WCW On Pay Per View in the 90's - Every event Reviewed

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Keith

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OPPS! 1993 is calling and saying that I forgot something:loser: I don't really think 1993 should be trying to flag up how awful it was anymore:mickie4: But what the hey, I will jump in my Delorean
back-to-the-future-delorean.jpg


and head back to 1993!

WCW Battle Bowl 1993

Date: November 20, 1993

Setting: Pensacola, Florida

Attendance: 7,000

Best Match: Battle Bowl Battle Royal

Worse Match: Hawk and Rip Rogers VS. Davey Boy Smith and Kole

Event Rating: 6/10

Comments: For the third straight year WCW pushed the Lethal Lottery/Battle Bowl concept on PPV. But this time rather than including it as part of the Starrcade super show, the powers that be decided to afford it its own pay per view. At a time when the depth of WCW's talent roster was not great and when business was the pits this was a strange move and one which rewarded the promotion with their lowest buy rate in history up to that point. Unlike the previous year's Lethal Lottery/Battle Bowl tournament which was broken up with non-tourament matches, here bigwigs decided to fill the whole show up with the format. Therefore, there was a total eight lethal lottery style matches, and the show was capped off with a 32 man battle royal for the battle bowl ring (the field was just eight in 92), it was overkill of course. Another issue was that WCW took the portential of having bitter rivals team up to the extreme, so that no less than five matches played out that way. The pick of the LL matches was Stunning Steve Austin and Ric Flair's lively win over Too Cold Scorpio and Maxx Payne. Flair who was very over with the crowd was clearly having a ball and was on top form during this match. Cactus Jack and Vader did a great job in selling their conflict at the begining of their LL scrap with rookies Charlie Norris and Harlem Heat's Kane (future Booker T). Manager Harley Race did a stand-up in the early stages too as he struggled to convince both that they had to get along in order to advance to BB. Race also earnt his money later during the headliner. Paul Orndorff and The Shockmaster against Ricky Steamboat and Lord Steven Regal (again bitter rivals) had its moments, but was also a little sloppy too. It was a better match for the lack of involvement from the clumsy Shockmaster. And I think the duo of Regal and The Dragon would have been better choices to advance to the main event. The highlight for me was Jesse Ventura on communtary commenting, that the Shockmaster last time was beaten by a wall, and since there is no wall in this match than he should be alright (this of course was referring to him tripping over a wall in a disatious appearance at a recent Clash of Champions special, this was very sharp from the Body!:Clap:). Involving washed up jobber Rip Rogers to beef up the field (Rogers and Road Warrior Hawk advaced) really was a sign of desparation from the company. In between matches Mean Gene and Fifi would draw the names of the next teams, this led to some amusing, if overdone comedy where the camera would often cut to Randy old man Gene with his mind far from on business:lmao
Luckily, the Battle Bowl main event was a very rewarding finish to the show. The field was overstuffed, and the action did sometimes drag, but there was still enough good talent involved to make for an eventful and exciting match, the closing stages of which was very dramatic. The final four of Ric Flair, Sting, Austin and Vader all produced the goods. Flair wasn't offically eliminated from the match, instead taking a stratcher job following a beating from Vader on the ramp. This was done to call into question Flair's appearance in his career VS. Title match at Starrcade, as well as to sell Vader's threat, and to protect Flair (by not having Vader cleanly eliminate him here), it suceeded in all three. This left heels Vader and Austin to double team face Sting (sound wrestling logic). Sting going for his second Battle Bowl ring was heroic and managed to eliminte Austin, but it was champion Vader who ended up eliminating his old foe for the win. Though the PPV was uneeded and flawed in many ways, this match and finish to it made it worth it.

Now back to 1994 for next review!:187:
 
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Keith

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You know I missed a trick then because I should have done the Halloween Havoc 94 review during OCTOBER!!:deniro:

Still I will return with that next review BY THE END OF THE WEEK!:brie:
 

Keith

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Halloween Havoc 1994: The Cage Revenge!

Date: 23nd October, 1994

Setting: Detroit, Michigan, Joe Louis Arena

Attendance: 14,000

Commentary Team: Tony Schivone and Bobby Heenan

Best Match: Hulk Hogan VS. Ric Flair (Title VS. Career cage match)

Worse Match: Dave Sullivan VS. Kevin Sullivan

Event Rating: 3/10

Comments: WCW carried on its battle plan against the WWF by repeating much of the F's past formula with a super show and headlining match that followed the route their rivals had often went in the 80s. The 94 Havoc featured the much hyped Hogan VS. Flair rematch inside a cage with Hogan's Title on the line against Flair's career. With all the add-ons including Mr. T (yes another Hogan buddy!) as the guest ref, this did have a big style WWF main event feel. Like many of those cards Havoc 94 was pretty much a one match show. Was it all worth it? Well, sort of, but we'll let the wrestling historians make the real judgement.

In a dark match Booker T pinned Brian Armstrong with a flyin forearm in a sloppy encounter. Both of these guys would go onto much bigger things in years to come. Armstrong who would have success as the Roaddog in the WWF looked very green and out of shape here. In an ill-advised move, WCW had the guest for the night Muhammad Ali led to his ringside seat during the match!:jc: For the guys involved and the promotion it would have been better to have done this entrance either side of the match. Not surprisley the boxing legend got a bigger response than anything in the match. The PPV proper opened with a dreadful performance of the Star Spangled Banner (another WWF copy cat, WCW had rarely opened like this, and certainly not with a mainstream pop act). TV Champion Johnny B. Badd went to a 10 minute time limit draw with the Honky Tonk Man in a very bad and dated comedy match. The finish was a result of Honky's silly "NO JOBS ON TV DEAL":cena: Thankfully HTM's WCW run was short lived. Pretty Wonderful (Roma and Orndoff) beat Stars and Stripes (Bagwell and The Patriot) to win the WCW Tag belts in a patchy effort. In further hype for the main attraction, Slick Ric and Sherri cut an entertaining heel promo (truth be told Sherri has cut some of my personal favourite promos ever, see Rumbles 1990, 91, and Slam 89 for examples).
:Sasha:

Dave Sullivan defeated brother Kevin via a cheap count out in a lame cartoonish match. In the storyline Dave was a Hulk Hogan fan who actually believed that he was HOGAN!!:lmao Leading to heat with his big brother. Dustin Rhodes bested Arn Anderson in a medicore match that only really peaked in the closing stages. Three years previous these two could have had one hell of a match. In a interview with Mean Gene, Sting (who was going to be at ringside for the main event, yep another unneeded add-on), made one of the dumbest ever comments, "I'm going to take a ringside seat and watch the man who is going to lead wrestling into the 1990s." The 1990s Sting? THE 1990S?!:Megaphone:ITS ALREADY 1994 YOU blueberry!!:pipe:

Hacksaw Jim Duggan retained the U.S. Title over Stunning Steve Austin via crappy over the top rope DQ in another hopeless match:Evil:The washed up Duggan looked terrible. Hogan bringing his mates along for the ride was possibly the worse thing for the likes of Austin's career prospects in WCW. Vader defeated The Guardian in a passible super heavy weight match. Ray Traylor was more effective when on offense than defense. The selling of manager Harley Race was a highlight for me. Loved Vader sticking it to be Sting and Ali at ringside:lmao The Nasty Boys beat Terry Funk and Bunkhouse Buck in a by the numbers filler match. The hard working Funk was the highlight of this forgettable match, and I did oddly enjoy the piledriver on the pumpkin spot that ended the match:) And finally, Hulk Hogan pinned Ric Flair with the leg drop of doom to retain the WCW World Title and end Flair's wrestling career (according to the storyline), in a fairly dramatic and entertaining 1980s style headliner. The match hit the skids in the last 5 minutes when the whole world decided to interfear. One of these extras were the masked heel who turned out to be Ed "Brutus Beefcake" Leslie repackenged in WCW as The Butcher. The dumb thing about this later reveal was that Leslie had earlier came out with Hogan wearing the red and yellow. So as a show Halloween Havoc 1994 was mostly crap with no standout matches on a undercard largely made up of re-runs (now where have I heard that before?:hm:). The promotion do deserve credit for getting the Hogan/Flair feud right where WWF had dropped the ball 3 years previous (eat that Vince!:gun:). And on the night the company made a profit overall. But they were still a long way off competing with even the underperforming WWF of 94. There were warning signs in the main event alone. Mr. T had lost some of his mainstream shine at this stage, after all the A-Team had been off the air for close to a decade. And if you look down the card, a guy like Vader had peaked probably in his feud with Flair, and had run out of good talent to feud with. Speaking of which, even if WCW could build their future success around Hogan, one thing they were struggling to do which WWF did so well from 85-92 was provide quality heels to rub off against him. The signs from this PPV was that WCW intended to keep the same old faces (Sting, Hogan, Vader, Flair) involved in the main event scene and rather than push the likes of Austin to the next level to challenge them would instead fill up the roster with Hogan's washed up pals, and useless 1980s style big men. From that point of view copying Vince's game plan to such a degree did not prove fruitful. Its the same thing that TNA would learn to their cost more than a decade later. Still there was a twist in the tail, but I haven't quite got there yet:thumbs:

I will aim to leave 1994 behind me next week:)
 

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wcw botched Muhammad Ali for crying our loud....no wonder they died.
 

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keith, you my guy and all. But your structure of the way you review is a mess.
 

Keith

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keith, you my guy and all. But your structure of the way you review is a mess.

Is it heck! That's the way Power Slam magazine did their old PPV reviews and we all know their the greatest wrestling rag of all time.... Besides you couldn't have told me this like 5 years ago?o_O
 

Crippler

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Is it heck! That's the way Power Slam magazine did their old PPV reviews and we all know their the greatest wrestling rag of all time.... Besides you couldn't have told me this like 5 years ago?o_O
I AM THE GREATEST RAG MAG OF ALL TIME. Plus i thought you would have smartened up in 5 years, guess not. :side:
 

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need stars and emojis/smileys to he a reviewer now.
 

Keith

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wcw botched Muhammad Ali for crying our loud....no wonder they died.

But do you really think Ali wanted to do a Tyson type thing? He was a different sort of person. After retiring I think he was happy to live the quiet life. I'm sure just having him appear would have helped boast the numbers.

I AM THE GREATEST RAG MAG OF ALL TIME. Plus i thought you would have smartened up in 5 years, guess not. :side:

Its not a mess though is it? The breakdown of statistics are clear, I used paragraphs. Think this one might have been a bit messy because I went a bit OTT with emjojis:shhh

need stars and emojis/smileys to he a reviewer now.

The stars are a good idea I will add them for my next review. Thanks.
 

Crippler

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i'm just talking about you having best, worse match and rating at the start of the review. I would leave it until the end.
 
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I like the format of these reviews. WCW in the early 90s was the best, imo.

It did horrible business but it was the last remnants of the gritty territory style or Wrasslin'.
 
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Keith

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I like the format of these reviews. WCW in the early 90s was the best, imo.

It did horrible business but it was the last remnants of the gritty territory style or Wrasslin'.

This is fair. I think it was the internal politics that killed it ultimately. The bussiness is surely poorer without those one or two companies nipping at WWE's heels.

I will update the format of the reviews by adding pictures and maybe the odd clips.
 

Keith

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i'm just talking about you having best, worse match and rating at the start of the review. I would leave it until the end.

Oh thanks. That's a good point. Think I will do that from now on.
 

Keith

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1428184340977

Starrcade 1994

Date December 27, 1994

Setting Nashville, Tennessee

Attendance 8,200 [Sell out, but with a fair few comps]

Comments
- The 11th edition of WCW's answer to Wrestlemania [or maybe Mania is WWF/E's answer to Starrcade], is probably one of the worse ever. Again Hogan and his buddies steal the show. A lot of the hype for the supercard surrounded the first WCW PPV appearance for new signing Macho Man Randy Savage, and the question mark of if he would side with Hogan, or join heel stable "The Dungeon of Doom" in their efforts to destory "Hulkamana".

U.S Title Match

Vader pinned Jim Duggan to become the US Champion [and effectively the number one contender for the WCW title] in a sloppy 1980s big man match. The finish involving manager Harley Race and Duggan's 2X4 was a mess. To make matters worse the booking was completely backwards. Vader was made to look like a jobber for most of the match. Most of his offense came through either a Hacksaw error or cheating.



Match Rating - *1/2

Alex Wright defeated Jean Paul Levesque with a School boy roll-up. This match was solid filler. Wright and Levesque were two of WCW's bright young hopes at the time. Levesque looked decent for someone with his experience at the time. This was his first and last PPV appearance for the promotion. He was offered a brand new contract, but was unhappy with his treatment over the past year, so instead took up the option to sign the WWF. There he was re-packenged as Hunter Hearst Helmsley [basically the same character as Levesque], and later Triple H. Fair to say Levesque made the right career move. Wright would stick around in WCW. I will return to him in future reviews:cool:



Match Rating - **1/2

WCW Television Title

Johnny B. Badd beat Arn Anderson with another School boy finish:confused: to retain the TV title in decent match. Anderson filled in for The Honky Tonk man who for the second PPV in a row refused to do the job for Badd. HTM had a attitude problem plain and simple IMO. I don't always take the side of WCW management. But in this case they did the right thing standing up to Honky. Seriously, Fuck You Honky!:187:We got a better match out of it too than if it had been HTM and Badd. During the match Tony and Da Brain buried Honky and promoted the WCW Hotline:mark:



Match Rating - ***

The Nasty Boys went over Harlem Heat by DQ in a terrible match which lasted at least eight minutes too long. It went past the twenty minute mark8D This was another example of Hogan's washed up friends doing damage to future stars. The Nastys past their prime [their last great match with the Harts at Mania 7 over three years ago], should have been used to put over Heat in a quick, 5 or 7 minute brawl IMO. Harlem Heat were still raw at this time, so such a match would have protected them also. Sister Sherri [another recent WWF signing] had was Harlem Heat's new manager. No surprise that she was the highlight of the whole match.



Match Rating - *

Mr T pinned Kevin Sullivan in a useless brawl with another crappy finish involving Kevin's Brother Dave who was dressed as Santa Claus. Even though WCW had already had a feud between the two brothers it seemed they were ready to dance that dance one more time. T who was originally used as the guest enforcer for the Hogan VS. Flair main event at Halloween Havoc decided to stick around like a bad smell [ironically the same happened a decade before when WWF used him, difference was he was a much bigger star then]. He looked silly coming to the ring dressed in black and white stripes:lmao



Match Rating - *

Sting defeated Avalanche [John "Earthquake" Tenta] with yet another DQ finish in a very solid match. Some people might hate it. But considering the size difference between the two I thought the structure and psychology of the match was about spot-on and that both guys worked a good match. The one big bum note was yet another dusty finish. Members of The Dungeon of Doom" ran in, followed by a spotlight stealing Hogan who made the babyface run in for Sting.



Match Rating - ***

WCW World Title - Main Event
And the most unlikely main event. But we all know the story about Hogan and long term buddy Ed Leslie so maybe no surprise that the former Brutus Beefcake had been given another leg up from the Hulkster. Now appearing as the Butcher [WWF owned the copyright to the Beefcake character], had previously switched heel on Hogan and sided with Kevin Sullivan and The DOD setting up this title match. Even so on a night when Vader was stuck in the opening match it was comical that this was the challenger for the top belt on what is meant to be the biggest show of the year. The match itself was stuffed full of weak, 1980s kick and punch combos, and rest holds and of course ended with Hogan's trademark "Leg Drop of Doom". The real main event was actually Macho's appearance. Heading to the ring during heels beat down on Hogan, at first it looked as if Savage would join in, but instead he helped Hogan fight off the baddies and the two posed "WWF" style to close the show. After the PPV went off the air Vader confronted Hogan [still celebrating with Savage] in the locker room area and the two had a heated pull apart. This set the stage for a meeting between the two at WCW's first supercard of 1995 Superbrawl V.



Match Rating - *

Best Match - Sting VS. Avalanche

Worse Match - Mr T VS. Kevin Sullivan

Event Rating - 3/10

Coming up I will round up 1994 as a year in WCW.
 

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New layout is dope, just a shame i can't say that about some of these shows. God damn that card looks like it sucked.
 
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