Found Footage Friday: CROCKET CUP 87 NIGHT 2~!

Crockett Cup 87 Night 2 JCP 4/10/87

MD: We had a lot more of Night 2 than Night 1 but some of that was still handhelds or pieced together and this is a big VQ upgrade regardless, so we're just going to go through this as much as possible on the idea that a lot of this is very much Found even if not entirely New.

Round 3

Bob & Brad Armstrong vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

MD: Really great stuff here. That's not a surprise. There's an extended (almost ten minute) heel-in-peril shine to begin where Tully gets a few moments but mostly gets clowned over and over. What makes this work is how he constantly tries to drive to the corner and everytime things go really wrong for him is when he tries to stretch the rules, like using his foot to make a tag. JJ complains and the Armstrongs do a phantom tag while the ref is dealing with that. I love the wrist control by Bob here. You get such a great look at how he's holding Tully's hand and the torque involved. So simple but so good. Eventually Luger does get in but the Armstrongs come back only for JJ to pull down the rope and send Brad flying.

The FIP isn't as long but they get a lot done quickly, using the guardrail and working over the back. Brutal stuff with Brad on the floor reaching not for the fans, but for his dad even though there's no way to make a tag, just trying to drag strength and power from his love. The hot tag is great too with Bob coming in fiery as can be, laying into the Horsemen with basically machine gun chops in the corner. I got a kick out of the finish which had the ref miss a pinfall due to the chaos and JJ and Tully do a double clothesline with JJ on the apron to pick up the win. It's funny to think that would add so much but it had symbolic value so it totally worked. Good tag and great to see it in this level of video quality.

ER: I thought this was tremendous, 8 perfect minutes of tag team wrestling. Also, 8 minutes reminding us of what a perfect wrestler Tully Blanchard was. Tully was the primary highlight of this, but I think the whole thing was highlights. Every single second of Bullet preventing Tully from tagging out is pro wrestling perfection. Every second. The cameras catching the perfect angles of the inches Bullet was letting Tully get from Luger, the cut to the hand-on-brow disappointment and disgust from JJ Dillon looking like Robert Prosky in Thief, Luger's teenage quarterback hands on hips frustration when the tags keep being prevented, the way Tully's legs dragged and floated when Brad held onto a side headlock, it was all perfect. Luger was a great partner for Tully. This was Luger's best hair era, by fair. It never came close to looking this good again. His fringe, his gentle approach to being a jacked Ramones superfan. I loved how all of Tully's long build to the hot tag was more about Bullet tagging in his son to square up to Luger, who looks like Asshole He-Man. 

Tully Blanchard has the same kind of physical bumping style as Bobby Heenan. Heenan's bumping gets talked about more because it's flashier and one of the greatest bumping styles anyone has ever attempted. Tully doesn't use the same physical movement as Heenan, but he bumps with the same physicality. Tully has the ability to work these inches and near misses as well as he works big looping O-face back bumps when tugged and pulled and thrown by the Armstrongs, in a way that only makes the Armstrong Family Biceps look like main event power. I don't think there's a more perfect bump than Tully ping ponging perfectly onto his belly into the corner right on his mark, after leaning into Brad's missile dropkick. It's that kind of precision that people see in Chris Candido, the things is that Candido is just 0.7 Tully. Candido was tan, shaped, modeled. Tully looked like your friend's dad who was the asshole orthodontist accused of touching a girl under the gas. The guy in your church denomination you don't want to talk to in the lobby after service.

Road Warriors vs. Midnight Express

MD: The feeding early on, especially by Bobby Eaton, is all time great. The way he's able to rush in and take things and contort pro wrestling physics and make it all look good is up there with the very best ever. He somehow hits the guardrail after getting tossed out and you buy it. He makes a press slam into a snake eyes look like a move that people should be doing weekly now but it's something I've barely seen this century and that if anyone else took wouldn't look nearly as good. Likewise, he took a chop (looked like to the chest to me) and then sold his face, pointing to his jaw repeatedly like he just lost three teeth. Lane does okay too, going head over heels just bouncing off a Warrior, but it's not quite the same as Bobby.

When the Express take over on Hawk, it's from going to the eyes again and again and again and double teaming at every point. They just have a few frenetic minutes in charge, but the sheer amount of varied and interesting cheating they're able to do in believable ways is just remarkable. You buy that the ref just didn't see it because they were so good and Animal was so frustrated. Eyerakes, tossing Hawk over the top illegally, using the racket, again and again. When the hot tag comes, everything becomes chaos and the ref goes down. Cornette threw a fireball at Animal and I thought Animal no sold it but on the replay you see that Ellering pulled Cornette's arm so he plausibly just missed. It's a dangerous thing to devalue though so I'm not sure I loved that. To the crowd, it must have looked like Animal just no sold it. Still that infuriated the Roadies and they took the racket and got themselves DQed the ref came to. This was another really good one as they matched up well and everything had the perfect weight to it, save maybe for that fireball at the end.

ER: This is a famously great tag that has never looked or sounded better. The sound on these new uploads is so key, it makes every bump seem like an impossible physical feat to maintain. There's so much good about this, including Bubba, Cornette, and Ellering at ringside. They all got reactions and none of the reactions took away from the others, just an insanely hot match where everything clicked. Bobby Eaton in 4K is truly something to marvel. He and Hawk are a perfect combination of wrestling physicality. Eaton was so gifted, another guy who moved all in his own way...and Hawk wrestles like the ideal jacked cool guy to be knocking Bobby Eaton around. Bobby was such a ham here, in a way that totally works when selling for the Roadies. Hawk hit a short hard chop that was so loud, Bobby improvised on the spot that it him right in the mouth, backpedaling all the way across the ring to tag in Stan. Sell it to the 18,000 people who couldn't see that it hit chest. Lane took some big shots too, getting whipped upside down into the buckles by Hawk and then calmly begging off as Hawk approached, like hey easy man we got other towns to make. Lane getting yanked by the arm from the apron into the ring was such a great bump, the athletic grace of the Midnights combined with the power of the Roadies. Bobby and Stan get great reactions for their bumps, but probably not as big as the reaction Bubba gets when he steps to the apron and removes his coat and hat. Huge. 

The finish is incredible, one of the great chained together bullshit finishes I've seen. The Midnights throw Hawk over the top to the concrete with full distraction, then Bobby hits Hawk in the ribs with the loudest racket shot and kicks him straight in the guts. It completely breaks down into chaos and pandemonium after the bell and it's fucking pro wrestling baby. That's chaining it all together. That's what we used to do. We used to cut off the ring and drink a case of beer and we used to chain bullshit together without reversals of reversals of reversals. A Cornette fireball to endless racket shots to bodies going every direction in perfect chaotic order. The Roadies murder Bobby with a Hart Attack to cap it off. Bubba takes a hit through the ropes that sends him crashing to the apron and down to the guardrail. He looked humongous and the fall was grand. Incredible pro wrestling. 

Rick Rude/Manny Fernandez vs. Superpowers (Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff)

MD: The #1 seed vs. the biggest babyfaces in this. While the first round had its share of fairly lame teams (especially compared to the year before), now in the quarterfinals you see the breadth of the talent here. This was a huge match. They'd only run it once before at a show at the Great Western Forum. It was a way to put the tag champs up against these guys with the belts not on the line. Rude vs. Nikita was such a natural pairing too and they leaned into that early with some fun strength stuff including Nikita breaking out of a full nelson.

Dusty played FIP after taking a post shot on the outside, with him gradually working back towards a comeback and these guys all knew how to milk it of course. Things broke down after Dusty hit a leaping clothesline off the ropes. Rude came in and then Nikita. Manny went for a flying body press but Dusty rolled through for the wins as the fans went nuts. 

ER: This was short but hot the entire way. I love the Raging & Ravishing team. Everyone in Crockett is so physical. I keep using various forms of that word because everyone is so physical in a totally different way. Manny Fernandez doesn't even look like someone who exercises, he looks like the most dangerous man in a bowling alley, but then he's throwing these impressively controlled kneedrops and holding back his body to keep his shots worked, and it's crazy how dangerous he can make himself look while being this safe. Rude is so good at working with Nikita and Manny knew exactly how to work as Rude's partner, I just love how these men fell around the ring. 

Round 4

Giant Baba/Isao Takagi vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

MD: Baba/Takagi had a draw as Ricky Morton was out (what a shame to lose that weird match). This was a kind of weird one too. Lots of leglocks early. It looked like things would open up when Luger slammed Baba but then he missed an elbow drop and Baba just beat up Luger and Tully. Novel pairings at least and fun to see them take his stuff (chop, big boot, Russian leg sweep). Takagi looked strong in there, good strikes and the fans really got up when he mowed through both Tully and especially Luger. Takagi missed a corner charge and weirdly Luger couldn't get him up for the rack. He hit an elbow drop for the pin instead. Up until the finish I could see there being interest in a Takagi vs Luger match back in Japan but after that, nah.

Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff vs. Midnight Express

MD: This was a blast really, the whole shine especially. There was an early bit where Koloff broke clean on Eaton, Eaton refused to break clean on Koloff, punching him in the face, Koloff gave chase, Eaton dodged a shot back in the ring and pointed to his brain, Koloff slingshotted him back into the ring and then dropkicked him, which was absolutely perfect pro wrestling. Beautiful stuff. Then Lane got thrashed about and claimed it was a tights pull and Eaton got caught in the ropes as Dusty pinballed him again and again in a teeter totter only to fall outside and immediately get hiptossed onto the floor. Pure Eaton right there. He does the silly painless bit to pop the crowd and decides to take the huge bump anyway. Dusty finished it by giving all of the Express and Bubba elbows and basking in the glory of it all.

Heat was on Nikita and they did what the Express did best, fit a ton of egregious offense into a very small amount of time. They focused on the neck cheated in both large ways and small, and made use of numbers and ring-positioning. They pushed it just a little too hard, had just a bit of miscommunication and Nikita used that to hit the Sickle, no hot tag needed. Given all the different finishes at play, it worked. It also felt a bit like a banana peel, definitive as it was, because of the lack of the hot tag, so that almost protected the Express in loss in a weird sort of way.

Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham

MD:A lot to cover in a paragraph or two. This match, given how it was preserved/presented over the years and that it was going back to a relatively dry well, has traditionally not been thought highly of. But I do think it was very good. There are individual bits that I love, and I honestly do think they come together. 

Some of those bits:

• After the initial feeling out, Flair chops Barry in the corner. Barry puts on a grin and storms out. Flair backs off but struts it off. They repeat the process and this time Flair falls down before strutting. Then Flair gets in a knee and does it one more time. This time Barry sells it big but still storms out and threatens to do a ten punch on Flair. He backs down. Flair goes for a cheapshot and Barry fires off on him. It was such a great exchange in part because how it escalates.
• Late in the match, Flair, who has been knocked around both inside and outside the ring, gets an advantage and scales the top. We all know what's coming, but the execution is so different than what we'd see in the years that would follow. Flair slows himself down to jaw with the fans. Once he reaches the top, he does it again. Barry gets up and waits for him to turn. When Flair does, he's shocked and begs off. Barry shoots a punch to his gut before grabbing him. Flair shakes his head repeatedly. Barry goes to throw him. They struggle over it. Flair grabs his hair. Barry finally gets him over.
• The biggest tease of the match is Barry hitting a one legged missile dropkick which looked so out of the norm for 87 that it felt like a big deal. He pins Flair for 3 but flair had his foot on the rope and got his hand there too at the last second. The hand drew the ref's eye to the foot and after he made the count, he had to restart the match. He was beside himself over it.  Barry immediately gets his finisher, being the leaping clothesline off, only for Flair to get his foot on again. The moment had passed.

Structurally, they go from Flair getting a hotshot and taking over and working the arm to Barry coming back and Flair taking back over to work the leg and getting the figure-four. They got in and out with advantages switching, throwing in plenty of high spots and building to some of the big moments above. When Flair wins it after a series of back and forth pin attempts and holding the tights, it's acceptable but not exactly satisfying, but it didn't need to be given the victory that would follow.

Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

 

MD: Ok, so I'm running out of time on this one and it's definitely been out for years. One thing I do want to point out that you get watching the show in context is how people controlled Nikita and had a chance by targeting the next throughout the show but the whole show builds to this one where they tear the brace off of his neck. So I really did appreciate that in context. 

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WWF UK Rampage 93

 

I really like how Rampage 93 is filmed. It looks and sounds like an incredibly well produced handheld, capturing a neat up-close house show vibe. It's 12,000 loud people in Sheffield and the crowd and ring are mic'd like you were there live. It's a real house show card too, with tag guys split into singles and a 10 minute Brooklyn Brawler match. 

1. Fatu vs. Brian Knobbs

ER: Nasties were so over that Knobbs was able to go around the ring milking NASTY chants for two straight minutes without anyone losing interest. Knobbs was like a big fat sloppy Hogan to this crowd, and he is a pretty great fat sloppy Hogan. I love how Brian Knobbs runs the ropes like fat guy. Not a fat guy wrestler, just a fat guy. He runs the ropes like an overweight principal who gets in the ring at a school fundraiser to do a completely ill-advised spot. If your principal ran the ropes like Knobbs, you'd think he was just being fun dorky Mr. Wilson. But Brian Knobbs is like the school's weird janitor getting in the ring and running the ropes like a fat lunatic, and kids fucking love it. 

2. Doink vs. Kamala 

ER: Doink keeps wrestling Kamala to the mat and it's so damn cool. Nobody ever rushes in and grabs Kamala in a single leg and then start working half grapevine armbars on him. Doink is working Iowa shooter holds on Kamala and I don't know if I've ever seen anyone do that. Kamala falls in ways he doesn't usually fall, because nobody ever thought to work like Lou Thesz against Kamala. Doink runs into Kamala's comebacks really well, and there was a big time Kamala moment where he got sick of the armbars and just started swinging wildly on Doink as Doink scrambled to the corner. Kamala pinning Doink the wrong way took up too much of the runtime. 

3. Mr. Perfect vs. Samu

ER: Samu is so damn good during their opening rope running. He sticks every piece of Perfect's precise timing. He's the one doing the close call dropdown and leapfrog, and he's hitting them all while also working as careening out of control chubby guy. When they do more rope running he does another dropdown, then shuts it down with a cool clothesline. When Perfect gets thrown over the top to the floor, he REALLY gets thrown over the top to the floor. Perfect goes face first into the ring steps like he's trying to lose an eye. All of Samu's strikes look really powerful and Perfect bumps painfully for them, not doing big athletic bumps. His bumps to the floor were all really fast and I thought they had real complementary body language during their strike exchanges. Good rhythm. Perfect's inside cradle is a really great nearfall, but I do think they rushed to the finish. Needed a bit more build to the Perfect Plex. The whole match felt like a nice slow stiff build and then the finish was just bim bam boom. Bump to the floor, missed splash, Perfect Plex. This was all still really good, one of the best WWF singles matches of the year, but a finish that felt like part of the same match would have made it even better. 

4. Bob Backlund vs. Damien Demento

Why does it feel like I've seen half a dozen Demento/Backlund matches? Were these two just at the perfect corresponding place on the heel/face totem pole alignment, working low stakes face/heel back and forth, and there just happened to be some guy who followed WWF on tour to make sure and document several different Demento/Backlund matches with his camcorder? This is an official release obviously, but it feels like I've seen several Damien Demento/Bob Backlund matches and I'm just not sure how that's possible. They don't really have chemistry but they don't not have chemistry, they just fill about 7 minutes and it's fine, and some part of me has spent my life watching dozens of Bob Backlund/Damien Demento matches that were filmed by a Bad Dad, or perhaps the Greatest Dad. Demento took a big Berzerker bump to the floor and Backlund made a lot of great Popeye Whoa-Whoa-Whoa noises so maybe this was actually fucking great. 

5. Typhoon vs. Brooklyn Brawler

ER: What does it mean to the people of Sheffield, England, to see a man dubbed The Brooklyn Brawler? Had tales of the Brawler's Brooklyn Brawls made their way to South Yorkshire? Was Enzo Castellari's 1990: The Bronx Warriors been an underground UK hit, leading to a rising knowledge among UK teens of the various Five Borough Fighting Styles? Regardless, the people of Sheffield were treated to a real active Brawler performance, one that will no doubt be one of the great showcases of the best of his 1993, where he keeps running away from and running into Typhoon. He is great at getting leveled by Typhoon and building suspense by avoiding getting leveled, but things really jump a level when Typhoon finally misses an elbow and Brawler starts stomping his way through a really fun match. 

Brawler stomps away at Typhoon's head, stomps him right between the legs, stands on his throat, bites at his face, and stands on top of his back while Typhoon is draped over the bottom rope, surfing on him while pulling back the top rope reigns like Chris Elliot riding Melora Walters out to sea in Cabin Boy. He chokes and rakes at the eyes of a prostrate Typhoon, shouting out an amusing "Come on, that's a count!" while Typhoon's shoulders are down during the choke. This is among the longest Brawler control segments I've seen and I thought it was cool how he kept kicked at Typhoon's leg and really dominating this, keeping the big man down. When you knowingly go into a Typhoon match against Brooklyn Brawler, I don't think any of us would have expected it to be a mostly dominant Brawler performance with a quick and definitive Typhoon comeback victory right at the end. When Typhoon takes over, it is for good, and it is great. Brawler, who had been doing so well, makes the mistake of whipping Typhoon into the corner. Typhoon reverses that whip and follows Brawler in with a killer avalanche, then pulls Brawler by the arm directly into a perfect powerslam. I don't anticipate a better 1993 Steve Lombardi match from this one, but this is surely among his best matches of the 90s. 

6. Shawn Michaels vs. Crush

ER: I loved this. Anybody who ever got mad at me online for making fun of how terrible Shawn Michaels was during most of his last decade, should at least acknowledge how in the bag I am for 1993 Shawn Michaels. My 2000s and beyond criticisms come from a place of sadness, not glee. 1993 Shawn Michaels was a high speed John Tatum with better execution. He could push a pace without dropping the story at any point, was great at big momentum shifts, and knew how to work every size opponent instead of just mostly working the same match regardless. He was incredibly active but in ways nobody else was, flopping and stooging and bumping unnecessarily big, a great heel to get over the power of his opponent while looking like a joke, without ever looking like a joke. 

Crush and Michaels seemingly always had great chemistry as opponents. They have two big singles matches after this one in 1993: Their great King of the Ring Qualifier which is one of the great unheralded 5 minute matches, and their bloated but overall good IC Title match at King of the Ring, and there's a 1991 singles match on some Coliseum video or foreign Superstars airing. I wish we had more Rockers/Demolition matches or any of the 1993 Crush/Michaels house show matches to paint a fuller picture, but all the evidence we have paints them as natural opponents. 

This is the better version of the King of the Ring qualifier, as it had a much longer Crush control sequence before the great Crush ringpost bump, and more Michaels offense after his takeover. It's great. Michaels gets his ass beat in a non-stop sprint, getting pie-faced and pinballed across the ring, enough so that Heenan has to start bemoaning a Michaels title loss, and it's hilarious. 

"Can you imagine the embarrassment? 'Where did you lose your Intercontinental Title? In Sheffield?!' How could you ever live that down?"

Crush has a great way of catching a high speed Michaels in a bearhug - which Michaels escapes by throwing punches at his eye - and I love how he's able to go on bursts of matching Michaels for speed, then ends a quick moving exchange with something huge and forceful like a big backbreaker. There's an incredible press slam section where Crush walks Michaels around in full extension press for half a minute, walking him toward several sides of the ring and offering him up to the front row. When they saw how great Crush was at walking Michaels around the ring in a press slam, they really should have set up a Bam Bam/Spike Dudley spot with crowd plants, it would have played in Michaels highlight videos for the next 25 years. We'll settle for Michaels getting clotheslined over the top to the floor in the way that only 1993 Shawn Michaels was getting clotheslined to the floor. 

His comeback after a match-long beating is convincing, working smart spots to control a big man, like driving his knee into Crush's kidneys and then shoving him face first into the ringpost. Who remembered how great Crush was at taking ringpost bumps? Every one that he's taken in his Michaels matches has been Lawler-level great. The finish of this one is a less satisfying "Michaels just leaves" fuck finish than the KOTR Qualifier double count out, but I was really getting into the way Michaels was wearing Crush down after the ringpost bump. He just keeps coming off the ropes with axe handles until Crush gets dropped to all fours, then he comes off the ropes with an elbowdrop to the back of his neck. With an actual finish, this becomes one of the 10 best WWF matches of 1993 WWF. 

7. Lex Luger vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan 

ER: Jim Duggan was such a megastar in 1993 that he was able to drape himself in the American flag and lead the Sheffield Arena in loud USA chants. This was just a couple months after Duggan was the first person to knock Yokozuna off his feet, a moment I loved but wouldn't have thought that it would have a huge impact across the pond. Yokozuna had done an in-ring promo before this match and lingered at ringside the whole match, and when Luger's entrance music hit he was announced as "The NarCISSus" Lex Luger. Like the flower, not like the Greek myth. But they are merely afterthoughts, because the place comes unglued when Duggan's music hits. This is a 12,000 strong crowd and Duggan is wearing his USA singlet and USA kneepads, and gets the entire crowd to chant USA. Can you even entertain the IDEA of a foreign crowd chanting USA at a WWE show any time during the past 20 years?? You'd think this was in Alabama, not Yorkshire. USA chants. Loud. What a different time. Luger might as well have not even been in the ring. 

Luger works this as a stooge for Duggan, bumping around for Duggan's running clotheslines and playing into spots like trying to smash Duggan's head into the turnbuckles, only to have it reversed. Duggan was treated like Hogan and it was like I was watching this match from some weird alternate timeline. 1993 Duggan's appeal to live crowds was undeniable. 1993 Luger is a far better wrestler than Duggan, but Duggan would have drawn a far bigger number than Luger with a PPV match against Yokozuna. These two work the loosest match I've seen in 1993 WWF, leaning out of every clothesline and every strike, and it didn't matter an ounce. This was a Rick Reuschel/Mark Buehrle soft contact battle and it completely worked for the live crowd. Yokozuna sits down on Duggan's chest out on the floor and rolls him back in the ring, and there's a great show closing segment when Mr. Perfect runs out to start beating on Luger before Duggan can be pinned. As loud as the crowd was for Duggan, they react to Perfect as if he was the biggest name on the show (which was true, so that checks out). The main thing this match accomplished was making me genuinely want to see a Luger/Yoko vs. Duggan/Perfect tag match, which is a match they set up perfectly here and then never mentioned it again. All they did was run Luger/Perfect and Yoko/Duggan singles matches the rest of the tour. It's wild how many interesting workrate and fan service matches they left on the table during this era. 

Go out of your way to watch this for the great Samu/Perfect and Michaels/Crush matches, and a total surprise in Brooklyn Brawler/Typhoon. 

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Found Footage Friday: Second Annual Ilio DiPaolo Memorial Show/97 WCW House Show

Second Annual Ilio DiPaolo Memorial Show - WCW - 6/7/97

MD: This starts with Tony Parisi doing the national anthem for both Canada and the States, a pretty classy DiPaolo video with a ton of footage, and then switches from gallant to goofus for a martial artist (Gary Castanza) tribute video that really needs to be seen. Later on, they did a presentation on Buffalo boxing champs and brought out Carmen Basilio. The Legends presentation was nice, with guys like Ladd and Waldo Von Erich and Kurt Von Hess coming out and Thesz speaking. They did a presentation with Jim Kelly to set up the Savage match (more on that later). 

ER: The Ilio DiPaolo tribute video really was great, with an actual shocking amount of DiPaolo footage against at least a dozen different opponents. WWE owns more footage than any company in history and none of their video packages come close to using this many unique matches per package. Perhaps even more shocking, is how much footage they had for martial artist Gary Castanza's tribute package. I'm not sure my family has a photograph of me later than my high school graduation photo, but WCW is somehow in possession of hours upon hours of Gary Castanza footage to cull from. We're lucky they had that access, as Castanza is one of my all time favorite breeds of martial artist: A man who looks like Randy Marsh who also invented his "own style of fighting". You should watch him fight, but you will not be surprised that much of his "own style of fighting" involved standing in one place and throwing guys who grab him in a very specific way, like a Steven Seagal aikido expo. From the plentiful footage of this man's life, it appears like he fleeced a ton of police departments into paying for his self defense training programs, and I will always get behind a guy who got paid money to make cops look like idiots. Oh, and definitely watch 12:47 of the video to see Castanza screaming in full close-up while wearing some kind of bite suit helmet. After a warm and somber video tribute to this local community hero, Brian Knobbs brings Castanza's widow and three young children in the ring while yelling "MAKE SOME NOISE" into the mic directly next to their faces. 

Greg Valentine/Dory Funk Jr. vs. Tony Parisi/Gino Brito

MD: This had the local newspeople announcing and seconding and was very much the legends match on the card. And then Valentine and Funk skipped the shine entirely and went right to heat, the jerks! It wasn't idle stuff either as they were getting it on Parisi and Valentine kept rushing over to elbow Brito in the skull to stop tags and draw off the ref. Valentine/Dory teamed a bit in 83 and they were a well-oiled machine here, really complementing one another. Valentine, of course, wasn't afraid to bump and stooge around the ring when it was comeback time either. After a spirited, but brief, comeback ending with a Brito figure-four on the Hammer, they went into a second round of heat, building to Parisi having enough and rushing in and a DQ-drawing blatant ref bump. The fans didn't love the non-finish but at least old-timer babyfaces got their hands raised. For guys who were very much inactive, Brito and Parisi more or less held up their own. I was expecting more matwork and feeling out, not a trip straight to heatseeking, but it all worked out for the best. And hey, post match newsman second for the heels, Art Wander went after the babyface second with way more fire than you'd expect, and was revealed to be nWo.

ER: This match did not have any right being as entertaining as it was, as 3/4 of the wrestlers were 55 years old and two of those men had not been worked in a wrestling ring for a decade. Tony Parisi showing out was an especially nice surprise, and after seeing him here I'm bummed we didn't get him working any northeast 90s indies. This was all about Valentine and Funk being assholes and throwing nothing but elbows and jaw rattling uppercuts, cutting off the ring and making blind tags. Parisi was a really great babyface here, and the crowd was insanely loud for he and Brito. This was a huge show with a listed attendance of 13,000, held in the arena where the Buffalo Sabers play. This show drew a larger crowd than nine (!) of their 1997 PPVs. From the sound of the crowd, it certainly feels like that 13,000 figure is correct. Heel Valentine and Dory were so entertaining, and Parisi was really great at getting more and more fired up until he was throwing punches with the energy of a babyface half his age. There were so many satisfying beats in this, with some totally unexpected surprises, like Dory hitting a fucking brainbuster on Gino Brito, bringing him into the ring from the apron. 

Valentine really cracked the ref to draw the DQ, and the ref had this great backward leap into a flat back bump landing. Then we got a post-match with local newscasters that was insane! Art Wander was a Buffalo sports radio personality who was definitely older than any of the match participants, and he went after another sportscaster like a fucking psycho. He tore the guys' cool ass jacket and they scrapped and got thrown to the mat in a way that...honestly looked like what an actual fight between two men in their mid 50s/early 60s would actually look like. If two of the weird older guys at your office got in an unexpected fight over something stupid, it would look exactly like this, which means this ruled. You can still find Angelfire pages that list Jim Neidhart as a onetime member of DX just for getting tricked by them on one episode of Raw, and I think that means Art Wander should be listed as an official nWo member. Also, the page has both of them represented by South Park caricatures. 

Dean Malenko vs. Alex Wright

MD: Eric can speak much better than I can about 97 WCW and Dean in specific. That said, they really did adapt to the crowd for this match. Wright trashed the town on the mic to begin and it was for the US title so there were some stakes, but they crowd just didn't go up for the early matwork. It was good too with Wright using cartwheels to position himself. The second Dean started to lay in some shots and throw a suplex, they came alive, and they loved booing Wright's dancing and loved it more when he ate a dropkick over the top as comeuppance for it. They shifted to a formula where Wright would cheat to stay on top, throw uppercuts and stomps to keep the crowd simmering, and then Dean would come back by beating him around the ring until he cheated to get back heat. There was a pretty good near-fall laden finishing stretch with the crowd hating Wright's cut-offs and going nuts for the Texas Cloverleaf. I'm not sure if this one was because they had more freedom to adapt as it was a house show and not a PPV or what, but they did a good job of it here.

ER: The two Ilio DiPaolo shows he worked were literally the only times Alex Wright worked Buffalo, and it's to our benefit as he immediately recognizes that he is going to be booed as a Eurotrash heel and fully plays up that archetype. This was very soon after Wright started acting more overtly heel on television, so this is his big house show breakout with the new character. Because of the defined face/heel dynamic, and because Wright works a lot of this getting heat on Malenko, it is a much better match than they would have had on actual WCW TV or PPV. It lengthens sequences that would have been outright eliminated on TV, like every part of Wright working the mat, allowing for that extended Wright heel control that there wouldn't have been enough time for. WCW was not a house show company at this point, and we don't have anywhere close to as many WCW house show fancams as we do WWF, so I loved this look at them working to a crowd rather than working to an Orlando theme park studio. Malenko's best matches during this era are when he is the active underdog, fighting to comeback against a larger opponent. Wright was often presented on TV as a cruiserweight and here he more correctly works as a big tall guy who can keep a little guy down. 

Malenko had a really nice corner clothesline and hard vertical suplex, but instead of getting the long and pointless Malenko chinlock, Wright quickly broke that chinlock with a jawbreaker and took over. Wright worked uppercuts, leaping kicks, hard ground and pound, axe handles, all good control while the fans hated him. Malenko really benefits from working as fast underdog, as he's good at timing and good at quick execution, so his brief comebacks (like when he dodged a Wright charge and hit a cool quick crossbody off the top) work really well. The finish was sudden but worked nicely within the context of the match, as Malenko again dodged a Wright charge at the last minute, sending Wright neck first into the top rope on a missed crossbody, allowing the quick Cloverleaf application. This would not have been the match we'd have otherwise gotten from them in 1997, and I wish we had more looks at what could have been happening on WCW midcards. 

 

Public Enemy vs. The Steiner Brothers

MD: We have several Steiners vs. PE matches but they all tend to go around 6 minutes. This got at least double that and they used the extra time for pure, glorious house show BS. They jawwed on the house mic, insulted the Bills, insulted the crowd, and then Rocco refused to lock up with Scott. He stalled his way right into Rick's fist on the apron, then got upset and tried to leave until they threatened to fine them $1000 if they didn't make the ten count. Unsurprisingly, the fans loved the mad scramble back to the ring and Rocco had so much heat that someone was shining a laser pointer at him. That's pure 1997 heat right there.

They made good use of the back half of their time, with Grunge really throwing himself into all of the Steiners' shots, Scott returning the favor for Public Enemy, Rick cleaning house on a hot tag with the suplexes and Steinerlines you'd expect, Rocco and Scott setting up the finish with a great bit of chair choking to keep them out of the way, and said finish being Grunge own-goaling himself through the table. Scott's frustrating by this point (and probably far earlier) as he has all of the tools and the size and the look to go with them, is perfectly willing to sell and hit hard, and has a real affection for Rick, but just refuses to connect with the crowd. That animosity for them that he channeled so well as Big Poppa Pump a year later, made him a tough babyface to get behind here. Rick would be mimicking a chicken and driving Rock nuts and Scott barely wanted to revel in things with the crowd when they were loving the ten count. Really good stooging performance by Grunge and especially Rock here. All the stuff you probably only got on house shows.

ER: There were a lot of Steiners/Public Enemy tags but never ever one like this. As I say a lot, WCW was NOT a house show fed at this point. They were a TV product, and they had a LOT of TV. This tribute show was nearly halfway through 1997, and WCW had only run 23 house shows. For comparison sake, WWF had already run 56 house shows, but they also only had 3 hours of TV a week. Anyway, as I said, even though we got a ton of Steiners/PE TV matches, I've never seen one like this, with Public Enemy playing overt crowd-antagonizing heels with the Steiners almost as after thoughts. If you somehow saw this match, and had never seen either team before, there's no doubt you would leave thinking that Public Enemy were the big stars and the Steiners were more of a generic meathead team. 1997 Steiners just do not have the same appeal as they had even a couple years (maybe even one year?) prior. Scott just looked tired. He had no energy, barely engaged the crowd, and often stood on the apron leaning on the ropes listlessly waiting for his hot tag. And really, in this match, that's all he needed to do. 

Public Enemy were perfect at stalling, hitting all the beats, sprinting back to the ring to get one hand under the ropes to break a count (after being threatened with a $1,000 fine). Rocco got up on the guardrail to get down in people's faces, and threw stiff shots at Scott until getting caught in a press slam and thrown into Grunge. Any time PE would take a single piece of offense, they'd roll to the floor to stall more. Grunge gets upended by Rick's high powerslam, rolls to the floor selling his back while Rocco called for time outs and got on the railing again. I loved Grunge taking over by blindsiding Scott with a lariat from the apron, turning the match briefly into a PE brawl, with Rock choking Scott on the floor with a chair. Grunge went through his own tables a lot, and this was a great version of that spot, as you're watching him set up his table and know that he's taking too long, and the crowd gets excited when they see him taking too long, and of course crashes right through it into a loss. Heel Public Enemy could have been a real great use of them in WCW, but I also understand their value in dancing with Orlando grandmas. They were a fun babyface team, but after seeing them here it really feels like we missed out on a potentially great WCW heel run. 

Randy Savage vs. Diamond Dallas Page

MD: Savage and his dad interrupted the Jim Kelly presentation and the back and forth was just a bit too long as Kelly obviously was stretching outside of his skillset. Still, due to both the angle and the sheer star power, Page was super over and Savage had tons of heat. They worked something of a sprint, with Savage explosive in his cutoffs and cheapshots and Page putting it all out there including a dive. Finish had a ref bump and Kelly knocking Savage off the top to set up the diamond cutter, with him going into business for himself with a couple of elbow drops that the ref had to ignore. Jim Kelly was not a top-tier celebrity interloper but they worked around him well enough and the crowd was happy anyway. 

ER: Missy Hyatt called Jim Kelly an absolutely clueless lover, and he appears to be equally clueless at doing wrestling angles. Unlike his encounter with Missy, this went much longer than a few seconds. When Kelly and Macho Man were shoving each other, it didn't even look like Kelly had been involved in any kind of physical altercation in his life. This man has no sort of physical charisma. You wouldn't have even guessed he was an athlete, let alone a Hall of Fame quarterback. He looks and moves much more like David Flair appearing on Nitro before he started to train. The "elbowdrop" Kelly hit on Savage after the match-ending Diamondcutter was one of the least athletic things I've seen, and I had to watch it a couple of times just to make sure that it was supposed to be an elbowdrop and not just him slipping and falling on Savage. A slip and fall probably would have looked better and made better impact. 

But the match between Savage and DDP kicked plenty of ass. DDP and Savage had great chemistry, both knew how to bump really well for each other, and DDP's aggression played well into Savage's stooging, like when DDP flew out of the ring with a pescado when Savage rolled to the floor to stall. Every Savage punch was treated like a big moment due to DDP's selling, the way he staggered with split legs after a standing blow or the way Savage blocked a sunset flip with one pointed shot. I thought DDP's offense looked really great as taken by Savage, like that awesome high lift atomic drop or the pancake piledriver, but I wish we could have seen a couple more beats of action before Kelly shoved Savage off the top. Every camera missed the Diamondcutter, but somehow captured two different angles of Jim Kelly falling on Savage with far worse form that Art Wander had earlier. They hilariously cut to one of the Bills linemen at ringside immediately after Kelly's "elbowdrop" and he was making this perfect "yeah I don't know about that, man..." face. That elbowdrop was worse than every single interception that man threw during his near complete quest to lose every single Super Bowl of the 1990s. 

Chris Benoit vs. Meng

MD: If not for FFF I don't really see Benoit anymore. They have to come to me. That said, I wasn't as against seeing this one as I might have been five years ago. I wouldn't have sought it out, but I didn't avoid it. And it was ok. This crowd was very much into guys hitting each other hard and when they did that, the match worked for me. That was the first half or so (which instilled some broader issues with everything overall maybe). Benoit would charge forth and really put himself into his kicks and chops and punches. Meng would absorb. Benoit would make a mistake, like slamming Meng's head into the turnbuckle or go for one too many chops. Meng would take back over until Benoit was able to miss a move. Eventually things built to Meng pile driving Benoit on the floor and then leaning on him with chokes and what not. It was fine but I don't think the fans were along for the ride. They wanted more of the early stuff and not heat and comeback. Benoit would get a hope spot or two but again, it wasn't scrapping. The finish had a German and a dive, but when Benoit went for his second dive, Meng caught him with the Tongan Death Grip, Benoit in the ring, Meng on the apron. He got counted out, a finish that satisfied no one and didn't accomplish anything that an agent might hope it would on paper. If they cut out the middle and end and just had them throw themselves at one another for another five minutes until the thing got thrown out, I have a feeling this particular audience would have been all the happier.

ER: I've been writing ALL about 1997 WCW for an upcoming book project, and Chris Benoit is someone (maybe the literal only one) that I am getting tired of writing about. Before starting that project I was like Matt, not actively seeking out Benoit and only writing about him if he was part of a show or match that I was only writing about for other, not-Benoit guys. But writing about 1997 WCW means that I'll be writing about 60-80 Benoit matches and well, that was my choice.

But I did really like this match and I appreciated how Meng worked it much more than I appreciated Benoit's contributions. Meng is the most feared man in the last 30 years of pro wrestling, at least to me, because the thought of losing my nose - let alone from a person biting my nose off my face! -  is one of my biggest nightmares. Maybe my biggest. My nose is easily my best facial feature. It ties my entire face together. If I lost this beauty I have no idea how I would go about my life. I've grown too accustomed to the way I look and cherish the few plus features I've been blessed with. It's too late for me to rebuild my confidence from scratch and confront life with a massive physical deformity. I handled several years of high school acne, but I can't go through that stage again. As I do not actively seek out fights with huge Tongans, I should be safe, but just knowing there are people out there who could conceivably bite off a nose has haunted me. 

However, this Meng who bites noses clean off faces is not a Meng that shows up in the ring very often. With all the stories you've heard about Meng, you'd expect more existence of savage in-ring beatdowns, and those matches just don't really exist. He gets his nose biting kicks outside the ring, sunshine. But this match is more of a glimpse of what that Meng would look like, and it's great. He throws two chops to Benoit that would end the day of a normal man, and works a lot of this like a real freight train. His big arm swinging strikes all looked great, and he would punctuate strike exchanges with a big smashing headbutt. He also threw transition moves like bodyslams with real big move energy. Benoit's big strength is that he has no problem weathering the kind of beating this Meng could throw at him, and I liked how he fought back by timing boots to stop charges, and that suicide dive he built to was huge. Meng's Piledriver on the floor was the kind of mean badass shit he rarely did on WCW TV, another glimpse into an alternate WCW that this show has given us. I didn't mind the Tongan death grip cool down sections, even though this would have made a better 7 minute all out war that just ended with a DQ or count out, if it was going to end in a count out anyway. The cool down kind of built to a finish that wasn't going to be happening, so why not just lay waste to each other and go out in an explosion? 

Dean Malenko vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. 

MD: This was supposed to be Rey vs. Juvi and Juster came out saying Juvi wasn't there but they still wanted to give the crowd WCW's best high-flyer and he had an open challenge. Dean came out to put the title up. In front of this crowd, I don't think Juvi would have done the trick either. You probably needed Fuerza. Dean did an admirable job hitting his wrestling-someone-smaller-than-him offense and getting Rey everywhere that he needed to be to hit his stuff, most spectacular being the press up to the top from what felt like the middle of the ring so he could hit a twisting body press. He caught all the dives too. Even though Dean was de facto bully and the crowd oohed and ahhed at Rey's hope spots and comeback, Dean and Wright had managed to get the crowd behind him earlier and he was all the more admirable for putting the title on the line with no notice in his second match of the night. Rey wasn't exactly drawing the usual amount of sympathy, even when he was writhing on the outside. Still, you can't fault the action, especially considering Dean was doing double duty. Another finish (a double pin) that the fans hated. There's very little reason for these sorts of finishes on a house show. I'm not saying they could have made Dean in Buffalo by having him cleanly staving off Rey's challenge, but it might have helped for future appearances without hurting Rey in the least. 

ER: I think this era of Malenko and Rey were a good match for each other, while also being capable of playing into each other's worst traits. Juvy was supposed to be in Malenko's spot, and even though we got a lot of Juvy/Rey TV matches from this time I would have really liked to see a house show Juvy/Rey. Despite what promoter Gary Juster proclaimed about Rey before the match, I think Juvy was easily the craziest and even most inventive high flyer WCW had on their roster. Rey is a legend and deserves every piece of praise he gets, but 1997 Juventud was on some whacked out shit. You watch months of Juvy matches, and you see how many different pieces of offense he was coming up with every time out. Rey had certain spots he always hit and tended to hit them the same way; Juvy had a higher error rate but also tried out a ton of new material. There are comics who can work their classics, and then there are guys who go out there constantly working new bits and throwing twists on old material. Rey could surprise with the greats, but when he was in with a Technically Good Base like Malenko, you were almost surely going to get the exact same match Rey and Malenko often had with each other. There's less Wild Card factor when they wrestle each other. Juvy - in the best of times and worst of times - truly embodied Wild Card Spirit. This also made me think about Juvy vs. Malenko, which is a match that barely happened, despite both guys working constantly on TV at the same place for 3 years while having exactly these style of matches with everyone else. 

Rey/Malenko matches always have several incredible looking moments, and also seem to be paced exactly the same: They go go go for a couple minutes, then they go into long stretches of Dean just holding Rey on the mat until Rey gets up and runs fast for 20 seconds, and then Dean holds onto him for another minute, and it keeps going like that until eventually one of the times Rey stands up leads to a disappointing finish. Dean is a strong base for Rey, and knows how to set up spots that end with spectacular Rey showcases, but also there's a completely detached artlessness to a lot of it. You'll get one of the most insane and perfectly executed spots - like Rey getting whipped up onto the turnbuckles and flying back with a corkscrew moonsault that Dean runs directly into - but then it's followed up with Dean looking downright bored waiting for 5 o'clock to hit while holding onto a rear naked choke. Whenever Malenko is wrestling anyone smaller than he, there never seems to be any kind of sense that he's using these holds to advance the match. It almost always seems like he's only using these holds so that both can catch their breath for the next stunt. Resting is somewhat essential when you're moving like they do, but it doesn't have to feel so blatant. Malenko in control often makes it feel like there is no sense of an actual match or any kind of fight, but much more two circus performers that are catching their breath before their next trapeze stunt. 

Rey doesn't help that feeling, either. He goes along with all of it, as whenever he's pulled to the mat he is always immediately unmoving and practically comatose, tongue literally hanging out the side of his mouth like he's a vegetable, until it's time for him to "fight" to his feet (in quotations as it's usually just him standing up while Dean loosely acknowledges his headlock) and then sprinting and jumping for another 20 seconds. Rey was just not very engaging in holds yet, which I think is the main reason that they weren't drawing any sympathy from this specific crowd. It feels like too obvious an exhibition, when Rey simply flips a switch to go from innovative flyer to a bedridden grandmother too weak to reach for her pain pills. Rey got so much better at drawing sympathy in holds the older he got, and he's been one of the best sympathetic salesmen for ages now. 

The pacing for this pairing will just always be lifeless holds interspersed with some of the coolest movement you've seen, and I don't think it would take much to tweak that formula into a more fully formed match. Rey's rope flip seated senton to the floor looked amazing, and the springboard version into the ring looked just as great, and Malenko catches each of them like a real pro...but watching Malenko matches at this stage of my life means that I'm always going to wish that Malenko could have acted like a small human man actually landed ass first on his chest, instead of just viewing every single move as an opportunity to start a series of seesaw 2 counts. The moves all look spectacular, but they sure would mean a lot more if every single one of them didn't lead to Malenko just turning them into his own pinfall sequence. 

Lex Luger/Giant vs. Scott Hall/Kevin Nash

MD: Fun house show Hall performance here. At one point he was stooging around after three inverted atomic drops by Luger and you can see Nash breaking on the apron. Giant was on the apron for the entirety of the match until the hot tag as Luger worked the shine on Hall and Nash took over on Lex from there. You could do a lot worse than having a massive bellowing presence in the corner slamming the turnbuckle and cheering Lex on. Nash, to his credit, took a big bump over the top off of a Giant dropkick after the hot tag. Lex flew around a bit when he was knocking Hall about, but then didn't go down on the power slam towards the end, which was a little weird. Finish was Luger (the illegal man) racking Hall (the illegal man) while Giant stopped Nash from using the belt and used it himself to draw a DQ that also looked like Luger and Giant might have won the belts. There was a lot of trash in the ring at the end and the funny image of Hall and Nash laid out as the Fugees played over the loudspeaker. They probably ran this exact match a bunch in this era.

ER: This was a big house show match in 1997, and it's a good match with big star power. But I also think it's a repeat example of how Giant/Luger didn't ever quite fully click as a team, and yet another example of what incredible chemistry Hall and Nash had. This was a great Hall performance, and a great Nash performance, and watching them felt like they could have been placed in any era of US wrestling history and stood out as the most popular, charismatic team. The Outsiders bumped for a significant portion of this and yet felt like huge stars the entire time. Hall stooged around for Luger and took several inverted atomic drops, never going full Rick Rude, but always knowing exactly what he was doing. As much as I enjoyed their stooging, I thought the best parts were Nash going after Luger and then bumping big down the stretch for both Luger and Giant. Nash throws his big knee lifts, back elbows, and big boots, while Hall runs distraction from the apron (including getting forearmed off by Luger into a big bump on the floor) to allow Nash to remain in control.

Giant's strength is a role reversal, as he's better at taking a beating and building to a Luger tag, than he is standing on the apron waiting for his hot tag. The weakest part of his apron work is that the more verbal he gets, the more ridiculous he sounds. There's just something dopey about the biggest man in the arena yelling "Come on Lex, you're #1!" You're a fucking GIANT, dude, just yell a bunch of words that aren't. You don't even need to form sentences, just fucking shout. Maybe Andre could have pulled off yelling "You got this, pal!" at Haku or Baba (in fact he definitely could have, he's the greatest), but The Giant cannot. 

Kevin Nash somehow got summed up (by people who hate wrestling) as a lazy worker who always took the night off, and the more House Show Nash shows up from this era the more ridiculous that summation looks. Nash is also a giant, and the way he bumps in this match is yet another example of how he was one of the best bumping big men of his time. There's one gigantic bump, when Giant finally makes the hot tag and is running clotheslines through the Outsiders, and he throws a dropkick that sends Nash flying over the top to the floor. Nash takes a Berzerker level bump to the floor, and he's one of the few guys from the 90s who was actually bigger than John Nord! But it's not only his big bumps to the floor (which he almost always used in big matches, and in different ways), it's the way he goes down like a light for that belt shot, or the way he takes big man bumps without slowing down the offense feed. The man was a really great bumper who somehow got the reputation of someone who barely moved in the ring. 

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WWF Superstars 2/27/93: Three Maulings and an Under 5 Minute Classic

1. Yokozuna vs. Brian West

ER: This started with Brian West getting run right fucking over with one of Yokozuna's greatest clotheslines, and things didn't get any better for him. Yokozuna had two minutes to look like an unstoppable physical force, and he did it without breaking a sweat. He looked amazing in his white tights and black mawashi, and Brian West looked disgusting in his inverted singlet. West gets his ass kicked pillar to post while wearing a singlet where the straps go on the inside of the nipples. You never want to be out there in a dickey singlet top while a 500 pound man is throwing punches and headbutts at you. When the coroner is having your family identify the body, you don't want to be wearing something as stupid as Brian West. Yokozuna's legdrop is a thing of all time wrestling beauty: the form, the impact, the way he rolls off, the impressive safety of it all. He throws West with his belly to belly and sets up the banzai splash perfectly, running into West with another clothesline that drops him on his back, right into position. This was Yokozuna working with Terminator efficiency. Imagine a 500 pound Terminator chasing a kid through an arcade. Different ballgame. 

2. Nasty Boys vs. Mark Ming/Jim Gorman

ER: You always see people talk about the bad luck of showing up to your job duty and finding out you were opposite the Steiners, and that's valid. But the Nasty Boys are right there with them for most unfortunate gig worker opponent. Sometimes Knobbs and Sags show up with a literal lip licking intensity and desire to beat a couple guys up. It usually isn't unprofessional, and this match wasn't either. But there are levels of "professional" and a lot of them don't include elbowing a guy in the eye socket to start a Saturday morning. Maybe Mark Ming is a master salesman. There are several examples of Mark Ming doing weekend job work and maybe it would be worthwhile to examine his selling in those matches. So maybe Knobbs pulled his shot and Ming's selling is just so good that he slumped into the middle rope looking like a man who suddenly feared for his safety and was not expecting to be hit in the eyeball on this day. 

Knobbs looks so excited to beat Mark Ming's ass that he really had one of his best back alley ass kicking performances here, just a couple months before the Nasties' WWF exit. There are a lot of guys on this 1993 roster who are really busting their asses and wreaking hell on jobbers before the major spring roster transition. I love when the Nasty Boys throw out all civility and just fall on guys. Knobbs and Sags each do elbowdrops in this match that are real asshole older brother elbowdrops. They are big guys who just flop full weight onto other guys, leaping off one bed and onto the other with no regard for their younger brother or their bed frames. Sags hits an elbowdrop off the top so crushing that I would have rather had a couch thrown onto me. There's a shot of Knobbs standing on the apron at one point, leaning forward on his tippy toes over the top rope, wide eyed in almost childlike glee, licking his lips while Sags beat some dude's ass, and that shot kind of sums up the Nasty Boys. What's the proper term for an occasionally annoying asshole? Ask Rob Dibble or Norm Charlton. 

3. Doink vs. Big Boss Man

ER: This match is insane. It's Boss Man's last taped match of this WWF run, and it's a generous performance that helped Doink look like a very real threat. There's an alternate timeline 1993 where Vince doesn't panic after Hogan's long-forecast exit, and held steady through the year with Bret/Crush/Tatanka/Perfect/Duggan as the top babyfaces, and Yokozuna/Luger/Doink/Bigelow/Razor as the top heels, and every single person would have been better for it. Crush's feud with Doink killed his potential big run, but that's on WWF for unnecessarily keeping both men mired in it for half the year. If Luger stays heel, Crush slams Yokozuna, and Doink continues working amateur shootstyle matwork against guys 100 pounds heavier than he, THEN you have a promotion with a thriving summer. Heel Doink was an incredible role that Matt Borne played to perfection. People fondly remember the series with Mr. Perfect, the PPV gem against Bret, and weekend gems like his technical sprint with Bob Backlund, but I think this match against Boss Man was Borne at his aggressive bulldog matwork best. It being Boss Man's last WWF TV match for 5 years, and how dominant Doink was at the front end, looked like they were destroying Boss Man at his going away party. But the comeback came and showcased how at his best Boss Man was always just Dustin Rhodes, if Dustin was carrying an extra 100 pounds. I mean I don't remember Black Reign being anywhere near as good as Boss Man, but in theory.

Doink hits Boss Man upside the head with a cardboard box, which we are lead to believe was loaded, but either way Boss Man sells a box across the head as if someone cheap-shotted him with a pipe. It was almost shocking how dominant Doink was, but after a win over Tugboat and his mauling of Boss Man, this was the time to show how Doink could dismantle an opponent of any size. As I said up top, this match is insane. You don't often get to see a guy dressed up like a Spirit Store policeman working shootstyle amateur matwork with a clown, so this match had a deranged "technical street fight breaks out at a southern states Halloween party" feel to it. Doink twisted Boss Man's neck into a neckbreaker and dragged him to the mat with a drop toehold, then worked his legs into a fought for STF. It's so surreal watching a man in slightly rubbed off clown makeup work snug hammerlocks and half nelson grapevines against a man as large as Boss Man, and there's a moment where Doink traps Boss Man's arm and shoot turns him into a pin like he was Jack Brisco. Doink even plants him with a high back suplex and a tremendous fireman's carry takedown into an armbar! Doink completely eliminated the size difference while in control, making it look like Boss Man couldn't break these holds or stop these takedowns even if he knew they were coming. 

But Boss Man's comeback is believable and loudly received, as he press slams Doink off the top and goes on a real tear. I love when Boss builds speed and hits the ropes harder and harder, pushing the pace and throwing punches the entire time. He thunders into Doink with a corner clothesline and throws heavy corner punches, short uppercuts under the chin, a big boot, and slides to the floor with an uppercut after using his weight to see if he could break the ropes with Doink draped over them. Does the Georgia lawman get green spray paint sprayed into his eyes at the finish? Yes, but this was a fucking fight and it deserved to end dirty. 1993 Boss Man still had so much left in the tank. In his last couple weeks under contract he worked house show singles matches against Flair and Lawler, which I wish we had. We left a lot of fun potential Boss Man matches on the table that year, but in exchange we got the All Japan run that was probably the biggest gift his career gave us. Watch this match immediately.

4. The Narcissist Lex Luger vs. Jim Powers

ER: Luger and Powers matched up several times in short WCW singles matches a few years after this, Luger a major babyface and Powers with 40 extra pounds of muscle. Their March 1997 WCW match was their best competitive match, an entertaining babyface vs. babyface match. This one is a totally different dynamic obviously, with Luger as a freshly debuted top heel and Powers a babyface who was mostly working house shows. Powers looked like early career Rick Martel here, and four years later he looked like an American Gladiator.  Luger's work as the Narcissist was far and away the best work he ever did in WWF. His offense never looked better, his timing was better utilized, and it was a much more natural fit. He looked more at home taking apart Jimmy Powers in 90 seconds than he did in any 90 seconds of his All American Lex run. Powers was given some good offense in their 1997 encounters, but in 1993 it was all Luger, and he had a tight 90 seconds of material. 

I loved how they started this with Luger flipping out over Powers stealing a pose in his trifold mirror, blindsiding him with an awesome lariat and never letting up. He beats Powers up, and Luger is cool when he's smugly beating people up. He throws Powers chest first into the turnbuckles and lifts him high up for a back suplex, and the bionic forearm he hits would look like one of the sickest match finishers of 2022. Whoever was in production realized this, and we got to see that elbow from several different angles. Luger got up a real head of steam to hit the killshot, and it's a moved that looks as good in real time as it does in slo motion. The best slo mo replay showed Luger holding that elbow in tight to his body, fist to ear, Powers bumping it at the last possible split second. We got robbed of a two year Narcissist run, for nothing. Doctors get in the ring to attend to Powers after the match, Powers selling like he was knocked cold. They could have had Luger murdering men like this all year and built to a huge Bret/Luger title match at Summerslam. What might have been. 

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WCW Nitro 12/30/96

1. The Amazing French Canadians vs. Public Enemy

ER: This had some odd uses of time, with the Canadians giving us the whole interrupted off-time National Anthem bit, and Public Enemy taking forever to get into the ring, really hitting every side of the ring to see how many people in Knoxville are waving their hands in the air. When they're wrestling, it's an amusing match. There are fun sloppy punch outs and an old lady in the front row giving advice and encouragement to PE. Both Canadians take nice backdrops (Carl went higher) after a fun punch out, but then get kept on the floor for while PE block the ropes for nearly a third of the match. Rougeau is great at getting himself on a table for PE, something hardly anyone does well. Jacques moves so Rocco Rock puts Grunge through a table with a Drive-By, and then the Canadians win in-ring with their own top rope assisted senton. I don't know what they call drive-bys in Canada, but it's probably got something to do with kicking at someone while riding a black horse. 

2. Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Ultimo Dragon

ER: These two were the big cruiserweight winners at Starrcade the night before, each getting a long time in their matches to build whatever they wanted. Here they didn't even get a third of the time they got at Starrcade, and the match felt disjointed and incomplete because of it. Dragon's strikes all looked very light, and his timing was off on his tilt-a-whirls. Liger had a lot of crisp stuff, like a nice cartwheel tope en reversa and follow up rolling senton, and a hard powerbomb (that was far more respectful than any of his powerbombs to Rey the night before). Dragon can be really lazy about how he sells opponent offense and sets up his own offense, like when he hits a light body slam and nothing else to set up a big missed top rope splash (a move I've never seen him do unless he catches boots on the landing). I did like Dragon using Liger as a jungle gym, scrambling all over him in the corner to hit a nice frankensteiner, and the tiger suplex follow up looked painful while also surprising for the finish. It seems crazy to me to have Liger win a long dominant match against Rey, only to turn around and have Ultimo Dragon take some offense until it was his turn. Things feel wrapped up too neatly and too feebly. 

3. Strap Match: Konnan vs. Michael Wallstreet

ER: This was supposed to be Konnan vs. Big Bubba, which sounds better on paper than Konnan vs. Wallstreet. Wallstreet issues a threat on Bubba's behalf before cheapshotting Konnan with a strap. Believe it or not WCW didn't run many strap matches in their existence, only a dozen or so (and half of those were Sting/Vader). But somehow one of the strap matches they chose to run was a Michael Wallstreet match, all 2.5 minutes of it. Wallstreet whips Konnan, takes a long journey to climb the ropes only to jump off into Konnan's boot, and then Konnan whips Wallstreet. Even with this match being under 3 minutes, they still managed to give us the most common strap match finish, taking up a huge portion of the match with it, and the second any viewer saw Konnan tag the turnbuckle immediately after Wallstreet tagged his first buckle they should have know where this was heading. 

4. Hugh Morrus vs. Kensuke Sasaki

ER: At minimum, this was a couple of guys who had no problem hitting hard and not backing down. They didn't take that as far as they could have, and the finish was as weak as can be, but it's fun to see Kensuke Sasaki hit Hugh Morrus as hard as he can while Morrus acts like none of it phases him. There are hard hitting shoulderblocks, lots of kicks to the stomach, and fast clubs to the back. Sasaki throws whistling chops, Morrus rakes the eyes and throws mediocre punches, makes hard impact on his clotheslines and hits a pretty unforgiving avalanche. Sasaki hits how own just-as-hard lariat, a big powerslam, and his over the shoulder rolling arm drag. The finish is incredibly lazy and one that WCW went to a lot, where someone with a top rope finisher would just take a lot of offense, then hit one singular bodyslam and hit their finisher. The No Laughing Matter hits, and the ref has to slow down his count because Sonny Onoo is late breaking up the pin. This was just two guys filling time until an uninspiring finish, even playing as background to Eric Bischoff confiscating a VHS tape of Hogan losing to Piper, but they hit each other hard and that's enough to make it the best match of the first hour of this Nitro. 

5. Harlem Heat vs. Faces of Fear

ER: This had some timing mistakes and a messy finish, and is really only saved by Faces of Fear's willingness to lean into Harlem Heat's kicks. Harlem Heat really don't show a lot of team chemistry (although to be fair, a lot of that is Stevie Ray being where he doesn't belong), and a lot of their simplest strikes show a lot of light. There are a few big moments in the match, like Barbarian taking a stiff Booker axe kick and not going down, only to get leveled right after by a Harlem sidekick. Barbarian also hit an insane top rope belly to belly on Booker that really threw him to the opposite corner, and to put over how dangerous that landing could have been, Col. Parker came out in his French Legionnaire get-up and whipped Sherri's ass with his riding crop. French Canadians interfere, Harlem Heat get the win even though the interference was aimed at them, and this should have ended with Faces of Fear massacring everyone instead of just rolling away. 

6. Disco Inferno vs. Glacier

ER: This was great, loved every second of it. Glacier was still pretty new, only a few months in, and I'm not sure there was a person on the WCW roster who could stooge better for Glacier's offense at this point. He's great at setting up his own ass kicking, too, taunting Glacier on the mic after Glacier's long entrance. "Look Glacier, you're career is just starting." Telling Glacier that if he knew what was best for him he'd leave, before Disco embarrassed him. I love that stuff. When Glacier finally just grabs him with a top wristlock throw, Disco holds onto the mic the entire time and yells into it in pain through the whole bump. Not all of Glacier's kicks and palm thrusts look great, but Disco makes every single legsweep and leaping kick and palm strike look as great as they will look. Disco pinballed and did pratfalls and made a ton of great OFF noises every time he caught heel (palm or foot) to the breadbox. 

There's a great transition to Disco's control, when he tries to use referee Scott Dickinson as a human shield, distracting Glacier enough to plaster him with a great western lariat. All of Disco's offense looked great, like his snapped off swinging neckbreaker or his elbowdrop straight down onto Glacier's throat. But what looks even better is Disco posing for far too long on the turnbuckles as Glacier does a kip up to a big reaction (obviously, because kip ups are cool) in the background, then hits a flat out gorgeous highlight reel Cryonic Kick as Disco turns around and jumps right into it. You could make an effective Glacier video package using shots of this kick a few times. His form is excellent, the arc on the kick is impressively vertical, and it looks straight out of a John Woo movie. This is the finisher of a guy who is justifying his push. Loved this. 

7. Chris Benoit vs. Chris Jericho

ER: A great example of the 4 minute Nitro workrate match. It's a fairly breathless 4 minute sprint, exactly what fans of these two would enjoy seeing. Tenay refers to him as "Mr. Intensity" Christ Benoit, but that nickname doesn't really fit (and I don't think ever caught on). Benoit isn't really intense here, so much as he has a real vicious dead-eyed performance. Both guys are showcased and get big spots, and things ramp up quick with a great Jericho springboard dropkick that sends Benoit sprawling off the apron, and follows it up with a missile dropkick to the floor! Benoit's offense is delivered really violently; he catches Jericho with a hotshot, throws hard stomps to the back of the head, blistering chops, and a hard landing fast elbowdrop. Jericho refuses to get run over and slams into Benoit with a stiff falling lariat to give the match a good breath. Benoit wins fairly easily with a big back suplex off the top, but this was an action-packed 4 minutes. 

A super entertaining promo happens in the entrance way after the match, with Flair strutting around in a college pullover, Woman looking drop dead gorgeous, Mongo wearing a chambray shirt the same color as his jeans, and another great Debra McMichael promo. Debra is an extremely underappreciated character in wrestling. A condescending Texas Christian who slurs her words and insults you to your face with a "bless your heart" smile just begging to be slapped. Debra does Dynasty party talk better than Dynasty did party talk. When Woman leaves after getting into it with Debra, Debra tells Gene "she's got all these built up hostilities because of her weight gain over the holidays". It's so cutting. Mongo has incredible denim meathead energy, yelling at Woman "That'll be the day, when a skirt like you tells Mongo what to do!" The McMichaels are amazing. 

8. Mascarita Sagrada/Octagoncito vs. Jerrito Estrada/Piratita Morgan

ER: I had no memory of WCW attempting a minis division, and it's pretty wild to just throw out 4 minis unannounced to the Knoxville crowd in the third hour of Nitro and give them 2 minutes to get over. I'm not sure why you even bother sending guys out to that kind of fate. Still, they work a lot of cool spots into less than 2.5 minutes and the fans do start reacting to it. WCW only used these guys for two matches, and this reaction was probably at least as good as any of the reactions they got in front of cold disinterested WWF shows from 97-99. Jerrito bumps appropriately big for a mini version of Jerry Estrada, doing strong base work for all of Sagrada's headscissors and monkey flips. Piratita takes a couple of really big bumps for a big boy, including a great somersault bump past the ringpost to the floor, and there was a fun extended sequence where the rudos kept being lured into doing chain offense to each other. I am not sure why this happened, but it was an enjoyable blink. 

9. Dean Malenko vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

ER: Matches like these are why a lot of us were switching over to Nitro in 96/97, but a lot of them are weird time capsules now. The moves look good, there's often little story behind them aside from "get up and do more" and the crowds react with most arms folded silence until the matches end in confusion. Here a 9 minute match gets the 10 minute time limit draw treatment, a bell just ringing in the middle of an exchange like the recess bell sounding during a game of capture the flag. The fans weren't reacting to any of the several ungiving back bumps that Rey took, and suddenly ending a match in a draw wasn't going to help. Malenko and Misterio work well together, that's no secret, because Rey can get his head powerbombed into the mat several times a match and Dean is great at catching complicated headscissors and ranas. Early on Malenko works over Rey's back in painful ways, getting him vertical with a single leg crab while digging his knee in, throwing him way up into the air for an awesome flapjack, his great press slam gutbuster, bouncing Misterio with a Last Ride style powerbomb, all punishing stuff. The problem is that for Rey to get in any offense, he has to ignore that he just got his cerebellum smashed into the mat at concussion speed and bounce back to his feet to sprint around. Rey has some crazy moments, like an unhinged butt splash senton from the top rope over the ringpost to the floor, and a cool rana to the floor where he Fuerza bumps his way into getting his legs around Malenko's neck. There were a couple of cool reversals that played off early spots, like Dean catching a headscissors and sitting down into a sideslam, or Rey flying over Dean's head and turning a pop-up powerbomb into a Manami Roll. It all looked cool, but it didn't really play as a full match, and when they just went into a few rapid fire pinfall exchanges they felt like they came from a different match. It's a recommendable match because it's 10 minutes of cool stuff, but every move feels like it happens in its own vacuum.

10. Lex Luger vs. Greg Valentine

ER: Greg Valentine is in his mid-40s here, but when your wrestling style revolves around dropping heavy elbows, throwing stiff chops, and leaning into strikes, well then that's a style that is going to age well. He does feel like an anachronism in this era, but this was a fun short match made up almost entirely of punches, elbows, and clotheslines. When two guys are good at throwing punches and elbows you really don't need much more than that to fill a fun 3 minutes. Valentine really roughs up Luger, and when it's his time to sell he does some great tip toes selling for Luger's punches, and goes down with a thud for Luger's clotheslines. Luger drags Valentine over the ropes from the apron to Rack him, which is a cool babyface visual. 

The show ends on a great segment, with Hogan and the FULL cast and crew of the nWo surrounding Piper and giving him a stiff beatdown. They bash his surgically repaired hip with a chair, Scott Norton really puts the boots to him, Hall/Nash/Hogan do an ill-advised three man press slam and throw spike Piper chest first across Norton's knee, just a total beatdown. Piper gets stretchered out, the garbage rains onto the ring and the nWo (Scott Hall ignoring a full box of popcorn hitting his back, Bischoff never flinching at soda cups. It all leads to the Giant standing up to Hogan and choking him, then fighting off a ton of nWo flunkies. Giant looked like a real monster, and there was a cool visual of Hogan directing the full nWo roster to surround the ring. Bagwell attacks first, leaping off the top rope onto Giant's back and getting flung across the ring. Vincent runs directly into Giant's hand, and Giant palms his head like a basketball while wasting him with a chokeslam. nWo Sting takes another great chokeslam, before the big guys get involved and they swarm the Giant. This is part of what made the nWo great. It was a common talking point at the time that allowing a ton of "lesser" workers into the nWo weakened the entire operation, made it into a club with no kind of exclusivity. But you NEED members to strengthen your gang. You NEED bodies. You need cannon fodder. Vincent is a great guy to get pushed by Hogan into a chokeslam. It's great to have a fake Sting who gets his ass kicked. Even Michael Wallstreet, in his mullet and sleeveless nWo shirt, actually looked cool for the first time in who knows when. He looked like a guy who would get his ass beat in a Bronson movie, and the nWo needed guys like that. Bray Wyatt only recruited like one guy into his cult. How stupid is that?? You recruit EVERYBODY YOU CAN. 

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WCW Starrcade 12/29/96

1. Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenko

ER: It's a bold move to start your Nashville PPV with a AAA minis dark tag and a 20 minute cruiserweight match. This is the first 12 minutes of a strong cruiserweight match, with a lot of mid 90s juniors matwork to start, and quick exchanges that don't really go anywhere but give us something to build off. They build to some quick rope running exchanges and some snap suplexes, and it plays like a very crisp New Japan juniors match. The Nashville crowd isn't really on board with it until Ultimo starts working a little more than just de facto heel. He had been the automatic heel by virtue of being Japanese in Nashville, but they wake up a bit when Dragon starts landing nice looking kicks to the grounded Malenko's ribs and a little toe kick to Malenko's temple. Once Ultimo is actually working with mild disrespect the crowd picks up on it immediately. It peaks with a great spot where Dragon feints a dive with Malenko on the floor, landing on his feet in ring with a quebrada and turns that into a flat footed tope with emphasis on making it look like a flying headbutt. Dragon even started selling like a heel, taking a couple of nasty Malenko back suplexes on his shoulders and acting like a heel getting punished. 

It's a match that is building to something strong, but Malenko makes the decision to throw some ice on things by grabbing a kneebar for a couple long minutes, really getting things silent in the arena. It threw off their vibe as Ultimo HAD been working as a luchador working as southern heel, and then in a couple minutes Malenko started working heel legwork while Ultimo valiantly kept having to struggle to the ropes and work a knee injury. It went instinctively against the fans' instincts to cheer the legwork the way it was being worked, as Ultimo was clearly face in these exchanges. A couple of awkward cross ups when they came out the other side of the legwork only extended the weird vibes. Malenko hits a body press with Ultimo leaning in the ropes, but Dragon stays put on his feet while Malenko tumbles to the floor, with Ultimo feebly rolling out after. Crowd is getting silent by the second and suddenly snaps awake in unison when Malenko looks like he has the match suddenly won after a nasty tombstone. The entire Nashville Municipal Auditorium thought they were seeing a Malenko win. With the crowd now suddenly heavily invested in a Malenko win, it really added to the closing stretch. I think they went with a couple too many nearfalls and the Onoo interference to break up Malenko's center of the ring cloverleaf weakened things, but there were some good nearfalls that the fans bit at. A Malenko release sitout Tiger suplex got a huge reaction, he plants Dragon with a disgusting brainbuster for another, and there was a great match-winning go behind waistlock battle that ended with a fantastic Tiger suplex for Dragon. This was the kind of PPV opener that a lot of WCW fans came to expect, with a lot of big moves and nearfalls. There were some stretches that didn't work and felt out of place, and they didn't really explore the stories they set up, but a lot of the action looked really good.

2. Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

ER: This was not the match the crowd wanted to see. The crowd was far less familiar with Hokuto than they were with Ultimo Dragon, but even a Japanese competitor against a white woman wearing a sequined stars and stripes aerobics thong couldn't inspire them to get involved. Hokuto works holds with a short match they probably would have had a better chance going straight to fireworks. By the time they build to some big German suplexes and a couple hard missile dropkicks I was expecting them to react but it was still real light. The best reactions came from two pieces of Sonny Onoo interference, yanking Madusa's ankle from ringside to allow Hokuto to take over, and coming in later with to smack Madusa in the back of the head with a full American flag on a pole. This was laid out pretty heavily for Hokuto, never really feeling like Madusa was going to win, and Madusa's big moments on offense came off flat when a tornado DDT didn't really get pulled off. Hokuto wins with a nasty northern lights bomb, and it come off like an easier victory than the crowd was expecting. This was not the show to have Akira Hokuto win the inaugural WCW Women's Title Tournament, and an omen for how the Women's division would eventually wind up in the coming months. 

Roddy Piper does an interview with Mean Gene, and well, Piper's interviews in 1996 were really bad. He had taken coked up 1986 Hot Rod promos and now it felt more like a man performing comedic impressions of Cocaine Rod. He makes weird references to Strangler Lewis and Sky Low Low, says that he and Hogan ("can I call him Hogan?") are the only two icons, makes a joke about Roseanne Barr that barely felt like a reference (let alone a joke), and hops out on one leg when asked about his hip injury. This was like a hopped up Roger Rabbit promo that made the heavily promoted "Match of the Century" feel like it was about to be a tremendous disaster. 

3. Jushin Liger vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

ER: This match was a major deal among tape traders, a first time (and last time, it turns out) singles match between two of the very best. So, of course this match starts with an enthusiastic USA chant, which Misterio happily accepts as his, and that's just fine. It also becomes apparent pretty early into this match that this crowd is tired of seeing a Japanese wrestler against a WCW regular. The commentary has some real wild tone shifts too, as Tenay starts the match talking about Liger's brain tumor surgery, and within minutes we take a weird sidetrack. Dusty ends up going on for far too long about Liger "looking heavier" than the last time he saw him, and none of the four man announce crew picks him up. He keeps trying to get anyone else to chime in, repeatedly asking whether or not he's crazy for thinking Liger is heavier. The crowd pays about as much attention to the match as commentary does, but it is surprising that people don't react louder for the beating that Misterio takes. Liger is very punishing, hitting an in-ring powerbomb about as hard as you can powerbomb someone, hits a crazy vertical suplex to the floor (and Rey really splats on that floor), then hits a powerbomb ON THE FLOOR! The actual wrestling in the match is great, it's nothing but offense, but it doesn't draw the crowd in like it should. They occasionally get them to notice, but they don't keep them hooked. 

Liger is super dominant here, brushing aside a missile dropkick and locking in a stretching surfboard, a release German suplex that folds Rey, a kappo kick in the corner, a dragon screw that would snap the surgically repaired knee of 2021 Rey Mysterio, and a really sunk in half crab. Rey had some comebacks, some flash to counter Liger's dominance, but Liger keeps effectively cutting him off. When Rey goes on a big tear with a headscissors and beautiful Asai moonsault, I foolishly thought that all of Rey's offense got backloaded into the match. But Liger immediately blocks a top rope Frankensteiner by hopping down to the mat, nails a kappo kick, and then drills Rey's head into the mat with a definitive Liger Bomb for the win. So far this PPV has had three Japanese wrestlers win the first three matches, and it is clearly not what anyone in attendance expected or wanted. This match was as good as could be expected with no fan involvement, and a suitably entertaining Dream Match with Liger really assaulting Rey and Misterio flying and splatting in cool Misterio ways. But, this also seemed like a match where Rey was to be the OBVIOUS winner, and even the finish looked like he kicked out before 3, which didn't help the reaction. Liger wasn't around in any way in 1997 WCW, so letting him destroy Misterio like this on WCW's biggest PPV of the year was a really strange decision. 

4. Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: This was kind of a peculiar match, as it was billed as No DQ but was not worked in any way as a No DQ match. The match didn't need the stip to work, as we find out that they really only made this No DQ to allow for a rush of outside interference right at the end. The match started like a strong Benoit/Jarrett match, both working some nice mat exchanges and Jarrett getting lit up by chops, but there's a weird tone as both men are clearly working as heels. Benoit rubs Jarrett's face in the mat and grinds his boot into the back of Jarrett's head after getting the best of a mat exchange, and later when Jarrett does the same he runs up the length of Benoit's back and then struts around the ring. Jarrett is the Nashville boy but isn't rallying the crowd behind him, and every single thing Benoit does is delivered as a heel. So the crowd doesn't get into this match the way they could have. They both work the match with a lot of aggression, and the pace feels really good, even if Benoit has a lot of strikes that show noticeable light. Benoit's stomps in the corner all whiff by 6" or more, and it's odd that the guy known for working stiff appears to be pulling his shots so much. Woman interferes from the floor, except her and Benoit continue to act like they don't realize the match is No DQ, as she sneaks in her interference behind Brian Hildebrand's back, and later on Benoit does the whole feet on the ropes bit with Hildebrand just missing his cheating each time. 

This is a match where Benoit could have just choked Jarrett with a chair, so holding a grounded headlock with his feet on the ropes behind the ref's back made zero sense. At a certain point Benoit didn't even have his arm wrapped around Jarrett's neck, looking more like he was just pinning him across the shoulders. Jarrett's comeback doesn't get a reaction, since he didn't decide to show the fans of Nashville that he was their guy, but he looked good. I liked his clothesline and super high belly to back suplex, but that's when everything goes to hell. Woman gets on the apron, Arn comes out, Hugh Morrus and Konnan attack Woman, she kicks Morrus in the balls while Konnan holds her in a snug headlock, Kevin Sullivan breaks a wooden chair over Benoit, Arn DDTs Jarrett, and somehow through it all Jarrett just gets rolled back inside and pins Benoit. So we had a No DQ match where it seemed like neither guy realized that was the case, all the DQ worthy events were caused by guys that came out at the very end of the match, and even after the match the crowd had no clue which one of them to cheer for. This felt like nobody knew what role they were actually playing and the match fell apart because of it. 

Arn Anderson and Jeff Jarrett blow off Mean Gene's interview requests after the match, but Steve and Debra McMichael have no problems repping the Horsemen on the mic. McMichael says Benoit is getting too distracted by Woman, and Debra says that Woman is looking rode hard and put up wet (to which Gene covers the microphone) and then calls her plump. I really wish we had been given a Woman reaction to being called "plump" by Debra McMichaels' perfectly slurred judgmental Alabama Christian voice. 

The Outsiders vs. The Faces of Fear

ER: This was heading towards being a truly great big man tag match, but a slow third act that dropped all the big man clubbering left us with a kind of unsatisfying finish. These guys all have great chemistry and have no problem hitting hard, and the match forgoes a lot of structure and instead mostly just exists as four tough guys hitting each other hard. You don't really need to cut off the ring with guys this large, as it's incredibly satisfying to have them constantly cutting each other off, able to turn any tide at any time with a hard clothesline or harder headbutt. It's hard not to get excited for a tag match made up wholly of big guys hitting each other hard, and commentary gets into it as much as the crowd does. The action is steady and nobody remains in control long. Nash really punishes Barbarian in the corner with kneelifts and heavy back elbows, hits a lariat to the side of Barbarian's neck when Nick Patrick steps in. Meng and Nash come off like superstars, with Meng having no trouble standing up to either Outsider and Nash getting roars whenever he gets into the ring. 

Meng's chops look like something that Hall and Nash legitimately hate taking, and you get some cool bigger spots like a Hall second rope bulldog on Meng, a great missed middle rope elbowdrop from Barbarian, Meng fighting to get Hall up for a piledriver before finally spiking him, and not long after that a big Barbarian powerbomb on Hall. The match also has a bunch of cool clotheslines and lariats from everyone, like Hall running the length of the apron to nail Barbarian in the corner, or Hall whipping Barbarian into a Nash apron lariat and then hitting one of the hardest possible diving lariats as Barbarian is reeling. Everyone in the match is showing stiff shots from the apron whenever an opponent gets anywhere near, and I love tag team fights like that. Things do take a bit too much of a cool down when Barbarian locks in a LONG nerve hold on Hall that the match didn't really need. 

The only formula the match had settled into by then was four guys kicking ass, with Hall and Barbarian each being briefly separated from their partners. But this late in the match you don't need a long nervehold to build to a Nash hot tag, as the crowd was hot every time Nash had been in and the hold went on so long that the hot tag was literally Nash's quietest part of the match. The hold cooled things down too much and took the energy away, and then for whatever reason Barbarian didn't make his own hot tag out when Nash made his big tag in. Hall and Barbarian had clearly been building a long sequence that was supposed to build to Meng and Nash absolutely wailing on each other, and instead Barbarian just stays in the ring. It's a bit anticlimactic as Nash tags in and Hall immediately drags Meng to the floor, and Nash fairly easily beats Barbarian with a jackknife. The match deserved a finish that was a bit more thought out than that, but the bulk of this was hard hitting heavyweight wrestling that I loved. 

Hogan cuts a truly unhinged promo backstage with Dibiase and Vincent laughing along with him. If you show this promo back to back with Piper's promo earlier you get 10 minutes of what feels like it is going to be the craziest match you've ever seen. He keeps building towards a big ending but keeps getting derailed, until he's just shouting out the names of celebrities and calling Piper a woman. This kind of manic old man insanity is making this match come off far more exciting than I've been lead to believe.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddie Guerrero

ER: This was the finals of the WCW US Title tournament, a very fun match that is perhaps too long, but finishes strong. It's always best when a match goes out on a high note, and the finishing stretch makes this worth seeing. This is cool because Page fights Eddie as an equal and makes it work, going toe to toe with both throwing elbows and chops as heavyweights (even though Eddie is much smaller than DDP here). DDP is great at doing fast armdrag and leapfrog exchanges, and both know how to salvage minor miscommunications by taking big bumps. DDP takes an awesome backwards bump through the ropes off a dropkick, both good at working a back and forth match without it ever feeling like they're just trading moves. It's really hard hitting, with Eddie getting harder than expected impact an avalanche, pescado, and big back suplex. Page has a bunch of cool offense - a couple of unique gutbusters, nice right arm clothesline immediately following a missed left arm one, and a nasty kneeling piledriver - so it's a little disappointing when he locks in a too long abdominal stretch. 

The match had kind of been babyface/babyface and DDP wasn't working heel enough to build to a big Eddie comeback. But things really do come alive for the push to the finish, when DDP starts really throwing himself back into offense. He hits a hard shoulderblock in the corner and then misses another into the turnbuckles just as hard. Eddie sweeps DDP's legs and DDP takes it on the back of his head like Psychosis, Eddie lifts him in the air with a European uppercut (that makes Dusty lose his mind),and then drops DDP with a brainbuster. We get a crazy run of bigger and bigger spots, like Eddie catching DDP in an atomic drop off the top rope, and DDP hitting a bananas spinning powerbomb. There were several great nearfalls off of Eddie backslides (set up nicely by DDP's missed spinning clothesline or Diamondcutter attempts). The finish itself is a bit of a stretch, as the ref had to be distracted for far too long so that Scott Hall had time to run in and hit DDP with an Outsider's Edge (for turning down the nWo's invite), and then Eddie hits the frog splash for the title. This match could have gone 12 instead of 15, as trimming out the bullshit would have easily made this the tightest and best match on the card. As is it was strong, and the peaks lift it higher than its valleys lower it. 

The Giant vs. Lex Luger

ER: This was great, the best Giant singles match and performance so far (easily), and an excellent Luger performance that completely rewards the loud crowd. The Nashville crowd were cheering louder for Luger before the first lock-up, than any other babyface so far this PPV (Nash got the loudest cheers, but that's just because people are going to cheer the coolest guy in any room). Giant had a year of ring work at this point and was improving, but having a guy like Luger in there to guide the match really elevated this. Luger knew exactly what to do and the fans were behind him doing just that. I loved Luger's lock-up to start, getting a low base, taking big super ball bumps when Giant would throw him away. Every time Luger got thrown off, he would come back in with left and right elbows, and then began measuring Giant with right hands. Luger would rear back and throw one big right, send the Giant rocking and wobbling in the corner, then throw another. It was a great way to start the match and they used the ring incredibly well to make this feel like a big fight. Luger would get bumped to the opposite corner, and the camera would pull back and show the distance between the men, making Luger look like even more of a walking tall babyface every time he would stomp back across the ring to punch Giant. Both were good at selling the early fatigue, and I liked how Giant shut things down by just charging out of the corner with a straight arm clothesline to the chest. 

I thought Giant looked good in control, and Luger looked great bumping for him. They worked a long control section and the Giant has a lot of ideas on how to fill time, and Luger's selling keeps the crowd interested. The Giant gets insane air on an elbowdrop, throws a stiff kick to Luger's ribs (that Luger bumps through the ropes to the floor) and brings him back in with a big delayed vertical suplex. The Luger comeback teases are good, like a quick bodyslam attempt that ends with the Giant flattening him and then hitting another elbowdrop. We're over a year into the Giant, and he's still trying weird  things and I love it. He weirdly does the Shawn Michaels "draped over the corner ropes" spot after missing an avalanche, struggling to get his legs into position but even getting turned over by kicks the way Michaels would. I don't think I've ever seen a 400 lb. guy do that spot - probably because it looked pretty stupid - but I am all for wrestlers taking a risk of looking stupid. Even better, is how Giant sets up Luger's comeback by missing a running dropkick in the ropes when Luger moves out of the way. Giant really just ran and threw a dropkick into the ropes like he was a luchador, top foot nearly getting tangled on the top rope and sending him to the mat head first. Giant was lucky the landing was better than it could have been, but a giant doing crazy spots is impossible to hate. 

Luger starts punching the reeling Giant and really knows how to milk the reaction, the crowd getting louder and louder whenever it looked like Giant might fall over, and when Giant is reeling back far enough Luger gets the loudest reaction of the night by taking Giant down with a Rude Awakening style neckbreaker. It's a great nearfall, fans literally jumping up and down in their seats after seeing a neckbreaker. It's beautiful. Luger gets pressed onto Mark Curtis during the kickout, and this allows all the bullshit to start, and I loved all the bullshit. Luger finally has the advantage over Giant, but with no ref we get Nick Patrick finally showing up (with Syxx), and I love it when Nick Patrick shows up. I'm someone who is sick to death of rudo lucha refs, and yet I love Nick Patrick's stooging and idiocy. Luger bodyslams Giant and gets him up in the Rack (an awesome feat) and Patrick actually kicks Luger in the back of the knee! Patrick gets thrown across the ring and Luger Racks the Giant again, this time eating a spinkick from Syxx and unceremoniously dropping Giant again. To add to the great bullshit, Sting comes through the crowd, a man who looks like Jimmy Del Ray but with the flat out craziest eyes actually bumps faces with him before being pulled away by security, man looking like he actually wanted to fight or assassinate Sting. There's a great moment where Sting gets in the ring and shoves his bat into Patrick's chest, throws Patrick again to get him out of there, and Patrick punches a still ailing Mark Curtis in the face on his way out! 

The bullshit leads to a really great finish with some great theater, when Sting whispers separately to both Luger and Giant and leaves his bat in the middle of the ring. Commentary was strong this entire match, putting over and questioning everyone's motivations and getting fired up for Luger and Giant, making it really feel like a clash of the titans. They nail all of the visuals, with Luger reaching the bat but Giant getting there right after and standing on it. The crowd really seemed frozen in excitement waiting to see what was about to happen, and finally Luger just punches Giant in the balls and then beats him in the legs and body with that baseball bat. Mark Curtis dramatically drags himself over and counts the pin, and the fans rightly lost their minds for all of this. Luger cannot be denied. 

Hollywood Hogan vs. Roddy Piper

ER: Commentary calls this the biggest match of our lifetimes, and Michael Buffer manages to top that by calling it the Match of the Century. It's ridiculous, sure, and got mocked by smart fans at the time, but over 9,000 people in Nashville all bought into it to some extent. Buffer's intro is one of his best, genuinely adding to the match hype. Hogan looks like he's having a blast as a heel, with his broad MJF-esque "I'M a HEEL" shtick playing out like Hogan had been dying to do house show heel routines for a decade. It's a really great Hogan performance and it really felt like both men were playing up to their current abilities. Piper moves older than his actual age (and it's crazy that Hogan and Piper were only 43 and 42 here, respectively) and so Hogan really carries this by having a super active performance. Piper was limited but spirited, and he's good enough to make that work, but Hogan was the one working to make this big. Hogan stalls and stooges and tries to avoid Piper, slaps him on breaks and bails to the floor each time. Piper is mostly limited to punches and clotheslines and can't move quick, so Hogan avoiding him works and it makes it better when Piper finally tees off. Piper used a few different eye pokes and I love how Hogan sold each one. 

Piper is not going to be above fighting dirty and the crowd was fully behind Piper fighting dirty to combat Hogan's dirty fighting, and Piper moves stiffly enough that he draws a lot of sympathy, and he's able to pull off the performance of an old dog dragged back to another fight. Things get great when Piper gets knocked to the floor, tumbling hard, but fights back against Hogan and Dibiase. Piper gets his belt and whips Hogan around ringside like in a great LA Park match. All the belt shots looked really nasty, Piper not holding back and Hogan leaning into all of them. The whole match was an escalation of dirty fighting, and it peaked when Hogan started kicking at Piper's long visible hip surgery scar, even locking in an abdominal stretch while hammering on that scar. They don't quite know how to transition into the finishing stretch but there are some big moments, like Piper pulling off a vertical suplex while Schiavone wondered if his legs would hold, and a big missed Hogan legdrop. Schiavone was great at covering for things while keeping the excitement live, and his excitement really added to the chaotic ending. 

The Giant comes out and lifts Piper for a chokeslam, but a fan also charges the ring and grabs Hogan's legs, so the Giant has to keep Piper in the air while security roughs up the fan. It throws off the timing but still plays huge when Piper bites Giant in the face and dumps him to the floor, then somehow beats Hogan with a sleeper, with Randy Anderson delivering a great shocked face when Hogan's arm drops a third time. I was really into this match and thought it was far better than most thought at the time. The moment was hurt by being non-title. I'm not actually sure they ever said it was non-title, they just never announced it was FOR the title and didn't talk about it during the match, like they were intentionally avoiding it. Dusty even calls Piper the champ after the win, with some immediate awkward silence as Dusty clearly gets corrected off-mic. 

This was not the great workrate PPV that it has the reputation for being, a rep that it mostly got by having two long singles matches early in the card between cruiserweight legends. This was still a good in-ring show, but not to the level it has been written about being. The two cruiserweight matches have flaws that weren't as glaring in 1996, but even though they aren't the MOTYC that people wanted them to be in 1996 doesn't mean they aren't still entertaining as hell. The Hogan/Piper match doesn't deserve the bile that it got at the time as I thought it was an excellent Hogan performance, working around a guy who hadn't wrestled an actual match in 10 months. It was a top to bottom mix of styles and matches, and that gives a show a high floor. 

Best Matches:

1. Lex Luger vs. The Giant

2. Outsiders vs. Faces of Fear

3. DDP vs. Eddie Guerrero

4. Jushin Liger vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

Weakest Matches:

1. Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

2. Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett

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