[1992-06-13-WCW-Saturday Night] NWA World Tag Team Title Seeding

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Eric Bischoff and Lance Russell walk through the upcoming NWA World Tag Team Title tournament. I like the production of this.

[Tim Evans]

Lance Russell on WCW tv 92? Did he even do commentary at the time? I think he was just doing the hotline. I also like the only footage of Bagwell they show is him botching a dropkick.

[shoe]

This is a pretty cool set up. It had a feel of the old NCAA bracketing back in the 80's where the announcers would talk about the tourney.

[Kevin Ridge]

Big board with the tag team title bracket in the background. Putting a lot of effort into that one.

[WingedEagle]

Bischoff and Lance Russell is quite the contrast. I didn't remember Lance appearing here at all. Good promos from Arn, Rude and Dangerously. This is how you make a title tournament feel like a big deal.

[PeteF3]

A Lance Russell sighting! Am I the only one who was watching in 1992 and horribly, horribly, HORRIBLY confused by the return of the "NWA" with its own separate titles back again? I was one of those people who thought the NWA->WCW thing was a simple name change, and that this was akin to...I dunno, the NFL deciding to crown AFL Champions again. Actually it WAS sort of like that. Apparently Frey wanted to completely drop the "WCW" stuff entirely and rebrand as the NWA name all over again, which was how this deal got struck, and I guess it was something Watts couldn't undo.

 

Hype for the possibility of an all-Dangerous Alliance quarterfinal. This is twice now that they've hyped Austin as the "longest-reigning" TV Champion which is patently false unless maybe you limit it to WCW only, which is kind of an empty record in 1992. This is a nicely-done, Pure Sports Build type segment with some effective quick-and-dirty promos, which makes Bischoff's presence with Russell all the funnier.

[MikeCampbell]

I like these sort of "control center" segments, but this didn't do much for me, except for the Paul E. promo.

[PhilTLL]

In an earlier version of this, they try to sell Joe and Dean Malenko as honest to god Hungarians who "have been scouting the American scene" despite the fact that when Joe speaks, he clearly sounds like Joe from Tampa, or Peoria, or anywhere but Hungary. Delicious bullshit. Dean, for the record, is silent but looks exactly the same as he did 5 years later, probably as he did 5 years before, and still does now.

[garretta]

Nice buildup here for the NWA tag tournament. I wonder how they chose which member of each team was going to speak. Some of them were obvious (Arn), but why Rude over Austin and Dustin over Barry?

 

Paul's promo is unique because it welcomes the idea of the two DA teams facing each other. Most of the time when members of a heel stable could possibly face off, the manager involved hints that one team or wrestler will "take a dive" for the other. Bobby Heenan in particular was a master at this. Unfortunately, this type of confrontation never happened that I can remember, at least not in the Big Two.

 

Nice to see Lance again. He'd be out of WCW not long after this, first making an appearance or two in SMW and then heading back to Memphis, where even with Dave's greatness he's still missed terribly.

 

Watts not wanting the NWA connection for WCW explains why it wasn't made a big deal out of except as a way to make Doc and Bamm Bamm double champions. I wonder how the NWA brass felt about the Cowboy using their belts to give his protégé a monster push and then discarding them.

[dawho5]

Loved seeing Lance Russell.  My favorite ever announcer.  I thought this was really well done and got the idea across that the tournament was a big deal.