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I have to disagree with Pete; Lawler-Vince wouldn't have been awesome at all. If Vince had gotten more than a few shots in or lasted more than a minute, Lawler would have been ruined for good in Memphis, and I don't say that lightly. I think Lawler spilled the beans about the WWF's announcing being done at Titan Towers to show the USWA fans that the WWF was inferior. At least our ​guys show up live at ringside and call the action as it's really happening! Can the so-called New York bigshots say that? I liked the image of Vince trying to call wrestling matches surrounded by off-duty cops and paid bodyguards. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually happened at some point, although I wouldn't think he ever needed three of each. Lawler seems to be treating Tatanka as a joke, literally. Usually I wouldn't mind that, but even though most Memphis fans have probably seen him on TV, they haven't seen or heard from him on their ​show, so if Lawler dismisses him so cavalierly and saves his real venom for Vince, why shouldn't the fan who has to spend his or her money carefully wait until a night when Vince actually is scheduled to show up? That's when the real ​action figures to take place. Maybe they should have had Tatanka come down and wrestle a squash match, then cut a promo so the fans could see and hear right in their own backyard what their King was up against. (For some reason, Tatanka is the only WWF Lawler opponent thus far not to send in a promo.) For everyone's information, Lawler's crack about the cowboys always beating the Indians except during football season was only half right. The Cowboys and Redskins split their two meetings that year, and the Cowboys went on to win Super Bowl XXVIII.

First fall: ​This is the third match in the four-match tag series between Rose's Babyface Army and The Clan. In this one, the newly crowned champions Buddy and Curt are defending against Dynamite and Assassin even though Oliver was Assassin's partner last week when The Clan lost the titles. At any rate, like most first falls lately in Portland this fall could have been a whole match in itself. Assassin gets his arm dissected by Curt and Buddy until he catches Buddy with one of his patented loaded headbutts. The challengers pound on Buddy both inside and outside the ring for a while until Curt gets the hot tag and cleans house. Eventually, Assassin eats the Ax, and Buddy runs across the ring to cut Dynamite off while Curt gets the three count. The champs lead one fall to none with about twelve minutes of disc time remaining. It continues to amaze me that four men who hate each other as much as these four aren't having pull-apart after pull-apart. Don't get me wrong; that's a wonderful thing, as we get to see just how good of workers they are. The chain wrestling sequence between Buddy and Assassin is especially good, not because they do anything earth-shattering but because they're two of the last people you'd expect to see well-executed chain wrestling from, considering their reputations. Maybe it's because I've been watching so many Assassin matches back-to-back lately, but the loaded mask gimmick is starting to wear thin with me, not because of anything Assassin does wrong but because Sandy has to know by now that there's something in the mask most of the time, even if he can't prove it, but does nothing about it. When a gimmick like this starts getting heat on the referee for appearing clueless instead of the guy who's doing something illegal in the first place, it's time to not use the gimmick quite so much. Multiple headbutts per match, and even an offense based around headbutts in some matches, aren't doing Assassin any favors. We know he can wrestle, so let's see him do a lot more of that and only use the gimmick as a finisher or a game-changer. It's nice to see the Ax for the first time on the set; Curt should have been using it as his finisher all along. If I saw what I thought I saw, though, he hit it in the wrong place, as Assassin's forehead is where he keeps his object. Curt should have been selling pain even as he scored the pin . I wonder how long Chavo Classic stayed in Portland. Apparently it wasn't long enough to make much of an impression, as I didn't remember ever hearing about anything he did there. ​Second fall: ​This fall went long enough that I thought the time limit was going to expire. Curt plays face-in-peril, with most of the heels' attention directed toward his neck and throat area. Curt comes back to take control briefly, but Dynamite executes a drop toehold so forcefully that it knocks the wind out of him. Dynamite then quickly goes up top and nails a flying kneedrop to get the three-count. We're even at a fall apiece with just three minutes of disc time remaining. Big guys doing aerial moves impress the hell out of me, so it's a treat to watch Assassin throw a dropkick. He's done it in many matches so far, and each time it looks really good. The Clan owes a lot of their popularity to Stasiak, who puts them over as superior athletes and wrestlers every chance he gets. Much like the Four Horsemen, it's their undeniable in-ring skill that makes them stand apart from most other heel groups. At last we know Rip's in the building, as Stan mentions that he was probably in the middle of any between-falls strategy meeting that Assassin and Dynamite may have had. Unless Irish Pat McGhee wrestled in the WWF or JCP under another name, what Stan says here about him being one of the top wrestlers currently on the East Coast is a lie. (I just looked it up; it's Scott McGhee, who actually was​ a decent hand in Florida around this time, although he wasn't trained by Piper, but rather by the odd triumvirate of Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, and Buddy Rogers. Of course, being introduced as Piper's protégé was a great way to kickstart his career in Portland and get the fans behind him right off the bat. He's best known for being one of the first jobbers to be tortured by Jake Roberts' snake Damien after a match at Madison Square Garden, which was documented in Jake's Coliseum Video tape.) As much as Stan and Coss praise Curt, they don't bring up his second-generation background much. Usually promotions at this time brought up and hyped second-generation wrestlers' backgrounds as much as they could, even if the sons wrestled differently from their fathers. I don't think they were making a conscious effort to ignore Larry, because he came in to team with Curt several times. Did Don believe that Curt was over enough on his own already that Larry didn't need to be mentioned? Was he not over enough (which I find hard to believe based on the crowd reaction I've heard)? ​Third fall: ​This just isn't Curt's fall. He accidentally costs his team the belts when his and Buddy's doubleteam backfires; his dropkick off the top causes Assassin to fall back on Buddy (who'd been holding him). Buddy's shoulders are down, and he gets pinned. The Clan then celebrates the return of the tag belts by knocking Buddy out of the ring, then executing what can best be described as a triple spike shoulderbreaker on Curt. I guess this is how he was injured and missed over a month of action. I loved the finish; the heels still win by a fluke, but it's a legal ​fluke caused by the other team's inadvertent mistake. If Buddy and Curt hadn't just finished a major feud such a relatively short time ago, I'm guessing that they could have used this as an excuse to turn Buddy heel again. The shoulderbreaker looked sloppy, but it was a miracle that they were able to do it at all. It's much harder than a spike piledriver, where as long as the victim's head hits the mat everything is fine. Actually, it looked like Rip completed the shoulderbreaker before Dynamite ever came off the second rope. No matter, though, because Curt sold the arm like it had been amputated. We know perfectly well that we won't see him again for weeks, if not months. I forgot to mention Assassin's $2500 bounty payable to anyone who can take his mask off. I wonder why they didn't make a bigger deal of it. It certainly sounds like something Don would want to promote the hell out of, especially with Assassin heavily involved in the promotion's hottest feud at the moment.

Okay, let's take this one match at a time. First, let's deal with Bret-Borne. The actual match was really good, and Matt got to show odd moves that we not only had never seen in the WWF before, but ones we didn't see too often after either. The STF and stump puller (which, miracle of miracles, Vince actually called) aren't normally holds you'd associate with the WWF, and it's a shame Matt let the STF go in favor of a regular reverse chinlock. Unlike most, I think that the original Doink gimmick, while much better off on a heel, could have been adapted to a babyface style if the right heel was programmed opposite him. I don't think Lawler was that heel, though. Bret was a bit off, but that was what was called for in light of the situation, I loved how he was trying to get outside at Lawler during the first part of the match, only to settle down to the business at hand once he realized how tough Doink really was. This wasn't a classic in-ring Bret performance by a longshot, but it was good enough. As far as Lawler goes, if he'd performed like this more often his WWF character have been taken a lot more seriously. We've all seen the fake injury routine, and usually it's as obvious as sunrise in the morning that the wrestler in question is faking. But Lawler plays it as close to straight as his heelish nature allows, and although it was almost certain that the injury' was a fake, the moment that he came in and let Bret have it with the crutch was still a legitimate shock to me. I thought there was a tiny chance that he'd injured his knee somehow the previous night in Memphis and they'd decided to run an angle with it and give Borne a pay-per-view payday in the process, but that (thankfully) wasn't the case. The Hart brothers were a distraction we didn't need. Bruce getting water thrown in his face was a nice bit, but we could have lived without it. I wonder if that bucket of water was intended for Stu originally; he seems like the type that would have gone along with something like that. Owen was even worse; he's an active WWF wrestler, and presumably would have many chances to get back at both Lawler and Doink, so he had no business interfering in Bret's match. I wasn't feeling Heenan's performance, but a lot of that's because Vince was in no mood to play straight man. Any comedian sounds like he's reaching when his audience turns a deaf ear or growls at him to stop it, and Vince was guilty of both of those. Not that that's anything new, of course. The only two WWF announcers who know how to work with Heenan well are Gino and Okerlund, and he's barely working with either of them anymore. JR's too straight, Vince is too much of a nerd, and no one else appears to have the first clue how to work with themselves, let alone anyone else. Even Bobby's terrific retelling of Lawler's "accident" got no reaction from Vince whatsoever except "What a ripoff", which had to do with the match, not what Heenan was saying. They just don't understand you anymore, Brain, and that's ​their ​fault, not yours. Now for Bret-Lawler. If they'd wanted to turn Lawler face, there wasn't a better way to do it than we saw. I know all about poetic justice and whatnot, but the sharpshooter segment was too damn long, period. Heenan delivered one of his best serious performances, and he was absolutely right all the way down the line. There's no way in hell that it should have taken all those people to get Bret to release the hold, it ruins the story they were trying to tell completely. It would have been better for Bret to have lost semi-clean if they were going to have Lawler go over; have one of the crutch shots put him down for good and let that be the end of it. As it stands now, it truly does​ look like every WWF referee and official was conspiring against Lawler, and that's a bad, bad look for your top babyface going forward. No wonder this issue was shoved aside both in New York and Memphis. What could they have done to rehab Bret in the WWF? And forget Memphis totally; he would have been a dead man the second he crossed the Tennessee state line and Vince knew it. It was easier for Lawler to (ostensibly) turn his attention to Doink and let Bret lay low for a while, at least in terms of hot feuds. By the time the Owen issue started up later in the year, the fans had had time to digest what had happened at SummerSlam and realized that Bret had momentarily snapped. If they'd tried to continue the Lawler program right afterward, there's a good chance he'd have ended up being booed like he was against Austin in a somewhat similar situation years later, especially since Owen and Bruce didn't help matters by pounding on Lawler as he lay on the stretcher. For a second I thought they were going to be the ones who convinced Bret to release the hold, but they were more overtly heelish than Bret was, both with their whining during the match and their actions after it. None of the above is to say that this wasn't a classic angle/match; it certainly was. But the story being told by the end didn't match the one framed at the beginning. It wasn't the workers' faults; they all played their parts as well as they could. But the booking had too much of an "attitude", if you will. It wouldn't surprise me if Lawler asked for some of this in order to come off as a bigger face than ever in Memphis, but he did his job too well for them to take advantage of it. I forgot to mention the great psychology built around pulling down the strap. Bret did it first here, and in true Memphis fashion, it was lights out for his opponent. Even Lawler pulling his own strap down was no help for once. I'm guessing that the whole sequence was Lawler's idea, because Bret seldom if ever pulled his own straps down to signal a comeback.

What we see here is an extended beatdown from Doug on J.T. Smith. It's not particularly violent compared to what we later saw from ECW, but the promotion hadn't truly hit its stride yet, so it may have looked scarier than it would have during the promotion's heyday three or four years later. I thought guys would know better than to take the bump off the scaffold in a way that practically guarantees a completely blown knee. Then again, is there really such a thing as a safe bump off of a scaffold? I'm honestly not sure if it's Joey on commentary. He doesn't sound much like he would in later years, that's for sure. On the other hand, he's an immediate improvement by several hundred leaps and bounds over Jay Sulli, even if he sounds like he's having a meltdown here. One thing, though: Can the overly cute allusions during a crisis. Saying that "Jazzy" J.T. Smith was "singing the blues" did nothing whatsoever to enhance the drama of the situation, and in fact detracted from it by making the audience wonder why the hell he would say something like that about a guy who was being beaten half to death. The "fallen and can't get up" stuff was understandable, considering that Smith had fallen and couldn't​ get up, at least at that moment. I'm not even sure Joey was thinking about the commercial when he said it.

We haven's seen the Beat the Champ belt in a while, so it was nice to see it here, even if it's just as an excuse for the latest round of Rock 'n' Roll-Bodies. I could have stood for a bit of a longer match and not quite so much fawning from Dutch toward Corny. I'm guessing that Bob Caudle has somehow been disposed of for the moment, which is a shame because I'd love to hear him lambaste Corny just for the hell of it. The finish was pretty clever at that, but it doesn't do much to establish Robert as singles champion material, even for the five weeks he can ostensibly hold the belt. Of course, with Corny as Commissioner I'm guessing that his reign will be a hell of a lot shorter. I'd actually like to see Dutch try to referee, or anybody that's not Brian Hildebrand for that matter. Not that Brian isn't a great ref, but it's ridiculous that one ref gets ninety percent of the work, if not more. Surely Corny can afford at least one more referee, even with a limited budget. Double secret probation plus official demerits? Gee, those Harris Twins have been naughty, naughty, naughty!

Missy does nothing for me in any way, make, shape or form, or in any universe. Neither does the finish here, which wasn't "What the....." bad, but was yet another step in the stupification of WCW referees. I thought one of the top rules of booking was not to run the same kind of finish more than once a card, but I guess we aren't under those rules anymore, because this is the second referee distraction finish that I've seen so far. If your referees are that easily distracted that often, wouldn't it be prudent (in a kayfabe sense) to bring in new referees? Roma was the only one who had any discernible energy in what we saw. Everyone else seemed several steps slow, including Arn, who's almost always at the top of whatever game he has on a given night. As for Missy and her motivations, this was yet another WCW screwup. If Missy wants to get back at Flair for whatever she thinks he did, wonderful. But have her come out with Rude, not the Nasties. This incarnation of the Horsemen hardly "works individually, but thinks collectively", to quote Arn; Flair has barely appeared with Arn and Roma from what we've been able to see. So how does showing up in the Nasties' corner get back at Flair when he's barely shown a passing interest in anything Arn and Roma have done since the group reformed? I was willing to give this Horseman unit a fair chance when it was formed in spite of the bad reputation it had;. it's just a shame that Flair, Arn, and Roma weren't. One final tip for the gang at CNN Center: When you decide to put a manager with your new tag team champions, use one who can talk better than they do. Missy sure as hell doesn't qualify for that with the Nasties, as she and Sags both made negative sense in the postmatch interview. Knobs wasn't exactly Piper in his prime either, but in the land of the idiot, the moron is king.

Two matches, two horrible finishes for this card. Ar least I know why Rude made a big deal of bringing Fifi into the ring, but why wouldn't she run for cover? She's not a worker and never has been, so why did she just stand there where either guy could hurt her, either accidentally or on purpose? It couldn't have possibly been more obvious that Flair was going to get hosed somehow, and while it frees him up to go for the real ​World title (Vader's), it also accidentally makes Fifi look like a double agent for Rude. The brass knucks finish was at least somewhat different, but Rude looked like he'd shot his wad long before then. If his back bothered him that much, why did he get in the ring? It wasn't like the NWA World title or whatever they were forced to call it was a big deal by now, even while Flair had it. I don't think Rude ended up doing much with it at all, although the rest of this set could prove me wrong about that. I didn't mind Jesse at all; not only was Flair a face here, he was wrestling an admitted favorite of Jesse's from way back. The last thing I was expecting was a call that was unbiased and made sense. I thought the rule of thumb was that Flair always missed the move off the Flair Flop when he was a heel and always hit it as a face. It's good to see that Flair decided to live outside his comfort zone for once in his life; I guess he figured that hitting that move off the top to the floor was a nice substitute.

This goofball won WarGames? He's half a step above Norman the Lunatic, if even that. Yes, WCW had a choice. They could have sent Ottman packing back to Vince and found someone else to play the Shockmaster gimmick as they intended it to be played. Unfortunately, he's also the booker's brother-in-law, so that wasn't an option, I guess. Given that, I guess they did the best they could. The shame of it is, Ottman knows how to play a fearsome big guy; he was great as Typhoon, and if it hadn't been for his unfortunate stumble at the Clash he'd have made a fine Shockmaster in the original gimmick. On little things are wrestling careers made and ruined. I love Tony's wry reaction when Ottman spills the water on him. It fits the situation and character perfectly, almost like Tony was expecting something like that to happen at some point. It played much better than outrage or disgust would have,

The other mistake Vince made here was referring to the Unified title as the "United" title. He's never made that mistake before, so I can forgive him a slip of the tongue. They probably only had one shot at getting him to do these promos, so any mistakes he made almost had to be ignored unless he started swearing on camera or something. Seeing Vince with the belt is surreal, and that should have been the only time in his life that he ever came close to wearing one. He's starting to become a bit more cartoonish with the evil chuckle at the end, but this is Memphis, where Lawler's fought every kind of horror monster come to life imaginable, plus Andy Kaufman and Batman. Compared to all of that, Vince is ​Masterpiece Theatre. ​​Imagine the level this whole feud would have gone to if Vince had allowed the Unified title to be brought to the WWF. It not only would have given Lawler a chance to showcase his wrestling skills, but it would have given Tatanka a program, which he didn't have at this time. It would have also put more juice behind Lawler's feuds with Bret and Savage, though the former really didn't need much more juice behind it. I wonder if Vince and Lawler talked about bringing the belt in, although if they had it couldn't have been defended around the Memphis loop unless and until Vince was finished with it. That would have left Jeff as the USWA's top champion, which may have just answered my question. I can't wait to see what we have of the Tatanka-Lawler match. I wouldn't think that they would mesh all that well, but I've been wrong before.

If I'm not mistaken, Miss Christine was Jerry Jarrett's mother and Jeff's grandma. She was sort of the "power behind the throne" of the Jarrett empire and a beloved backstage figure, which is why Tommy attacking her got Dave upset. As for the match, we only saw the last minute or so, which didn't make any sense. Apparently Jeff has a glass jaw and Tommy doesn't, because Tommy got nailed with a chain and suffered no visible effects while Jeff stayed down after one regular punch. I couldn't quite see whether Jeff had his foot under the bottom rope or not because of the camera angle. Regardless, the restart made no sense because it was so short. Why not just disqualify Jeff and award Tommy the match to set up a rematch? What exactly is Paul Neighbors now? Is he still a ref? Is he managing Tommy? Is he "just a fan"? He's still selling those piledrivers Lawler gave him a few weeks back. so if he's still a ref, he's on the injured list. I liked the "I'm the champion/you've got the belt" bit too, but I don't understand what Tommy's motivation is supposed to be. He and Jeff aren't exactly contemporaries, but they're a lot closer in age and experience than Tommy is with Papa. Yet it almost seems like Tommy's trying to use Jeff to draw Papa out of retirement. Why? We know it's not going to happen regardless, and we also know that Grandpa Eddie's not coming out of retirement either. As far as we know, the Richardsons (Tommy's full last name) had no stake in the USWA, the CWA, or any other Memphis wrestling promotion, so why is Tommy after the whole Jarrett family? My guess is that this angle was meant for someone else, specifically Doug Gilbert, but when he proved unavailable, they used it for Tommy instead. Ideally, of course, Eddie's the Gilbert who would have done it, but he was still in Philadelphia, and the whole thing would have circled back to him and Lawler eventually if it had happened, which obviously wasn't the intent at all. I know you're trying to get heat, Tommy, but you have no business calling anyone a cracker with the accent you've got. I'm amazed that there were people actually cheering Tommy through all this, which says a lot about how the Memphis fans felt about Jeff when he wasn't teaming with Lawler. So the USWA title is the old Southern title. I was wondering about that when Dave brought it up. Whatever name you give it, it's still the belt behind Lawler's in the pecking order. God love T.D. Steele with the backhanded three-count on Tommy. I've seen odd counting methods before, but that one takes the cake, especially because he was lying flat on his back.

The only really good part of this is Mick's end promo, although that goes off the rails a bit too with all the talk of sippong tea, brutality and reality. How about insanity and banality just to round things out? I'm glad the stuff involving Harley getting gifts didn't make the set. What little we saw here looked slightly better than Lost in Cleveland, but that's hardly high praise. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe that they shold have just forgotten about Mick altogether from the night he was hurt until the Clash where he returned, ehich would have guaranteed that siad return wouldn't have been just a surprise, but a jaw-dropping shock. I guess WCW had to bleep out the words "Big Van" when referromg to Vader, because you can see Mixck's lips moving the firstr time Vader's mentioned, although no sound comes out. I always suspected that Colette and Dewey Foley weren't really involved in this angle, but it foes my heart goof to hear Mick confirm it for all the world to see. Welcome back to WCW, Chris Cruise. In case you couldn't tell, he was the one who narrated this recap.

A rule of thumb: Any WarGames that ends with the losing team not only walking but cutting full-fledged promos into the camera isn't a real WarGames. Nobody on that side looked like they'd been through anything at all, which kind of kills WarGames as the ultimate team match where cataclysmic grudges are settled. I guess Dusty felt he had to do something to make it up to his brother-in-law after his debut went so horribly wrong, but couldn't he have just bought Fred a car or something? Also, the timing was off. Tony and Jesse managed to not make themselves look too awkward doing the wrapup, but between that and the general milling around after the match, it seemed like we should have had at least another two or three minutes of action. Jesse, of course, signs off by saying that he's glad to get out of Texas, which is what you'd expect him to say. Boy, does Booker look dumb here, claiming that he didn't submit. Here's a hint, pal: Not even the heel color guy is willing to back you up. You quit; get over it. Seriously, why have Booker go off like that, then let Jesse shoot him down before something could be made out of it? That makes about as much sense as the losing team cutting promos from inside the cage after the match. Hey, wait a minute......... I just remembered who Fuller reminds me of as Col. Parker: Boss Hogg from ​The Dukes of Hazzard. ​The outfit''s almost identical, Boss Hogg smoked cigars, and Fuller looks about as much like Sorrell Booke (who played Boss Hogg) as anyone in wrestling, except that his hair's gray while Booke (and Boss Hogg) were going bald. Let's see, that makes Sting and Davey Bo and Luke, and Diana would then be Daisy, which makes no sense. Then again, neither does assigning Fulller a half-baked character from a kiddie action-adventure show instead of letting him be the Tennessee Stud. Finally, is Cole Booker and Kane Stevie Ray, or is it the other way around?

I disagree about promos not being a strength of Sherri's; check out her work as Sensational Queen sometime. It may be a chore to listen to the royal metaphors at times, but she really shines on the mic. In fact, I daresay she's better than Savage. Sherri and Tracy seem like an odd fit, but who else was there to bring in opposite Tammy? Besides, Sherri's from New Orleans, so she can claim that she's standing by Tracy as a fellow Southerner if nothing else. Corny probably sensed that Tammy needed a bit more of a mean streak in order to be a viable manager, and who outside of Moolah was a meaner woman than Sherri, at least in North America? I can't wait to see some actual interaction between these two. It should be a real treat!

If his father had a dollar for every cheesy music video he ever had produced touting Jeff, there would still be a USWA. There isn't even much wrestling action in this one, just shots of Jeff walking to the ring intercut with various people saying "Now that's fabulous!" Believe me, I can think of quite a few words I could use to describe this video, and "fabulous" doesn't even make the top hundred. I don't know if Minnesota Fats was a wrestling fan or not, but he sure knew a good hustle when he saw one, plus he legitimately lived in Nashville at the time, so he was a local celebrity of a sort. Even if he didn't follow wrestling, getting a few hundred bucks for saying just three words into a camera is definitely something that would have appealed to him.

I never could figure out why they wanted to run Curt-Nash as a feud. Waltman-Michaels makes a bit more sense since both of them could move around, but the character of the 1-2-3 Kid wasn't anywhere near ready to be a championship contender yet, let alone a champion. Michaels had the IC belt (at least for now) but no one to work with long-term, which turned him into an afterthought. It was almost as if Vince legitimately saw more potential in Nash at this time, which would make sense given his penchant for larger-than-life characters (and just plain large ones, too). Note that Nash is the one who gets the last shot in on Curt, which is also the last physical act of the segment. It's hard to mistake who Vince really wants the fans to remember.

Yet another wonderful promo from Vince. The only problrm is, he's starting to send midcarders and less down to Memphis, and Lawler's having his way with them. He should clear a Monday night at some point and send Yoko, Fuji, and Corny to the MSC and give Lawler an honest-to-God World title shot. I don't even care that his status as a heel in the WWF means that he won't get the title; I just want to see this feud carried to its logical conclusion. Hearing Vince as the so-called champion of "real" wrestling is especially rich considering what he foisted on old-school fans just a few short years later. His screaming, slobbering idiocy is one reason that the Attitude Era disgusts me. If he'd acted a little more like this as Mr. McMahon, I might have tuned in for more than ten seconds at a stretch once in a while.

I haven't had a chance to see the SummerSlam match just yet, but based on this promo I'm more anxious than ever to do so. But first, who kidnapped the King and substituted his Memphis twin? This may be the best promo Lawler's ever cut in the WWF, and if he'd done more like this his WWF career wouldn't be seen by fans like me as a total embarrassment. It's a bit sad that the issue for Lawler is moving away from Bret and toward the Doink character, though, because Lawler's been presented as too much of a joke for this feud to be anything but one long, bad comedy skit no matter who's in the costume. The matches may have been a bit better if it had been Borne, but hide-the-chain Lawler really isn't capable of having a decent match with ​anyone. They teased a real feud between the two in Memphis earlier this year when Borne made an appearance at WMC as Doink, if you remember, and that's when the trigger should have been pulled. Face Lawler vs. heel Doink could have been something around the Memphis loop. The reverse, with Vince's absurdity mucking up the works, isn't worth thinking about.

Halmi's doing the best he can with what he's given, but there's no way this is going to end well for either him or Luger, and I suspect that both of them know it. Joe Fowler seems to be another one of the host/interviewer types that Vince turned out at this time like they were cars on an assembly line. He's Todd Pettengill, and Todd Pettengill is Charlie Minn, and Charlie Minn is.....well, you get the point. Gino can stop cutting promos during Update segments any time he damn well wants to. And the next time someone gives him a line like "Someone from Helsinki with the intelligence of a Slinky", he should threaten to buy ​a Slinky and make the offender eat it.

Is it me or did Ron and Don shave their beards for the interview? What we saw of the title change looked good, and I'm sure that before too long one of the Harrises will remind Corny that if he hadn't been arguing with Curtis, Rock 'n' Roll would have never hit the second double dropkick because Curtis would have ushered one of them out of the ring. It sure seems like they were building toward a feud between the Bodies (with Corny) and the Harrises (with Sully), before Sully decided to go to ECW instead. That's too bad; I'd have loved to hear the verbal war that was sure to break out between Sully and Corny. The question is: Which team would have eventually ended up turning face?

I would have felt this more if we'd seen clips from the first two matches as well. There's really no way to tell how good or limited Rude is at this time based on three minutes; it doesn't seem like he's changed much at all to me. Jesse's indignation over Flair's interference made the clip, as did the sight of Flair and Dustin sharing a hug, albeit a brief one. I didn't get much of a look at Rude's Flair tights; maybe there's a longer look coming in the clip from their match at Fall Brawl.

First fall: ​As is customary, Billy Jack the local hero gets most of the offense, and gains several impressive nearfalls and visual pins. But Harley's a wily veteran, and he eventually catches Billy Jack with a reverse victory roll, then grabs the trunks for good measure. Sandy counts three, and the champion leads one fall to none with about fourteen minutes of disc time remaining. Most guys who wrestle for the World title do things you've never seen before, but Billy Jack really shows off his repertoire here, using a sleeper for the first time (according to his mentor Stasiak) and busting out a damn good piledriver as well. His offense is neck-based, as you would expect from someone whose finisher is the full nelson, and he works a side headlock for a good portion of the fall as well, once getting a two and three-quarter count. It's tough sometimes to think about how close a challenger seemed to be to gaining the title when you know in advance that he didn't win, but Harley definitely seemed to be in trouble after one fall. Speaking of whom, I can see the argument some make that neither he nor Flair ever really looked like champions because they gave too much of their matches away. But how else are you going to convince the fans of a certain terriitory that their hometown boy has a chance? Even in non-NWA territories, the champions made money by making their challengers look like they were the better man for most of the bout. Look at Bruno, Backlund, and even early Hogan in the WWF. They certainly looked on most nights like they were not only going to lose the belt, but be injured so badly that they'd have to be stretchered out of the arena. That's what made their eventual comebacks so satisfying (or, in Harley's case, frustrating). I liked Stan on commentary watching his protégé. He tried as hard as he could to be impartial, but Coss points out how he's jumping out of his seat after nearly every move Billy Jack makes, right along with the rest of the crowd. The fans were so hot for Billy Jack that Harley got some of the loudest boos I've heard on the set for a simple tights pull. Make no mistake, they believed that Billy Jack was walking out the World champion on this night. I loved Harley trying to bargain the match down to one fall. As it turned out, it would have been better for him if he had, because he would have already won. This definitely wasn't the first World title match ever held at the House of Action, but I think it's the first one Coss has called, so we'll forgive him his historical ignorance. One question, though: If the World champion has never been in Portland before as Coss claims, how does Flair know so much about Billy Jack? ​Second fall: ​Billy Jack continues to work on Harley's back with basic bodyslams and backdrops, including one on the arena floor to get out of a potential piledriver. Harley's moving pretty slowly by the end, which allows Billy Jack to slip over his back and lock on the full nelson. The pain ends up being too much for the champion, and he submits to even the match at a fall apiece with about four and a half minutes of wrestling time remaining, according to Coss. (Something tells me we're going to a draw here, folks.) I like how Billy Jack lifted Harley off the ground as he applied the full nelson. For a second I thought he was going to swing him around the way Kenny Patera used to do. I'm at the point now where I could stand to see more than just headbutts out of Harley. Usually the champion gets a control section in his title matches so that the fans can see what a good wrestler he is. Harley hasn't gotten his yet, and with so little time remaining I don't think he will. Unless they're building to a house show match somewhere in the territory, this match is a waste of Harley's time and talent. By contrast, Flair got plenty of offense in the match I saw against Hack Sawyer. Granted, Billy Jack's the much bigger crowd favorite, but it's not like he hasn't taken a beating before. Does anyone else think that it would be better at times to do away with the break between falls? You could still book time-limit draws, but there would be more wresting time, which would make the finishes in matches like this less obvious. Even the marks have to know that the odds are against Billy Jack winning the title with so little time left, and that's not really fair. At the very least, we should have had Don on the microphone getting the boys to double-time it to the ring. Third fall: ​This consists of Billy Jack trying to apply the full nelson and Harley trying to stall for time. At one point Billy Jack locks on the full nelson ​outside ​the ring, but of course it doesn't count. The time limit runs out just after Billy Jack slips out of a vertical suplex. He applies the full nelson after the bell just because, but Harley bails out for his life. The big problem in this fall was that even the kayfabed time was shaved. The calls were honest until we hit three minutes, then all of a sudden within about fifteen seconds we had the one-minute call. I don't mind time being fudged, but figure out how you're going to do it before the match starts, not right in the middle of the last fall, when even the six year-olds in the audience know that two minutes can't possibly pass that quickly. Maybe this is why Vince, both The Elder and The Younger, never bothered with time calls; could you imagine trying to convince the hip crowds in New York and Philadelphia that two minutes have passed in the span of fifteen seconds? Overall, the atmosphere was the main thing to recommend this. Billy Jack looked great, but it's easy to look great when your opponent is a Wrestling Buddy in human form, like Harley was here except for occasional forearms and headbutts. He probably looked better and got more offense in when he and Billy Jack wrestled in midcard bouts for Vince a few years later. I can't blame the NWA World Champion formula; Harley just plain looked awful, period, like his mind wasn't even on the match at times, or like he'd been hurt and was just trying to get through the evening without aggravating his injuries. Either way, I expected a lot more out of this match than we got.

I'm not sure about this one. First, I agree about the suplexes at the end. Two would have been sufficient, with Kenta doing his crawl aroiund the ring after the first one. That was a compelling visual which needed to remain. I would much rather have seen Doc hit the Stampede to get the win, since that's been his bread-and-butter finisher since he came into the sport. Second, if this match was designed to put Doc over, it did so no thanks to Kenta. I realize that he's now Misawa's number two and the plucky underdog routine really won't cut it anymore, but his no-selling of most of Doc's offense in the first half of the match was ludicrous. It wasn't until Doc hit the powerslam on the floor that Kenta acted like he'd been really hurt, and that was just too long. They should have booked Kenta into a match with someone who didn't have a shot at Misawa coming up in three days if they wanted him to be AJPW's answer to Hogan. Doc sold a ton more for him, to the point where I wondered if he was legitimately injured or gassed, especially since both men were sweating like pigs almost from the start. So this is about the time Bamm Bamm overdosed. Even though he's generally a mess from here on out, he still had at least one run in SMW, plus he was fed to Taker on a pay-per-view sometime in '96 (I think) under a mask as The Executioner. Wouldn't it have been something if Dok Hendrix (Michael Hayes, of course) had been the one to bring him in? Joe Higuchi was a lot more visible and active in this match than he has been most of the time in the Yearbooks. This led to my favorite spot: Doc has Kenta up on the top turnbuckle, and Joe's quite emphatic about wanting them in the ring now. ​As if on cue, Doc hits a superplex for a nearfall. Talk about following orders to the letter! Can't wait to see Doc against Misawa.

​First fall: ​This is the brawl that those beautifully worked tag matches have been leading up to. Everyone on both sides takes a brutal beating at some point, and it's chaos from start to finish. Speaking of the finish, Billy Jack has Dynamite just about put away when he goes up to the top, but he forgets that he doesn't fly, and by the time he comes down Dynamite's long gone. Billy Jack is then dragged to the Clan corner, where Oliver uses his taped thumb on Billy Jack's forehead. Dynamite covers, and Buddy and Curt make the save too late. The Clan leads one fall to none with about nineteen minutes of disc time remaining. As I said earlier, I knew there was a brawl coming up somewhere in this feud, and this one doesn't disappoint. Curt's apparently coming back from some kind of injury; either it happened in the 11/12 tag match I have yet to watch on this disc or we never saw it. At any rate, we see his revenge, as he takes on all three Clan members by himself at the start. The whole Clan gets the triple-ream treatment in the first few minutes, in fact, which is what they've needed for weeks if nit months. The hair match that Dynamite lost to Buddy is about two months old at this point, so I'm wondering if Tommy didn't like the clean-headed look and decide to stay with it for a while. Now that I'm used to it, it does make him look like a tough guy. What is it with guys supposedly bleeding and the cameras not being able to pick it up? As the second fall starts, Stan and Coss mention that Oliver's thumb busted Billy Jack's forehead open, but I can't see blood on him anywhere. Either the boys need to blade more visibly (which isn't exactly safe) or the production crew needs to make sure that we see the blood when they do. Sounds like a hell of a Christmas lineup, with Billy Jack and Oliver main-eventing in a street fight. But, as usual, Buddy steals the show whether he means to or not. He's pulled off a lot of stunts in his day, but I'd pay serious, serious money to see him as the Baby New Year, diaper and all. Second fall: ​This one is all Clan, as they lay tremendous beatings on both Billy Jack and Curt, working on the cut on Billy Jack's head and Curt's previously injured shoulder. Finally, Curt gets the hot tag to Buddy, but the Playboy gets cut off before he can do much. Just when it looks bleakest for Rose's Babyface Army, Rip shoots Buddy into the ropes and catches him coming off with his taped thumb right in the throat. That's too much for Sandy, and he disqualifies The Clan to even the bout at a fall apiece with about four minutes remaining. Billy Jack's a bit of an odd choice for face-in-peril considering that Curt's the one coming back from an injury, but he sure makes it work, kicking out of pin attempts that most normal wrestlers would be unconscious during. The more I see of Dynamite's ringwork as a heel, the more I realize that Vince miscast him and Davey Boy as faces. He looks sharper than I've ever seen him; each move looks crisp and designed to do damage. As a face, especially part of the Bulldogs, his moves looked visually impressive but not especially devastating. When there was a beating to be given, Davey (who fit Vince's idea of a wrestler much better) took care of it. The camera missed Curt being thrown over the top rope by Assassin and Billy Jack somehow ending up on the outside as well. Missed shots are becoming epidemic with this crew. I realize that they only have two cameras and won't necessarily catch everything, but too many times we've seen random crowd shots or corner shots while important things are going on in the ring or out on the floor. Watching footage like this makes me appreciate Vince's first-class production; the product may have been lacking, but at least it looked ​like a million bucks. I'm glad we heard about the Bonnema Trophies; it's nice that Frank's being remembered by the Portland wrestling community. He's a bit more low-key than most wrestling announcers, but he calls matches well, and when he gets excited you know something major's going down. I can't wait to hear more of him on the set. Curt sounded like a real killer in the between falls promo; he's come a long way from the white meat babyface he once was thanks to his feuds with Buddy and The Clan. I loved Buddy, especially "Revenge should be on the marquee along with wrestling!" which was both original and brilliant. Billy Jack didn't have a lot to say, and I'm wondering if he wasn't legitimately shaken up from some of the stiff head shots he's taken throughout the match. ​Third fall: ​Buddy plays FIP briefly, then gets the hot tag to Curt. Eventually it all breaks down, and we have bonzo gonzo triangle style. Rip bails on the proceedings, but Billy Jack's right behind him, and they go up the aisle. Buddy and Assassin take their issue outside as well, leaving Curt and Dynamite. Dynamite misses a corner charge and hits the post headfirst, which opens him up, then gets a brief advantage and heads up top to finish Curt off. But Curt catches him and delivers a thunderous back superplex. The issue's academic after that, and a three count later the RBA emerges victorious. Now I know where Buddy got the outfit he wore at Mania I. Seriously, if it's not one of Assassin's spares I completely miss my guess. Nice job leaving the spotlight to Curt in his return match, allowing him to score the winning fall. I might have had him beat Oliver instead of Dynamite, but since his issue's with the entire Clan I don't suppose it matters much. I loved how Buddy used the taped thumb on Oliver......once. He's still not above such things (and would we ever want him to be?) but he knows to use such tricks just often enough that they're payback, not his own attempt to maim someone. We didn't get a whole lot of Billy Jack-Oliver, but that's understandable with the Christmas show just nine days away. I'd have liked to see a bit more of Buddy-Oliver, though. since that was the issue that precipitated Buddy's turn in the first place. I'm glad we got a definitive winner instead of just a wild brawl that ended inconclusively. Everyone knows that there are more battles to come in this war, but for this night good has prevailed.

​First fall: ​This is the second match of the four-match tag series between The Clan and what I call Rose's Babyface Army. Representing The Clan are Assassin and Rip Oliver; representing the RBA are Buddy and regular tag team partner Curt Hennig. If you recall, last week Assassin and Dynamite were disqualified in a non-title match against Buddy and Curt, which means that the belts are on the line this week. This fall could have been a complete match; there's tremendous back-and-forth action, mostly centered around the faces doing a number on Oliver's arm and the heels working on Curt's ribs and back. Buddy finally gets the tag, but is waylaid as soon as he gets into the ring. He somehow manages to turn the tide, though, and while Curt's dropkick knocks Assassin for a loop, Buddy superplexes Oliver to get the win for his side. He and Curt lead The Clan one fall to none with less then eleven minutes of disc time remaining. As great as the in-ring action is here, Buddy teaches a clinic on how to provide distractions. He chases Assassin all around the ring at one point, leaving him so mixed up that he doesn't know whether to cry or wind his watch, with the end result being that Rip gets the upper hand on Curt and goes to tag, only to find no partner there and his arm back under assault. Buddy provides an even more painful distraction later with Assassin the legal man in the ring, as he stops a tag attempt by snapping Oliver's already-injured left arm off the top rope as the crowd goes nuts. It's always a treat to see heels hoisted by their own petard, but it's twice the treat when it's done as spectacularly as Buddy does it here. We're to the point in the feud now where people are starting to remember where they've hurt each other in the past. For example, when Assassin wants to use his loaded mask to cut Curt off, he doesn't butt him in the forehead and bust him open, he drives his head into Curt's ribs, which he's hurt several times in the recent past. Likewise, Oliver and Assassin do a real number on Curt's back, pitching him over the top rope so he lands right on it outside the ring. Unfortunately, the studio lighting doesn't let us see the fall, but hearing Stan describe the welts on Curt's back lets us know just how awful the landing was for him. Speaking of Stan, he was great analyzing the arm work done by Buddy and Curt, describing how Rip was afraid to move while trapped in Curt's armbar lest the wrong move tear his arm off. He also was good in telling us that as tough as Rip was, he wanted no part of being in the ring for a good long while after he finally tagged out because his arm was in such bad shape. He's not quite the natural broadcaster Dutch is, but he really lets the viewers know what it's like in the ring in a way few others can. I have no idea where Dynamite is, and Coss and Stan haven't offered any clues yet either. It's as if Rip had been one of the champions all along. Second fall: ​This fall was booked kind of weirdly. Sandy takes a bump after only a few seconds, and most of the rest of the fall is worked with him flat on his back. Buddy gets the hot tag from Curt and appears to have Assassin beaten after a beautiful flying elbow, but instead of taking the pin, Buddy walks back over to the heel corner, and Rip bangs his head into Assassin's loaded hood to knock him out. Another diving headbutt makes it all look legal, and we're even at a fall apiece with just over six minutes remaining. I wonder if the bump Sandy took (supposedly from Curt's feet after he was hiptossed by Assassin) might have been legit. I don't think a ref bump would have been booked for so early in a fall, or in the second fall at all, for that matter. That would also explain why the guys kept working; it simply wasn't time to go home yet, plus Sandy eventually recovered, although he was noticeably winded for the rest of the fall. This doesn't have anything specifically to do with this fall, but at least twice on the set I've heard Don refer to tag matches as "relay matches". I've never heard that term or seen it in print before, and I've seen plenty of old print material concerning wrestling in my time. Has anyone else on the board heard it, and if so, where? ​Third fall: ​The champions spend most of this fall working over Curt's shoulder, repeatedly ramming it into the steel post outside the ring and punishing it with various maneuvers inside​ the ring. A shoulderbreaker from Oliver almost gets three, but Curt manages to get a foot over the bottom rope. A chagrined Oliver tries for another one, but Curt slips out the back door and hits a German suplex to get the win and the titles as the crowd and the announcers go crazy. Apparently The Clan was using whatever the Northwest equivalent of Freebird rules is to defend the belts, because Dynamite ran in to protest the decision after the match. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but Stan and Coss should have explained this before the bout started rather than make out like Oliver had been Assassin's partner all along. How in the world do you no-sell ramming your own head into a concrete floor like Assassin did? Stan covers by saying that the object in Assassin's mask cushioned the blow, which assumes that the object in question is some kind of metal. Regardless, Assassin could have acted stunned for at least a few seconds. I loved Stan's reaction when Buddy and Curt won. Even though he's tried to hide it throughout the series, everyone watching knows that the Clan tried to hurt him too, so he can certainly be forgiven for a lapse in his impartiality. Nice job by Coss pointing out that the RBA now controls all the belts the way The Clan has always wanted to, at least for a week. It'll be interesting to see how much the new champions have left for the rematch next week, when Dynamite will be plenty fresh and plenty angry over this loss. It should be a real barnburner, and I can't wait!

First fall: ​This is the first of the four-match tag series pitting The Clan against Portland's top faces. We didn't know how the last (fourth) one ended, but Dynamite and Assassin walked out with the belts against Buddy and Billy Jack. Now Buddy's teaming with former sworn enemy Curt Hennig. This fall had some tremendous action; in fact, it would have been almost a complete match in itself. Curt and Buddy thoroughly worked over Dynamite's arm, and the heels retaliated by trapping Buddy in the ring and working him over. Eventually Buddy made the tag to Curt, but Assassin's loaded mask came into play, as he caught Curt in the ribs with it to Sandy Barr's blind side. From then on, it was easy pickings, and the champions finished Curt off with a combination suplex lift/powerslam from the top. Dynamite got the fall, and the champions lead 1-0 with about ten minutes of disc time remaining. Say what you will about The Clan; their tag team work is exquisite. The finisher (which deserves some sort of name; that's how devastating it looks) was one that I wish the Bulldogs would have stolen, and the rest of their work, particularly the FIP segment on Buddy, was textbook. Part of that was due to Buddy, who's really mastered the art of playing sympathetic babyface while not going all Ricky Morton about it. This feud's really starting to hit its groove. In addition to the tag team issues, you have Dynamite/Curt over the Northwest title, Buddy/Dynamite, also over the title, and Curt/Assassin over Assassin's mask. (Don't worry, I'm sure Buddy and Assassin aren't exactly exchanging Christmas cards either.) Plus, Oliver has apparently destroyed Jules Strongbow's headdress, which is another reason the faces want a piece of him. The multiple layers of this feud make it compelling wrestling no matter who's in the ring. I'm guessing Oliver's been warned to stay away from ringside, which would explain his absence. I wonder if he'll try to interfere to save the titles for Dynamite and Assassin; in the Billy Jack match I've already seen, the champions simply refuse to get in the ring during the third fall, which leads to whatever the decision was. I'd love to see Stasiak join the war against The Clan, but with young talents like Curt and Billy Jack whose careers will benefit from being involved, plus Buddy being as over as he is, I understand why he's soft-pedaling his own problems with Rip and company. It's not like they need him in order to make the matches better. Second fall: ​The champions spend the majority of the fall working over Curt's back, which was damaged by the first fall finisher. After a few nearfalls, Buddy finally gets the tag and cleans house a bit, then Curt tags back in. A doubleteam by the champs fails as Curt catches them both with one mighty dropkick, then hits a back suplex on Assassin and bridges to score the pin and even the bout at one fall apiece with about six minutes remaining. One point that Stan brought up on commentary is what makes this feud so refreshing to me: As badly as all four men want to hurt each other, they want to ​wrestle​, not simply beat each other up. All four guys are showing off their repertoires for everyone to see, and it makes for great viewing. I don't know how long it'll last; there's bound to be a bloody brawl or two somewhere in this feud's future. But for now, it's nice to see good hard wrestling action even in a feud with such obvious hatred. Apparently this isn't a title match, as Coss clearly said just before the start of the third fall that Curt and Buddy would have to win this match to get a shot at the Northwest belts. Since these two teams have a rematch on this disc which aired two weeks later, I'll guess that Curt and Buddy win this fall and set up a title match. By the way, this is the first time I've seen Curt wear his famous blue trunks with the white swoosh that he wore all the way through his AWA run and into his first days as Mr. Perfect. I'm guessing that he switched to a singlet at least partially because of the back trouble he developed which came to a head at SummerSlam '91, much like Andre wore a singlet as a heel to conceal his back brace after his surgery in the fall of '86. Third fall: ​This one doesn't last long. Assassin changes from a gold hood to a black one between falls, and Stan speculates that it means he's up to something. How right he is, as late in the fall with all four men in the ring, Dynamite holds Curt while Assassin comes off the ropes. Curt ducks out of the way just in time, and Assassin butts Dynamite right in the forehead, busting him wide open for the third match in a row and sending him out of the ring. Dynamite sees the blood and goes wild, grabbing a chair and bringing it into the ring. He proceeds to wear both Buddy and Curt out with it, then eliminates both of them from the ring, sending Curt flying over the top rope. The champions are disqualified, but it doesn't help them, as Buddy and Curt now have earned a title shot for the following week. I don't think I've ever seen a masked man change masks in the middle of a match for any reason whatsoever. If Buddy and Curt were smart, they'd get a clause in the title match contract stipulating that any change in masks during the match by Assassin means both an automatic DQ ​​and ​a title change. I thought that Buddy was busted open sometime during the first fall, but we don't see blood on him at any point in the match, although he was clearly butted by Assassin's (first) loaded hood. Could Buddy have been so into the match that he forgot to blade when he was supposed to? I've mentioned before how naturally muscular Dynamite looks in these matches, although he was most likely already on the juice to some extent. With that look plus Davey Boy's, the Bulldogs could have been just as over as they were if not more so. It's a shame that Dynamite, like Billy Graham before him. overdid it to the point that he's now a physically broken shell of a man. It didn't have to be this way. According to the both the match listing and the disc menu, Oliver takes Dynamite's place against Buddy and Curt the following week, Either the listings are wrong or some sort of shenanigans are afoot with The Clan. Knowing them, I'd bet on the latter. (Of course, Dynamite could be too hurt to wrestle as well, but I'm still betting on some sort of funny business.)