garretta
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The finish to this was fine, but I'm not a fan of Davis doing the Hulk-Up after two DDTs and a piledriver, which Prichard just finished putting over as Embry's killer move on commentary. The hide-the-chain and talking spots are part of the package with Embry (and most other USWA heels) by now, so not liking them is almost the same as not liking the style in general. The match was built around Embry not being able to put away the pesky Davis no matter what he tries, and it was told as effectively as possible given the guys involved. Davis really showed that he could hang with someone like Embry in a fair fight, so it made the standard cheap finish almost necessary. Embry helped make the moment with his superb selling, which I wish he'd put himself in a position to do more of. Michael and Dr. Tom were good on commentary, but Prichard doing an Embry match allows for just a little too much bragging. Still, he's showed that he'd have been quite a good commentator if he'd chosen to stick with it. Unfortunately, he didn't get an opportunity with Dallas closing (at least as far as Jarrett was concerned). And so ends USWA Texas, at least on the Yearbooks. Kudos to Papa Jarrett for trying to revive it after the KTVT disaster, but having to eliminate blood in order to remain on ESPN made what could have been tremendous TV matches rather pointless. You could say that it was his own fault for having too much male/female violence and getting kicked off of KTVT in the first place, but bloodless promotions generally lack something, especially when most of their money matches are gimmick brawls such as cage and strap matches. Having a World champion who barely appeared didn't help either, although guys like Jeff and Dundee got much bigger pushes as a result and lived up to them. Still, this promotion's heart is and always will be in Memphis, so it's good to see that all of its efforts will be concentrated there moving forward.
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Thanks, DR!
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This was probably a better match than the Abrams UWF deserved, as both men went their hardest from bell to bell despite the small crowd and just as small pay-per-view audience. The blood was a great touch, and only reminds us of how sterile every American promotion outside of Memphis has become. Doc somehow survives a top rope splash from the Bammer, then hits something that's about as close as you'll ever get to the Oklahoma Stampede on someone Bigelow's size for the three count and the title. The one downside to the match was Abrams' involvement. Did the match really have to start with Bigelow shoving him around? Did he have to present the belt in the first place? You have guys like Bruno and Captain Lou on your payroll, Herb. That kind of stuff should be their function, not yours. Of course, Bruno was the only good thing about the announcing, so maybe it's best that he didn't present the belt. Craig Minervini/DeGeorge hit his peak in the wrestling business reading off of a teleprompter in a WWF studio back about four years before this; everything else he's tried in wrestling, from podium interviews to color commentary to play-by-play, he's totally stank at. In this match, he can barely call a simple slam without being prompted by Bruno, who won't exactly make anyone forget Gordon Solie either. How was Doc a heel fighting Orndorff just a few weeks before, then a total babyface in this match with no explanation whatsoever? I guess Herb figured that he was the lesser of two evils. By the way, does anyone know if any of the tournament matches mentioned in the opening actually took place? The names are most of the ones we saw around this promotion all the way back in December, but I'm wondering if Japan stalwarts like Gordy (and Doc too, for that matter) would have taken time out of their busy and lucrative schedules overseas for anything less than a pay-per-view payday such as this card. Yet another title for title challenge, as Abrams challenges every World champion in the sport to come and face Doc. I know this kind of stuff was beyond guys like Flair and Hogan, but Doc might have been a interesting challenge for Lawler if Abrams would have agreed to work with the USWA. Don't ask me why, but I could even see him acting as the mouthpiece for Doc in a scenario like this, since Doc's still pretty brutal on the mic, as we saw after this match.
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This was very good. Wilkins shows that he can be a real asskicker despite his average look, and Waltman's selling is unbelievable here. He wrestles a completely different style than he does in the Lynn matches, and shows himself to be excellent in it. If Verne had had access to talent like this in the dying days of the AWA, he might have been able to hang on at least regionally for a few more years. Kudos to Karch and his partner; they really did the homework that clued the viewers in to what type of bout they were seeing. It's tough to put over shootstyle to people who haven't seen it before, but they manage it quite well, constantly selling how much of a stretching Waltman's taking, even telling the audience that Wilkins asked for the match to be stopped at one point. They're also instrumental in making Waltman the babyface while not completely ignoring his recent heel past, which is another difficult line to walk. They miscall the occasional move, calling a Wilkins headbutt a shoulder and saying that a Waltman enziguri hit Wilkins in the jaw instead of the back of the head, but they're on point otherwise, even comparing the respect Waltman's gained over the last few months to that of the Crusher back in his heel days. The only negative in their performance is the constant shots at the AWA, including calling referee Stan Gagne "one of the last working Gagnes". That wasn't necessary, especially in the context of a match like this. I don't know where Vince got off burying Wilkins, because with a few of his tweaks I think Wilkins could have had a shot in the WWF, possibly as Doink the Clown with the "psychotic clown who can wrestle" gimmick. I guess it was the bald, pasty look that scared him away, and that's a shame. At least Waltman got his due on the big stage, even if he wasn't quite the can't-miss superstar he seemed to be here. All in all, I'm sorry to see the PWA go. It had a lot more action than your average indy, and Karch and his partner may be the best indy announcers I've heard yet despite their flaws. It might have been a worthy successor to the AWA in the Twin Cities if it had been able to escape the bars and get some dates in small arenas, or even some area high school gyms to draw the family audience.
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This is one of those matches where the booking negates the match. First of all, what was the point of doing the Murdoch/Slater run-in on such a crowded show? They couldn't even show what I'm assuming was supposed to be the major maneuver of the whole sequence, which was Murdoch coming off the top into Rick's arm, because they had to go to break. You've got good old WCWSN to run angles in, Dusty. Are you so afraid that you'll lose viewers that you have to cram every major angle for the next three months into one show? Since we don't have the whole show, it's possible that they had the rest of the attack on instant replay when they came back from break, but I wouldn't bet the house on it. The one nice touch is that Murdoch and Slater attacked the Japanese too. One question: If Scotty's arm was the one that was hurt, why attack Rick's arm? Usually if guys are hurt enough to be put out of action with a real-life injury, that injury is the one that's attacked. As for the match itself, it's not nearly the classic some of you are making it out to be, There's no time for a real classic, for one thing. For another, even though the Japanese get brief showcases for their good moves, the Steiners stink at actually seeming like they're going to lose, especially to a team that's so well-oiled and experienced that this is the first time I've ever seen them in my life. Was Sasaki hurt, or did Dusty just figure that any two random Japanese were good enough to do the job for the Steiners in front of a crowd that just wanted to see them kick ass, no matter whose it was? (I don't buy that they gave one flying speck about Chono and Hase; they'd have been just as happy to see Rick and Scott against Zan Panzer and Tommy Angel, or against Murdoch and Slater.) I'm not sure Rick deliberately no-sold Hase's kicks; that was probably a planned sequence, with the broken headgear an unfortunate accident that both men just ignored. No mention at all of your own World tag titles, even in passing? I know Dusty probably wanted to show courtesy to the Japanese and put their major tag title over as big stuff, but that's going way too far in my book.
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I liked this as a prelude to Flair/Eaton much better than the Pillman/Arn tag the following night, but I think they should have had Bobby pin Flair in one of the two matches to really set him up as a tough challenger. Their exchanges here are great, but they get spoiled when Arn introduces Borne's axhandle into the mix out of nowhere. Bobby has a flashback to his MX days and swings it around like he used to swing Corny's tennis racquet, leading to a lightning-fast DQ. Even the announcers recognize this as a Flair/Eaton preview; JR specifically mentions twice that they refuse to tag Arn and Borne respectively, preferring to try to hurt rach other as much as they can before their big showdown. Almost lost in the shuffle is Arn's own rematch with Bobby later that evening on WCWSN. It's almost like they're trying to cram a year's worth of Eaton push into the space of forty-eight hours so more casual fans turning into the Clash won't say, "Why is one-half of the Midnight Express challenging Flair, and where's the guy with the racquet?" Heyman's started sliding downhill in the booth ever since the Missy feud's been hot again, as he's almost required to take a shot at her at least once a match, much to JR's annoyance. He also throws in a reference to Chappaquiddick, of all things (although I seem to recall Ted Kennedy being involved in another DUI around this time), which annoys JR even more. By the way, was Skip Caray taking shots at WCW during Braves games? That might explain why JR and Paul went after him here, although they were careful not to go too far, being that the Braves were Turner's number one program at the time. As a preview for Flair/Eaton, this was good. I expected a little more out of the last Horsemen teaming that we Yearbook followers will see for over two years, though.
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This is the first (chronologically, at least) of June's three tags that feature Arn and Bobby Eaton on opposite sides. I've already seen number three, with Flair and Pillman as the opposite partners, and it led to nothing. This one's a bit better, if only for the seemingly odd pair of Arn and Taylor. It's not really all that odd, as they work together fairly well for a first-time team. Arn even becomes a temporary convert to the way of the computer, although it doesn't last long. The segment with Morton leaving was a nice twist, but it might have worked better if Dustin played FIP afterward instead of Bobby: Dustin sees Morton walking off, gets distracted, and leaves himself open to be attacked from behind, which turns the match around. Of course, they do it the way we saw to showcase Dustin and give him a victory over the Yorks' showcase member, which isn't bad at all. A postmatch confrontation between Dustin and Hughes is teased, but stopped by Terri. Wouldn't want the boyfriend to get messed up, would we? Tony's very good here, putting over both the history between the competitors (particularly the Rhodes family and Arn) and future angles (Morton's appearance on The Danger Zone). He's also good for small but important facts, like Arn not wanting to get hit in the mouth. That's the kind of subtle stuff JR sometimes misses or ignores in order to talk about football backgrounds and/or shill other events, either later on TV or at the arenas. There's a place for both of these in good announcing, and it's a shame the two approaches aren't integrated in a promotion that prides itself on its serious sports presentation.
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Let me start by saying that any criticism I have of Dusty over these next few days isn't meant as disrespect of the recently deceased at all. That said, what could he have been thinking here? This should have been one of the main event matches, just as big as Luger/Muta and Flair/Eaton. Instead, this is a finish in search of a match. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that they taped this prior to the broadcast and only showed the finish, and I'm not sure they wouldn't have been better off doing that. Yeah, Pillman does a Superfly off of Gigante's shoulders. Hip hip hooray. The final pin sequence was weak (since when does one kick to the head pin someone as supposedly courageous as Pillman after less than five minutes, even if a guy like Barry's doing the kicking?) and not having Gigante tag in at all renders him pointless. They should have just made this one-on-one and given it at least ten minutes; they could have used a podium interview to show off Gigante's claw another time. Pete's point about not hyping Pillman's leaving because they didn't want anyone to think that he was going to Vince is most likely valid, but if that's the case, why do the loser leaves stip at all? They didn't need to for injury purposes; all they wanted to do was put Brian under a mask to drive Windham up the wall. But this kind of match doesn't justify the trouble they went to at all; it just makes Brian look like he can't beat Barry fairly, so he has to use mind games and parlor tricks. Of course, we've seen that kind of thing before with Dusty (Midnight Rider, anyone?) so it has the potential to be entertaining. I just wish Pillman hadn't lost so cleanly in order to set it up. Want to know how short this match was? There wasn't one mention by JR of Pillman's football career. It was covered in the pre-bout graphics, but not in the commentary itself.
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This was a neat little match until the tarring and feathering got started, with just enough of Prichard and Anthony to excite the fans and good performances from Davis and Sabu in particular. Then it all went to pot. The tarring and feathering itself didn't bother me, but to do it to poor Kim? At least it was Jackie who committed the act, but still, after losing Dallas TV (which effectively killed the Texas end of the promotion, since the ESPN bouts were so watered down), you'd think Jarrett would think twice before allowing men to put their hands on women in a violent manner, even if they're just restraining her so a woman can do damage. What saved this was beautiful selling on the parts of both Tony and Kim. Tony was the perfect outraged boyfriend, while Kim was too dazed and surprised to quite figure out what was going on. Dave put on the finishing touches by again pointing out the Texas crowd's inability to get the upper hand on the Tennesseeans without resorting to dirty tricks like this. What could have been simply exploitative turned into a surprisingly serious angle that should lead to one hell of a series of matches between Tony and Dr. Tom. All we need to do is keep the women in the corner and out of harm's way. (Like there's a chance of that, right?)
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Anyone who actually thought we'd get this match has an IQ under ten, but this was a great segment nonetheless. Even though Lawler knows perfectly well that the sprained ankle is a ruse on Embry's part, he still has to turn his back to make sure Prichard doesn't jump him, thus leaving him wide open for Embry's crutch shot. I'm not sure I cared for Lawler's Superman comeback, but the alternative was a lengthy beatdown from Embry and Prichard, and I've seen enough of those to last a lifetime in this feud. Embry leads Lawler on a merry chase to end the segment and predictably gets counted out. Nothing's settled here, of course, but at least Lawler carries the day again, which seemingly narrows the score in this feud to Texas 50,000, Tennessee 3. We know that Lawler's coming out on top in this somehow or other, so the question becomes: How long can Embry avoid the inevitable, and what happens to him once it comes? I don't think he's a good fit at all for one of the Big Two, so Memphis looks like his best bet going forward, even after he jobs to Lawler. Kudos to Dave and Michael for their professionalism throughout all this chaos. Memphis TV lost something that it hasn't regained when Lance left for WCW, but Dave's become a hell of a host and play-by-play man, and Michael's much better here than he is as the play-by-play man for the Dallas side. They know how to express outrage at Embry's actions and still allow him to get over, which is tougher than you would think for a couple of face-leaning announcers. I really can't imagine JR or Gino thriving in an environment like this as opposed to the pre-taped, tightly controlled environments of the Big Two, and they're a couple of play-by-play legends, Hell, Gordon Solie tried it for a few shows back around '84 or so, and he sounded way out of place next to Lance. (I think most of them were PWUSA cards, but I seem to remember Gordon making at least one appearance at Channel 5.)
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They actually manage to craft a pretty good story out of Lawler wrestling a man literally risen from the ashes, which is a miracle. Dave and Michael manage to keep straight faces while doing it, even incorporating some nifty psychology around Ta-Gar's headgear and mask; that's miracle number two. And Lawler manages to look somewhat vulnerable while dominating the match on offense; that's miracle number three. I wouldn't go so far as to say that this was in Lawler's top ten as far as studio performances goes, but it may be his most unexpectedly good. He even has enough left to knock an interfering Embry from the ring with one shot. (By the way, I thought Ta-Gar was a cohort of Embry's, so why was Embry not at ringside? It would have made the run-in easier, if nothing else.) Who played Ta-Gar here? I'm guessing it had to be a Memphis regular, since trying to explain the gimmick to an outsider would almost certainly have been more trouble than it was worth.
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This is a nice little glimpse into the early careers of Van Dam and Candido. Neither is anything near what they turned into, but RVD not only shows great stuff in the ring, but talks back to Embry in a way few rookies would dare, which earns him a sneak attack. Lawler comes out to save, and now I know why Dave was so disgusted at Embry when he came back out later in the show. Nice foreshadowing by Michael in bringing up the Lawler/Embry stuff so it would be fresh in the fans' minds when Embry came out Apparently Prichard's still one of the Texas bunch, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, but he's definitely getting the short shrift from Embry in every way possible. Something tells me he's not going to take that for too long.
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It was fairly obvious from the start that this match wouldn't have a finish, as it was basically a commercial for Flair/Eaton and the loser leaves tag, but it was adequate for what it was. The Horsemen got in some good work on Pillman's leg, and Eaton got a near-fall on Flair with a neckbreaker. Unfortunately, JR was more worried about the next show at the Omni and his radio show with Dusty, which gave away that 1) He was calling this match from a studio, not live and 2) he knew before he sat down to call it that it would ultimately mean nothing, so why make it a big deal? Of course, he was proven right quite spectacularly, as the brawl to the back is barely mentioned in the rush to get to the next commercial break. Is it just me, or was that ten-count awfully honest? I've seldom seen a countout actually take place within ten seconds, and Fonzie's count seemed even faster than that here. That could be at least partially due to the fact that JR was throwing it to commercial from the moment all four men landed outside the ring, though. The match itself wasn't bad, but the production of it for TV stank. Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come for WCW, but I'm not looking forward to the Clash if what I've read in these threads is right.
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This one lost me once Deadeye Dick spat in the cooking pot. These things are painful enough to watch without making them physically disgusting too. These guys actually made it to the Bash tour (bur not the pay-per-view). According to Graham, their first program was with the Freebirds, so we can assume that they were programmed as faces. They lost every match I've been able to find. At any rate, if they were faces, unless they were planning a turn for Hansen it looks like he would have turned on/spurned them if the angle had ever been completed. If this was Dusty's big plan for him going forward (assuming he even knew about it in the first place), he should be glad he stayed in Japan full-time. I know I am.
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Based on the crowd reaction, I'm not sure that this wasn't supposed to be a heel-heel matchup, though why they'd do something like that so soon after Anthony turned on Eddie I don't know. Even if Eddie was gone by now, the fans surely remembered Tony's actions and wouldn't have been quick to cheer him. Of course, the whole thing gets obscured by a catfight between Kim and Jackie. Just what we need in Memphis: more angles involving valets who can't physically work at all. As always, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. Not necessarily entertaining, but interesting.
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Count me among those who don't get the point of these. There's nothing at all wrestling-related in them except an occasional name drop of Stan Hansen, who as far as I know never returned to WCW. If Dutch hadn't referred to "Bart" several times, I would have never known (except through reading the board) that Black Bart was supposed to be his sidekick, and the idea of a wrestler with only one good eye seems ludicrous. To top off the absurdity, the streets they're walking on are right out of the Old West; while Hansen's character was a Texan, he existed in the modern day. So what would have been the end game? Dutch and Bart as a team with Deadeye as a hanger-on and Hansen as a manager/mentor? A Hansen/Desperados feud? I'm not sure what that would have accomplished, since Bart and Dutch wouldn't have even been upper midcard in WCW at this point, while Hansen's a former US champ. Or maybe Dusty, the original wannabe moviemaker of wrestling, simply thought that a Western serial starring Black Bart and Dutch Mantel would be a nice change of pace from all that wrestling stuff. If that was his line of thinking, he should have stayed with Vince and worn his polka dots, because he certainly didn't fit in WCW anymore. Then again, this stuff is so pointless that I'm not even sure Vince would have tried it, and he tries just about anything to this very day.
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Let me get this straight: WCW flew Salt 'n' Pepa in just for that? They never got to say a word or sing a note or anything. Dusty could have hired two African-American models from any agency in Knoxville to do what Pepa and Spinderella did. Now, we all know PN can't rap for spoiled milk, but why build up a second-rate Little Richard clone as a rapmaster, then let him get away without rapping either? Strangely enough, there was the germ of a relatively harmless idea here: a rapping contest between PN and Mero, with Salt n' Pepa as celebrity judges. PN wins the contest, Mero takes exception and beats him up, we all know the drill. Dusty had to have thought of something like that, but for some strange reason that wasn't good enough for him, so we got this sludge instead. PN never even got to call Mero out as a phony, with his entrance music straight out of the fifties. If the guy's supposed to be a rapmaster, shouldn't his music have some kind of beat to it? (That's a legitimate question for the WCW music department as well.) All I can say is, I hope that PN's at least passable in the ring so I can get some entertainment out of him. There might have been money to be made with a white rapper gimmick, but this kind of stuff sure wasn't the way to make it. Mero as Johnny B. Badd's not doing much for me either. The one I feel sorry for is Peanuthead, who's rapidly becoming just as much of a joke in WCW as Slick is in the WWF. The closest thing we've had to a serious African-American manager has to be Ernie Ladd when he managed the Samoans in the early eighties for Watts.
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This might be a whole bunch of nitpicking, but they could have told Ben to at least attempt a Southern accent. For a Knoxville native, there was a bit too much second-generation Boston in his voice. In a bit less of a nitpick, was it a coincidence that Ben and Sting had the exact same paint pattern, almost as if someone (read: Sully) had told Ben beforehand what paint Sting would wear so the two of them could look alike? The attack was nicely done, but everyone, even the marks, knew that Nikita wouldn't really go after Ben, so that part didn't accomplish much. By the way, is/was Ben's "mother" anyone famous? That certainly wasn't Nancy with him by a longshot. Then again, that could have been Ben's real mother, since I doubt Sully was a one-woman man. Did the Bruise Cruise actually happen? I wouldn't think that WCW would want to take most of its top wrestlers off the road for five days, even if there were some scheduled cards on the ship. Having Flair as your spokesman under these circumstances may not have been the best idea, but who else did they have who was both well-known and adult-oriented? Sting, Luger and the Steiners were all geared too much toward kids, and you wouldn't find many of them on a cruise like this. Maybe Arn would have been a better choice, or possibly Windham, since he was going face soon enough.
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This actually took place on the June 12th Clash card from Knoxville. There wasn't much to it: a few words from Heyman (maybe Tony was out for lunch when they wanted to tape this), a few seconds of Sting and Flair's entrances from the World title match the year before, and Scott Steiner pinning Jimmy Garvin to end their tag match, also from the year before. When you think of all the different segments from the Clash that could have used even the sliver of time this got, it's ridiculous. No matches announced, no promos, nothing. Just a waste of perfectly good TV time.
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The victory here was almost too fluky for its own good. I know they have a match upcoming at the Bash, but do you really want your top babyface looking like he stole a win against a guy he had no business beating? Maybe if this was '86 Sting against '85 Nikita, but not after Nikita's been off for most of the last three years. The WWF might not have invented the tombstone name for that kind of piledriver, but Taker's definitely the one who popularized it. When Don Muraco used to use the move, it was called simply an inverted piledriver. I'm kind of surprised that WCW used the word "tombstone" too, but it's not like the WWF could copyright that name for the move (at least not then; it may be a different story nowadays).
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This was obviously taped behind a green screen, so it was relatively easy not to have Heyman show up. I get Soup's point, but the only reply I have is, it's wrestling; they can do as they please. Trying to apply logic to a situation like this when your World champion had one foot out the door and the other in Stamford would have been a monumental waste of time and energy for whoever booked this. JR really undercut Missy by lumping her in with Heyman as an adolescent here. She's clearly supposed to be the babyface and the aggrieved party, and acting like this is a fingerpaint fight at a preschool after Missy's boyfriend might have been seriously injured by Heyman at the Clash seemed really insensitive. Maybe he had a real-life problem with this whole angle being made into such a big deal, and it's hard to blame him for that, but he needed to make Heyman the one and only heel in the situation and he failed. Of course, he got an on-camera kick out of Missy being spanked by Stan Hansen, so maybe this shouldn't have been such a surprise to me after all.
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Hervey actually acts like a humble fan here, with no mention of his past as Dusty's sidekick, even though his last appearance on The Bull Drop Inn was just six days ago. That makes him the babyface by default, I guess, along with Heyman's usual cheap shots at Missy. JR and Tony treat this as if it was an attack on an active competitor, which is laughable when you think about it. Maybe if Hervey had never appeared on WCW TV before and was just a celebrity out of the crowd, this may have worked better. Even if this had been postponed a couple of months to let fans forget about The Bull Drop Inn, it may have had a fighting chance. Under these circumstances? No way. I'm sure there were quite a few people cheering Heyman that night in Knoxville, and I don't think having Missy, who was still a skank to a lot of people even though she was a surprisingly good babyface against Heyman, as a girlfriend helped matters out any. The best thing they could have done if they were determined to run this was have Dusty come out to make the save, but that would possibly have meant scuttling his retirement for a match at the Bash, which I don't think anybody wanted, not even the man himself. What's wrong with a simple in-ring interview with Tony or JR which leads to nothing except the next match on the card? No confrontation, no trash talking, just a straight interview and that's all. Did they really need to further the Missy/Heyman stuff, which should have been over long ago?
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It's easy not to touch on the history when you're pretty sure that there isn't going to be a match. If I recall correctly, Flair had already decided not to drop the belt to Luger by now, and the firing process was getting started. Luger outpromos Fair by a good margin here, which is difficult to do. I wasn't aware that they'd had a Luger/Muta match to determine the number one contender for the World title, and I wonder what would have happened if they'd decided to pull the trigger on a Muta reign in the wake of Flair's departure. To Shoe's point, I'm not sure what other stip they could have used here. Maybe "I Quit", but how do you reconfigure that one once Windham has to sub for Flair? I'm sure Dusty knew that they'd already done a cage match on pay-per-view in '90. but so what? It wasn't on his watch, which meant that the slate was clean in his view. Doing a mid-match turn like what happened in real life might have breathed some life into the whole thing, but I doubt Flair would have wanted to do it, and we'd have gotten the same old Horsemen DQ finish anyway. (If Flair would have stayed, I'm sure he would have demanded to remain champion if Luger was still his challenger here.)
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I don't think we needed the collection agency gimmick, but even a slightly long-in-the-tooth Murdoch and Slater figure to give the Steiners a tussle. Murdoch really brings it on the mic, but Slater's almost solely a Terry Funk imitator these days right down to the last inflection. I don't get the boot on Slater's hand, either. Maybe we'll find out its significance in the weeks to come.
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Whoever put this together didn't even know enough about the movie to realize that Oz was the Wizard; that is to say, Dorothy and the gang didn't see two characters when they went to the Great Hall. At the very least, they should have named Nash's second The Gatekeeper. Wait a minute, why am I rebooking this crap, of all things? This has got to be the worst Clash in history bar none, and I haven't even seen any matches yet. Are we sure that 1999-2000 was a worse era than this one in WCW? What little I remember from that time (and trust me, it's very little; I'd stopped watching weekly years before) was a lot better than this. Is anybody we know playing The Great Wizard? That name sounds like one Ernie Roth would have taken if he'd been alive and jumped to WCW about this time.