garretta

First fall: I liked that they showed how Barry almost won the TV title two weeks before. It put the idea of a title change in the viewers' minds and showed how vulnerable Austin could be if Barry picked up the pace just a tad. Interesting that Barry used a regular suplex to gain his only fall instead of the superplex. Maybe Dusty wanted him to save it for the rematch he knew was coming tonight. As usual, the pace was sloth-like almost until Barry hits the superplex for the pin. There were a few more action sequences than are typical of these matches (including the one where Austin busted Barry's mouth open), but they weren't exactly hopping to it. I don't expect guys to go a hundred miles an hour for a half hour, but these constant slow starts have to be turning off at least some viewers. Owen wasn't much on commentary, and if the guys we've heard in the last four weeks are the best celebrity co-hosts that Turner with all his money can find, they need to tell JR to get over his ego and bring Jesse on full-time. I thought the guests were picked based on their wrestling fandom and knowledge, but if they were, they could have fooled me so far. Rachtmann was a cut above the rest, but he's still not the experienced commentator that a promotion's flagship show needs. It was interesting to hear that Owen was a wrestler in high school, and he really put over what good condition a wrestler needs to be in whether they're an amateur or a professional, so he's made at least one positive contribution to the broadcast so far. I really didn't need to hear JR's reminiscences of the first time he saw Alabama in person, though I suppose they were inevitable with the lead singer right next to him. Has JR ever put Heyman over, even grudgingly? It sure doesn't seem like it. I've never heard one word about how smart or resourceful he is, or how he's been a major force in WCW for the past six months, locking up three titles and forcing WCW to dance to his tune for the most part, just as he bragged that he would. How many homosexual or wimp references do we need to hear? How many times do we need to hear that he's acting like a brat at ringside (which he does a lot of the time, but JR doesn't need to constantly call attention to it)? In other words, when he says things like he does, is he insulting Paul E. Dangerously the character or quasi-shooting on Paul Heyman the human being? Yes, he's done similar shtick in the past, most notably on Corny. But Corny was playing a mama's boy type whose manhood was in question, with his brightly colored outfits that didn't match and his fire engine red tights when he wrestled, plus his high-pitched voice and the use of a tennis racquet as a weapon. Paul E. Dangerously is many annoying things, but he's never come across as effeminate or childlike. A blowhard, yes. An asshole, definitely. But always a manly blowhard asshole. If the only thing JR can say about Dangerously is that his success doesn't count for much because he's somehow less than a man (read: gay), then he really needs to keep his mouth shut and his personal feelings about Paul Heyman the man out of his broadcasts. Second fall: This one was quick, as Austin took over and dominated, hitting the Stun Gun for the pin, Barry spent most of the fall selling, which he's great at, and Austin's offense really looked good, as some said earlier. I loved Paul taunting Barry with the belt right in front of Randy Anderson. As big a part of his act as the phone is, I wonder if he'd be taken a little more seriously if he spent less time on it and more time interacting with his wrestlers' opponents. JR mentioned at the end of the fall that Austin took control through illegal tactics on the outside. The problem is, the only truly illegal tactic that I remember was Barry's low blow to get out of the camel clutch. Was there something edited out of this fall, presumably for time? Third fall: This fall is basically one long finishing sequence, as both guys sell exhaustion and try to gain the advantage and the win any way they possibly can. More taunting of Barry by Heyman with the belt, and by now Pee Wee's so used to it that he only glances over once. It's amazing what referees can get used to. I forgot to mention this earlier, but Austin does a superior job of selling Barry's right hands with the cast. They're not meant to be instant knockout shots, but they're definitely meant to cross Austin's running lights, and we can see that they do. I would have liked the finish better if Barry had whacked Austin with the belt instead of just rolling him up. After all, it's not like he's above that sort of thing. Austin's postmatch attack was well-done, but it's not anything we haven't seen before. One thing that kind of distressed me was JR's lack of outrage. This is the time when most announcers will go crazy denouncing the heel's tactics, and given JR's dislike of both Dangerously the character and Heyman the man, I thought he and Austin both would be in for a real blistering. Instead, JR reports it just like everything else in the match, and seems more eager to plug next week's matches in the standup than talk about the one we just saw. The pressure to get all the plugs and shills in for a given block of time has compromised the ability to tell a story fully on TV, and not everyone can afford wrestling hotlines to catch up on what they missed. WCW is usually more conscientious about trying to make sure the matches and angles aren't given short shrift than the WWF is, but they don't always succeed, as we see here. Before I forget, it was nice of JR to allow Owen to introduce Rhubarb since they were classmates at Jacksonville State. Most promotions wouldn't even bother to acknowledge the connection, let alone act on it like that.

I've never known a manager to be this effective while seeming so frail. Ron could literally manage any heel currently on the SMW roster, even the Bodies, and have them more over in one promo than they'd been before. Fortunately, he's got Tony, who's back in his true element. Sorry, Kim, but I hope your plan fails, because your husband's never been better! I love Bob's reaction to Ron's ramblings. You can tell that he's trying to be solicitous to a sick old man, but when Ron starts going on about the refs being paid to screw Tony out of the title, he has to cut Ron off to save his own integrity. People rightfully talk about how Dutch's work adds to the broadcast, but Bob's far from chopped liver himself. What an inspired pairing!

I tuned in only infrequently in real rime by now, but I remember this pretty clearly. I remember being shocked a few years later when I found out that Razor was really Scott Hall, whom I remembered as a white meat weightlifter type in the AWA. Of course, I wasn't familiar enough with WCW to know who the Diamond Studd was. Regardless, it was one of the most startling transformations I'd seen up to that time. He's really menacing here, speaking softly and slowly with great authority. It's a pity that the most of the stuff I remember this same basic character for is "SURVEY TIME!" and all of the NWO-related crap that came later.

A pleasant little oddity. I liked seeing the interpromotional pairings more than the others, but most of the real action happened between Goto and Onita for FMW and Del Santo and Casas for the luchadores, which I guess was for the best. The second fall was almost too quick to catch. As Pete said, it's almost like they thought they were working a one-fall bout, only to be reminded by the ref that it was two out of three and they had less than a minute left to take it home. To their credit, they improvised a decent finish, but it was just too abrupt. Someone should tell Mil not to wear a black mask when Casas is in the same bout. For a second, I got the two of them mixed up until I remembered that Casas doesn't wear a mask.

First fall: This is set up to be almost bigger than WarGames, which is a major tactical error. In fact, the argument could be made that this match shouldn't be happening at all so soon after WarGames, which is supposed to be the ultimate showdown between factions in WCW. Maybe they could have swapped this for Muta/Armstrong the following week in order to give those who saw WrestleWar a chance to digest what happened there. This is very, very slow-paced, which is the norm for the first falls in this two-out-of-three series. It only picks up toward the very end, in time for the pin. Casper is mostly there for JR to bounce his football references off of, which doesn't sound like much unless, like me, the last match in this series that you saw was Borne/Arn from 5/2 with the unforgettable Jason Hervey on color. Heyman may be the standout performer on his side for the fall: yelling at cameramen to get out of his face, registering concern, and browbeating Zbyszko for questioning his strategy. By the way, we missed the Nikita/Larry match that supposedly started the whole dissension angle. This fall does an excellent job of establishing that the DA just aren't all on the same page. Arn makes several mistakes due to his mind wandering, Heyman and Zbyszko publically argue, and Zbyszko gets caught by a blind (at least to him) tag and is pinned by Steamboat, who's now presumably replaced Sting as Public Babyface #1, so to speak. For those who wanted the DA to have more offense, they might have if this was the supergroup who was firing on all cylinders as they were at the beginning of the year. Right now, they're falling apart at the seams, with Larry on the outs and Arn thinking mostly about singles glory. It makes perfect sense that the more unified babyface team dominates them. Lines of the fall: Casper (after JR tells him that he can just call Bobby "Beautiful"): "I will, at least to his face." Bobby (to Zbyszko, after he and Heyman get into a verbal spat, in an "aw shucks" voice): "Gee, Larry, listen to him. He's pretty smart." (It's all in the delivery, folks.) Second fall: There's not a whole lot to say here, as the faces continue to dominate. The DA gets a brief advantage when Dustin's shoulder gets rammed into the post, and Arn works it over a bit, but the advantage doesn't last long. We get a great triple figure-four spot from the faces, which leads to the referee forgetting (intentionally or otherwise) who the legal men in the ring are. The ending furthers the dissension storyline even more, as it's Larry who's elected to throw the phone into the ring, but his pass bounces off Bobby's hands, and Dustin makes the pick on the deflection, then inexplicably waffles Bobby for the DQ. I agree with Mike here; if the idea of the fall was to make Larry look like a schmuck, the ref (Mike Atkins, I think) should have caught the phone and DQ'd the DA, thus giving them a loss in two straight. Otherwise, Dustin should have been pinned; he had no real reason to hit anyone with the phone (now once again a "foreign", as opposed to "international", object, according to JR in the Borne/Arn match) except that they felt they had to give the DA a fall somehow. I wonder what the DA took a vote on. We overheard Paul and Arn discussing that early in the fall. Could it have been Larry's dismissal? Once again, Casper pretty much confines his remarks to the old Raiders, including a comparison of the DA's current situation to the infighting his Raider teams went through. Not that the comparison wasn't apt, but guest commentators who barely know anything about what they're seeing is a trademark of Vince's that he's rightly panned for, and outside of that one statement (which was audibly spoon-fed to him by JR), he's had nothing to say about the match he's watching. Even Hervey. as annoying as he was, tried to talk about the match intelligently now and again. If JR can't handle working with Jesse every week, get Dusty out of the office and put him in the booth, or let JR go it alone, which he was practically doing here anyway. Third fall: The DA finally takes control, as Arn nails a surprise DDT and they then launch a spirited attack on Steamer's head, face, and neck. People here have complained about his selling, but how would you act if you were in the middle of an athletic event and someone hit a knee right in your already-broken nose? Chances are you'd act like you'd been shot, just like Steamer did. The only problem here is the lack of blood, but this is WCW TV; no one's allowed to have any in their body lest it come out by accident. Eventually, we get the hot tag to Nikita, and that leads to one of the most well-done "accidental" finishes I've ever seen. Arn's holding Nikita for a doubleteam with Larrry, but Nikita ducks and Larry nails Arn instead. While they're collecting themselves, Arn spots Nikita coming with the sickle and warns Larry, who ducks. Arn gets blasted and pinned. The question is: Did Larry duck out of instinct, or did he deliberately set Arn up to get hit, thus costing the DA the match? The DA, to a man, goes with answer number two, and it's hard to blame them considering what a selfish sleazeball Larry's always been. Heyman takes his jacket off to challenge Larry, which JR all but cracks up at, and we end on a confrontation between The Enforcers. This match existed solely to put Larry even further on the outs with the DA, and it succeeded. (If you wanted to stretch a little, you could also say part of its goal was to hype the Steamer/Nikita team for the NWA tag tournament.) As I said, I really liked how the finish was done, and the fact that all three decisions involved Zbyszko miscues; the only reason the DA escaped with the second fall was because Dustin went inexplicably stupid at the wrong time. There doesn't appear to be any way to repair the rift between Larry and the DA, and the only question now is: Which member does Larry target first once he's kicked out? How did we not get a full-blown Larry/DA feud? Even without Heyman, everyone else from the DA was still in WCW, so they could have all had matches with the Cruncher. I don't know how I'd handle Zbyszko/Rude, since Larry's not really US champion material by now, but he should have been able to beat Eaton and Austin and hold his own in defeat against Arn. By the way, when did Cactus and Abby get back together? JR hypes a match between the two of them and Dustin/Barry on the following night's edition of The Main Event.

Let me be the rain on the parade, so to speak. I understand what the intent here was: two old guys showing the masses how pro wrestling should be done. And that's fine; New Japan booked a pair of similar matches toward the end of 1990, one of which featured Thesz and the other Bock. No one expected either match to be a titanic struggle, and neither were. But they were actual matches, with Bock doing a job for his former partner Saito and looking just as good there as he did here. My point is, no one would have minded seeing these guys go at it for ten minutes if there had been even the illusion of each guy actually trying to win. A couple of old farts introduced by a third old fart with an ax to grind against American professional wrestling who go out and lay around for ten minutes and then laugh themselves giddy with the thought of getting one over on Vince McMahon and Ted Turner in front of a Japanese audience isn't going to do much to convince me that Randy Savage and Sting are noithing but mediocre actors rolling around in tights. In fact, it's going to make me want to go out and buy tickets to see them; they may not be actual pro wrestlers as Lou Thesz defines the term, but at least they can make me care about them through the showmanship he despises so much. Don't get me wrong, it was nice to see that Bock and Billy could still go. But a few pinfall attempts or a little bit of body part work would have gone a long way in proving the point that Thesz was trying to make more than just a holds exhibition. If you want to throw a nod to UWF style, have each takedown be worth three points, but don't count them as you would knockdowns in a regular shoot fight. A draw was the desirable outcome, but there had to be a more exciting and competitive way of getting there. For those of you who might say that competition wasn't the point, that's exactly what I'm saying; it should have been. It should always be in whatever form pro wrestling takes. I liked the English promos by both guys, and even the English intro by Thesz, although it might have been just as effective for him to simply stand there and smile while the native ring announcer read his statement in Japanese.

This one belonged to Jumbo and Taue from the second that Taue used Kikuchi as a dart with the snake-eyes to the buckle. Man, did that look brutal, and the clothesline/stun gun off the top rope a few seconds later was every bit as bad. I get the feeling that Taue really enjoyed throwing Kikuchi around, at least in a kayfabe sense. Kikuchi as face in peril/weak link on Misawa's side is getting a tad old, but he plays the role so well that I can see why they keep him in it. Can't wait for the six-man, as we get very little of substance from any other pairing in the match, particularly Jumbo/Misawa. That may be the last truly big match in the feud, as the two sides only get together three more times on the Yearbook before Jumbo gets sick, and I think all three are regular tag matches. Taue's new chokeslam reminds me of the Bossman Slam, except that Taue takes his man a bit higher. Is the similarity a coincidence, or did Taue actually learn something from an American?

First fall: Not a whole lot going on at first; business picks up when Borne targets Arn's lower back and works it over diligently. Heyman tries to interfere a couple of times and almost gets kicked by Borne, but manages to survive intact. Arn ends up taking the fall with the help of the ropes. But you don't want to hear about any of that; we're all here to heap praise on Jason Hervey, right? The most brilliant color commentator in the history of our sport, so brilliant that he's able to play a face and a heel at the same time and be gratingly obnoxious at both, turning JR against him in the process. In all seriousness, I think he wasn't trying to be a commentator; I think he was trying to play the role of a commentator, as in doing it how he would do it if this match was taking place in a movie and he was a character in the movie. He's trying hard to be a mixture of Jesse Ventura, Terry Funk, and every other heel commentator he's ever heard of, but you need credibility to pull that off, and he doesn't have any that he didn't "earn" by taking Missy to bed. JR tries to play along at first, but after about five minutes of phony sincerity, he's about ready to wring Hervey's neck, and he's far from alone. Come to think of it, he's not really a tweener here; he's pretty much a solid heel. The only heel he hates on is Heyman, and that's mostly because he remembers getting his head almost caved in by Paul's phone last June (which isn't mentioned, at least not yet). The rest of the time, he's taking shots at Big Josh's intelligence and getting smarmier by the second. I'm surprised that "Jimbo" hasn't turned to him by now and said, "That's Mr. Ross to you, you lousy punk kid. And besides, Fred Savage is cuter than you!" It would help matters immensely if the action in the ring was a bit more compelling........no, it wouldn't. This match is totally ruined with two falls and twenty-five minutes still left. Oh well, at least we still have Hervey to pick on! You'd Have To Hear It to Believe It: JR mentions the previous week's Windham-Austin TV title match and how time ran out before it could be completed. The ever-eager Mr. Hervey, hearing his cue, begins to analyze the match as if it was happening in front of him. Maybe he was flashing back to his afternoon delight with Missy or applying his Dippity-Do in the nearest mirror. I'm surprised the producers (of whom JR was one) didn't edit that out of the broadcast. Second fall: This fall features some picture-perfect arm work by Arn, as he whacks Borne's arm off the post early on and spends the rest of the fall working it over as only he can. JR stops playing straight man for Hervey long enough to commend Arn on his strategy, especially considering the fact that Borne's left-handed. In the end, though, Borne steals the fall by rolling Arn up and rather blatantly holding the tights. (Hervey: "HE CHEATED!") Honestly, there's too much Hervey obnoxiousness going on here to comment on it all. The kid (and even if he's a legal adult, he sounds about thirteen) is playing what he thinks is a heel, but he's so audibly dorky and whiny that it does nothing but make the viewers (and JR) wish he'd go far, far away. At least Paul whacking Hervey with the phone is subtly referenced, and JR can't possibly be the only one wishing that he'd do it again, Even the few bonus points Hervey gets for at least seeming to recognize Gordon Solie and Lance Russell don't raise his total score out of the negative eight figures. I love JR asking if Hervey's cast members liked him, and of course the idiot blithely answers, "Sure", The worst part of the evening so far comes when Hervey announces that he's in negotiations with WCW to bring back The Bull Drop Inn. Honestly, wasn't four weeks of that abomination enough for everyone, including Dusty? Thank God this particular revival never saw the light of day. Third fall: Let's get the commentary report out of the way first. Outside of some brutal segues and a few plugs for The Wonder Years (which are understandable), Hervey's pretty much shot his load here, so things calm down quite a bit. He does have one more "get the hell outta here" moment, though, as he appears to be holding Borne's lumber jacket during the postmatch standup. He's also holding his nose, and he says that the jacket's a gift for Fred Savage: "It may even fit him". I wonder if Hervey's costars knew exactly how big a fool he was going to try to make of himself here; if they didn't, I'll bet they really gave him a hard time when he came back to the set. (By the way, there's at least a partial answer to why we saw so much of Hervey during this time; Turner Broadcasting's syndication arm distributed The Wonder Years.) As for the bout, it degenerates into a slugfest, as Borne's busted open over the eye (at least according to JR) and Arn not only sustains more damage to his back, but also to his legs, courtesy of Borne's figure four. Eventually, Borne gets caught coming off the ropes once too often, and Arn hits the spinebuster for a win that took entirely too long. Seriously, one-half of the tag champs takes thirty-five minutes to beat a simpleton like Big Josh? What does that say about him and his ability to challenge Sting? Not only that, Borne dominated long portions of the match with his work on Arn's back. After this, Arn's stock has gone way down in my eyes. Not as a worker, but as a title contender. How can anyone take him seriously as the man who can possibly dethrone Sting? No wonder that whole storyline ended up being nothing more than a tease. There's another problem, too. The Big Josh character has always been presented as a big dumb hick from the woods, and with a few exceptions Borne has wrestled the way a lumberjack who's still finding his way in professional wrestling would. But the length of this match caused him to break character; a kick-and-punch brawler seldom goes three falls and almost thirty-five minutes, so in an effort to have some offense Borne went back to his wrestling training, busting out things like a double underhook suplex and the aforementioned figure four. JR does the best he can to get the holds over, but the question is: How did a man like Big Josh learn to not only execute intricate moves like these, but to do so flawlessly? It takes more training than a former lumberjack could possibly acquire after only a little over a year as a wrestler. I don't fault Borne for all of this, though. The fault lies with the genius whose idea this all was. Surely there was someone else whom Arn could have gone this long with and had a better match. Surely we don't need to have two-out-of-three-fall matches on TV every single week. And most assuredly, the absolute last thing we need is Jason Hervey anywhere near a camera in WCW. This wasn't the worst WCW match I've seen by a longshot, but it's in the running for the most aggravating. I just remembered another awful Hervey moment: he mistakes Jesse for Johnny B. Badd, mostly because Johnny wears a boa and Jesse used to. It's obviously a dig at Jesse, and I wonder if the Bod had a response at some point.

This really dragged at first, but picked up in the middle about the time Pillman missed his somersault on Zenk's leg. Then business (and the crowd) started picking up, and the last eight or ten minutes really clicked. It's almost like they tried to tell the "former partners and friends wrestling cleanly" story, found it wasn't working, and decided to just go at it like any two opponents would, which turned out to be a very smart choice. Thus match was very much influenced by the Japanese juniors, as you can tell by spots like the double missed dropkick, the superplex, and even Zenk sticking his foot in Pillman's face to counter his leap from the top. I've even seen swatted dropkicks turn into nearfalls, although I don't think I've ever seen one actually lead to a winning fall I'm surprised Zenk was able to keep up as well as he did in such a style, since Pillman's the one who's been spending his time wrestling Liger recently. It seemed like they were teasing heel turns for each guy at various points. I'm not sure Zenk would have been much of a heel unless he was given a Model-type gimmick, which would of course have been a blatant ripoff of Zenk's former tag team partner Rick Martel. Maybe it's because I know that Pillman eventually had several successful heel runs, but he seems more of a natural in the role to me. Okay, now to the commentary. It had its flashes, but it was never as good as the match itself, and that's mostly JR's fault. He seemed to get in a snit over "NOSE TACKLE?" and never really got out of it. I've said before that Jesse really shouldn't argue football with a diehard like JR, but in that case he was only saying what a lot of fans were probably thinking. Pillman's thin as a rail here; it is difficult to believe that he once played the same position as 350-pound William Perry. JR then repeats the old "They don't play much football in Minnesota" bit that he's tried before. News flash, JR: Jesse was one of the voices of the Vikings during this time, the same as you were with the Falcons, so don't make him out as not knowing what a football looks like; you just sound hurt because Jesse interfered with one of your standard (and overused) spiels. The other major story Jesse tried to push was that one of the two would begin to cheat during the match to gain the advantage. It never really happened, which Jesse admitted himself several times, but JR not only specifically no-sold that notion (and admitted on the air that he was doing so, which was terrible form on his part), but did everything but warn Jesse to shut up and stop interfering with his broadcast or else whenever he brought it up. (You could hear the warning in his voice, in fact.) There were also several times when Jesse made perfectly good, solid points that JR petulantly refused to respond to, and the silence was deafening. To his credit, Jesse soldiered on, but I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd tried to give JR whatever the broadcasting form of a receipt was. Of course, JR would have liked that, since it would have meant he was flying solo, which is what he wanted anyway. All of the booth pettiness wasn't enough to ruin this match, though. I hope we get to see a rematch at some point, because they really showed in the second half of this match that they can be as spectacular going against each other as they were teaming with each other.

This was a decent bout for what it was, which was Hughes trying to act as a roadblock to Nikita's showdown with Vader the following night at the Omni. All I can say is that they better have shown the Omni bout at least in part the following week, because otherwise it doesn't make sense that Nikita, who's good enough to be Sting's surrogate against Vader, had as much trouble as he did with a midcarder like Hughes. Don't get me wrong; Hughes isn't a stiff, at least not now. But Nikita should have beaten him a bit quicker and a lot more decisively than he did. Where was Harley? JR mentions that Hughes has been/is being trained by him, which makes sense considering that they came in together to second Luger. But he wasn't at ringside here, which is a bit hard to fathom considering that Nikita's coming after his new star protégé unless Hughes stops him here. Could he have been fired before this taping, then brought back before the show aired? Doing something like that would be so typical of WCW it isn't funny. Where was Randy Owen? JR did solo commentary here, which either meant that this match was taken from one of the syndie shows or that Owen was so bad that they wanted to feature him as little as humanly possible. They really need to stop hyping JR's radio show so aggressively when it conflicts with a live Omni show. From the way JR talked about his interview with Zbyszko, one would think that there was going to be major breaking news. Thus, the fan's dilemma: Stay home and listen to Larry, thus forfeiting your chance to see Nikita/Vader live and in person, or go to the matches and risk falling behind on what's going on with the DA (like possible dissension in the ranks, perhaps?) It's a choice that Atlanta-area fans simply shouldn't have to make. What's wrong with giving the radio show a week off when WCW runs the Omni once a month? In case you're curious, Nikita got a clean pinfall over Vader the next night at the Omni.

This is my first exposure to the two-out-of-three fall main events on WCWSN. Let's see what they look like: First fall: Holy cow, was this ever boring. There had to be a miscommunication somewhere along the line, because I've never seen a first fall in a two-out-of-three paced like this. I'm honestly wondering if they forgot themselves and were trying to work a classic babyface scientific draw, then realized about eighteen minutes in that they had about twelve more minutes to score three falls. I've certainly seen better from Muta, but at least he (presumably) has the excuse of coming in from Japan. If ever someone wants to know why Brad gets the rap he does, show them this match. His lack of pep here is totally inexcusable. He and Muta should have each pulled out every highspot that worked in their Japanese encounters and used them all here in an effort to tear down the house. Instead we get nearly twenty minutes of matwork that goes absolutely nowhere. When even Randy Rachtmann can tell you're dogging it, you're in big trouble. JR tries to explain it all as strategy, and mixes in a few shills to keep the audience from falling asleep. Rachtmann at least knows enough about wrestling to sound halfway intelligent, and even throws in an NHL reference which JR either can't figure out (not surprising, since he's from Oklahoma and has spent most of his life working in non-NHL markets) or chooses to no-sell. It takes two small packages from Muta to cop the first fall, and this is almost certainly going to end up a time-limit draw unless some major aspirations are put in gear posthaste. Muta's previous stint in WCW is almost, but not quite, ignored, and the impression I get is that we were originally supposed to believe that this is Muta's first major match in the States ever. To his credit, JR realizes that that's ludicrous and does a nice job putting over Muta's 1989 winning streak. Second fall: The action's a little faster-paced, but not much. The only thing of any real consequence that happens outside of Muta's winning pin is that he appears to knock himself silly headbutting Brad, and injure his eye to boot. Typical of Brad in this match, he either can't or won't follow up. At least we got to see Muta hit the handspring elbow and the moonsault, which are always worth the price of admission on either side of the Pacific. Again, it's Rachtmann who calls Brad out on his lack of energy here, and I'm wondering if the reason Brad half-assed it is because he was booked to lose two straight to a guy who was in and out of WCW so often during this time that he wasn't part of any storylines or even mentioned on television. That wouldn't jibe with all we've heard about what a consummate pro he is, but the only other explanation is that he wasn't physically up to par. Regardless, it's hard to fathom why Corny wanted him as the top face in SMW if he was capable of pulling stinkers like this on the national stage. On an unrelated note, WCW loves to put together teams that have never teamed before to represent New Japan on its big shows. I've never seen Hase and Nogami together before, certainly not on this set, and yet they're the number two seed in the NWA tag title tournament? How about the actual IWGP champions, Vader and Bam Bam, or if you want to save Vader for Sting, how about a team like Muta and Hase, who have actually worked together before? I guess they figures that it really didn't matter, since only diehard fans would know either man, or any New Japan guy other than Muta for that matter.

This was actually a decent bout considering that no one was really supposed to pay attention to it. This was all about Jacques and his new shock stick, which for a supposed expert he took entirely too long to put together. I'm with Mike on the supposedly blown slingshot; as old and as fat as Sarge was, why would Flair be able to do something like that with ease? I'd have been more suspicious if he had gotten him over with it. Besides, Sarge took two (or was it three?) corner bumps that no one his age has any business taking, which more than made up for it.. His selling of the shock was first-rate as well. I know they were trying to bury Sarge's past as an Iraqi sympathizer, but he wasn't even mentioned as a former WWF champion, though Flair was. There's glossing over unpleasantness, and then there's blatant, public's-intelligence-be-damned revisionist history, which Vince is a master of, unfortunately. One habit of Vince's that's only growing worse is his outright refusal to call even the simplest wrestling holds. I love Bruno to death, but I refuse to accept his thesis that Vince didn't know even basic stuff during their time together in the booth. He did a great job at MSG and a good job on TV until about five years ago (1987). Then we started getting "Whatta maneuver!" more and more often. Now, it's constant. All of a sudden, he forgets suplexes and half-Boston crabs? Granted, this match was all about Jacques' shock of Sarge, but I shudder to think what he'll be like on pay-per-view, especially when he's paired with Heenan, who can analyze bouts well but has zero interest in calling holds, period. The "ONE-TWO-THREE! HE GOT HIM! YES HE DID! BECAUSE I SAY SO, THAT'S WHY!........oh, wait, only two" has gotten even more ridiculous as time has gone on, too. Unless he pulls out a vintage 1977 performance from somewhere in his memory bank, I may actually find myself wanting to jump forward in time and listen to a solid hour of Jerry Lawler screaming "PUPPIES PUPPIES!" at the top of his lungs. Why is Sarge ordering the mothers in the audience to have a Happy Mother's Day at the top of his lungs? Can't he speak in something resembling a normal human voice at all anymore? I guess Vince didn't want to pay Heenan to sub for Curt on commentary for this one. Too bad; he would have been merely intolerable with a color guy instead of excruciating.

I think everyone else has stolen my thunder here. Norton was much better in tag matches where his smaller partner could do most of the work and he could come in every once in a while and clean house. He does eat lariats well, though.

I don't know whether it was supposed to be a feather in Horner's cap that he could beat someone with Landell's reputation in about three minutes, but if it was, they missed the boat. This was way too short, barely getting started before it was over. In fact, the beatdown afterward by Landell lasted just about as long as the match did, and was more emotionally engaging to boot. If it wasn't for Dutch running through the things that Horner could do with the money and complaining about Bullet Bob's supposed favoritism, I doubt that there would be anything memorable about this at all. One thing's for sure: Landell's finished as a threat to anyone on the babyface side, at least for now. Now Corny has a problem: Lee's his champion, but Horner's the hometown boy who's really gotten the big buildup. Which one does he push as his top ring-active face? (Remember, regardless of the fact that he's the commissioner, Bullet Bob's the top overall face, but he's not supposed to be able to both wrestle and be commissioner at the same time, at least not yet.)

The idea of Embry being some sort of avenging angel for Dr. Tom after the way they broke up amuses me. I wonder if Corny ever tried to get Embry to do a guest shot in SMW; he'd have fit right in as a third Heavenly Body, even on a one-time basis. For two guys working in a ring that was almost collapsing around them, Eric and Brian do a fine job here. Eric being so angry that he just wants to pound on Brian works perfectly here, as neither one of them have to run the ropes or go to the air. Of course, we get a Dogs run-in, and I completely buy Eric being so mad that he doesn't feel the board being cracked over his head. Nice cameo by the Power Twins, whom I thought had left the business after their stint in Abrams' UWF. I guess we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Coffey's supposed to be the heel in the Coffey/Marlin situation, because Embry not only accuses Coffey of protecting the Dogs, but says that he can't hold a candle to Marlin as a promoter. Yet another sign that hell has indeed frozen over in Memphis. Lawler and Corey Maclin as gospel singers? I pity the folks at that jubilee! Nice to know that Lawler's team swept the doubleheader last week. Keep 'em rolling, Kingfish!

No, Eddie tried to move up, but apparently his match with Lawler didn't come off, so this really wasn't beneath him at all. It would have been nice if there had been an alliance forged between Eddie and Brian after this, but that doesn't seem to be happening from what we see here. My major problem is that we didn't need three screwy finishes in one match (powder, chain, Gilbert interference). One would have been more than enough to make the point. Of course, they wanted the fans to want Brian to get his butt kicked because he's not really a good wrestler, but a lucky stupid punk, so maybe having him potentially get lucky three times in less than five minutes was exactly what they wanted. It would have been nice if we'd actually been able to hear what Billy Joe was saying. Regardless, this is a completely fresh matchup that should be a ton of fun, even if the Southern title is just a midcard trinket these days. I would have laughed if Dr. Tom had come back the next week with Corny and Stan in tow demanding an investigation. It might not have led anywhere, but think of the possible promo battle between Corny and Eddie!

I collect quaint little Memphis-isms as a hobby, and this is a good example of number 206: The on-screen promoters automatically believe that an outsider, who is almost in all cases a heel, will give up the TV time they just hijacked and come quietly and respectfully to the back to talk business. Didn't you hear the first part of Eddie's interview, Mr. Coffey? He knows he's not scheduled to be here, that he's taking up valuable TV time that you have slotted for other matches, but he doesn't care! And no matter how many times you repeat yourself and threaten to have him escorted out, he isn't going to start caring! There are so many good things about this that it's hard to list them all: Eddie begging for security to take him out, Marlin interjecting himself with good points about why security shouldn't throw Eddie out and why he actually saved Eddie from a hell of a beating at Lawler's hands, and, perhaps most shockingly, Dr. Tom and the Southern title coming out to answer Eddie's challenge instead of Lawler and the Unified belt. It's a welcome surprise, because if they really want to put this over big, there's no sense in giving away the match everyone wants to see right out of the gate. Plus, Eddie vs. Dr. Tom is a fresh matchup which didn't happen on Eddie's last time through Memphis, so there should be some intrigue surrounding it. Someone should tell Guy Coffey that repeating yourself every time you get the mic isn't a sign of authority. I know he's not used to being an on-screen character, but he needs to express himself just a tad better if he's going to get over for as long as he's out there. I'd really like to see someone like Dave in the role on a temporary basis, but Corey Maclin as the host isn't something I'm willing to put up with in order to get it. Interesting that Dr. Tom mentions his booking for Windy City Wrestling, and that it's on the same night as the MSC card. If that's legit, I'm surprised Papa let him do it. It's just a sign of how little the Southern title means in Memphis right now.

I guess I was right; the Lawler/Gilbert unification match never took place, probably because Global refused to sanction it. Instead, Eddie's "defending" the Global title against the face midcarders, but I suspect he won't be doing so for long. Anyway, we haven't heard from King Cobra for quite a while. I liked Eddie getting down on the floor to simulate Cobra asking Coffey for a shot against him; the man can take over an interview just like his idol Lawler can. I also like the excuse he gave for being DQ'd against Jeff; it not only put himself over, but it put Jeff over as a tough guy for knocking him into the middle of next week. Too bad he probably won't be that high on the card again, at least during this run. A Saturday night card at the MSC. huh? I wonder what was going on the following Monday, since Memphis' college basketball season was long over.

I don't know. Eddie was almost too much of an outsider here; if he hadn't thrown in a reference to Jeff's basketball career, I would think he'd never been in Memphis before, and considering all he's done there and all the blood he's spilled, that's just wrong. I like the suit and tie look, but I'd prefer just a little more emotional engagement, even if he is supposedly an outsider from Dallas these days. I notice that we didn't get any clips of the unification match, and Eddie acted like it hadn't even happened yet, talking about wanting a shot at Lawler if he gets by Jeff. Does anybody know what happened? Did Eddie pull a no-show? Did they scrap the unification match once everyone got to the MSC? If so, was it because Global threatened the USWA somehow? This whole mess is getting weird.

It's Lawler's willingness to do segments like this that make him so beloved. I hope his team got the sweep! The kid in question had to have some kind of brain damage, because he didn't seem to be able to communicate except in moans. An injury like that's a tad more serious than just a broken neck.

As Pete said, this can't really be the last battle in the war, but it sure feels like the biggest to date, especially since Lawler emphasizes that it's one time and one time only. The match doesn't last ten seconds, but it's the promos afterward which make the segment, especially Lawler and Embry. I loved Embry saying that Memphis now means as much to him as Texas, and while he'll never be as popular in Tennessee as he was in Texas, saying that had significance because of him being Public Enemies 1-10 for so long, If ever you needed to know just how hated the Dogs are at this point, that should tell you. With Lawler and Embry behind him, Jeff doesn't need to say much at all. I originally thought this was going to be an eight-man, with Marlin and Lee getting in the ring. I liked how Coffey was very reluctant to let Marlin be any part of the match until Lawler asked for him to be included as a personal favor. I can't wait to see how that mini-storyline plays out. Lawler's worked double duty with two hot feuds before, so him wrestling this match and the Gilbert match on the same night doesn't bother me. Maybe they could have extended the Prichard issue for one more week to keep Eddie busy, but eventually he'd have to be dealt with just like the Dogs, so one week's as good as the next. This has to be just the second or third time I've seen the Dogs run off since they've been in Memphis. Could this be a turning point for the faces? We'll know soon enough!

I don't think Lawler came across as a heel, he came across as someone who, as he himself says, has had enough of Eddie and wants him out of his life for good. There's no more fooling around to be done; this is the last chance for Eddie to achieve what he says his dream is: to become the King of Memphis. Eddie simply attacking Lawler is a nice touch; each man has gone back and forth with the other literally hundreds of times over the years, so what else is there to be said? I think it would have been more dramatic if Eddie had pulled brass knucks out of his pocket and laid Lawler out cold, which seldom happened in the WMC studios, but the surprise factor of him simply snapping without a word would have been lost. It's a shame that Global chose not to participate formally, but given Lawler's complete disdain for working in Dallas, it probably worked out best for them. I'm not sure what it would have done for Memphis at this time either; the Dogs/Lawler-Jeff feud was still so hot that even with Lawler back as Unified champion, the belt was clearly secondary. At least Lawler/Gilbert was still enough of a program that it could co-main event with the inevitable tag match featuring the Dogs. Good move keeping Eddie and the Dogs separate; it reinforces the notion of Eddie being an outsider now, even if he technically wasn't (at least officially). Was Eddie still recognized by Global as North American champion, or was he stripped of the title for this and just decided to take the belt with him, a la Flair in the WWF?

We didn't see much of Embry/Spotty except for the run-in, but the tag match was good as always. The highlight performances come from Marlin and Lee outside the ring. It had to feel so good for Eddie to finally get a piece of Lee after all the trouble Lee and the Dogs have given him over the past few months. For his part, Lee can sure take a beating. If he calms down promo-wise just a tad, he's got a nice future in the business. Interesting that Lee made a virtue out of necessity before this card, promoting Spotty as a technical genius who could outwrestle Embry. Of course, that's because Spike and Cujo were defending the tag titles and Spotty was the only one left.

That makes the most sense. Thanks, Mig!

I consider "main eventing" title matches, Mig. Any two wrestlers can main event spot shows; that doesn't make them a true main event player. There are always exceptions for red-hot feuds like Sarge/Sheik and Piper/Snuka, but neither one of the feuds you mentioned were pushed to that level. Duggan/Savage was decent-sized, but Duggan/Andre was just a placeholder for the Giant until the SummerSlam buildup could start when Hogan returned.