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Episode 57: Bash at the Beach 1995
35 Plays2 years ago
With Bash at the Beach 1995, WCW has finally hit on the idea of holding a beach-themed show on, you know, a beach! With a partnership with Baywatch and a sponsorship from Slim Jims, the stage is set for interesting show - can WCW deliver fun in the sun? Hogan faces Vader in a cage! Savage faces Flair in a lifeguard match (not those lifeguards, wrestler lifeguards)! Paul Orndorff faces DDP...in a contest to see who can get a better match out of their respective dance partners, Renegade and Dave Sullivan! Plus, triangle match has yet another meaning, and this one sucks. For all this, plus a discussion of Vader and multiverse theory, let's go to the beach!
Music by Michael Gary Brewer at https://www.instantmusicnow.com/
Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/letsgo2thering , or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LetsGo2theRing/
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Transcript
Introduction and Setting
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, tonight we're taking a look at Beach Blast 1995, an event so hot they had to put it on the beach. Oh, um, it's Bash of the Beach 95. Oh, it is. Beach, Bash of the Beach 95. Well, found my show intro. There you go. Okay.
00:00:42
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 I'm joined by a man who really enjoys having a warm cup of Ovaltine and a cookie, Alec Pridgen. I'm apparently 75 years old, according to that intro. I feel like I'm sometimes in the morning, but that's just, you know, that's just getting old in general. Yeah, yeah. We're slowly getting there, you know, time is creeping along.
00:01:12
Speaker
That's true, it's true. Otherwise I'm doing quite well. Good, good. What's your favorite kind of cookie? Um, I like dark chocolate, so we know those dark chocolate ones are really good. Mmm, mmm. I wonder if they're just, they're all, they're really dark. Oh, cookie's dark. Ooh, yeah, yeah, those are tasty. Very nice. Tonight, we're taking a look at Bash at the Beach 1995, an event so hot they had to put it on the beach.
00:01:37
Speaker
So, is there, like, some kind of temperature chart where if things reach a particular temperature you have to move to a beach? Yeah, and what if it gets too hot for this show? Where'd it go? Like a volcano? Well, and I kind of feel like it's more likely that if things reach a particular temperature you have to move it to, like, a specially constructed facility made out of heat-shielded material, but that's just me.
00:01:56
Speaker
I mean, just turn the fans on, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really easier to move your show to a beat than to just turn on the AC. I mean, I guess it I guess it costs less, you know, in terms of energy, right, you know? Yeah, both so. WCW, the green conscious company. Yes.
Attendance and Viewership
00:02:17
Speaker
Bash of the Beach 1995 was held on July 16th, 1995 at the beach in Huntington Beach, California in front of 9,000 fans. Obviously this being a literal beach, we can't do a comparison to the arena capacity like we sometimes do. Right, yeah.
00:02:34
Speaker
The Bash of the Beach 1995 earned 210,000 pay-per-view buys, which is on the high end for 1995. There's only two shows that earn more, those being Super Brawl 5 and Uncensored 1995, at 220,000 each. It's also only 20,000 less than last year. I'm not sure if it was the beach theme or some lingering good feelings from how important last year's show was, but it looks like we're maintaining some pretty good numbers so far. I don't know if that's, like, your goal, like, well, it didn't do quite as well as the censor, but that's okay.
00:03:03
Speaker
I mean, to be fair, no one knew what Uncensored 95 was going to be like going in because it was the first show of the series. So it might have gotten artificially inflated numbers because they were like, oh, new show. That's exciting because they didn't realize it was going to be a steaming pile of crap. Yeah, that's very fair. Yeah.
Promotions and Sponsorships
00:03:21
Speaker
Prior to the pay-per-view, three matches were filmed for WCW's main event TV show.
00:03:27
Speaker
Sergeant Craig Pittman beat Chris Canyon, who I didn't even realize was in WCW at this point. Road Warrior Hawk beat Mark Starr, who at one point was Canyon's partner in a team called Men at Work, where they played construction workers. I think that's a bit later in 95, but I could be wrong. I think so. I will say, when I hear Men at Work, I get to think of the band
00:03:52
Speaker
Or I think of the film with Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, which of course they're not construction workers, they have a trash, so it's a little different. Yeah, well, you know. Finally, Dirty Dick Slater and Bunkhouse Buck with Colonel Robert Parker beat Marcus Bagwell and Alex Wright. Oh no, we missed a Bunkhouse Buck match. I am saddened. We've seen one good one. Yeah, this ratio is not great stuff. Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
00:04:19
Speaker
Well, actually, last year's was fair as well, I have to say. That wasn't bad. No, I mean, I got way more out of Terry Funk in that match. Yes, Dustin. Yes, yes. But yeah, he didn't ruin things. The sun is shining. The waves are crashing. Let's go to the beach.
00:04:40
Speaker
Waves occur. Sharks will be swirling. As Slim Jim presents WCW's Bash at the Beach. Snap into a Slim Jim. Snap into the biggest thing ever to hit the beach. WCW's Bash at the Beach. Oh, yeah. Brought to you by Slim Jim. Snap into it. I'll be snapping into some payback from the Nature Boy. Oh, yeah.
Main Event Build-up: Hogan vs Vader
00:05:04
Speaker
Big Steel Cage will be rumbling like a tidal wave when WCW world champion Hulk Hogan returns to the shores of the Pacific to fend off the miraculous monster big fan fader. Let's rumble and tumble at the WCW bash of the beach. Sponsored by Slim Jim. Snap into it.
00:05:28
Speaker
I like the little theme they've got for it. I think they used that for the intro video package last year, the same song. I think so, yeah. It's up over a familiar, yeah. Yeah. Our intro video package serves part as a promo for the show and part as a Slim Jims ad.
00:05:44
Speaker
But it's about 60-40 as far as that goes. Yeah, yeah. Randy Savage does a rather tortured segue from snapping into Slim Jims to snapping into Payback. It's also a little bit weird he words it as snapping into Payback from Ric Flair. Yeah. Because that would
Meng vs Sting: Build-up and Match Highlights
00:06:02
Speaker
mean that Flair was paying him back. I mean, why not just say snapping into Ric Flair? Yeah. See, that would make sense. Maybe he thought that would sound like cannibalism, given what snapping into means with a Slim Jim.
00:06:14
Speaker
I suppose. If anyone thinks logically, it's Randy Savage 95. Good try anyway, Randy. Yeah, fair enough. I like the cage logo that they use for Hogan Invader, but they have all of the other graphics, including the cage match text up here underneath that and actually underneath the wrestler pictures as well, which makes things really hard to read. Yeah, it should be the wrestlers, then the cage and then the graphics. Yeah, yeah. The cage match over everything else.
00:06:43
Speaker
Right, you obviously want them behind the cage Metrographic to symbolize, hey, they're locked on the cage, but you also don't want to block the text. Yeah. We close with the great Flexing Wave logo, which I still love, accompanied this time by the incredibly hyperactive Slim Jims logo that cycles through at least 15 logo iterations in a rapid loop. Why do Slim Jims even need logo variations? Yeah, I'm not sure on that one.
00:07:11
Speaker
I don't think they plan this, but they've gotten a really good value for their sponsorship deal, whatever money they paid, Randy Savage. Because, you know, when they upload shows and decide what to cut, we here and there, especially like Nitro is where there's commercials written on it. They have to use some sort of, you know, primitive AI or some sort of program to go, here's where you cut, here's where you cut. So they don't run the ads again, basically. Yeah. However, the Slim Jim ads seem to break the metric a bit.
00:07:38
Speaker
Because they show up. I think those legit were aired by WCW. I think those are legit considered part of Nitro. It might be. My theory is just that because Rain Savage shows up, the program is, oh, that's part of the show, and it keeps them in. But either way, I mean, good. Good value for money, definitely. They got their money's worth, yeah.
00:07:56
Speaker
Even now, in fact, Slim Jims uses Randy Savage in some of their marketing. Their website actually links to a playlist with a bunch of old Randy Savage Slim Jim ads. Some in extremely low resolution, as apparently rather than uploading their own copies, they just used ones that other folks had loaded onto YouTube, most notably someone with the charming username of F*** Man Barbecue. Oh! You would think the company would still have the video files to load themselves?
00:08:23
Speaker
Um, yeah, maybe it's a thing where they were on master tapes and never wanted to keep them. I don't know. Still fun to watch though. Yeah, I will say I see, um, usually in big lots, I'll see them. They have packaging that has them on it as well. Yes. They have like a Savage stick specific. That's it. Yeah. Savage Savage size. It's like three times the size of a normal Slim Jim, which is already pretty big. Yes. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah.
00:08:46
Speaker
The best Slim Jims ads with Randy Savage, I think, are either the one where he's in the library and basically wrecks the building with Slim Jim Snaps, or the Romeo and Juliet play one. He repeatedly tries to murder the director with unlikely stage accidents fueled by Slim Jims. I don't remember that one, but I definitely have to watch it again. It's utterly hilarious. The one that sticks in my mind and the one that I've seen on Tucked in Nitrous is the one where he's just, again, the insane asylum wrapped up. That one gets around a lot, yeah.
00:09:18
Speaker
Anyway, Slim Jim's interlude over, let's move on. Yes.
00:09:22
Speaker
Tony Schiavone welcomes us to Huntington Beach for Slim Jim's Bash at the Beach because WCW needs money. And yes, this year the show does literally take place on the beach, not an arena decorated like a beach. The ring is a bit elevated, much like at Hog slash Road Wild. It's an interesting arrangement and definitely gives a unique atmosphere, though aside from a few bits of elevated seating, the crowd largely looks like they have to just stand around on the sand around the ring for several hours. Probably got a little tiresome.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm wondering if, spoiler alert, they didn't do this setup ever again as far as I recall with Bash of the Beach. I'm wondering if they'd done it multiple times, if they would have learned the same way they learned with the Road and Hog Wild series. Like how by the last show, as terrible as that last show was, they had the setup perfectly right. Yes. They had like little bleachers out there and they had space for the bike. So they had the bike still there and people could also sit and they could see. Yeah, it became much more of a formal set.
00:10:20
Speaker
in 98 and 99's version of that show, yeah. It would have been interesting to see them try this idea again. I would kind of like it if they moved it around a bit, like if they went to places like through by lakes and stuff, that'd be fun. Just go by the Great Lakes, yeah. Or just go to different beaches around the country, and yeah, that'd be cool. They could have gone Niagara Falls. Oh god, they'd be so tempted to do a really horrible match concept, you know they would. I know, yeah.
00:10:51
Speaker
It is funny as well, in the background, you can often see folks having fun in the ocean. So to me, what this kind of feels most like is a street fighter stage. Yes, yeah. You know, you always are fighting in the foreground and in the background, people are just going about their daily lives or having fun at whatever location you're in and stuff. It's always interesting. Yeah, it's funny, as the show goes on, when they cut to room crowd shots, obviously, most people there are, you know, they're dressed for the beach. So, you know, they're either wearing a bikini or, you know, guys that are wearing, you know, trunks and not wearing a shirt and whatnot.
00:11:19
Speaker
So you'll see occasionally, I remember when I was just rewatching the main, I think it was the main event. There's a guy in like a polo shirt out there and he's, he is sweating. Cause he's been out of there for two and a half hours on the beach and the sun. The afternoon was like, like, Oh, why didn't I dress for the beach? She's regretting his decisions in real time.
00:11:39
Speaker
Tony intros his co-host Bobby the Brain Hienan. They are almost going with your suggestion from last year, Al. They're not quite in beach wear again, but they are dressed more casually in WSW polo shirts instead of suits. So at least it's a slight nod towards this is more casual atmosphere. No, absolutely, yeah. And again, I can imagine them dressed in the nines out in that weather. Oh, gah, no, yeah.
00:12:03
Speaker
That is one thing you notice, though, is that they are under a little tent. Yes. That was actually a smart move, I think, by WSW. They got them some shade because they were like, you're going to be out here forever, guys. Yeah, because they had they had to do prep. So I'm sure they were a long way. And I also was practically. Yeah.
00:12:19
Speaker
Tony and Hienan build up the Hogan vs. Vader cage match main event, and Hienan predicts that Hogan's reign as champ and his career will end here. Tony notes that we're going to have four title matches tonight, and up first is Sting vs. Meng for Sting's United States title. Tony then throws to an enormously over-the-top video package building up Meng.
00:12:48
Speaker
At the time of his existence, he was taught to intimidate, to eliminate, to conquer and destroy. A one man shield of steel is Ming.
00:13:04
Speaker
Brought up to protect the emperors of the Far East, his soul disperses fear to all persons willing to step into his protected domain. Trained in nine forms of martial arts, Ming is a master of disaster.
00:13:22
Speaker
Inside his mind, the focus is there. Discipline, tenacity, diligence. The fight will continue until the breathing stops. There's a murderer, apparently. Yes. Victims are many. There's a serial killer. Yes. It's widespread.
00:13:48
Speaker
Protect my master with all means necessary. I have been put here to finish the competition, to complete the contest, to continue to serve. This is Ming.
00:14:07
Speaker
I swear this thing sounds like they're building him up as the next world title challenger, not putting him up for US title in the first match on the show. Also, why does the narrator start speaking like he himself is Meng about three quarters of the way through? It's very strange, yeah. I can't remember the exact timeline, but we're less than a year out from Glacier. I wonder if it's testing this formatting.
00:14:31
Speaker
There's a number of things in the show that feel kind of like trial runs for things that are gonna happen later. The ending of the show in particular, where they cut away, act like they're wrapping up, and then cut back as, oh my gosh, something else is happening, feels like such a trial run for like NWO era stuff.
00:14:48
Speaker
And this is well before they're starting that, but that sort of thing would happen a lot with the NWO era that is like, oh, we're wrapping up, we're totally done with the show, and then something new will... What's this? What's this in the back now? Yeah, what's going on? Yeah. And genuinely, I've long said that the Dungeon of Doom angle in general actually kind of feels like a trial run for the NWO. Oh, yeah. Just a cartoony way of doing the same basic concept.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, in many ways, the Dungeon of Doom is the, I'd say, the Super Friends. Yes. To the N.W.O.'s modern-day DC movie franchises. Yes. With their grim dark and seriousness. Yeah. His soul disburses fear is kind of a great line. Like, very cartoon-y, supervillain, but great line. It is, yeah. I'll be honest, I kind of want to make that a natural guy MVP, just off of that.
00:15:38
Speaker
It's right up there with Buffer last year getting saddled with the Buzz Aldrin line, but making it through it. Yes. Honestly, that delivery is pretty impressive. Yeah. We cut right from that video package to Mean Jean Okerlund, who is with United States champ Sting.
00:15:56
Speaker
And speaking of Ming, the man that is going to be challenging my guest at this time, U.S. heavyweight champ Sting for this coveted title is none other than Colonel Parker's pride and joy. He's made a lot out of this guy. You know how tough he's been in the past. Well, you know something mean, Gene? I know how tough he's been in the past, but you know something? This is the Stinger here on his home turf. Yeah, he's a bad, bad dude.
00:16:17
Speaker
He can wipe anybody out. I mean, he's got kicks. He's got swats. He's got karate chops. He knows seven different forms of martial arts, but the stinger knows seven different forms are crazy and more important right here on my home turf.
00:16:32
Speaker
with the ocean, the palm trees, and that's right, waves and waves of little stingers, big stingers, medium-sized stingers, every color in the whole wide world. I got good buddies like Mark Johnson and Jamie Pugh by my side, and you know something? I got my mom and dad sitting ringside, and this stinger is not gonna be embarrassed. Not in front of mom and dad, not in my home turf, not in California. I make the beach with the U.S. title up for grabs.
00:17:01
Speaker
Well, I tell you what, I've never seen you quite so pumped up staying in a city that's that hometown environment. That's right! I said it tonight! Hometown! Right here, Huntington Beach. I got the beach, I got the sun, I got my muscles going just right. Yeah, that's right, a little bit of Popeye. How about one for the crowd? Let's hear it.
00:17:35
Speaker
So apparently Meng forgot two different forms of martial arts between the video package and Sting's promo, or maybe he learned them recently and Sting's just not aware of it yet. Yeah.
00:17:45
Speaker
I don't like that he knows seven forms of crazy. Yes. Like, does that mean he knows different mental disorders? I mean, I know a lot of them too. I don't have them, but I know what they are. I'm not bragging about it. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Maybe or maybe crazy is actually like it's crazy like a fox. You have to actually study it. It's a technique. Okay. Yeah.
00:18:07
Speaker
Otherwise, yeah, this was a fun if-slim-off-kilter Sting promo. Yeah. He builds up how being so close to home has him supercharged and how he's even got his mom and dad watching from ringside, apparently. Yeah. I absolutely love the bit where Gene says Sting is in his hometown and Sting appears to double-check that he did, in fact, say that bit. So I said that, didn't I? Yeah.
00:18:29
Speaker
I'll know about you. I've definitely been in that situation frequently on this show, in fact, when I'm just saying stuff and honestly, I'm not quite sure if I've mentioned all my planned points yet. Yeah, sure. So I sympathize, Sting. I could lie to you about a little Popeye. Yes. And Gene requesting a Stinger call. That's a lot of good energy in this promo.
00:18:52
Speaker
My one critique for staying at this point is why I like his outfit, his orange thing. I kind of wish when it comes to US Champion, he'd really commit to the thing and like wear red, white, and blue. I get that, yeah. I do like the orange and blue for this show specifically, because that looks very beach wear. Like something about that color scheme feels like a beach color scheme. Right. I think for me, it's because I know he has a jacket that goes with it. Yes. And he wore it three years back.
00:19:20
Speaker
Yes, he should eternally wear that outfit when he's U.S. champion. Well, you should make a thing about how, you know, I just bought, say, let's say 10 new things of ring gears to wear while champion to show how determined he is to keep a championship. Yes. Because I would say I can't wear these if I'm not U.S. champion.
00:19:37
Speaker
I get championed for months. He loses the title and you have this sad video package of him hanging all the gear back in the closet and locking the door as sad piano music plays. Yes. Sad patriotic piano music, like a really sad version of, I don't know, Battle Hymn of the Republic. Yeah, that'd be good, yeah. Oh, look, Al. They have my favorite thing from the Hog slash Road Wild series on this one, the shaky helicopter shot. Oh, good.
00:20:08
Speaker
It's not the best thing for this show either. It does show a big crowd around the ring, which is cool, but it also shows that not all that far from the ring. Still, there's a lot of folks just having a nice, normal day at the beach and not really giving a crap about the WSW show going on. Right. Because the thing with the Road Wild shows is they've like set a designated area that got one side of the road. If you were going, you're near there, you're there for the show. Yeah. Or at least you're wandering over curious to see it. You don't wander by accident.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, this one, they've just plopped a ring somewhere on the beach. I really do wonder what folks staying at the hotels for the weekend thought. If you didn't know that the WCW show was going to be there when you booked your hotel room, we're like, oh, great. We'll have wonderful views of the beach. And you look out your window like, what the heck is going on? Yeah. Why is there a wrestling ring? Right.
00:21:00
Speaker
Our first match is Meng with Colonel Robert Parker versus Sting for Sting's WCW United States Heavyweight Championship. Referee for this one is Randy Anderson.
00:21:12
Speaker
So the previous US champ was Vader, but of course they're building Vader up to fight for Hogan's title so you don't have him lose anybody. So they had him attack Nick Bockwinkle amongst all them other many people attacked, so he stripped the title. And of course when there's no title holder or no champion, what do you do? Tournament. Yes, you do a tournament! Oh my gosh, especially with this title that happens all the time.
00:21:37
Speaker
Ultimately, it came down to a finals match between Sting and Ming, and of course you can guess who won based on the previous promo, which is where we discovered. Heels don't like losing, especially when they have heel managers, so they have a rematch. We transitioned to the match card for the US title match by means of some very fun wave graphics. WCW is keeping its graphics game up from last year, which is nice.
00:22:02
Speaker
The ring this year has ring posts covered in the Slim Jim colors and logo because WSW needs money. Yes. Meng gets some very ominous music for his intro. It's not the usual, like, uh, wistful flute theme that they give him later. Yes, sure, yeah. Much more ominous. Yeah, nice. He comes out in a very bright multicolored kimono. Hinen notes that Parker is wearing a hat gifted to him by race car driver Richard Petty, and somehow that's gonna give him good luck, so he predicts a Meng win. Why not?
00:22:31
Speaker
Michael Buffer, who must be absolutely sweltering in that white tux, gives the ring intros. It's weird to see him early in the show like this. It is very odd, yes. He notes that Meng was discovered by the WCW while working as a bodyguard, and calls Sting the star of Thunder and Paradise. I know he was in an episode or two, but did Buffer mix up his note cards with those for the Hogan match there?
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like this weird thing where, well, you're a star and you're on show. So you must be the star of the show, I guess. Yeah. Normally that's what they use the word guest star for. Right. Yeah. The guest part does that, that qualifier in there. Yeah. It's just, it's funny to hear that as like the defining thing in Sting's career and buffer's notes, apparently. Yes.
00:23:21
Speaker
Sting lands several strikes, but Meng just roars at him and beats him up, intermixed with choking and nerve holds, and earns two with a nice leg drop. Tony points out the camera crew from Baywatch is also filming today, as this show will be featured in a Baywatch episode. Sting dodges a second rope splash and fights to put on the Scorpion Deathlock, but just as he does, Parker climbs up on the apron, so Sting immediately lets go to go after him, earning a kick from Meng. Duh, Sting. Yeah, right?
00:23:48
Speaker
Meng earns two counts with a brain buster and a triple backbreaker. Tony claims this is the largest crowd ever to see a WCW event in the United States, claiming that there's hundreds of thousands of people. Are we counting everyone anywhere on the beach? I guess, yeah, apparently. Because the figure I found was 9,000. Right, yeah. They've definitely had more than 9,000 people in some of their arena shows. Yes, of course.
00:24:15
Speaker
He didn't mention that Okerlund claimed it was a capacity crowd, and asks, what's the capacity of a beach? Tony admits that's a good point. Yes. Meng works around an abdominal stretch. Sting counters a whip with a sunset flip, but Meng ends up in the rope, so no count. Meng tries one of his own, but Sting drops right on Meng's nose. Yeah. Ow. Yeah, he's trying to do that jumping, basically for lack of a word, butt drop.
00:24:44
Speaker
It's weird. I don't know what goes wrong there because he jumps up. I mean, it really is staying and he has like a 30 foot vertical leap at this point. So it's possible he's probably aimed and then falls farther than I think he's going to. He he's like he's ready to land and he he changed position. He seems to like fall back instead of landing straight. And so I think maybe it might be like you said, he threw himself too high to do it accurately. It's a little hard to aim from orbit. Right. Right. Yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
He basically ends up doing the jumping senton that he likes the Mojo to where you run, except they do it across the chest because that's the goal, whereas he just falls on Ming's face. Yes. Yeah, even Meng looks a little bit stunned by that one, which it takes a lot to shake Meng. Meng tries a variant Boston crab with both legs under the same arm and Sting gets out somehow off camera because WSW's camera crew is on point today. Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
Sting fires up and earns two counts with a Thess Press and a rare Frankensteiner. Frankenstinger? Yeah, sure. I'll take that. Another two with a somewhat sloppy crossbody. Hits a little bit too high. Mm-hmm. Stingersplash but Meng boots him in the face in midair for two. I have no idea how he did that safely. That looked like it hurt.
00:26:02
Speaker
The only move I see that's worse is there's a couple of times with X-Pac matches, they'll run into his Bronco Buster and I think if Jim Jare's done it, they'll put their foot out that exact same way. Yes. And then just, let's see, he doesn't hit his face if you don't Bronco Buster it. Yes. I can't imagine how you do that without it actually hurting a lot. Yeah.
00:26:25
Speaker
Meng, second row of splash for two. We get a Freudian slip as Henan notes that Meng was jobbed on this one. Was he robbed? Just as Sting ducks a kick and smoothly takes ring down for the three count in the win. Yeah, I noticed that too. As Sting celebrates tiredly, Meng clubs him from behind and chokes him with a foot, then boots him out of the ring.
00:26:50
Speaker
Anderson goes to check on him and Road Warrior Hawk comes down in full regalia to protect Sting. Scorpahawk's reunion! Yes! John will be so happy. We get a replay of the kick during the Stinger splash and the ending and Heening claims that Sting was holding the tights though he clearly is not. Yeah he is not. Thoughts on this one?
00:27:13
Speaker
So this one in matches, I feel it's really strong on story. There's a lot of nice bits as far as that goes. There's a part where Sting is sort of fighting for control and Ming pushes him away and he shows like legitimate concern slash fear in his face. Like it's what it looked like. Wow, can I really take this guy down? Yeah, Sting does some amazing facial storytelling in this match. Yeah. He did a lot of good work that way. Ming for his part is just generally big and menacing.
00:27:40
Speaker
It's interesting with him because there's little bits that sort of shine through where, you know, he's playing this big savage guy, he's uncontrollable, you know, murderer at the end. That video pack could talk to him. Yes. Serial killer, basically. Yes. But then he'll ram, we just jump into a really nice leg drop he can do. Just the thing you learn like in wrestling training, rather than the clubbing and punching and throwing for round. Well, to be fair, they built him up as knowing nine different times of martial arts. So clearly one of the kinds of martial arts is leg drop.
00:28:08
Speaker
Then which one is that again? That's like drop-fu, obviously. Oh, my mistake. I have problems. See, I spent all my time in high school learning the crazy. I didn't learn the martial arts. Yeah, exactly. See, that was the flaw in your strategy. It's one or the other. You can't learn both. I do imagine it's maybe a little too long for the content. Because for me, it gets real sort of punch, kick, punch a lot. I think in the middle, maybe.
00:28:33
Speaker
The other thing is, there's parts that just don't quite seem to go right, like as you mentioned, the sting falling onto Ming's face, that cross-body wasn't super great. I'm still not sure if that brain buster he's doing was him actually doing a brain buster or just the timing still a little off. What he's doing is he's suplexing him from the ring apron into the ring. Yes. The timing of when you as the suplexer go down all the way for the suplex E, for lack of a better word.
00:28:58
Speaker
is important. He comes down really fast at the end, rather than like a normal like flat back fall you would do, like you sort of potentially float down, but try and make a look at your going really quickly. So I don't know if that's actually a bot or not. It could be just him doing a brain buster, but it catches the announcers off guard. Like, whoa, what is that? Yeah. Yeah. It definitely is a, is a surprising moment in the match. I feel like it was probably intentional, but, uh, yeah, I can't say for sure. It's not a move like I associate being doing. That's why it seems that way.
00:29:29
Speaker
And for me, the ending, I don't know, it's fairly well done, but I don't know why it has to be a sort of fluke-pulming-down finish and not, I get, don't want to, you know, have him tap out or, I guess, Verbo's in it, we're not doing tap outs yet. But I don't know if staying just sort of lucking into the victory by getting a hold on him is the best way to book your champion.
00:29:49
Speaker
I kind of read it more as honestly a very skilled takedown, though, that it's not a luck rollup. He dodges the move, gets him exactly right. It's a martial artsy takedown, actually. It's like Sting using Meng's style against him. Maybe, yeah. I'm not really bothered by it. It's just not one I would have voted. Okay. Well, the only thing I would say is that this is the second time they've had a big match, first most ranked champion.
00:30:17
Speaker
Like, this kind of finish actually makes sense for the first match. Gotcha. You want something bigger for the second one? Yeah, yeah. One more definitive. Yeah. Okay. I'll accept that. Yeah, I thought this was a perfectly acceptable match, but not really the pace that I expect for an opener. Mm-hmm. There were some very nice spots mixed in, particularly that kick on the Splash and the Frankenstinger, but the pacing was just too slow, like you were saying. Yeah. Part of that, I think, is just the style that Meng is going for here. He's playing the big hulking destroyer.
00:30:47
Speaker
The crowd was hot for Sting for most of the match as he slowly got beaten down but kept fighting back, but between somewhat repetitive spots, a few botches, and lots of holds that just kind of unceremoniously just stop, I found this a bit underwhelming.
00:31:01
Speaker
What would you switch to opening match? That's where I was struggling myself. Yeah, that's the hard thing on this show is, I think in terms of speed at least, maybe the tag match, but that one for various other reasons I wouldn't put an opening spot. That's the one that has the speed of action that you want for opening match anyway. I definitely wouldn't make the TV title match first for a number of reasons. Yes, no, people would leave. Right.
00:31:29
Speaker
The third match we'll obviously get to, maybe it's a strong one because facing that gets a really good crowd response and he's... Oh, the Duggan, yeah. The Duggan one, yeah. Also, it's not too long. It's not a great quality match, as we'll discuss, but... But you at least get a crowd reaction because of Duggan, yeah. Yeah. You almost wonder if the shop's in the back going, man, if I only had some guys that worked really fast, like small guys that could jump around, that would really start a show strongly. Yeah.
00:32:00
Speaker
The ending couple minutes of this, though, I thought were really good. I agree. We got a quicker pace, some big stunts, and a nice surprise finish. I rather liked that one, honestly. If the whole match had that kind of energy, I think it would have been great. I do feel like these two have a great match in them. This one just wasn't it. I was thinking, too, wonder if
00:32:22
Speaker
some of the stuff that goes slightly off is maybe due to not being used to wrestling in this environment as well. The sunlight could get in your eyes, you're not quite able to see, well, you're hot, you're sweaty, it's not the same environment. Certainly, there's a few more botches on this show than normal anyway, and I would say it might be the whole outdoors at the beach thing. Right. I do have to say, it's too bad they never actually show us a picture of Sting's parents in the crowd though. Yes, I was thinking that too. I was gonna bot them.
00:32:51
Speaker
I would assume that it would be like an older couple wearing face paint, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. So that bit at the end with Sting and the Road Warrior Hawk as the Scorpio Hawks reunited would lead to a match at the next official show, which is Clash of the Champions, their TV specials, because there's a gap as we'll cover between this and the next proper PPV. So you'd have the Scorpio Hawks team up against Ming and Kurosawa, not the director, because at that point he's dead.
00:33:22
Speaker
It's a different Japanese wrestler who was brought in under Colonel Parker's stable. Gotcha. It is funny actually thinking about it going these shows year to year. We go from Colonel Parker's studs table. The idea anyways, they're all sort of good old boys to he's managing Ming and he's managing Kurosawa. As we'll discuss, he's just dropped setting Steve Austin. Yes. He's not in the company. So it's, it's just a weird transition from here's my stud table guys to here's these big scary guys that are definitely foreign and scary.
00:33:52
Speaker
He's still calling it the stud stable at this point, or at least other people. Yeah, I believe he is, yeah. As far as the two men in the match, they have a big match at Fall Brawl, which I'll discuss more later when more people get involved. As far as the US title itself, the next show, Fall Brawl, would open with a match turning their one contender to the belt and staying as busy on something else.
00:34:16
Speaker
We cut to Mean Jean Okerlund, who is with Jimmy Hart and Renegade. Joy. We talked about Renegade briefly back on Slambry 1995. He is WSW's blatant, blatant ripoff of the WWF's Ultimate Warrior, just with our themed face paint instead of Warrior's normal style, which is more of a, I don't know, descending bat shape or an upside-down W with a pointy end.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's definitely a bat symbol thing going on. Yeah. Warrior's face paint design. Yeah. Warrior was an energetic performer who might not have had a ton of actual wrestling variety, but made up for it with charisma and a big personality. Renegade might not have had a ton of actual wrestling variety, but he made up for it by having ours on his shoulders in addition to his face. Yes.
00:35:07
Speaker
I don't necessarily terribly mind the R in the face, but just randomly paying the R on his arm looks so dumb. It looks weird, right? Yeah. They were just trying to think, what arm decorations can we do that are not quite warrior so we don't get totally sued? Even if he would lose the case, no warrior would have sued him if they had him wearing tassels. Yes. He would be like, I owe tassels. I'm pretty sure he would win the case too, actually.
00:35:35
Speaker
I'll tell you what, Jimmy, it's very tough for me to concentrate on all of the action we're seeing. I mean, all of the action we are seeing here, including your tie to the fans for World Television champ, The Renegade, who's going to be squaring off against the Slim Jims Challenge winner, Mr. Whittleful Paul Orndoyne. You don't mean, Gene?
00:35:50
Speaker
you pick up any wrestling magazine in the country. They're all talking about the Renegade baby and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff right here in Southern California and the Warren California son when he gets through with you. That's all you're going to be talking about too. Renegade World television champ, big pass, ahead of you.
00:36:07
Speaker
Jimmy Hart has programmed me to T-O-S, germinate on Zod! You got this guy tuned up, Artega. Lee Jean, he is ready, baby! Bash at the beach!
00:36:23
Speaker
All right, I'll tell you, I think some of this Southern California weather making these guys a little kooky. Bobby Heenan, you don't know a standing room only crowd when you see one, my friend. Slim Jim's pass at the beach right now. Let's get you back to more action up in the ring. Gene getting back at Heenan for that capacity joke at his expense earlier there. Oh, gotcha. This segment. Well, they did their best. Yeah.
00:36:51
Speaker
They're stuck with an absolute lemon of an angle here, and they're trying to make it what they can. Jimmy and Gene have to pretend that the wrestling world is excited about a blatant sub-par Ultimate Warrior ripoff, and poor Renegade has to spend the entire promo acting like a blatant sub-par Ultimate Warrior ripoff. I do not envy the man. Yes, no.
00:37:11
Speaker
That said, Warrior was known for a bizarre, lengthy, completely nonsensical promos about spaceships, rocket fuel spirits of the Warriors, and in one memorable instance, claiming he was going to kill the pilots of Hogan's airplane and drive the plane into a mountain. Yes. This guy? One short sentence about how Jimmy Hart programmed him. Yeah. He is in desperate need of a different gimmick. I'll give him this. He knows how acronyms work. Yeah. That's something. I'm trying to find a positive here. Yeah, yeah. I'm desperately trying to find a positive here.
00:37:41
Speaker
Genuinely think the guy is doing his absolute best with the gimmick that he has been given. Oh, yeah It's just that they have given him an absolutely terrible idea for a gimmick. Yes, that should not have been tried What's the thing? Okay. So we have warrior has a lot of faults personally and in the ring obviously no disrespect to the dead but he again he had a presence he had this look where
00:38:06
Speaker
If you were a non-wrestling fan, if you saw Wario, you'd be like, whoa, who's this guy? I gotta see who this guy's up to. There's genuine interest in this guy. Not only he has a physical presence, like when you see him and Hogan, it's like a big face-off. These two mountains of steroids and tanning spray.
00:38:23
Speaker
But second you see them introduce Renegade, that promo where he's repeared some dry ice and smoke behind him, you realize he's not as big as Hogan. It's like he's a small guy. Yeah, he's in good shape. He's in good shape. But he didn't have this huge physical presence. Yes. Yeah. So it's not the same. Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
It's doomed from the start, and the entire idea of the character is we thought that we had the ultimate warrior, or we promised that we would have the ultimate warrior, and we don't. So here's a guy that we can claim is warrior-ish, but he's not. It's the kind of thing that you shouldn't even try once, but if you do try it once, you should realize early that this has utterly failed and just quietly stopped doing it. Yes. Yeah.
00:39:15
Speaker
I think the legacy of the Renegade, I guess the character, would be very different if it was you bring him in, you have a new thing where he interferes and he helps Hogan, people are attacking him, and you look at him and go, okay, this is not working. You didn't even have to really have him be written off. You just don't have him be shown again. Right. He was here for that one surprise and that's it. Yes.
00:39:40
Speaker
It's like, as we'll cover when we do Halloween, having 95 with the, the Yeti and all that, if they, if they had done the same approach, you know, like the Renegade approach, they would just kept doing the Yeti hanging around and trying to explain this and just, they'd make them a champion. Like the Yeti itself was bad enough on its own. Imagine it runs for six months and beats one of the greatest wrestlers ever for a title just to make the angle work. No, that's a bad idea.
00:40:08
Speaker
Our second match is Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff versus The Renegade with the mouth of the South Jimmy Hart for Renegade's WSW World Television Championship. Referee for this one is Nick Patrick. So as mentioned, Paul Orndorff won the prestigious Slim Jim tournament which took place on WSW Saturday night. Thankfully Wikipedia lists all these tournaments, even the stupid ones, so it's very helpful finding these things out. The prestigious Slim Jim tournament involved four people.
00:40:38
Speaker
Paul Randolph beat Jim Duggan, and then in the finals he beat Fly and Brian Pillman. At this point they could just Fly and Brian. His last name has vanished in the wind. As a note on commentary, this happened back in May, and we're in July now. So for some reason he wins the title of May and they don't bother to give him a title shot for a while, which is a little weird. When he wins the tournament, the champion is R. Anderson. However, between then and the show, R. Anderson loses the title to the Renegade.
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, again, it's like, I'm not a huge Paul Wundera fan, but a Paul Wundera versus Arne Anderson match, much better than this. They're not even seeing it. I'd be down for that. I think they could work well together. Absolutely. Yeah, you robbed me of Arne Anderson Renegade. I have more reasons to boo you. Yeah. I really wish that somehow this involved Renzel Lamas' Renegade and not the new guy. Oh, yeah.
00:41:32
Speaker
Especially with, we'll see, I hope he's talking a little bit about riding Harleys up and down the road. Right. He rides himself. Orndorff doesn't come out in the usual road because it is way, way too hot out for that. Yes. Hart leads Renegade out to a ripoff of Ultimate Warriors theme. I can't believe that Hart bothered to get a Renegade themed jacket made for himself, but the man is a completionist, I guess. Yes.
00:41:57
Speaker
Renegade does his warrior run down to the ring, and a warrior-esque turnbuckle pose, and I am sure that I heard booze over his music. Yes, you did. Renegade knocks Orndorff down, but Orndorff lands strikes and yells at Hart. The crowd cheers Orndorff. The heel. Yes. Renegade lands closed lines and knocks Orndorff outside, so Orndorff throws himself all the way to the sand. The crowd chants, Wonderful! Wonderful! This is not working.
00:42:28
Speaker
No. Renegade awkwardly drags Orndorff back in by his head and puts on a headlock, and Orndorff audibly tells Renegade to dropkick him. Yes. Renegade hits the worst dropkick this side of Eric Watts. Well, he hits the worst dropkick in this match so far. Yeah, hitting about waist-high with one leg. Yes. Dreadful. Yeah.
00:42:53
Speaker
Orndorff rolls out and grabs some sand, throws that in Renegade's eyes, and Patrick quickly looks away for no reason. Orndorff wears Renegade down with a suplex, neck hold, strikes, turnbuckle ram, and actual dropkick, as even Tony highlights. Renegade escapes the pile driver and hits more weird dropkicks.
00:43:17
Speaker
He jumps up and then kicks his foot out, so he gets one foot up. He at least gets better elevation that time. He does, yeah.
00:43:28
Speaker
It really reminds me of when they would take the divas who they barely trained, but hired and put on TV because they're really good looking and mostly blonde. And they said, yeah, throw drop kicks. And they'd spend like, I don't know, a month learning with Finley at this point. So they would do a drop. And then they got Kim, they get the one leg out, but it's a tard. I mean, not to sell it. I'm sure it's hard to learn to jump up.
00:43:52
Speaker
and then kick both legs out. You got to really trust yourself. Right. Yeah, it is for the landing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that we're not saying drop kicks are easy. No, no. But this is a skill that a lot of wrestlers learn and Renegade does not appear to have received proper tutoring in it. No, he has not. His power slams. OK, I will give him give him that. It's really slow. Yeah. But but the form is fine. Yeah. Yeah. He rotates properly, which is good.
00:44:17
Speaker
Orndorf dumps him outside, but back in, Renegade kind of slips sideways awkwardly out of a suplex attempt. Yeah. I think they were going for the float over, but he just didn't have the momentum. No, I don't think so. Yeah. And he hits a basic belly-to-back suplex for the three count and the win. Tony notes he thinks Orndorf got his right shoulder up, but Patrick didn't notice, but Renegade has declared the winner.
00:44:42
Speaker
As he celebrates with his belt, Orndorff beats him up and hits the pile driver to cheers. Renegade no sells Orndorff's finisher and cross-bodies him to the boos of the crowd. Orndorff just rolls back out and poses for the crowd, who cheer him while the camera focuses on Renegade posing with the belt, so it looks like Renegade is getting cheered.
00:45:01
Speaker
Yes, I noticed that as well, yeah. Inspired move by Orndorff there. He made use of the crowd's reaction to him to try again to get a good reaction for Renegade. That is honestly a really good audible, yeah. Yeah. Sure. You can tell he's a veteran. He like realized, okay, this is not working, but my mission is to get this guy over. So I'm going to, like, as I pull an audible here. Yeah. Both commentators get distracted by attractive ladies in the crowd. Yes. The replays show that Orndorff did appear to get his shoulder up, actually. Yes.
00:45:43
Speaker
Ambitious. Ambitious, that's why, thank you. You get too ambitious, like, let's try this move and then you just don't. There's a ladder match between RVD and Jeff Hardy. Jeff's hanging from the, like, the little buckle with holding the belt. RVD's like, ooh, I'm gonna jump off the top and kick you into a fall. And he doesn't think that, oh, I can't possibly make that distance or height. So that is ambition in your body, to a certain extent, failing you. This is you failing at basic things like drop kicks,
00:45:50
Speaker
thoughts on this one?
00:46:12
Speaker
Honestly, if you look at it, when he does the clothesline on the ring, his listing is actually off on that as well. He's too close. He runs up, he's like right next to Wurndorf and then throws the clothesline. Yeah. Where you really throw the clothesline as you're coming into him so he can lean with it. So, Wurndorf really has to pull himself over and out of the ring more than he's supposed to. When the high point is someone throwing sand, I mean, yeah.
00:46:40
Speaker
No offense to follow Orndorff. He really does try here. You can tell both audibly and just with your eyes that he's calling this match through for Renegade and trying to get him to do what he can do. That's probably why there's so many clotheslines. Yes. He's like, okay, you got that. Let's do a clothesline. We'll figure something out. Cause when he tries things, he doesn't know what to do. Like when he sort of pulls Orndorff really slowly with the top rope. That was the weirdest looking spot. Yeah. I'm going to pull you really slowly and then, uh, let go.
00:47:08
Speaker
It's like he forgot what the second part of his move was, is what that looks like. I don't think that's what it is. I think that was the move, but it makes it look like you forgot the second part of your move. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not great. The finish is not really helping Renegade. If they didn't expect the heal reaction he got, it'd be weird that they booked this finish.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah, I was I was going to ask because I haven't really seen renegade matches. Is that his finisher? No. OK, I've watched more than I wanted to involve to this over the matches, which is more than one. Does he do a warrior splash thing or what? Yes. Well, I've seen your top row of splashes to win as well. OK.
00:47:52
Speaker
the booking is just weird. If that's the case, like if he's really the face and he didn't adjust it, because yeah, he definitely gets the heel is victory. And intentionally, because I mean, I wonder if blatantly does get a shoulder up, but the logic is Nick Patrick is staring straight down at the ground, but that the ring the canvas to watch that one shoulder and has no peripheral vision, apparently. Yeah. Well, I mean, he has a referee. So yes, I have
00:48:19
Speaker
seeing people theorize, and I don't know that anyone has ever said this is the case, like that was actually there. But I have seen people theorize that this was someone calling an audible backstage and saying, this is not working, just end it. That's possible, yeah. Something I noticed when I was rewatching this show in my notes is two matches in a row where a face painted good guy with a pedal belt gets a cheap victory. That's true. That is weirdly exact booking on this show.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm in agreement with you. I think Orndorff is trying his absolute best here. He really is. He sold big for Renegade to make him look powerful. He tried to add some interest with the creative Sand Throw spot. He tried a lot of heel-ish cheating and yelling at the crowd to try to get booed. Unfortunately, the crowd is just not in the mood for an Ultimate Warrior ripoff. Yeah. And Renegade was just not ready for pay-per-view level matches. No. He just didn't really have much in the way of moves, and he didn't have the moves he could perform down all that well.
00:49:17
Speaker
I think most of his clotheslines, like you noted, looked pretty well, except for the one out of the ring. Yeah. I blame WSW much more than Renegade himself, to be clear. Of course, yeah. They saddled him with a gimmick consisting entirely of pretending to be a different performer from a different organization. He could likely improve if he didn't have to spend all of his energy trying to be somebody else, and if he was given time to train for a little while longer instead of someone saying, hey, you kind of look like Warrior, get out there. Yeah, right.
00:49:45
Speaker
This was Doom from the start. The fact that they kept this going for months rather than just sending the guy back for more training and a new gimmick is asinine and is not fair to the performer. Oh, of course, yeah. And it's a giant shame, especially as I'm aware his story has a very sad ending. Yeah. Great. As for this match, Orndorff probably made it better than it would have been, but it was still bad and should not have been on pay-per-view. No.
00:50:10
Speaker
I am curious when we go back around to Grand American Bash where the Arne match happens. Are we interested to compare the two and see can Arne get a better match out of this guy or are we seeing the best version with Orndorff? Yeah, that would be an interesting contest. I feel like there's also on, I don't remember what show, but I feel like there's a Renegade DDP match as well.
00:50:30
Speaker
Um, yes, that is something coming up later. Okay. Paige obviously is another guy that you kind of has a style that could work with a less experienced performer as we will see later in the show. So our great value ultimate warrior would be defending a title at fall brawl. He would win a rematch against Paul Orndorff at the same class of champion show. So maybe that's better.
00:50:54
Speaker
I mean, obviously he couldn't throw sand at him in that match. I mean, I guess he could have brought some with him. Yeah, yeah. Be prepared. Yeah, very pocket sand. But yeah, so leave that look forward to. Okay. More Renegade, still champion. Tony talks up the Dungeon of Doom's beginning with Kevin Sullivan and throws to a video of the entry of a new warrior in the Dungeon of Doom's roster, Kamala.
00:51:24
Speaker
Father, I have drank from the Goblet of Darkness, and now I feel your power. Father, now I know why we can crush the immortal Hulk Hogan.
00:51:48
Speaker
Father, what gift do you give me next? I can't wait.
00:52:13
Speaker
of the Sahara Desert
00:52:54
Speaker
As with most things Dungeon of Doom, this is absolutely bonkers.
00:52:59
Speaker
I love Sullivan claiming that he's drunk from the Goblet of Darkness, this low-budget fantasy TV show prop goblet with dry ice smoking from inside. Yes. And then repeatedly looking down at it like, I'm totally gonna drink, but please cut the camera so I don't actually have to do it. Yes, yeah. And then there's the master who bellows every single word of every single line. Imagine how awful that was for his vocal chords. Yeah. Unfortunately, the Kamala character himself is racially insensitive at best. Yes, yes, yes.
00:53:29
Speaker
It's worth noting WCW did not design the character. No. James Harris started portraying Kamala in 1982 in the Continental Wrestling Association, and the idea reportedly came from Harris, Jerry Lawler, and Jerry Jarrett. That makes sense. That said, WCW did bring the character into the angle and keep the highly questionable portrayals so they're not guiltless here. Correct.
00:53:52
Speaker
I was curious about the whole Mount Kilimanjaro and his Ugandan giant and all that. I was curious what the relationship spatially was, if you know the two places. If it makes any sense. Tanzania, which is where Mount Kilimanjaro is, is very far away from Uganda. Well, it just means he's a good hiker. Yeah, I can see that. I really wonder what's up with the master.
00:54:19
Speaker
guy like why he well I that could just end that but then there honestly oh yes but no I wonder like what's with this livery my working head cannon is that maybe he had really bad eyesight so he's never quite sure where where Kevin Sullivan is so he's always yelling at him yes like where are you
00:54:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's the greatest delivery in wrestling history, right? Yeah. It's so just amazingly over the top. I don't know who told him to scream every single word that he ever says, but they deserve a raise. Yeah. I think it was a joke when we were talking about the show afterwards. I feel really bad for the people that were in the studio when they're recording this.
00:55:08
Speaker
Anyone in earshot, yeah. Yes, because as we'll talk about, there's more people that will be in there and they all, similarly, are very loud. Yes. And all just shouting at each other in like a 10 foot space. Yeah, I did not envy the camera crew or the audio guys for those promos, any of them. No, no, not at all. We cut right from that to Jean, who is with Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
00:55:35
Speaker
Well, I can guarantee you one thing, ladies and gentlemen, Kamado not spending a lot of time with Jack O'Lane. Hacksaw, Tim Duggan, coming in here. I just don't care, Gene. I tell you, time and time again, time and time again, Hacksaw and Duggan comes out here and I try to play by the rules. I got Nick Bockwinkle breathing down my neck saying, Duggan,
00:55:57
Speaker
Watch the rules or you're gonna get fined. Well, fine. I've been trying to play it up on top, but things are getting out of hand. So Mean Jean, I'm making a statement. No more Mr. Nice Guy. If you guys want to move furniture, understand this. I saw Jim Duncan. I'm not shy about users two by four. So come on. And you know who his manager is, Mean Jean. The task, bastard. You know who his manager is, Mean Jean.
00:56:25
Speaker
You know who his manager is, Meiji. So understand this task, master. Hacksaw Duggan will strike to take you down. Hacksaw Duggan will strike down, come on, and I'll prevail. Hacksaw, Tim Duggan, to face Kamana. Tony, Shivani, you got your cross to bear. Let's get back to the ring.
00:56:48
Speaker
There's a bit of a thing with wrestlers on this show during the promos asking Min Jin a question and Min Jin actually answering it correctly but them ignoring him. Yeah. Duggan does it here. Vader does it later in his promo as well. Oh, that's true, yeah. Because like what time is it? And Jin says Vader time and Vader just like ignores him and claims that someone needs to tell him what time it is even though he got it right. Correct, yeah.
00:57:14
Speaker
I kind of liked this promo overall, actually. Duggan leans into the fact that while he's a babyface, he tends to have some trouble actually following the rules in matches. Something we've noted several times on our show. It doesn't so much feel like he's complaining about Bakwinkle getting on him for rules violations so much as he's complaining that he gets called out when his opponents get away with it. So there's a little bit of complexity there, which is nice.
00:57:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a nice little detail even though if his promo is all shouting and tough guy and repeating himself, yeah. Yeah, I like to see him actually acknowledge that element of his character rather than ignore the fact that he frequently has, shall we say, rules amnesia.
00:57:53
Speaker
Yeah, well the company does as well. So when he does his tape fist thing, he'll tape up behind the ref back, punch a guy, and he'll win the match, but then he'll still have the fist all taped up hanging there. Yes. Even like the end of the roll is still hanging off. The ref will literally raise his hand by that fist and take nothing off it, yes. But remember, it is if the referee didn't see it, it didn't happen, unless it did like last year. Yes, correct.
00:58:22
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I liked that he added that little touch of complexity to this. I appreciate when wrestlers actually acknowledge that kind of thing. And he did a pretty fair job here. Yeah. I mean, it's still a hacksaw Jim Duggan from with your mileage may vary on how much you enjoy it. Yeah. I agree. Our third match is Kamala with the Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan versus hacksaw Jim Duggan. Referee for this one is Nick Patrick.
00:58:51
Speaker
So, back at Sambury, as we covered already, Sullivan left the arena when he started hearing a strange voice calling him after he won his match. As I recall, his boring, terrible match, if I remember correctly. So we see a video package where he's just running through the woods somewhere.
00:59:07
Speaker
It's a very funny package because he's like running and like the voice is calling and I was like, I'm coming. And he's shouting and he's just running. He's still wearing his little rustling speedo. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like a dude running randomly through the woods in his underpants and wrestling boots. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So he'd finally find his way via teleportation. I'll be at very low budget teleportation. Just kind of fades out and fades in somewhere else. Still higher budget than the teleportation in Max Magician. Yes. That's a deep cut reference for anybody.
00:59:36
Speaker
Feel free to track the movie down, explain what that joke means. Don't track that movie down. Oh no, you should. But yeah, so he meets, as we saw in the promo, meets the master, who tells him repeatedly that their victory over Hulkamania is written in stone, or he'll sometimes say carved in stone. Etched in stone. Yeah, he said it a couple of ways, but yeah, etched in stone is the more common one. And his loud bellowing, constantly shouty voice.
01:00:02
Speaker
Again, he appears in his ring gear from Slampery, his little wrestling speedo and boots, runs in the little cave area, like behind where the master's big chair he never leaves is, and comes out through a cloud of dry smoke wearing his red flash track suit. Yes. So that is part of the transformation. It's like the weirdest outfit, right, for this angle, that you're like, the entire idea is like mystic cult leader kind of... Former druid. Former druid, yes, former druid.
01:00:32
Speaker
This is not what they would be wearing at Stonehenge. No, no. Like the master outfit, okay, it's kind of the weird creepy black robe. But yeah, Sullivan, why they thought red and yellow tracksuit, even red and yellow robe would have been okay. But the tracksuit. It's very odd. It's very strange. I still never stood his face paint either. It's like the two weird ducks drawn on his face.
01:00:59
Speaker
I think it was ducks, or I think I've said before it's like Nessie, like Loch Ness Monster. He has two of those in his forehead, which is also far as transformation, by the way. And as we saw in the promo, he would later be gifted the warrior Kamala after quote unquote drinking, as you noted, from the Goblet of Darkness, which he immediately draws once Kamala shows up. Yes. Well, he's already received the gift. Yes.
01:01:21
Speaker
I didn't see any interaction between them, like Kamala and Duggan. So I think it's just... Duggan's a Hogan buddy. Yeah. And he's a right level face to be fighting Kamala. So far there's no personal interaction. Duggan doesn't like the Dungeon of Doom, the Dungeon of Doom don't like Hulkamaniacs, so... Yes. Yeah, okay. Fair enough.
01:01:42
Speaker
That is one advantage of like faction warfare angles, kind of, is you don't necessarily need to set something up for the individual performers for every match. In the feud, you can just say these guys are in opposing factions and that kind of does work. Yeah, exactly.
01:01:58
Speaker
Kamala comes out with a tribal mask on and looks around at the crowd, acting distracted by them. Speaking of distracted, Henan gets distracted by attractive ladies in the crowd again as he tries to talk about Sullivan's, quote, father in the Dungeon of Doom, the Master. Duncan comes out with a US flag and his two by four. Henan gets a great line in. Forget your two by four, you're gonna need a whole tree to beat that man, pal. You're gonna need a lumber yard. Nice. USA chant.
01:02:28
Speaker
They trade blows and Duggan uses bizarre short jumping headbutts and a clothesline to knock Kamala down. I love you as a chant. Kamala Ipoke and Taskmaster yells Hulkamaniac so Kamala will beat up the person he's already beating up. Just to reinforce it. Lots of choking and a bear hug. Joy. This is like the worst bear hug I've ever seen. It's really bad. Duggan KOs himself with a headbutt but keeps his arm up on the third try.
01:02:58
Speaker
Another USA chant. Duggan stomps Kamala's bare feet, but Kamala dodges a headbutt and Duggan hits the turnbuckle. Very weird armpit hold by Kamala. Yeah. I don't get how that one's supposed to work. And Duggan bites him to get free. Duggan hits the three-point stance clothesline, but Taskmaster grabs Patrick, and Duggan does this weird jump to grab Taskmaster over Patrick, so Zodiac sneaks in and hits Duggan with Kamala's mask for the three-count and the win.
01:03:28
Speaker
Sullivan gets in and hugs Kamala's head, then leads him out of the ring. We get a nice shot of a sailboat, and Henan gets annoyed that the replays aren't up yet. I don't want to talk about a sailboat, he whines.
01:03:45
Speaker
So this is very much a throwback match, and for me, all the worst ways. Putting a report of you might enjoy this kind of thing, but yeah, it's real basic stuff. Cause I mean, let's be honest, Duggan's not gonna body slam Kamala.
01:04:00
Speaker
They didn't make a story of them trying to do it, but that's not gonna thing that's gonna happen. You're not gonna have suplexes and all these sorts of more advanced moves with these guys. They're gonna do real basic stuff. They'll do decent little things, like when Duggan can't quite knock Kamala down, he's replacing the crowd before the final knockdown. Yeah, yeah. They have good crowd interaction, definitely. Yeah, yeah. It's a real, real 80s match. There's weird bits like, okay, so...
01:04:29
Speaker
Kamala has, for like a half a second, has Duggan off the ground for the bear hug. The Emilia just is on his feet and standing there just looking more annoyed than anything else. Yeah, Duggan like barely sells the bear hug at first. I think I joked when we were watching it, oh, Duggan's as tired of bear hugs as I am.
01:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, he looks derisively at the camera, and then does the worst version of that hand clap thing you're supposed to be doing to knock them loose. Because he didn't even really make contact with Kamala. No. He claps his hand an inch behind his head, going more far than that. Since Kamala released him because he thinks he hears a squirrel, he's like, what's that? That's why that's him go, because he's not making a physical contact.
01:05:11
Speaker
I've never liked that spot in general, but Piper makes it look like you're actually hitting the guy. Yeah. This is so bad. The finish is really predictable. Obviously, you get a lot of this kind of thing with Dungeon of Doom in the unimportant matches, and then otherwise you'll get run-in DQ finishes a lot. Again, to your point about Dungeon of Doom being a testing out of the interview format. Uh-huh. Yep.
01:05:35
Speaker
Yes, but yeah, looking at this match, do you think Duggan is really going to job clean? Probably not, no, yeah. Yeah, there's not much to this one. It's just two big guys landing strikes and chokes on each other. The most interesting thing in the match was Duggan's very strange side hop headbutt thing. Yeah. Which it looks like he lost his balance trying to bow or something. It doesn't look like he's intentionally doing an offensive move. Yeah, I could see that.
01:06:03
Speaker
The ending spot is just awkward. It looked like Duggan was intentionally continuing to grab Patrick so his view of Zodiac would be blocked. Obviously that is what's going on, but it's not supposed to look like that's what's going on. Right, yes. It's a really weird ending for a quite poor match. To me it's also a little weird that they're so obsessed with being a Jim Duggan that after they win the match they just leave.
01:06:25
Speaker
They don't have the NWO beatdown concept with Dutchessen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The other thing. Okay. So Zardek runs in and hits him with a thing. I get why he gets out of the ring. So the rep doesn't go, Hey, what are you doing here? But he just actually leaves the whole area. He leaves ringside after that. I mean, credit for this, he's very confident. He's like, well, that worked. Time to go. From personal experience, I've actually seen this match before.
01:06:51
Speaker
So back in, I want to say 2003, maybe 2004, we heard about it as a local show, which is like 15 minutes down the road from me to this place called the Expo Center, which sadly does not host any events anymore. It's just empty shell of volume. It's kind of, no one's bought it. It's really weird. It's a nice space off the interstate road. It's weird. No one buys it. But anyways, yeah, we went because it was the advertised, it was the main event of the show was Terry Funk and Jerry Lawler. I thought that even though then it's weird, these guys are still hitting together with chairs at this point in their lives.
01:07:22
Speaker
They didn't really hold back. I was like, oh, maybe you can tone that down a little, guys. There's like 50 of us here. It's not worth it. But yeah, one of the main matches was Kamala versus Jim Duggan.
01:07:33
Speaker
To be honest, I don't run the match very well, but I'm guessing it was much better than this. Okay, I was going to ask, do you have an evaluation of which version of the match is better? I'd say it's a little different doing the crowd interaction in a very small space, like they were in there. I think you can get a more visceral response there, but at the same time it's also not as loud. Yeah, fair. To answer that, I don't remember any holes or big moments from that match, no, because I'm guessing there really weren't any.
01:08:00
Speaker
This match does bring back memories, albeit very foggy memories. So fresh off this epic, I guess, win, Kamala would actually challenge the world champion for the WWE title at Clash 31. This really is 1985 all over again. That's really the title match on that show. Okay.
01:08:25
Speaker
Tony builds up the upcoming lifeguard match between Flair and Savage, as Hienan points at an attractive lady in the crowd. We cut to Jean, who brings in Savage. Savage's shirt is actually a drawing of him from that Romeo and Juliet Slim Jims ad I mentioned before, saying, art thou bored? Oh, I do remember that. I do remember that now. Awesome shirt. That line brings it back to me, thank you.
01:08:54
Speaker
I thank you very much, Tony Savani, Bobby the Brain Heenan. What a marvelous, simply marvelous afternoon and evening here in Southern California, the hospitality second to none. For some folks, however, for others, a little shaky, I must say. Macho Man, Randy Savage, come on in. You and I, earlier on in the main event, alluded to your big lifeguard match with an ancient boy, Ric Flair, what this man has done to you, to family members,
01:09:20
Speaker
It can all come to an abrupt halt here this afternoon of this evening at Slim Jim's back. And it will! Slim Jim's bashed at the beach! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Everybody getting excited, yeah! There's a chill in the air and we're on the beach, what's up with that? Opposites to attract! The Nature Boy, Ric Flair, and the Macho Man, Randy Savage.
01:09:43
Speaker
have the chemistry to disagree. I agree to disagree with him. You know why? He's the styler and profiler, and he's been making a statement, but that statement is coming to an end here in a little while, and I guarantee you that, yeah. What role are these lifeguards gonna have? You know, Ric Flair's been known to take a hike periodically. I know you caught up with them a couple of times in Atlanta, there on West Peachtree.
01:10:05
Speaker
You know what? I don't care who they are or what they are. What time of the animal they are. It doesn't matter to me. It's all about emotion and it's all about family. And it's all about survival. You know, I'm from Florida and we're in California, but the common denominator is, is that we're on the beach. And you know, I feel real, real, real good on the beach.
01:10:44
Speaker
Typical Savage promo here, simultaneously packed with emotion, building a good story, and just plain weird. Yes. Savage has good energy and makes you feel the length of this feud and in fact started in the WWF.
01:10:58
Speaker
And mixes in a bunch of bizarre statements that make you go, huh? Yes. Not a complaint, by the way. That's just Randy Savage. Exactly, yes. It is a little hard to take the emotion seriously with Macho dressed in Slim Jim's marketing gear, though. A little bit, yeah. Besides the shirt, he also has a Slim Jim's baseball cap. He does, yes, yeah. I do enjoy classic Savage stick.
01:11:25
Speaker
This is the kind of thing, like we were talking about Renegade didn't have that presence and that energy that Warrior has. Because Savage has all of it. Yeah. So he's always, as always, he's really fun. I will say he's from Sarasota. Does Sarasota have a big beach? When I think of Sarasota, my first thought isn't beach. It's where remote marine is, right? I think so. Yeah. So anyways, that leads to like, you know, waterways and stuff. Right.
01:11:52
Speaker
In St. Pete, yes. Beach. Tampa Beach, sure. But yeah, I don't know. Not my first thought in the end. But yeah. It was all superior about your hometown. That's all it is, man. Well, for sure, yeah. And that's the theme of the show, isn't it? Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I am. I'm just getting on board.
01:12:08
Speaker
But yeah, it's funny what Savage, you watch his sort of mind working in real time, because he mentions Florida, and then he's like, I'm from Florida. We're in California. And then he's like, what's the connection? And he says the connection. Yeah. Actually, it's a beach. It's like beat poetry sometimes. Yes, yes. He's just a little scatting along in the promo.
01:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, I dig at your point that it's funny. He's in the crazy Slim Jim stuff, and he's talking about how serious he wants to beat up Big Flair. His weird wordplay about opposite attracting, we agree, disagree, and... Which, by the way, saying I agree to disagree, it means we disagree with each other, but there's going to be peace between us. Yeah, that's definitely... It's not how Savage is using it, yeah. Correct, yes. Yeah, it's said Savage. I love Savage, so no complaints.
Diamond Dallas Page vs Dave Sullivan: Comedy and Conflict
01:12:57
Speaker
All right, our fourth match is Diamond Dallas Page with Max Mussel and the Diamond Doll versus Dave Evad Sullivan, supposedly with Ralph the Rabbit, though I didn't see one. No. The referee for this match is Nick Patrick. So first off, it's worth noting that every match so far in this has a promo by one of the competitors before it. Yes. Except this one. Except this one, yeah. Why is Cish and Nike of Dave Sullivan promo time? And I guess they just don't care enough about DUP to give him promo time.
01:13:27
Speaker
This part of a longer story, DDP would come in, once he become established star, he would have this rich benefactor, but then he'd lose all his money. This angle where he's like, we're in the same gear all the time and just dirty. It's kind of weird, weird thing to do with him. Then he comes rich again from various confusing methods. They see some of the long lines of Kimberly or him winning like 13 million in bingo, which is a lot for bingo. I think I'm not, not being an expert, but yeah.
01:13:57
Speaker
This whole thing was that if he was rich again, he would go to his head. He would, not physically, but he definitely would mentally abuse Kimberly. He'd berate her. That would lead to Dave Sullivan coming in and being nice to her. Clearly, she's not really into him in that regard, but he's being nice and, you know, D.P. is being a jerk. So I was like, oh, hang around him. But obviously, D.P. does not like that. D.P. would challenge Dave Sullivan to an arm wrestling match.
01:14:24
Speaker
And if he won, Dave Sullivan got to go on a date with her. Hijinx wouldn't sue when he would actually win the match, that being Dave Sullivan. So now he can get his date. The said date would happen on WSB Saturday night. They got to love a dinner and they would really bad stick where he doesn't know what French words are or which fork is which. It's really, really bad. Oh, gal. While they're getting ready with time to order, a man in a full rabbit costume to show up, they'll bring a rabbit gram. Okay. That rabbit.
01:14:53
Speaker
That man in the rabbit suit, disco inferno. Are you kidding me? I am not kidding you. Nice. A guy walks in. First thing I see besides the rubber costume is his nose. And I hear his voice. I'm like, yeah, that's disco. Oh my gosh. He had been hired earlier in 1995. He's not disco inferno yet. He's probably just Glenn. Go birdie, is it? Go birdie, yeah. He got the lucky gig of coming in and doing a rabbit gram.
01:15:20
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that's funny. As far as first appearances go, that's pretty good. Yeah, you know. Yeah. They would scare Dave Sullivan. He left his rabbit in the car, apparently. It's just sure. Why not? He went outside thinking that he was in there. I was in danger and Max, most one DP beat him up. So that would lead to this match because he's all upset. And Kimberly is also upset, but, you know, not really went about it.
01:15:46
Speaker
DDP's music actually starts up while Gene is trying to wrap up his segment with Macho, drowning him out, as WSW abruptly cuts to a too close shot of Page. Comedy of air is there. Page's music, by the way, currently sounds like Alice Cooper's School's Out, rather than Page's later Nirvana ripoff. Yeah, I was thinking it sounded like something, that's what it is. Yeah, that's it. What's doing your art for you?
01:16:15
Speaker
Paige has a rather nice, shiny coat today. He does. A kid gets to the ring and offers the diamond doll some flowers, apparently from someone else in the crowd, but Paige jealously snatches them out of the doll's hands and repeatedly smacks her with the flowers as she shields herself with her large beach hat. Dave Sullivan makes his entrance and runs to the rescue. Sullivan knocks Paige through the ropes, then rams the flowers into his face. I hope Paige doesn't have allergies like I do. I can't imagine he'd book that if he did. Yeah.
01:16:43
Speaker
Sullivan lands strikes and chokes Paige and yells, shut up, Max, at a complaining Max muscle. Going by his gimmick, shouldn't it be, shut up, Sam? Uh, yeah. Sure.
01:16:56
Speaker
Sullivan hits a suplex and goes for his inverted bear hug, but gets smitten with the doll, so Paige stomps his hands, beats him up, and yells at the doll that she is making him hurt Sullivan and is not Paige's fault. Muscle rates a Paige clothesline a nine, but Sullivan catches Paige with a bear hug. Paige escapes that, but Sullivan ducks a crossbody, and Paige crosses himself on the top rope. Hienan notes that could be worse. It could have been Hienan.
01:17:22
Speaker
Sullivan ducks Paige's spinning lariat, proving himself the smartest man in wrestling history. Sullivan stops Paige's hand, then builds to the inverted bear hug, apologising to the doll. Muscle gets to the apron, so Sullivan lets go and slugs Muscle, but Paige clotheslines him and hits the diamond cutter for the three count and the win.
01:17:42
Speaker
Paige celebrates, but spots Kimberly checking on Dave, so goes over to drag her away and berates her. The replay shows that Paige accidentally slugged Muscle in the face when he closed-lined Dave at the end there. Oh yeah, he did. Full in the face. Oof. Ow. As we cut, Hienan asks my question. Where's the rabbit? Yeah.
01:18:06
Speaker
Thoughts on this one? Thankfully, this is a short match. It is pretty basic. So I was a little surprised. I don't know if you looked this up. Do you know how long Dave Sullivan was wrestling at this point? I do not, no. He's been wrestling for six years. Wow, okay. You would not have guessed that from this match, would you? Honestly, I have fairly decent feelings about this match. So that doesn't surprise me with regard to this match. In regard to certain other Dave Sullivan matches I've seen, then yeah.
01:18:35
Speaker
Yeah, as we've noticed, he's not the worst worker on the show. I just survived from that much experience. I mean, his finish is basically if you try to do a powerbomb but can't lift the guy up properly. Fair enough. That's what it is. Given his size, I'm glad, well, besides it both been really, I'm glad that he only stays on page for like a second or two. Yeah. I could go horribly wrong.
01:18:58
Speaker
Creditorcreditors do DDP. At this point, obviously, he's not the great worker he would be later. He's still getting the experience in there. He's still working on his look. He still has the not so great diamond on his crotch and on his ass. Yes. On both sides. Hasn't figured out that the blue jeans look better for him yet. Yeah. His sort of superhero outfit is not my favorite look.
01:19:21
Speaker
He does his good spots. He knows what his character is. Obviously he gets much better with time and with better opponents, thankfully. And at least the right man won. And the diamond cutter looked pretty good as well. Yeah. I've seen people not know how to take the diamond cutter and it go rather poorly, but Sullivan does a fair sell of it. So that was that was good. Yeah.
01:19:43
Speaker
For me, this was fine, and I give 80% of the credit for that to Diamond Dallas Page, who I'm pretty sure would have put this match together and rehearsed it with Dave until they had every moment solid. Yes. But, credit to Dave Sullivan as well. He was solid here, save for some odd mannerisms from time to time. His suplexes, I thought, were really nice in particular, actually. Yeah. He's not terrible.
01:20:06
Speaker
The match was short and brisk and had a good general flow with a couple minor twists and callbacks like Paige stomping Dave's hands early on and Dave getting revenge later. Even in this short of a match, Paige got in some genuine plot to it. Sure. This was still an average match, but a surprisingly average match, if that makes any sense. Yeah, no, I agree. Considering that you and I both spent the past two shows dreading a Dave Sullivan match, this was an astonishing achievement.
01:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you for the most part. I think it also might just be a positioning thing. Like if this show didn't have a Renegade match on it, it wouldn't get with that buffer. But yeah, it's definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. I feel like I would still think that this one is fine. Yeah, I'm not saying it's terrible without that, but I think that definitely helps.
Triangle Tag Team Match: Chaos and Confusion
01:20:56
Speaker
As mentioned before, there would be a new challenger for the TV title against the Renegade, and that would be DDP. Okay. Which will happen at Fall Brawl. I don't know about you, but I am rooting for the heel. Yeah, a little bit, unfortunately. Yeah, that'll be interesting when we get to Fall Brawl to do the, like we said earlier, do the comparison. Does DDP get a better match out of Renegade than Orndorf did? Yeah. His style could work. I mean, his binder approach works, people. Yeah. Give him his six things to do and then lose.
01:21:28
Speaker
We cut to Mean Jean, who is with Tag Champs, Harlem Heat, and Sister Sherry, all dressed in cool purple outfits with the flame highlights. Very good look for the group, I thought. I agreed. All right, they're getting a little crowded here at Bash at the Beach, but it's going to be a little crowded. Sister Sherry in the ring for this unusual triangle match for your champions.
01:21:50
Speaker
It's gonna be a little unusual, but not for the tag team champions, because we are the number one cohesive unit in world championship wrestling. We are two-time world champions. Lord Steven Riegel, Earl of Eden, nasty girls. It doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter what you do out there, because we are the ones that are gonna come out on top.
01:22:17
Speaker
Get off, I gotta tell you something Booker, this man is stuffin' You should just shut up Gene Oakland I just got a couple of things to say and I'm gonna make it fast and quick Nasty Boyz, Blue Bloodz If you want some, you can get some But you better be pickin' up bad enough to take some Because tonight, it's gonna be old Like a steaming pot of neck bones, cookin' for about three days, man You were stuffin' on my foot Stevie, right? You know me, Gene, your foot got in the way Just like the Nasty Boyz I've gotten in the way Just like the Blue Bloodz I've gotten in the way
01:22:45
Speaker
I've told you once, I told you a thousand times, today we will whoop two suckers, two tag teams at the same time, and it ain't gonna be nothing to it. All right, I thank you very much. And, Sister Sherry, I'm certain you're gonna knock this crowd out when you appear out on the ring. Booker T, Stevie Ray, WCW Tag Team Champions. Ladies and gentlemen, this special triangle match. They cut poor Gene off again. Yeah. Work on your timing, WCW.
01:23:14
Speaker
Craig is not a fan of meeting, I guess. Sherry, Booker, and Stevie all did a good job building themselves up as the superior tag team who's ready to face two challenging tag teams at once. Booker's line about neckbones is an interesting and complicated analogy though.
01:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, he likes that expression. He uses it a lot. He starts using it more as like, it's going to be on like neck bone. Yes, yeah, yeah. He doesn't add the steaming for about three days, which is like, OK, a little perplexing. A bit, yeah. Is it stronger or weaker if the neck bone is steaming for more time? I'm not. I mean, it's like a crock pot thing. The more you do it, the softer it gets. Yeah. Gotcha. OK. That's the idea.
01:23:53
Speaker
Nice quick thinking from Stevie at the end as he realizes that he can't just say they're going to whip two suckas, as presumably that'd just be two people, and there's four opponents. So he quickly amends to two tag teams. Yeah, that's true. And I really liked, I don't know if they'd actually plan this out beforehand or if he just ad-libs this, but I liked him playing off Gene, mentioning him stepping on his foot.
01:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if that script that felt like a natural sort of call response thing. Yeah. Yeah. They really worked well. Like he did a good job just segwaying from that to what he was going to talk about. Just excellent work with air. It is just thinking about this show is a dangerous one for poor me and Gene's feet because Sting drops his belt near his feet at one point. Yes. And then Hacksaw drops his two by four by Gene's feet. And now he's already stepped back on his feet.
01:24:39
Speaker
And Vader will come in and swing a chair down dangerously close to him as well. Yes, he will. Vader on, so. Yeah, Mean Chain is up for kind of a lot of abuse in the show. I hope he gets a hazard pay bonus for work in the show, yeah.
01:24:53
Speaker
Our fifth match is the Blue Bloods, Lord Stephen Regal and Earl Robert Eaton, versus the Nasty Boys, Brian Knobs and Jerry Saggs, versus Harlem Heat, Booker T and Stevie Ray with Sister Sherry, in a tag team triangle match for the Heat's WCW World Tag Team Championship. Referee for this one is Nick Patrick. Triangle match appears to mean a different thing just about every single time we hear it used. Yes.
01:25:21
Speaker
Unfortunately, this year it means one of my most hated rule sets ever. A tag match to first pinfall or submission, but with three tag teams where only two guys are in the ring at a time, but anybody can tag anybody. I hate that rule set. The strategy makes no sense. Why would you tag out to anyone but your own partner ever? Yeah. Elimination. Elimination. Totally fine. At elimination, you're cool. Yeah. Like he'll defuse the tag again until they're forced into it.
01:25:50
Speaker
Right, then you're not screwing up your chances of victory by tagging out to a different team entirely. But with this version, there's no guarantee your team's ever gonna get tagged back in. Right. Yeah, the elimination version's a lot better, or the Slambry 99 version that we saw, where it's all three teams have a man in at all times, and you can only tag your own partner. They call that a triangle match, but it's obviously very different from this one. That makes sense as well. Yeah, that one is a triple threat match that happens to involve tag teams. Yeah, but this one, I just hate this rule set.
01:26:20
Speaker
They literally just transposed the triangle match from, was it Starrcade 95? Starrcade 95, yeah, that one I was thinking about too. That's the one, yeah. That one, I remember saying this does feel weird, but I was still able to get past it with that one because at least the wrestlers in that made use of the fact that they didn't want to tag out. Yes, no, agreed, yeah. The rules still don't make sense, but they performed it well.
01:26:44
Speaker
This is literally them taking the triangle match, but making a tag team which adds all another layer is not necessary. Yeah, because in that one at least, it still doesn't make sense why you tag out to someone else, but at least if you're going to tag out because you're getting beaten up, your only choice is an opponent. Correct. In this match, if you're going to tag out because you're getting beaten up, you have a perfectly good choice in your own partner. So why would you ever go to someone else?
01:27:13
Speaker
Correct, yes. Yeah. Anyway, I will cease ranting about that for the moment. I will have more after the match, but storyline.
01:27:20
Speaker
So the Nasty Boys would be tag champions early on leading into this. However, they would be a rematch on WCW worldwide in which Harlem Heat would win the titles back thanks to interference by the Blue Bloods. Okay. I've noted the Blue Bloods challenge Nasty Boys unsuccessfully for the tag titles at pay-per-view, thus them winning the revenge and just sort of by proxy helping the Harlem Heat. They don't really want them to win, but they also want to screw over Nasty Boys. Right. That's a real 3D chess from the beginning. The Blue Bloods there.
01:27:51
Speaker
To be fair to this match, the story going into it is that you have three teams all going for the title at the same time. Yeah. That said, they booked this kind of match and not, say, some sort of gauntlet situation, maybe. Or the version that Slambry 99, like we said. Like that would be fine. Or the elimination one, yeah. Right. Or you could have, because you have a Hill Faith dynamic, you could have just booked the Blue Hood versus the Nasty Boys for them on kendership.
01:28:19
Speaker
Fair. And then down like via triangle match, weirdly enough, where the winner goes right after the title following that. Yeah, you could do that, yeah. So I get the idea why all three teams are involved in this match, but the choice they made, not the best one. Yeah. As the blue bloods enter, ring announcer Penzer does at least clarify that if a team is disqualified, they're out, but the others continue to fight. Sometimes they don't specify that, so it's good to hear it clarified this time.
01:28:48
Speaker
The nasty boys make their entrance next, and the heat are last to enter, as Tony nearly pulls a dusty, noting the sea of humanity on the beach. I did notice that, yes. Nick Patrick conducts a somewhat overcomplicated coin toss to decide the two starting teams. So here's how this works by my understanding. Each team flips its own coin, with whichever two come up matching, starting. If all three match, they have to flip again.
01:29:15
Speaker
And indeed, on the first throw, all three come up heads. Also, on the first throw, the Nasties didn't even manage to catch their coin, so Patrick had to find another mat. Yeah. On the second toss, it all goes a little bit better, as Knobs catches his coin properly, and we only get two that match, the Nasty Boys and Harlem Heat. There had to be an easier way to do that. Yes. Honestly, I gotta get started when I'm watching this. If you had just told me that you did coin toss in the back, I would've been fine. Exactly, yeah, they don't have to do this live. No, they don't.
01:29:47
Speaker
Hienen claims if he were the Blue Bloods, he wouldn't accept a tag from the Heat or the Nasties. Well then you wouldn't win, Hienen. You see? You see how stupid these rules are? Yes. Suddenly, everybody's in, regardless of the coin flip, and the Nasties win an opening brawl as Hienen asks who's legal. The match proper starts with Booker and Knops.
01:30:13
Speaker
Knobs overpowers Booker until Regal tags himself in off of Knobs, which I'll admit is a nice use of the rules. Booker, Stevie, and Sherry beat up the Blue Bloods as the camera misses a Regal Eaton tag. Tony gets so confused he calls Booker Stevie. Sag sneaks in a tag on Eaton before Stevie hits an awkward slam on Eaton. Looks like they were going for a tilt at world but didn't quite have the right momentum. Yeah, I thought that too.
01:30:38
Speaker
Sags and Knobs beat Stevie down, then trade out to Regal for unknowable reasons. Stevie tags Booker, Regal tags Eaton, and Eaton tags Stevie, but Patrick rules that making Stevie fight Booker is stupid, so that's illegal, making this a slight improvement over other WSW and WWF versions of these rules. Eaton shoves Booker to the nasties corner and tags Knobs, which Tony notes is to Eaton's disadvantage. When the commentary team is pointing out the flaws in the match concept, you have a dumb match concept.
01:31:07
Speaker
Yes. Weird spot as Booker gets a boot up on a charge, but then spins wildly over the ropes and falls to the floor. What was that? Yeah, I don't quite get it. It kind of looks like he's going for like a head surgeon's type move almost, but like in reaction to his foot getting hit, which is weird.
01:31:28
Speaker
The Nasties and the Blue Bloods inexplicably trade off, beating Booker up, and earn two off a Knob's Splash and one off a Sag's Knob's Shoulder Block, even though Regal had tagged in and Sag's was no longer legal. There are no rules for rules, claims a completely baffled Henan. Whatever rules there is in this match, there are none. This is the Fight Club of Matches. That's almost a Dustyism, Henan. Yes, it is.
01:31:53
Speaker
The crowd has a really interesting hierarchy in this, the chant for the nasties over the heat, but the chant for the heat over the bluebloods. Yeah, it's true, isn't it? Yeah. Eventually, Booker fights free and tags Stevie, as both commentators are confused if a tag happened again. Hienan openly states the match makes no sense. Yes.
01:32:15
Speaker
After several more nonsensical tags, Stevie ends up fighting knobs in the heat corner. Booker gets two with a Harlem sidekick, which a distracted Tony calls a high knee. Hienan repeatedly claims that you can only win the title if you beat the champs, and Tony doesn't correct him as he's too busy trying to make sense of the action. He finally does correct Hienan as Regal has a hold on knobs, and Hienan, rather brilliantly, admits that he forgot the rules and in the same breath claims he'd always said the blue blood should pin the nasties.
01:32:45
Speaker
Sag saves Knobs, so Regal tags Stevie because why try to win? Yeah. Everybody trades in and out, and we end up with Regal and Sag's legal. Everybody in, but Knobs flings Eaton into Stevie to knock both to the floor. Knob's back body drops Regal, Sag's back body drops Booker onto Regal, Knob splashes both, and Sag sits on Booker, who is a top regal, for the three count.
01:33:10
Speaker
But wait, because Booker was underneath Sags' buttocks and on top of Regal, it turns out that Booker is the winner, despite not being the legal man and that therefore being completely impossible. Boy, this is nuts, Tony notes. Yeah. Oh. I know we normally have you start first on thoughts. Do you mind if I start first on this one? Feel free. I have a feeling like you may have at least a slight positive comment. I'll do my best. Yeah, I'll do my best.
01:33:39
Speaker
Despite the action being fine, I absolutely hated this, because the match plot is flat out stupid.
01:33:46
Speaker
The commentary team repeatedly pokes holes in the entire concept because they can't help but do that. There is no way to discuss the match strategy without revealing the match concept makes zero sense and requires teams to act in ways that are completely counter to their interests. We mentioned the Player Luger and Sting match from Starrcade 1995 earlier, and as I noted, I felt like that one at least used the psychology of not really wanting to tag.
01:34:12
Speaker
even though it was still weird, but at least they got the idea that, oh, I don't actually want to tag out. Right. The idea can work in that because especially with Flair, you know, you could just run in and hit him and break up the thing until you can recover yourself a bit and then tag him when you think Sting is vulnerable or think Luger is vulnerable. With less people and a simpler story, it works a little better.
01:34:34
Speaker
And Flair actually manages to win that one while he's tagged out because he gets them both outside and they get counted out. So like he uses the match concept again. Like the entire plotting of that one is better, even though the match concept is still kind of dumb. Yeah. I definitely would not, we're not a fan of that match when it happened, but that comparison is great. Yeah. Yeah. And this one teams repeatedly willingly tag out to another team when they have their opponent weakened, which is the worst possible time to do that. Yeah.
01:35:02
Speaker
To make matters worse, the ending is awful. Yes. Sags clearly knows that Booker is there when he sits down. So why would he sit on Booker atop Regal if that would give Booker the win? And why would that give Booker the win? Sags and Regal are the legal men. Right. Also, take a shot every time Tony or Hienan asks if there was a tag or gets mixed up about the rules, you'll be drunk like a third of the way through this match. Yeah.
01:35:31
Speaker
I would declare this one of my three worst matches of the series already, but I know there's really bad stuff on 1999 and 2000, so I'll hold off. Yeah. Okay, I'll try and bring us back from the brink here. Okay, gotcha. So there's two parts of this match, really. So there's the main part of the match, and then the finish. So breaking that down.
01:35:50
Speaker
The main part of the match, other than the nonsensical tagging out thing, as mentioned, really makes the Nasty Boys look strong because they definitely fight well against both teams. They get in their stick where they both, you know, wear their armpits and all the heels faces. There's that weird bit where Booker T takes the clothesline, but it's actually off his armpit. Ian does a little spin off of that, which is strange.
01:36:12
Speaker
Up until the other part, the Nasty Boys look like they're the dominant team that's gonna win. Harmony can take control with cheating and Blue Bloods is kind of are also there and occasionally do a cool spot. Companies even make a point of the thing that Blue Bloods don't really show great technical cohesion until like the final part of the match before the finish happens. Yeah, I think Keenan, I think it is that also says, I don't think the Blue Bloods understand this match. Right, yes, exactly. I had noted the rules are too silly for the commentators to keep up with, which is definitely a problem.
01:36:41
Speaker
It always takes me back to early T&A when they come up with these really convoluted matches like the Hannah Mountain match. Yeah. When they go, it's really simple folks. And then a graphic appeared with like 300 words on it bracketed into like 10 sections. Like, oh, it's so simple. Yes. So, so simple. Now second part makes the Nasty Boys look like the dumbest team on earth. Yes. Admittedly, my opinion of them was about there anyways, but it really just sort of drives it in for me, drives it home. Yeah.
01:37:11
Speaker
In theory, this finish is clever. Ian theory. And I can see thinking about how to do a finish with this kind of match. I could see why they would go this general direction. The idea that Tarlem, he just in a, in the right position to win. How this could have worked slightly better is if you do everything the same way. Honestly, as I understand the point that Booker is not legal man, but that's lost in so many tag team matches.
01:37:38
Speaker
I accept that as part of the rules. I have to do it all the time. So have the thing happen where Regal's down and then Booker T's dropped onto him. Then the Nash boys sort of sure shove him away because they're going to do one more splash onto Regal. However, there's a slight delay because they switched out to make sure the right person's pinning, so they're trying to follow the rules as best they can.
01:38:01
Speaker
However, before they go for the pin, Booker puts his arm over, say, Riegel's legs. So he crawls over out of their sight. Yeah, if they don't know he is there, yeah. Yes. His arm is there a split second or two before they go for the pin. So quickly, if the ref starts counting again, they go, oh, he's counting our pin. And then they don't realize that the pin was first. Yes.
01:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, like you said, that still runs into the problem of which guy is the legal man. But, I mean, as you noted, that gets lost in a ton of tag matches anyway, so people would be prepared to accept that. Yeah, I do think you could have resolved that slightly as well by if you manage to have Booker make a sneaky tag in. Sure, then that's done a lot in these kind of multi main matches as well.
01:38:45
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So I think there were ways to resolve the ending a little bit more than they did. I agree. Like your method definitely resolves the wait, why would the nasties do this if they know that that would be Booker on top of the guy? It doesn't make sense that that should result in Booker's victory. And yet the nasty boys still do it. Right. Like it's a weird. It's such a weird ruling.
01:39:11
Speaker
The other thing that's worth noting is, as dumb as this finish is, the execution is kind of funny because of the spacing. They do a decent, really good back body drop, getting him to go right in the center there. And then they're like, okay, good Riegel's here, I'm going to backdrop you. And he starts to whip him and he goes, oh wait, we're way too close. Because we're near the middle of the ring where he's laying there.
01:39:32
Speaker
So they have to do a little dozy doe thing where he has to throw back in the corner and then have him running out of it to get back on it. Yeah.
01:39:41
Speaker
It really reminds me of when you played the wrestling games. Because in those games, I don't know if 2K23 has this the same way anymore, but it was really loose with how you could counter. It was just hitting a button at the right time, not you had to pick different buttons like some games did. So you try to throw someone off by instead of hitting X to, say, clothesline them, and they know, oh, a clothesline can actually hit the counter button.
01:40:06
Speaker
people like me would have fun sort of changing direction on the throw just to throw the timing off. I know you enjoyed that quite a bit. Does that remind me of that? Now I'm going to buy something. Right. Yes. That's the one joy I got that match besides laughing at how stupid it was. All right. Well, yeah, you had a little bit more positivity there, even if it was still laughing at the match.
01:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, as noted, the actual action in the match is fine. Yes. Yeah, I don't have a problem with their overall performance. It's just the plotting on this one that is so, so bad. Absolutely. Thinking of fusion, I have a little confusion here, so try to stick with me. Technically, when this match happened, Harlem Heat were not tag champions. Okay. You see, back on June 21st,
01:40:58
Speaker
a match was taped for WCW Saturday night in which the Harlem Heat lost the tag titles to Dainty Dick Slater and Bunkhouse Buck. Dainty Dick Slater? Yes, I don't want to say their name. Oh, okay. He's Dainty Dick Slater now.
01:41:13
Speaker
So anyway, that match was taped on June 21st. So on this show, which is July 16th, they really shouldn't be champions. However, due to their pre-taping, that match didn't air until July 22nd, six days after this match. Gall, pre-tapes again. Yep. At least we don't have the negative title ring we had back with the... Pre-birds, wasn't it? Yes, thank you, the pre-birds. Where they had like a negative eight day title ring, which is weird.
01:41:42
Speaker
So it would lead to a six person tag match at Costa champions between Dick Slater and Broncos Buck and their manager versus Harlem Heat and Sherry. They would begin the angle where Sherry and Carl Parker were falling in love with each other. Gotcha. As part of that, Harlem Heat would win the match, thus getting the number one contendership for Fall Brawl. Okay. So thus the time torn belts would be defended at that show. One less bit of confusion for the, uh, for the cake there. Oh God.
01:42:16
Speaker
Tony and Hienan still try to figure out the match, and we cut to Jean, who is with Harlem Heat once again.
01:42:22
Speaker
I think they feel very fortunate at this juncture. Yes, fortunate, fortunate. With fortunate, we have just shown you the most cohesive tag team in WCW what greatness really means, meaning that we are still the WCW tag team champions. Can I be, I'm only the messenger, but I think the bearer of- Hey man, let me tell you something.
01:42:51
Speaker
The whole world just saw exactly what me, my brother, and my sister told you we was gonna do. We took two fat pucks and took two so-called foreigners and whooped them just like the dogs. They really are, and we beat them at the same time, baby. And guess what? We still the best and ain't nothing you suckers out here on the beach can do about it. Gentlemen, could I bring something up for the record?
01:43:16
Speaker
You know that earlier tonight in the main event, Bunkhouse Buck and his partner Dirty Dick Slater came up with a very big victory, and as a result, they're gonna have an opportunity to challenge you for these tag teams. Well, let me tell you something, Gene Oakland. Me, my brother, and my sister at the whole world know we are not closet champions. We will put the belt on the line against anybody. That means all these stinking fans out here. That means the Blue Bloods.
01:43:44
Speaker
That means the nasty boy, then that certainly means Colonel Parker in his stud staple, if you know what I'm saying. Well, I would certainly underestimate the capabilities of Bunkhouse Buck and Dick Slater. They fared very, very well as of late. No, we do not underestimate anyone! Bunkhouse Buck!
01:44:01
Speaker
Six later, Colonel Parker, being that you scored that nice little victory tonight. You as the number one champions as of now, we'll get your title shot. As we said, we are not closet champions. We don't run from anybody, we go face to face. Thank you very much Booker T, Stevie Ray, Sister Sherry. You better want some, but buddy, I'm gonna tell you, you better be bad enough to come take some.
01:44:30
Speaker
All right, I thank you very much, gentlemen. The Heat did fine with this for the most part, though Sherry does manage to accidentally call Buck and Slater number one champions rather than number one contenders. I'm guessing that's because of the timey-wimey stuff that you mentioned. Yeah, probably. She knows they actually are the champs. Yeah, she knows that she was there for that match, yeah. That's funny. I just thought it was a weird verbal slip up originally, but after you told me that story, I'm like, oh, I know why that happened now. Yeah.
01:45:00
Speaker
But yeah, the Heat present themselves well overall as fighting champs, though they make an interesting mix of bravery and healishness, and being willing to take on all comers, including apparently the fans, but also very much accepting their cheap and weird win from the last match. I'd just be glad to be done with that match too, honestly. Perfectly fine promo, I think. It's kinda weird that they interview them after the match about another match on TV a bit, but I guess you gotta build up things.
01:45:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I think they need some time for wrangling all the people they're going to need for the next phase. True, yeah. So I think that's why this happens. No, I can see that. I did like that Sherry took her promo lessons from the master there. Shouting at full volume. I guess. Yeah. Foonge versus I, and then Justice of We, which is great. Yes. They're a collective unit. It's OK. But yeah, I enjoyed that. I'm a little confused by the repeated uses of the phrase closet champions, though.
01:45:56
Speaker
I think they mean they're not hiding, basically. Yeah, it's a weird statement. Yeah, it's a very weird statement. Not quite as weird as neck bone steaming in for three days, but you know, it definitely up there. Yeah. But it's enjoyable. Yeah. After more helicopter footage, Tony builds up the final two matches, pausing to laugh at him and still trying to puzzle out the triangle match finish. You and me both, man. Yes.
01:46:22
Speaker
Hienan says he's actually wondering how sweaty Hogan's palms are being worried about Vader, and what's going through Macho Man's head as he prepares to fight Flair. He points out that Macho's father, Angelo Pafo, is in the crowd today. Tony explains the lifeguard match concept that will be used for Flair and Savage, basically it's the same as a lumberjack match, in which a bunch of wrestlers are positioned around the ring so that if either competitor ends up out of the ring, the wrestlers muscle them back inside Pronto.
01:46:50
Speaker
Honestly, Lifeguard makes more sense as a name than Lumberjack for that match concept. It's like people that are about retrieving other people from places they're not supposed to be, you know? I mean, I don't know the history of that without, you know, googling it, but my guess is that that's a very, very old expression, a Lumberjack thing. Like, maybe, like, the Midwestern thing, you know, logging area. The idea would be that these guys had an issue, they would fight it out, and, you know, the people would surround and make sure they had, like, you know, kids in a playground, keeping them from
01:47:20
Speaker
But I don't know if that's true or not, that's my best guess. And actually, WCW, they briefly had a Lumberjack wrestler. They did. That was Matt Bourne, yeah. That's Big Josh. I wonder if that was his signature match. Gentlemen. Yeah.
01:47:35
Speaker
As Tony points out, the main point of the lifeguards is to prevent a heel, in this case Rick Flair, from stalling outside or fleeing. Heenan claims Savage was escaping outside just as much in prior matches, and Tony denies it so that they literally end up in a kindergarten, did not, did to kind of exchange. They do, yes, great. Tony goes on talking up the match, and Heenan points at himself, mouthing, I'm right, not him, while shielding that from Tony with his other hand.
Savage vs Flair: Emotions and Lifeguards
01:48:00
Speaker
Amazing. That's great.
01:48:03
Speaker
Tony throws to Gene, who is with Ric Flair in a very, very, very pink robe. All right, ladies and gentlemen, 11-time WCW Heavyweight Champion of the World, a man that has cut quite a swath through this great organization as of late. And one man, especially, that you have attacked verbally, physically, and virtually every other way possible is the man you're going to be facing in a lifeguard match, the Macho Man Randy Satin. Me, Gene!
01:48:29
Speaker
What we're talking about tonight is the macho man versus the nature boy. Now let's go back in time macho Elizabeth saw the nature boy and just like the Baywatch girls, she broke down, had to have it and she moved on to a bigger brighter life with the nature boy.
01:48:56
Speaker
Did she go to Space Mountain? You know she did, baby. And last night, national television, I bring out the Space Mountain that's reminiscent of the lifestyle of the nationwide to point out to you, macho, that are right here, bash at the beach.
01:49:17
Speaker
You got three things to remember. Number one, I swept the Elizabeth off her feet in her finest hour. Number two, I jack slapped your father because he'd gotten my way. And number three, there is only one limousine riding jet flying, kiss stealing, wheeling dealing.
01:49:44
Speaker
Son of a gun that's kissed all the girls and made them cry. And that's the Nature Boy. And today, Bash at the Beach, California, I will drive them wild one more time.
01:50:01
Speaker
Nature Boy, you gotta get yourself a 900 number. Doctor, nobody tells us better than the Nature Boy, Macho. Today, Bash at the Beach, I own you. All right, keep in mind, there are gonna be 12 to 15 lifeguards around that ring. Ric Flair, I hope you are not taking a victory here in Southern California for granted. What of a kind, the Nature Boy, Ric Flair, me the Macho Man, Randy Savage.
01:50:29
Speaker
I know it's all in character stuff, but this feud is always just a tad uncomfortable. So by this point, Savage and Elizabeth's marriage had fallen apart. I just hope Savage and Elizabeth were both actually okay with that being used for wrestling storylines. Yeah, I hope so. As far as the promo itself, interesting tactic from Flair here in character. He's reminding the guy that he's about to face of all the things he's done to him to make sure he's really, really ticked off. Yeah.
01:50:56
Speaker
I guess the idea would be that Macho will be too mad to think straight and catch Flair's tricks. I think that's the idea, yeah. Yeah, me, I'd be a little more worried that he'd punch me even harder. Yeah, for sure. Gene was bizarrely happy to join in and get gossip about Flair and Elizabeth's sex life, by the way. Yeah, I think he's just happy someone actually responded to him. That's true, yeah. Like, you do hear me. Yeah, I'm not invisible. Yes. Or inaudible, I guess.
01:51:24
Speaker
Yeah, still strongly delivered, just a bit of an uncomfortable angle, I think.
01:51:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because it's a deal a lot of people have. They look back at wrestling, they think, oh, this, you know, kayfabe was a shooting, reality, all sort of thing. They think of that as a real like Vince Russo-ad motivator thing. But obviously, as we've covered, you have this part of it, and you have that. Honestly, you had a little tease of that, like in WWF, when Flair was pretending like they were having an affair. Yeah, he's trying to instigate that. And of course, you have the even more awkward one involving Benoit and
01:51:58
Speaker
Sullivan. Yes, yes. Otherwise, yeah, it's an enjoyable Flair promo. Like before, it is it is weird that Gene just like getting into it. But Gene always has this sort of friendship with Flair. He does. He or not. So that kind of makes sense. Yeah, Gene kinda like he's been around certain people for so long that he just always has a buddy buddy relationship with them, regardless of their alignment. Yeah. Which I guess you could argue is like good neutral reporting, I guess. Yeah, that's fair.
01:52:24
Speaker
As far as Florida logic, I'm thinking he's done so much in a short amount of time. Maybe he's like, there's no way I can go. Look, we're cool, man. Come on. Yeah. So I might as well, might as well just go, go full onto it. I guess. Fair enough. Maybe he's the guy wearing a full long sleeve robe on the beach. So maybe taking things out is not his best skill. Maybe there's a lot of little air vents. He's got probably it's big enough. You might have a fan in there. Oh, that's true.
01:52:53
Speaker
I will say it's interesting too, breaking up Elizabeth and she's not on the show. That's true. I didn't realize that, yeah. Yeah, I fully forgot about the Flair promo entry, but I'm like, oh yeah, wait, then where's Elizabeth? I don't know. That's interesting, yeah. Our sixth match is The Macho Man, Randy Savage, versus The Nature Boy, Rick Flair, in a lifeguard match. Referee for this one is Randy Anderson.
01:53:17
Speaker
So, there's a lot of issues in play. As sort of talked about the promo, Flair has attacked Savage's dad, Angelo Paflo, on Slamboree after he ducked to the Hall of Fame and tried to save his son. And there's the whole thing with Elizabeth, as discussed. It comes to a head when, going back to the first match, they booked that US title tournament for the Naked title. It's a very interesting tournament bracket, actually, if you look at all the people involved, including the Butcher, before he became Zodiac, the Patriot, Young Alex Wright,
01:53:47
Speaker
And Steve Austin are in this. Steve Austin loses to Rainy Savage, which as a match I didn't know ever happened, like ever. And he's also out of the company at this point. He was fired in June 1995 via FedEx while working overseas in Japan. Jeez. So he's part of the overall story, but he's also absent. So anyways, I will come to a head where they are on the same side of the bracket and it's supposed to be a match against each other.
01:54:14
Speaker
Savage comes out first and he's stewing, and Flair is apparently scared of coming out, which, I mean, I don't blame him. Yeah. So Savage runs to the back and attacks him, ends her in the backstage area, and ultimately Flair runs away to a car and drives away, which leads to a sort of awkward stopping of the segment where it's like Sting and I think Duggan's there and...
01:54:35
Speaker
Savator there same mole the road outside the back of like the arena because flare drove off and sort of walking away like Maybe go a little faster. You're kind of you are in the road guys Apparently if anyone is dressed to be easily seen in traffic, it's staying in Randy Savage. Correct. Yeah, I'm just picturing a guy like driving by like what's going on over there?
01:54:57
Speaker
Oh yes, anyways, because their match didn't happen, they were both pulled from the tournament, as opposed to just rescheduling it. Gotcha. Savage is described as like a rabid animal, and Flair is frayed, so they go, well, we got a, we got a book of version of the Lumberjack match, but we're at the beach, and if you wager hot to be wearing flannel at the beach and fake beard, so let's make him lifeguards.
01:55:18
Speaker
Okay. All the worth noting that they're relating into the Baywatch aspect, which we'll probably cover in a second. So it's not really a full bait and switch, but there's a certain level where on TV, they really build up the Baywatch lifeguards being involved in this. I kind of figured that might be the case. In comparison to what we actually get, that's what we'll cover. Okay.
01:55:39
Speaker
As Al just mentioned, before the match, a bunch of lifeguards enter. Not the wrestler lifeguards for the match, mind, but lifeguards, Tony says, are from Baywatch. Quick question, Al, you've mentioned that you might do some investigation. Were you able to determine which of these are actual cast members? Yes, I think I was able to ask Allison Pregler from the Baywatching. If you should check her out on YouTube, she's really great. She is. Amazing.
01:56:02
Speaker
I did my best to get screenshots since Peacock on every device would allow me to take the direct screenshot to my computer. According to her, the guy you see coming up front is Chris Fiore, who is a regular extra. She wasn't sure the rest of them, because again, it couldn't be great shots, and this is a declare, but she definitely didn't recognize them as being any of the star people. So they had a half dozen random blondes that would be around and seen, but then they're not the ones that have dialogue or characters or even B-blots.
01:56:30
Speaker
Fair bet that they are people that are on the show but as extra as likely. Oh yeah, they're definitely on the show because they would hire extra people for this, yeah. Hienan literally stands on his chair to get a look at them and Tony absolutely loses it. Hienan imagines mouth-to-mouth restitution. Think it meant resuscitation, Hienan. I mean, I don't think I was an accident. I think you're just big funny.
01:56:58
Speaker
The actual wrestler lifeguards for the match are all around the ring already. Before Flair's entrance, we get a shot of some of them. I spotted Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Dirty Dick Slater, Bunkhouse Buck, and Arnd Anderson among them in that shot. I'm sure Arnd is perfectly capable of staying neutral. We've got nothing to worry about. Entirely trustworthy man, just ask Dustin Rhodes. Yeah, we're at Daniel Tosh. Always trust Arnd Anderson. Yeah, exactly. That's the saying.
01:57:21
Speaker
That is exactly the same. What's funny, too, is when they're panning around the ringside area, you can see Arne, but they don't nod on the first time. It's only the second time they go, wait, is that Arne Anderson? Yeah. Yeah. Don't think it's very upset. I will say, I'm a little disappointed that they don't dress the wrestlers like the Baywatch guy lifeguards. They're just wearing the red shorts.
01:57:43
Speaker
I'm thinking that's probably a concession for the Baywatch people. There are people who mixed up with the wrestlers. I don't know. Yeah. I don't think you'd confuse it too much, frankly. Right. I'd just be, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. I'm not sure Dyrveidix Slater is ever going to be viewed as a member of the Baywatch cast. Yeah. They had special shirts for this bit. I'm wondering how many of them still have them. Oh, I hope they do.
01:58:10
Speaker
Michael Buffer is back to do the ring introductions. Flair is out first, followed by Savage, who gets some encouragement from his shirtless dad. Buffer's intro for Savage mentions him being the national spokesman for Slim Jims, like that's as important to wrestling as him being a two-time former world champion. Also, Slim Jims? And they're hurt? What are these things you're talking about? It might be as important for WSW's finances, though. Yes. Savage tosses Slim Jims out to the crowd.
01:58:37
Speaker
Meanwhile, Diamond Dallas Page chills out with fellow lifeguard Canyon. Savage beats the crap out of Flair. At one point, Flair hits the corner and it is really, really loud. I think one of the Slim Jims decorations on the ring post comes loose.
01:58:53
Speaker
Savage back body drops him on the rebound. Savage clotheslines Flare out, and the lifeguard send him back in. Flare hits an inverted atomic drop and throws Savage out, but lifeguard's dug in in the nasties get him safely back in, with the nasties taking a swing at Harlem Heat. Paige can be heard cheering for Flare. Savage flings Flare out, Flare flings Savage out, and Savage suplexes Flare out. You would think that the benefit of a lifeguard batch would be that someone would catch Flare on that stunt, but no such luck.
01:59:22
Speaker
Yeah. Um, okay. So we obviously are dealing with brain savage who like DP, you know, uses the binder method as we'll call it, I guess. So it makes me wonder either a the people in the outside are just in the wrong spot, which is highly possible. There's a lot of things going on in this match or be flare called nodibles. Oh, throw me over the ring. The outside could see that. Yeah. So they, they, uh, they're on page six and they're like, wait, there's no one follow the ring here.
01:59:50
Speaker
Tony claims it was not an intentional toss over the top and Hienan does an absolute disbelief because that makes no sense. Agreed. I believe they later amend a different show where it says you can't be disqualified if you're outside the ring. Yeah, I think they'd state it more that way, yeah. Yeah. Not that that makes it better. Savage rebound back body drop. Flare eye poke and he works around a sleeper hold, but Savage runs him into the turnbuckle to escape.
02:00:15
Speaker
Flair dumps Savage over the top rope, as Randy Eddersing quickly finds a reason to be looking at lifeguards instead. Arne tries to get close to Savage, but can't get through the crowd as Dick Slater and the Nasties get Savage back in. Flair up top, but Savage dives onto the ropes and Flair falls on top of him. Savage builds to a sleeper, but Flair counters with a shinbreaker as DDP and Canyon just hang out and have fun. Flair works the leg and slaps on the figure four, earning a two count, but Savage struggles and turns it over, so Flair breaks.
02:00:44
Speaker
Flare earns two with a stalling vertical suplex, but Savage knocks Flare out of the ring. Flare flees, but lifeguards retrieve him, calling him a, quote, little worm, as Paige and Canyon wander over to just have a better look at the action.
02:00:58
Speaker
Savage rebound back body drop and he hits a top rope double axe handle, but Arntrix knobs into distracting the ref and sneaks in. Savage decks Arne and dumps Flare to the nasties, who actually do catch him this time, but while the ref is distracted, Arntrix sneaks back in and DDT's Savage, and Flare crawls on top. For two. Savage backslide gets two. Flare goes up top, but Flare Karma strikes.
02:01:23
Speaker
Savage hits a flying double axe handle, slams Flair, and lands the top rope elbow drop for the three count and the win. The Nasties, Duggan, and Johnny B. Bad celebrate with Savage as Bunkhouse Buck is upset outside. The Nasties go to hold Flair for another big elbow, but a lifeguard I believe to be Canyon's tag team partner Mark Star rescues Flair while Canyon looks on. Savage jumps out and gets a hug from a Baywatch gal, and then I think one from his dad but the camera just about entirely misses that one.
02:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, it does, it does, yeah. Tony throws to the Slim Jim's snap of the match, which oddly is not one but multiple replays. I don't think you get how singular and plural work here, guys. No. Thoughts on this? I thought this was a really fun match. It's a great example of how when you get two really strong workers who know each other, work together so long at this point, you definitely see the experience they have working together. What I really like with this match, and I think made the thing of credit for it, is that
02:02:23
Speaker
So Savage did this thing where when his match is more of a blood feud, he books his match like a blood feud, though he changed it into much more of a fight. There's the famous thing where in WrestleMania 7 when him and Warrior have their match, two of them like to rate matches via star ratings, lock the match down because they don't begin with the lockup and like, you know, no wrestling stuff. And of course it's a blood feud. That makes perfect sense. Absolutely. Yeah.
02:02:52
Speaker
So there's that going for it. The other thing is this match really feels like they tweaked the formula a bit because they're on TV because this match, at least in part, I believe it is going to be shown on Baywatch. So I get depression. They're working much less of a scientific match and much more hard hitting sort of back and forth. Here's our big spot here. Throws hoping to entice a non-wrestling fan base to watch the product.
02:03:17
Speaker
So in many ways, this is almost the precursor to the cinematic match that people will start doing in the COVID era and even afterwards when they have- Yeah. Okay, I can see that. Also worth noting historically that the pair of Flare and Savage accidentally create the Stone Cold Stunner. That's the earlier spot where Savage dives towards the ropes and Flare falls off. Flare falls onto Savage
02:03:43
Speaker
Like chin first, yeah. Yeah, he's going to get his chin on on side with his head or shoulder. Obviously you go for the shoulder more over this with the tungsten and you're not throwing out top rope, but it's very similar to the way the landing and everything. So, you know, he's not there. I hope Steve Austin's watching going, I have an idea. By the way, yeah, I really enjoyed this. I thought they did a good pacing here. They didn't do long arm holds or leg holds. Obviously they do the figure four spot, but it's fairly succinct.
02:04:13
Speaker
And it's the figure four, so. Yeah, yeah. And they get in it, they get the moment of kind of gets the ropes or kind of turn it, then they turn it and then that's it. Yeah, it's quite good. I'm not not positive on this match, but I think I'm not quite as positive as you on it. I found it fun, but oddly repetitive.
02:04:31
Speaker
There's a few spots that come back quite a few times, like the rebound back body drop, for instance. I will say, based off of you saying, oh yeah, this match appears on Baywatch, maybe that's an explanation. They repeated a few spots to make sure that they actually got it with the camera angle they wanted, that they were plotting it, like you said, part four of the Baywatch cameras. So you want to make sure that they get certain spots in. I have to see if that rebound back body drop shows up in the show. That might answer that question then.
02:04:57
Speaker
I also felt the guys ended up out with the lifeguards maybe a tad too many times. I do get that that's kind of the point of this match, but it felt to me like it interrupted the match's flow. That said, Flare and Savage are still huge personalities and still made this very fun to watch.
02:05:14
Speaker
And some of the lifeguards also did a really good job of being either interested in the match or keeping their personalities and personal feuds alive. Like the nasties in Harlem Heat specifically fighting each other because of their prior match. And DDP making sure to cheer Flair and thereby earn some camera time for himself. Yeah. Smart man DDP. There's also a bit early on when Savage is thrown out and the heel side with Arne in them or attacking him. You can see the faces, including Duggan, coming over to try to make sure. Yes. Like, hey, you know, get him in the ring, guys. Right. Yep.
02:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, overall, this was fun. Just not as, I guess, intricate and well plotted, which some of that comes from, like you said, he makes the blood feud. So it's actually more of a brawl, but a little more repetitive than I thought it would be for Savage and Flare match. And I think the gimmicks a little bit to blame with it. It's still a good match. Let me be very clear on that. It's still a good match. I just felt like there were little bits about it that I was noticing and wasn't as satisfied by.
02:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to that point, a Flair Savage match has a very high ceiling and also a very high floor as far as content goes. Yeah. Think of it like the worst gimmick you can, unless even then they'll probably make it enjoyable. Yeah. The best thing for me in this match was repeatedly catching sight of DDP and Canyon just chilling out, having a grand time watching the match and completely ignoring lifeguard duty.
02:06:33
Speaker
Yeah. To your point earlier, when Max and Muscle and DDP accidentally hitting him, he hangs around near DDP, but yeah, it's definitely DDP and Canyon hanging out. He's there in proximity. You would think he'd be hanging out. DDP and Character would be hanging out with Max and Muscle, planning out his next bag. Max, I'm going to give you a little space. My personal headcanon, given how much DDP is known for planning things out, is that he and Canyon are actually already working out like Jersey Triad stuff. Oh, okay. Fair enough.
02:07:00
Speaker
Like, hey, man, we can find a third guy to be part of this whole thing. Here's all the matches we can do. Yeah, fair enough.
02:07:07
Speaker
Uh, what a little thing I think is kind of funny. Okay, so while we don't see them, we hear that Sting got his parents ringside seats. Yes. Meanwhile, Savage got his dad a not a great view of the map. Yeah, yeah. He's halfway down the ramp. I mean, admittedly, I'm not sure that you technically have quote unquote seats that you could actually buy tickets for on this one, like specific areas. So probably just wandered up at, you know, it was just late, so.
02:07:32
Speaker
Heaton has a great line where he's making fun of Angelo Pafo, and if you got a note of that one. I did not note that one. So when they first, okay, so when they first see him there, and they highlight him when the Baywatch ladies and the rest of the coming out. Stravano makes a note of him being there, and Heaton says, someone along the line says, oh yeah, he's been here all morning. He got his cane stuck in the sand, he's just walking circles all day. Right, yeah. It's so good.
02:07:56
Speaker
At the time, all my folks, they were laughing at it. That's why you book Heaton. He has just such great lines like that. Yes, absolutely. I understand your point in that. For me, I found it really enjoyable still. Yeah, and I still did. Oh, I know, I know, yeah. So this is where it's a blow-up to the review with both being busy on the next hip review. I'll cover the flare stuff more when involved after the main event match.
02:08:20
Speaker
And of course, Flair will be going to North Korea, or did go to North Korea three months earlier, or whatever it was, for the next show that we've already covered. It is funny you say, oh, that's the blow up for the repute, but they bring it back in 96. Oh, I know. They do the same one, yeah. This is a blow up to them having repeated matches, yes. Yes. We get more super shaky helicopter footage made even worse when they zoom in for some reason to show a guy sweeping the ring. OK. Yeah.
02:08:50
Speaker
Tony now uses capacity crowd and quickly tries to cover by claiming he meant this section of the beach was at capacity. Hienen doesn't buy it. Don't blame him. Tony throws to a video package for Vader's roadkill tour.
Hogan vs Vader: Promos and Match Dynamics
02:09:09
Speaker
Hogan! Remember me? Ah, yes!
02:09:17
Speaker
You attacked me from the back! Look at it! And back and wide my friend!
02:09:51
Speaker
What are you doing here, Zodiac slash Rey Mysterio? Yeah.
02:10:01
Speaker
Vader's roadkill tour comes to an end. The carnage, the casualties have piled up. Big fan theater.
02:10:28
Speaker
The Roadkill Tour is basically Vader absolutely destroying a ton of choppers. Yes. I love the random opera music for Vader's promo segments and how jarringly that soundtrack switches in with the rock music. Yes. I also love that it randomly switches to the theme that they'll later use for Zodiac and then Rey Mysterio as well. Well, that's a through line. Vader, Rey Mysterio, Zodiac.
02:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The soundtrack is just all over the place here. Yes, it is. Pretty good video package, though. Absolutely. We cut from that to Mean Gene, who is with Vader, who is wearing his outfit backwards. He is, yes. Vader smashes something, probably a chair, down on the ground near Gene to start us off. Vader, please, Vader. Vader, come on and put that, put that, no, no.
02:11:17
Speaker
Please, Vader. What time is it? It's Vader time. What time is it? Somebody must show this jump what time it is. The whole world knows what time it is. The WCW knows what time it is. And in a few moments, brother, Hulk Hogan, Hulkamania is going to find out what time it is. We all know Vader is.
02:11:39
Speaker
The most powerful wrestler in the world today. Bar none, he fears no man, and I feel no pain. Hogan, you say this is your stomping ground. You say there are 50,000 Hulkamaniacs out there in the sand waiting for you. But let me tell you something, brother. Vader himself grew up right here in inner city LA, brother, in the sweat, in the blood, in the tears.
02:12:06
Speaker
And when your butt was down there tanning with your brand new car, brother, I was fighting for survival. Hogan, it's over, brother. The charade is over. Oh, yeah, brother, you're going back to Hollywood where your puppy loves, because Vader's going to kick it there all the way back to Hollywood. I should point out, for the record, you have
02:12:29
Speaker
Irritated a lot of promoters around the country. What you did on this roadkill tour, you absolutely devastated everybody in every one of those cities. That shows Mr. Hogan, there is nowhere to run! Nowhere to hide, brother. I've chased you from the East Coast, and now we're at the West Coast.
02:12:46
Speaker
Brother, there's nowhere else for you to go unless it's time for you to go swimming, Hogan. Vader's roadkill tour. The carnage has built up. The bodies, the casualties have built up. Hogan, it's over. The talking's over, brother. In just a few minutes, you're going to find out what Vader time is all about, brother. Ladies and gentlemen, 452 pounds. Please, a big fan, Vader.
02:13:14
Speaker
good Vader promo here. As he does a great job of taking Hogan's hometown story that they're using tonight. Hogan is built from Venice Beach, which is just about an hour away in LA. Yeah. And turns it into his own. Vader, though billed from Colorado generally, was indeed raised in LA. It's good use of his personal story to add some legitimacy. Yeah, absolutely.
02:13:35
Speaker
That, plus Vader's aggressive, intimidating style, definitely build anticipation to the match. The legit feel of the promo actually makes Vader feel somewhat sympathetic? Yeah. Tempered, of course, by the fact that he was just beating the crap out of guys nationwide. Right. I feel like that might maybe be a signal of some things to come. Maybe. Um, yeah, it's a scary, creepy Vader promo where he almost introduced somebody, so it's typical fashion, really. Vader 101, basically. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
02:14:05
Speaker
But yeah, I feel like that's a good point. I do like that he sort of brings a personal aspect into it. Because you can easily just go, you know, I'm the big strong guy, I'm Vader, I can beat you up with my title. You could do all the hits without adding any subtext or any nuance to it. But yeah, that is a nice little touch there, where he sort of makes it makes it all personalized. Yeah, sure. It is funny, too. He's like, I'm going to send you back to Hollywood where you belong, Hogan. And I'm like, I mean, that kind of
02:14:35
Speaker
would maybe be a good thing, right? Like, it means, like, I think that you belong in a place where they make movies. Yeah. Yeah, but it is funny getting these things that sort of happen. Pure coincidence. Hollywood Hulk Hogan. Yeah. He says, yeah, Hogan go to Hollywood. And he's talking about it being attacked by Hogan. He says, you know, it's all in black and white. Uh-huh. Which is funny because it's actually when they actually show the footage is in color. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, the black and white end up your thing. Yeah.
02:15:03
Speaker
You gotta stay on Vader. You remember when you got hit in the head by Stan Hansen? I don't think he sees color anymore. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, if your eye gets partially detached and you shove it back in, that would definitely affect your vision long term. A little bit, yeah. Not that I know from personal experience. I don't, and nor do I ever want to know from personal experience. Fair enough, yes. But yeah, it's, it's, I love Vader. Obviously in case you've never listened to the show before, that's the fact. So it's nice to have a Vader promo for sure.
02:15:31
Speaker
Gene expresses concern over the upcoming match and asks Tony for his thoughts. Tony agrees that this is a crossroads for Hogan's career and Hogan's most dangerous match. Hienan asks for Chalk to make an outline of Hogan's body after the end of Hulkamania. It is funny how Tony doesn't get that he's going forward first. Yes. There's definitely some parts where they are just playing around together, like he's feeding him a line, but that felt legit. Yeah, it feels like, where are you going with this for a second? Yeah, exactly.
02:16:01
Speaker
Tony shows collision in Korea, and we get the trailer that was used to open the show on the version that we reviewed. Yes. Gene brings in Hogan with Jimmy Hart and Dennis Rodman. Jimmy Hart has a pretty tremendous American flag jacket and outfit in general, actually. He does, yeah. With Hogan's face on the back. I was thinking if you switch that out for Sting and Brad Armstrong on the back, he could be the manager for that tag team we wanted, Al. Oh, yeah.
02:16:30
Speaker
Jimmy Hart, bring him in. WCW Heavyweight Champion of the World, Hulk Hogan, check it out. And NBA superstar, Dennis Rodman. Dennis, the last time I saw you was at the airport in Detroit. That's the last time you go ever see me as an airport in Detroit, baby.
02:16:48
Speaker
I mean, Gene, you know what the deal is, big dude. Me and Rod the Bod, we were riding Harley Davidson's brother up and down Pacific Coast Highway, brother, all through the straddle of the night, brother, looking for somebody to bust up, dude. We heard Vader's big mouth, how he lived around the area, how he lived in the inner city, brother. That's a bunch of- Brother, Vader ain't nowhere around the place, man.
02:17:13
Speaker
Take it easy, big man. Right now, we got Vader set up for the kill. We got the lambs led to slaughter, brother, with hundreds of thousands of Hulkamaniacs out there, dude. We're gonna make Woodstock look like a backyard barbecue, brother. We got all the beautiful babes of Baywatch to distract Vader, man. We got the steel cage plowed in the sand, brother. I've got the killer whites out in the Pacific Ocean waiting, brother, when I press his
02:17:41
Speaker
Filthy stinky warden-fested body over my head, brother. As I launch him over the top of the cage, the shark's gonna be there to rip and tear his body limb from limb. But you know something mean, Gene?
02:17:56
Speaker
Rod the bod, Rodney man is the man that's got the nastiest attitude brother in the NBA. And after he trains, after he says his prayers, and after he eats his vitamins brother, he does whatever he wants to do. And even though we got to steal cage out there dudes, we know what happens around the WCW brother. So I strategically paced the big brother.
02:18:21
Speaker
right outside the door. And if anybody tries to come down and get in my face or interfere in that cage, ride the bod, tell them what's going to go down, brother. Vayner! Anyone can snow that cage! The head is back, big man, back! You know what I'm saying, brother?
02:18:43
Speaker
Rod the Bod will take their face, and he will give them a floridory on the side of that cage. What is that? I don't know! And with Jimmy Hart, Rod the Bod, the baddest dude around I know, and Hulk Hogan, and with the largest arms in the world, pumped in all the new veins, pumping out of my... New veins? New veins?
02:19:07
Speaker
when the power of Hulkamania destroys you. What's he gonna do, brother? What's he gonna do, big man? Let's give him back! Let's give him back! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, guys. Let's go! It can be hard, I thank you. I don't mind telling you if anything happens out there to Hulk, and I'm certain with the presence of Dennis Rodman at the door, he'll rebound. Tony, Bobby, gentlemen, let's get back to you.
02:19:30
Speaker
Interesting tone to this one. Yeah. Hogan honestly comes off as pretty heelish here. Yeah. He disrespects Vader's life story, calls him a liar, talks about wanting to beat people up, praises Rodman for doing whatever he wants in the NBA and having a nasty attitude. Oh, and also he's going to literally kill Vader via throwing him into sharks.
02:19:49
Speaker
Yes. He does turn it back around to face mode by the end by noting Rodman's there to stop interference, at least. Sure. I do really want to compliment him for the beginning of the promo, though. There's this awkward pause after Gene and Rodman's first interaction, and Hogan clearly recognizes it and jumps right in to get the promo going. Mm-hmm. Otherwise, this wasn't bad, just weirdly reversed in tone from what I expected. Yeah. Rodman's bit at the end of the promo is strangely emphasized too. Yes.
02:20:19
Speaker
He made a choice to have flustered words that he wouldn't think of at all. Yeah, I like how it's like, again, kind of jumps right in there to try and clarify, though he does get a bit flustered and use the word floridori, which is like, what is a floridori? I need to go in Urban Dictionary and look up floridori now. I don't know.
02:20:44
Speaker
For me, my favorite part of the promo is, Ogan, I assume was gonna do fake spitting, but did a real spit on the ground. Yes. First off, more things going near... Poor me and Jane, yes. Poor that. And he's got a little spittle on his chin. He's just gonna ignore it, obviously. Rodman sees it and goes over and wipes it off for him. Like, covering his whole face for a second. And that's why he's an easy big man. Yeah.
02:21:09
Speaker
It's like, okay, well, wasn't expecting that, but sure, we'll go ahead. Rodman's just being very helpful. He's not, he's not appreciating it. Yeah. Oh yeah. There, there were some very interesting interactions in this promo. Hogan hyperbole is just the best and the worst. Cause like, okay, he's going to press slam Vader. Yes. Which already sounds already already fishy. He's going to press them over the cage to the ocean, which is fairly full of sharks.
02:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, which is news to the people that are, you know, swimming in it at the moment. Yeah, right. I mean, is it going to do a sudden zoom in shot on Sheriff Brody before that happens? It's also I also love he says killer whites, which I think he's combining killer whales and great white sharks. Yeah, he is. He is. Oh, yeah, there's so much bizarre goodness in this promo that you just this. Yeah, the best types of Hogan promos were just yeah. I agree. What are you saying?
02:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, this is definitely the more enjoyable version of the sort of Hogan Bollocks promo. I think Robin there is both funny for foreshadowing, because obviously we'd see him on later shows, Hogan's Full Heel. It is randomly hanging out backstage to Sturgis. Yes. So it's getting more foreshadowing there. But yeah, his energy mixed with Hogan's and Jimmy Hart is interesting. Yeah. But you can see Jimmy Hart is the most sedate person there, which is... Which is bizarre. A weird thing to say. Yeah. Yeah.
02:22:37
Speaker
I also love, uh, Gene gets that rebound pun in at the end. Oh yes, yeah. And he heroically holds back a smile at his punting until the very moment the camera cuts. He does. If you're watching, you can see him just start to grin at the end of it. Yeah. One last bit of weirdly quintessential irony here. We go from a promo package for a collision in Korea, they must see it in North Korea, and who from the next field we see, Dennis Rodman. Fair enough.
02:23:05
Speaker
History is just weird. Yes. The Matrix is coded very oddly. Could not write this stuff. No. So our final match is Big Van Vader versus Hulk Hogan with Jimmy Hart, Dennis Rodman, and a ton of Baywatch lifeguards. Yes. And a cage match for Hogan's WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Referee for this one is Randy Anderson.
02:23:30
Speaker
The cage match this time is under escape rules. You win by going over the cage to the floor or escaping through the cage door to the floor. Pinfalls are also still an option. I personally much prefer the pinfall rules for cage matches where it's just like there's a cage up to stop interference and to be used as a weapon but not for escaping. I just I don't really like the I really hate this guy so I'm gonna run away from him to win concept.
02:23:55
Speaker
I understand the logic of having the escape rolled in to find some cheap way for a heal to get victory. And it helps keep the guys strong, you know, potentially if they... Yeah. Right. Like you have the real extreme version with JBL where you got choke slams that already fell through the ring canvas and crawled out underneath the thing. Just kidding. But to your point, I don't like faces going for the escape.
02:24:17
Speaker
Yeah. I don't mind this one as much the way that it turns out just because they don't really go for it much. No. I've seen matches where it's like everybody's sprinting for the climb immediately. Yeah. But this one is more like I think Vader goes for it once and Hogan goes for it once.
02:24:34
Speaker
No, agreed, yeah. Yeah, there's a famous Bright and Knowing Heart cage match, which... Yeah. It's a match you either love or you hate. Yeah. Because of that aspect. Exactly, yeah. I don't... I know people love that match, I don't like that match, because it's them constantly, constantly, like, sprinting for the sides, so... Agreed, yeah.
02:24:53
Speaker
So in Vader's mind, his very twisted, and I guess colorblind mind, Hogan has been ducking him. While they would face off in a pair of matches across paper views, technically Hogan never pin Vader in these matches. They would have a really curious one where it's a strap match, in which while Hogan is going for all four corners, he decides to leg drop Flair, who tried to interfere,
02:25:17
Speaker
and pin him, at which point they ring the bell, and then he still goes and tags the fourth one just to make sure he won after he apparently already won. So the key thing here is that Vader looks strong, while Hogan wins, he and their officially beat Vader. And you find ways with flair being involved, which will come into play later. Oh, so you remember that really much I really loved, where it's Vader and Stan Hansen, that gets 1990, 91? Yeah.
02:25:46
Speaker
where Vader comes out in his headgear and he gets to show off his fun smoke of steam effect? Yes. Well that never happened apparently. Because Vader of all people is dragging into the stupid stupid stupid dungeon of doom angle. Yes, Vader is summoned to the weird cave set where the master lives and Kevin Sullivan sort of hangs out, wink for random strangers drew, burst out of walls, and free to kill Hulk Hogan for him.
02:26:14
Speaker
Oh my gosh, the shouting that must have ensued in that segment between the master and Vader. Okay, so if you can find it, it's worth watching because Vader appears in his full headdress and headgear. He's wearing it the entire time, the promo. So he summoned there, Kevin Sullivan's there and the master are there and they are all shouting at the top of the lungs. With Vader, I think compensating the fact that he's wearing the helmet. So he's shouting louder to try and get through the helmet space. Oh my gosh.
02:26:42
Speaker
Vader is summoned there by the Master and told to go on his Path of Destruction tour. On top of that, when he would appear with his headgear, he proclaimed that he is, quote, no longer Vader, now always Big Ben Vader, now and forever. Okay. Oh, and, um, if you're wondering where Vader was before he was summoned to the Where the Hell's Dungeon and Doom Live, he was, quote, going to another dimension.
02:27:08
Speaker
I swear, Vader says he was going to another dimension. I'm not making that up. So just to be clear, why does that mean that the Stan Hansen match never happened? Because the headgear is part of him being Big Van Vader. Oh, so he's claiming like, I received this from the dungeon? Yes. Gotcha. Because previous matches blowing up to this, he didn't have the headgear for one or another.
02:27:29
Speaker
maybe okay bear with me here okay maybe what that actually means is that this is not the vader that we've been watching up till this point this is a vader that was in another dimension and was summoned here it's an alternate universe vader oh that they have summoned and gifted this universe as vader's helmet
02:27:49
Speaker
Okay. So that, so he, he did legitimately receive the helmet from them and become big van Vader because of them, because he's a different Vader than the Vader were used to. That's good. I like that. Yeah. Alternate theory. We're going under tenant rules where even though you see someone earlier, that's actually them later. That's back in time to do there. So that match with him and Dan and happens technically for Vader happens after this. It's in his future. Gotcha. Exactly. Yes.
02:28:20
Speaker
See, this is why I love the Dungeons of Doom angle, even though it's so dumb. It's like, what other wrestling angles do you get to discuss weird time travel and alternate universe things and have not entirely sound like a joke? Yeah, zero things that happened. Buffer is back for the entrances. It's funny to hear him say main event of the afternoon instead of main event of the evening. Yeah, true. Vader comes out in his tremendous amazing helmet.
02:28:50
Speaker
His outfit is still backwards. Well, yeah. A lady in the crowd flexes her own quite impressive muscles. Yeah, she reminded me a lot of Raquel Gonzalez, who's in depth with me right now. Obviously, it couldn't be her, because this is only 30 years ago, but it looks like her. Unless Tenet thing is out again. Oh, yeah. See? There you go again. Everything's next together. We've lost it, man. Yeah. I only feel like I should apologize to Christopher Nolan for bringing his movie into this.
02:29:22
Speaker
Vader hands the helmet over to Ref Randy Anderson before getting in because, yeah, he's not getting through the door with that thing on. No. Hogan's music hits and a ton of Baywatch lifeguards come out.
02:29:33
Speaker
I was curious about the people coming out for this one because you see different people than last time. Well, I actually recognize people in front having watched Baywatching since the beginning through Allison on YouTube. Again, definitely check her out. He's really amazing. So Hogan gets actual stars for his. Gotcha. I guess that he's more important for this angle on the TV show than Savage is. Yeah, he gets David Chokachi and Genely Nolan, who are both actual main characters who at very least get B plots.
02:30:02
Speaker
but then the rest of the Baywatch extras fall behind. Okay. Also following behind are Jimmy Hart, Dennis Rodman, and finally Hulk Hogan himself. One of the other guys escorting Hogan to the ring has a slim Jim's hat because money. Yes. Hogan gives the cage a shake as Buffer proclaims him king of Hulk mania. He does. So close. Yeah. Hogan climbs in over the top of the cage and tears his shirt off, and we start right away.
02:30:31
Speaker
Hogan wraps his shirt around Vader's neck and repeatedly rams him into the cage, but can't knock Vader off his feet. Hogan breaks the eyes to win a slugfest, but Vader blocks a cage ram and runs Hogan into it, then beats the crap out of him, and runs him into the helmet, which is propped on a corner turnbuckle. For some reason, WCW decides to show that from outside, behind Rodman, so the audience can barely see.
02:30:53
Speaker
Hogan blocks a second ram and sends Vader into it instead, and Vader falls for the first time in the match, proving not Hulkamania, but helmet mania is the most powerful force in the universe.
02:31:16
Speaker
It's like a very Mysterio being chucked across the ring by someone. He is. He is selling for his helmet. Yes. Well, it's magical, obviously. Hogan puts on Vader's helmet. It looks gigantic on him. This is the funniest thing Hulk Hogan has ever done. It's great. I do like that he does the sort of stilted Vader walk with his arms. Yes. That as well. He lands a couple of very gentle head butts to Vader as he probably can barely see and doesn't know how far he is from him at all.
02:31:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think they could have cooperated a little better on that. Vader could have sort of helped him, like, Vader could have pulled him in or something. Yeah, it doesn't look great, honestly. Yeah, it's a funny idea, but they don't quite nail the execution of him actually doing the move. Vader, again, sounds like he's been shot with a cannon. Yes. Yeah, not the best execution, but this had me in stitches. I love that. Oh, yeah, it's funny.
02:32:07
Speaker
As the ref disposes of the helmet, Vader splashes Hogan in the corner, hits a couple second rope Vader bombs for two, then props Hogan on his shoulder and rams him into the cage. Vader released Suplex, and he goes for the door, yelling out the camera guy to move. I would move. Yes. Hogan recovers and rams Vader into the cage repeatedly, but he can't slam Vader. Vader clubs him down and tries a top rope elbow drop, and Hogan dodges because Hogan would like to remain alive. Yeah.
02:32:36
Speaker
Hogan tries the slam again, but Vader falls on top for two. A third attempt works, but Hogan hurts his back, so Vader hits him so hard that Heenan jokes that he knocked Hogan's mustache off. Again, sign of things to come, Hogan will be shaved in an angle later this year. Yeah, about three months from now.
02:32:53
Speaker
Vader's second rope splash gets two, but Hogan hulks up. Vader tries to run him into the cage, but Hogan blocks and lands strikes, multiple cage rams, and a big boot, but Vader won't fall. Hogan kicks him in the gut. It looked like he was going for another big boot and misjudged the distance. Very possible. And Vader finally falls. Suddenly, Zodiac and Taskmaster run down the ramp, but Rodman drives them off with a chair, held upside down the wrong way. Glad he didn't actually take a swing. Yeah.
02:33:23
Speaker
Hogan hits not one, but TWO leg drops, thinks about pinning Vader, and decides to climb out instead. Vader gets up and fights him atop the ropes, but Hogan knocks him back to the mat, and climbs out into the floor for the win. Hogan celebrates with Rodman and Hart and makes his exit, as Vader lies on the mat inside.
02:33:44
Speaker
Tony starts to wrap up the show and we even cut to the commentary team where Tony signs off and Hienan takes off his headset. But, as Tony is telling Hienan good broadcast, we suddenly cut back to the ring, where Flair charges into the ring and gets in the revived Vader's face, yelling that Vader was supposed to beat Hogan. Flair continues losing his mind, but Vader chokes him. Arne runs in and hits Vader to save Flair, then immediately regrets all his life choices and flees from the angry charging Vader as fast as he can.
02:34:12
Speaker
Flair climbs up and over the cage faster than anyone who has ever been in a cage match ever. And he would have won this match, wouldn't he? Yes, easily. He drops all the way to the floor in his rush to escape, and he and Arne flee. Vader yells at the camera that Flair stuck his nose in his business and challenges Flair and Arne at once to a fight. He calls Flair a big-nosed punk and says he stuck his nose in Vader's business for the last time. Thoughts on this one?
02:34:41
Speaker
I thought this was a fun match, even with and perhaps maybe to some extent because of the usual Hogan bollocks involved.
02:34:48
Speaker
I enjoyed the power dynamic they had. I thought they'd make Vader look, for the most part of the match, look really strong. Yes. I mean, he won't go down. Hogan's got to hit him a little harder and he's got to do certain things to get him down. I appreciate little things like the helmet coming into play, you know, how they, how they bump forward, how the helmet is apparently made of like some sort of super strong lead like material depleted uranium. I think we normally. Yes. There we go. Yeah.
02:35:14
Speaker
And then as soon as it's funny, once they're done with it, they sort of calmly take that and quality of the helmet out of, out of the ring and never mentioned again. Yes. Yeah. Randy Anderson, just like, I'm moving this over here. Get your eyes are done. Right. Yeah. Okay. Good. To Logan's credit. Okay. He does sell well for Vader. I do like that. You know, even when he's starting to do his usual Hogan comeback, he does fans to finally buy a son Vader on the third attempt, but he sells his back afterwards. So Vader's actually up before he is. Yes. It's a nice touch.
02:35:45
Speaker
There's a lot of parts I can critique. One thing I've noticed watching the Vader stuff is that even though he shouldn't, he would do his landing differently and land differently if he knew he was going to miss. True, yeah. To be fair, I can't imagine a landing on your side is that much fun. Probably hurts, yeah. But it makes that move he's doing. I'm glad you called Elwood up because I honestly was not sure what he was trying to do there.
02:36:08
Speaker
Because he jumps and it sort of flails a bit when he realizes he's not going to hit and lands on his back. But again, it still wouldn't be fun, but it's definitely better than landing your knees. Yes. But yeah, so for the most part I really enjoyed it. I like that Vader got to do his stuff, he got to look strong. But in the ending, I'm torn on the ending.
02:36:27
Speaker
So pinning is an option. Hogan eventually does finally get Vader down and do a leg drop. Makes Vader look strong in the sense that he doesn't really go for a pin, thinking, oh, the idea that it's not gonna work. So he does it again. But then he sort of plays to the crowd for a while, asking him if he should pin. Which means Vader's gotta just sit there and go, ah, can't do anything. Now to be fair, it is the Hogan leg drop. Yeah, no, that's a thing. That's why I'm mixed on this. I'm really not sure how I feel about this yet. Yeah. Even if you're watching this today to keep it fresh, I'm still, I go back and forth on this.
02:36:57
Speaker
He sort of plays around with it. He's like, oh, I could beat Vader when I want to after doing this a little bit. Yeah. That said, then once he goes on the cage, Vader's back up. Yes. And fighting him toe to toe. Yeah. Yeah. So Vader does a cover from two Hogan leg drops, which makes him look good. I'm not sure on this one.
02:37:14
Speaker
I think on balance, for me, it comes out making Vader look quite strong. He takes two Hogan leg drops, which normally one is enough to put you out for good in a match. He still gets to keep going, fights evenly with him, and only loses because he falls from the ropes. Right. Like I said, yeah. Even as I'm thinking about it, I might go back and forth on that. Because yeah, just this brief bit where he seems like he's playing with him just kind of sticks in my craw a bit, but I get your point.
02:37:41
Speaker
Maybe like if, for instance, instead of Vader doing the, I guess, elbow drop and splatting the ground, if they did maybe some version like the Flare Karma spot, or grab him out of the corner with the power slam. So if he does something like that and pinned him, and Vader like kicks out strongly, so he's sure he can escape Hogan's offense, I think that would help me. Again, I do like that they still end with Vader not being pinned, leaving things open for something that spoiler alert will never happen. But yeah, I will still enjoy the match as a whole.
02:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, for me, this was pretty much your average Hogan vs. Large Man template match just with some of Vader's signature spots put in, but they do add little extra bits like the helmet rams and the helmet headbutt and using the cage a lot to elevate it a bit more. The match had some good pivot points and some clear build-ups too, most notably Hogan's repeated attempts to slam Vader. I also really appreciated that they changed the Hulk-up pattern to acknowledge the cage.
02:38:38
Speaker
which as a side effect makes Vader look smarter than basically anyone else who's ever taken a Hulk up. That's true, yeah. Because he at least tries to do something different and more impactful. It's also worth noting that Hogan does block the cage rams, rather than no selling them. So there's an implication that that would have broken him out of that ending surge. Hmm. Okay. It was something he felt the need to defend against, even in the Hulk up.
02:39:04
Speaker
He gets pretty close on them too, and none of them make a big show of easily blocking. He gets an inch at each time. Yeah, so even during the Hulk up, he's, I think, actually trying to make Vader look strong, which is kind of nice. He thankfully avoids a dangerous Floridori. Yes. Okay, whatever that is. That said, there's quite a lot of heelishness from Hulk in this. Yeah. Which feels backwards, much like the promos. Well, if his first move is grabbing a shirt and trying to choke a guy.
02:39:33
Speaker
I mean, admittedly, it's a cage match. There's no DQ. You can be a little bit, but it feels weird that the face is the one that goes for that first. Yeah. Like, I don't mind the helmet stuff because Vader does it first, but the T-shirt stuff does feel a little bit weird. Yeah. As mentioned before, I don't really like escape endings because I don't like escape rules, but it does protect Vader. Not only has he not been pinned, he survived two of Hogan's finishers in a row. There's not a lot of guys that get to do that.
02:40:00
Speaker
Yeah, if memory served correctly, the first Hogan Vader match as a DQ finish, and then, as I talked about before, the second one is that strap match, which has the flare interference and all that. Yeah. It's actually a little odd, given that this keeps Vader pretty strong, that we're clearly building not to another Hogan match at this point, but to Vader vs. Flare.
02:40:21
Speaker
Not that I'd want him crushed before facing Flare, but it just doesn't feel like a definitive end to the Hogan versus Vader feud. Like you pointed out with Sting and Meng earlier, this feels like something you'd do in a mid-match and then you still have the definitive pinfall ending from the leg drop at some point in the future. Yeah. I'm a little disappointed having a Vader match with no moonsault. No moonsault, yeah. And no powerbomb.
02:40:47
Speaker
I wonder if he was worried about the cage for the moonsault. Like, it'd be too close and he might catch it with his feet. Yeah. We haven't reached the point in pro wrestling where everyone goes, ooh, a cage, I'll come to the top and then jump off. I wouldn't want to see Fader do it. Oh my gosh. The cage would not survive. Right, right.
02:41:04
Speaker
One little thing I noticed on the rewatch, he didn't notice first time. Much like generally just like Hogan, he's always one of those guys that would find a way to work a little bit smarter than other people sometimes. So if you watch the way he escapes the cage, he drops down to the steps and then climbs to the floor. That's smart. Yeah, his actual drop is probably a couple inches because how tall he is. And it steps down. I did not notice that. That's a good point.
02:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, again, the overall booking seems to protect Vader for future stuff that, I think I know it won't happen, but they were planning on happening. Yeah.
Vader's Departure and Storyline Impact
02:41:40
Speaker
As he threatens, Vader would face Arn Anderson and Ric Flair in a handicap match at the next class of the champions. The finish would involve this communication between the pair of them, that being Arn and Flair, which would lead to their very confusing, but also quite good feud that would follow, leading it to fall broadly against each other.
02:41:58
Speaker
As for full brawl, it's war games time yet again. We would get the team of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Sting, and Vader. Oh, sorry. Actually, it's Lex Luger because Vader gets in the backstage fight with Paul Orndorff and is fired. Yes. Like the week before Nitro begins. Yeah. Timing, man. Yeah. There is a promo package. Oh yes. Where it is. Yeah. I'll have to put a lot of fun pasted.
02:42:24
Speaker
It's the face team of Vader, you know, all preparing for war games. They have their military camo face paint and all stuff on. Then the fight happens, you know, Lex Luger makes his famous Nitro debut, and they begin one of Bob's favorite long-term storytelling bits, which is, can you trust Lex Luger? Because I sting do. So Luger is put into Vader's position because of what happens. I genuinely wonder if Vader had stuck around.
02:42:53
Speaker
Do you think they would have tried to do a similar thing with Sting and Vader? Like that they do with Sting and Luger? Vader is the guy that nobody trusts other than Sting? Or is that purely because they know that Sting and Luger are actually buddies? Yeah, that's a good question. I ain't thought about that. I could see that. You could do the you should respect Borne from combat thing. Yeah, exactly.
02:43:14
Speaker
That said, of course, Lexigar was still going to come in because they wanted the surprise for Nitro and they could steal him because of Primetric Man's apathy towards Lexigar and his contract.
02:43:24
Speaker
I feel like that was probably always a Sting and Luger plan, but it just is funny to me picturing just slotting Vader into all of Luger's moments, the sleeping outside the arena bit when he misses the title match or the agreeing to a Chicago street fight and then asking annoyed Sting what a Chicago street fight is. Picture all of those as a shouty Vader and it's almost even better.
02:43:51
Speaker
So yeah, you get the team of Hogan, Savage, Luger in this placement, and Sting. It gets the Dungeon of Doom, which is now would be full effect by the time the show happens in September. Yes. The Dungeon of Doom team, by the way, at this point is Kamala, getting another nice payday for that guy. Good for you. The Zodiac, who we saw briefly here. Yes, no. Ming, who at that point is brought into the story. They give him a weird mask like they gave Kamala.
02:44:18
Speaker
And I had the fine excuse to mention this, because it happened on the very next WWE Saturday night. The newest member of the Dungeon of Doom, which they actually reference on this, the shark. Oh no. Hogan's sharks buddies betrayed him that he was going to use against Vader. Betrayed by his own sharks. That is Jon Tenta coming over from the WWF, who famously was so committed to the gimmick. He went through a long process of turning his tiger tattoo into a tiger shark tattoo.
02:44:47
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Only it'd not be the shark by the end of 1995. Aw, poor guy.
Event Setting and Match Quality
02:44:53
Speaker
Yeah. But he, I, so he devours in the next, the mystery Saturday night. And again, that same silly cave set everyone has to hang around in. He is proclaimed as having come from, quote, 200,000 leagues from under the ocean.
02:45:06
Speaker
Which is, I mean, okay, let's, breaking that down for a second. Okay, yes. Number one, 200,000 leagues would be quite a distance. But number two, the line is specifically 200,000 leagues from under the ocean. Yes. Which makes it sound like you're saying that he's from a place that is 200,000 leagues from the bottom of the ocean. Yes. High-E way up in the sky. Yeah, he doesn't have satellite, Bob. Yes. Well, maybe he's part of the Justice League back when they had a satellite. Would make sense. We already did say they're kind of the super friends thing.
02:45:36
Speaker
Man, look at that. Threw a line to the whole show. We are so good at this. But yeah, that's the end of that. Anyways. Nice. As Vader makes his exit, Heenan is confused by what he's just seen. Heenan blames Flair's insanity in going up in Vader's face on how crazy Hogan makes him. Tony covers some replays from the match, which puts a bit of a lie to the whole, we thought we were off the air thing earlier, since why would they not be planning on showing replays before going off the air?
02:46:06
Speaker
Tony asks if it's really time to go off the air this time and signs off for real. And Slim Jim's Bash of the Beach 1995 is done. So, final thoughts on the show? Uh, it's not the strongest show. Match-wise, I mean, I could enjoy parts, like, of the Sting match and, you know...
02:46:24
Speaker
In their own little bubble, I can enjoy, you know, DDP, Wiggle Over a Sullivan. As we discussed pretty thoroughly, the tag team match makes no sense. So for me, it's mostly a two-match show with the main event matches as far as the high peak. That said, it has a really unique feel, as I'm sure you're going to say, because of the outdoor beach setting. It's always interesting seeing a show that's just different looking. It's not always better. You can book a show in a really unique environment, but if you don't book a good show, it doesn't matter that much.
02:46:55
Speaker
But yeah, this show stands out historically for both the product placement between Baywatch and for SimGems, but also the sea of humanity they have out there. It's just a mix bag quality wise, but the general crowd is going to really enjoy everything.
02:47:11
Speaker
I felt this was a notable downgrade from the prior years. It's just kind of odd though. Objectively, it's actually a pretty bad show with several poor matches and one that was just downright confusing. The fact that I'm genuinely considering a match involving Dave Sullivan in Match of the Night contention says a lot. Yeah. It didn't help that the show featured several of WSW's more questionable decisions from the period, from stereotypes to poorer imitations to ridiculous cartooning gimmicks to involving people's actual divorce and storylines. Yeah. But at the same time,
02:47:42
Speaker
It's not a difficult watch. No. Only one match on the show even reaches 15 minutes, so most of this good or bad moves at a brisk pace. And if what's going on is bad, it generally won't be on for very long. True. To be fair to WCW as well, this show is them trying new things and hoping to build up new stars. Yeah. Most of it doesn't really work. Yeah. But I appreciate the effort. Mm-hmm.
02:48:07
Speaker
They've got the right idea. Let's build up new guys and try out some interesting match types. They just don't pick the right new guys or the right match types sometimes. The promos are part of what really helps the show. We get a lot of them tonight. And most are solid to good, not all, but most.
02:48:23
Speaker
There's a lot of plot and character building tonight, and I do appreciate that, even if it did mean a lot of segments to the show. It's kind of the better version of what they'll try to do in 1999 and 2000. There's lots of promos, but they actually get time here, rather than having time for a single sentence. Right, yes. The video packages were weird, but fun as well.
02:48:43
Speaker
Yeah. I got the impression that this show is really trying to build off what they got last year. And because they have this announced Baywatch connection, you know, you get a lot of press about it, you know, from outside sources. Yeah. I'm sure like entertainment tonight and other places are like, Oh, you know, Deb's debut in Baywatch and you're going to do this thing, blah, blah, blah. So I think their, their, their mindset is we're getting people that may not watch wrestling. So let's get everyone a promo. So we go, Hey, here's this character. So.
02:49:09
Speaker
it's not flare command they go who's the flare guy what's he doing if you know someone's gotta explain it to him yeah that makes a lot of sense that they probably added some promos to the show so that you had people able to like get in with the angles yeah yeah
02:49:23
Speaker
Tony and Hienan were a little bit more hit and miss than usual tonight, leaning into the adversarial gimmick maybe a bit too much on this show. They always bicker on shows, and normally I love that, but this time it felt like the gimmick was getting in the way of their storytelling at times. And some of it fell flat besides. There were still fun moments with quick back and forth jabs, particularly that kindergarten argument bit was really funny. Yeah. Yeah, Hienan's in really good lines throughout the show. But it just felt a little bit weaker than usual. Not much. Just a bit.
02:49:52
Speaker
It probably wasn't great for the company's bottom line, but I love that this took place on an actual beach. It gave it such a unique atmosphere, as you knew I would say. I did, yes. And for the first time, this series really lived up to its name. Yes.
02:50:08
Speaker
The ocean, the hotels, the beachgoers were a neat backdrop. And WSW did a good job further emphasizing the theme with their graphics choices. I wouldn't want every single show to be on the beach, but it was a fun idea for this year, and I would like to see them try it one more time. I don't think they do. The coast that you get are their spring breakouts. I was thinking the same thing, yeah. Or the other ring around a little pool, yeah.
02:50:30
Speaker
Overall, this was a subpar show that nevertheless is slightly elevated by a creative gimmick, fun atmosphere, and a quick pace. Despite not really liking it much in the end, I do still recommend watching it all the same. There's not much that WCW does that's similar to this show, save for maybe the Hog slash Road Wild series, so it's worth a look just for that alone.
02:50:54
Speaker
This takes me back to when we were going through Starrcade, there's a big difference in quality of show between 1993 Starrcade, which was, you know, I had to say that I had moments that were bad too. 94, because that point, you know, it's six months, six months into Hogan being in the company, all his buddies are in here. So you have all these people that involved and it generally makes the show worse and more silly because
02:51:17
Speaker
you know, all the stuff's happening. So that's kind of the same thing you get with this show and the previous show. That said, again, the silly aspect of it and the unique location elevates it a little bit from being a half-hearted repeat or re-trail like we ran into when he did four hog wild shows, road wild shows in a row. Right, yeah. This one being unique helps it, but if they put another show at the beach, then you're going to really start looking at the show quality, so it better be better.
02:51:47
Speaker
Yes, agreed.
Event Reflections and MVP Debate
02:51:51
Speaker
Match of the Night and MVP. So, Al, what's your Match of the Night? So, as I said, for me, this is mostly a two-match show. So, it's between the two main event matches, Flare and Savage versus Vader and Hogan. And once I love Vader, I still enjoyed the Flare-Savage match slightly more. I thought it was an enjoyable fight that will hopefully play well on television and did play well on television for them through Baywatch. Okay.
02:52:16
Speaker
For me, this was a three-match show. Fair enough. Flare versus Savage, Hogan versus Vader, and DDP versus Sullivan. Flare versus Savage is fun, but it for me was quite start and stop and repetitive. Hogan versus Vader features nice hard hits in the helmet spot, but I don't like Hogan's heelishness or the escape rules. DDP versus Sullivan is well plotted and surprisingly good, but really short. That's the thing, yeah. I couldn't put it in there because it's only four minutes long.
02:52:45
Speaker
It is closer than it has any right to be, but I'm going with Hogan vs. Vader. Okay. Vader's power, the slam subplot, and the helmet spot are pluses, and they don't much use the escape rules so I can set them aside and give it the win. Fair enough. MVP? And I went through this a lot. That's the one I was torn on, the hardest, how is hardest aside?
02:53:09
Speaker
As I joked from the beginning, I was tempted to give it to the unnamed announcer guy who talked up Ming and I guess spoke as Ming. But no, I'm not going to do that. Father of Flare and Savage both did a really good job in both their promos and matches. My delivery was quite well. They really sold their characters and their anger. Same with Hogan and Vader. Obviously, Hogan does a much more silly enjoyment.
02:53:33
Speaker
I briefly give shout out to DDP for again making a way better match than I get thought of with Dave Sullivan, even as really short. Sting's energy and what he was going to give Ming in his match was quite good, even if I didn't do the match as a whole. And again, poor Orndorf really having the albatross around his neck in the form of Renegade and the way the match was built. I got him credit for that, he did what he could. And even, you know, most of the people in the triangle match, which again, as bad as it was, could do the nonsense we've covered. Pretty ad nauseam now.
02:54:01
Speaker
I don't think they necessarily did bad, but they didn't stand out enough for me, especially because only one third of that group got a promo. So for me, it's tight contention between some combination of their matches and their promos between Savage and Vader.
02:54:19
Speaker
I think very slight edge goes to Savage. I enjoyed his match a little better. I enjoyed his insane promo. And going back to Jon's original logic, literally without him, I'm not sure they could afford to do this show without Slim Jims. So yeah. Okay, sure. It's a real razor thin though. You mentioned mine. Okay. Of course you mentioned just about everyone on the show. So maybe that doesn't narrow it down that much, but it does not know.
02:54:47
Speaker
I am giving this to Diamond Dallas Page. He genuinely did a great job with his match with Dave Sullivan crafting a well plotted match that was performed smoothly. I came into that match somewhat dreading it and I left pleasantly surprised and that is a major achievement.
02:55:06
Speaker
And that wraps up our review of Bash at the Beach 1995. If you've enjoyed listening to us tonight, you can find us on Twitter or Facebook as Let's Go to the Ring. Links will be available in the episode description. Follow us for episode announcements and other show details, and share your own thoughts about each show as we go through.
02:55:23
Speaker
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, TuneIn, Verbal, or Audible. And please, if you've enjoyed this show, give us a rating or review, and show the show through your favorite social media platforms to help others discover us. Many thanks to OSW Review for attendance and pay-per-view figures, and to Gina Trujillo for our logo. Next up, Bash at the Beach. What one, you ask? The Baywatch one, I say. What?
02:55:53
Speaker
Yes, as Tony noted, Baywatch cameras were filming at Bash at the Beach 1995, which features as part of the plot of Season 6, Episode 15 of Baywatch, titled, appropriately enough, Bash at the Beach, which didn't actually air until half a year later in February 1996. Yes. Feels a bit far away to be effective cross-promotion. Yeah, a little bit. This is Bob Moore for Alec Pridgen, signing off without being interrupted by Angry Ric Flair. Good night, everybody.
02:56:23
Speaker
happy wrestling tonight we're looking at man i hope i didn't say that last episode i don't i i don't think he did so yes tonight we are taking a look at beach blast 1994 hulk's wcw debut
02:57:18
Speaker
La, la, la, la.