luger are just brilliant through the match and they made the story come alive.
02:01:12
Speaker
I do want to give an honorable mention though to Sting for coming out well injured to help give the match an extra boost too. He did not look like he was having the good time that we're used to seeing Sting having out there, but he did his part and did it well. Absolutely. Yeah.
02:01:27
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Wrestle War 90. 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 the Wrestle Wars as we go through. You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, or TuneIn.
02:01:51
Speaker
And please, if you've enjoyed this show, give us a rating or review, and share the show through your favorite social media platforms to help others discover us. Many thanks to OSW Review for attendance and pay-per-view figures, and to Gina Trujillo for our logo. Join us next time for WrestleWar 91. War Games. We want you. It's our first look at one of WCW's most famous match designs, and one of my personal favorite match types.
02:02:20
Speaker
Will this instance live up to the legend? We'll find out next time. This is Bob Moore for Alec Pridgen, signing off. Good night, everybody. Happy wrestling. But as they turn to take off their coats, Pillman and Zeman... I'm saying his name the same way, good gosh.
02:02:51
Speaker
Tag to Pill, man. This is gonna happen, I'll match.