[1991-06-14-WCW-Clash of the Champions XV] Sting vs Nikita Koloff

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. Interesting that the tombstone piledriver is actually being called that now, when I don't think it had a name before the Undertaker started doing it. The action is pretty decent and the heat is good. Sting gets a rollup win.

[shoe]

This looked solid.

[PeteF3]

"Tombstone piledriver" as a name goes back to at least the mid-'70s when Billy Robinson was using it, though I'm kind of surprised they were using the term here. Nikita doesn't bring anything worthwhile to the table but Sting is still working hard here and drags this closing stretch into something pretty decent.

[Kevin Ridge]

I really can’t get into anything Koloff is doing. Sting was trying though.

[soup23]

I was shocked at how good the match looked based on the finishing stretch. Nothing blowaway but not a train wreck either. Sting gets a fluke victory and it looks like the feud will continue.

[garretta]

The victory here was almost too fluky for its own good. I know they have a match upcoming at the Bash, but do you really want your top babyface looking like he stole a win against a guy he had no business beating? Maybe if this was '86 Sting against '85 Nikita, but not after Nikita's been off for most of the last three years.

 

The WWF might not have invented the tombstone name for that kind of piledriver, but Taker's definitely the one who popularized it. When Don Muraco used to use the move, it was called simply an inverted piledriver. I'm kind of surprised that WCW used the word "tombstone" too, but it's not like the WWF could copyright that name for the move (at least not then; it may be a different story nowadays).

[dawho5]

This didn't suck. I mean what we saw of it, anyway. And by the standards of the last month of WCW, that inherently makes it good?

[DMJ]

On my review blog, I'm going to have to preface this entire show with a brief blurb about how formative this show was for me as a kid. I was 7-and-a-1/2 when this aired and my older brother taped it on our family VCR. Over the next 5-6 years, I would put this show on countless times, often when I was playing with my toys (GI Joes that I used as wrestlers in my original WWF ring with only one rope [the top and bottom long gone] in a fantasy fed that I kept track of in a notebook and built up with PPVs and everything). By the time I was 15, I was well aware that I was too old to be doing this, but how could I drop my fed when The Scavenger [the Zangief figure from the Street Fighter line] had finally earned the right to face Colonel Kill for the title at MegaBrawl?

 

Anyway, even watching this back today, I couldn't help but enjoy it. Is Nikita great? Nope, but, man, Sting is. His selling, as overwrought as it may be to some, brought me back to being that 7 year old kid. They stretch maybe 4 minutes of action to twice that and I love how Sting continuously sells but never "dies" as Steve Austin might describe it. Its this kind of performance that makes it possible to draw a line from what Sting did in the early 90s to what Cena did in the 00s, letting everything register but constantly looking like all he needs is a chance to catch a breath and he'll be right back into this match. Of the other matches I watched dozens of times between the ages of 7 and 13, matches that I watched and re-watched on self-recorded VHS tapes (WrestleMania VII, Havoc 91', SummerSlam 91'), this one is probably in the upper tier of that very limited and admittedly weak set. Compared to the entirety of wrestling, its shit - but when you're a kid and a Sting fan, this match was awesome.