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Episode 76: Halloween Havoc 1994
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Happy Halloween! It's the first Halloween Havoc of the Hogan Era of WCW - Halloween Havoc 1994! Thankfully, no big spinning wheel this time - even for WCW, three years in a row would've been a bit much. Instead, we've got Hogan vs. Flair for the WCW title - plus, the loser must retire (for real, definitely not something that'll be overturned before the next summer. Plus: Johnny B. Badd wins the Halloween Havoc costume contest by default, the Nasty Boys debut the Pumpkin Driver, Dustin Rhodes goes for a distance record in self shotput, Brother Bruti demonstrates the art of pretend camouflage, and the hit wrestling themesong of the 90s makes its incredible crowd-pleasing debut. For all this and more...let's go to the ring!
Music by Michael Gary Brewer at https://www.instantmusicnow.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to WCW History and Halloween Havoc 1994
00:00:00
Speaker
On the bright side, as host Halloween, what sorry, as host Halloween, wow. It begins already how the scripts begin.
Exploring Halloween Havoc 1994's Venue and Significance
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to Let's Go to the Ring, where we take a look at the good old days and not so good old days of World Championship Wrestling series by series. I'm your host, Bob Moore, and whoomp, there Al is.
00:00:47
Speaker
Whoomp, there I be, apparently. How's it going tonight, Al? It's going great. How about you? know I'm doing all right. I was at such a loss for what I wanted to do for the show intro, and then I remembered that song being repeated incessantly on the 93 show constantly. At least four times, I think, at crowd chance? There were a lot.
00:01:05
Speaker
Some associated with situations that was like, no, don't do that. Yeah.
00:01:10
Speaker
Tonight, we are taking a look at Halloween Havoc 1994. Witness the terrifying Rage in the Cage. It occurs to me that between the Thunderdome match, the Chamber of Horrors match, tonight's main event, and at least one later show in 1997, I think, WCW seems to believe that the epitome of Halloween theming is a cage match.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it does provide a place to hang decorations that could easily catch fire, as we saw at 1989's show. But is that really the match type that should be showing up all over this series? Did the WWF have a copyright on the casket match?
00:01:42
Speaker
I do think that next show we're doing, at one point they're inside something with the roll cage, so that also counts as well. That counts, that counts, yeah. Yeah.
00:01:53
Speaker
It gets metal scary. I mean, you know, you can get tetanus from it, so. Oh, that's true. it's It's pretty bad. and Halloween Havoc 1994 was held on October at the Joe Arena in Detroit, Michigan,
00:02:07
Speaker
in front of fourteen thousand fans eight thousand five hundred and ninety five of which paid The Joe Lewis Arena is now known as absolutely nothing, as it was closed in 2017 and demolished by 2020, and the land is now occupied by apartments.
00:02:22
Speaker
It was the home of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, held the first NHL draft that took place in the United States, and hosted the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, that being best known as the event where Nancy Kerrigan was famously attacked, though the attack actually took place at the nearby Kobo Arena, not Joe Lewis Arena.
00:02:40
Speaker
That's true, yeah. It also hosted the Stanley Cup Finals several times and hosted several basketball games for the Detroit Pistons. In politics, it was the site of the 1980 Republican National Convention where Ronald Reagan was nominated as a presidential candidate.
00:02:55
Speaker
And back on topic for us, ironically, the final ticketed event to be held there was a WWE show. oh there go Good job sticking the knife in a little further fate.
00:03:06
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Depending on the event, the Jill Lewis Arena is recorded as holding between about 19,000 and about 21,000, so WCW seems to have missed the mark on filling it up this year.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah. We'll be back next year to see how they do again. Halloween Havoc 1994 received buys, more than last and the second best amount for ninety ninetyf four only five thousand behind bash of the beach ninety ninety four hogan's debut show On a less encouraging note, it's also 85,000 more than Starrcade 1994 is
Pre-Show Matches and Opening Critiques
00:03:43
Speaker
going to earn. and Oof.
00:03:44
Speaker
Though if people had known what Starrcade 1994 was going to be like before watching it, I imagine there would have been an even bigger difference. Yeah. Before the show, one match was recorded for WSW main event, Booker T versus b Brian Armstrong.
00:03:59
Speaker
Brian Armstrong would later be the WWF's roadie for Jeff Jarrett, and later known as the road dog of the Attitude Era. Wikipedia lists this as his, quote, final WCW pay-per-view appearance.
00:04:13
Speaker
He wasn't actually on pay-per-view, technically, and he'd otherwise hang around until early 1995, from what I'm reading, so basically this show was not notable at all from his perspective. I guess not, yeah, wow.
00:04:24
Speaker
Is it notable from any other perspective? To find out, let's go to the ring.
00:04:42
Speaker
I'm the dirtiest player in the game. I'm going to tear up Christmas.
Show Opening and Event Atmosphere
00:05:02
Speaker
The opening video package cuts together clips of the feud between Hogan and Flair, using a rather stylish four vertical panels approach with clips sliding in intentionally out of sync with each other. I'm not in love with the kind of distorted audio it has for the promo quotes, though. It makes it kind of hard to follow what anyone is saying. Mm-hmm.
00:05:20
Speaker
I'm also not in love with the complete lack of Halloween theming. Yeah. i mean, last year we had a full-fledged, like, what we described as goosebumps or are you afraid of the dark style intro. Yeah, yeah.
00:05:32
Speaker
This time we get a decent but extremely normal video package. They finally pay over that graveyard from the last three years? Yeah, it's it's bizarre. i'm I'm very sad about that. On the bright side, as host Tony Schiavone welcomes us to the show, we get the Halloween Havoc logo on one side of the screen and a moon on the other side.
00:05:50
Speaker
And then a shadow of a witch on a broom flies across the screen and passes in front of the moon and live appears in front of it, just as Tony announces the show is live. Aren't pay-per-views always live on their initial airing?
00:06:02
Speaker
ah Well, not the New Japan Super shows. Okay, that's fair. That's fair, yeah. But I don't quite get why we needed to announce that specifically, but I'll take whatever spooky graphics I can get. Yeah. Tony claims the arena is jam-packed to the rafters, which it isn't, and builds up Hogan and Flair as the two greatest superstars professional wrestling has ever known and ever will know, as we get a shot of Muhammad Ali in the crowd.
00:06:26
Speaker
The then 52-year-old Ali, massively successful as both an amateur and professional boxer, of course, Also had quite a few professional wrestling appearances over the years, including his famous non-scripted match against Antonio Inoki in 1976.
00:06:40
Speaker
His participation in the Collision in Korea event that we covered previously, and an appearance at WrestleMania 1 as a special guest referee for the main event, among others. yeah He gives a very nice smile for the camera and seems happy to be there.
00:06:54
Speaker
We cut to Tony, who introduces his co-commentator, Bobby the Brain Heenan, as well as Mean Gene Okerlund. Tony has a mullet, Heenan has a neck brace, and Gene looks like Gene has always looked, probably even in second grade.
00:07:10
Speaker
Tony and Gene agree that this is a major, historic night, and Heenan chimes in that Detroit makes a lot of history, naming Motown music, and then rapidly name-dropping a number of stars in various sports and pro wrestling stars, but says all of that will be forgotten.
00:07:24
Speaker
Gene notes the Nancy Kerrigan attack taking place at nearby Cobble Hall as well. Thanks, Gene. Heenan says the only thing people will remember is that Hulkamania ends here tonight.
00:07:37
Speaker
Then makes kind of a perplexing statement that if he were a betting man, he'd take Hogan with him to Vegas as Hogan has that kind of luck, but he'd rather go down the road with Flair as he'd have a better time. I'm not quite sure how all of those thoughts interacted. I think he's trying to say that Hogan's been lucky all this time, and Flair's to put an end to that luck.
00:07:57
Speaker
I guess so, yeah. I think it's the end goal of that. Yeah, I think he doesn't quite get where he would and' wanted to go with it, but it's a good attempt. He says Flair will always be his champ.
00:08:09
Speaker
Gene, indicating his neck brace, wishes Heenan luck with his insurance scam. Heenan tells it to shut up. Ha ha. Tony accused Gene to talk up the hotline, so 1-900-909-9900.
00:08:22
Speaker
Apparently, the first guest is Sting, who will be talking about why he wasn't at Halloween Havoc and is answering questions backstage now.
Honky Tonk Man vs. Johnny B. Badd Match Analysis
00:08:30
Speaker
He and him looks confused, perhaps wondering, like me, why Gene is talking about Halloween Havoc airing live in past tense and claiming Sting isn't there when he's right backstage.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I was wondering that myself.
00:08:43
Speaker
T. Graham Brown sings the national anthem wearing an unusual shirt featuring black and gray checkerboard pattern with multicolored streaks over top, blending into actual colorful checkerboard near the shoulders.
00:08:56
Speaker
A dude in the crowd dressed like Hogan intensely salutes on other audience members' flag motif cloth. Brown, incidentally, started out singing advertising jingles, but eventually released 12 albums, the latest in 2020, and was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2024.
00:09:14
Speaker
He does a perfectly serviceable national anthem, and we get fireworks. So our first match is... The Honky Tonk Man vs. Johnny B. Badd for Badd's WCW World Television Championship.
00:09:27
Speaker
The referee for this one is Nick Patrick with Nick Patrick's mustache. Our story began back in 1991 when Honking Dog Man left the WWF. He tried to debut in a company called the UWF, one of many companies called that.
00:09:41
Speaker
However, before his promo could actually run, because he had pre-taped, WWF's like, you can't be Honking Dog Man, we own that. So they just never ran it. He never debuted for the company. Oh, geez.
00:09:53
Speaker
So here we are back in 1994, and I guess things have worked out because he's on a honky-tonk man again. No changes whatsoever. Yeah. He's not, you know, the tonky honk man or something. Try to flip it around to get past, you know, the attorneys.
00:10:07
Speaker
Considering this the same year that WSW tried to do the big boss man as the boss and expected not to get sued about that. We would not have put it past them, but yeah, yeah I guess he must have worked something out. Yeah, somewhere after Arachnaman.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yes. I wish he was on more shows. Ah, I do too. I'm sure Brad Armstrong is glad that he isn't on more shows. but Yes, yes. So anyhow, the actual story of the match is that Honka Dog Man debuted, like a lot of older talent that suddenly showed up when Hogan did.
00:10:34
Speaker
Purely coincidental, of course. I'm not implying anything. He would go on on a winning streak against mostly jobbers on their Saturday night main event shows before finally qualifying to challenge for the TV title currently held by a different musical wrestler, Johnny B. Bad.
00:10:50
Speaker
Okay. Speaking of legitimate music stars, except in this case not at all, it's the Honky Tonk Man. He comes out in an Elvis-style jumpsuit with Elvis-style haircut, carrying a guitar with Honky Tonk on it.
00:11:03
Speaker
It's all very sparkly. Tony notes the irony of Honky Tonk coming out right after we saw someone who actually can sing. Heenan takes umbrage. Bad is out next in a black and silver cape, even more sparkly.
00:11:16
Speaker
He wears vampire fangs as blessedly he remembered to dress up for Halloween. And he fires off sparklers and later his bad blaster. I believe Johnny B. Bad is the only person on the entire show to nod to Halloween in their outfit in a notable fashion. Other than maybe, I think the Nasty Boys wear black and orange for their outfit. But that's, you know, eh.
00:11:37
Speaker
Oh, they have a pumpkin. Yeah. But far as far way they dress, for sure. Yeah. that's It was really sad that after several years of great costumes by the commentary crew and stuff, they kind of dumped the dump yeah concept a little bit.
00:11:51
Speaker
I will say it's funny to see Johnny B. Badd as a sparkly vampire over a decade before it Twilight. but Yeah, that's true. He was a trailblazer. He really was. And the and they wonderful Riff Trax parody song of Twilight, Sparkly Vampires.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yes, exactly. To give WCW some credit per theme, the entrance set has kind of a crypt design to it this time, simple but effective. And they nicely have Halloween-themed graphics for the name panels during entrances.
00:12:18
Speaker
Ghosts in this case, but they vary tonight. I think as far as like the overall show design, they've done a good job with it, but just they haven't played with the theme so much. They've done their set and then called it a night.
00:12:30
Speaker
It's like how there there's always one guy in the town that's like super into Halloween, right? And he's going to host, you know, the neighborhood Halloween party. He's going to make his house look all nice. He's got some sort of funny outfits and topical.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then everyone else that shows up the party does not dress up at all. Yes. So here he is dressed like, you know, the Joker and everyone else is just, you know, wearing sweatpants. Yeah, the show is the sullen teenager asked by their mom to take their little brother trick-or-treating.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So the little the little brother is the set design, and everything else on the show is the sullen teenager. Yeah, that's a fair fair comparison, yeah We're getting into weird metaphors tonight, man.
00:13:09
Speaker
It's a weird show. Yeah. Bad shocks Tony and Heenan by bringing out a second Bad Blaster and firing it at the opposite side of the ring. Enjoy cleaning up all that confetti, WCW ring crew.
00:13:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Honky Tonk tries to steal the belt before the match even starts, but Patrick gets it back. Bad wins several early hold exchanges. Atomic drops Honky Tonk and then messes up his hair.
00:13:31
Speaker
This means war. her An enraged Honky Tonk tries to slug Bad, but Bad blocks and floors him, so Honky Tonk rolls out and we see a backstage shot of Sting talking with Mike Tenet.
00:13:43
Speaker
Sting is in a tux, sans jacket and bow tie, plus checkerboard suspenders, because it's the Mm-hmm. and Back in, Honky Tonk uses a knee strike to largely take control, landing strikes while taunting the crowd and fighting off bad comebacks generally with more knee strikes.
00:13:58
Speaker
Meanwhile, Tony and Heenan discuss the upcoming Hogan-Flair match with Heenan noting that he wished Flair luck earlier and Flair didn't even seem to hear him he was so focused. And Tony saying Hogan was not taking any visitors.
00:14:10
Speaker
It's a different atmosphere with the two tonight. Hmm. Bad does get a sunset flip for two, but Honky Tonk knees him down and slaps on a chin lock with five minutes down, five to go. Bad fires up and elbows free to a good reaction and slams Honky Tonk, but Honky Tonk dodges an elbow drop and pins for two.
00:14:28
Speaker
Honky Tonk builds to shake, rattle, and roll, his swinging neck breaker, but Bad counters with a back body drop, but Honky Tonk dodges a corner charge, and Bad eats Turnbuckle hard.
00:14:38
Speaker
Credit to him, he really like just charges in there and does not slow down. It's the full Bret Hart like Turnbuckle chest bump, yeah. I appreciate when you don't make it look like you knew you were going to miss. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
Honky Tonk pins with the foot on the ropes for two as Patrick notices and stops. Three minutes remain. Honky Tonk beats up bad outside the ring, then back in into the chin lock. Two minutes.
00:15:01
Speaker
Bad fights free, gets stunned by another knee strike, but counters an advancing Honky Tonk with kicks and hits turnbuckle rams and corner punches with the crowd enthusiastically counting along. One minute left.
00:15:13
Speaker
Bad lands a punch combo and a knee, and Honky Tonk begs for mercy, but gets kicked. Bad goes for the kiss that don't miss, but Honky Tonk ducks, which is technically a dodge, not a miss. Yeah?
00:15:24
Speaker
Belly-to-back suplex by Honky Tonk, and we've got 30 seconds left. He chokes Bad instead of covering, and we're down to 15 seconds. They trade blows, even rolling-on-the-mat landing strikes.
00:15:35
Speaker
With one second left, Bad small packages Honky Tonk, but the bell rings and it's a time-limit draw. Bad retains. The crowd boos the draw, but cheers Bad retaining.
00:15:46
Speaker
Bad celebrates on the turnbuckle, but Honky Tonk grabs him and hits an atomic drop, but Bad no-sells and lands a punched combo, whips into the ropes, and goes for a clothesline, but Honky Tonk ducks through the ropes and runs off.
00:15:58
Speaker
Bad celebrates again. Thoughts on this one? It's a very nothing match, unfortunately. It makes me really yearn for when we get the cruiserweights, because that's really what they're so good at, is opening shows.
00:16:11
Speaker
And it's giving you the energy and excitement here. Honky Dog Man, i I have not watched a lot of his stuff, to be fair. I started watching wrestling when he was not even wrestling, least not a national level. He might have wrestled, you know, independents and whatnot.
00:16:25
Speaker
But yeah, this is my only, like, exposure to him. It's not a good one. ha ha. All he does is real basic strikes and just generic, I have my notes, I wrote Rasslin, the line at the end. Because it's it's all just the real generic, I'm a bad guy, so I'm going eye rake you, that kind of stuff.
00:16:44
Speaker
Nothing that even this audience has had seen a hundred times, I'm sure. Bad is ironically the only good part of this match. Mm-hmm. Even if he's not the greatest wrestler, he has so much style and energy in this.
00:16:58
Speaker
He elevates any part that he's in charge of, he's like on the comeback for. There's at least something to react to when he's on offense. Yes, that's fair. The finish doesn't really help anybody because Bad can't actually beat HonkyDockMan. HonkyDockMan is just really bad at wrestling a time limit, apparently, because he starts choking when he can play try to be for a pin.
00:17:21
Speaker
He tries his finish once and just gives up, apparently. It's just not a good choice for opener because the face doesn't look strong other than the very end when he takes the bad guy off.
00:17:32
Speaker
The note decides to finish. And it's like it's a fun heel to watch. It's not like later ninety s you know, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall or something where, oh, you know, you don't like them because they're bad guys, at least they're entertaining.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah. This is definitely a show where I feel like if, and I'll get to it obviously more later, if they'd switched the first and second match of the show, would have been a lot better. That's fair. I think I would agree with that, yeah.
00:17:56
Speaker
I felt like this was shaping up to be a fun opener. It wasn't fast, but both guys had tremendous character and did a great job playing to the crowd and getting maximum reaction for their moves and taunts. But unfortunately, it just got very, very repetitive, mostly due to Honky Tonk Man at some point deciding 90% of his offense should be chin locks.
00:18:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Bad had really good babyface fire, and Honky Tonk had a great cocky heel persona. Yeah. But there just wasn't much going on in terms of the action. And as a result, it went from being a fun big personality showdown to two guys sitting on their butts on the mat for a while. Mm-hmm.
00:18:30
Speaker
I feel like Honky Tonk is a great personality, but he's like all personality, no ring work. Yeah. He would have been an excellent manager, but maybe should not have been a straight up wrestler, at least if this is his full style. Like you, I don't have a ton of exposure to his matches. So if you really love the Honky Tonk man's performances, know that we're judging from basically having seen this one match. Yes.
00:18:54
Speaker
So it's entirely feasible that there's something else in his career that is just an amazing in-ring performance that we would both love if we saw it. But just off of this one, all I can say is it feels like he's all character, no no actual ah wrestling.
00:19:10
Speaker
I think a telling thing with Hoggy Dog Man is, like, when you think of him, is there a match you picture at all? I think the only thing I can say to that is maybe isn't he's the one that ends up getting beaten by Warrior really Correct. Yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
And again, that's more of a character moment than a yeah straight up match, right? so but Yeah, that that's the first thing I think of when they hung to me. Oh yeah, he held the title. he had the record forever until he gets beaten up in 30 seconds by Ultimate Warrior.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah. I think he's ah he's an amazing character and does a very good job with the gimmick in that respect. But in terms of the the actual wrestling, he feels like it's not that he does anything badly. It's just that he doesn't seem to have that many different things that he wants to do. Yeah.
00:19:53
Speaker
The character thing, I think, as well, there's a difference between him working, like, regionally, I think. You're working southern territories. That really works well. I don't know how this other plays off nationally.
00:20:07
Speaker
Like, you know, places that have no connection to the music or the Elvis stuff that he's trying to copy. I don't know how well it plays off, like, places. I would say, like, because they're doing it specifically as Elvis, I can see it working pretty well nationwide. Everybody knows who Elvis was. Yeah, I guess.
00:20:23
Speaker
It's definitely a character that should not be in the upper card. No. Much like later on, ah fairly similar gimmick, Disco Inferno. Sure. That has a similar, to some extent, I think Disco Inferno is probably a little bit better in the ring than Honky Tonk Man. I agree with that, yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
but also has a similar balance more towards his character than his in-ring performance. And that will get you reliably on a card. Yes. It won't necessarily get you up the card too much. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like you need people filling up your lower card
Tag Team Dynamics and Wrestling Themes
00:20:52
Speaker
as well. Obviously. And that's a good place to have some fun comedy gimmicks and things like that. But he has a particular limit beyond which I don't think he would be going.
00:21:01
Speaker
And also his in-ring work, I think, has a particular limit beyond which he won't be going. Mm-hmm. The ending sequence I did feel was pretty fun, though it was fairly obviously telegraphed that they were going to go for the draw.
00:21:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They didn't even try to time it out precisely, just brawled until it was close to time and then did a pin that blatantly didn't have time to be counted. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Much like the rest of the match, that had good character. I enjoyed the emotion of the final brawl. Sure.
00:21:24
Speaker
But it wasn't really much of a match design. I did have fun seeing Honky Tonk here, but ultimately I agree this was not a good opening match. Mm-hmm.
00:21:35
Speaker
This would lead, of course, to a rematch, because this was a non-decisive finish. Again, great way to open your show. Non-decisive finish for either character. Yeah. The ranch would take place at the next Clash Champions, Clash 29.
00:21:48
Speaker
It would end in disqualification, where Hong Kong Man, despite being a veteran heel, somehow gets caught cheating. Like, the one thing you must be good at is not getting caught cheating. This was designed to set up yet another match, which is the rematch, or it's the re-rematch, in this case, at Starrcade 1994, which, as we know from when we covered this show long ago, doesn't take place because Honk-a-Nog Man refuses, apparently, to lose to Johnny V. Batten and the build-up to it.
00:22:18
Speaker
That leads him being fired by Bischoff, who in one interview said, the happiest he's been firing somebody has been Honky Tonk Man. And as a fan, Honky Tonk Man did reply to that, saying something along with, I'm glad I brought you joy, or something like that.
00:22:32
Speaker
So, you know, he took in stride.
00:22:38
Speaker
We got back to the commentary team, and he then claims that if it had gone another 30 seconds, Honky Tonk would have beaten bad. But Tony looks very skeptical and says he's not so sure about that. Tony mentions the next match is for the World Tag Team Championship, but throws first to a video package building up Hogan vs. Flair, as we are hard-selling that tonight.
00:22:58
Speaker
As Tony asks who could forget what happened at Clash of the Champions, Heenan sneaks in a, you probably will. I had to cut myself off on including Heenan lines tonight because he has so many good ones through the show. Yeah, yeah.
00:23:10
Speaker
The video package narrated by Gene Okerlund goes over Hogan being assaulted repeatedly by masked men during his feud with Flair, as well as suspicions that guest referee for tonight's Hogan vs. Flair match, Mr. T, might be in cahoots after T was seen with Flair coming out of Michael Jordan's restaurant in Chicago, Illinois.
00:23:29
Speaker
This, by the way, would be the Michael Jordan's restaurant, not Michael Jordan's steakhouse. The former is a sports bar and restaurant that operated from 1993 to 1999, to which Jordan reportedly only licensed his name, though he did frequently dine there himself.
00:23:43
Speaker
He didn't have an ownership stake. Gotcha. The latter is a fine dining restaurant group that he reportedly founded himself. Huh? The steakhouse, by the way, is said not to have basketball memorabilia like the restaurant once did, but you can apparently get a cocktail with Jordan's famous Jumpman logo drawn in the phone.
00:23:59
Speaker
Oh, okay. I've seen a picture of it. It's actually kind of cool. Okay. It probably is extremely expensive, but you know, i would bet. Back to the commentary team. Tony says a lot of questions need to be answered.
00:24:12
Speaker
Heenan says it just hit him. He's been concerned if Flair's career might end tonight, but Hogan has a bad knee. Flair knows it, and Flair will continue to walk the aisle. Tony says they'll talk to both wrestlers later on before the match, and throws to the next match.
00:24:28
Speaker
So our second match is Pretty Wonderful, Pretty Paul Roma and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff versus Stars and Stripes, The Patriot and Marcus Alexander Bagwell for Stars and Stripes WSW World Tag Team Championship.
00:24:42
Speaker
Referee for this one is Randy Anderson. a pretty straightforward one this time. They're really trying to build the division as being highly competitive with the limiter teams that we have here. As such, on an last big show, Stars and Stripes won the tag titles off of pretty wonderful.
00:24:58
Speaker
So now this natural buildup is the heels coming back in the return match, trying get the titles back they had. i think more than that. Short but sweet. Yeah. Orndorff and Roma maintain our sparkly entrance gear streak for the night with an excellent black and gold robe and a nice red and silver jacket, respectively.
00:25:16
Speaker
As a side note, I recently found out that a guy at my church was friends with one of Paul Orndorff's kids growing up. Kind of like your dad being ah friends with the savages. Yeah, yeah. In this case, the kid of the wrestler instead of, you know.
00:25:27
Speaker
Still cool. Yeah. We get a very good shot of the stage between the entrances, revealing that aside from the main crypt design for the entryway and screen, there's a number of tombstones as well. It's a pretty nice set overall.
00:25:41
Speaker
Bagwell and Patriot break the Sparkle Streak, but their American flag-themed outfits are still good. Interestingly... This may be an inaccurate use of the word, interestingly, but I'm going to go with it anyway.
00:25:52
Speaker
Okay. Their jackets are oriented in the same direction. Yes. But their tights are swapped. Bagwell stars are on the right and the stripes are on the left and Patriots are reversed. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They would have an easy chance doing something for the Halloween theme.
00:26:06
Speaker
Just give Bagwell the big top hat and the Uncle Sam beard. Yes. If he had already been doing the top hat thing, i imagine they would have done that, but obviously this is years before he decides to turn into another jerk.
00:26:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:26:21
Speaker
Patriot's mask is extremely busy. Yes. So it has a gold background on one side, black on the other, black highlights around the eyes, nose, and mouth on one side and gold on the other, all in the form of an eagle with a blue head, plus American flags on both sides, and stars on a red background on top.
00:26:40
Speaker
It doesn't look bad, it's just a lot, and it's weird that it's not just red, white, and blue, considering his theme. Yeah, yeah. Tony points out that Bagwell was in much the same position last year, entering Halloween Havoc as defending tag champ only to lose it to the Nasty Boys.
00:26:56
Speaker
Some people might call that a bad omen. Yes. Patriot and Orndorff start and grapple along the ropes until the ref calls for a break. Patriot breaks clean.
00:27:07
Speaker
Heenan insists that Patriot must be Al Gore. No, but give it a few years and Bill Clinton will show up, in a manner of speaking. True. Roma charges in, and Patriot and Bagwell win a brawl.
00:27:19
Speaker
Patriot and Bagwell pinball Orndorff with punches, but he crawls to Roma and tags. Patriot tags Bagwell, who works the arm a bit but gets stunned and slammed, and Roma hits a fist drop.
00:27:30
Speaker
Patriot leads a USA chant against Roma, from New York, and Orndorff, from Florida. I didn't know we were four right now. Yeah, apparently so.
00:27:40
Speaker
Bagwell and Patriot trade off and earn two counts with a Bagwell crossbody, double hip toss, and a Bagwell sunset flip, but Orndorff and take over and trade off wearing Bagwell down while they, and accidentally Patriot, distract Anderson from shenanigans.
00:27:55
Speaker
Bagwell lands strikes and tags Patriot, who smashes Roma with a corner clothesline and takes him down for two, works the arm, and tags Bagwell, who immediately gets pulled face-first into the turnbuckle. Roma and Orndorff trade off beating him up again.
00:28:09
Speaker
Heenan, referencing the death of Hulkamania, asks Tony what he would want on his tombstone. Quotes Tony, he put up with the brain for as long as he could. Heenan says he would want, I'd rather be here taking a dirt nap than in Detroit.
00:28:24
Speaker
Ouch! Yeah.
00:28:27
Speaker
Horndorff and Roma earn two with a Roma elbow drop and one with a Roma backbreaker after posing. Roma gets so much air on a dropkick that he mostly clears Bagwell's head to Tony's audible surprise.
00:28:41
Speaker
Bagwell visibly calls a spot, gets whipped to a corner, and rebound crossbodies Roma for two. Roma stops the tag with a kneeling bear hug. I didn't think the bear hugs could get less exciting.
00:28:53
Speaker
Only worse if you're actually just sitting down on the ground in a bear hug? Yes. They actually stand up during it. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm finally grateful to see a regular bear hug. Mm-hmm. Heaton claims that no one's going to shower after their matches so they don't miss the main event.
00:29:08
Speaker
I mean, unless you're literally the match before, you'd have time. Yeah, right? Honestly, with how entrances tend to go on on these shows, you'd probably have time even if you were the match before. Yeah.
00:29:20
Speaker
Roma and Orndorff keep up the double teams, and the crowd gets quite loud, in particular when Bagwell blocks and counters suplex with his own for two, and Patriot reacts big to the whole sequence to get the crowd charged up.
00:29:31
Speaker
Great work by him there. Bagwell backslide for two, and he finally gets a boot up on a charge and puts Orndorff in a sleeper, but Roma comes in and slugs him, drawing Patriot in.
00:29:43
Speaker
Bagwell and Patriot win a brawl and line up for stereo clotheslines, but Roma and Orndorff take a while getting up, and Anderson actually reaches a five count with Patriot and then kind of has to act like that's okay and just tell him to get out again. and They finally complete the spot, and Anderson shows Patriot out, while Bagwell hits his bridging fisherman suplex.
00:30:02
Speaker
Patriot, celebrating, misses Roma hitting a great top rope elbow drop to Bagwell, and Orndorff rolls on top for the three count and the win, as Patriot realizes too late to save. Orndorff and Roma celebrate with their belts, and Patriot bemoans the loss.
00:30:17
Speaker
Tony says he can only blame himself because he just wouldn't get out of the ring, and when he finally did, he turned his back to the action. Heenan, during a replay of the finish, calls Orndorff and Roma pretty wonderful, pretty smart, and pretty clever.
00:30:31
Speaker
Thoughts on this one? thought this pretty enjoyable match. Again, I think this would be stronger opener than the actual opener we got. It's very example, I think, of the pretty simple tag team formula. And it's simple. with not necessarily negative thing. It's just it's the basics of how this sort of classic wrestling tag team formula works.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's a reason that it is a formula. And that's because it is a really good, straightforward way to put together a match. Yes. The only critique I have, I guess, in general is that it never really ramps up as a match.
00:31:03
Speaker
They build two tags here and there, but there's not like a sudden, like a real big crescendo and then either a victory for the faces or yeah losing to the heels.
00:31:14
Speaker
It kind of remained fairly steady between the hope spots, I guess is what i'm saying. It's interesting going back and watching shows as well because we're so used to heel bag well with his, guess prancing is the right word, the way he sort of uses his hips.
00:31:29
Speaker
Canter, I guess, whatever word you use for how describe how he would sort of flow down towards the ring, you know, wearing his top hat and silly stuff. So I'm so used to him just being the most punchable guy in the world.
00:31:41
Speaker
And here he's like, actually, I don't know if I want to hang out with him, kind of likable, but he is, he plays a really good face here. Yes, actually he does. I think we said that last year as well, that yeah Bagwell comes off as a young wrestler who doesn't necessarily have a huge character, but you, you like him. And when you're seeing him get beat up, you're like, Ooh, yeah, no, I don't like that.
00:32:04
Speaker
Stop that. Exactly. has another year where he's with someone who's definitely got a much bigger character. this case, it's Patriot as opposed to Too Cool Scorpio. Other than the creative finish, even if it hinges upon Patriot walking with his back turn for quite a while and missing everything, I still enjoyed the use of the formula. thought they did that really well.
00:32:26
Speaker
Clearly, the crowd does build up for the hot tag, so it works. That's what you want. You can argue maybe they went back to it once too many, perhaps. But overall, I think it's a pretty adorable match.
00:32:39
Speaker
It's funny because I don't love Roma or Bagwell. i don't really know enough about Patriot other than limited watching him in WBF in like 97, 96. And my, as you know, my track record with Orndorff is here miss.
00:32:53
Speaker
So I like this match more than I thought I would, given the people involved. So fair play to them. Yeah, I thought this was a perfectly solid tag match. There's nothing exceptional, but it's reasonably good.
00:33:03
Speaker
I like that they kind of teased the face in peril bit with Bagwell early, but didn't actually go for it for another minute or two. Sure. He gets in trouble briefly, escapes, then gets back in and gets in trouble again, and that's the actual one.
00:33:15
Speaker
yeah It felt earned when they finally got to that part as it came after some major hits. Yeah. The early face control section felt a little bit repetitive with a lot of arm work that set up nothing in particular, though.
00:33:26
Speaker
Yeah. Once we got to the heels in control, it was maybe a little strike heavy, but they mixed things up with some nice power moves and a good few sneaky tricks and double teams, and Bagwell got enough hope spots to keep the story interesting.
00:33:39
Speaker
A few spots felt ever so slightly mistimed, never enough to ruin execution, but enough to look a tiny bit odd. yeah Especially the ending, where it felt like Roma and Orndorff took longer than expected to get into position.
00:33:50
Speaker
The final bit, as you pointed out, Al, is a little bit awkward as Patriot has to work really hard to aggressively never look Bagwell's way no matter what. And it just looks unnatural. But in concept, it's fine. And I quite liked Roma's elbow drop for the finish there as well. You got some great hang time on it.
00:34:06
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, basically your standard tag match, but well executed and a good example of the formula with just a few but meaningful little tweaks. Yeah. I'm torn on whether I like this one better than last year's s match. Ooh, yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
Because I think in general, and I guess this is an insult towards them, but I think they have better heels they're working with, at least for my personal preference in wrestling, in Orenorf and Roma. But at the same time, the other half of the Face Tag team isn't as excited to watch as Scorpio, obviously.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's hard to say. i i would say i lean a little bit more strongly towards this one, in part because, well, Scorpio, I think, is a little bit more exciting than the Patriot. Scorpio also, as I recall from last year, was not in the match for very much at all.
00:34:53
Speaker
No. Where Patriot is maybe a little bit less directly exciting with, like, the unusual moves that Scorpio could perform. but he gets a little bit more of a balanced representation in the match. That's fair.
00:35:05
Speaker
And so it feels like this has a little tiny bit better overall flow, I think, maybe. Yeah. But I'd have to really watch back-to-back, I think, to to judge. Still, I think two fairly strong performances from Bagwell in the tag scene, which, ah yeah you know, is nice. Like, it's always nice when you see...
00:35:23
Speaker
a person that you aren't as keen on, but get to say, yeah, this was good. Yeah, exactly. And I've enjoyed that with these past two years. Honestly, like last year as well, but got to say that about the Nasty Boys.
00:35:33
Speaker
I don't normally like their stuff that much. Yeah. We will probably hear the more normal opinion on them later tonight. but um But last year they did ah did a very nice job. And I feel good when I get to actually say that. yeah So people know like I'm not totally against a particular person and never going to give them a chance, right? Exactly, yeah.
00:35:51
Speaker
I do like this heel finish for when the title's back better than the take your shoe off and swing it. Yes, yes, definitely better finish.
00:36:01
Speaker
The Wonder would not last, as Orinda from Roma would lose the titles in a rematch in November at the Clash 29 show I mentioned earlier. As part of the storyline, they also made Patriot put his mask on the line, but of course, they didn't beat him, so that didn't come to factor at all.
00:36:19
Speaker
On top of that, the new champs of Stars and Stripes dropped the belts on tape delay on December 8th. That's how you get the Nasty Boys versus Harlem Heat. It's Darkade, which you've covered already, that is a non-title.
In-Depth Analysis of Kevin vs. Dave Sullivan
00:36:32
Speaker
Either the Nasty Boys that actually won the titles in a straight timeline. yeah yeah So it's a non-title match between two teams. One team has actually taped the match where they won the titles already, but it hasn't aired.
00:36:45
Speaker
Oh, jeez. So said tape delay would mean that officially Stars and Stripes dropped the title in January, the cursed month, from Let's Go to the Ring. But worth mentioning here because all of this happens before even get to Starcade.
00:37:03
Speaker
Tony throws to Jean, who is with Flair in wonderful black and silver robe, and Sherry in black and white dress with black and silver face paint. Sherry dances around like a maniac. I thank you very much, Tony Schiavone. I'm back in the locker room area with the perennial, yes, matter of fact, 11th time WCW heavyweight champion.
00:37:24
Speaker
He is the nature boy, Rick Fair. He is, ah of course, accompanied by Sensha with Sherry. I don't know if she can keep a lid on it or not, Flair, but this has got to be the biggest night of your career.
00:37:35
Speaker
Well, she can keep a lid on it, but she doesn't have to. You see, we're already planning the greatest celebration and the history of the sport, and why not? Where? Where? The so-called number one wrestler of all time, the governing body, the man that's made it all happen, is no longer going to be with us.
00:37:58
Speaker
You see, Hogan, and I'm directing at this at you and the entire pay-per-view world, Hulk Hogan, tonight it comes to an courtesy of this son of a gun that just happens to be The greatest wrestler of all time.
00:38:29
Speaker
Don't you get it? Don't look at the videos. Don't look at old tapes. Look at what's happening today. My butt your butt, it's on the line.
00:38:41
Speaker
Two of us walked out. out Two of us get in a ring. Two of us battle. One of us walks out unquestionably, undeniably, the greatest of all time.
00:38:56
Speaker
The other one, get out of here, brother. It's into the sunset. It's gone. It's history. It's no more. Now do I, does the queen, do we look like we're ready for the history book?
00:39:12
Speaker
No, queen. Have we got a game plan? We've got a game plan! Are we ready to go? We're ready to go! the price right? The price is right!
00:39:22
Speaker
I am on the nature boy! Rick Flair, are you the queen? I'm the queen! Are we going to beat Hulk Hogan? We're going to beat Hulk Hogan! Hogan! In just a few hours, sayonara!
00:39:36
Speaker
what On that, I thank you very much. Sensu Asuri and the Nature Boy, very confident now at the 11th hour. Let's get back to Tony and Bobby inside.
00:39:48
Speaker
Unsurprisingly, Flair gave a great promo here, despite a brief pause at the beginning, where he seemed to be wondering just what he was supposed to do with that lead-in that Gene gave him. gene Gene does the, can she keep a lid on it, Flair kind of like pauses for a moment.
00:40:02
Speaker
It has this expression, like, I'm trying to look like I'm about to say something tough, but really what I'm doing is wondering what the heck that was, Gene. Yeah, right? He built the importance of the match, the epic stakes, the intrigue around Mr. T and other nefarious plans, and just built and built and built in excitement and energy until he and Sherry were literally talking over each other they were so charged up.
00:40:25
Speaker
hu It could be taken as a little disorganized, but I think, to me, it actually helps the mood. These two are so supremely confident and looking forward to success they are already exultant. Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker
Super excitable Sherry worked really well here, too, and both she and Flair spoke so fast and she moved so much that Jean had trouble pointing the microphone at the right one at the right time. It was really fun to watch.
00:40:47
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. It's your classic crazy Flair promo. You gotta love him. Yeah, definitely.
00:40:56
Speaker
Tony says they're indeed confident and points out Flair asking if the price was right. Maybe they have gotten to Mr. T. Heenan says it's not let's make a deal. No one's going to get zonked or wear a stupid outfit.
00:41:08
Speaker
These boots are made for walking and Hogan's going to walk, or crawl, out of the Joe Louis arena. He can go back to Hollywood and do whatever he wants, but that jet flying, etc. Ric Flair is going to do it tonight, right here.
00:41:20
Speaker
He actually almost says son of b****. He does, yes. Rather than son of a gun, but catches himself just in time. Tony says Flair put his career on the line because of Hulkamaniac Dave Sullivan, and he didn't last spitefully.
00:41:34
Speaker
Tony throws to a video package building up the feud between Dave and Kevin Sullivan. Kevin Sullivan doesn't like that his brother Dave is hanging around with Hulk Hogan. Hogan encourages Dave to stand up for himself via punching Kevin.
00:41:45
Speaker
In response, Kevin later comes out during a match while Hogan is locked in the figure four and being beaten up by two masked guys, and finds Dave outside the ring and kicks the crap out of him. So our third match is Kevin Sullivan versus the world number one Hulkamaniac, Dave Sullivan.
00:42:00
Speaker
The referee for this one is Nick Patrick with Nick Patrick's mustache. Ah, yes. The equalizer is no more. has now become Dave Sullivan, the dyslexic brother of Kevin Sullivan.
00:42:14
Speaker
It's, well, you'll see. Yeah. Basically, WCW doesn't quite know how dyslexia works. Yeah, they play it as him being developmentally disabled. Yes, that's the correct word for it, Yeah.
00:42:28
Speaker
If you want to see where Eugene gets a lot of his character from, this is Kimmich in the mid-2000s, that's where a lot of this comes from. It turns out that Dave is a huge hokomaniac and loves dressing up like him, and this makes Kevin hate his brother.
00:42:43
Speaker
Which, I mean, that would do it.
00:42:47
Speaker
I would argue that what makes Kevin Sullivan hate his brother is that Kevin Sullivan is Kevin Sullivan is filled with hatred at all times. but Yes. By the way I don't know if this is an intentional thing or purely coincidence, but noticed that we'll see in a bit.
00:43:03
Speaker
Dave Sullivan wears red boots as part of his Hulk Hogan getup. Yes. and Instead of wearing yellow boots. Yeah, they they say that he got them from Hogan and that those are the ones that Hogan wore at WrestleMania 3, which I haven't gone back and looked at photos of Hogan from WrestleMania 3 to see if he wore that type of boot then, but I don't know.
00:43:21
Speaker
See, my thought was someone that was being cute that he mixed up red and yellow. I could see that. Given the level we're at here, that would make sense. I can't confirm this, of course, but that's what it felt like. Because if you're going to dress like Hogan circa 1994, you're wearing yellow boots. That's just kind of how it works. Yeah.
00:43:39
Speaker
he's either not fully committed to it and wearing his regular red boots, which is possible, or someone thought this was clever. Yeah. Sullivan, in quite nice purple robe, is announced as seeking sanctuary in the Conch Republic.
00:43:53
Speaker
If you'd like to know about the Conch Republic, we covered that in our episode on Slambury 1995. Suffice to say, it's a bit weird to be seeking sanctuary in a place and not, you know, stay in that place. Yeah. People don't normally seek sanctuary at an embassy and then take a quick trip down to the local public for some groceries, you know?
00:44:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tony builds up, Dave will have a brand new song as he comes to the ring. Oh, no. Yeah.
00:44:30
Speaker
Hulka-Maniac! I wanna Hulkamaniac! Hulka-Maniac! Yep, Dave comes out, dressed in backwards ball cap and yellow and red robe, Hogan's colors, with Hogan's face on the back, to I Wanna Be a Hulkamaniac, a song which features a chorus over a basic beat and MIDI-sounding notes, plus Hulk Hogan rapping.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yes, really. About how to be a good Hulkamaniac, which it turns out is basically the kind of advice you get from 1980s anti-drug cartoons and kids' safety shorts and such, including train, say your prayers, eat your vitamins too, just pick good friends to be with you, when a dealer tried to push on you, just tell him what you're going to do, and of course, always go swimming with a buddy, work real hard, and always study.
00:45:18
Speaker
There's apparently more than one version, both seemingly with Hogan rapping, but one with a mixed chorus and one with a kids chorus, each singing, I want to be a Hulkamaniac, have fun with my family and friends. So yeah, definitely a hit wrestling theme song there.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, the the one with the kids singing is the one that's in great in my memory because of the but octave they sing at because they are children. Blessedly, Tony and Heenan talk over much of it as we get shots of kids in Hulk Hogan merch in the crowd who show basically no reaction to Dave Sullivan, number one Hulkamaniac, and his awesome song.
00:45:48
Speaker
To be fair, one does kind of pump a fist a couple times. Mm-hmm. Kevin attacks before Dave can get his robe off, but Dave land strikes and knocks Kevin through the ropes, takes off his robe in Hogan-style shirt, and chases Kevin and beats him up.
00:46:02
Speaker
This is where Tony notes Dave's autographed boots from Hogan, which he says Hogan wore beating Andre the Giant, and Heenan, who managed Andre for that match, says not to talk about that. The boots are signed, by the way. You see that as close-up?
00:46:16
Speaker
Okay. Kevin sells Wobbly like a champ, and Dave plays Rent-A-Hogan. Heenan says Dave needed Kevin's discipline and gives parenting advice involving two-by-fours and motor oil that leaves Tony aghast.
00:46:31
Speaker
Kevin sends Dave through the ropes and runs him into the ring post, then beats Dave up, stuffing a Hogan bandana in Dave's mouth and hitting his double stomp. Kevin cups an ear in Hogan style and gets mixed cheers and boos, then double stomps Dave again and gets more solid boos.
00:46:46
Speaker
Kevin up top, but Dave flare-karmas him, crams the bandana in his mouth, takes the bandana back out for some reason, and uses an awkward clothesline in the big boot, which Kevin sells by spinning around and flopping across the ring to get near the fallen bandana that he needs for the next spot.
00:47:03
Speaker
but Kevin grabs the bandana and mimes putting it on, and his earnest, heartfelt eyes slowly convince Dave that his brother has changed, so Dave affectionately pats Kevin's head.
00:47:15
Speaker
So Kevin slugs him, obviously. Yes. I like to think that Kevin really was coming around, but then he took the head pat as a crack about him being short and got mad. Sure. Kevin drags Dave out and they fight.
00:47:28
Speaker
Kevin shoves Dave to the ring post, but Dave quickly scrambles into the ring and Kevin fails to enter before 10, so Dave wins by count out. Dave hugs Patrick outside as Patrick announces his win and Kevin shows his displeasure inside by jumping once.
00:47:42
Speaker
As one does. Yes. Unfortunately, we have to hear Dave's song again. Mm-hmm. Thoughts on this one? It's not very good. I'll just go with the obvious stuff first.
00:47:54
Speaker
My note I wrote for her is that it's a fight that's mostly story. The problem is that it's story featuring Dave Sullivan. Mm-hmm. So I really don't care. if I'm supposed to go, okay, well, you know it's just basic punches and strikes, but I'm really invested in this character, fine.
00:48:10
Speaker
But obviously, as case you couldn't tell, I'm not invested Dave Sullivan. Kevin does try some stuff throughout that does, I think, help raises above being the worst things we've seen.
00:48:22
Speaker
Like, it's not like when Hogan's buddies man with no name, he could beat it by Kevin Sullivan. That's so much worse. Yeah. Yeah. so there are there are levels to this. Yeah. This is not like the Zambui Express batch from the Starcade series that still lives in my nightmares or anything. Yes. They don't really like screw anything up in this. It's just dull. Yeah, exactly. Not a mess.
00:48:41
Speaker
I would forgive this match to a certain degree if the story stuff actually paid off like we would think. So like, okay, Kevin gets beat up and then does the pantomime, like he's coming back around with the headband on.
00:48:55
Speaker
If he attacked him and somehow managed to win the match, I'd be okay, sure, that's what they're going for. He outsmarted his brother by being evil, da-da-da, and then, you know, Dave gets his heat back by being able afterwards.
00:49:07
Speaker
Yeah, or vice versa. You could have like that finally takes off Dave enough that he's like, I will never forgive this man. And I actually do just pound the ever living crap out of him. Yeah. And pin him like this needed a definitive ending. Yes, as it is. Yeah, they had this whole thing where he suddenly might be a good guy. no, he betrayed him again. And then they just go back to fighting outside. And the story that matches Dave Sullivan apparently outsmarts Kevin, which is not the story that they would go for.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, fair. Like, Kevin doesn't get at hearing people count, I guess? I don't know. Maybe in the Conk Republic, it's different schools. Maybe it's like nine, and then a few more numbers then ten. he's like, oh, it's nine, I got plenty time.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah, Conk Republic actually includes imaginary numbers in counting. Oh, gosh. So, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, he got used to the laws there, and, you know, that ah worked against him, unfortunately.
Reflections on Halloween Havoc 1994 Matches
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:58
Speaker
Not much action of note, and then a silly count-out finish that helps nobody. Yeah, like you said, this was super basic, just simple strikes with any bigger stunts or more complex moves coming from Kevin, while Dave imitated Hulk Hogan without even doing most of his poses or a real Hulk up.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah. I did get a good chuckle out of Kevin managing to convince Dave that he was on his side via bandana miming, and Kevin honestly did some good facial acting there. He looks so sincere. Yeah. No, man, I'm your brother. I really, really am coming around to this. Look, I'm going to I'm going to totally going to put it on. Yeah, I'm going to put it on.
00:50:31
Speaker
Please ignore the fact that this thing is too small for my head. Yeah. Otherwise, this felt like a really simple rookie match that you'd see on TV. They could have done a lot more with this to really pile on the Hogan act, but maybe they were worried it would start feeling like parody or something.
00:50:47
Speaker
The most blatant Hogan mannerisms actually come from Kevin here. He does the like... Yeah, yeah. The ear cup. Yeah, it's taunt, yeah. And like you said, why does this end with a countout? Yeah. Either have Kevin do something nefarious and beat Dave or have him get the advantage but Dave do the Hulk up big bootleg drop win.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah. This needed to either be a climactic confrontation between two brothers that now loathe each other or a pure comedy Hogan tribute where Kevin lost to full Hogan mode Dave and it was neither.
00:51:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm. This is hardly among the absolute worst things that we've ever seen by a long stretch. We've seen a lot worse in terms of matches. This was just dull, not actually bad it's kind of bad that i'm gonna forget in like a month yeah exactly and then whenever we get around to doing the hell and havoc you know wrap-up show like oh right there was a dave sullivan kevin sullivan match i we forgot him about that i don't think there's a single chance that this ends up in my worst three matches of the series no i don't give i know what's coming ahead yeah yeah especially with that yeah but even just all what we see i i don't think it's necessarily that bad no yeah
00:51:50
Speaker
and And honestly, like, considering this involves Dave Sullivan, a guy that neither of us is on record as liking at all, I think that's kind of an achievement. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:01
Speaker
This whole angle with Dave Sullivan is interesting in the sense that it really does foreshadow when Hogan befriends Abyss in TNA. Same thing, yeah.
00:52:12
Speaker
Like 20 years later, gives him the ring instead of the boot. Abyss starts acting like Hogan because he has his Hall of Fame ring. And the way they treat the mannerisms and intelligence levels, they imply of the two is very similar.
00:52:27
Speaker
It's weird that of all the storylines you go back to, what, 25 years later, this is one you picked. That is blatantly this storyline again. It ends up in a different place, I think. Yes, it does, yes.
00:52:38
Speaker
They are blatantly doing this storyline again with it, yeah. What a weird choice. Yes, very strange.
00:52:46
Speaker
Tony says the bad blood is clearly not finished between the Sullivans, and Hedon blames Hogan for telling Dave to slap Kevin and breaking apart of family. Heenan references Hogan's bad knee and says that he can dress up as Gunsmoke's Chester for Halloween and hobble around calling for Mr. Dillon because he's done in pro wrestling.
00:53:04
Speaker
Tony throws to a video package building up Dustin Rhodes vs. Arn Anderson. The video package goes over Rhodes recruiting Anderson, Anderson betraying Rhodes as we saw at Bash at the Beach 1994, and Anderson's promo at the party afterwards.
00:53:18
Speaker
Blessedly, they use the exact point where he's getting doused with champagne or something and pulls off his quite expensive looking glasses and looks a bit miffed, but goes on. Yeah. Love that bit. Also, I'll run down your eyes and sure felt great. Oh, yeah, yeah. Probably not the best moment for him.
00:53:33
Speaker
No. So our fourth match is The Enforcer, Arne Anderson, with Colonel Robert Parker and Meng, versus The Natural, Dustin Rhodes, in a special grudge match.
00:53:44
Speaker
Referee is Randy Anderson, no relation.
00:53:48
Speaker
As noted, this is part of a longer feud involving Dustin Rhodes and the so-called Stud Stable, I believe they're officially at the call at this point. It would build up to the previous show, Dustin getting his father Dusty back in a match, as well as the Nasty Boys, which will play into the story later.
00:54:04
Speaker
But ultimately, this is tying back to really the first big match of this series, again, back at Bash the Beach. Weird that it ties back, like this is the the big Hogan show match, or Hogan match show, rather.
00:54:17
Speaker
And we're tying back to angle, something from the same show Hogan debuted at. That's fair, yeah. The weird bit of synchronicity there. You think that might have been intentional on their part where they were like, we might have some fans that specifically watched Bash at the Beach and then came back specifically for this one because it's the same main event effectively?
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah. And so they might have said, they'll recognize this angle for sure, let's do it. That's fair, honestly. that That might be the case. Mm-hmm. ah The way the feud is played on TV, again, it's been multi-man matches, like war games matches, which we'll cover eventually, and stuff like that. But we didn't really get a proper match between Dustin Rhodes and R. Anderson for said betrayal, because you cannot trust R. Anderson, yes as we all know, until the show tonight.
00:55:03
Speaker
Anderson, out with Parker and Meng, gets spiders for his name card graphics. Rhodes is out to The Natural, and his sparkly jacket is right up there with the other ones we've been seeing tonight. Mm-hmm.
00:55:14
Speaker
Tony calls this a super grudge match instead of special, and builds up the rivalry between the Andersons and the Rhodeses. Heenan says he can tell that Dusty isn't in Detroit, because if he is, you can usually smell it.
00:55:26
Speaker
Aw. As we start, we cut to Thomas the Hitman Hearns in the crowd, a boxer famous for matches with Sugar Ray Leonard in a famous fight against Marvin Hagler, where he reportedly broke his dominant hand early in the first round of the fight, but put up a fight for two more rounds before he could no longer continue.
00:55:42
Speaker
Wow. As you'd expect with the Hitman moniker, he'll later show up in the WWF for a confrontation with Brent the Hitman Hart. That makes sense. Rhodes gets the advantage on early counter-wrestling, and Arn claims his hair was pulled.
00:55:55
Speaker
Rhodes gives a long-suffering look. Tony jokes about Arn's lack of hair, and Heenan says that he's going to tell Arn, and Arn will pull Tony's eyebrows up over his lips. Tony, up over my lips?
00:56:08
Speaker
Heenan, think about it. Tony, that sounds horrible.
00:56:15
Speaker
Arndt sneaks in a hard left hook on a rope break, but Rhodes fires back with a right hook to knock him flat. He nearly tags Randy there, too. Rhodes' lariat, but Arne crotches him on the top turnbuckle, but Rhodes headbutts him and hits a top rope diving lariat for two.
00:56:31
Speaker
Arne floors Rhodes with a hard punch and sells his own fist, perhaps inspired by Hearn's. Then he goes for nothing in particular off the second rope, but he catches Rhodes' boot and hits an elbow drop, and perhaps the first and only example in wrestling of a wrestler are doing a basic jump as a ploy rather than an obvious sign that they'd be countered.
00:56:48
Speaker
It's definitely quite rare, yeah. Arne lands hard kicks to the leg and tries a figure four, but Rhodes boots him out of the ring as Tony discusses how dumb it was for Rhodes to ask Arne to partner with him at Bash of the Beach when Arne had previously broken Father Dusty's leg and arm in 1985 1988, respectively.
00:57:06
Speaker
Yeah, even Sting would have had a second thought about trusting Arne with that history. Yeah, he'd still do it, but he'd think about it. Oh yeah, for sure, he would still do it, 100%. Outside, Rhodes dodges a punch and Arne hits the ring post.
00:57:19
Speaker
Rhodes throws him into it again, and Arne scrambles into the ring like Dave Sullivan, which is probably the only time that I will equate the two. Back in, Rhodes works the shoulder and rolls Arne up for two. We get a great shot of the action reflected in Meng's sunglasses as Rhodes continues the arm work. You could actually see what was going on. The reflection was so clear, so good work.
00:57:38
Speaker
but and I will rarely say this, but good work, WSW camera crew. And I guess they'd be inspired by this shot later in the show as well. Yes, yeah. With Arn near the ropes, Rhodes goes for a charging lariat, but Arn ducks and Rhodes flies over the ropes, clears the steps, lands on the narrow mat-covered gap between the steps and the non-elevated entrance ramp, and rolls probably two or three more feet to the crowd barricades on the ramp.
00:58:01
Speaker
Love you, Dustin. Yeah. Perfect aim there, too. Like, that was a narrow gap to actually hit. Yeah, exactly. Rhodes stumbles to the ring, where Arn forearms him hard in the gut for two, then two again.
00:58:14
Speaker
Annoyed, he locks up Rhodes' hands too and tries again, but still gets two. Arn goes for a knee drop, but Rhodes' body scissors him, but Arn catapults him into the ropes. Brawl, and they clothesline each other down, get back up a five, and start slugging again before they're even to their feet.
00:58:31
Speaker
Rhodes earns two off a jumping lariat and an elbow drop after countering the DDT, but Arn dodges a knee drop, and Rhodes hurts his knee. Arn Piledriver, countered by Rhodes' back body drop, countered by Arn Sunset Flip for two using the ropes.
00:58:44
Speaker
But Randy kicks his hands off, and Arn looks away from Rhodes to protest, so Rhodes dives on him for the three count and the win. Huge cheers from the crowd there. I want to take a moment. This is a good contrast for me to last year's Rhodes-Austin match for for the ending there.
00:59:00
Speaker
Yeah. Unlike Patrick with Austin last year, where he seemed to count the pinfall, but then signaled the match was still continuing while Austin was already celebrating, Randy Anderson here very clearly signaled that he saw Arne cheat and Arne obviously knew the match was still going on.
00:59:13
Speaker
Yeah. So it feels like it's Arne's mistake, solidly, rather than Rhodes taking advantage of a distracted man. Yeah. Yeah. Arn shows his sportsmanship by clotheslining Rhodes' butt over teakadle after the bell, then DDTs him.
00:59:28
Speaker
Parker gets in and encourages Arn to keep it up, and Arn lands stomps and big punches. Patrick comes in to help get things in order, but ends up in a stare-down with Meng for a bit before Parker, Meng, and Arn back off and let the refs check on Dustin.
00:59:41
Speaker
Nicely, Parker raises Arn's hand just as Dustin has announced the winner, so the heels can pretend that the crowd's cheers are for them. Nice. Thoughts on this one? This is ah quite a good match, which shouldn't be a surprise given the two people involved.
00:59:55
Speaker
But the pacing was good. The action is nice and back and forth as well. There's not quite huge amount variety, but there's little bits there, like, again, countering the foot up and, you know, the body scissors spot.
01:00:08
Speaker
and There's some really creative spots in there, but there's some repetition with multiple variants and stuff like that. This still all works. It's just, I mean, it's a little more variety in it. But that's a pretty minor critique. And one of the critiques I give when a match e involving people like Arnie Anderson and Dustin Rhodes because there's a higher bar for people that, you know, work certain standards. So they get judged the same way, to be fair.
01:00:33
Speaker
guess Rhodes goes for the distance record on that floor bump. That's what I wrote. It's so good. don't think we we ever got heel Dustin Rhodes in, well, in early WCW. We got heel Dustin Rhodes later, I believe, in WCW.
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah. It'd be been interesting if they could have heel Dustin Rhodes, like, around this period. He could, you do that spot where he dives the wolves out of the ring and then protest claiming that the person threw him out. Yes. Yes.
01:00:58
Speaker
That'd be good. Or stagger to his feet and just walk off. Yeah. Just be like, nope, I'm done. just look at the ring and they just keep rolling back that direction or something. I'd be a tad too silly, but i I laugh at it.
01:01:09
Speaker
Yeah. That's the one thing that this spot is missing is that he'll try take advantage of it. Yeah, that's true. ah Other than little critiques here and there, only problem is the non-decisive finish here.
01:01:21
Speaker
i would kind of like Dustin to either beat Arn somewhat defendably, you can still have be attacked by Ming afterwards if you want to do this angle, or have Arn do something to win.
01:01:32
Speaker
This kind of splits the difference here. It does make Dustin look smart in that he does take advantage of opportunity, because so much of the match is Arn is turning things against him, so him finally getting um one up, I get...
01:01:44
Speaker
But he does that and then immediately gets beaten up. So it's hard to remember that he outsmarted Arn because he's laying on the floor within 30 seconds the match being over. That's fair, yeah. Yeah, I thought this was a terrific match.
01:01:57
Speaker
No surprise with it being Dustin Rhodes, who is extremely good, and Arn Anderson, who is extremely good. The two put on, I thought, a quite varied and interesting fight, mixing hard, brutal strikes with some quite intricate grappling and clever counters, plus the requisite insane Dustin Rhodes dive out of the ring and splat outside.
01:02:14
Speaker
This was among his most bonkers ones, especially given he had to clear the oddly placed ring steps, which are center of the ring instead of by the ring post, and land on the narrow, clear part of the safety mats between the steps and the ramp.
01:02:25
Speaker
They nicely pulled an earlier storyline, too, with Rhodes focusing on Arn's arm, and especially going for the late match knee drop, in revenge for Arn's attack on his at Bash of the Beach, even to the extent that it gets him countered and injured late match.
01:02:38
Speaker
and I also appreciated Rhodes being ready for the DDT late match and blocking it, and Rhodes not using the bulldog at a few points where it seemed like he had perfect opportunities, kind of selling like he knew Arn would have that scouted, and just like he had the DDT scouted.
01:02:51
Speaker
yeah Okay, yeah. I do agree on the ending that it felt a little bit like Rhodes has wanted to beat this guy up really badly for the entire match, and then suddenly he just goes for a quick pinfall.
01:03:03
Speaker
And I have a little problem with that. i feel like you can maybe sell it a little bit as Rhodes finally realizing after the knee bit, that keeps getting me in trouble. I need to just win, which makes some sense. But it does feel like the storyline gets cut a little tiny bit short here.
01:03:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Even so, aside from that, an excellent, very well plotted, evenly contested match that felt like a proper follow-up to Bash at the Beach's 1994 events. I think maybe if he did the quick pin like he does in the match we have, and then rolled out and, you know, talks smack to it, basically.
01:03:38
Speaker
You know, you think you're so clever, you're outsmarted you. And maybe while he's doing that, he's attacked by Ming, and then Ming throws him in. Have him make a better point, like, I got one over on you in your style, Lauren. Exactly, yeah.
01:03:49
Speaker
I agree. I think like you maybe could have let that breathe a little bit more. It's not like Vince Russo immediately move on type of stuff, but it's you don't quite have time to realize Dustin just won before he's already getting beaten up again. Exactly. Yeah. yeah As mentioned in the first match, Hong Kong Man will be fired before his planned match against Johnny B. Badd.
01:04:14
Speaker
The substitute would be R. Anderson. I remember that, yeah. Definitely an improvement in every way can think think so, yeah, yeah. I mean, even if I didn't have this feeling about Kong and I'm having watched this one match he did, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before that, you know, him being replaced by Arne is a massive improvement. So it's just my general feeling about him. I mean, look, Arne Anderson is a terrific performer. Exactly, yeah. I think we can say that and not mean it in any way as an insult to the other performer whatsoever because Arne is just an amazing, amazing performer. So generally, if you're replacing someone with Arne Anderson, you you have done an improvement.
01:04:52
Speaker
Exactly, yeah. As for Dustin, his reward for winning this match would be having to wrestle Vader at Clash 29. Sorry, Dustin.
01:05:05
Speaker
We cut backstage to Gene, who is with Hulk Hogan, Brother Brutai, and WSW World Heavyweight Champion Jimmy Hart. He's the one holding the belt. That's true. All right, Tony, I'm here along with the Moth of the South, Jimmy Hart. The big brother is back here. And, of course, the man is here tonight. The biggest night, certainly, in his career.
01:05:26
Speaker
WCW Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan, a jam-packed Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. And we got millions of other folks watching all over the country and around the world tonight.
01:05:37
Speaker
You and Ric Flair one-on-one inside a steel cage. And what about tomorrow? Tomorrow's going to be a new era. Well, you know, what we need to talk about is last night, Mean Gene. You know, I actually thought Hulk Hogan could sneak into the Motor City unnoticed, brother.
01:05:54
Speaker
But as I was camouflaged, as Jimmy Hart was camouflaged, and as a big brother acting like he was camouflaged, everybody knew by the pump on the guns, big brother, that Hulk Hogan was here to take care of business. you know And then we went to the hotel, man. You talk about Hulkamania running wild. You talk about anti-flare sirens.
01:06:13
Speaker
I've never seen anything like it. And now that we're in Joe Louis Arena, it's going to be just like the last time I slammed that big giant. God bless his soul. The place is going to come down. The Hulkamaniacs going to start ripping their shirts. And then Mr. Flair will know for one last time that there's only room for one man in the WCW to lead all these Hulkamaniacs. All right, now Hulk Hogan out of the subject of the special guest referee.
01:06:41
Speaker
Things just don't seem right, in my opinion, with Mr. T. He showed up tonight in a big long limousine and all of a sudden Sherry was all over him like a cheap suit. Well, you know, I cornered Mr. T just the other day. And you know something? When somebody doesn't make eye contact with you, when you talk to them, you can tell if they're on the level or not.
01:07:01
Speaker
Well, as I stared into Mr. T's eyes, as he stared into the eyes of the holster, brother, i knew Mean Gene he was still training. I knew he was still saying his prayers, brother. And I knew Mr. T had definitely eaten his vitamins by the pump on his guns, brother. Mr. T said holster.
01:07:18
Speaker
If you're down for a three count, I'm going to count you out, brother. He told me he's going to call it just like he sees it. But all I got to say, Mr. T, is watch the dirtiest player in the game because it's not Mr. T I don't trust.
01:07:31
Speaker
It's once I'm inside the safety, that is, of the steel cage, I'm afraid that Ric Flair might try to sucker Mr. T in, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, there's a lot of pressure involved in this title of defense tonight here at Halloween Havoc.
01:07:47
Speaker
You've got Muhammad Ali here. You've got Thomas the Hitman, Hearns, Emmanuel Stewart, Willie Stargell, Hank Aaron, and I mean celebrities right and left. Does that add any more pressure to it? You know, we're not worried about the pressure, brother.
01:08:00
Speaker
Jimmy Hart and the Big Brother here, we've gone over this thing in detail, man. We don't care about the celebrities. All we care about the Hulkamaniacs. I sat down with a Big Brother and Jimmy Hart and we discussed how we were going to get in the ring. We discussed how we were going to out-wrestle Flair, how we were going to beat him, how were going to humiliate him. They know each and everything that I'm going to do out there. We've got the battle plan and we're a team. And what you're going to do, Ric Flair? When I retire you!
01:08:26
Speaker
All right, let's get back inside! Come Yeah! Oh, look at that! Oh, my gosh. Good, solid Hogan promo here, I think, though not among his best work.
01:08:37
Speaker
He and Gene seemed a little bit at odds on topics, and Hogan spends a lot of the promo kind of turning what Gene wanted him to discuss into something else or even directly opposing it, giving the sequence a bit of an awkward, almost argumentative feel that isn't standard for Hogan promos and I'm not sure was really intended.
01:08:53
Speaker
No. It's still really entertaining in Hogan's typical bombastic style, though, and made all the better by some deeply confusing statements. Most notably, his bit about sneaking into Detroit with him in camouflage, Jimmy Hart in camouflage, and Brood Eye acting like he was in camouflage.
01:09:09
Speaker
but the What the huh? How does that work? I would have liked a little bit more introspection on maybe what the match could mean for him if he did lose. Though really, that's not the Hogan character at this point. Sting's more the face that's willing to speculate on fears and loss.
01:09:24
Speaker
Still, it would have been interesting. I will say, to this point, it had actually been a little bit unclear to me what the precise stakes were on this show. People repeatedly have mentioned that Flair's career is on the line quite clearly.
01:09:36
Speaker
And from various comments, it seems like Hogan's is too. Yes. But no one actually came right out and said that the match was lose or retires, not just Flair retires if he loses. They've repeatedly said, like, Flair put his career on the line and and things like that.
01:09:49
Speaker
So I'm assuming that it's both. Correct. But it could have been a little bit more clear on the show leading to this point. I think they get a little bit better with it a little bit later on. Yeah, I think it's supposed to be like a wrestling face kind of thing.
01:10:02
Speaker
If it was reversed, like if it's Flair is champion, he would force Hogan to put his career on the line exchange for the world title being on the line. Right, yeah. But he wouldn't put his own career on the line with the title.
01:10:13
Speaker
Right. But because Hogan's a penultimate good guy, he's going to do the same thing.
Critique of Hogan vs. Flair Feud and Promos
01:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, it makes sense as a face move that you'd be like, well, it's only fair that we both are offering something that has extreme value to us, our actual careers. Yeah.
01:10:28
Speaker
I think it makes sense as ah as a match thing. I think they just could have made it a little bit clearer that that had happened. and Yeah. I'm sure, like, it was probably clear on the TV shows leading up to this, just the show to this point has concentrated much more on Flair might lose his career tonight and less on Hogan might also lose his career tonight. Yeah.
01:10:46
Speaker
It would be nice to have this promo if he had time to compare their careers briefly. Like, you know, you know, Flay and Russ since, you know, 80, da, da, da, and I've been Russ since this. Yeah. We've both been the best in our divisions, you know, yeah our companies.
01:11:00
Speaker
And only one of us can be here, brother, Jack. Thankfully, Tony will do that later on in the night quite well, I believe. Yeah. This is one of those great examples of people remember Hogan crazy promos, like WrestleMania 4 promo where he got a bi-slam Andre, which would cause a crack in the and the mantle of the earth, causing the entire city to be flooded.
01:11:22
Speaker
Yes, and then he'll he'll ah save people by doggy paddling, I believe he goes on to say. Yes, and Donald Trump will abandon all of the worldly possessions to doggy paddle save his family, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, even 1990-whatever, no one's like, nah.
01:11:38
Speaker
think people remember those crazy things, but then they forget that he had a tendency in these big promos to get his line flight out of order or stuff like that.
01:11:49
Speaker
And he just powers through so much. Yes. Which I think is both a and negative in that he does occasionally flub lines. Yeah. But also a positive in that he never lets it throw him.
01:12:01
Speaker
To his deep credit, when he says something a little bit perplexing, he doesn't pause, he doesn't stop, he doesn't say, hey man, I screwed up, can we start again? We're live, pal. Yeah. Anything like that. He just carries on going and you kind of like almost don't notice it.
01:12:15
Speaker
Yeah. Because what you're there for is the Hogan energy. Yeah. Yeah. Flair and Sting, I think, both have that kind of thing as well, where even if they say something a little bit perplexing at times, they just oftentimes will just power through and just keep on going and you're just on to the next line and everyone's forgotten that you said something a little little weird.
01:12:34
Speaker
I began to think, watching this promo and listening a second time, that Hogan didn't understand how guns worked. Because I get the whole your arms like guns you thing, but he keeps talking about the pump of his guns.
01:12:47
Speaker
Maybe he's just thinking exclusively of shotguns. Oh, okay. that but That's what he thinks. that's Otherwise, yeah. I'm like, are you pumping guns that often? Yeah. Or maybe that's what he does with weights.
01:12:58
Speaker
Instead of weights, he uses like fully loaded assault rifles. Oh. Or like a minigun would be really good for weightlifting. That's true. That thing's huge. You know, yeah Ironically, it's huge. That's true. Yes.
01:13:10
Speaker
It's very strange, but it's it's hard not to love the insanity sometimes. long as it's one per show,
Steve Austin vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan Match Breakdown
01:13:16
Speaker
it's all right. Yeah, I think that's the thing with Hogan promos is like he nine times out 10 is going to be full energy, full throttle the whole time. And it will be very fun to listen to. yeah Like rear regardless of what bizarre place he ends up taking the promo, you're going to have fun with it.
01:13:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:37
Speaker
Back to Tony and Heenan, and Heenan says that Hogan sounds scared and looking for excuses. He tells Hogan he had a great run, but it's over. This one, i think, is where it starts getting a little clearer that, yes, Hogan's career actually is on the line.
01:13:51
Speaker
Yes. Heenan gives us woo. Tony throws to a video package setting up Austin versus Duggan. We get a nice spiral crosscut into the video. Mm-hmm. The video package shows most of what happened at Fall Brawl.
01:14:06
Speaker
Al may have more to say about this in the setup for the next match, I imagine. But Ricky Steamboat had to retire, so Austin was awarded the U.S. title, but then was put in a match unexpectedly against Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Distracted by protesting that he wasn't signed to wrestle Duggan and wouldn't do it, Austin was basically shoved at Duggan by Commissioner Bockwinkle, and Duggan back body dropped and splashed him for the three count and the win.
01:14:26
Speaker
So our fifth match is Stunning Steve Austin versus Hacksaw Jim Duggan for Duggan's WCW United States Heavyweight Championship. The referee for this one is Nick Patrick with Nick Patrick's mustache.
01:14:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm. As noted, there would be a match between Steve Austin and Ricky Steamboat. That would take place at Clash 28, in which U.S. champion Steve Austin would lose his title to Ricky Steamboat.
01:14:49
Speaker
That goes into Fall Brawl, where it's going to be a rematch. But unfortunately, its show as part buildup, Ricky Steamboat got away with a back injury and was forced to retire, which he did until 2008 when he came back to wrestle Chris Jericho twice.
01:15:03
Speaker
Yeah. One those matches I think really holds up, especially you need know the whole story of that. I don't think I've ever actually seen that match, but I've heard that it is like, it's Ricky Steamboat back again, basically, and and as good as that sounds.
01:15:15
Speaker
Yeah, you you you forget that it's been 14 years since he last wrestled. That's a tremendous compliment. Absolutely, yes. And again, as mentioned, he'd be given the title in that absence.
01:15:26
Speaker
But then before it's Russell Duggan, another Hogan buddy, by the way. Again, just a coincidence, these things seem happening. And he would lose it immediately to Duggan in screwy fashion. Makes me really both not want to watch and want to watch the Fall Brawl series whenever we get to it Because I know we'll loop back on to this moment again at some point. That's very, yes.
01:15:45
Speaker
Which I saw in full in this video package. So yay. In Austin's defense, again, I know he's the heel, but he was signed to wrestle Ricky Steamboat. Yeah. You should at least give him five-minute head start or something. Give him some for prep time.
01:16:00
Speaker
So he lost his title to Duggan, and this is officially the rematch tonight. Okay. By the way, Steve Austin is wearing his U.S. champ trunks. Yes. Now, a skeptic might say he's in denial. He's still wearing his U.S. champion trunks.
01:16:18
Speaker
He doesn't really believe that he lost the title. But you have to understand, that's not stunning Steve Austin. He's not living in denial. He actually wrestled for a small independent show in which he beat Uncle Sam for his championship.
01:16:32
Speaker
Okay. So he's the Uncle Sam champion. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Now, there an issue with that company about the belt being shown on TV and how they get with those things. Oh, yeah, yeah. So he's not wearing the U.S. champ belt. They had a time traveler that came back to them and told them, be careful about letting your belt go on other shows they might throw it in a trash can. Exactly, yes.
01:16:51
Speaker
But yeah, he know he is a champion. he just He's not legally out of the world of his belt tonight. But I assure you, he's not just wearing U.S. champ trunks in sort of a sad protest. Okay. Just to be clear. Just to be clear, yeah. Yes.
01:17:03
Speaker
We're in a very weird mood tonight, guys.
01:17:07
Speaker
You know how long he's been Googling acronym for U.S. saying the best answer for this? Too long is the answer. Opening camera shots give us a spooky trip through the tombstones on stage, quite artistic, if somewhat poorly lit.
01:17:20
Speaker
yeah Austin is out first, and his vest keeps our sparkly entrance gear quota tonight. Tony says Austin's was the shortest U.S. title reign, and to the best of my ability to tell, that is true, unless I've missed a negative title reign like we've had due to pre-tapes for some other titles.
01:17:34
Speaker
It appears Austin still holds that record. Keenan says, fairly, like you said, I would entirely agree with your statement on this, that it was a fluke, and he wasn't prepared. Normally, that is just a heel excuse, but it feels semi-legit here, honestly, given how it all went down. Mm-hmm. Austin F. Albrahl did make the mistake of just continuing to protest rather than prepping to wrestle, which is on him, but he was also basically shoved into the match while still protesting rather than, say, told he'd be stripped of the title if he didn't line up and given a choice. Mm-hmm.
01:18:04
Speaker
We'll probably talk about this in more detail when we do fall brawl. But I think the way that that goes down, while it is often seen as an insult to Austin, does a lot to defend him in that moment that he has a billion very legitimate excuses for why he lost there.
01:18:22
Speaker
You could easily take that and turn him into the face in this feud for how legitimate his excuses are, which is a rare thing to be able to say with a heel. Yeah. It's a credit to him that he is also then able to play that up in a heelish fashion. Yeah. Despite actually having a point. Yeah. Yeah.
01:18:39
Speaker
It's also an example of the difference you see in how they book heels and faces, right? If the situation had been reversed, they would have done something like Ricky Steamboat comes out, talks to Nick Blackwinkle, Austin's there, not dressed to wrestle, guess he's injured, is going that direction.
01:18:58
Speaker
they would set up a promo saying that, unfortunately, your opponent can't wrestle, you'd be worth the title, but you will will defend it later on. They'd have, like, the heel come out on on the ramp, and confront him, and then match or shoot later, they'd fight.
01:19:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Because you don't do this to a face. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah, that's and something that more happens with a heel, because you want you want to show up the heel. Exactly, yes. Duggan marches down with the U.S. flag in 2x4, as is his wont.
01:19:27
Speaker
Hogan guy in the crowd now has the other guy's flag bandana. Tony says this is Duggan's town, which seems debatable since he's from New York. But I get the idea. Duggan is built as a blue-collar guy, and Michigan is home to a lot of auto workers.
01:19:39
Speaker
Mm-hmm. The name panels for this match are Deformed Pumpkins. Interesting choice. Not smashed, per se? No. Okay. Okay. Austin attacks and floors Duggan with a clothesline, then lands heavy strikes that keep him staggered.
01:19:53
Speaker
But Duggan rebounds from a corner whip with a clothesline, slams Austin, and ends up shoving Austin to the turnbuckle. But Austin backflips out of a belly-to-back suplex, kicks the knee to take him down, smiles real big, and starts working the knee and mocking Duggan's whole call.
01:20:08
Speaker
Tony says that Duggan's at a disadvantage on the mat. Heenan says he's also at a disadvantage when you hand him a paper and pencil. Aw. But yes. Austin figure four attempt, but Duggan kicks him away, pulls the tights to reveal more of Austin's backside than I wanted to see, and rolls him up for two.
01:20:25
Speaker
Austin suckers Duggan into an eye poke, but takes his time being smug, and Duggan dodges a butt drop on the leg. Austin amusingly staggers around selling his butt. Duggan atomic drop sends Austin outside, and clearly we are working Austin's butt as part of this match.
01:20:41
Speaker
So I guess he worked his butt off? Yeah, exactly. Duggan leads a USA chant against the Texan Austin. Austin offers a handshake, and Duggan refuses.
01:20:52
Speaker
Again, and Duggan refuses again. Again, like Liu Bei asking the aid of Zhuge Liang, but Duggan again refuses, so Austin finally howls off. Duggan... Why did I put a Romance the Three Kingdom joke in there? I don't know.
01:21:07
Speaker
No one's gonna get that. Screw it, I'm leaving it in. All a reason to. Duggan grabs a side headlock, and someone in the crowd yells for him to break it off, which I'm pretty sure would be a DQ, or, in the case of Immortals, lead to a quickening.
01:21:22
Speaker
Austin stuns Duggan and hits two diving double axe handles, so but Duggan clotheslines him out of midair on the third try, and Austin supercells, writhing around the ring, Duggan slugs him down, and Austin goes to Patrick for comfort, then mule kicks Duggan in the crotch when he comes in.
01:21:39
Speaker
Heenan blames his trick knee. Patrick questions Austin about why Duggan is suddenly writhing on the ground, and Austin actually cowers from Patrick. Austin chokes Duggan with a boot and the crowd, who apparently flunked history and think that Texas is still part of Mexico, chant USA.
01:21:57
Speaker
Austin's dragged away by Patrick for not breaking. Austin lands punches and dodges Duggan's counters and earns one and two counts with choking and an elbow drop, but Duggan dodges a top rope dive and Austin eats Matt.
01:22:09
Speaker
Duggan batters Austin with punches and headbutts, backbody drops him, and clotheslines him, but Austin ducks the three-point stance charge and dumps him over the ropes to the floor, and Patrick calls for the DQ, giving Duggan the win.
01:22:23
Speaker
Austin goes out and runs Duggan into the barricade, then Lance stomps. Patrick tells Austin that he's lost and he needs to stop, but Austin rolls Duggan back in the ring. Even once his loss is announced, Austin goes to grab Duggan, but Duggan back elbows him and gets his 2x4, chases Austin around the ring, and takes a swing, but Austin dives out through the ropes to escape.
01:22:43
Speaker
Austin yells at Duggan from outside as Duggan celebrates with Belt in 2x4. Thoughts on this one? It's actually pretty decent match. It's interesting to see if they actually get to work and match each other and not an angle.
01:22:55
Speaker
What they actually could do. Austin's doing really the heavy lifting here, I'd say. And that's not to say that Duggan can't do stuff. It's just that he never really ever did.
01:23:06
Speaker
mean, whether you're watching him in 1984 or ninety four or two thousand four for that matter It's kind of all the same Duggan match. Maybe he's a little quicker moving around in certain years than others, but he figured out what he can do that get the least amount of work to get the pay.
01:23:25
Speaker
And he's paid the same by whether he worked really hard or not. So I guess fair play. Duggan is by no means the worst wrestler I've seen. And his thing is he has so much character and the crowd reacts to him matter what.
01:23:39
Speaker
You can forgive a lot of that, like I said. He's not, you know, he's not dropping people in their heads or anything, so he's not botching either, but he's definitely this real safe, here's how much I want to work in a match kind of guy, and it's definitely pretty visible here.
01:23:53
Speaker
You can compare him to what we said with Honky Tonk Man. He is maximum character and much less on the wrestling side. yeah I think not quite to that same degree, at least from the one match, admittedly, that we've seen of Honky Tonk Man.
01:24:08
Speaker
It feels like Duggan goes for more than that, at least especially in this match. yeah But it's a similar balance, I think, of that Duggan is a guy that is going to be a big character, get a huge reaction from the crowd, and interacts with them very, very well.
01:24:21
Speaker
yeah But in terms of what he's going to do moment to moment in the ring... it's not necessarily going to be that intricate or exciting. He's not the guy that you're going to see like a mat clinic from or anything like that, but he can be fun to watch.
01:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. This matchup features a lot more Nick Patrick interaction than I was expecting. True. Nick Patrick must be jealous of Earl Hebner for constantly, fearing in matches. I'll show you how it's done.
01:24:47
Speaker
ah I get the Austin stuff to sense that Austin is the desperate would-be champion, or i guess double champion, Ken. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a belt. It's a real thing that, yeah, yeah you definitely didn't make up.
01:24:59
Speaker
Absolutely, yes. thanks I'm glad you agree. You get the idea why he's banging off a bit. Yeah, gets that weird thing where refs believe faces almost never, but he asks Duggan what happened, Duggan tells him, and he's like, suddenly he believes it.
01:25:14
Speaker
Admittedly, in this case, Duggan is riding on the ground, you know, clutching his crotch, and so it maybe is a little bit more easy to figure out what happened, but... yeah Fortunately, the finish makes Austin look dumb.
01:25:26
Speaker
and i know we have an early match we covered. I forget which series it's from, where it's Austin defending the US title against the great Muda. And he does that same finish. But as the heel, where they have to beat you, it's like, okay, I get why you're doing that. just You're that desperate to escape a move, and you know there's no consequences for you.
01:25:45
Speaker
Right. But in this case, he's so desperate to win, and he still does it. Yeah. Yeah. and the worst part is we don't get to see if Duggan could beat Dustin's distance record from earlier in the show.
01:25:57
Speaker
Yes. He was clearly going for that spot, we were cut off by Austin. It's a real shame. Yeah, I thought this was honestly a pretty good match. I credit Austin a lot for that as he just has tons of character and builds a tremendous storyline of trying desperately to fight to regain his lost title, lending big hard strikes and using clever tactics while also selling like mad for Duggan to make him look super strong.
01:26:21
Speaker
But I'll give credit to Duggan too. He sold quite a bit for Austin and made his gut punches and kicks to the knee in particular look really painful. And he just comes off quite credibly as a big, powerful guy that doesn't have the technical expertise, but is just hard to fully take down. Mm-hmm.
01:26:36
Speaker
Considering the fall brawl match and some other Duggan stuff that I've seen, I was expecting this to be really one-sided with Austin just getting beaten down. But it gets a good amount of offense through it. Yeah. It's not a complicated match, but it has enough variety in it to stay interesting, and the big characters, and especially Austin's strong and emotional performance, really help.
01:26:54
Speaker
and I will agree the ending is quite weak. I imagine that's them trying to carry this forward to another match or two, but the over-the-top rope DQ rule tends to annoy me, all the more so when it comes as the result of a dodge, rather than a clear intention.
01:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. To be fair to it, Austin does kind of more obviously set for the throw this time, but still. It's an interesting one to look at because this feud represents the beginning of the end of Austin's time in WCW and begins to show that he's kind of being undervalued by the company yeah in favor of some of the people coming in.
01:27:27
Speaker
But putting that aside, he and Duggan actually work very well together. Yeah. Ending aside, I would call this one of Duggan's best matches that I have seen. And I actually would like to see more from these two if they could keep up this kind of quality.
01:27:41
Speaker
I think they actually make quite a good pairing. Yeah, ah agree with that. Duggan has reputation based on a couple performances of not being willing to sell for certain people. When just in a bad mood or whatever are the reason was, he did those couple times.
01:27:57
Speaker
If you're expecting that yeah in his history, or have the sort real sour taste of Austin's fluke being beat up and losing his title to Duggan in your mouth, this will surprise you in a lot of ways.
01:28:12
Speaker
Obviously, I know it because it's Duggan and because I know where the story is going. I know they're not going to have him lose Dawson, but think it made it look a little closer. They could have lost Dawson. Like guess somehow it's not a DQ. Like he he does it while the ref's not looking. So he has Duggan weakened and he loses some other way.
01:28:29
Speaker
Like he's too cocky and he gets taken down with three points stance. I would like to better. I feel like this this gets to a good match point, but not quite a great match point. And I think that's probably a good way. Like, if they could have made that an over-the-top rope thing that worked for the heel and carried the match forward another three minutes, a little bit more of a beatdown by Austin Duggan and then Duggan managing to come back and win if that's the way they wanted to go with it.
01:28:53
Speaker
I think that might have taken it from just good to actually pretty great. But still, like, these two really put together quite a good show together. And considering especially this time in WCW and what is said about what was going on backstage involving them just not valuing Austin anymore, I was really expecting this to just be like a trouncing or something, and it's not. it's yeah It's a quite, like, evenly contested match and really quite exciting to watch.
01:29:21
Speaker
Agreed.
01:29:23
Speaker
Clash 29, a very popular subject in this recap. and There would be another match between Austin and Duggan, again, for the U.S. title based on the DQ ending. Unfortunately, it would go about a minute before Vader would run an attack, Duggan as part of the angle where Vader's going after the U.S. title to get to Hogan.
01:29:44
Speaker
wisely, Austin does not protest to Vader about what happened. here we just He just lost his final chance to get the US title, or so it seems. Yeah. And you think he'd be really mad at Vader, but he's like, yeah and um okay good you you go ahead.
01:29:58
Speaker
think that's the thing. is like He was mad at Vader, but you don't say that to Vader. Exactly. He wisely does not get powerbombed by Vader for complaining. Yeah.
01:30:09
Speaker
We cut to Gene on stage. As Austin walks behind him, Gene advertises Austin's upcoming appearance on the hotline. 1-900-909-9900. Duggan walks by as well, greeting Gene.
01:30:21
Speaker
And Gene calls out Sting, who comes out to Man Called Sting in a sharp but not even remotely sparkly tuxedo, with very cool sunglasses. Huge cheers. They should have this Sting guy wrestle or something. I bet he'd be really popular.
01:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, right? Right now, as Hacksaw heads to the locker room, I would like to introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen, truly one of the great superstars at World Championship Wrestling.
01:30:49
Speaker
Here comes Sting!
01:31:06
Speaker
Listen to them blow the roof off the house here tonight, Sting. You are here for one explicit reason. You got that right, Mean Gene. I am in a park myself ringside here so I can get a bird's eye on the man, whoever that might be, that is going to lead wrestling right on to the 90s.
01:31:26
Speaker
I'll talk to you soon. All right, ladies and gentlemen, he is going to be seated alongside of Muhammad Ali and the other celebrities and dignitaries that are here at Halloween Havoc in Detroit. They are hanging from the rafters here tonight, ladies and gentlemen.
01:31:42
Speaker
Right now, let's get back to Tony Schiavone and louis the of a Bobby the brain. Turn around here, we brain. Talking about you.
01:31:56
Speaker
Short Sting promo, just kind of a reminder that he exists and a moment to establish that he's in the crowd, which might turn out to be important later. Sting comes out in a tux and says like one or two sentences and still gets one of the biggest reactions all show.
01:32:09
Speaker
I'm not surprised, mind, it just bears noting. Yeah. his His line about parking himself at ringside for a bird's eye view is another example of those perplexing statements that they'd say and just move on from.
01:32:22
Speaker
I don't think he understands what a bird's eye view is. Well, you assume what kind of bird he's talking about. Flamingos stand at eye level with us. Emus, ostriches, cassowaries.
01:32:37
Speaker
If you put a bunch... Okay, look. If you replace the entire crowd with this show, now what I'm recommending, with ostriches, that would be a bird's eye view. They'd be right the same position as people. They'd just be standing upright. They think they'd bend for long distances.
01:32:51
Speaker
At ostriches, bird's eye view would actually be of the ground because they'd bury their heads. Well, the cement on the floor. They're they're very determined now. Oh, okay. I feel like you could get to briefly touch upon Sting's last line as well.
01:33:04
Speaker
Okay. Sting talks you're going see the champion, it's going to lead us into the 90s. Yes. It's a 1994, Sting. We're a little past that, buddy. Lead us through the remainder of the 90s, I guess would be a more accurate line, yeah.
01:33:17
Speaker
He has so few lines to say, and yet he says what you think doesn't make sense in the bird's eye view. And what I know doesn't make sense to the fact that four years have passed, apparently, since he thought of that statement.
01:33:29
Speaker
Yes. Maybe he Sting's that time traveler that came back to warn the company about sending their belt to WCW. Oh, yeah. And he got mixed up about exactly which year he'd come back to. Yeah, yeah, there you go.
01:33:41
Speaker
His shades are very futuristic, so. Mm-hmm. Did we, like, drink something tonight? This is how I always am. What are you talking about?
01:33:52
Speaker
Heenan looks annoyed with Gene and with Tony for the weasel cracks. Tony builds up that they're getting closer to the Hogan-Flair match, Careers on the Line, The crowd chants Weasel at Heenan as Tony sets up the next match, the Guardian Angel versus Vader for the number one contendership to the winner of Flair Hogan.
01:34:08
Speaker
Tony throws to a video going over the feud. That video goes over the events we saw at Bash at the Beach, where Vader produced a weapon to use against Angel, and Angel got it, but was seen holding it by the ref and disqualified.
01:34:19
Speaker
And then Fall Brawl, which we haven't seen yet, where Vader KO'd the ref on a whip before Angel's finish, and Harley Race broke up the pin, letting Vader hit the Vader bomb on Angel. Finally, equally important, WCW Saturday Night, where Vader and Race beat Angel up and Race decked Nick Patrick for good measure,
01:34:36
Speaker
But Angel returned the favor by interfering in a match between Sting and Vader and going after Race with handcuffs and a chair before Doug Dellinger and WCW Security got him to leave. So our sixth match is The Guardian Angel with The Guardian Angels versus Vader with Harley Race in the Battle of the Big Men for the number one contendership, apparently.
01:34:57
Speaker
Referee for this one is Randy Anderson. Vader wants one thing right now. The WCW title. He's actually already number contender, despite the fact that there's a different title match happening without him tonight.
01:35:10
Speaker
The match of the previous show was a term number one contender. Oh, okay. Which he won. Okay. But again, he's not fighting with the title tonight because reasons. and Instead, he has to settle his long-running feud with the big boss man. I mean the boss. I mean Guardian Angel.
01:35:26
Speaker
I guess eventually i mean Ray Traylor. Big Bubba. I sure he was Big Bubba, then Ray Traylor. Yes. yes yeah Briefly, NWO Ray Traylor. I forgot. now If you always forget that last step in his career.
01:35:37
Speaker
And wisely so. We had a video package that was out pretty well. They've been fighting on and off for months. So one more match just sort of finally settled thing between them is in order.
01:35:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Some members of the Guardian Angels organization are shown watching the video package on the big screen by the entrance ramp before Angel enters and they escort him to ringside.
01:36:00
Speaker
This match, surprisingly, ties to current events. Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, is the Republican nominee for the 2025 New York mayoral election oh after a previous unsuccessful attempt in 2021.
01:36:12
Speaker
Vader is out next, accompanied by race. Sadly, no helmet. Some fans in the crowd hold up a Vader Rules sign, so he's got some fans. We get a shot of Sting whispering something to Ali, and then Vader comes over to Ali and asks, who's the man?
01:36:27
Speaker
Who's the man? Ali points at Vader, but Vader kneels to Ali and proclaims, you're the man. I genuinely got a little misty over that. Ali looked really happy. and I kind of wonder if what Sting was whispering earlier was letting Ali know what was going to happen.
01:36:41
Speaker
Yeah. Because Vader can be a little bit intimidating if he comes up to you unexpectedly, you know? Yes. Meanwhile, Race gets in the ring, so Angel decks him, whips him to the ropes, clotheslines him down, and kicks him out of the ring.
01:36:55
Speaker
Tony approves, and Heenan says, that was for nothing. this Yeah. Tony points out Race's many prior misdeeds, and Heenan blames Angel for handcuffing him in the earlier video. Vader helps Race up, then enters.
01:37:08
Speaker
Heenan claims the ring is surrounded by the guardian angels, but Tony points out they've already left. They were smarter than to hang around with Vader around. Heenan tells Tony that he's fired, but then realizes that if Tony left, they'd probably put Gene in instead and that'd be worse.
01:37:22
Speaker
Yeah. Sure. Angel forces Vader into the corner and slaps him twice. Vader mauls him. I'd say that's why you don't slap Vader, but let's be honest, that was going to happen either way.
01:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Mixed cheers and boos. This match has really interesting reactions, as Vader clearly has some fans but is also being clearly treated as a heel, and then Angel gets purely face reactions.
01:37:47
Speaker
Yeah. Repeated short-arm clotheslines by Vader send Angel out over the ropes, but Angel sends Vader to the barricade, catches Race sneaking up, and beats the crap out of him outside and inside the ring.
01:37:59
Speaker
Heenan is aghast at this treatment of poor innocent Harley Race. Ha ha ha ha. Vader interrupts, so Angel stuns him with an uppercut and drops him on race to huge cheers.
01:38:10
Speaker
Yeah. Vader unmasks and Anderson rolls race out. Angel beats Vader up with an elbow drop, leg drop, headbutts, and punches, and visibly calls a spot before whipping Vader to the corner for a splash that Heenan calls two Amtraks colliding.
01:38:26
Speaker
Vader fires back with heavy blows, but Angel counters a suplex with his own for huge cheers. More Angel strikes, but Vader jabs him straight in the chin a few times, some of which I'm pretty sure made contact. Oh yeah.
01:38:38
Speaker
And clotheslines him flat. But Angel counters a second rope dive with a power slam. Vader nicely scoots a bit on the mat so that Angel can hit a top rope headbutt for two. Nice of him.
01:38:49
Speaker
hu Angel and Zagiri, throat thrust, and palm strike can't take Vader down, and Vader even lands on his feet after a clothesline out over the ropes. You can catch him readying himself for it and checking position a moment before.
01:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, sure, yeah. Heenan says he's not sure that Ali, Hearns, or even Joe Louis could knock Vader down. Angel visibly calls another spot. Come on, Angel, you know where the cameras are.
01:39:14
Speaker
And Vader ducks in the Angel clothesline and lands his own, but it lands awkwardly Vader hurts his arm, leaning on the ropes and clutching at it. Not quite sure what went on there, but it seems like maybe Angel accidentally like steps more into it than he's supposed to.
01:39:28
Speaker
Yeah, i mean I think it seems like he hits him fully like across the chest with his arm out yeah all the way, whereas it's usually it's little closer you clench it. So I could see if you were running at him like that, or he's running at you, and your arm is fully extended, and could get bent a certain way for the impact. He, like, jerks the elbow or jams the elbow or something, maybe. and Yeah. Yeah, because he kind of, like, clutches it for a bit and just has to, like, shake it off.
01:39:54
Speaker
Vader backs off, and Anderson goes to, like, lecture him. I used to get back from him, but I think he's actually checking if Vader's okay. Yeah. He shakes it off and slams Angel, then hits the Vader bomb for two Angel gets his knees up on a second try.
01:40:10
Speaker
We get two counts off an Angel Splash and an Angel Spinebuster. Tony asks, what will it take to keep Vader down? He didn't suggest General Schwarzkopf with a Hummer, but then says, that still wouldn't do it.
01:40:22
Speaker
Boss man slam by Angel, I'm not sure what they call that in WCW, but he sees Race getting to the apron, and he gives chase. Angel punches Race and suplexes him into the ring, but as they land, a recovered Vader splashes Angel for the three count in the win.
01:40:38
Speaker
Quite a reaction from the crowd again, both cheers and boos. Tony says that Angel lost that for himself, and he then says, you gotta be like Flair, you gotta be on top of things. He says Angel was focused on race, not Vader, and that's why he lost.
01:40:53
Speaker
Meanwhile, Vader gets in Sting's face at ringside and poses for the crowd. Thoughts on this one? It's a very fun match. As we've come to appreciate when watching through these shows with them, these guys work so well together. Because they're both big guys that can work way more than i think people would think.
01:41:12
Speaker
Looking at them at first g glance, like if you never see them wrestle, you think, oh, these guys are going to be slow and lumbering. They're going to be, you know, clubbing glows and bear hugs. But then you see them, you know, do the splashes and drops and jumping attacks, counterattacks, all these things they can do because they're just one step above an athlete of the exact same level and size and weight.
01:41:32
Speaker
Like you said, you you look at them initially and you think they're big, scary dudes. I could totally see why you recruited these guys. But in both cases, you're like, I bet they're not going to be that fast. Their match isn't going to be that exciting.
01:41:43
Speaker
And then they move like guys like 100 pounds lighter. Yeah. They both have quickness and stamina and technique that you do not ah huh get from guys this size normally. It's the same reaction you have of someone.
01:41:56
Speaker
You show a picture of Bam Bam Bigelow. And then you show a video of Bam Bigelow doing a dropkick. Yeah. And doing a cartwheel. And you're like, oh, okay then. These guys, as we've noted, have wrestled multiple times just on pay-per-view.
01:42:11
Speaker
I would assume they wrestled the same house or circus as well. So this is probably the 20th or 30th time they've wrestled together at this point. Great example of how that benefits you.
01:42:22
Speaker
They tried all these spots on non-televisors, I'm sure, and on smaller scale shows. So they know if I jump off second rope, you're going to be able properly turn me for the body slam.
01:42:33
Speaker
You dodge this, I can do this. Hell, they probably did a version of the actual Matt Fish on a house show. Would not surprise me. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Great timing on that, by the way. Oh, yeah. Amazing timing.
01:42:45
Speaker
The finish is very smart because it's clear from before the match technically even starts that Rey slash Guardian, the way we want to call him, is hyper-focused on Harley Race due to past interference. Yes. And his actions.
01:42:59
Speaker
He attacks him before the match even starts. Any chance Harley Race is in his proximity, just anywhere near him, he's going to attack him. I would love to see, like, in the character thing, Vader and race discussing that.
01:43:12
Speaker
You know he's going to go for me. When he's down attacking me, got to get him. Mm-hmm. The timing is so good because Vader has to be down and away from them. So Angel's not expecting him to interfere.
01:43:25
Speaker
He has to be out of his viewpoint completely. Mm-hmm. But then also, he's able to run over, because it's not like just a quick splash, like he's dropping on him. He gets a couple steps and jumps on him.
01:43:37
Speaker
And he gets him, like, just after the suplexes hit. Literally as they hit the mat, Vader is, boom, on top. Yeah. Yeah. What's nice is also not too early. no Is a brief moment where Angel is clearly able to set and prep. Okay.
01:43:51
Speaker
Cause he's taking a back bump. not two black Yeah. Cause that's a, if you think about it, that is quite a dangerous sequence for Angel in particular, because he has to brace in two completely different ways in the span of like a second.
01:44:01
Speaker
Yes. You don't want to too much, and as we've seen, you can almost neck yourself sitting up too much when video's coming at you. But also don't want to be too late. You don't want to laying there prone.
01:44:13
Speaker
You want to sit up a little bit. So you meet in the middle, basically, do with splashes. Mm-hmm. So I like that this being like the big blow off match with these two, everything is a culmination of these things.
01:44:27
Speaker
They built up race attacking so much so it becomes a part of the match. All these counters they know for each other are all ways they know to fight against each other. And just the fact that Vader knows his timing so well, they can hop just the moment to splash him and beat him.
01:44:41
Speaker
To your point on on timing, I'm pretty sure there's a shot of, I think it's right when Angel is starting to suplex race. He's like set, so he's looking away from Vader. And that's when you can see Vader behind him starting to stand up. Exactly. So they've timed it out like perfectly here. It's ah it's amazing work.
01:44:57
Speaker
I know this has been, in particular, one of your favorite feuds during this era, though like every time. Absolutely. And I've loved every their matches, too, but a lot you in particular ah have often given it like match of the night and phrased it quite extensively. And with good reason. I mean, these two, as you said, work together amazingly well.
01:45:14
Speaker
You could definitely listen this show and think I have a Vader bias, but it's a Vader bias built from the fact that he is so good. Yes, absolutely. It's an earned bias, if you want to put it that way. My only critique I will give very briefly, if I was rating on stars, which I'm not, I would take maybe a half a star off because there's no moonsault.
01:45:32
Speaker
That's fair. But obviously I'm not expecting moonsault into that position. But it'd be nice to see a moonsault. It's always a nice to see a moonsault. gosh, can you imagine trying to time that out if they tried to do him moonsaulting onto hunt the suplex? Yeah.
01:45:46
Speaker
I wouldn't want either of them to do that, but it'd be nice to have moonsault some point. and That's fair, yeah. Yeah, another in a series of really fun matches between these two. They have really gelled as a pairing.
01:45:57
Speaker
They always give us good good matches, and this is no exception to that. It's a striking-focused match, but it mixes in a few good slams and power moves where it counted. And I appreciate that while there were a ton of strikes in this, they were creative and varied in the types, and they used them to build up how much both guys could take and show good timing with some really nice counter-punching moments as well.
01:46:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. it's It's a good contrast to Sullivan versus Sullivan, which was also strike-focused, but in that one, they were quite simple and straightforward and didn't have variety and specific timing. They were just used to fill out the match, but in this, they were used for variety and planned out specific, detailed, complex, and carefully timed strike sequences that made it look like those were part of an overall arsenal of moves rather than a filler covering a lack of moves. so Mm-hmm.
01:46:42
Speaker
There were a few minor flubs or moments where we saw behind the curtain a little bit too much in this, but otherwise it was really good fun, and they effectively built a good story of Angel being too angry at Race for earlier misdeeds to properly focus his efforts on Vader, leading to him not only breaking his own pin off of his own finisher to go after Race, but leaving himself open for a magnificently timed Vader splash to finish.
01:47:06
Speaker
Normally I complain about this much manager involvement directly in the match, but they wove it fully into the storyline here and made it a clear flaw of the face as his vengefulness cost him big time. Vader and boss slash guardian angel I think is one of those fumes that I could watch all day. They're they're really, really good together.
01:47:24
Speaker
Yeah, there's so many pairings in wrestling over the decades that people will point to you right away. You're Rock Austin, Bret Harden Austin doesn't lean on Austin so much.
01:47:35
Speaker
You're Flair Steamboat. Yes. So on and so forth. But I think this the pairing that does not get enough justice because one reason is that they only ever competed and WCW.
01:47:48
Speaker
If somehow it could have worked with them working in WBF, And it's during a period that is known more from WrestleCrap as like, wow, they gave him the boss gimmick and tried to get away with that. Wow, they gave him Guardian Angel and that was kind of a weird gimmick to go with and stuff.
01:48:02
Speaker
What people lose sight of in that is that, yes, his gimmicks were either legally questionable or a little bit dumb. But he's a very, very good performer. yeah And you if you're looking for ah feud that shows what big men matches can be when the guys are really good and able to just go at it, Ray Traylor versus Vader and all its incarnations, I think, is a terrific example of extremely high-level big man matches. Absolutely. Where they just are capable of so much more than you expect.
01:48:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm. 100%. I know we've got, I think, one more match with them where it's the fall brawl one. Yes. Which I think also has Sting in it as a triangle match. But this feud has been great and i have enjoyed every single one of their matches really, really well.
01:48:47
Speaker
Same.
01:48:49
Speaker
Well, after this match, Vader is still number contender and he's still not getting his title shot. I'll discuss why later with the hook and stuff. As such, he shifts his focus to the U.S. title, which, depending on when the show takes place and, more likely, who's champion of the time, the U.S. championship is technically the default number one contender position.
01:49:10
Speaker
Yes. You're the top-ranked champion that's not world champion. It makes sense. If winning the number one contendership on its own isn't enough, he'll have to win the U.S. title as well to be a double number one contender. Maybe whoever is champion, whether it's Hogan or Flair, will finally stop ducking him.
01:49:29
Speaker
We cut back to Gene, who advertises the hotline again, featuring Jimmy Hart, speaking with Mike Tenet, and some other guy I don't recognize. Yeah, I know. 1-900-909-9900. He then brings out Thomas the Hitman Hearns.
01:49:43
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, here on the Motor City, please welcome to Halloween Havoc, boxing great, Thomas the Hitman Hearns!
01:50:05
Speaker
Hope Town, welcome for Tom the Hitman, Thomas Hearns. You know, you take a look at this big one tonight between Hogan and Flair. I liken it to some of the great battles down through the years between yourself and Sugar Ray Leonard.
01:50:19
Speaker
Well, you know what? This does remind me of the Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns fight. And this is going to be a big fight. I'm looking forward to seeing the win of this fight. You do know that Hitman, the the loser, goes south, I mean, all the way.
01:50:34
Speaker
ah This guy is out of the business altogether. he is put on the shelf, so to speak, and that seems to me to be pretty final. I think it's something that you have to be concerned about.
01:50:46
Speaker
I think that Rick Fair, as well as Hulk Hogan, it's going through their mind right about now. It's something that's definitely bothering them back there in the dressing room. There's nothing else for them to think about but winning, win, win, win.
01:50:59
Speaker
All right, well, that's the way you've thought your entire life. And Thomas, the hitman, Hearns, here in the Motor City, your hometown, it is great to have you aboard. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, again, Tommy Hearns.
01:51:12
Speaker
Tony, Bobby, let's get back to you guys.
01:51:17
Speaker
Hearns did about 50-50 here for me. His first answer was just so generic. I want to see the fight. Yes. His second answer about the reaction to the retirement stipulation was pretty decent and and a bit of a thoughtful answer.
01:51:31
Speaker
I liked it somewhat better. I think his wording probably is still a little generic. Yeah. But I think, like, him getting at the idea of that's going to be playing in their heads, but they need to ignore it and just try to win, i think makes sense as good advice from an athlete.
01:51:47
Speaker
ah This was largely just a way of getting a hometown celebrity on the show, Hearns having lived in Detroit since he was five. So this was all right, but it didn't really add anything. Yeah. Well, fact that the question was teed up for him and he repeated the answer as the question.
01:52:02
Speaker
This is true. Yeah. We've had a lot of celebrity promos on shows and some of them are quite good and some of them are quite bad. I think this one is solidly in the middle. He doesn't completely butcher anything or seem like he has no idea what he's talking about, but he just kind of is extremely generic in his responses.
01:52:22
Speaker
Nice suit, though. ah Yeah, yeah. It is worth noting what's left of his nose, I guess. Oh, my God. He clearly has has been in a lot of boxing matches, let's put it in.
01:52:33
Speaker
It has been broken several times, I think.
01:52:37
Speaker
Tony talks up the next match, the Nasty Boys versus Terry Funk and Bunkhouse Buck, and throws to a video of their history, including Dusty Rhodes recruiting and the Nasty Boys to join him and Dustin in a War Games team at Fall Prawl, and the Nasty Boys getting beat up after War Games by Funk, Anderson, Buck, and especially Meng, who beats the ever-loving crap out of Nobbs in particular.
01:52:58
Speaker
It is very rare for me to say this, but I felt very sorry for Brian k Nobbs there. Mm-hmm. They got revenge by interfering in Terry and Bunkhouse's match and beating them up on a later show, and Parker prevented Meng from going up against them one-on-two.
01:53:12
Speaker
So our seventh match is Terry Funk and Bunkhouse Buck of the Studs Table with Colonel Robert Parker and Meng versus the Nasty Boys, Brian k Nobbs and Jerry Sags.
01:53:23
Speaker
The referee for this one is Nick Patrick with Nick Patrick's Mustache.
01:53:28
Speaker
So it's interesting case of them trying to play a little with the format of these wrestling shows wrestling angles because they filmed the attack in the locker room.
01:53:40
Speaker
It technically takes place after the show. understanding was not run on Fall Brawl itself. The next show, whatever the main event or Saturday night, they said, hey, you know, we guys show you this thing happened after the show.
01:53:51
Speaker
Gotcha. It's unique thing. It becomes a lot more common, must be, nowadays to go early today's vignettes or last week or whatnot. Yeah. This is kind of interesting start to that kind of idea where you're setting the angles differently and where they happen.
01:54:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Because you could easily have Nasty Boys come out for a match, for instance, on the next show and just be attacked by all three of them. Yeah. Instead, they have it happen after the match and then tell you it happened there.
01:54:22
Speaker
That's fair, yeah. It's interesting when you start getting to those types of moments. Obviously, there's there's been other cases where people got attacked outside of a match, like ah the earlier Barry Windham attack while arriving at the arena and stuff like that.
01:54:34
Speaker
I think that's always, if you're going for the idea that these guys are really in these heated feuds and really don't like each other, ah not just inside the ring, but outside the ring, it makes sense that you'd have, like, stuff happen backstage or, exactly you know, other attacks and stuff.
01:54:47
Speaker
It makes less sense that no one goes to prison for them, but yeah that's just wrestling. As long as it doesn't go too much with that, as it definitely does later in the 90s. Yes. Keep more of the action in front of the crowd and less outside the ring.
01:55:01
Speaker
Having some action that's out in the backstage area and adding to the storyline and saying like, hey, these guys didn't just leave the ring and be okay with each other. They really just got revenge on each other and stuff. It makes sense. Yeah.
01:55:13
Speaker
As long you don't say make an entire video game. There's just backstage assault. Yes. Yeah. What kind of insane company would do that? and this This is fair. Yeah, so that's basically the story that the study was mad that the Nazi boys helped out the Rhodeses.
01:55:31
Speaker
So now this feud cannot be contained inside the studio, so they got to go in the ring on this show tonight and do it. Okay. Note for this match, I am going to call Terry Funk, Terry, and Bunkhouse Buck, Bunkhouse, to hopefully avoid any mishaps with the F from Terry's surname and the UCK from Bunkhouse's surname.
01:55:53
Speaker
I will do my best to make Bob edit me in our post-match recap as well. Oh my gosh, yeah. It's been stressful on previous shows for these guys working together. Mm-hmm. The stud stable enters first.
01:56:06
Speaker
As usual, bunkhouse looks quite cool coming out in the cowboy duster. As usual, he'll look much less cool once it eventually comes off. The nasty boys are out next to their unfortunately self-sung song.
01:56:18
Speaker
Yeah. Sags has a jack-o'-lantern, and Nobbs has Beavis and Butthead mask. He throws them to the crowd, one at quite high velocity. Yes, I know that too. Look, someone duck.
01:56:29
Speaker
That thing's coming in not. Sags puts the pumpkin on the ring apron in the corner. Heenan jokes that the mask might have been Beavis and Butthead, but as far as he's concerned, Nobs and Sags are both Butthead.
01:56:41
Speaker
Sags and Nobs win an initial brawl by whipping Bunkhouse into Terry, and the two briefly wrestle each other through the ropes and face off before realizing that they're facing their allies. so Bunkhouse chucks his coat to lose all my goodwill, and Parker, in distress, encourages Terry back into the ring as Nobs wipes his butt with Terry's old west poncho and throws it at Terry.
01:57:02
Speaker
Heaton tries to imitate Beavis and Butthead, but it sounds like Porky Pig, which, in my opinion, would have improved that show. Yeah. Terry versus Nobbs to start, and they trade blows, and Nobbs knocks Terry through the ropes to the floor, where he grabs a chair, but Patrick warns him, so he tosses it down.
01:57:18
Speaker
Get a nasty chant. Back in, a tag to Sags, who ends up snap marrying Terry and rubbing his butt on Terry's face, then shoves his face in Nobbs' armpit. Pity city. Terry angrily yells, You son of a F*** you.
01:57:34
Speaker
Heenan says that smell will stay in your lungs for eight years. Terry and Bunkhouse briefly get Sags isolated, but he fights free and tags Nobbs, and Terry tags Bunkhouse, who promptly gets battered by Nobbs and then Sags.
01:57:48
Speaker
Terry interrupts and gets thrown butt first into Bunkhouse. There's a lot of butt-related content in this match. her You can probably guess it's not going on a match of the night shortlist. Yeah. The Nasties batter Terry, too, and Terry and Bunkhouse get outside, where Terry grabs a chair and, logically, smacks it into his own face until he gets dizzy.
01:58:08
Speaker
Yeah. I assume that was a clever plan to build up disqualification credits so that he can now you do the same number of illegal moves the Nasty Boys. Yeah, it's gotta be like a five count, but like a chair shot. Yeah, yeah.
01:58:20
Speaker
Heenan suggests that Tony smash himself with a chair, too. When Tony refuses, he offers to do it for him.
01:58:27
Speaker
Sags chops Terry out over the ropes and follows him like a big dummy, so Bunkhouse predictably follows and Nobbs accidentally distracts Patrick so that Bunkhouse can strangle Sags with a rope. Terry and Bunkhouse beat Sags up outside and roll him in, but Sags ducks a double-team clothesline and hits a double-face puster, then tags Nobbs.
01:58:46
Speaker
Phew, I was worried that former world heavyweight champion Terry Funk might get some offense. Mm-hmm, yeah. Nobs runs wild like his buddy was in trouble for half the match, but Bunkhouse trips him bouncing off the ropes and Terry stomps him.
01:58:58
Speaker
Then, as Parker distracts Patrick, Terry holds Nobs for Bunkhouse, who puts on knuckles over his glove, but Patrick spots him and lectures him extensively. That keeps Patrick distracted, so Terry keeps holding Nobs for Meng to get up and slug him, but Nobs ducks and Meng nails Terry.
01:59:14
Speaker
Meng just kind of leaves. You could try again, buddy. Nah. With Patrick's still luxury bunkhouse, Sags sneaks in with the pumpkin and pile drives Terry onto it. Not sure how much that's supposed to add, and Sags' butt took the brunt anyway.
01:59:29
Speaker
I've said butt too many times this match. Yeah. Sags slides out and Nobbs pins Terry among the obvious pumpkin debris for the three count and the win. This wasn't quite as obvious as the guitar shards that Jeff Jarrett will later always be leaving around, but it's close.
01:59:44
Speaker
Yeah. Sags appears to have already decided he was done for the day and left, and Nob celebrates alone as he goes up the ramp. Terry spills out of the ring, and a despondent bunkhouse paces around.
01:59:57
Speaker
Parker can be seen complaining theatrically to Meng on the outside. Thoughts on this one? Prolonged and messy fight. I don't just mean the pumpkins. But believe me, that is definitely part of it.
02:00:10
Speaker
We know that I'm not a huge fan of them. There are wrestlers that can get away with a brawling style because they either do it so interestingly or so like aggressively or they have a great personality.
02:00:21
Speaker
There's ways you can even that out and make it entertaining. See Hacks on Dib Duggan. Some people like his brawling style. I don't get any of that from this match. It's just pretty boring fighting in a not interesting way.
02:00:35
Speaker
Way more comedy than you think of a match during Terry Funk. Even more comedy than they get him in a match featuring Bunkhouse Buck, for that matter. Yeah, it's weird because like it starts out as we hate you guys so much for getting in our business.
02:00:50
Speaker
But then it's comedy spots nonstop. This whole feud is building up to, man, I can't wait to see how they take care of Ming. And and they don't. And Ming doesn't take care of them. for he he hits his own guy. And then, yeah.
02:01:04
Speaker
Well, that's the only punch I know how to do is that I only do once. So maybe he he filled his meter all the way for that punch. And, well, you know, it takes time to refill that meter. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.
02:01:15
Speaker
He's got to go inside and, you know, hit the directional buttons and do taunts to fill the meter back. Right. Yeah. he hasn't had time for that. The only things that make the nonsense stand out, for better for worse, is Terry Funk and the way he sells all these things, whether it's... Yes.
02:01:30
Speaker
The very obvious swearing he's not supposed to doing. He says it, like, in a threatening manner, like he's, yeah, you. Yes. It is very much like from an Old West movie or something like that, and the villain's just been shown up by the white hat hero.
02:01:46
Speaker
Yeah. Seeing all his plans come to disaster, he's saying it that seriously, and he just got his head crammed in the guy's armpit. Exactly, yeah. Closest I could have to have movie-wise besides that would be Biff being dropped in the manure.
02:01:59
Speaker
Like the second or third time that happens. Yeah. On a pure merit, what actually with the match, however, it is a very nothing affair with a flashy finish involving a pumpkin that didn't really actually do anything to his opponent.
02:02:14
Speaker
Yeah. I can at least explain why the ref doesn't question the pumpkin shards. Okay. He saw Terry grab the chair and ram himself repeatedly with it. and think he just assumed that Terry did that to himself the pumpkin.
02:02:28
Speaker
He just smashed the pumpkin his own head, and that's why the debris's everywhere. And then he got pile-driven. So we're back to smashing pumpkins, are we? Yeah, yeah.
02:02:38
Speaker
This was a super basic standard tag match on a massively accelerated timeline with an unfortunate amount of butt and armpit related content and not much else beyond some simple striking and a pumpkin.
02:02:50
Speaker
The character work was good, and Terry Funk in particular remains amusingly insane. But this was pretty much just the opening face-dominated segment of any tag match ever, a face in peril segment lasting precisely 36 seconds, from rope attack to double facebuster comeback, 44 seconds if you want to be generous and cut it at the tag to knobs.
02:03:08
Speaker
Sure. And the ending. Yes, I did time that. I believe it. Did these guys get told halfway through the match that they were running low on time or something? yeah If not, they have booked the match backwards in the tag formula.
02:03:22
Speaker
The ending was okay, though I don't get why Meng just left after accidentally punching Terry. This was totally skippable, not even a notably entertaining brawl, and far too much butt-related content.
02:03:34
Speaker
Yes, that's fair. It's so weird that they build up Ming and build him, build him, build him up. Yeah. And there's no interaction between Flasty Boys and Ming. That's what that video package was, was, oh my gosh, look at how much damage Ming can do.
02:03:48
Speaker
Yeah. And then he's in the match for one spot where he punches Terry Funk once. Mm-hmm. You've misdirected your buildup or you've misdirected your match design. I'm not sure which, but one of those two things happened. Yes. some like Something went astray. Yeah.
02:04:02
Speaker
There's been other shows where I've liked the Nasty Boys matches, like last show, as we were discussing with the Bagwell thing. And then there's been at least one or two brawls with them in their more like brawling hardcore style that we've actually been like, yeah, that was pretty good.
02:04:15
Speaker
This was not one of those times. I give them some leeway when they have a team like, say, Public Enemy. Right. Which I think was one of the ones that we were like, oh, yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
02:04:26
Speaker
As noted, the Nasty Boys would challenge Harlem Heat at Starcade, but it is not for the titles because space is warped and time is bendable.
02:04:37
Speaker
Tony says there's been some great matchups so far. I mean, excluding the last one, but sure. Yeah, mean. One remains, the showdown of showdowns, and the biggest match of Hogan and Flair's careers.
02:04:50
Speaker
But first, a portion of the proceed proceeds went to the Muhammad Ali Future Foundation to help troubled youths across the country. Tony says that they're honored and proud to have Ali with them, and there's going to be a presentation in a minute.
02:05:01
Speaker
But first, he asks Heenan to give his thoughts on the show so far. Heenan says that if it stopped now before Hogan Flair, it'd still be the greatest pay-per-view he'd ever seen. I sincerely doubt that. Yeah.
02:05:12
Speaker
This hasn't been bad or anything. But still, Heenan was at Royal Rumble 1992, among others. Yeah. Heenan asked Tony to pick him a winner. Tony stalls by throwing to the presentation.
02:05:24
Speaker
We cut to the ring where Gene is with WCW President Bill Shaw, Eric Bischoff, and Muhammad Ali. Shaw gives Ali a check from WCW for his foundation and says it's great to have the greatest wrestler of all time, greatest boxer of all time, meet the greatest organization WCW.
02:05:40
Speaker
I'm not sure if that was a straight flub on wrestler boxer there or if he was trying to reference the main event with Hogan Flair. Yeah. And just did it clumsily. Maybe. The crowd cheers Ali really big and he gives a little wave.
02:05:53
Speaker
Gene introduces Bischoff as a Detroit native, and he gets some respectable cheers, too, before reading a plaque that they've got to honor Ali. Bischoff shakes hands with Ali, and Gene gets the crowd to give Ali one more big cheer as everyone makes their way back out of the ring.
02:06:08
Speaker
Perfectly nice little segment honoring one of sports greats. ah It's hard not to see it, and I understand why, but the way they format this segment... The reason why we have them talking to Heenan is because they simply don't film the ring when Ali is getting into the ring.
02:06:26
Speaker
And then right as the segment ends, they cut back to them before he leaves as well. The other thing i have to note is that two minutes ago, a man was dropping himself first onto a pumpkin. This is true. Now here's a plaque for Muhammad Ali.
02:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, we're doing this very respectful ceremony in the ring for a boxing great, giving him a check to his foundation with a very good cause and all of this stuff in a ring that, yeah, two minutes ago had a match focused on butts and pumpkins getting destroyed and ah man hitting himself in the face with a chair and all this sort of stuff. and you're like, contrast?
02:07:02
Speaker
It's almost the let's have a hardcore match and then call out Vern Gania and Luthez. Yeah. And again... that That's got to be the peak of not timing your segments right. But yes, this is second, I'd say.
02:07:16
Speaker
Back to Tony and Heenan, and Tony compliments the presentation, then turns back to Heenan's ask of a prediction. Heenan says he knows that Tony likes Hogan, and Tony agrees, though he also says he likes Flair, too, having known him a long time and followed his career.
02:07:30
Speaker
But he says that every time they think Hulkamania is dead, something happens to prove them wrong. Heenan agrees. Tony says, tonight won't be any different. Tony predicts that Hogan's going to win.
02:07:41
Speaker
Heenan says, but every time they thought Flair couldn't get it done again, he proved he could, winning the world championship 11 times. Heenan says, Ali couldn't do that, Hearns couldn't do that, the Yankees couldn't do that, but Flair could.
02:07:53
Speaker
One man, Ric Flair. And tonight he's going to do it for the 12th time. Hogan, take a hike. Tony says that one man's career will end tonight, and throws to the ring.
02:08:05
Speaker
A little early, it turns out, as we see Michael Buffer just getting set up in the ring and waiting for his cue. ah A small section of the crowd gives a Hogan sucks chant, so we've definitely got some flair fans out there.
02:08:16
Speaker
Yes. Tony and Heenan do a great discussion there of both guys being guys that have exceeded expectations at points in their career and gone beyond what you thought were possible for them at at various moments.
02:08:29
Speaker
And I liked that, as as he does many points on this show, Tony, despite being the face announcer and Flair being the heel, is very respectable of Flair. Yeah. And very keen to help build up that Flair has had this legendary career and is a great wrestler. Mm-hmm.
02:08:46
Speaker
and And it makes sense for Tony as a commentator and character on the show as well that, yeah, he has known Flair for absolutely years at this point and been part of various interview segments and gotten to know the man. So it makes sense that he'd be like, I recognize this man as a great wrestler. I may not always agree with everything he does. Yeah.
02:09:03
Speaker
But I recognize this man as a great performer and a great fighter. And I'm not going to say anything other than that. So I love that he, when he then says, look, I know you like Hogan. and Tony says, I like Flair too.
02:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I appreciated that. Yeah, I agree. I mean, this could have been a very one-sided Heenan is pro-Flair anti-Hogan bit, but like this more and more substance to it because, yeah, Sravani can separate Flair, the wrestler, the talent, and the man that he's known at this point about 11 years He sandwiches that from, say, Flair, the insane person that cheats and takes shortcuts.
02:09:45
Speaker
So it's respect for the person himself. would have been very easy to to just have Heenan be boo-hugging, yay Flair, and Shyvana be just sort roll his eyes, or sort of be dismissive, you know, like a Gorilla Monsoon, would you stop, please, kind of thing.
02:10:00
Speaker
Which, is I mean, is great, too. but too Yeah, it's not bad. not But this fits their relationship better, I think. and and And it worked for this moment, I think. Mm-hmm. To Heenan's credit in this segment as well, when Tony says Hogan has proven that he could rise to the occasion repeatedly, Heenan agrees with him.
02:10:16
Speaker
Yeah. He also doesn't just go into pure anti-Hogan on it. Mm-hmm. They both acknowledge the greatness of each other's favored picks. I think it's a terrific segment. Mm-hmm.
02:10:28
Speaker
I did check his stats. Yeah. I mentioned the Yankees hadn't had that many championships. Mm-hmm. Mind you, I am not a baseball guy. Maybe there's a qualification of these championships count and or these don't.
02:10:43
Speaker
But the total count of world championships they had up to 1994 is 22. Okay. So again, maybe these first 11 don't count because something, something, major league, whatever.
02:10:56
Speaker
But purely, and like, you go to Wikipedia and see the stats. How many times they won the championship? I kind of like, I'm like, 22. 22. and that that twenty two Maybe what he means is the Yankees couldn't win it exactly 11 times. Oh, I see. they they they They screwed up. They went beyond it.
02:11:13
Speaker
that That's fair, yeah.
02:11:16
Speaker
So our final match is The Nature Boy, Ric Flair, with Sherry, versus Hulk Hogan with the Mouth of the South, Jimmy Hart, and Brother Brutai for Hogan's WCW World Heavyweight Championship, and the loser must retire.
02:11:33
Speaker
The referee for this match is Mr. T. As we saw back at Bash Week 94 when we covered it, Hulk Hogan would debut for WCW. I'm sorry, the WCW, like I said correctly.
02:11:45
Speaker
And immediately win the world title off for Brick Flair. Rick, as we've known from watching shows, does not handle loss well. So he would get desperate as time goes on.
02:11:56
Speaker
We'd also get a side story where a masked man would think up behind it's attack Hogan before a match against Brick Flair for the world title. Weirdly, tried to strike him in the knee with the pipe or some sort of swinging object.
02:12:10
Speaker
It feels very similar to an actual event that happened at this time involving Nancy Kerrigan, but I'm sure they wouldn't do anything like that. It's just, you know, so ironic how fate and the story they did afterwards happened.
02:12:24
Speaker
That's fair. The same way they had someone biting ear, what, two years after it actually happened with Mike Tyson? Yes. You know, you're getting to it eventually. Oh, in spite of Hogan being attacked before a said match and being taken away in ambulance to a medical facility, they said hospitals back then.
02:12:45
Speaker
He would still come back for his match because he's Hogan. And don't worry, he would still win, but only via countout. A one-legged Hogan it isn't unbeatable, but via pinfall, he can beat you via countout.
02:12:57
Speaker
Things would escalate from here with more attacks and Hogan trying to get to the masked man Reveal's identity, but famously he'd pull the mask off he had a second mask on. A great gimmick that he apparently for alert forgot to do tonight, which would have helped.
02:13:14
Speaker
And as part of the escalation to things that's covered throughout the show, both men agreed to put their careers on the line for this match. So whoever loses will be out of the company and definitely out of wrestling forever.
02:13:26
Speaker
no caveat or asterisk there whatsoever. And the winner will be the world champion.
02:13:33
Speaker
Ignoring the fact for a moment that this is definitely not going to stick, as we know. Yeah. It is a great way to escalate a feud that has like gotten just to this this fever pitch between two guys, where just like, as they've said, I think in the opening video package, you couldn't really hear because of the really distorted audio.
02:13:51
Speaker
They very much gave that this town is not big enough for the both of us type of yeah yeah speech. so So I think that works as as a concept for how do we make this even bigger than the world title it has been. And it makes sense as well with it being from Flair's perspective, Hogan has come in and this place that Flair has been the lord and ruler of effectively by being the champion for so long.
02:14:13
Speaker
yeah Now there's a new threat and it's not even someone that he has been facing for years or anything. And from Hogan's perspective, it's him trying to prove himself in a new company.
02:14:24
Speaker
And this jerk keeps getting in my way and having people smack my knee with stuff and everything. Yeah. They've escalated it quite well, I think. And I'll go back to my words when we covered the Bachelorette match between Hogan and Flair.
02:14:37
Speaker
My one big critique of that match is they did every single thing they could in that match. Yeah. the outside of fearn All these things happening. They left nowhere for them to go match-wise and story-wise, which is why we're having a career-versus-career match as important and as well built up as it is.
02:14:55
Speaker
Within the first, what, six months? Yes. Of Hogan and Flair. They left themselves no place to go after that first match except the most extreme consequence you could possibly have. Yeah. Exactly.
02:15:09
Speaker
I do have to ask, like, how many how many masks do you think you could actually wear for an angle where, like, I would love to see a bit where, like, Hogan unmasked the guy once, another maskary a mask again, another mask again. Just how how many deep could you go on that?
02:15:23
Speaker
Yeah. I think you could reasonably do three depending on the level, but that'd be pushing it, I think. Yeah, then I think it starts getting hard to breathe, probably. Maybe wear like a domino mask underneath the third There you go, yeah.
02:15:36
Speaker
Mr. T is out first in a Detroit Tigers hat and Detroit Red Wings jacket. He gives the hat to a fan. Tony brings up the controversy about Mr. T and says he doesn't think that he's going to align with either. He'll call it down the middle.
02:15:49
Speaker
He then disagrees and says T wrestled once as Hogan's partner. Flair is out next, accompanied by Sherry. He gets big sparkly pyro jets, and Buffer builds up his repeated title wins, but that his legendary career is on the line.
02:16:04
Speaker
Both Heenan and Tony praise Flair, but Heenan gets nervous as Tony mentions that his career could end tonight. Heenan says everyone wanted to see this match, but nobody wanted to see this match, i.e. it's exciting, but no one wants either man's career over. Correct, yeah.
02:16:20
Speaker
Hogan's out next with nice red and yellow spinning lighting with Brother Brutai and Jimmy Hart. The noise of the crowd is so loud that you can barely hear Buffer. Yeah.
02:16:30
Speaker
But unfortunately, not loud enough that you can't hear him call Hogan the king of Hulk mania. Yes, yes. So close. Hogan poses with the Hogan guy in the crowd before heading to the ring and doing the traditional shirt tear, which Heenan points out we may never see again.
02:16:48
Speaker
Hogan keeps the shirt, as we'll see later. Buffer starts going on, but has to stop due to the crowd noise during Hogan's posing, and looks bemused. After a few moments, he gets to introduce Mr. T, the special ref, to a mixed reaction.
02:17:02
Speaker
T shows the belt, and he and Hogan seem to have a quick, slightly tense exchange. Buffer says both men are putting it all on the line in front of the greatest athlete of the 20th century, Muhammad Ali, and gives us a let's get ready to rumble, and the cage <unk> descends.
02:17:19
Speaker
With loads of fireworks, yeah because WCW hasn't spent enough money. Just think how much bigger a donation they could have made to Ali's foundation without those. Yeah.
02:17:29
Speaker
Also, maybe they could have spent more money on rigging that could lower the cage straight instead of all crooked and super dangerous looking. It wobbles the whole way down. It is scary. It is so tilted. Tony goes over both men's respective first world title wins, and the ring crew finally gets the ring down over the turnbuckles and starts working into shape after one more slightly scary sway.
02:17:51
Speaker
That is a lot of metal and I did not like seeing it swing like that. Yeah. It's a weirdly short cage tonight. It is. Yeah, Hogan can reach the top of his hand. Yeah. Normally, if you stand on the top rope, normally the cage would be about head height.
02:18:05
Speaker
Yeah. Or maybe a little taller. But in this case, when they stand on the top rope, as we'll see in the match, Hogan Flair are both taller than the cage. Yeah. By a significant degree, it comes up to like their middle chest. Mm-hmm. Heenan says, now it's just down to who's the luckiest, plays the dirtiest, or wants it the worst.
02:18:21
Speaker
Tony says, everyone has their favorite here, but it's WCW that brought this match to settle everything one final time on pay-per-view. It remains absolutely ridiculous that the WWF never truly made this matchup a pay-per-view main event. Yeah.
02:18:37
Speaker
And if there's one feather in the cap for WCW over their generally more successful rival, it's that they managed to make Hogan vs. Flair the heavily promoted big fight that it deserved to be, multiple times even, while the WWF failed.
02:18:51
Speaker
That's true. There's some great flair moments in his early 90s WWF run, don't get me wrong, Royal Rumble 1992 prominently, but a huge Hogan flair match is shockingly not among them. Yes.
02:19:02
Speaker
There's got to be multiple things that happen. And I don't know if we'll ever know truly. Because let's be honest, if you were an executive for WWF and you were the guy that said, don't think we should do this match.
02:19:16
Speaker
And then you saw the returns they got in 94.
WWF vs. WCW Presentation Styles
02:19:20
Speaker
And even up to 99, they were able to keep writing this match back. And in 2000, they kept trying it. And it still did reasonable numbers throughout. Yeah.
02:19:28
Speaker
I don't think you'd be willing, unless you're very humble, to admit your part in that. Yeah, yeah. But there's so many people that just will go, oh, well, yeah, the house shows didn't draw as well. We like or da da da da.
02:19:42
Speaker
You'd have to have an impartial record. Like if they had to record all the meetings and someone finally goes, here's all of the meetings. You can hear what happened and just lay it out there. It's only really going the answer.
02:19:52
Speaker
it's one of the most bonkers perplexing decisions in wrestling history, I think. Yes. And I get commonly it's credited one, the house shows weren't drawing, as you said. So they say, yeah.
02:20:03
Speaker
The reason for things like that might have been how the WWF tended to present that they were the only game in town. People that were coming in from other companies were scrubs and yeah had to earn their way up here and everything. And this was the one time that they were trying to present someone coming in as being on the same level as everybody else. The real world champion. Yeah.
02:20:24
Speaker
And it just doesn't, because of the way they've been building things so far, people don't maybe don't buy it. But regardless of the reasons... This is a case where the WWF failed something big time and WCW succeeded big time. Absolutely, yeah.
02:20:40
Speaker
As we get started, Heenan notes that this is a pinfall or submission-only cage match. There's no count-offs to disqualifications. This isn't a climb over the cage to win type. I'm very glad to hear that because I don't like that type.
02:20:52
Speaker
You will see a winner. Hogan chokes Flair with his torn shirt right away, and T takes the shirt and chucks it away. It ends up hanging from one of the cables in what has to be sheer chance, right? Yes, exactly.
02:21:05
Speaker
Hogan dominates early brawling and crams his bandana in Flair's mouth as Flair begs for a pause. T throws it out and gets in Hogan's face when Hogan chokes Flair with a boot, berating him and demanding respect as a ref. So there's no DQs in this, but apparently T will only allow what T allows and is going to get in your face otherwise.
02:21:23
Speaker
Hogan turns back to Flair and gets poked in the eye. Heenan says, Hogan is here for the fans and it makes Heenan sick. ah Says Flair is here because he's a competitor.
Hogan vs. Flair Cage Match Drama
02:21:32
Speaker
hu Hogan still overpowers Flair and runs him into the cage, but Flair slugs him directly in the injured knee and works the leg with chop block, stomps, and kicks, interrupted only by a shot of Commissioner Bockwinkle at ringside with the belt, exactly as he scratches his nose. so Timing.
02:21:49
Speaker
Yeah. T argues with Flair as well. Heenan cheers for Flair so hard that he goes horse. Yes, he does. We get shots of Hearns and Ali, too, and a guy behind Ali in the crowd kind of looks like a less-built John Cena.
02:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, kind of like that. Tony says when Flair came to the ring, he held up four fingers for the four horsemen. Heenan says when Hogan came to the ring, Heenan only held up one. Yeah. You can probably guess which one he means. with Not his thumb.
02:22:19
Speaker
Hogan finally manages a clothesline to a massive cheer and rams Flair into the cage twice, then grabs the shirt that got stuck on the cable earlier and chokes Flair with it, prompting a shoving match with T. That has to be improv, given the shirt had to be there just by pure chance. Yes, yes. I'd guess that what they did was maybe modify a planned spot like choking with the hands or something was going to happen.
02:22:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Good job all around on using that very well. Absolutely, yeah. Flair boots Hogan in the knee and gets two with a beautiful stalling vertical suplex. But Hogan beats him up and Flair tries to flee up the cage.
02:22:53
Speaker
But Hogan goes up and chokes him on the top bar and he falls and crotches himself on the top rope. Flair gets a boot up on a charge and Hogan gives this kind of weird herky-jerky collapse. Like jerks around, falls to his knees, jerks a couple more times and then falls down.
02:23:08
Speaker
It's like the Hogan version of the Flair flop, I guess, but not yeah as graceful. Yeah, yeah. He rolls Flair up on a figure four attempt for two, no-sells chops, and stalks Flair, limping.
02:23:20
Speaker
Hogan belly-to-back suplex for two, and Flair flees to the cage again, but Hogan gets him halfway over and rams his head into the outside several times. Back in the ring, Flair counters a headlock with a shinbreaker and works the leg with knee drops and kicks and tears off Hogan's knee bandages, despite T's protest and a shoving match.
02:23:39
Speaker
Hogan can barely stand even with the cage's help, and Flair locks on the figure four. Heenan tries to pull a Vince McMahon three years early and tells ring announcer Capetta to ring the bell.
02:23:52
Speaker
Hogan slumps for two, but turns the hold over, and Flair quickly escapes. Flair kicks the leg, but Hogan floors him, and T warns Hogan probably about closed fists. But he ends up between Flair and a charging Hogan, and Flair shoves him into Hogan and both go down.
02:24:08
Speaker
T is stunned and the situation does not improve for him when Flair pins Hogan after a belly to back suplex and Hogan presses him off onto to T. Nor when Flair, angry, just stomps T several times.
02:24:20
Speaker
Cut an old man out entirely, yeah. Sherry tries to climb in, but Hart stops her and her dress comes off, leaving her in kind of a one-piece garment, and Hart very confused.
02:24:31
Speaker
Sherry shoves him into a cameraman and climbs again, but Sting stops her and lectures her, but he and an unwisely intervening Hart get beat up by a masked man with a metal rod. Meanwhile, Hogan is choking Flair, but Sherry climbs again and dives off the cage to hit him, freeing Flair, who chop-blocks Hogan.
02:24:51
Speaker
The Masked Man climbs and props the rod against the cage, kind of adorably crab-walking along the cage to get there. It's gonna hold this here for you. And Sherry cuffs T to the ropes.
02:25:03
Speaker
Then Sherry and Flair run Hogan into the rod. Flair pins Hogan, which would be a great plan if he hadn't KO'd the rep and had him cuffed to the cage. Yeah, yeah.
02:25:13
Speaker
Flair and Sherry beat up Hogan some more, and Sherry kicks T for good measure. Hogan no-sells a Flair vertical suplex, and Heenan and Flair are in disbelief. Hogan ducks a double-team clothesline and double-clotheslines Flair and Sherry, and slams each of them.
02:25:29
Speaker
Flair chops him hard and turns his back, flexing. Flair, you're facing Hulk Hogan, come on. but Hogan devastates both, and Flair flees up the cage again.
02:25:40
Speaker
Hogan rams him into the cage repeatedly, and Flair does a Flair flop on the top rope, which was pretty impressive. Yeah. yeah Big boot to Sherry, and Flair kicks and chops Hogan, but Hogan hulks up, blocks a punch.
02:25:53
Speaker
Punch, punch, punch, whip, big boot, drag Flair to T, leg drop, tap T on the shoulder despite him clearly being conscious moments ago but now selling unconsciousness for some reason. Three count, Hogan wins. Huge cheers from the crowd there.
02:26:07
Speaker
Heenan is distraught. The Hogan guy in the crowd is elated. Tony says Hulkamania lives in Detroit once again. The cage raises, and Doug Dellinger frees T from the cups, and Hogan raises T's hands like he's awarding T the match.
02:26:24
Speaker
Heenan sounds close to tears as he says it didn't have to end like this. yeah Hogan can be seen directing T that it's time to get the belt. They both climb out and meet Bockwinkle, who is holding the title, by Ali.
02:26:36
Speaker
Hogan shakes hands with Ali, T raises both of their hands, and Bockwinkle helps Ali hand Hogan the belt. Hogan hugs Ali, then returns to the ring for his traditional celebration, showing the belt.
02:26:48
Speaker
Someone in the crowd has a simply massive Hogan mask that makes it look like he's a chibi-style Hogan from anime. Yeah. Seriously, the thing is like the size of his entire torso.
02:27:00
Speaker
Yes. Ali and his entourage make their exit, T escorting Ali. Hogan does the whole see-which-side-of-the-crowd-will-cheer-loudest thing and and his ear cups. Heenan is speechless about Flair's loss, and Tony praises Flair as one of the greatest world champions ever known.
02:27:18
Speaker
There is more after this, but I think we should pause here to discuss the match, because there's quite a bit that happens. Yes, exactly. So, thoughts on this one? I thought was a very good competitive match up until a point.
02:27:32
Speaker
If it's just the two of them fighting and hitting the usual spots, I think it works fine. As the match goes on, though, there are just so many bells and whistles.
02:27:43
Speaker
Yes. So many cheats and shortcuts and extra little things. It's back-and-forth match with more bells and whistles than a clown convention. How many people have to interfere in this match?
02:27:56
Speaker
Counting faces. I mean, you have Sherry, you've got... Sting, Sherry, Hart, the Masked Man. So four clear interferences. Yes. And then Mr. T himself is involved quite frequently as well. So yeah, four to five.
02:28:08
Speaker
Yes. In a cage match. Yes. But the whole point is people can't interfere because it can't get to you because of the cage. Yeah. Maybe they couldn't have if WCB had you know paid for the third level of the cage.
02:28:20
Speaker
Yes, yes. Maybe it's this is like the Thunderdome cages, but they just didn't take the dome with it. That's it's so short. Because it has that sort rounded dome at the top. Guys backstage are like, you packed the top, right?
02:28:31
Speaker
No, I thought you were packing the top. Aw, crap. I'm sure it'll be fine. Thankfully, it isn't the case where Hogan shook the cage and realized how wobbly is. Oh, yeah, that's a slambury 95, I think it is. Yeah.
02:28:43
Speaker
You can see him just give this like, oh, that's not supposed to do that. I'm not climbing up that side ever. I'm not taking this side at all, no. Yeah, there's so much nonsense, which, to be fair, a lot of the audience does eat up. So it's not like they're doing stupid things that the crowd doesn't react to.
02:29:01
Speaker
Right. It's just weird that with this level competitor that you need all this stuff. What I will say i think is good about it is that you basically do get an entire match between them before that happens.
02:29:13
Speaker
That's fair, yeah. It goes through the entire sequence. You can easily picture in a normal match what would have happened is Hogan gets the figure four turned over. Flair does that last like kick to the knee.
02:29:24
Speaker
Hogan starts the Hulk-up sequence and you go to the finish right there. Yeah. So really all the extraneous stuff that happens is kind of this like middle bridge portion between... Hogan starting his comeback and Hogan's final victory.
02:29:38
Speaker
Okay. So I didn't really mind all the extra stuff because it felt to me like we got a complete Hogan flair match before that even happened. Yeah. It is very busy. it It is very, very busy. Yeah.
02:29:49
Speaker
And it goes to what you said, I think, about like they started with the biggest thing that they could do.
Brother Brutai's Betrayal and New Storylines
02:29:54
Speaker
Yeah. On Bash of the Beach 94. And so you have to grow it from there. And the only way you can grow it from there is let's introduce an absolutely massive amount of people. Yeah. Yeah.
02:30:05
Speaker
Well, it also creates situations that can easily be avoided. If this match didn't have 20,000 people interfering on one side the other, you wouldn't question, wait, why isn't Brother Brudi or Brutus at ringside?
02:30:18
Speaker
Yes. He's absent when all this interference happened. Even if he didn't know what's coming next, you'd like, wait, why isn't he out? Yeah. He's part of the plan. He's big brother, apparently. Yeah, he's nowhere to be seen.
02:30:30
Speaker
Sting has to leave his his seat, his bird's eye view, Nolan. Yes, yeah, yeah. His treasured bird's eye view, yeah. He's got to flap his wing, get over there, and interfere. um um I'll tell you why you don't see Brother Bruteye, though.
02:30:42
Speaker
okay It's because he's there pretending to be camouflaged. and And he's so good at it. Oh, he was there. he's Yeah, he was he was there the whole time. He's just saying, i am camouflage, and it's the precursor to John Cena.
02:30:54
Speaker
He doesn't even have to do the hand wave to disappear. You there was a weird point in the match I noticed where the cameraman was sort of facing off to the right when then no one was in frame. And then he was paying back the match like normal.
02:31:07
Speaker
That must have been where he told him he's camouflaged. I'm camouflaged. If you turn your camera this way, there will be nothing there. yeah So just don't point here. Yeah. So at that point, he became visible. And that's why there was nothing there when the camera pointed. Okay, see, that explains it so much.
02:31:21
Speaker
Because otherwise, he was hiding under the ring, apparently between matches. And he's been there the entire time under the ring. Where he decided to crab walk to the middle and hold a steel rod in front of a steel cage. Because you need another piece of metal in front of the metal.
02:31:38
Speaker
A literal hat on a hatch involving a steel cage match. Yeah. But then I had to wait about it what felt like an eternity with his legs akimbo holding this thing in position. Yeah.
02:31:49
Speaker
Now, I will note, Brutai actually does walk down to the ring with Hogan. Interesting. And then he just walks back up, I guess. Yeah. So I don't know if, obviously, they've had someone else, I think Arne Anderson, be the masked guy at various points as well.
02:32:03
Speaker
So it's possible that he's the masked man during the match and Brutai... comes out again afterwards. We don't see because Brutai, slight spoilers, it's going to be Brutai that's the masked man. Yeah. As we've kind of discussed openly at this point. But when he shows up to attack Hogan later on, he will do it by running down the entrance ramp.
02:32:19
Speaker
Yeah. So maybe that's Arn. It's either Arn or it's just another guy they have doing that spot for the main portion, unless somehow he managed to duck under the ring in front of the crowd. Actually, I might have figured it out. Hold on.
02:32:32
Speaker
You'd be both in the prestige, right? Yeah. Okay, that whole story, not getting the complex nature of that story is broadly, is about how magic involves a prestige, a big moment to maybe you look over here so you don't see what's happening on the other side.
02:32:46
Speaker
Look to the right you don't see what's having left. So maybe he does come out with them, like your member, and Once the cage starts wobbling and shaking, everyone's like, oh, shoot, what's going on with this cage? It's going to fall over. It's going to snap off these ropes.
02:32:59
Speaker
Meanwhile, he slides into the ring during that. So it was not an accident. It's not poor design. It's all part of the act. I got it. Yeah. Entirely possible. Christopher Nolan worked backstage on this show. You cannot disprove that.
02:33:13
Speaker
If you know her where he was in 1994 in October, know more than I do. So again, you cannot disprove this.
02:33:21
Speaker
All that aside, I just found something that the Masked Man, whoever it is, he climbs up there. He's either too early or they're too late for that spot. Yes. So he's saying to Alexa Kimball on the cage, like, I got this thing. I'm ready, guys.
02:33:33
Speaker
I'm ready, guys. It does not look comfortable. No, no. Then, of course, knowing what we know later, it's kind of weird that he does that one tack and is like, well, that's probably fine and leaves.
02:33:44
Speaker
Yeah. Ultimately, it's like you said, that you do get a fairly full Hogan Flair match. Then all the chaos and complexity of all these people interfering and and these attacks and everything.
02:33:57
Speaker
And then it finished as victual as Sunrise. This is fair. Yeah, I thought this was another really, really good Hogan-Flair match. It did have some real repetition to it with multiple corner rebound back body drops, multiple slightly perplexing cage climbs for no major reason.
02:34:13
Speaker
Just a drop on the ropes, yeah. Yeah, at at one point, Heenan, I believe, claims Flair wants Hogan outside to do more damage to him, but Tony even notes you can only win the match inside, so it's still odd. Yeah. Still, the action was good.
02:34:25
Speaker
Both sold very well for each other. Yeah. And both got the crowd hyped to an absolutely unbelievable degree. The match had good progression and was more back and forth than I was expecting, with Hogan splitting his comebacks into sections, interspersed with Flair stopping them and working over his previously injured knee to build to the figure four.
02:34:44
Speaker
After that, they shifted gears to entertaining spectacle, with loads of people all deciding to get involved. Yeah. Some interesting Flair-Sherry spots en route to an unsurprising but well-executed finish.
02:34:54
Speaker
Yeah. There are some confusing elements in the storytelling, like why T interposes himself so much when there's no DQ, which can often be asked of refs in no DQ matches anyway, and why Flair and Sherry beat up and handcuffed the ref that they need to win the match and who couldn't do anything to DQ them anyway, so they might as well just beat up Hogan in front of him.
02:35:13
Speaker
Yeah, this was a non-Cade match. could oh, they they want some of ref to take his place, but I don't get that. But this was a really fun watch, and much like their Bash at the Beach match, proved that the WWF really dropped the ball in this feud when they had the chance.
02:35:28
Speaker
Like Bash at the Beach, this is Hogan and Flair are showing all their prowess from their long careers in putting together an epic contest and exciting a crowd. I thought Mr. T put on quite a good guest ref performance overall.
02:35:40
Speaker
His counting is a little awkward. He kind of like does this weird kneel and very short movements for it. Mm-hmm. But he was on the ball for the whole match, and this was quite a long match with a lot of complicated spots in it.
02:35:50
Speaker
He never seemed lost for what to do. I didn't catch, like, someone having to go over and say, now we will do this or anything like that. He handled his role quite naturally. Mm-hmm. While I will agree, like, we suddenly, like, massively complicate everything in the late match, I thought at least those were still entertaining moments. Yeah, I agree.
02:36:07
Speaker
And it was a lot of fun. Really great match to end the show. Yeah. I could easily see someone who doesn't agree with me, and being too much, could say, look, this is for sure, totally, and they at least built as the last Hogan Flair match.
02:36:21
Speaker
So I get why they would do all this stuff. I still don't agree, but I can at least see that point of view. Your point from earlier is is taken, this is only six months, less than six months into Hogan's time in WCW.
02:36:33
Speaker
we We kind of went straight for the top with the very first match. This is the only place that we can take it, but we're maybe doing this far too early. You could get probably ah full year or or years of feud out of Hogan and Flair before you necessarily have to go to this level if you'd built slower.
02:36:51
Speaker
And WCW went really far right away. Mm-hmm. On the one hand, that's a negative that you blew a big match that you could have used down the line. And as we'll see, WSW doesn't have a great few years before they get to the end of your angle.
02:37:05
Speaker
Yeah. But at the same time, you did give the audience two absolutely massive matches that are epic showdowns between people they wanted to see epic showdowns between. So yeah, you can fault them to a point, but only to a point.
02:37:18
Speaker
That's fair. Yeah.
02:37:21
Speaker
Suddenly, the masked man races down to ringside and gets behind Hogan, readying quite a long bar to hit him. And stands there. Yep. And stands there.
02:37:31
Speaker
As Hogan poses, while the masked man just kind of keeps winding up, and eventually Hogan turns as a crowd member points to the masked man. I kind of think that might have been what's going on there as Hogan's waiting for some clear crowd interaction. They'd be like, aha, thanks, buddy.
02:37:44
Speaker
And it just takes a little bit longer than he expects. Yeah, it's a good like 20 seconds of standing there. Hogan turns and blocks the rod, then lands punches, steals the rod, and whips the masked man to the ropes.
02:37:55
Speaker
Hogan goes to swing, but the masked man tries to flee through the ropes, so Hogan grabs him. Hogan theatrically asks the crowd what he should do, and decides to wind up and punch the guy. Hogan celebrates, then pulls the mask off, showing it to the crowd triumphantly, then turns around to find that the masked man was Brother Brutai.
02:38:14
Speaker
Hogan actually does some genuinely good facial acting here, yeah showing a progression from confusion to heartbreak as he realizes what has happened. Heenan delivers the line that we'll rename Brutai.
02:38:26
Speaker
He has butchered a friendship! Brutai shakes his head, gesturing for calm and seeming to make excuses. Hogan throws down the belt and turns to leave, but he spots Kevin Sullivan climbing onto the apron and turns around to question Brutai.
02:38:41
Speaker
Again, some quite nice facial acting from Hogan as he turns resolved. ah From confused and upset to resolved, like accepting that Brutai is now his enemy. Sure, yeah. Standoff between Hogan and both men, and Hogan ultimately slugs Brutai, and Sullivan charges, but Hogan slugs him too.
02:38:57
Speaker
The building's starting to rumble. It's like an avalanche, Tony yells, as John Tenta suddenly climbs into the ring as well. Hogan lands a couple blows, but Brutai hits him from behind, and Tenta and Brutai club Hogan down and lay in stomps.
02:39:10
Speaker
Tenta, at Brutai's Q, does his excellent power slam on Hogan. I've always loved how he does it. He picks you up and very deliberately changes his grip before he does the slam down. Yeah, yeah. So it's like getting perfect control over you and locking you in for it.
02:39:27
Speaker
Tony gets on the actual loudspeaker to identify the formerly masked man as Brother Brutai for the crowd. i guess wondering if they for sure got the point of the angle here. Yeah. The beatdown on Hogan continues, leading to Tenta hitting Hogan with his seated senton, which I believe is later called the avalanche splash.
02:39:44
Speaker
That's very redundant. Yes, yes. it It makes a little bit more sense than the earthquake splash, which is what it was called in WWF, though. Yeah. these Earthquakes don't splash. Hogan lies on the mat, defeated, but Sting charges down to ringside and decks Kevin Sullivan, then climbs up on the top rope, still in Tuck's sans jacket, with sunglasses, because he's a badass.
02:40:06
Speaker
Sting splashes both Brutai and Tenta down. Sting quickly grabs the big gold belt to use as a weapon, and Brutai and Sullivan flee, while Sting has to ward Tenta off several more times. With Tenta finally leaving, Sting goes and checks on Hogan.
02:40:20
Speaker
Heenan issues his heartfelt thanks to Brutai for what he did to Hogan. Hogan chant by the crowd, and Sting cradles Hogan until he finally stirs as Jane talks about the psychological damage of Brutai's attack.
02:40:33
Speaker
Tony effectively names Tenta, referring to him as a big man like an avalanche. We get replays of the chaos of the interference in the match, Hogan's victory, and the discovery of Brutai.
02:40:45
Speaker
Sting and a WCW trainer help Hogan walk out.
02:40:50
Speaker
Ignoring what this is leading to, which we know will suck, I thought this was a very effective segment. For the most part, I agree with it, yeah. Hogan does some of the best acting I've seen him do in WCW.
02:41:02
Speaker
Yeah. Brutai, not so much. Brutai is kind of just standing there as usual. But I did like his, wait, wait, wait, no, I can explain kind of pose that he has. Yeah, sure. But yeah, I think Hogan does some of the best acting that he's done in WCW. He really does a great job of showing this progression of understanding of, wait, what's going on here?
02:41:20
Speaker
oh my gosh, what's happened? Yeah, yeah. Sullivan and Brutai and the future avalanche working together to take Hogan down feels like it takes the right amount of time that it doesn't undersell Hogan's ferocity as a competitor, basically. Right. But obviously he's three on one against three quite good competitors themselves in storyline anyway. Yes.
02:41:40
Speaker
I mean, legitimately intent in teta and Sullivan's case, less so in Brutai's. Understood, yes. And so they are going to get him down. It doesn't really take them too long to do so. The number of game, as they say. And then Sting coming out and doing a quite dramatic save of Hogan and Tenta being quite hard to actually get to go away as well all kind of show that we're in a different angle now.
02:42:00
Speaker
Yeah. Show that Tenta in particular is a massive, massive threat. Massive, not intended as a pun, but it is one. Yes. Mm-hmm. and really set the stage for something new.
02:42:11
Speaker
It is unfortunate that the thing that it is setting the stage for is Stargate 1994 and that terrible, terrible patch on on the show. Yeah. But the actual moments on this show, I think, are quite good.
02:42:24
Speaker
yeah it's a mix of high quality, like to your point, and some pretty silly theatrics, like waiting for the audience to react where you turn to see him or pulling the mask off and me and me looking away and then turning back to see what it was. Yes.
02:42:39
Speaker
It's very important know what is. Excuse me. Hey, wait a second. Yeah, I agree. Definitely those two moments are a little bit unnecessarily theatrical, maybe, or or just make this a little bit clumsier than it needs to be Otherwise, yeah, I agree. I think they do a lot in a short amount of time, setting up multiple matches, eventually four later shows, and resetting the Bruges character as the Butcher, and focusing on Kevin Sullivan, and it was an avalanche. So a lot they do there, for sure.
02:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, and in one segment, they managed to quite effectively establish a totally new heel faction that has not existed before this moment, and You don't generally see that effective of a transformation in WCB, I think, until the formation of the NWO.
02:43:21
Speaker
ah hu And I am not comparing a heel faction involving Brother Brutai as one of his three members necessarily to the quality level of the NWO angle. No, no, I get that. But you can see signs of the same kind of thinking of yeah how can we make this as shocking and big as we can?
02:43:39
Speaker
So we've given this angle a big send-off. Now let's give a big intro to the new one. I think it works. yeah I think they'd try something similar next year, it didn't quite work the same way.
02:43:52
Speaker
Especially considering that I already knew what what this was leading to and that I don't like what it leads to. Yeah. It's impressive how well this still made me take it. There was a part of me that's still like, I really want to see this show that this leads to. And then I was like, oh, right, it's Starrcade 1994 and I hated that.
02:44:09
Speaker
Yeah. Which I think is ah a pretty good compliment
Event Wrap-Up and Final Thoughts
02:44:12
Speaker
to give a segment. but Yeah.
02:44:15
Speaker
So that will lead to a big match at Clash 29, involving Hulk Hogan, Sting, and Dave Sullivan to battle the new threat. I put in quotes on my no word threat there, but let's go with it.
02:44:29
Speaker
Of Kevin Sullivan, Avalanche, and The Butcher. That also leads to a handful of matches of varying levels of bad, let's put it that way. Starcade, 94, including, for some reason, Kevin Sullivan and Mr. T, because there's no third person out here in the segment, I guess, to interview with.
02:44:49
Speaker
So the ref from earlier, I guess, counts. Obviously, Sting and Avalanche are clearly building up to, and of course, Hogan and Butcher, which is definitely a match. Yeah.
02:44:59
Speaker
Dave Sullivan, I think, is actually injured on that show or something like that. Yes. So that may be why we didn't get another Sullivan versus Sullivan match. That's very powerful. imagine is probably what they were going to lean towards.
02:45:10
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if we got a better match. The Sullivan versus Steve match was an absolute nightmare of the thing. Yeah. That was so bad. That was so, so, so bad.
02:45:22
Speaker
We cut to Tony, Heenan, and Gene. Heenan looks distraught. Tony says that Flair's career is over, and Gene says that's one thing about tonight that he regrets, because like him or not, Flair's retirement is a loss to the sport.
02:45:38
Speaker
Tony agrees. Tony says they're going to have updates on the Hogan-Bruteye situation in the future, as Gene calls Heenan, you piece of seemingly out of nowhere, maybe for praising Bruteye earlier. Yeah.
02:45:49
Speaker
Tony starts to sign off, but Heenan interrupts to address Rick Flair. Gene tells Heenan to stop crying. Heenan glares at him and then continues, thanking Flair for 27 years at the greatest and is overcome by emotion and stops.
02:46:03
Speaker
Tony says he agrees and signs off. We get the credits with what I believe is the same dramatic music from last year. And Halloween Havoc 1994 is done. Just before we get to our overall thoughts, again, ah really love that all three of the announcers were praising Ric Flair in this segment again, so they maintained that earlier feel of we're not just going instinctive face-versus-heel reaction.
02:46:27
Speaker
We're seeing beyond that. I really like that for this show. It's something Flair has obviously earned at that point, and it's good he gets that. Overall thoughts on Halloween Havoc 1994.
02:46:39
Speaker
It's a pretty strong show. It's a shame the branding is all but missing. But the quality show, for the most part, is really strong. There's obviously some downsides, bad quality-wise.
02:46:50
Speaker
you know, the Sullivan's fighting and the opening match not being that great. But there's good for the presentation and the they have a clear story from the get-go, which is, we're building the Flair Hogan and we're going to that throughout the show with various promo packages, interviews, and all these things.
02:47:05
Speaker
The match itself is given everything they could possibly give it. for better for worse, and they then set up angles going forward. I think it enough good on this show if you can be selective and skip past some stuff, ah or just sort of bite your tongue, I guess, and power through certain segments, and then you're like, okay, it's worth it to get to the rest of it.
02:47:28
Speaker
We still haven't gone to show that ah at least, you know, 90%, this is all really amazing, must see, but it's still a generally, I'd say, high-quality show overall. all Mm-hmm. I just wish they had more Holbein branding.
02:47:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Not just the Elvis placard ringside. Yeah, this was another in a series of somewhat uneven shows. Though more of its content was good than bad this time, and what was bad wasn't outright terrible.
02:47:55
Speaker
Of the eight matches, I'd call five of them good to great, with the remaining three, the opener, Sullivan vs. Sullivan, and the Nasties vs. the Stud Stable, poor, but hardly among the worst stuff we've ever seen. Yeah.
02:48:06
Speaker
There were some poor endings, but not as often or consistently as on other shows. Mm-hmm. So this is a weird compliment. I think you kind of said something similar earlier, actually. But what was bad was not memorably bad.
02:48:17
Speaker
It's just generic or simple or stupid, but not in a way that's going to stay with me. In a few months' time, I'm going to think back on things that I liked and not really think at all about the stuff that I didn't like. Promo content was good, with great Flare Sherry and Hogan promos mixed with some solid, if overlong, video packages.
02:48:36
Speaker
There were some less useful bits, like Sting's very short, I'm going to sit down now promo, and Hearn's less useful but not terrible celebrity promo. But overall, everything worked to set up the show and the major matches quite well.
02:48:49
Speaker
And while the videos were a little long, they did a good job of covering story content to prep for the matches, so I appreciated them. Like you said, they did a really epic build in particular to Hogan vs. Flair. Like, they are on that effectively the whole night.
02:49:02
Speaker
Which it is good and bad, as I'll get to in a moment. It should be no surprise that Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan did a great job on commentary. The early show was a tad uneven, with some perplexing jokes by Heenan, and perhaps a bit too much focus on the admittedly huge match of Hogan vs. Flair, career vs. career.
02:49:20
Speaker
It's a massive story, but the two focus on it so much early on that they kind of ignore the matches going on in the ring at times, much like we'll see with some NWO-era shows later. A few matches in, though, they found their groove and played off each other very well, as always.
02:49:34
Speaker
Heenan's impassioned Hogan Flair match commentary is a real winner. And believe me, he hits so many great lines in that match and during the show overall that I had to cut myself off, including more Heenan commentary, or we would be here all night. Yeah, sure.
02:49:49
Speaker
I also really, really appreciate it as I've said, that Tony joined in on praising Flair for his lengthy career repeatedly on the show. It respected Flair's importance to WCW, the long time that Tony had known him, and it felt more real than if Tony had just gone with a more expected heel-bad face commentator approach.
02:50:08
Speaker
Production kind of upped their game for this one. Aside from the pretty good video packages, we had some great shots reflected in sunglasses, the one I specifically called out on Meng, but there's also one, as you noted, with Sting later on. Yes. In both cases, you can 100% clearly see the action, yeah which is just terrific filming work.
02:50:25
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They had some other nice stylistic points as well, and they caught some truly great moments like Vader's tribute to Ali. That said, it's still WCW, so they also caught stuff like Mockwinkle scratching his nose.
02:50:38
Speaker
The lighting wasn't always great, and not the cameraman's fault. Some wrestlers were caught clearly calling spots throughout. Thematically, the show did pretty well. Sadly, we didn't get a crazy spooky intro, but the crypt and the cemetery stage design was great, and the varied spooky cartoon graphics used for the entrance name cards were a lot of fun.
02:50:56
Speaker
Yeah. If the commentary team and all had worn costumes, this would probably be up there with the best uses of the theme. Mm-hmm. They didn't, but it's still a pretty strong showing, I think. Yeah. Overall, it's an uneven show, but with more good to it than bad, and no sustained down periods, making it a pretty easy watch. Mm-hmm.
02:51:14
Speaker
enjoyable and less frustrating than some of the other shows in this series. so Yeah, I think booking-wise, maybe the problem is that you think of Halloween as a celebratory, let's have fun, sort of thing, let's dress up as characters, let's unwind, that kind of stuff.
02:51:29
Speaker
But the same time, they're trying pitch this match as the most important match in all wrestling history. i think that's the conflict you run into thematically. This goes a little bit interestingly to what I believe Tony Schiavone has said on his own podcast that as a company, WCW, he said, did not actually see Stargate as their version of WrestleMania.
02:51:46
Speaker
They saw Halloween Havoc as their version of WrestleMania. that That's the one that you pull out all the stops for. And you can see that, that that's the show that they do the Big events, big weird matches, costumes, and the showmanship aspect of it, if you're thinking of that as part of WrestleMania.
02:52:00
Speaker
And also the one that they oftentimes, not necessarily always, but oftentimes target their like big feud enders and things for, or big feud transitions for.
Halloween Havoc as WCW's Flagship Event?
02:52:09
Speaker
Sure. You can see those a lot of the time at Halloween Havoc.
02:52:12
Speaker
ah So it's a somewhat weird contrast between Because, like you said, you you see these like kind of very playful graphics and well-done but cartoonish set and everything. And at the same time, you're being asked to be like, this is deadly serious. We have Hogan vs. Flair for their careers. the One of these guys will leave wrestling forever.
02:52:30
Speaker
yeah It's a similar thing that you run into with Bachelor of the Beach series. that yeah you know The formation of the NWO happens on on a beach-themed show. Hogan walking down to betray WSW down a beach-themed set.
02:52:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. in In some ways, the contrast works yeah for both series, but in some ways, you're you're always a little bit like, hmm, kind of wish that we had that dramatic moment with a less silly backdrop or things like that, you know?
02:52:55
Speaker
Exactly, yes. right, match of the night and MVP then. So Al, what is your match of the night? So, there's a couple good match of contention. I could see case for the Stars and Stripes versus a pretty wonderful match.
02:53:09
Speaker
It's a great example of the tag formula, if not the best example of the tag formula. It doesn't do ah any sort of creative thing with the formula to elevate the formula, and there are matches that do that well.
02:53:19
Speaker
But it's a solid tag match, and this is a really bad show. Miles, in a way, stands out. But thankfully, it's not. There are definitely shows where we would have picked that for Match of the Night, for sure. 100%. And not meant
Debate on the Night's Best Match
02:53:30
Speaker
as an insult. yeah minta No. That's a good match.
02:53:33
Speaker
Just on this show, there might be ones that are better. Even if understand grading on curve, it's still good match. Exactly. Made an event with all the buildup and expectations and hypes.
02:53:44
Speaker
Still delivers pretty well. I could see that being a case. I think I'm pretty sure know where I'm going with this. My match tonight is, of course, Vader versus the Guardian Angel. I had no doubt from the moment when we watched the show. was like, this is Al's match of the night.
02:53:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a great use of all the talent involved. They know how to make each other look so good while beating the crap out of each other in ways that can also be safe. Like they take same bumps, but they'll hit other really hard in the chest.
02:54:12
Speaker
Yes. and It's the ending of a feud in a way that, as I said before, builds off everything from that feud and wraps up nicely. Yes. Yeah. I think that is a totally fair view. I mean, you've been phrasing this feud all throughout for very good reasons. This is an excellent, excellent feud. As we said earlier in the show, this is one of the best big men feuds that has been, I think, in wrestling.
02:54:37
Speaker
Yes. And they they are terrific together. Mm-hmm. As you said, there's a bunch of good choices on this show. Yeah. I had Hogan Flair, Rhodes Anderson, and Vader Angel for my choices options.
02:54:48
Speaker
All three were matches that I think managed this like really good big fight feel and feuds that had reached a breaking point. Yeah. All three went big with the emotion and ferocity of the match. And I have gone back and forth on this. Sure. But I'm going to go in my case with Rhodes Anderson.
02:55:05
Speaker
Okay. Okay. I think it had some really great stunts to it, some intense emotion, and some choices by Rhodes in the match that directly called back to what Anderson had done to him earlier in the feud, so I really liked that. Sure.
02:55:16
Speaker
As well as two of my favorite moments on the show, Rhodes going flying out of the ring in his typical great flying spots. And then the two clotheslining each other
MVP of the Night Discussion
02:55:25
Speaker
down. And before they even got back to their feet, they are brawling with each other again, which I thought was just ah such a great emphasis of how much they disliked each other. Yeah, absolutely. They they fought like they hated each other. And I really love the match.
02:55:39
Speaker
I got that. Yeah. So MVP. so mvp So my usual style, as much as I would like to pick Vader or Angel, and they absolutely, I think, do qualify for attention for MVP, I'd rather go outside of the main event, unless someone shines so well in my match of night, I just can't overlook it.
02:55:59
Speaker
Otto mentioned, I would say, would be Ric Flair for his crazy promo and his performance in the match itself. Obviously, that stands out really well. Dustin Rhodes for how well he well hit in his match. Arn Anderson for how he played the sort of canny veteran who can counter all these things and then gets caught up in his own hubris.
02:56:16
Speaker
Harley Race for being beaten up all the time. Yes. Impressive work by him. Yeah, definitely. Buff Bagwell for being a surprisingly good face in peril. Yep. The ensuing years being the most hateable man on the show for justified or unjustified reasons.
02:56:32
Speaker
Bobby Heenan for how well did commentary. I considered giving him the MVP and he absolutely does deserve it. However, wanted to go for a match that didn't quite hit where I wanted to. But thought the person and there did the best they could and really amped up a match that could have been much worse.
02:56:50
Speaker
And I do it back and forth, by the way. I have an or if I'm i'm deciding now. Okay. Ultimately, say my MVP for the show is Steve Austin. When he actually gave him a chance to have a match with Duggan, he could put on a good match with him.
02:57:04
Speaker
He made Duggan look unbeatable. And his own stupidity aside for getting himself disqualified in the match that's important to him, he did so many little things throughout that I couldn't ignore. Yeah, yeah.
02:57:17
Speaker
Oh my gosh, this was a hard choice. Yeah. There are so many terrific performances tonight. We had Hogan, Flair, Rhodes, Anderson, Vader, Angel, Austin, Duggan, Mr. T. I could give it to Ali for being part of some quite nice moments tonight as well. Honestly, he made an impression.
02:57:34
Speaker
Sherry, for her part in the show, was terrific as well. Harley Race, as you pointed out. Mm-hmm. It's a tough call, but I think I am also going to give it to Steve Austin. All right. He just had such strong character performance against Duggan, both on offense and defense, and he did such a great mix of heelish overconfidence, cockiness, and desperation. It's a really complex approach that he handled every facet of very well. Absolutely.
02:57:59
Speaker
I'm curious to hear your runner-up because you did ah you said you had an or. Yeah, my other or was just as a combination of his match and performance and his promo earlier was Ric Flair. Yeah, i think that's fair. And interestingly enough, my runner-up and quite close behind Hulk Hogan.
02:58:13
Speaker
All right, yeah. For, again... Very fun promo early on in the show. His terrific selling of the leg during his match and just general big fight presentation that he did. Sure. And an honestly terrific reaction to the Brother Brutai angle during that closing segment. Yeah.
02:58:29
Speaker
So I love that we both picked the same guy. Yeah. And then for our secondary picks, we had the two opponents in the final match. Yeah, yeah. hey Oh, that's great.
02:58:40
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Halloween Havoc 1994. If you've enjoyed listening to us tonight, you can find us on Facebook as Let's Go to the Ring. A link will be available in the episode description. Follow us for episode announcements and other show details and share your own thoughts about each show as we go through.
02:58:55
Speaker
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, YouTube Music, Audible, iHeartRadio, Spotify, TuneIn, or Pandora. 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.
02:59:11
Speaker
Many thanks to OSW Review for attendance of pay-per-view figures and to Gina Trujillo for our logo. Next up, Halloween Havoc 1995. There's nowhere to hide.
02:59:23
Speaker
As the later 1990s will repeatedly demonstrate, yes, there is. Under the ring. Plenty of space, actually. Yeah. Oh, and up in the rafters. Or backstage around a corner. Or in disguise in the crowd.
02:59:34
Speaker
Won't even take long for that one. So actually, there are plenty of places to hide, and this tagline is factually incorrect. There you go. Also, the fact that they somehow don't make a monster match joke on the show with a monster proxumo match is a massive shame. Yes.
02:59:48
Speaker
Also, there's a monster proxumo match. Yes. Don't bear the lead there. I was hoping to sneak that in, like the Chekhov's gun of wrestling matches. It's too big of a gun to sneak That is true. That is true.
03:00:00
Speaker
It's a minigun, as we said. Yes, exactly. Exactly. This is Bob Moore for Alec Pridgen, signing off. Good night, everybody. Happy wrestling.
03:00:20
Speaker
I was just like, I'm just going to stare at him until he runs out of birds that stand up for the convention. They're the one that kind like came to mind initially. They could think of more if he wanted. Peacocks.
03:00:32
Speaker
Peacocks also do that. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.
03:00:35
Speaker
And we watch these shows on Peacock. That's true. It all fits together. Mm-hmm.