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Anyone who says that Bret isn't a good promo should watch this. If there's anyone who doesn't feel bad for Bret after watching this, their hearts are made of stone. I especially liked the way he emphatically turned down Owen's challenge in spite of the fact that it meant that he was in a way going back on his promise to take on anyoime at any time. He didn't equivocate or waffle; he simply said that there are certain things he won't do, and fighting his own brother is one of them. He has to know that Owen's going to interpret that as cowardice, that maybe Vince (as the interviewer here) already does, but he won't change his mind for only that reason. He also refuses to get into an accomplishment-checking contest; he wants to end what he sees as nothing more than a pissing contest before it does irreparable damage to their family. Vince asks the tough questions, but until the last one about whether Bret will wrestle Owen, he really doesn't hold Bret's feet to the fire. This is another thing that Owen can hold against Bret; Vince grilled Owen all over the place and demeaned him by saying that he was Bret's brother and living in Bret's shadow, while he allowed Bret to say whatever he wanted. Bret's interview even got two more minutes of airtime than Owen's did. I don't think that stuff like that was ever brought up in the feud, but it certainly could have been, which is a nice touch of seemingly insignificant detail on Vince's part. The setup for this has been so subtle and layered that it's hard to believe it's coming from the WWF. There's only one small thing wrong: Vince's jacket. It looks like he raided the bag of clothes that Linda was going to give to Goodwill just to rescue it for this interview. Couldn't he have just worn his announcer's blazer, since this was meant to be on camera? One other thing I just thought of: Eliminated wrestlers never celebrated with their victorious teammates at Survivor Series before that I know of. I understand why they made it an issue here, though.

Nice to hear Rude call Mean Gene Divothead, like he did in the WWF. It's just like old times, and Hogan isn't even here yet! So the issue between Rude and Davey is that Rude cost Davey an ​arm-wrestling contest​? Gee, you'd think that whatever they're now calling the NWA World title would be enough. It gets to me when the prestige of holding a belt isn't enough of a reason for a feud with a champion. Davey never even mentioned wanting the title, so I'm guessing it's pretty low on WCW's priority list. It's odd that they would move up a Starrcade match for one of their two World titles, but I guess they wanted Flair and Vader to have the spotlight all to themselves, which is especially understandable in Flair's hometown. I didn't catch the stuff with Rude and Davey each saying that they wanted the match next week as if it was a fresh idea. I wouldn't blame the office for it, though; Davey might have been too wasted to think of anything else to say, or he may have just gone blank.

What did these guys end up doing as a team? I know that the name Thunder and Lightning was stolen from the Amateur Challenge, so they saw potential in that at least. But I don't recall them being anywhere close to a championship team. They look good, but that and a buck will let you get coffee for Dusty and Ole.

This never really got out of first gear for me. The moves and dives were well executed, but I never felt like these guys turned it up as much as they could have. The crowd was also surprisingly dead, considering what a legend del Santo is and what a jerk Barr's been acting like lately. They woke up for the postmatch celebration, but that didn't do the match itself much good. I guess I was expecting a hate-filled brawl. Instead I got a nice match that ran slightly too long for the story they told. Maybe there's a rematch in the future where they bring more hatred.

I wasn't aware that Owen had challenged Bret this soon. It seems at this point that they might have been thinking at least in passing about Bret-Owen at the Rumble, but that would have been a bit too soon. We've heard almost all of this stuff from Owen before, but it's still very effective in stating his position. Vince is the star of this, though, appearing to be an impartial journalist but twisting the knife every time he opened his mouth right down to "You are ​Bret's brother". This is the Vince that those of us who'd seen the older WWF product liked and wish we could have seen more often. Even at this relatively late date, he didn't need to scream and puke to be effective, and it's a shame that he didn't realize that. The other rather subtle touch I liked here was that of all the accomplishments Owen listed, none of them related to professional wrestling. I suppose he could have brought up his success in Stampede and Japan if Vince had allowed it, but it fits the story of the feud better that he didn't. Besides, no matter how much Owen may hate it, Bret's accomplishments in pro wrestling do ​dwarf his, and he is ​living in Bret's shadow, which of course is the whole point of the feud in a nutshell. Can't wait to hear Bret's response!

Amen, Pete. Whatever value Percy had as a mouthpiece for Taker has been gone for a long, long time now. Taker, as usual, says more in a few words than Percy did in that whole excruciating speech. For God's sake, Percy, get yourself some underwear that fits for Christmas! Nice PSA from Bret, just in case we were thinking about drinking and driving during the holidays.

I looked at it as more of Bret not wanting to fight Owen and doing whatever he could so he wouldn't have to. If it had been anyone else but Owen I would agree with you, Marty. Owen has to dial the rhetoric back a bit under the circumstances, but his heelishness continues to show through when he talks about leading the way with Bret behind him and how it doesn't matter if the stuff about Bret getting all the recognition and him getting none is true. Anyone who can watch this and not figure out exactly what's going to happen at the Rumble simply isn't paying attention. I agree about Lane being a phony as a broadcaster. That's likely why he didn't last long, even in a place like the WWF where phonies tended to find a home. I could be mistaken, but I don't think they referred to him as a former wrestler at any point, even though they could have used his past as a way to establish credibility for him in the booth. I remember not liking him very much on play-by-play, and I can't believe that he'd be much better as a color guy, although I suppose we'll find out as we head into '94.

I don't recall the Sparky Plugg name lasting more than a few months before it became Bob "Sparkplug" Holly, which was a little better but not much. I could be wrong, since I wasn't following wrestling regularly at this time. The irony of this gimmick and Double J was that there aren't two things more associated with the South in popular culture than country music and stock car racing, and Vince supposedly hates all things Southern with a passion, Southern wrestling included. Neither one of these gimmicks was presented tongue-in-cheek (punful name in Holly's case aside), so could this have actually been an attempt on Vince's part to lure WCW's core Southern audience by giving them at least a few wrestlers they could relate to? Also, I thought I read that Bob Holly really was ​a part-time stock car driver, which is what led to him getting the Sparky Plugg gimmick. Obviously, Vince didn't continue in this vein, since Tony Anthony wasn't a plumber that I know of and Mike Shaw (Friar Ferguson) sure as hell wasn't a priest.

My favorite moment of this one may have beem Jeff talking about how Buddy Lee was going to crawl out of his office on his hands and knees to meet Double J and then was going to say (cut), "Get your greasy hands off of me!". Proof positive that someone in Stamford has a sense of humor. I guess this was supposed to be a sign that the introductory vignettes are over. Now let's get Jeff in a WWF ring!

Owen cuts a very good promo, while Bret's remarks seem unscripted and from the heart (no pun intended, now or in the future). That's a perfect encapsulation of how far apart these two are at this time. I thought I read somewhere that Vince thought about turning Bret at first when this feud was proposed, but went with Owen because he saw Bret as his new face of the franchise and didn't want to mess things up. If that's true, it was certainly the right choice. because Owen's already embraced being a heel thoroughly. It's tough to even remember him as a face at this point. Gino's certainly a bit more blatantly pro-face than Okerlund was on these segments, but he wasn't too bad here. After all, he didn't come right out and specify which Hart brother was Cain and which one was Abel, and he's shown in past segments that he can be as unsubtle as a haymaker when the mood strikes. In all seriousness, though, if Pettengill is the successor to Mean Gene as top interviewer/studio guy, shouldn't he ​be doing this segment?

The only thing wrong with this so far is that Jeff hasn't mentioned any wrestlers yet. That's par for the course when it comes to Vince's new gimmicks, though; it usually takes about four to six weeks of vignettes before the focus turns to the ring. (Actually, I take it back; Jeff did ​mention going after Hall and Taker, among others, in his debut promo.) The dichotomy between Double J and the Fabulous One continues to fascinate me. Why Papa insists on having Jeff act like he's an unsure kid who's new to the business mystifies me, especially when he knows that the secret to popularity in Memphis is to be only slightly less of a heel than those who the fans hate more than you. Lawler and Dundee followed that path and became living legends; Jeff's got the athleticism and looks to do the same. Thankfully, it seems like we'll be seeing at least bits and pieces of Double J in Memphis soon, and I for one can't wait. The guy with Jeff looked more like Dave Hebner than Frank Morrell, though that could just be the camera's tricks. Whoever it is, I wasn't aware that the character had a lackey quite this early.

First fall: ​Hack outwrestles Buddy for most of the fall, working a side headlock to maintain control. But Buddy turns things around with some high-impact maneuvers including two extremely high vertical suplexes, one of which comes with added leverage from the bottom turnbuckle. Buddy then finishes things off with the side backbreaker, and he leads one fall to none with a little more than thirteen minutes of disc time remaining. I mistakenly said that Buddy slipped in the aisleway during the Regal match I reviewed earlier. It turns out that this was the match where it happened. That'll teach me to switch matches in the middle. Anyway, great camera work showing Buddy going down like a ton of bricks I wish they'd shown the moron who went to challenge him and ended up in a heap too. They're really pushing Borne-Regal as a blood feud. I've never seen a wrestler rake another wrestler's face all the way along the apron like Matt did here. I just hope he didn't forget himself and go too hard, because something like that could have seriously injured Regal legit. I love how the heels constantly shout up to Frank in the Crow's Nest, and also how Frank acknowledges their comments on the air without sounding offended that they dared talk to him instead of focusing on the match, as some announcers would. That practice stopped almost completely once Coss took over. I think Buddy really did ​plan to superplex Hack, but he must have gotten dizzy, as he looked legitimately mixed up after some of the bumps he took on the back of his head. He still managed to make that move look good by using the bottom turnbuckle, though. I get a kick of how Sandy often lets the wrestlers demonstrate holds and positions on him without saying a word. Most other refs won't allow anything of the sort. Maybe Sandy agrees to do stuff like that because he's a former worker and knows that the boys won't take advantage of him. Second fall: ​Buddy continues to work on Hack's back with various power moves, and except for a brief flurry has all the offense. He hits another side backbreaker and goes for the win in two straight.......only for Hack to hook him in a small package and hold on for three to tie the match at a fall apiece with about eight and a half minutes of disc time remaining.. Buddy's not really known as a power wrestler, but his press slam is one of the best I've seen. He really puts height into it, which makes the bump his opponent takes all the more spectacular, particularly when it's a great athlete like Hack. He gets a tremendous amount of height on his vertical suplexes too. I liked the idea of Frank being so desperate to give the audience an update on Regal's condition that he asked Matt, of all people, if he'd ​heard anything from the babyface dressing room. Journalistic dedication or foolishness? You make the call Third fall: ​We get another really wild ending. Hack and Buddy hit head to head coming off the ropes and are sprawled flat. Matt and Regal each make their way to ringside, and while Sandy's trying to stop Regal from getting revenge for what happened earlier, Matt pushes Buddy on top of Hack. Sandy counts three, and there's a riot brewing at the House of Action. But just as we're about to go to break, Sandy gets the brainstorm of the century and goes into the crowd. After conferring with several ringsiders who saw what happened, Sandy swipes the belt back from Buddy, who was about to make tracks with Miatt's help. Buddy's naturally livid, and Sandy explains himself on the mic: "I didn't see it, but I'd trust these people over you any day!", he gleefully informs the Playboy. That tears it; not only do all four wrestlers get into it, but one prime example of evolution steals the belt and tries to run away. Another tries to challenge heaven knows who, and Frank's about ready to really let loose if only he wasn't on the air. In the end, the belt ends up back in Sandy's hands, and it's held up pending a decision by the Oregon State Athletic Commission. This finish clinches it; Portland's the wildest territory I've seen yet. Others may have stiffer and bloodier ring action, but the fan involvement pushes Portland into a class by itself. Some of these yahoos (very few of whom were shown on camera. thank God) would have been too active for ECW a decade later. When you the fans have a mild-mannered man like Frank Bonnema about ready to tell you as a collective where you can go and how long you can take to get there, you're not exactly behaving like ladies and gentlemen. In all seriousness, the idiot who tried to steal the belt should have gone to jail. Maybe that ​would have convinced the rest of the poor suckers to stay in their seats or else. Nothing else seems to work, that's for sure. On an actual wrestling note, Buddy's back work during the early part of the fall was stupendous, as was Hack's selling of it. I especially liked the spot where Hack went for a piledriver, couldn't get it, and turned it into a backdrop instead for a close two-count. That was a nasty-looking scrape under Regal's eye. I'm not sure if it was real or not, but it certainly looked ​real enough. It may have been an actual scrape from a non-wrestling incident, which they covered for by having Matt run Steve's face down the apron and into the post.

We saw what we needed to see here, which was Owen acting like a whiny baby. There's something repulsive about his attitude right off the bat; he has the perfect face and voice for a crybaby heel at this point in his career. The more he whined, the less sympathy anyone felt for him. At the time of the incident, you could at least see Owen's point about not wanting to live in Bret's shadow anymore. But a man who blames his brother for being hurt when he ​was the one who accidentally caused the injury deserves no sympathy, and here he got none. He even encouraged the boos, which is rare for a just-turned heel. (I know he teamed with Bret at the Rumble after this, but this is where he really became the character everyone hated almost until he died.) Nice job by the other brothers not taking away from Bret as the focus of the angle. We didn't get Bruce or Keith up in Owen's face or shoving back after Owen pushed Bret. They knew that their job was over, and that it was time for Bret and Owen to have the spotlight to themselves. Unfortunately, that was also one of those moments that exposed the business; if this had been a real fight between brothers, Bruce and Keith probably would have taken Bret's side, and Owen would have faced the same three-on-one odds which Shawn had just run away from. Speaking of whom, he tried as hard as he could to bump like a man who was taking the asskicking of his life, but it just didn't resonate with me. This was Lawler's angle, period. If he couldn't complete it and they still needed to have the match, they should have done what I suggested earlier and made it a six-man elimination with the Harts against the Knights. Bury Lawler for running scared from now until next Thanksgiving if you want to, Vince, but don't ask a guy with almost no prior history against the Harts to come in and act like he's hated them with a passion all along. (Or, just fast-forward about three and a half years and have yourself a ball.) I'm not sure I'd have had him take the Honky countout when he was going to be in a program with Hall for the IC belt soon, but he didn't matter much in this match to start with. Besides, that was probably the finish they had planned for Lawler too. Combs sounded like he at least knew what he was watching, and he and Heenan showed some good chemistry. Vince was in super-serious geek mode, though, and so didn't really acknowledge either of them much. He completely stonewalled Heenan calling Helen "Sarah Heartburn", which wasn't his best line ever but still deserved at least a little something. I guess by now everyone knew that Bobby was leaving in two weeks, so why waste time trying to work with him anymore? Helen overacted slightly, although the angle may have been a legit shock to her if the boys hadn't told her about it beforehand, which was possible so the camera could pick up her honest reactions. Stu didn't do much at all, and I'm wondering again if he quite knew what to do with himself in a wrestling world that was so different from the one he'd known. Line of the Night 1: Combs, after Shawn is crotched on the top rope by Bret: "He's riding the horsie and he don't have a quarter!" Line of the Night 2: Heenan, over a shot of Helen's concerned look: "She's thinking, 'Oh no, they're gonna repossess my teeth'!"

​First fall: ​This is a no-disqualification match, with Stasiak and Masters of the Army in a cage at ringside. There's a lot of activity surrounding the cage in the first few minutes, as first Masters tries to bend the bars, then both he and Stan try to tip it over so they can crawl out. Dutch comes down to ringside and keeps it right side up with the help of some other wrestlers (I know I saw Iceman in there somewhere) and eventually we get down to business. Regal controls most of the fall with a chinlock, but Buddy turns the tide by crotching him on the top rope, and from then on he targets the crotch with his offense, hitting a few low stomps and even crotching Regal on the post. Several times he has the chance to get the pin, but refuses, and Sandy can't do a thing about it. Finally he covers and allows Sandy to make the three count with about sixteen minutes of disc time remaining. I think all of the crotch-based offense is Don's way of reminding the audience that this is indeed a no-DQ match. Even though it's far from fair and may offend a few people, it's better than a total bloodbath, which is the other way they could have gone in terms of violence. Regal just doesn't have the same charisma (for lack of a less clichéd word) as Hack does at this time or Curt and Billy Jack will in the future. He executes his moves well, and he's certainly popular enough, but I don't see the fans embracing him as their number one hero at any point (as indeed they didn't). How cool must it have been for Steve to grow up near the world's best-known auto racing track? I wonder if one of Frank's wives really cane from there. (The town of Speedway, where Steve's billed from, is the home of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the Indianapolis 500 is raced every year.) Nice job by Frank reminding us that even though Buddy couldn't be disqualified for what he was doing to Regal, he could still be counted out. It's easy to forget that, since a lot of no-DQ matches ended up being fought more outside the ring than in it, even in the kayfabe days. It was educational to hear Frank talk about how NWA rules supposedly prohibited more than one stipulation per match. It probably wasn't true, but it made this match with two stips (no-DQ, Stan and Masters in the cage) more special. I also liked Frank talking about the different kinds of cages that a promotion can use for different purposes. Something tells me that this is a sort of apology in advance for Stan and Masters staging a breakout and interfering somehow in one of the last two falls. We'll soon see if I'm right. I got a kick out of Frank basically directing the show (which was apparently the Spokane syndicated version of the KPTV show) on the air, telling people when to go to commercial for the Spokane market. That's the type of stuff you don't get from national, corporatized promotions. Finally, congratulations to Frank for learning new names for the sitout backbreaker. Hopefully he'll demonstrate this knowledge over the final three matches plus on this disc. Second fall: ​Buddy continues to work on Regal's lower regions, continuing to work on the crotch and also busting out an abdominal claw. But Regal eventually fights his way out of trouble and takes back command, and from then on he repays Buddy for every crotch-based move performed on him in the first fall. He even picks Buddy up from potential pinfalls twice, just as Buddy had with him earlier. Finally, after crotching Buddy on the post, Regal takes the pin, and we're even at a fall apiece with about eleven minutes of disc time remaining. I liked Regal's "repayment tour". Most faces in Steve's position don't go quite as far as he did, but poor Buddy brings out the sadist in people like few others in wrestling. Stan managed to reach through the cage and grab Regal's arm at one point to hold him in the corner so Buddy could work on him. I have a feeling that we'll hear from the Army again before this bout's over. Third fall: ​It all breaks down here, as we get an all-out brawl with chairs, spare ropes dragged out from underneath the ring, and interference from the Army despite the fact that they're still locked in the cage. Finally, the match gets back into the ring, but Matt provides a distraction for Buddy, allowing Regal to roll him up and score the winning fall. We get a three-on-two brawl for a few minutes after that until Hack comes down to even out the sides once and for all. Regal really picked up his game in this fall. Before this, most of his offense had mirrored Buddy's, but once the brawling started, he held up his end of the deal quite well for a white bread babyface. Frank tried to insist throughout the fall that the no-DQ stipulation didn't apply outside the ring, even though Regal and Buddy were pounding each other with chairs and choking each other with ropes right in front of him. Personally, I've never heard of weapons not bring allowed in a match like this; it would sort of defeat the purpose of the no-DQ stip if the guys couldn't use weapons on each other. Frank was right about this being one of the wildest, most brutal matches in Portland history. It was more violent than most of the coal miner's glove matches that I've seen, and those are supposed to be the standard for wrestling violence in Portland. The most impressive thing is that this was all done without blood from either man. Funniest Visual of the Night: Sandy standing on (not in) the middle of the cage to try and stop Stan and Masters from interfering. He's lucky that he didn't accidentally put his foot right through it and end up with a broken leg. It was a shock to hear Frank say that fans were lined up in the front row trying to give Regal chairs that he could use on Buddy. Based on what I've seen in this set, Portland fans take a back seat to no others when it comes to craziness. The promotion surely would have had a reputation as storied as Mid-South's for that sort of thing if it hadn't been somewhat isolated from the rest of the wrestling world. This has to be the sixth or seventh match on the set in which Frank has had to warn the audience not to get involved physically the next time they come to the House of Action, which is about five or six more times than any other promotion in this project has had to do so. I'm not sure if the other match on this disc between these two can top this one, but I'm looking forward to finding out!

Son of Sam sounds like it could have been something. I'm not sure why the guy targeted Roma in particular, but find the right guy to play it and the right manager to talk it up (neither of which were here, unfortunately) and it might have drawn some money. He needs to be taller than six-four, though. "Roadhouse Renegade" and San Francisco don't quite go together. The guy should have been a small-rown Southerner. Otherwise, he wasn't bad. So this series ends on a not-too-humiliating note. There weren't nearly as many total dipsticks as the threads led me to believe, and a few of the tapes contained at least the makings of talent. Unfortunately, WCW did something with only one or two out of all the ones we saw (mostly lifting the gimmicks for their own purposes), so it all turned into a waste of time for the viewers, which may also describe the promotion as a whole at the moment, considering some of their booking decisions lately.

The third guy had a cool look and wasn't too bad of a talker, but looked a bit skinny to be a wrestler, let alone a Horseman. Hey pal, you mean to tell me your dream is to be completely ignored as if you'd never been there in the first place, the way the Horsemen have been lately? The last one would have had promise if the guy in the middle with the sunglasses had opened his mouth even once. The other two weren't overly embarrassing. After a couple of bad weeks, this series has regianed its momentum a bit. Offf to wrap this up by watching the one from the week before.

That was actually a very nice followup to Battlebowl. I would have liked Flair to at least have a little tape on his ribs, but hat's a nitpick. The career-ending stipulation's about the only one that makes sense here; Vader's already almost crippled Flair before a pay-per-view audience, so Ric's not really a viable challenger under any other circumstances. Flair tries to get himself the match by claiming that he's giving Vader the honor of wrestling him, but The Mastodon's way too smart for that, as well he should be. It was Muhammad Ali who said, "It ain't braggin' if you done it", and Vader's come by his titles and scalps honestly. He doesn't need to bother with Flair unless Flair can give him one or the other. Again, I'm struck by how useless Harley was to Vader in a traditional manager's sense. Vader does all of his own talking except at the very end, and quite well too. The only thing Harley was really needed for was his final exchange with Flair, and we could have done without that if we'd had to. Mean Gene looked right at home here doing the same pseudo-news conference he did so well in the WWF. I haven't seen him pawing Fifi yet, and shilling for the hotline was part of his job description, so I'm not as turned off by him as a few of you are, at least not yet. They overdid it with the big cities wanting to host Starrcade. If New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were ​really ​in the running, does anyone think that Charlotte, of all places, could have beaten them out? They should have found a way to say that Charlotte got the card because there's a possibility that Flair the hometown hero could be wrestling his last match, which means that they should have had Flair present Vader with his contract ​before Charlotte was announced as the host. I admit the logistics would have been tough to work out, but anything's better than hyping Sao Paulo, Brazil as a potential Starrcade host, bullshit or not. Charlotte didn't get much of an ovation from the plants in the audience when it was announced. Come on, Eric, either do a better job of inspiring your actors or don't hire any and let Gene do announcements like this from a regular studio.

I had no idea what or who I was watching from start to finish. All I know is that a match which involves people being whipped by flaming torches isn't my idea of a wrestling match. This is one I'll be glad never to see again.

No, JK. No, it wasn't. It was a gigantic waste of time and money. You see, I don't care one iota what a good fight Sting put up. I don't care one iota how good Austin looked. And I don't care one iota what a monster Vader looked like, either. The only thing I wanted to see- the only thing that made sense- was an exhuasted Flair somehow eliminating Austin and Vader and putting himself on a collision course with Vader at Starrcade. What did I get instead? Flair going toe-to-toe with- and ​being outfought by- ​two hundred and six year-old Harley Race, as if this was 1983 instead of 1993. Then Flair being squashed like a grape by Vader and being put on a stretcher and carried out like yesterday's garbage, sniveling and crying while Harley and Vader sneered at him. He should have been saying "Fuck you!", rolling off the stretcher, and coming back after Vader full bore. That's what real ​challengers, ones who might actually have a chance at Starrcade, do. Why the hell would I want to pay to see Flair-Vader after this? What chance has a pathetic old man like Flair got, anyway? Vader will just bust him up all over again and let Harley have the scraps. So okay, we have Sting left, and he does ​put up a hell of a fight, eliminating Austin. But just as he's got Vader on the run, he mistimes the Stinger Splash and basically eliminates himself. Vader thus reigns supreme, and there's not a viable challenger for him in sight. He's already taken care of Sting, Flair's a wreck whom even Harley can beat the hell out of, and Austin's on the same side of the fence. Who's going to save us from Vader? Even Hulk Hogan isn't a gleam in WCW's eyes quite yet, remember. Can you tell I hated ​the way this was booked? Sting should have been the one doing the stretcher job; he's not in the main event at Starrcade, and he can feud with Austin while Vader's busy with Flair; let Rocco the dummy team with Hawk against the Nasties, if you can find him. Flair puts up the fight that Sting did, only he actually wins, ​albeit by a whisker. You can even beat him down a little afterward to make sure Vader stays strong. Fuller and Race are both knocked into the middle of Christmas, and I tell Harley that if he goes for a suplex on an active talent again on my television, he's fired on the spot, and Leon can go with him if he wants to. I'm usually not that hard on former wrestlers turned managers who still do spots, but Harley trying to suplex Flair on the floor defied common sense. If he still can go to that extent, he should put the tights back on. (Even headbutts and kneedrops are a bit much, but it's Harley, so I can live with those.) While they're at it, over the top and to the ramp should be an elimination. To me, a ramp is part of the floor, so it should count the same. I guess they're trying to make the ramp a part of the ring, technically speaking, but that makes no sense to me whatsoever, like a lot of the boneheaded things about this trainwreck of a finish. I got a laugh when Tony tried to save what he could of the Starrcade hype (at least for the moment) when he claimed that Vader and Harley were scared of Flair. Scared ​of a man whom they just squashed like a bug and eliminated as a threat to Vader's title? Are you crazy, Tony? Wait, don't answer that......... This outfit doesn't even know who they want to close their shows. Mean Gene was obviously expecting Vader out in the arena, but he randomly (at least so far as we know) popped up with Tony and Jesse instead. The one good thing out of that little mini-disaster was Tony saying to Vader "You're the man!" in order to get off the air with his hide intact. I'll be interested to see how they get the people believing in Flair again over the next month or so. They're going to have a tough sell as far as I'm concerned, even though I already know that Flair not only wrestles, but wins the belt. Right now, I'd have either put him with Hawk against the Nasties for the tag belts and had Sting wrestle Vader or done something else with Dustin and have Austin go against Vader heel vs. heel. That's how far off my radar Flair is at the moment, and it's nobody's fault but his old pal Dusty's. Hell of a way to treat a man who was almost your "brother", isn't it, Dream?

Bret seemed genuinely honored to win the vote; his interview was morre realistic than your average babyface promo. I like how he emphasized that he was dedicating the award to all ​of his brothers as well as the rest of his family. They were really slow-building the Owen feud here; I seem to remember that one of them (I can't remember which) wasn't too keen on the idea, and the other one had to talk him into it. I think it was Owen who was reluctant because he didn't want the on-screen feud to affect their tight relationship offscreen. Vince must not have liked the pop Bret got, because at one point he practically ordered the fans to cheer louder. See, Vince, that's how it works; when you run five thousand-seat buildings instead of twenty thousand-seat buildings, there aren't as many people cheering, so the pop won't be as big. You'll get used to this in time, trust me. Luger did what he could under the circumstances, but this was another example of Vince deliberately painting him as a loser for some reason known only to Vince himself. The Borga feud was a disaster because no one gave a fiord about Finland, plain and simple, and I suspect that Vince knew it would tank when he set it up. It's clear to me now that the perplexing thing about Luger in the WWF wasn't that he fell from grace so quickly; it's that he was able to rehabilitate himself to the point of co-winning the Rumble and getting a Mania X title shot against Yoko, whether he won or not. If I'd had to guess what he'd be doing at Mania after watching this segment, I'd have him ticketed to put over Bastion Booger in less than five minutes, considering what Vince obviously thought of him. I'm pretty sure that Bret mentioning Julie and the kids was an ad-lib; we were still a ways away from WWF superstars having an active life that was worth knowing about away from the ring.

Yes, Bossman was the story here, although Doc looked excellent in his own right. The double Stampede spot is a better doubleteam than we ever got out of the MVC, and outfit aside, Bossman looks more at home in All-Japan than he did his last few years in the WWF. Once the DiBiase feud was over, he simply wasn't the same (though the Nailz program might have been something if Kelly hadn't decided to choke the life out of Vince instead). Could Bossman have been a contender as is? I think so. First of all, Ray was too damn big not to wear some type of shirt, so the regulation trunks and boots simply weren't a realistic option. I think he'd have gone back to Big Bubba Rogers eventually to avoid Vince's lawyers, but he'd have been either one or the other; I don't see him simply being Ray Traylor, wrestler. Under the circumstances, maybe it's better that he stayed stateside, even if he floundered a bit and got caught up in some of the most ridiculous angles I've ever heard about (and have no desire whatsoever to see, thank you very much). Credit also to Misawa for selling Bossman's offense as if he was the next looming threat; he made the punches in particular look like knockout blows. I might not have used the nightstick if I'd been in Bossman's place, but we've seen plenty of other foreign object spots in Japan before, and it's not like they were happening in every other AJPW match at the time. Bossman also trusted Misawa and Kobashi enough to allow them to throw him around a bit, which was nice to see. It's kind of a shame that he had to do the job, but he's an outsider and they're starting to push Doc hard, so that's understandable. I hope we see more of Doc and Bossman as a team over the next month and change; I'm fairly sure they won't win the tournament, but I'd like to see them against other native teams to shake things up a bit.

​First fall: ​The comment Frank made about hockey player Bobby Orr referred to Buddy's ring attire. Black and gold are the colors of the NHL's Boston Bruins, which is the team Orr most famously played for. I loved the opening sequence, where Buddy kept taking issue with Sandy's counts no matter how fast or slow they were. That's the kind of comedy that wrestling should have more of: funny, entertaining, yet relevant to the match in the ring. Frank brought this up on commentary, but it bears repeating in black and white: Buddy only used one questionable move for the entire fall, when he briefly grabbed the rope for extra leverage when he had Hack trapped in an armbar. Loved the "patrolling referee" whom the camera made sure to get a shot of. When's the last time you saw an old lady on one of Vince's broadcasts? (Moolah and Mae Young don't count.) I liked the armwork Hack did in this fall, particularly the short arm scissors. Most guys use the armbar as their control hold, so it was nice to see something a little different. I think Frank has it nailed where Buddy's weight is concerned; two seventy may even be a bit low. Buddy definitely looked more winded than he usually does at certain points during the fall It's hard to believe that Hack's still a rookie here, because he sure doesn't wrestle like one. His moves are crisp, and he definitely knows where he is in the ring at all times. Leave it to Buddy to be distracted and almost pinned because he saw a sign in the crowd. Actually, I'm surprised that that spot hasn't been used in Buddy's matches more often, because it fits an egomaniac such as him like a glove. Hack has Buddy reeling toward the end of the fall, but hits his shoulder on the post as he attempts to follow up on an Irish whip. Buddy goes to lift him, but he wraps the Playboy up in a small package, and Sandy tolls the three count to put Hack up one fall to none with about nine minutes of disc time remaining. Hack's obviously favoring the shoulder he hit on the post as we go to the break. Second fall: ​This fall consists almost entirely of one incredible move: a superplex by Buddy from the apron up to the turnbuckles and then down to the mat. Needless to say, Hack doesn't get up, and the match is tied at a fall apiece with about six and a half minutes of disc time remaining. I've seen lots of superplexes, but none done exactly like that. Hack looks like he's still far out to lunch as we go to break. Nice little blurb between falls from Frank concerning Regal's condition. I liked how he reminded the audience that wrestlers (supposedly) don't get paid while they're injured, then asked "How much do you think Rose and Borne will have to pay in blood?" Talk about a subtle but effective sales job. According to Frank, Buddy's going to try to score some goals between periods of a Portland Winter Hawks hockey game the following night. Clips of this are located in the extras. Third fall: ​Buddy spends the first part of the fall working on Hack's injured back, and Hack takes some hellacious bumps to further the cause, including one off the apron and into the aisle following a dropkick. Hack's just turned things around when Buddy takes him down and puts his feet on the ropes for leverage. Sandy counts three, and Buddy's the new Northwest champion........until Rocky and Iceman hit the ring and demonstrate exactly how he got the pin. That's enough for Sandy to reverse the decision, disqualify Buddy, and give the belt back to Hack. A similar demonstration by Buddy goes for naught. I loved Buddy's postmatch promo, where he promised to find a way to beat Rocky and run him out of town as "revenge" for stealing the belt from him. He and Rocky have a no-DQ match coming up the following Tuesday with Matt and Oliver in a separate cage so they can't interfere. I wish the match had made tape, because I'll bet it was a goody. Speaking of goodies, I can't wait to see the rematch between Buddy and Hack later on this disc, or the two singles matches between Regal and Buddy either.

Magnum has it nailed on Mark Curtis. You'd think a proponent of old school as Corny supposedly is wouldn't want his refs to look like they're incompetent or, worse, deliberately on the take, but he certainly looks to be in Mama Cornette's pocket here. The worst part is, I don't think there are now, ever have been, or ever will ​be any other refs in this promotion, so we have about two more years of this guy. I know he was well-loved by the boys, and I know he died way too young, but I'm not looking forward to this. The bigger issue is Corny tying Ron (I have to give them one name or the other; if I'm wrong, who's going to know?) to the post. It's not the tying that gives me trouble; it's the dragging. Someone as wimpy as Corny's supposed to be simply shouldn't be dragging a three hundred-pound man around like he weighs three pounds. If he wanted to do this spot, he should have called Brian Lee (to name just one possibility) out from the locker room to help him, then ​tied Ron's ankle to the post. Either that or have Don trap him in the ring while the Bodies took care of Ron outside. Either way would have worked, and how Corny didn't think of one of them I'll never know. If he thought of and rejected both, shame on him. I've said this before, but for all his bluster, Corny's getting just as hardcore and farfetched in SMW as his old friend Heyman is in ECW. The difference is, he thinks it's cool because he's doing it with guys seventies and eighties fans would remember. Well, so is Heyman at this time. But Heyman set ECW apart by discovering and pushing new guys and becoming a legitimate part of the national wrestling landscape, while Corny and his old-schoolers stayed in Tennessee and went out of business. Corny has trouble dealing with that, so of course hardcore is wrong and evil, as is making hash out of the "established rules" of wrestling. Never mind that in November 1993, Corny's actually neck and neck with Heyman in the "Disrespect the Business" derby. Watching Corny pull his Lou Ferrigno act distracted me from almost everything else, but I liked Dutch criticizing the Bodies for trying to hit fancy moves that had no effect on the Harrises. The man continues to bring intelligent, insightful commentary to SMW, and even though JR coming in in '94 will be a good thing overall, they're still going to miss Dutch (and Bob Caudle, for that matter) like you wouldn't believe.

I disagree, Pete. To me, this was the first one in which no one has a realistic shot at a tryout, which I still assume is the idea behind these. Even the Prichard lookalike (who also reminded me a bit of a dark-haired JJ Dillon) just doesn't have the certain something you need to make a splash in the business. Something tells me that we've seen all the viable candidates we're going to, though; the rest of this contest is going to be consciously played for laughs, as evidenced by the final comment from JJ Prichard: "We're not amateurs, we're professionals​", followed by the voiceover guy's mocking "Says who?". The best part is, I think this will be over at the end of the year.

First fall: ​The faces control the first part of the match, working over the arms of both Buddy and Oliver. But eventually the Army targets Hack, punishing him primarily with devastating suplexes. They score several close two counts, but Regal's always there to make the save. Finally, Buddy and Rip execute a nasty-looking double shoulderbreaker and score the easy three. They lead the bout one fall to none with about thirteen minutes of disc time remaining. The interesting subplot here is the Regal-Borne feud. It's all but stated outright that the only reason Oliver and Buddy are teaming here is because Matt refuses to get in the ring with Regal after Regal had bloodied him the previous Tuesday. This is kind of a strange promotional tack to take, but I guess it'll help build the house for the next time Regal's scheduled to get his hands on Matt. I got a kick out of Buddy insisting that he and Rip be called "The Athletes" and buying Rip spiffy new warmup gear so he'd look extra classy. It's a detail that most managers wouldn't think of, although Frank hints that Rip may not appreciate the gesture because he's always paid his own way. Gee, you try to bring class to some people...... I've been meaning to say this for a while now, but no one I know of hits a better flying elbow from a standing start than Buddy does. The only other guy I've seen try that move is an ancient Blackjack Mulligan, who used it as his finisher during his post-Machines WWF run in 1986-87. Compared to Buddy's version, Mulligan's looked absolutely pathetic. Regal and Hack really worked over the arms of both Army members, and Oliver in particular. They looked like the better precision team for most of the fall, which was a surprise because they aren't regular partners. Of course, Buddy and Rip almost certainly didn't know each other as well as they would one day either. It was nice of Frank to provide an injury update on Buzz, who got his start in the Northwest before moving on to Georgia. It's also good to hear about the upcoming dates for Flair and Andre. It seems like they're really pushing a confrontation of some sort between Andre and Buddy, which I'm sure would pop a house anywhere in the Northwest whether it's for a singles match or some type of tag match. One thing you never get today and rarely got back in 1981: radio reports of wrestling results. Not just once, but three times on Sunday mornings, yet. I guess that's just one measure of how popular wrestling really was in Portland at the time. For the record, we barely got a small corner of the back sports page for wrestling results in Pittsburgh when I was growing up, with one exception: the now-defunct Pittsburgh Press ​sent a reporter to Los Angeles to cover that portion of Mania 2. They didn't do it again the following year for Mania III even though Hogan-Andre was a much bigger deal that Hogan-Bundy had been. Nowadays, the ​Tribune-Review ​actually has a wrestling column every Sunday in the sports section, while the ​Post-Gazette ​largely ignores wrestling except for an occasional feature in the lifestyles section. Second fall: Hack plays FIP for the vast majority of this fall, as Buddy and Oliver continue to tear apart the arm that they weakened in the first fall. Oliver executes an Anderson-style hammerlock slam, while Buddy drops down from the apron and wrings out the arm over the top rope. They try their best to prevent the tag, but eventually Hack makes it to Regal, who comes in on fire. Hack tags back in after a few minutes, and comes over the top rope to catch Buddy in a sunset flip. He holds on for three, and we're even at a fall apiece with about seven minutes of disc time remaining. Hack took a pretty insane bump when Buddy wrung his arm off the top rope, and another when he hit his shoulder on the steel post (which may have been in the first fall). Ah, to be young and able to fly. I liked Rip intentionally distracting Regal so he wouldn't be in the corner when Hack went to tag. Like most spots, if it's repeated too often it loses its effectiveness, but it's a nice change of pace on the old "the faces make a tag that the ref doesn't see" routine. The pinfall looked spectacular, but I wonder if the faces stopped to think that Hack's shoulder is still badly hurt, and putting him in a position where he has to start the third fall isn't the smartest move they could have made. We'll see how that decision plays out in the third fall. Third fall: ​This is a back-and-forth fall, with some excellent arm work from both sides. The time limit expires just as Hack makes a hot tag to Regal, and we end in a 1-1 time limit draw. As I just said, there was some great arm work by both teams, particularly the arm wringer Regal applied to Oliver. If it had either started just a few minutes earlier or carried over from the first fall , it would have most likely turned the match around for one team or the other. The title defense Frank mentions for Hack against Buddy is the next (and last) match on this disc. Frank needs to stop calling a vertical suplex a belly-to-belly suplex. He's usually not wrong on move calls (though he does have alternative names for some moves, as we've discussed throughout this set), so a glaring error like this stands out. It doesn't take away from the calls, but it's easily correctable, so someone should definitely work with him on it.