goodhelmet

you made great points Some Guy but I want to talk specifically about stuff you brought up about Elimination Chamber. You nailed it on the head. You throw 6 guys in there where only 2 have an actual feud. It makes no sense. Is the cage there to keep the outside interference away like it would be for a Wargames or cage match? No. Does it enhance it in anyway? No. Even the Hell In a Cell gimmick kind of kills me with all of the emphasis on what happens outside the cage. Stay in the damn cage and fight it out in there.

If he went under the name War MAchine, then yes. it is on the same disc. That clearly happened but I didn't think that was what caused Dillon to submit. Is the Orange Bowl the rematch Some Guy was talking about? Agreed 100% about the heat. The crowd is friggin' rabid in this one. I think one of the things I love about the 80s wrestling is the heat that carries through for the entire match. Between this and Mid-South, usually I don't have to worry about the crowd detracting from a match. Agreed 100%. But before Luger, it was Nikita who played clean-up for the faces. When Luger neutralized Nikita, then the heels really gained an advantage. Again, I agree 100%. I think I should write an essay on the fallacies of the Elimination Chamber. The massive machine is so convoluted I haven't seen one of them actually translate into a good match. I also think the Wargames concept smokes the Hell In A Cell matches. A few of the HIACs have been good but for awhile, Wargames was money in the bank until they spent 6 years flushing a great idea down the toilet.

Wargames (Great American Bash 7-4-87) This is probably the most popular gimmick match of all-time and with good reason. The Wargames matches are usually revered as the best that WCW could offer. Wargames 1991 and 1992 get hailed as the best but I wanted to observe the original and possibly revisit the followers at a later time. In this match, it is the battle of the Four Horsemen (Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Ric Flair, Lex Luger & JJ Dillon) vs. The Legion of Doom and the Superpowers (Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, Hawk, Animal & Paul Ellering. The biggest flaw I found in the match right off the beginning deals with the participants. Once you realize the managers are in the match, you know there are only two possible losers in the match? Dillon or Ellering. This bothers me slightly but the real fun is getting to the finish. This is where Wargames works and why we love them so much, 18 years after they began. There is a really simple formula for most Wargames. In the initial 5-minute period, when things are even, the face gets the upper hand. Once the heels win the coin toss, they inevitably take control with constant double-teams and we play a back-and-forth game of heels having the advantage and a face evening up the odds. This formula is apparent in almost every Wargames that matters. I have never seen a Wargames that is successful if it happens to deviate from the formula. As the bell rings, Dusty Rhodes squares off against Arn Anderson. I had reservations about this match-up but it turned out to be a great way to get things started. Dusty has a bandaged leg so Arn attempts to exploit the injury but can?t get close enough. I love it when wrestlers have injuries, If other wrestlers try to exploit the weakness, you have an automatic storyline with little or no background needed for understanding. Not only is Dusty?s leg hurt but Nikita Koloff also has an injured neck. These injuries play an important role in how everyone approaches the match. For the heels, it gives hem an instant target. For the faces, since the Superpowers are banged up, the LOD are required to help ?protect? them when they are being attacked. Back to the match? The first contact of the match happens when Dusty stalls, climbs to the 2nd rope and grabs a hold of the top of the cage. Arn charges so Dusty kicks Arn down. Dusty retains control with punches and a low blow. If you have not read my review of the Fantastics v. MX, I love it when the faces cheat in a No DQ or ?anything goes? match. This mindset also gives us a great visual when Dusty pulls Arn up to the 2nd rope and grinds Arn?s face into the top of the cage. One of the great things about the Wargames setup is the potential for so many neat spots that you wouldn?t normally see provided the spots make sense in the context of the match. For example, after being beat down into a bloody mess, Arn finally kicks Dusty?s leg. Dusty, realizing he may be in trouble, retreats to the other ring where he promptly gains control again when Arn follows. Following up on the exploitation of injuries, Arn takes Dusty down and goes for a knee drop. He misses and it appears he injures his leg. Dusty reacts appropriately by hooking in the Figure-Four. It is at this point that the 3rd participant enters the match. Tully Blanchard enters and the Brainbusters double-team the Dream. At this point, the action moves fast and furious. However, everything makes sense within the confines of the Wargames formula. Initially, I gave the match a strike because of the additions of Ellering and Dillon. Well, since Dusty and Nikita are working with injuries, the fans in attendance could easily accept one of those two being a weak link if Dillon and Ellering neutralized each other. For example, when the Brainbusters work over Dusty, Tully Blanchard turns the tables and hooks a figure-four while Arn pulls the arms for more leverage. Later on in the match, Ric Flair uses a rope-assisted Figure Four to dish out even more pain. This focus on injuries continues with Nikita Koloff. When Nikita came into the match, he evened up the odds and prevented the heels from doing any more damage. After Lex Luger came in, Luger neutralized Koloff and the heels regained control. With numbers on their side, Flair and Tully give Nikita a spike piledriver and Nikita sells the neck like death. The heels smell blood so Dusty covers Nikita, absorbing most of the blows and protecting his partner. This was just a great way to take advantage of the Wargames formula while also giving the match some focus. Another great thing about the Wargames match is the ability to create spots due to the layout of the ring. I have already mentioned the Dusty-Arn encounters with the cage and two rings but the fun doesn?t stop there. When Animal enters, he gives Tully Blanchard a bearhug while shooting him into the cage three times. This is probably the neatest spot of the entire match. Another cool spot sees Tully Blanchard stuck between the ropes of the two cages while Nikita Koloff gives him repeated Russian sickles until Blanchard collapses. Add these spots to the prerequisite spots where opponents get tossed from one ring to another, rammed into the cage, and the endless amounts of face grinding and you have yourself one bloody brutal brawl. Speaking of blood, nearly all of the participants bleed buckets. At one point, there were 6 guys in the ring (Dusty, Arn, Tully, Animal, Flair, and Nikita) and five of them were already bleeding. The one weak part of the match was the finish. After JJ Dillon was in, he immediately attacks Hawk with a bionic elbow and a forearm smash. Hawk no-sells JJ and the crowd laughs. While I enjoy manager shenanigans as much as anyone else, I didn?t want to see it in this match. It really took away from what had been built up to this point. When Ellering enters, he works over JJ Dillon with a spiked forearm brace and you had the feeling that they would go back and forth. Then, unfortunately, the Road Warriors were attacking Dillon and it seemed like he gave up out of nowhere. I honestly have no idea what happened that led up to his giving up. I played it back several times to catch the ending and have no idea what happened. I will chalk it up to a bad camera angle and leave it at that. Final Thoughts I have seen several Wargames matches and always felt disappointed by all of them. I just felt that they were over-hyped and undeserving of the praise they received. I had seen Foley thrown off a cage before I saw any Wargames. I saw Honma get bashed by light tubes and thrown on a bed of nails. I have seen most of the garbage brawls of ECW. ?Surely, these Wargames can?t be more violent and realistic than that!? I couldn?t have been more wrong. This is one of the best gimmick matches I have ever seen. I have to re-watch the 1992 match (which I have seen more often) but this one might be my favorite one of them all. The blood, the logical flow of the formula, the unique spots? it all fits into one cohesive match that has more depth to it than any Kurt Angle mat ?classic?. Who would have thought that a match with the Road Warriors, Lex Luger, Nikita Koloff, Dusty Rhodes and two managers would be one of the best matches I have seen from the 80s? When I create the gimmick match compilation, you can be sure this will be included, alongside the Duggan-DiBiase stipulations match.

Was it dismissing a JBL match or a Cena match? I think tight now, at least as far as the net is concerned, it is Cena that people have little faith in when it comes to ring work.

I haven't watched the others yet but that wouldn't surprise me.

I didn't believe people who said he could go. I had zero faith in Jim Duggan to entertain me after 18 years of NOT entertaining me.

As he should have.

Well, looks like another show I have to put on my wishlist. I want to make one note in reference to... I think JBL-Eddie taught us to never underestimate anything or to pre-judge something before it happens. I did that for Wrestlemania and got burned. Supposedly, it was an entertaining show with a few good matches. Think about it... never in a million years would I think I liked ONE JBL matchmuch less two. If this is another JBL match where I have to give props, so be it. IN the last two weeks, I have gone from thinking Jim Duggan was absolutely worthless to loving two of his matches... to the point where I want more more more Jim Duggan. Who would've thunk it? It just goes to show that until you actually see the match, you never know what to expect.

Here are complete results from the Meltz...

That is exactly the type of Doomsday Device it was.

Mick Foley

Randy Savage

Randy Savage

See, I wanted to call it a Doomsday Device but my understanding is the Doomsday is where they have the victim on the shoulders and the guy comes off the top with a clothesline. In this version, Condrey has Fulton in the Bearhug and Eaton comes off with the clothesline.

Randy Savage

Eddie Guerrero