[1992-09-02-WCW-Clash of the Champions XX] Spin the Wheel Make the Deal

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Ohhh boy. You know, this isn't quite as horrible as some of the other mini-movies, if only because Jake is awesome and almost makes this really hokey environment seem credible. Almost. Sting should get a sympathetic HOF vote for all the crap ideas and changes in leadership he endured during the WCW days. Madusa is around, I think just to make phallic innuendo with knives and the stick for the wheel. All the overly coordinated "ooooh"s from the onlookers is ridiculous.

[El-P]

WCW at its most horrible best. This is wrestling.

[Tim Evans]

Oh man the locking of the eyes at the end is just wow. Jake is pretty good in this though and makes it tolerable. Why was Madusa there? And what was Watts smoking doing this?

[shoe]

This would have been great if it was just Jake cutting a promo for the match. When I first saw this when it aired I was like why is Madusa there is she with Jake now? Jake was great here though.

[BackToBionic]

I remember this so vividly. The ending was the best part. The music was good too.

[Zenjo]

This is Wrestlecrap at it's finest. Someone had a really sick and twisted imagination to think up this insanity. Cheatum the Evil Midget was such a great character that they brought him back the following year.

[Kevin Ridge]

Yeah Bruno this WCW does remind me of wrestling back in your day. Not sure why Madusa is involved in this. I hope lazer beams shooting from eyes in one of the match stips on the wheel. Roberts facial expressions was great. He did fit in this segment sitting in a dark corner.

[WingedEagle]

Classic bad video. Much campier than anything in WWF. We've got midgets, Hannibal mask, and Madusa in a trashy outfit with Jake watching on in a biker bar. Sting shows up and everyone freaks out. Jake tries to make this great but he's surrounded by awful. Sting sounds like he's struggling to remember his lines. I remember being so psyched for this gimmick, then having no objections my parents didn't let me order it when I heard what the wheel landed on, which of course is not one of the options Jake mentions here.

[PeteF3]

Did Watts seriously sign off on this? This also aired at the end of the Clash, which makes Sammartino's comments about "real wrestling" coming back all the funnier. Jake completely outdoes even the ostensibly professional actors in this thing. Jake and Sting step up to the wheel and shoot laser beams at each other out of their eyes, much like Bruno and Apache Bull Ramos did before their MSG encounter.

[garretta]

First of all, can we stop having laughs at Bruno's expense here? I'm not sure he knew that Watts signed off on stuff like this, and even if he did, Watts was a friend and asked him to make an appearance for his (Watts') promotion. If he'd refused, that would have said a lot more about how bitter he was over the direction of the business than any of the shots he took at Vince (most of which were justified, considering what both Senior and Junior had tried to do to him and his family ever since his initial attempted blackballing back in 1961). What's worse, doing appearances for a promoter who occasionally produces crappy mini-movies or running a promotion that features a gibbering idiot loaded with steroids (Warrior) as its number two babyface?

 

All of that said, this was truly awful. What was the matter with a face-to-face between Jake and Sting where Jake could have properly put over the stips of all (or almost all) of the matches on the wheel, especially the ones we didn't see too often by '92? Jake was the only one who appeared to know what he was doing in this setting; Sting seemed out of place, and the rest of it seemed like a bad dream a five year-old might have, if said five year-old went into biker bars.

 

It's kind of surprising that Watts, who values wrestling as pure sport more than any other promoter of the modern era except possibly for Verne, would have okayed this. But did he, or was it okayed over his head by the Turner brass in an effort to try and out-Vince Vince? Whatever it was, whoever was behind it, it was a terrible mistake and a regrettable waste of perfectly good airtime. Twice.

[PeteF3]

The laughs are more at the WCW's bureaucratic, left-hand-not-knowing-what-the-right-is-doing expense, at least for me.

[garretta]

Oh, I see. Yeah, they're a hoot down there in Atlanta, GA!

[dawho5]

Jake did well here.  This reminds me of the bar in one of the worst MST3K movies they did that happened to be made in the 80s.  The chanting was hilariously bad throughout.