[1993-05-22-WCW-Saturday Night] Vader and Davey Boy Smith

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Vader does the old public workout angle, going through jobbers like crazy, until Davey Boy comes out to take exception. Good action and heat between the two when they brawled, but the announcers weren't really selling as hard as they could have been to get it over.

[Kevin Ridge]

Vader does a public challenge where he beats up some jobbers in proper Vader fashion. Since it’s a public challenge, Davey Boy gladly gets in the ring. Nice show of strength by Bulldog on the catch and powerslam.

[PeteF3]

Good segment, with a cool powerslam by Davey Boy when he catches Vader attempting an avalanche.

[WingedEagle]

Vader training session where he destroys a few jobbers. Davey Boy out to end it, giving Race a big vertical suplex and then brawling. DBS catches him in the powerslam and lariats and looks like a legit threat. Nice angle heading into the big show.

[soup23]

Crowd seems pretty tepid on Davey Boy until he power slams Vader and then they are going nuts. This was effective in setting up the main event.

[garretta]

How much harder would you have liked to see the announcers sell this, Loss? I thought Jesse in particular was as good as he's ever been. If you're referring to the jobber portion, I thought their disgust was spot on. How is squashing five guys whom nobody knows and who don't even look like wrestlers supposed to establish Vader as a killer?

 

Davey Boy looked tremendous here, even better than he did against Bret at SummerSlam. This was a great way to establish a newcomer as a viable World title contender, which was quite a feat considering that most of the fans probably wanted to see a Sting/Vader rematch. I might have had him suplex Vader instead of Harley and save the powerslam for the match, though. I hate to keep using Hogan-Andre at Mania III as a comparison, but Hogan's finishing slam of the Giant wouldn't have been nearly as earthshattering if he'd slammed him during the battle royal on ​SNME ​two weeks earlier.

 

Tony really needs to focus on his move-calling. You mean to tell me that he didn't know what to call Davey Boy's finisher? I realize that he probably picked up a lot of things from Vince during his time in Stamford, but his reluctance to ever acknowledge actual wrestling moves shouldn't have been one of them.

 

I wish we'd gotten to hear more of Harley on the mic before everything broke loose; hearing him call Vader's mauling of the jobbers might have made it a bit more watchable.