[1992-10-17-WCW-Saturday Night] Cactus Jack & The Barbarian training

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Simmons needed a bigger name to work with right out of the gate in order to draw, but this was really well done.

[Strummer]

Mick has said the spot with the 2X4's (or bricks?) hurt so bad he was out on his feet and had to force back tears he was in so much pain. HMM maybe I'm thinkjing of the wrong segment but I'm pretty sure it involved Barbie.

 

WCW changing Barbie's look back to his 80s style get up was smart. No furry boots! The mohawk look made him look more like a badass

 

hard to believe Mick was only 27 at the time. He looked like he was pushing 40

[Tim Evans]

Another good segment with Cactus and Barbarian.

[shoe]

Another great segment, and these things are getting Barbarian over to me. They should have built him up slower and give him a title shot in 6 months. I think Barbarian could have been a main eventer.

[El-P]

This is the best Barbie training segment yet. They really did an excellent job pushing him as a monster, and Foley doing the talk for him really fit the picture perfectly. Yeah, Barb going back to the 80's look to erase the WWF years from the mind of the audience was a good idea.

[Kevin Ridge]

Barbarian looked like a beast taking those shots from Cactus. He smashed a pumpkin made to be Simmons face with a kick.

[PeteF3]

They gave it the old college try with Barbarian, both with these vignettes and a huge TV push, but it just was never going to work. Great stuff from Cactus, though, and some crazy stunts being pulled.

[WingedEagle]

Cactus breaks a cement block that's on Barbarian's back, then cracks a 2x4 over him. Barbarian then kicks a pumpkin that's supposed be Simmons. This was really good, but it does a much better job selling Simmons/Cactus than Simmons/Barbarian.

[garretta]

How, Eagle? It was Barby's back that was shown to be impervious to pain with stunts like this, not Mick's.

 

I know most of you can't get past the idea of Barby main eventing a pay-per-view out of nowhere, but to dismiss these vignettes as a vehicle to get Mick over through his managerial antics sells Barby (and Watts) well short. WCW was doing the best they could with what they had available; maybe Barby could have used six months of build, as Shoe suggested, but what do you do in the meantime given who's on the roster? Besides, as it turned out Barby would be gone in six months, and Watts would have one foot on a bar of saddle soap and the other out the door himself.

 

I think Barby would have been just as fearsome in his WWF look, but it makes sense to go back to the mohawk and facepaint too. Let's face it, any guy who doesn't flinch when another guy uses a two-by-four to break bricks on his back is scary regardless of how he looks.