My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Main Event 7/14/96 & 7/21/96

The Main Event was probably the weakest of your WCW syndicated shows. It aired on Sunday afternoons in my neck of the woods, which were always filled with dread for me since in my house we always got to goof around on Saturdays, but Sundays were when we did yardwork and chores and before you knew it another week of school was here. So you had Sunday afternoon wrestling, sometimes used as a PPV lead-in (the Konnan/One Man Gang U.S. Title change was actually shown on The Main Event!), but usually the matches were really short and nobody good ever wrestled on there. I've yet to come across a match from The Main Event that I'd give the full two thumbs up to.

But you know? It still has its charm. The crowd is always excited and almost too quick with a jingoistic chant if there is a foreigner wrestling, you get sit down studio bullshit sessions with Bobby Heenan, you get Dusty in full-on hilarious "Even I don't know what I'm saying" commentary, and you get highlights from Saturday Night and Nitro. So you get a pretty decent package, bookended with some matches that are rarely awful. It's WCW syndicated wrestling, so it at least has its charms.

This was also a neat random pick out of the stacks because it originally aired almost exactly 15 years ago. Remember how full of dreams you were 15 years ago, as you watched Konnan and Joe Gomez matches?

7/14/96

Ruckus vs. Joe Gomez

Ruckus is Robbie Rage, and they even bill him as being part of High Voltage. Never knew he went under a different name in WCW. Gomez is not very good, but he's not very good in a really entertaining way. Rage has a waistlock and does a takedown, Gomez tries to get his hands out to block his face, somehow goes forehead first into the mat. Rage does a REALLY cool armbar/headscissors takedown (that somebody today should steal), Gomez takes the bump right onto the top of his head. So he looks really lost out there, but when he's match against a powerhouse like Rage fun things happen. I'm sure there is a Gomez/Jerry Flynn match out there, and that Gomez somehow manages to take a boot to the eyeball in it. Match only goes 90 seconds, Ruckus takes the whole match until Gomez wins with a sunset flip. Forgettable, but Rage always breaks out moves I don't expect from him, and therefore Rage is starting to be someone I genuinely look forward to seeing on these shows.

Konnan vs. Alex Wright

Man, was Konnan on every single fucking episode of Main Event in '96? Jesus, I have seen soooo many Konnan matches already, and this was a real odd one, and I'll be honest...I was really getting into it, until Konnan. Starting to get into it, match was building nicely, and then Konnan. Konnan. The match starts with 14 minutes left in the show and I am filled with dread at the prospect of a long Konnan match, but also excited to see what Wright could do. Will Wright get the title of superest superworker ever, by having the great 10+ minute Konnan match?

Well, the first 3 minutes are all on the mat and while Konnan doesn't look great, he doesn't look bad at all. Wright bends himself into some painful looking holds, pulls out some nice reversals, twists Konnan around by the wrist, Konnan jams his knee in Wright's back, neither guy gets an advantage, some cool stuff. Then they stand up, and Konnan rolls him up for the win, immediately. What. The. Fuck. But to add to that, Wright was not only under the ropes, but had both arms wrapped around the bottom rope. So Wright is looking to get the count broken, but the ref just counts three. This is literally the 2nd time a '96 Konnan match on Main Event has ended this same way, that I've seen. It's as if only Konnan and the ref know when the match is finishing, and it makes everybody look bad. Wright was in the ropes, HOLDING the ropes, looking right at the ref, and the ref just slowly counts three, while making awkward eye contact with Wright. "I know this looks bad Alex. I can clearly see you making love to those ropes. I know it's now taken me 7 seconds just to count to 2...but....I'm counting 3."

7/21/96

VK Wallstreet vs. Jim Powers

I always had a soft spot for Wallstreet/IRS/Rotundo, as I thought he looked like Will Clark when I was a kid, and Will Clark was my favorite thing in the world when I was 9. I still think he kinda looks like Will Clark as an adult, and Will Clark is still one of my favorite things in the world. I was wearing a Will Clark t-shirt yesterday. Wallstreet actually looked really good here, but good lord was Jim Powers not very good at pro wrestling. Wallstreet had a couple nice clotheslines, and GREAT short elbowdrop (boy but he really shoehorns that abdominal stretch while holding the ropes into every match, huh? What's great is the camera pans to the crowd during the payoff of the ref finally catching him cheating, so Powers doesn't even get his comeuppance shown) and the Stock Market Crash is a great name for his Samoan drop finisher.

Bobby Eaton/Dave Taylor vs. Jim Duggan/Craig Pittman

This was only 3 minutes but very fun. Not tons of offense aside from punches, but Eaton can obviously punch, Taylor can throw some blows, Duggan can throw alternately great and horrendous punches, so 3 minutes of punches isn't really an awful thing with these guys. But it was Pittman's punches that were the star here. They had the look of someone who didn't actually know how to throw any kind of punch, worked or real, so was just kind of moving his fist towards Eaton's face...but they looked brutal! Not sure how much of it was Eaton putting them over big, but it looked like he was not so much selling them as he was trying to get out of the way of them. Regal runs distraction on the floor, making a bunch of funny Don Knotts mannerisms to get the crowd hyped and put over Teddy Long as some sort of threat. Duggan gets the win with a nice taped fist punch.