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NWA World Title Tournament
Date: August 27, 1994
Location: ECW Arena, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Commentator: Joey Styles
So it’s 1994 and there is no NWA Champion. There hadn’t been for 11 months as WCW had withdrawn from the NWA and made their own world title. Since the territory system was completely dead and everyone but the NWA accepted it, they decided to have all their remaining talent come together in Philadelphia at their largest remaining territory: Eastern Championship Wrestling, for a world title tournament.
This show is incredibly famous for the very ending, which we’ll get to at the end because that’s the logical conclusion right? Anyway, I’m sure most of us know the ending, but how did we get there? Let’s take a look.
Here are your brackets:
Shane Douglas
Tazmaniac
Dean Malenko
Osama Nishimoura
2 Cold Scorpio
Chris Benoit
911
Wildcard
That’s not bad. It should be noted that the ECW chant was there already. Terry Funk was supposed to be in here but he dropped out to be in another match.
Malenko cuts a promo saying that he’s been wrestling for 15 years which STUNS me but is correct and says that he would be honored to be world champion. It’s a very good promo, and at first I thought he had no charisma at all, but he refers to everyone as gentlemen. Now what this says to me is that he doesn’t lack charisma, but instead that he’s just a calm and collected man.
That’s fine and it’s working out very well for him. If nothing else this is awesome as we get to hear Malenko talk for three minutes. He’s not great on the mic at all, but for what he was at the time, an indy wrestler, this was fine. He says he associates Philly with Rocky and says he’s Rocky this Saturday night. Never mind that Rocky lost in the end but I get the point.
2 Cold Scorpio cuts a promo also which is almost a rap but not quite. Whomp There it is plays in the background. That sums this whole thing up.
Heyman says that the NWA is trying to step up and challenge the big two. Oh man this is amazing when you really know what’s coming. In something that amuses me, he says that Nishimoura wants to take the title back to Japan and have the recognition that guys like Inoki, Muta and Chono have.
What’s amusing is that of those three, only two have been world champion and Baba, the guy with the most reigns, isn’t mentioned at all. To be fair though, Heyman goes on such a rant that it’s understandable. This is vintage Paul as looking back, it’s amazing that you know what’s coming and didn’t realize something big was coming.
Shane Douglas says he joins the greats on Saturday and cuts into the other two major companies. He’s with Mr. Hughes, his bodyguard and is ECW Champion at this point. The system back then was the territory system or at least in the NWA’s line. Shane was the local champion and there likely are others in this tournament also.
He was supposed to travel as champion because even with the company more or less dead they insisted on doing stupid stuff like staying with what killed them. The times changed and they refused to change with them and that’s why you don’t see the NWA around today.
First Round Match: 911 vs. Wildcard
911 is with Heyman who is still Paul E. Dangerously here. The wildcard is freaking Doink the Clown of all people who is booed out of the ring and they chant kill the clown. This HAD to be a rib. It just had to be. And it’s a minute and a half as 911 hits three chokeslams, which was on the level of the Memphis piledriver back in the day so Doink is legally dead at this point.
Rating: N/A. It’s a rib, and would have been funny back in the day actually. It made me laugh when I got the joke. Joey has a great line: One clown down, Bischoff and McMahon remain.
And now we reach the problem with this tape: match clipping. With only an hour and 15 minutes to work with, seven matches plus a possible tag match is going to be too much to air, so they have to cut a lot out. We jump straight to the end of Shane vs. Taz, where Shane wins with a handful of tights. I really hate doing that to you, but this is the only release of this tape that I could find anywhere.
And let’s do that again with the best match in the first round: Scorpio vs. Benoit. Benoit goes for a top rope suplex and Scorpio hooks his legs on impact to get the pin. I hate match clipping, and leave it to the NWA to cut out the best matches.
Now all of a sudden we’re in the SECOND ROUND, completely skipping Malenko’s win for no apparent reason. Ok then, as he’s fighting Shane and takes a piledriver. He hits a second and covers, but we don’t ever seen the count! Literally, Shane covers, Joey says that’s all for Dean Malenko, and we go to another clip. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? You can’t show a damn three count?
911 and Scorpio are shown and the chokeslam hits. Doink hits the ring though and beats up Heyman. Matt Bourne, the guy that played Doink, comes out and hits 911 with a chair. Doink is unmasked as Shane Douglas and 911 is counted out to give us Shane vs. Scorpio in the finals.
We have about 52 minutes left on this tape, so either the match is about 30 minutes long, or there are a ton of extra matches on here. It runs 75 minutes in total. They couldn’t just make it two hours and give us more of the show? Seriously, Malenko winning was completely left out, but hey, we got to hear Mr. Hughes talk about women or something.
NWA World Title: Shane Douglas vs. 2 Cold Scorpio
And we get no entrances or anything like that. Joey said a quick thing about this is it and we cut to the bell ringing. I’m fairly certain that Shane is heel here but it’s not incredibly clear. Yeah he definitely is. The locker room is out to watch this. They try to tie this into the classic NWA guys like Race and Thesz, but for some reason the WHOMP There it is chant hurts the credibility on that one.
They do some decent stuff but it’s a tad sloppy which hurts it a bit. I wonder what Shane is thinking as he knows what he will be doing in about fifteen minutes. They lock up for about the fifth time in two minutes. We get it guys. You can do the most basic move on the planet. They do a bunch of small packages and reversals that aren’t bad but it’s hardly the masterpiece that Joey wants you to think it is.
To change the pace a lot, we have a lock up. A top rope cross body gets two and we hit a chinlock. You can really tell how far the title has fallen when it was eleven years before this when Starrcade aired and the company hit its peak. A top rope dropkick puts Shane on the floor and we have a sign that says I’ve Got Crabs. You can really feel the spirits of Thesz and Kiniski here can’t you?
They really do try to put this over as a classic. Well give Joey a point for trying of course. What they don’t point out most of the time is that Douglas beat Terry Funk for the ECW Title coming into this. Barely Legal was far from Funk’s first title reign. We get back in the ring with Shane somewhat in control.
It amuses me that this was supposed to be the biggest match of all time according to Joey, but that weekend we had Owen vs. Bret in a cage at Summerslam. Anyway, Scorpio misses a moonsault and Shane hits a belly to belly for the win. Scorpio says that Shane was better tonight but he’ll be back. Nice job on stealing the spotlight there buddy.
Rating: C+. This was nothing entertaining at all really. It’s just a match with limited heat and not very good wrestling. I get that this is supposed to mean something in the long run, but damn man, there was just nothing to talk about here at all. It’s not bad but there are about a million better matches.
And here it is. The speech that officially got ECW on the map and made everything different. Shane Douglas throws down the NWA belt, saying that he refuses to take the torch from an organization that died in 1987 (when Turner bought out Crockett). This didn’t really take effect on the fans at first, but at the same time it had a huge impact for the company.
The thing is though, all this really did was open a door for ECW. The NWA Title had been more or less dead since Flair just dropped it and headed to WWF. Think about it: it’s being decided in front of a few hundred people in Philly with no heat and a bunch of relative unknowns. After this it was won by Chris Candido in Smokey Mountain Wrestling. That should give you a hint about where this belt was.
Scorpio shakes his hand while the fans chant so loudly that no one can hear a word that he’s saying on a microphone. The fans chant Flair is dead. Shane Douglas currently works at Target and Flair debuted on Impact three days ago. That’s just amusing.
We get a clip of Dennis Corraluzzo talking about how Shane is the NWA Champion but because ECW is under the jurisdiction of the NATIONAL WRESTLING ALLIANCE which has to be followed by dramatic music, they might STRIP him of both titles. You know, strip him of the title that he just threw down and declared dead.
See, this is the problem with the NWA: they think they still mean something. No one cares about the NWA Board or whatever they were. They tried to have wrestling be a business or a company or something and that simply doesn’t work at all. The NWA hasn’t meant anything in nearly 25 years and they need to wake up and accept that.
Dennis was head of the NWA at the time and earlier that day he had been on a radio show and, knowing who was winning the title that night, more or less said that Shane Douglas was a joke and didn’t deserve to be champion. Shane hears about it and this was the result. This is why the NWA just sucked so terribly: they honestly believed that their title was on equal ground with the big two at the time.
I would almost bet that right now, most of the people that read this have no clue that the same guy has held the NWA Title since October of 2008. Any guesses as to his name? It’s a guy named Blue Demon Jr. Ever heard of him? Maybe some of you but I would bet it’s a no on most answers. He’s ok, but they try to make him out like someone better than Angle on the mat.
They always have thought they were the best thing in the world and they simply haven’t been since the late 80s. They deserve to be worthless and a joke anymore. Get over yourselves you old men.
ANYWAY, back to the show. Sorry I just really don’t like the NWA. We get the famous promo where ECW Commissioner Todd Gordon announces that ECW is now Extreme Championship wrestling, breaking away from the NWA and making them a big deal. This really was cool, but no one knew what it would become.
Ok, so we have 30 minutes or so left in the tape and the tournament is over. This should be stupid.
The Public Enemy spray paint Extreme over the word Eastern on the logo. They’re both dead now. Well that’s two minutes killed.
Shane Douglas says he’s a wrestler, not an entertainer. That’s true: he doesn’t entertain anyone anymore because he works at Target. Cactus comes up and says they started together and congratulates. I think this is supposed to be a press conference or something.
Shane is with Doink but the clown has his back to us. And now he doesn’t and it’s just him talking about how this isn’t a circus but he can kick ass. He looks and sounds like Roddy Piper minus me caring. Shane really wants you to know that this is a sport. This is the same thing that we’ve heard 3 or 4 times already. ECW is great and hardcore, we get it. And lose the damn clown.
ECW World Title: Shane Douglas vs. Ron Simmons
Well this isn’t random at all. Simmons gets no intro. They say Simmons could get the world title again. So WCW does exist I guess. Shane gets two off a clothesline and Simmons kicks out which launches Shane thought the ropes.
And then we go to Joey who says Shane won. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS DAMN THING?
Rating: N/A of course. We saw 30 seconds of it.
We go to a clip of after the match where Shane beats up Simmons but Scorpio makes the save. Apparently this was at November to Remember 1994. Shane calls Sherri who he brings back from WCW. Shane talks forever about the same things he’s talked about for an hour now and says that he’s bringing in Steve Austin which was HUGE, as Austin had been rapidly becoming a huge deal in WCW but was just about to be fired for being unmarketable.
We go to the show where Austin is supposed to debut and he’s injured. Sign in the front row: Ric Flair is dead just like WCW’s buyrates. That’s just hilarious given what was coming for this company. Apparently if anyone is disappointed with Austin’s replacement, they can get a refund at intermission and therefore get to see the first half of the show for free. It’s Brian Pillman who fits in perfectly.
Shane Douglas/Brian Pillman vs. Ron Simmons/2 Cold Scorpio
We actually get a full match! This is a standard tag match with Shane hiding most of the time as he’s the heel champion. Pillman works the majority of the match which is always fun if nothing else. Simmons wouldn’t be around much longer and Pillman was more or less a one night thing until he left WCW.
There’s not a lot to say here as it doesn’t run that long and is just Shane running from both guys and yelling at the crowd a lot. After Pillman does a ton Shane comes in for an extended period of time and promptly gets powerslammed and pinned by Simmons. He suplexes Sherri afterwards to just end the tape with no goodbye or summary or anything like that, making this just weird or maybe the first half of a tape, but it’s all I’ve got.
Rating: C. Not bad here but not great. It’s really about getting Shane over as a heel and that’s fine and good. It worked rather well so I’ve got no complaints. It wasn’t that interesting but it wasn’t bad at all. Watchable would be a good way to put this one.
Overall Rating: D+. I guess this would have been a lot better about 15 years ago when this was brand new and hadn’t been covered to death on so many books and DVDs. The title is completely misleading as it’s more or less an hour and fifteen minute tribute to Shane with the tournament being just the first half.
I guess you could call the other half fallout from it, but this was very weird. If you like old school ECW stuff though, this would be great. It’s ok, but nothing that jumps off the page at all. Still though it’s short so I can’t complain.
Date: August 27, 1994
Location: ECW Arena, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Commentator: Joey Styles
So it’s 1994 and there is no NWA Champion. There hadn’t been for 11 months as WCW had withdrawn from the NWA and made their own world title. Since the territory system was completely dead and everyone but the NWA accepted it, they decided to have all their remaining talent come together in Philadelphia at their largest remaining territory: Eastern Championship Wrestling, for a world title tournament.
This show is incredibly famous for the very ending, which we’ll get to at the end because that’s the logical conclusion right? Anyway, I’m sure most of us know the ending, but how did we get there? Let’s take a look.
Here are your brackets:
Shane Douglas
Tazmaniac
Dean Malenko
Osama Nishimoura
2 Cold Scorpio
Chris Benoit
911
Wildcard
That’s not bad. It should be noted that the ECW chant was there already. Terry Funk was supposed to be in here but he dropped out to be in another match.
Malenko cuts a promo saying that he’s been wrestling for 15 years which STUNS me but is correct and says that he would be honored to be world champion. It’s a very good promo, and at first I thought he had no charisma at all, but he refers to everyone as gentlemen. Now what this says to me is that he doesn’t lack charisma, but instead that he’s just a calm and collected man.
That’s fine and it’s working out very well for him. If nothing else this is awesome as we get to hear Malenko talk for three minutes. He’s not great on the mic at all, but for what he was at the time, an indy wrestler, this was fine. He says he associates Philly with Rocky and says he’s Rocky this Saturday night. Never mind that Rocky lost in the end but I get the point.
2 Cold Scorpio cuts a promo also which is almost a rap but not quite. Whomp There it is plays in the background. That sums this whole thing up.
Heyman says that the NWA is trying to step up and challenge the big two. Oh man this is amazing when you really know what’s coming. In something that amuses me, he says that Nishimoura wants to take the title back to Japan and have the recognition that guys like Inoki, Muta and Chono have.
What’s amusing is that of those three, only two have been world champion and Baba, the guy with the most reigns, isn’t mentioned at all. To be fair though, Heyman goes on such a rant that it’s understandable. This is vintage Paul as looking back, it’s amazing that you know what’s coming and didn’t realize something big was coming.
Shane Douglas says he joins the greats on Saturday and cuts into the other two major companies. He’s with Mr. Hughes, his bodyguard and is ECW Champion at this point. The system back then was the territory system or at least in the NWA’s line. Shane was the local champion and there likely are others in this tournament also.
He was supposed to travel as champion because even with the company more or less dead they insisted on doing stupid stuff like staying with what killed them. The times changed and they refused to change with them and that’s why you don’t see the NWA around today.
First Round Match: 911 vs. Wildcard
911 is with Heyman who is still Paul E. Dangerously here. The wildcard is freaking Doink the Clown of all people who is booed out of the ring and they chant kill the clown. This HAD to be a rib. It just had to be. And it’s a minute and a half as 911 hits three chokeslams, which was on the level of the Memphis piledriver back in the day so Doink is legally dead at this point.
Rating: N/A. It’s a rib, and would have been funny back in the day actually. It made me laugh when I got the joke. Joey has a great line: One clown down, Bischoff and McMahon remain.
And now we reach the problem with this tape: match clipping. With only an hour and 15 minutes to work with, seven matches plus a possible tag match is going to be too much to air, so they have to cut a lot out. We jump straight to the end of Shane vs. Taz, where Shane wins with a handful of tights. I really hate doing that to you, but this is the only release of this tape that I could find anywhere.
And let’s do that again with the best match in the first round: Scorpio vs. Benoit. Benoit goes for a top rope suplex and Scorpio hooks his legs on impact to get the pin. I hate match clipping, and leave it to the NWA to cut out the best matches.
Now all of a sudden we’re in the SECOND ROUND, completely skipping Malenko’s win for no apparent reason. Ok then, as he’s fighting Shane and takes a piledriver. He hits a second and covers, but we don’t ever seen the count! Literally, Shane covers, Joey says that’s all for Dean Malenko, and we go to another clip. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? You can’t show a damn three count?
911 and Scorpio are shown and the chokeslam hits. Doink hits the ring though and beats up Heyman. Matt Bourne, the guy that played Doink, comes out and hits 911 with a chair. Doink is unmasked as Shane Douglas and 911 is counted out to give us Shane vs. Scorpio in the finals.
We have about 52 minutes left on this tape, so either the match is about 30 minutes long, or there are a ton of extra matches on here. It runs 75 minutes in total. They couldn’t just make it two hours and give us more of the show? Seriously, Malenko winning was completely left out, but hey, we got to hear Mr. Hughes talk about women or something.
NWA World Title: Shane Douglas vs. 2 Cold Scorpio
And we get no entrances or anything like that. Joey said a quick thing about this is it and we cut to the bell ringing. I’m fairly certain that Shane is heel here but it’s not incredibly clear. Yeah he definitely is. The locker room is out to watch this. They try to tie this into the classic NWA guys like Race and Thesz, but for some reason the WHOMP There it is chant hurts the credibility on that one.
They do some decent stuff but it’s a tad sloppy which hurts it a bit. I wonder what Shane is thinking as he knows what he will be doing in about fifteen minutes. They lock up for about the fifth time in two minutes. We get it guys. You can do the most basic move on the planet. They do a bunch of small packages and reversals that aren’t bad but it’s hardly the masterpiece that Joey wants you to think it is.
To change the pace a lot, we have a lock up. A top rope cross body gets two and we hit a chinlock. You can really tell how far the title has fallen when it was eleven years before this when Starrcade aired and the company hit its peak. A top rope dropkick puts Shane on the floor and we have a sign that says I’ve Got Crabs. You can really feel the spirits of Thesz and Kiniski here can’t you?
They really do try to put this over as a classic. Well give Joey a point for trying of course. What they don’t point out most of the time is that Douglas beat Terry Funk for the ECW Title coming into this. Barely Legal was far from Funk’s first title reign. We get back in the ring with Shane somewhat in control.
It amuses me that this was supposed to be the biggest match of all time according to Joey, but that weekend we had Owen vs. Bret in a cage at Summerslam. Anyway, Scorpio misses a moonsault and Shane hits a belly to belly for the win. Scorpio says that Shane was better tonight but he’ll be back. Nice job on stealing the spotlight there buddy.
Rating: C+. This was nothing entertaining at all really. It’s just a match with limited heat and not very good wrestling. I get that this is supposed to mean something in the long run, but damn man, there was just nothing to talk about here at all. It’s not bad but there are about a million better matches.
And here it is. The speech that officially got ECW on the map and made everything different. Shane Douglas throws down the NWA belt, saying that he refuses to take the torch from an organization that died in 1987 (when Turner bought out Crockett). This didn’t really take effect on the fans at first, but at the same time it had a huge impact for the company.
The thing is though, all this really did was open a door for ECW. The NWA Title had been more or less dead since Flair just dropped it and headed to WWF. Think about it: it’s being decided in front of a few hundred people in Philly with no heat and a bunch of relative unknowns. After this it was won by Chris Candido in Smokey Mountain Wrestling. That should give you a hint about where this belt was.
Scorpio shakes his hand while the fans chant so loudly that no one can hear a word that he’s saying on a microphone. The fans chant Flair is dead. Shane Douglas currently works at Target and Flair debuted on Impact three days ago. That’s just amusing.
We get a clip of Dennis Corraluzzo talking about how Shane is the NWA Champion but because ECW is under the jurisdiction of the NATIONAL WRESTLING ALLIANCE which has to be followed by dramatic music, they might STRIP him of both titles. You know, strip him of the title that he just threw down and declared dead.
See, this is the problem with the NWA: they think they still mean something. No one cares about the NWA Board or whatever they were. They tried to have wrestling be a business or a company or something and that simply doesn’t work at all. The NWA hasn’t meant anything in nearly 25 years and they need to wake up and accept that.
Dennis was head of the NWA at the time and earlier that day he had been on a radio show and, knowing who was winning the title that night, more or less said that Shane Douglas was a joke and didn’t deserve to be champion. Shane hears about it and this was the result. This is why the NWA just sucked so terribly: they honestly believed that their title was on equal ground with the big two at the time.
I would almost bet that right now, most of the people that read this have no clue that the same guy has held the NWA Title since October of 2008. Any guesses as to his name? It’s a guy named Blue Demon Jr. Ever heard of him? Maybe some of you but I would bet it’s a no on most answers. He’s ok, but they try to make him out like someone better than Angle on the mat.
They always have thought they were the best thing in the world and they simply haven’t been since the late 80s. They deserve to be worthless and a joke anymore. Get over yourselves you old men.
ANYWAY, back to the show. Sorry I just really don’t like the NWA. We get the famous promo where ECW Commissioner Todd Gordon announces that ECW is now Extreme Championship wrestling, breaking away from the NWA and making them a big deal. This really was cool, but no one knew what it would become.
Ok, so we have 30 minutes or so left in the tape and the tournament is over. This should be stupid.
The Public Enemy spray paint Extreme over the word Eastern on the logo. They’re both dead now. Well that’s two minutes killed.
Shane Douglas says he’s a wrestler, not an entertainer. That’s true: he doesn’t entertain anyone anymore because he works at Target. Cactus comes up and says they started together and congratulates. I think this is supposed to be a press conference or something.
Shane is with Doink but the clown has his back to us. And now he doesn’t and it’s just him talking about how this isn’t a circus but he can kick ass. He looks and sounds like Roddy Piper minus me caring. Shane really wants you to know that this is a sport. This is the same thing that we’ve heard 3 or 4 times already. ECW is great and hardcore, we get it. And lose the damn clown.
ECW World Title: Shane Douglas vs. Ron Simmons
Well this isn’t random at all. Simmons gets no intro. They say Simmons could get the world title again. So WCW does exist I guess. Shane gets two off a clothesline and Simmons kicks out which launches Shane thought the ropes.
And then we go to Joey who says Shane won. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS DAMN THING?
Rating: N/A of course. We saw 30 seconds of it.
We go to a clip of after the match where Shane beats up Simmons but Scorpio makes the save. Apparently this was at November to Remember 1994. Shane calls Sherri who he brings back from WCW. Shane talks forever about the same things he’s talked about for an hour now and says that he’s bringing in Steve Austin which was HUGE, as Austin had been rapidly becoming a huge deal in WCW but was just about to be fired for being unmarketable.
We go to the show where Austin is supposed to debut and he’s injured. Sign in the front row: Ric Flair is dead just like WCW’s buyrates. That’s just hilarious given what was coming for this company. Apparently if anyone is disappointed with Austin’s replacement, they can get a refund at intermission and therefore get to see the first half of the show for free. It’s Brian Pillman who fits in perfectly.
Shane Douglas/Brian Pillman vs. Ron Simmons/2 Cold Scorpio
We actually get a full match! This is a standard tag match with Shane hiding most of the time as he’s the heel champion. Pillman works the majority of the match which is always fun if nothing else. Simmons wouldn’t be around much longer and Pillman was more or less a one night thing until he left WCW.
There’s not a lot to say here as it doesn’t run that long and is just Shane running from both guys and yelling at the crowd a lot. After Pillman does a ton Shane comes in for an extended period of time and promptly gets powerslammed and pinned by Simmons. He suplexes Sherri afterwards to just end the tape with no goodbye or summary or anything like that, making this just weird or maybe the first half of a tape, but it’s all I’ve got.
Rating: C. Not bad here but not great. It’s really about getting Shane over as a heel and that’s fine and good. It worked rather well so I’ve got no complaints. It wasn’t that interesting but it wasn’t bad at all. Watchable would be a good way to put this one.
Overall Rating: D+. I guess this would have been a lot better about 15 years ago when this was brand new and hadn’t been covered to death on so many books and DVDs. The title is completely misleading as it’s more or less an hour and fifteen minute tribute to Shane with the tournament being just the first half.
I guess you could call the other half fallout from it, but this was very weird. If you like old school ECW stuff though, this would be great. It’s ok, but nothing that jumps off the page at all. Still though it’s short so I can’t complain.