klunderbunker
Welcome to My (And Not Sly's) House
Slamboree 1996
Date: May 19, 1996
Location: Riverside Centroplex, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Attendance: 7,791
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Dusty Rhodes
So we’re back to the final incarnation of the Battlebowl idea with mixed up tag teams trying to get into a battle royal at the end of the night. The winner is named Lord of the Ring and gets a title shot at Great American Bash. Other than that we have Sting vs. Giant for the title. Yeah literally that’s all that’s on the card: Battlebowl matches and the title match. Riveting PPV no? Oh apparently there are US and Cruiserweight title matches where the participants aren’t important. Let’s get to it.
We don’t even get the announcements of the teams as they’re already made. What a damn ripoff!
Battlebowl First Round: Animal/Booker T vs. Hawk/Lex Luger
Love that Iron Man music. Dusty is excited. This was one of his bright ideas. Wow a tag team is fighting each other. What are the odds of that??? Luger is a face now in case you’re keeping track. If you are, I feel very sorry for you. Tony suggests 100 million people are watching this PPV broadcast and are listening in English. That’s most amusing.
Ok so the first round has 8 matches and then there’s ANOTHER round of tag matches. The winners of the second round of matches go to the battle royal. Ok then. Luger and Animal start us off. The commentary is somehow stupider than usual. Luger is a tag champion here along with Sting. Hawk hasn’t come in yet. Booker hits a Spinarooni which has no official name yet. Luger is TV Champion here too. Hawk and Luger get into it and we have the massive brawl. That’s a double countout. Hawk was never in the match.
Rating: D-. For these matches, I’m starting at a D rather than a C like I usually do. This was quick and boring if nothing else, but it gives me a very bad feeling about the rest of the show. Also, point to the double countout?
Battlebowl First Round: Public Enemy vs. Chris Benoit/Kevin Sullivan
Sullivan and Benoit hate each other. WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT? And yeah, they’re against a real team. Well, as real of a team as Public Enemy can be classified as. Bobby and Dusty have a funny exchange where Bobby asks Dusty what he would do if he was in this with his most hated rival. Dusty says he’d throw Bobby in there, drop an elbow on him, grab his belt and leave. Notice two things: it’s Bobby, and Dusty just knows he’d have a belt.
There’s something so funny about that second part. We start the weapons crap and Benoit saves Sullivan from going through a table. That’s stupid as not only would Sullivan have been hurt, but Benoit’s team would win. Sullivan gets the idea…but that’s not a DQ??? The referee was looking right at them. It gets the pin.
Rating: F. This was just all over the damn place to put it mildly. Something tells me this was a bit rigged. Seriously, this was just awful and it was over almost before it began. Terrible match and I think it’s going to get worse.
Battlebowl First Round: Scott Steiner/Craig Pittman vs. Rick Steiner/Booty Man
Is this like a sick joke or something??? Teddy Long is Pittman’s manager for no explained reason. At least we can look at Kimberly. Pittman and Booty Man start. Oh just shoot me now. It has to be less painful. Wow it’s weird seeing Teddy out there as a manager. The announcers are orgasming over Rick vs. Scott. I can’t say I blame them as they didn’t have a showdown for a long time. And there it is.
Actually they tag twice so Scott isn’t legal. The fans pop to it too so this is a good idea. To their credit, they actually get in there and wrestle rather than do a short sequence that will be forgotten in 8 seconds. I’m not saying this steals the show or anything, but they actually throw each other around and pound on each other, but no punches.
This worked and when Rick made the tag it didn’t feel like it had been weak or short or anything like that. They were in there about 2-3 minutes and it was fine. I like that. After an arm hold on Booty Man, Rick comes in and a German suplex on Pittman ends it with Rick and Booty winning.
Rating: C. Best match of the night by far to this point. Rick vs. Scott was a nice touch indeed and while no one at this point is buying the pairings being random, this was certainly entertaining and came off well. It’s a pleasant surprise if nothing else.
Battlebowl First Round: VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan vs. Blue Bloods
Yes, two more guys that don’t like each other and are feuding vs. a legit tag team. This is insulting my intelligence. Wallstreet, IRS in case you didn’t know, was one of the first parodies of Vince that WCW did. It was much funnier when WWF went public soon after this. Oh this was supposed to be Finlay instead of Dave Taylor.
That still is stupid but whatever. We’re almost forty minutes in here and none of this has been any good other than the Steiners fighting. Duggan winds up fighting all three before taping his fist and punching Taylor in the head for the pin. Yeah that tape hanging from his hand isn’t a giveaway at all.
Rating: N/A. Get us to the title match. I beg of you.
Battlebowl First Round: Dick Slater/Bobby Eaton vs. Alex Wright/Disco Inferno
Yes they’re future tag champions but that wasn’t until later so that’s excusable. Oh look: people that are complete opposites of each other. WHO WOULD GUESS THAT??? At least Eaton is a good wrestler so that’s a perk. You know, Disco Inferno is really impressive.
To have a pure comedy gimmick and put together a fairly decent resume (Cruiserweight Champion, TV Champion, Tag Champion) is saying a lot about him. He made a horrible gimmick into something which says a lot about him. We talk about Flair and Savage for the most part here. When Disco Inferno gets the hot tag, you know we have a problem. Disco starts dancing and gets blasted in the head with a boot. Yep that’s it.
Rating: N/A. At least it was fast. Seriously, someone thought this was a good idea? Why? What kind of drugs were they on? I want some of them.
Battlebowl First Round: Diamond Dallas Page/Barbarian vs. Meng/Hugh Morrus
Meng and Morrus are in the same stable and Meng and Barbarian are tag partners. Wow this makes my head hurt. Page was supposed to be out of wrestling but had a mysterious benefactor that got him back in this somehow. That and Luger hurt Barbarian’s partner, Hard Work Bobby Walker. That’s the right choice I think. Oh and Page has his familiar theme music. This is the 6th of 8 matches in the first round.
Page looks like his usual self now too and it works much better than the other version of him. Apparently this is his first match back. Oh and the 7,700 people are now 20,000. Morrus is impressive if nothing else. Barbarian is one of the guys in wrestling that is consistently hired. I have no idea why, but for a LONG time, this guy was always on a major roster. He and Meng fight and it’s a far cry from the Steiners fighting. Crowd is DEAD.
Morrus doesn’t want the pin on Barbarian for no apparent reason. Barbarian hits a belly to belly off the middle rope. This needs to end. Morrus hits that sweet moonsault of his but the pin is broken up. Both Faces of Fear hit their big kicks and get pins on the respective guys but Page’s foot was under the rope so only Barbarian’s pin counts, making them the winners. I like that ending actually.
Rating: D. This wasn’t horrible I guess, but I don’t remember a more dead crowd in a long time. This wasn’t that good at all but by comparison, this was a divine occurrence. It certainly was watchable, but that doesn’t make it really good.
Battlebowl First Round: Stevie Ray/Big Bubba vs. Fire and Ice
Yes, it’s another team getting randomly paired together. WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT????? They’re Scott Norton and Ice Train who I always liked for some odd reason. Stevie and Norton start. Somehow they might be the best four in there. Crowd is a bit more awake for this than they were in the previous one.
Norton tries to throw Bubba and it just fails. Like it REALLY failed. Ice Train comes in as I try to figure out if that’s a cool name or not. We get a double clothesline and Train’s arm is on Bubba but since we need to pad it out there’s no count on it. Fire and Ice hit their finisher, a freaking double shoulder block and it gets the pin. Wow. Tony thinks Stevie Ray is Regal for no apparent reason.
Rating: N/A. At least it was short. This is one of the dumbest PPVs of all time. It has to be.
Battlebowl First Round: Randy Savage/Ric Flair vs. Arn Anderson/Eddie Guerrero
Oh come on. Did you expect anything else really? It’s weird when Eddie is the worst worker in a tag match. There’s no Flair, but Savage is here. Savage gets jumped early and here’s Flair just in time to be able to do nothing. Yep the Horsemen had a plan. Flair and Eddie start us off and it’s fast paced with the fans into it. This needs to be about 20 minutes long.
Naturally it won’t. Liz and Woman sneak out and they look good. Naturally it breaks down into a big brawl with the Horsemen beating on Savage and Eddie just being stuck in the middle. Eddie comes in and beats up Flair until Savage jumps him partner. Then Anderson DDTs his partner. That lets Flair get the pin. Flair and Anderson beat up Savage some more after the match. Dusty thinks the Horsemen planned this.
Rating: C+. By comparison, this was a masterpiece. It was fast paced and had four great workers in there. For this show, what more could you possibly ask for? This show is completely awful if you couldn't tell and I want it to die.
The announcers kill some time by saying we’re going to hold the “random” draw for the second round. One team will get a bye into the battle royal finals.
Hooters chicks are here to help with the draw. They have envelopes. The first draw is for a bye. It’s Fire and Ice. They get a bye because of the initial double elimination. Here’s the rest of the draw. Crowd is silent.
Dick Slater/Bobby Eaton
VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan
And that’s it? No other matches are announced. What the hell is the point of this damn show?
Cruiserweight Championship: Dean Malenko vs. Brad Armstrong
So Malenko is the second champion as Otani of all people won it at an NJPW show. Yeah it made no sense but it’s WCW so there you are. There allegedly was a tournament, but only the finals were ever seen. It was also double elimination apparently, but no one other than these three have ever been mentioned. I hear it was in Rio. Apparently the Cloverleaf is a standing Figure Four. And so begins Tony being an idiot.
Armstrong is a guy that was pretty good back in his day but never really was given anything past a glorified jobber role. He hooks the Cloverleaf. Wow I do not care about this match at all. Dean hits his gutbuster from the top to end it. Somehow this was almost ten minutes long. Wow.
Rating: D+. Nothing special at all but considering what we’ve had to watch otherwise, this was GREAT. Like I said Armstrong was good but the title was brand new and nothing was told to us about this. This show needs to die.
We have the rest of the draw. Wait. Why didn’t they do this before? Could they really not rig a draw? Were they afraid of what would come out of it? They have envelopes there and even if they’re random, just talk into Gene’s ear and tell him what to say. My goodness how hard is this? Anyway, here are your brackets of fun.
Public Enemy
Ric Flair/Randy Savage
DDP/Barbarian
Rick Steiner/Booty Man
I went back to find DDP/Barbarian’s opponents. They didn’t say them. This is awful.
Battlebowl Round Two: Dick Slater/Bobby Eaton vs. VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan
Duggan and Wallstreet start fighting before the match so of course the others go and break it up. My headache is now even worse. This is like some abortion of a comedy match and it’s just bad. Duggan randomly yells and he and Slater ram into each other and sell it like death. Duggan punches Wallstreet and Eaton rolls him up to make the finals. Thank goodness it’s over. I guess this was just building to the epic Duggan vs. Wallstreet showdown.
Rating: G. This was an insult to my intelligence as a human being. This might be the worst WCW show ever. And it’s not like you can make fun of it like Uncensored. This is just terrible.
Battlebowl Second Round: Public Enemy vs. Ric Flair/Randy Savage
Hmm I wonder who wins this one. No I’m seriously not sure as it’s such an obvious one that WCW would manage to mess it up and put Public Enemy in the main match. The women are here with Savage’s money and give it to the fans. Savage is too injured to be here and ignore that as here he is. Savage gets taken away by security and police. Why? He was coming to the ring for his match. Oh they’re keeping him from Flair. And because of that, Public Enemy advance. WOW.
Rating: N/A. So to be clear, Public Enemy has gotten wins over Benoit, Savage and Flair in one night. Just let that sink in for a bit.
Battlebowl Second Round: Diamond Dallas Page/Barbarian vs. Rick Steiner/Booty Man
Again, Kimberly is the only reason to watch this. Oh and she’s in the same match as DDP. Shocking isn’t it? I’m shocked but we get an explanation for why DDP is allowed back: he agreed to put his career up vs. Johnny B. Badd, not Booty Man. I guess that makes sense in a WCW sort of way, which is to say it makes the very bare bones of sense. Again we’re just meandering along here and nothing of note at all is happening. Booty Man rolls up Barbarian, DDP hits him in the head, Barbarian covers him and we’re done.
Rating: F+. And that’s all because Kimberly is very hot. I mean dude, who thought THESE four in a match was a good idea? Terrible match and Kimberly's chest is all that makes this even remotely interesting.
Ok, so I kid you not, here are the 8 men that are in the finals with the winner going to next month’s PPV for a title shot: DDP, Barbarian, Ice Train, Scott Norton, Dick Slater, Bobby Eaton, Rocco Rock, Johnny Grunge. Do I even need to make fun of this?
US Title: Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Konnan
THANK GOODNESS Tenay is here for this. Dusty leaves so this could be watchable. They’ve never met before. Jushin is heel here for no explained reason. Apparently this is the first WCW PPV in Mexico. I feel so sorry for them. Konnan does some fucked up cover that looks like a submission. The term mixed martial arts is mentioned here. That’s a new one. In a funny moment Tenay is talking about Konnan’s hair and what it means and Bobby cuts him off and says he doesn’t care.
Apparently Liger has recently formed his own Horsemen as a tribute to Flair. That’s rather cool. If nothing else this is a decent back and forth match with the crowd actually being interested. Liger Bomb gets two. Konnan hits Splash Mountain to retain. It’s setting someone for a Razor’s Edge and going into a sitout powerbomb.
Rating: B-. Not great but it was ten minutes of heaven by comparison. The international style was showing up really clearly around this time and it worked for a very long time. Rey would debut at the next show.
Flair, Anderson and the ladies come out and say that they’re awesome. Wow Liz looks good in leather. Gene gets invited to the party. Ok then. He calls out McMichael and challenges for a match at Great American Bash. Savage would be their coach against Anderson and Flair but McMichael would turn heel and take Pillman’s spot in the Horsemen.
Mongo shows up and accepts the challenge. His partner is Kevin Greene. Flair gets a nice jab by saying “Who do you have, Lawrence Taylor?” Mongo was part of Taylor entourage at Mania so that works actually. At the time Greene was a Carolina Panther so this was something close to a big deal.
Battlebowl
DDP, Barbarian, Dick Slater, Bobby Eaton, Rocco Rock, Johnny Grunge, Ice Train, Scott Norton
And yes, one of those guys gets a world title shot next month. Let that sink in for a bit. Just a regular battle royal here with the winner being Lord of the Ring. Almost immediately we see the problem here: there is no feuding at all. Think of any battle royal you’ve seen. You have people with feuds or angles or whatever to pair off and a lot of random fighting. Here it’s just the random fighting with 8 midcard guys.
Scratch that. You have DDP, two tag teams and three jobbers. DDP hits the floor but the referee misses it so he goes back in. We actually go split screen for a one ring battle royal. Wow. Rocco is out. Ice Train yells at the crowd. No one cares. Eaton is out and he punches the hell out of Parker. Nice shot. Slater is out too. I hate this show. Norton is out. DDP, Ice Train, Johnny Grunge and Barbarian are the final four.
Diamond Cutter to Barbarian. And to Ice Train. And to Grunge. Page pins Grunge…because you can do that. And he pins Ice Train. He gets two on Barbarian. Oh I hate this show. Diamond Dallas Page vs. Barbarian is the co-main event of a PPV. Barbarian hits a SICK tombstone on DDP. That looked as bad as the jumping one at Mania this past year. Oh look it’s a sleeper. The flying headbutt misses and a Diamond Cutter ends it. Wow that was uninteresting as hell.
Rating: F. The second biggest star was Barbarian. Let that sink in. I don’t need to say anything else. The title shot was revoked tomorrow night due to one foot hitting the floor, making this whole show entirely pointless. Apparently being gone about 2 months is now being on the shelf for six months. Wow.
Giant and Hart are nervous and Jimmy wants Lex back. Giant is improving on the mic but he’s still bad.
WCW World Title: Sting vs. The Giant
Luger is with Sting here. The graphic on the monitor says this is a US Title match. This is just pathetic. This is the still thin Giant. He looks like Kane if not thinner. Imagine that. Hart and Luger will be handcuffed at ringside apparently. Sting gets a solid pop. Giant is from a place unknown to man. So he doesn’t know where he’s from? Sting just tries all kinds of stuff but it doesn’t work.
He gets Giant up for a slam but he falls on him. You have to remember that Giant has only been in pro wrestling for like 7 months here so he has like no experience. Sting is having to carry this and sell like Billy Mays to make this work. Giant just throws Sting down the aisle. That was awesome looking.
Luger saves Sting from a chokeslam on the floor. Giant busts out a running dropkick. He misses but that’s due to Luger. He was amazing back then. Down goes the referee. Giant takes like 5 Stinger Splashes and doesn’t go down. Sting gets the Scorpion but Hart throws the Megaphone at Sting to break the hold and the chokeslam ends it.
Rating: D+. Not awful at all but nothing great. Giant probably hadn’t had 20 matches at this point so Sting and Luger being there helped him out a lot I think. This was just a formality though as no one really thought Sting was going to win it. Not bad, but nothing special at all.
Overall Rating: F-. Holy crap this show sucked. The idea was stupid, the matches sucked, NO ONE CARED and worst of all, it didn’t mean anything 24 hours later. WCW had nothing at all going for it at this time, but in 8 days a guy named Scott Hall debuted. Actually his contract expired like an hour after this ended, so this really was the end of an era.
Anyway, this show is terrible to put it mildly and if not for Hall and Nash, this could have been a very dark era for the company in the next few months. BIG pass here as this might be the worst WCW show ever.
Date: May 19, 1996
Location: Riverside Centroplex, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Attendance: 7,791
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, Dusty Rhodes
So we’re back to the final incarnation of the Battlebowl idea with mixed up tag teams trying to get into a battle royal at the end of the night. The winner is named Lord of the Ring and gets a title shot at Great American Bash. Other than that we have Sting vs. Giant for the title. Yeah literally that’s all that’s on the card: Battlebowl matches and the title match. Riveting PPV no? Oh apparently there are US and Cruiserweight title matches where the participants aren’t important. Let’s get to it.
We don’t even get the announcements of the teams as they’re already made. What a damn ripoff!
Battlebowl First Round: Animal/Booker T vs. Hawk/Lex Luger
Love that Iron Man music. Dusty is excited. This was one of his bright ideas. Wow a tag team is fighting each other. What are the odds of that??? Luger is a face now in case you’re keeping track. If you are, I feel very sorry for you. Tony suggests 100 million people are watching this PPV broadcast and are listening in English. That’s most amusing.
Ok so the first round has 8 matches and then there’s ANOTHER round of tag matches. The winners of the second round of matches go to the battle royal. Ok then. Luger and Animal start us off. The commentary is somehow stupider than usual. Luger is a tag champion here along with Sting. Hawk hasn’t come in yet. Booker hits a Spinarooni which has no official name yet. Luger is TV Champion here too. Hawk and Luger get into it and we have the massive brawl. That’s a double countout. Hawk was never in the match.
Rating: D-. For these matches, I’m starting at a D rather than a C like I usually do. This was quick and boring if nothing else, but it gives me a very bad feeling about the rest of the show. Also, point to the double countout?
Battlebowl First Round: Public Enemy vs. Chris Benoit/Kevin Sullivan
Sullivan and Benoit hate each other. WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT? And yeah, they’re against a real team. Well, as real of a team as Public Enemy can be classified as. Bobby and Dusty have a funny exchange where Bobby asks Dusty what he would do if he was in this with his most hated rival. Dusty says he’d throw Bobby in there, drop an elbow on him, grab his belt and leave. Notice two things: it’s Bobby, and Dusty just knows he’d have a belt.
There’s something so funny about that second part. We start the weapons crap and Benoit saves Sullivan from going through a table. That’s stupid as not only would Sullivan have been hurt, but Benoit’s team would win. Sullivan gets the idea…but that’s not a DQ??? The referee was looking right at them. It gets the pin.
Rating: F. This was just all over the damn place to put it mildly. Something tells me this was a bit rigged. Seriously, this was just awful and it was over almost before it began. Terrible match and I think it’s going to get worse.
Battlebowl First Round: Scott Steiner/Craig Pittman vs. Rick Steiner/Booty Man
Is this like a sick joke or something??? Teddy Long is Pittman’s manager for no explained reason. At least we can look at Kimberly. Pittman and Booty Man start. Oh just shoot me now. It has to be less painful. Wow it’s weird seeing Teddy out there as a manager. The announcers are orgasming over Rick vs. Scott. I can’t say I blame them as they didn’t have a showdown for a long time. And there it is.
Actually they tag twice so Scott isn’t legal. The fans pop to it too so this is a good idea. To their credit, they actually get in there and wrestle rather than do a short sequence that will be forgotten in 8 seconds. I’m not saying this steals the show or anything, but they actually throw each other around and pound on each other, but no punches.
This worked and when Rick made the tag it didn’t feel like it had been weak or short or anything like that. They were in there about 2-3 minutes and it was fine. I like that. After an arm hold on Booty Man, Rick comes in and a German suplex on Pittman ends it with Rick and Booty winning.
Rating: C. Best match of the night by far to this point. Rick vs. Scott was a nice touch indeed and while no one at this point is buying the pairings being random, this was certainly entertaining and came off well. It’s a pleasant surprise if nothing else.
Battlebowl First Round: VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan vs. Blue Bloods
Yes, two more guys that don’t like each other and are feuding vs. a legit tag team. This is insulting my intelligence. Wallstreet, IRS in case you didn’t know, was one of the first parodies of Vince that WCW did. It was much funnier when WWF went public soon after this. Oh this was supposed to be Finlay instead of Dave Taylor.
That still is stupid but whatever. We’re almost forty minutes in here and none of this has been any good other than the Steiners fighting. Duggan winds up fighting all three before taping his fist and punching Taylor in the head for the pin. Yeah that tape hanging from his hand isn’t a giveaway at all.
Rating: N/A. Get us to the title match. I beg of you.
Battlebowl First Round: Dick Slater/Bobby Eaton vs. Alex Wright/Disco Inferno
Yes they’re future tag champions but that wasn’t until later so that’s excusable. Oh look: people that are complete opposites of each other. WHO WOULD GUESS THAT??? At least Eaton is a good wrestler so that’s a perk. You know, Disco Inferno is really impressive.
To have a pure comedy gimmick and put together a fairly decent resume (Cruiserweight Champion, TV Champion, Tag Champion) is saying a lot about him. He made a horrible gimmick into something which says a lot about him. We talk about Flair and Savage for the most part here. When Disco Inferno gets the hot tag, you know we have a problem. Disco starts dancing and gets blasted in the head with a boot. Yep that’s it.
Rating: N/A. At least it was fast. Seriously, someone thought this was a good idea? Why? What kind of drugs were they on? I want some of them.
Battlebowl First Round: Diamond Dallas Page/Barbarian vs. Meng/Hugh Morrus
Meng and Morrus are in the same stable and Meng and Barbarian are tag partners. Wow this makes my head hurt. Page was supposed to be out of wrestling but had a mysterious benefactor that got him back in this somehow. That and Luger hurt Barbarian’s partner, Hard Work Bobby Walker. That’s the right choice I think. Oh and Page has his familiar theme music. This is the 6th of 8 matches in the first round.
Page looks like his usual self now too and it works much better than the other version of him. Apparently this is his first match back. Oh and the 7,700 people are now 20,000. Morrus is impressive if nothing else. Barbarian is one of the guys in wrestling that is consistently hired. I have no idea why, but for a LONG time, this guy was always on a major roster. He and Meng fight and it’s a far cry from the Steiners fighting. Crowd is DEAD.
Morrus doesn’t want the pin on Barbarian for no apparent reason. Barbarian hits a belly to belly off the middle rope. This needs to end. Morrus hits that sweet moonsault of his but the pin is broken up. Both Faces of Fear hit their big kicks and get pins on the respective guys but Page’s foot was under the rope so only Barbarian’s pin counts, making them the winners. I like that ending actually.
Rating: D. This wasn’t horrible I guess, but I don’t remember a more dead crowd in a long time. This wasn’t that good at all but by comparison, this was a divine occurrence. It certainly was watchable, but that doesn’t make it really good.
Battlebowl First Round: Stevie Ray/Big Bubba vs. Fire and Ice
Yes, it’s another team getting randomly paired together. WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT????? They’re Scott Norton and Ice Train who I always liked for some odd reason. Stevie and Norton start. Somehow they might be the best four in there. Crowd is a bit more awake for this than they were in the previous one.
Norton tries to throw Bubba and it just fails. Like it REALLY failed. Ice Train comes in as I try to figure out if that’s a cool name or not. We get a double clothesline and Train’s arm is on Bubba but since we need to pad it out there’s no count on it. Fire and Ice hit their finisher, a freaking double shoulder block and it gets the pin. Wow. Tony thinks Stevie Ray is Regal for no apparent reason.
Rating: N/A. At least it was short. This is one of the dumbest PPVs of all time. It has to be.
Battlebowl First Round: Randy Savage/Ric Flair vs. Arn Anderson/Eddie Guerrero
Oh come on. Did you expect anything else really? It’s weird when Eddie is the worst worker in a tag match. There’s no Flair, but Savage is here. Savage gets jumped early and here’s Flair just in time to be able to do nothing. Yep the Horsemen had a plan. Flair and Eddie start us off and it’s fast paced with the fans into it. This needs to be about 20 minutes long.
Naturally it won’t. Liz and Woman sneak out and they look good. Naturally it breaks down into a big brawl with the Horsemen beating on Savage and Eddie just being stuck in the middle. Eddie comes in and beats up Flair until Savage jumps him partner. Then Anderson DDTs his partner. That lets Flair get the pin. Flair and Anderson beat up Savage some more after the match. Dusty thinks the Horsemen planned this.
Rating: C+. By comparison, this was a masterpiece. It was fast paced and had four great workers in there. For this show, what more could you possibly ask for? This show is completely awful if you couldn't tell and I want it to die.
The announcers kill some time by saying we’re going to hold the “random” draw for the second round. One team will get a bye into the battle royal finals.
Hooters chicks are here to help with the draw. They have envelopes. The first draw is for a bye. It’s Fire and Ice. They get a bye because of the initial double elimination. Here’s the rest of the draw. Crowd is silent.
Dick Slater/Bobby Eaton
VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan
And that’s it? No other matches are announced. What the hell is the point of this damn show?
Cruiserweight Championship: Dean Malenko vs. Brad Armstrong
So Malenko is the second champion as Otani of all people won it at an NJPW show. Yeah it made no sense but it’s WCW so there you are. There allegedly was a tournament, but only the finals were ever seen. It was also double elimination apparently, but no one other than these three have ever been mentioned. I hear it was in Rio. Apparently the Cloverleaf is a standing Figure Four. And so begins Tony being an idiot.
Armstrong is a guy that was pretty good back in his day but never really was given anything past a glorified jobber role. He hooks the Cloverleaf. Wow I do not care about this match at all. Dean hits his gutbuster from the top to end it. Somehow this was almost ten minutes long. Wow.
Rating: D+. Nothing special at all but considering what we’ve had to watch otherwise, this was GREAT. Like I said Armstrong was good but the title was brand new and nothing was told to us about this. This show needs to die.
We have the rest of the draw. Wait. Why didn’t they do this before? Could they really not rig a draw? Were they afraid of what would come out of it? They have envelopes there and even if they’re random, just talk into Gene’s ear and tell him what to say. My goodness how hard is this? Anyway, here are your brackets of fun.
Public Enemy
Ric Flair/Randy Savage
DDP/Barbarian
Rick Steiner/Booty Man
I went back to find DDP/Barbarian’s opponents. They didn’t say them. This is awful.
Battlebowl Round Two: Dick Slater/Bobby Eaton vs. VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan
Duggan and Wallstreet start fighting before the match so of course the others go and break it up. My headache is now even worse. This is like some abortion of a comedy match and it’s just bad. Duggan randomly yells and he and Slater ram into each other and sell it like death. Duggan punches Wallstreet and Eaton rolls him up to make the finals. Thank goodness it’s over. I guess this was just building to the epic Duggan vs. Wallstreet showdown.
Rating: G. This was an insult to my intelligence as a human being. This might be the worst WCW show ever. And it’s not like you can make fun of it like Uncensored. This is just terrible.
Battlebowl Second Round: Public Enemy vs. Ric Flair/Randy Savage
Hmm I wonder who wins this one. No I’m seriously not sure as it’s such an obvious one that WCW would manage to mess it up and put Public Enemy in the main match. The women are here with Savage’s money and give it to the fans. Savage is too injured to be here and ignore that as here he is. Savage gets taken away by security and police. Why? He was coming to the ring for his match. Oh they’re keeping him from Flair. And because of that, Public Enemy advance. WOW.
Rating: N/A. So to be clear, Public Enemy has gotten wins over Benoit, Savage and Flair in one night. Just let that sink in for a bit.
Battlebowl Second Round: Diamond Dallas Page/Barbarian vs. Rick Steiner/Booty Man
Again, Kimberly is the only reason to watch this. Oh and she’s in the same match as DDP. Shocking isn’t it? I’m shocked but we get an explanation for why DDP is allowed back: he agreed to put his career up vs. Johnny B. Badd, not Booty Man. I guess that makes sense in a WCW sort of way, which is to say it makes the very bare bones of sense. Again we’re just meandering along here and nothing of note at all is happening. Booty Man rolls up Barbarian, DDP hits him in the head, Barbarian covers him and we’re done.
Rating: F+. And that’s all because Kimberly is very hot. I mean dude, who thought THESE four in a match was a good idea? Terrible match and Kimberly's chest is all that makes this even remotely interesting.
Ok, so I kid you not, here are the 8 men that are in the finals with the winner going to next month’s PPV for a title shot: DDP, Barbarian, Ice Train, Scott Norton, Dick Slater, Bobby Eaton, Rocco Rock, Johnny Grunge. Do I even need to make fun of this?
US Title: Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Konnan
THANK GOODNESS Tenay is here for this. Dusty leaves so this could be watchable. They’ve never met before. Jushin is heel here for no explained reason. Apparently this is the first WCW PPV in Mexico. I feel so sorry for them. Konnan does some fucked up cover that looks like a submission. The term mixed martial arts is mentioned here. That’s a new one. In a funny moment Tenay is talking about Konnan’s hair and what it means and Bobby cuts him off and says he doesn’t care.
Apparently Liger has recently formed his own Horsemen as a tribute to Flair. That’s rather cool. If nothing else this is a decent back and forth match with the crowd actually being interested. Liger Bomb gets two. Konnan hits Splash Mountain to retain. It’s setting someone for a Razor’s Edge and going into a sitout powerbomb.
Rating: B-. Not great but it was ten minutes of heaven by comparison. The international style was showing up really clearly around this time and it worked for a very long time. Rey would debut at the next show.
Flair, Anderson and the ladies come out and say that they’re awesome. Wow Liz looks good in leather. Gene gets invited to the party. Ok then. He calls out McMichael and challenges for a match at Great American Bash. Savage would be their coach against Anderson and Flair but McMichael would turn heel and take Pillman’s spot in the Horsemen.
Mongo shows up and accepts the challenge. His partner is Kevin Greene. Flair gets a nice jab by saying “Who do you have, Lawrence Taylor?” Mongo was part of Taylor entourage at Mania so that works actually. At the time Greene was a Carolina Panther so this was something close to a big deal.
Battlebowl
DDP, Barbarian, Dick Slater, Bobby Eaton, Rocco Rock, Johnny Grunge, Ice Train, Scott Norton
And yes, one of those guys gets a world title shot next month. Let that sink in for a bit. Just a regular battle royal here with the winner being Lord of the Ring. Almost immediately we see the problem here: there is no feuding at all. Think of any battle royal you’ve seen. You have people with feuds or angles or whatever to pair off and a lot of random fighting. Here it’s just the random fighting with 8 midcard guys.
Scratch that. You have DDP, two tag teams and three jobbers. DDP hits the floor but the referee misses it so he goes back in. We actually go split screen for a one ring battle royal. Wow. Rocco is out. Ice Train yells at the crowd. No one cares. Eaton is out and he punches the hell out of Parker. Nice shot. Slater is out too. I hate this show. Norton is out. DDP, Ice Train, Johnny Grunge and Barbarian are the final four.
Diamond Cutter to Barbarian. And to Ice Train. And to Grunge. Page pins Grunge…because you can do that. And he pins Ice Train. He gets two on Barbarian. Oh I hate this show. Diamond Dallas Page vs. Barbarian is the co-main event of a PPV. Barbarian hits a SICK tombstone on DDP. That looked as bad as the jumping one at Mania this past year. Oh look it’s a sleeper. The flying headbutt misses and a Diamond Cutter ends it. Wow that was uninteresting as hell.
Rating: F. The second biggest star was Barbarian. Let that sink in. I don’t need to say anything else. The title shot was revoked tomorrow night due to one foot hitting the floor, making this whole show entirely pointless. Apparently being gone about 2 months is now being on the shelf for six months. Wow.
Giant and Hart are nervous and Jimmy wants Lex back. Giant is improving on the mic but he’s still bad.
WCW World Title: Sting vs. The Giant
Luger is with Sting here. The graphic on the monitor says this is a US Title match. This is just pathetic. This is the still thin Giant. He looks like Kane if not thinner. Imagine that. Hart and Luger will be handcuffed at ringside apparently. Sting gets a solid pop. Giant is from a place unknown to man. So he doesn’t know where he’s from? Sting just tries all kinds of stuff but it doesn’t work.
He gets Giant up for a slam but he falls on him. You have to remember that Giant has only been in pro wrestling for like 7 months here so he has like no experience. Sting is having to carry this and sell like Billy Mays to make this work. Giant just throws Sting down the aisle. That was awesome looking.
Luger saves Sting from a chokeslam on the floor. Giant busts out a running dropkick. He misses but that’s due to Luger. He was amazing back then. Down goes the referee. Giant takes like 5 Stinger Splashes and doesn’t go down. Sting gets the Scorpion but Hart throws the Megaphone at Sting to break the hold and the chokeslam ends it.
Rating: D+. Not awful at all but nothing great. Giant probably hadn’t had 20 matches at this point so Sting and Luger being there helped him out a lot I think. This was just a formality though as no one really thought Sting was going to win it. Not bad, but nothing special at all.
Overall Rating: F-. Holy crap this show sucked. The idea was stupid, the matches sucked, NO ONE CARED and worst of all, it didn’t mean anything 24 hours later. WCW had nothing at all going for it at this time, but in 8 days a guy named Scott Hall debuted. Actually his contract expired like an hour after this ended, so this really was the end of an era.
Anyway, this show is terrible to put it mildly and if not for Hall and Nash, this could have been a very dark era for the company in the next few months. BIG pass here as this might be the worst WCW show ever.