[1992-10-10-WCW-Saturday Night] Cactus Jack & The Barbarian training

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Barbarian training in the ring with Coach Cactus Jack. I really LOVED these, and thought it was great that Watts found a way to keep Cactus involved despite his injury.

[Tim Evans]

I guess this is the first appearance of Ice Train as one of the guys with Barbarian. I like Cactus as the motivator.

[shoe]

These are a nice way to get Barbarian over.

[El-P]

Really enjoys these vignettes too. Finally Watts seems to get into a groove with the Havoc build, as he does the best job possible to get Barbie over. Good use of Cactus too.

[Kevin Ridge]

Ice Train keeps popping up in these year books and surprising me with how long he's been around. Cactus says Barbarian is prepared for Simmons powerslam move. He then takes four repeated bodyslams and gets up right away after each one. Cactus motivating the whole time really helps the overall segment.

[PeteF3]

These are pure Watts. I love it.

[WingedEagle]

Did Cactus's mic work here get him any kind of increased push? He was great here even if Barbarian was a mid-card act. This is a great video but I still don't understand why Barbarian is the top contender.

[Robert S]

Usually in these kind of videos the featured guy in the training video is the guy doing moves, not taking them. As this made perfect sense however this was a fun alteration.

[garretta]

Even though I guess we're not really meant to understand how Barby got into this spot, these vignettes show that Watts is going all out to show that he belongs there. This was an excellent way to inject a storyline into a match that didn't really have one up until now: What will Simmons do to beat Barby if the powerslam isn't an option? Can he come up with another move, or will he try and wear down Barby's supposedly impervious back until the powerslam can work? It'll be interesting to see if this story's played up in the rest of the hype for the bout.

 

The only complaint I have is that some of these guys look a bit small to be slamming Barby with such ease. Of course, you could argue that Barby's cooperating with them much like a boxer would cooperate with his sparring partners, but it sill might have helped Barby's image as a powerhouse if at least one of them would have had trouble lifting him.

 

Mick's decent here, but he kind of fades into the background once the action starts, as he should. Still, after seeing this I can't figure out how Vince isn't using him as a mouthpiece to this day. Surely there's someone out these who can use the help he could still give.