[1992-05-02-WCW-Saturday Night] Arn Anderson vs Big Josh (2/3 falls)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Novel match, since they gave these two over 35 minutes and 2/3 falls on TV. I've always liked it for the booking courage as much as anything, as Josh had a great rep as Matt Borne, but hadn't been put in a position like this to deliver a great match in a very long time.

 

As a match, it takes some time to get going for sure. It is a bit telegraphed that they're going long. The second fall is the best for Arn rolling out a bunch of fun arm work. Arn stays on offense pretty much the whole time and Josh finally takes the fall by using Arn's tactics from the first fall against him, pulling Arn's tights where Arn held the ropes in the first fall.

 

Dave is probably right that this was sort of a boring match, but I stayed interested just because it's unique. But there's no real rhythm to it and it's mostly Arn in control the whole time. Borne came to work for his run as Doink, but I'm thinking being presented with this match had to have caught him off guard.

 

Jason Hervey is unbearable on commentary, but Jim Ross takes it in stride.

[Tim Evans]

Jason Hervey makes me long for the commentary styles of Bill Fralic and Randy Owen. He can't decide if he's a heel or face. I guess Missy saw dollar signs in dating him.

 

Good match thanks to Arn. This match just proves how great he is. Few guys can have that good of match with Big Josh.

[shoe]

I really did enjoy this match. I'm a mark for working body parts. Was it a bit long, yeah it was but would people complain if it was Steamer and Arn going 35 minutes? Arn was awesome here, and Big Josh carried his end big time.

[BackToBionic]

Once you've heard Jason Hervey commentate on a ~20 minute Big Josh match, life takes on new meaning.

[jasch]

Very good match. I would rather listen to Art Donovan than Hervey any day.

[Exposer]

Matt Borne was tremendous in Portland. The Buddy feud is awesome. Anyways, I recall this being the typical good 1992 WCW tv match, but it is certainly novel.

[El-P]

So far these 2/3 falls matches have been totally dreadfull. Somewhere in those 35 minutes there's a really good 10 minutes match, but really, neither have the offense to sustain interest for 35 minutes. Arn working the arm is fine but after a while it just put me to sleep, because it goes nowhere.. No story told, just a bunch of stuff to fill time. Long doesn't equal good, and this is not a good match, this is a boring overlong match. Way to waste two good workers (although Matt Borne really was much better as Doink, as showed by his matches with Jannetty and Hennig the following year).

And yeah, Jason Hervey is fucking unbearable.

[Kevin Ridge]

Putting up with Hervey for that long of match was very tough to say the least. Can't believe they put him on commentary for such a long match. He was recycling lines by the end and flipping back and forth between heel and face. Ross managed to put up with him somehow. Far as the match, thought it went way too long and was just not believing that Big Josh could push Anderson to such a long match.

[WingedEagle]

Hervey was truly awful. Good early stooging from Arn. Great work from Arn on Josh's arm in second fall after post shot, using an armbar/DDT-type takedown and hammerlock. When Ross brought up Gordon Solie & Lance Russell to Hervey you knew he shared your thoughts on his co-host. This wasy way too long, but Arn deserves a ton of credit carrying it as far as he did, though there was no reason to go this long and Hervey really made it rough.

 

**3/4

[PeteF3]

Really good insight from Hervey--NOT!!!

 

That little jackass still can't decide if he wants to be a heel or a face--hey, "jackass," that's a good word! VELOCITY! Okay, I think I've got most of that out of my system. Good Lord, was this a tough listen. This is a bold booking move, and both guys are nicely focused on certain body parts, but the match comes off as being long for its own sake and none of the finishes have anything to do with all the limb work. Instead we get two rollups and a spinebuster on the guy who hadn't had his back worked over. I liked Josh using atomic drops as transition moves, playing off Arn's injured back, his submissions, as well as using the Northern Exposure as sort of a weardown move. Arn was Arn, but this wasn't as good as his tighter TV title bouts.

[MikeCampbell]

This is a nice contrast of WCW to the WWF, WWF would have never let a match like this see the light of day. It's a nice match, but goes a bit too long. "The Color Commentator of the '90's" is un-fucking-bearable.

[Rock_Of_Jericho]

Right when I was thinking what an annoying scumbag Jason Hervey sounded like, Jim Ross point blank asks him, "Do your fellow cast mates like you...you know, as a person?", which made me lol. Hervey was too distracting for me to even enjoy the match all that much. I'm not even sure Hervey was acting like a heel as much as much as he was being himself. What a tool. Decent match, but not good enough to sit through and be tortured by Hervey.

[Robert S]

Right when I was thinking what an annoying scumbag Jason Hervey sounded like, Jim Ross point blank asks him, "Do your fellow cast mates like you...you know, as a person?", which made me lol.

That was epic and somehow Hervey did not get the insult there. After this match Ross is a bit of a hero to me, every other man would have punched Hervey in the face five minutes in.

[Migs]

A great match to put your laundry away to. Brisk and entertaining although not exactly a deep story. And yes, Jason Hervey blows.

[garretta]

First fall: Not a whole lot going on at first; business picks up when Borne targets Arn's lower back and works it over diligently. Heyman tries to interfere a couple of times and almost gets kicked by Borne, but manages to survive intact. Arn ends up taking the fall with the help of the ropes.

 

But you don't want to hear about any of that; we're all here to heap praise on Jason Hervey, right? The most brilliant color commentator in the history of our sport, so brilliant that he's able to play a face and a heel at the same time and be gratingly obnoxious at both, turning JR against him in the process. In all seriousness, I think he wasn't trying to be a commentator; I think he was trying to play the role of a commentator, as in doing it how he would do it if this match was taking place in a movie and he was a character in the movie. He's trying hard to be a mixture of Jesse Ventura, Terry Funk, and every other heel commentator he's ever heard of, but you need credibility to pull that off, and he doesn't have any that he didn't "earn" by taking Missy to bed. JR tries to play along at first, but after about five minutes of phony sincerity, he's about ready to wring Hervey's neck, and he's far from alone.

 

Come to think of it, he's not really a tweener here; he's pretty much a solid heel. The only heel he hates on is Heyman, and that's mostly because he remembers getting his head almost caved in by Paul's phone last June (which isn't mentioned, at least not yet). The rest of the time, he's taking shots at Big Josh's intelligence and getting smarmier by the second. I'm surprised that "Jimbo" hasn't turned to him by now and said, "That's Mr. Ross to you, you lousy punk kid. And besides, Fred Savage is cuter than you!"

 

It would help matters immensely if the action in the ring was a bit more compelling........no, it wouldn't. This match is totally ruined with two falls and twenty-five minutes still left. Oh well, at least we still have Hervey to pick on!

 

You'd Have To Hear It to Believe It: JR mentions the previous week's Windham-Austin TV title match and how time ran out before it could be completed. The ever-eager Mr. Hervey, hearing his cue, begins to analyze the match as if it was happening in front of him. Maybe he was flashing back to his afternoon delight with Missy or applying his Dippity-Do in the nearest mirror. I'm surprised the producers (of whom JR was one) didn't edit that out of the broadcast.

 

Second fall: This fall features some picture-perfect arm work by Arn, as he whacks Borne's arm off the post early on and spends the rest of the fall working it over as only he can. JR stops playing straight man for Hervey long enough to commend Arn on his strategy, especially considering the fact that Borne's left-handed. In the end, though, Borne steals the fall by rolling Arn up and rather blatantly holding the tights. (Hervey: "HE CHEATED!")

 

Honestly, there's too much Hervey obnoxiousness going on here to comment on it all. The kid (and even if he's a legal adult, he sounds about thirteen) is playing what he thinks is a heel, but he's so audibly dorky and whiny that it does nothing but make the viewers (and JR) wish he'd go far, far away. At least Paul whacking Hervey with the phone is subtly referenced, and JR can't possibly be the only one wishing that he'd do it again, Even the few bonus points Hervey gets for at least seeming to recognize Gordon Solie and Lance Russell don't raise his total score out of the negative eight figures. I love JR asking if Hervey's cast members liked him, and of course the idiot blithely answers, "Sure",

 

The worst part of the evening so far comes when Hervey announces that he's in negotiations with WCW to bring back The Bull Drop Inn. Honestly, wasn't four weeks of that abomination enough for everyone, including Dusty? Thank God this particular revival never saw the light of day.

 

Third fall: Let's get the commentary report out of the way first. Outside of some brutal segues and a few plugs for The Wonder Years (which are understandable), Hervey's pretty much shot his load here, so things calm down quite a bit. He does have one more "get the hell outta here" moment, though, as he appears to be holding Borne's lumber jacket during the postmatch standup. He's also holding his nose, and he says that the jacket's a gift for Fred Savage: "It may even fit him". I wonder if Hervey's costars knew exactly how big a fool he was going to try to make of himself here; if they didn't, I'll bet they really gave him a hard time when he came back to the set. (By the way, there's at least a partial answer to why we saw so much of Hervey during this time; Turner Broadcasting's syndication arm distributed The Wonder Years.)

 

As for the bout, it degenerates into a slugfest, as Borne's busted open over the eye (at least according to JR) and Arn not only sustains more damage to his back, but also to his legs, courtesy of Borne's figure four. Eventually, Borne gets caught coming off the ropes once too often, and Arn hits the spinebuster for a win that took entirely too long. Seriously, one-half of the tag champs takes thirty-five minutes to beat a simpleton like Big Josh? What does that say about him and his ability to challenge Sting? Not only that, Borne dominated long portions of the match with his work on Arn's back. After this, Arn's stock has gone way down in my eyes. Not as a worker, but as a title contender. How can anyone take him seriously as the man who can possibly dethrone Sting? No wonder that whole storyline ended up being nothing more than a tease.

 

There's another problem, too. The Big Josh character has always been presented as a big dumb hick from the woods, and with a few exceptions Borne has wrestled the way a lumberjack who's still finding his way in professional wrestling would. But the length of this match caused him to break character; a kick-and-punch brawler seldom goes three falls and almost thirty-five minutes, so in an effort to have some offense Borne went back to his wrestling training, busting out things like a double underhook suplex and the aforementioned figure four. JR does the best he can to get the holds over, but the question is: How did a man like Big Josh learn to not only execute intricate moves like these, but to do so flawlessly? It takes more training than a former lumberjack could possibly acquire after only a little over a year as a wrestler.

 

I don't fault Borne for all of this, though. The fault lies with the genius whose idea this all was. Surely there was someone else whom Arn could have gone this long with and had a better match. Surely we don't need to have two-out-of-three-fall matches on TV every single week. And most assuredly, the absolute last thing we need is Jason Hervey anywhere near a camera in WCW. This wasn't the worst WCW match I've seen by a longshot, but it's in the running for the most aggravating.

 

I just remembered another awful Hervey moment: he mistakes Jesse for Johnny B. Badd, mostly because Johnny wears a boa and Jesse used to. It's obviously a dig at Jesse, and I wonder if the Bod had a response at some point.

[dawho5]

So this show had a good idea that was executed terribly (Heyman in the stands), a terrible idea that couldn't have been god no matter how it was executed (Steamboat the perv) and this.  Certainly a bold idea, and I wonder why Big Josh was chosen here.  They didn't have anyone on the babyface side that made more sense?  Good enough match for the time it was given.

And after watching this I hate Jason Hervey for existing.  Fuck that little shit, get him off my TV forever.