Random Network Reviews: Superbrawl VI

SuperBrawl VI
February 11th, 1996 | Bayfront Arena in St. Petersburg, Florida | Attendance: 7,200

Here’s an era that I’m not too familiar with. I was watching WCW at the time, but didn’t care for it the way that I cared for the WWF. Even as a kid, I realized how ridiculous Hulk Hogan’s first year or so was. I mean, you had Brutus Beefcake in main events, the Dungeon of Doom and things like the YE-TAY! This is a month before the most absurd match I’ve ever seen (the Doomsday Cage) at Uncensored. Obviously, this is the sixth Superbrawl event.

The opening seems outdated for even 1996, but it focuses on the card. I do appreciate some shine being shown to things like the Television Title along with the biggest matches on the card. Commentary consists of Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan and Dusty Rhodes.

Falls Count Anywhere
The Nasty Boys vs. Public Enemy
Tony Schiavone points out that the Nasty Boys don’t have regular wrestling boots on and they’re wearing sneakers because they’re ready to fight all over. I appreciate that in a match like this. The brawl starts instantly and weapons quickly come into play. Rocco Rock gets a table, only to get bashed in with a chair by Jerry Saggs. Rocco is also the first victim of a table spot, getting slammed from the apron through one by Brian Knobbs. Saggs just lays into Johnny Grunge with a trash can lid about 15 times. Saggs hits a damn piledriver onto a trash can on Grunge but he gets his foot on the ropes. Is that a legal pin break in a Falls Count Anywhere match? We get the WCW split screen effect to see both things but I’ve never liked this. All four men end up fighting by the entrance. To point how this is a fight and not a traditional wrestling match, Dusty asks Tony if we’ve seen any “Australian arm drags”. No Dream, I’ve actually never seen one. Rocco misses a somersault from the crowd and crashes through a table. Knobbs hits him with a piece of the broken table and gets the 1-2-3.

Winners: The Nasty Boys in 7:49
A bit of a mess, but unlike most Nasty Boys matches I can remember, this was actually pretty fun. It was a bit too one sided for me to really enjoy it too much though. ***

Mean Gene hypes the WCW Hotline. [phone]! He then interviews Konnan, who says nothing of note.

WCW Television Championship
Johnny B. Badd (c) w/ The Diamond Doll vs. Diamond Dallas Page
I’ll never get over Johnny’s theme saying “he looks like Little Richard.” DDP tries to hand flowers to the Diamond Doll, so Badd attacks on the outside. Inside, they trade offense while commentary tells us that there is $6.6 million on the line, which goes to the Diamond Doll. I think DDP owed her or something. DDP hits a stun gun to take the upper hand. He wants the Doll to score his offense but she’s no longer about that. DDP makes the mistake of showboating too much. Bobby Heenan is pissed about it. The Doll scores him a zero, which upsets him. He starts using more underhanded tactics, like using the ropes for leverage on a wear down hold. Johnny B. Badd rallies with some marvelous punches. Get it? I’m here all week. He gets two on a sitout powerbomb. When DDP does get in a bit of offense again, he uses the ropes to try and cheat. DDP applies a sleeper which Schiavone thinks might be a cobra clutch even though it clearly isn’t. Johnny breaks it and puts his own on, which Heenan instantly calls a choke. He is on fire so far. Badd then reverses a tombstone into one of his own to win.

Winner and Still WCW Television Champion: Johnny B. Badd in 14:59
Overall, this was a fine match. It lacked some heat but had some good action. I thought the finish was cool because DDP had already done the tombstone variation and it was going to the well too often that cost him in the end. ***

Mean Gene interviews Harlem Heat about the upcoming Tag Team Title match. Booker T is surprisingly the one that stumbles through this, but he fixes himself in the end.

WCW World Tag Team Championship
Lex Luger and Sting (c) vs. Harlem Heat
So, the winners of this will defend the belts later tonight against a fresh Road Warriors team. Three weeks earlier, Harlem Heat lost the belts due to Luger using a roll of silver dollars or something. Basically, Sting is face and Luger is doing heel things but Sting is pretty clueless to these things. Sting and Booker have a fine exchange. When Luger comes in though, the match gets more physical as it is him that they want to get their hands. Luger quick tags out, which Sting questions. Like a classic heel, Luger only wants in when Harlem Heat is down. That soon backfires when Luger starts to take a pounding. Schiavone points out how dumb the strategy of both teams is since neither unit is looking for a quick win. Booker hits the Scissors Kick and choosing to pose instead of going for the cover. I get that they want to beat up Luger, but this is just dumb. They do the faux hot tag to Sting, which the referee misses. Sting says fuck it, and just beats up Harlem Heat anyway. Sting and Booker brawl outside. The Road Warriors show up and Animal hits Stevie Ray in the back with a pipe or something. Luger falls on Stevie and the champions retain.

Winners and Still WCW World Tag Team Champions: Lex Luger and Sting in 11:49
Technically, it wasn’t a bad match. The way they chose to work it was poor though. The lack of urgency was dumb since the winners would have another match and the hot tag was hard to work. Luger wasn’t garnering any sympathy from the crowd, so they didn’t react the way they normally would. That hurts the overall score. **

WCW United States Championship
Konnan (c) vs. One Man Gang
This is before Konnan was BOWDYBOWDY AND ROWDYROWDY! He holds both the US and Mexican Heavyweight Titles and he had just won the US Title from One Man Gang less than two weeks prior. One Man Gang uses his size to gain the early advantage and Konnan has to use his speed to overcome it. None of what they’re doing looks good or is interesting. The match is so boring that they cut to a NASCAR racer in the front row to talk about him instead. One Man Gang hits a splash and covers, but pulls Konnan up. WHY? YOU’RE IN A TITLE MATCH AND I DON’T WANNA SEE THIS ANYMORE! He goes to the second rope for another splash and misses. It looks horrible. Konnan climbs and nails a somersault to keep the belt.

Winner and Still WCW United States Champion: Konnan in 7:27
Oh my, that was terrible. They had no chemistry, everything they did looked so bad. It was painfully dull, the crowd was dead and there were no redeeming qualities about this. DUD

Back to Mean Gene again. He plug the hotline and says that two former WWF Champions are headed to WCW. Well, if they’re counting the Intercontinental Title, he could have been talking about Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. It might have been the one hotline prophecy that came true. He interviews the Road Warriors who promise to do some gross things to Sting and Luger. Like, at one point Hawk claims they will detach their rectums. What?

I Respect You Strap Match
Brian Pillman vs. The Taskmaster w/ Jimmy Hart
The rules of this aren’t really explained except for Schiavone saying that it’s a combination of a strap match and an I Quit match. Pillman charges to the ring and they go right at it. The brawl lasts almost a minute before Pillman takes the microphone and says “I respect you…booker man.”

Winner: The Taskmaster in 0:59
More of an angle than a match. I can’t really rate it. NO RATING

Kevin Sullivan was the booker at this time, so that finish was meant to work as a shoot. Arn Anderson shows up in street clothes, only for the Taskmaster to whip him with the strap. Anderson doesn’t play any games and removes his shirt, ready for a fight.

I Respect You Strap Match
Arn Anderson vs. The Taskmaster w/ Jimmy Hart
The bell rings and I guess this is the match now. Again, there is no official call. They whip each other and do your typical strap match spots. After a few minutes, Jimmy Hart runs to get Ric Flair, who comes out and stops the match because the Four Horsemen and the Dungeon of Doom are part of something bigger to beat Hulk Hogan and Macho Man. That bigger thing was for all of them to lose in an absurd Doomsday Cage match the following month.

Match ends in a draw at 3:45
I don’t even know what to rank that. All of it was so strange. The only thing that saves it from being a dud was Flair’s antics. ½*

Brian Pillman would head to ECW to really make the “Loose Cannon” gimmick click. I believe Eric Bischoff wanted him to return after a while, with a lot of buzz. Instead, Pillman left to the WWF.

Mean Gene interviews the Giant. It’s just really awful. The Giant was doing far too much extra nonsense with his voice that made it so bad.

WCW World Tag Team Championship
Lex Luger and Sting (c) vs. The Road Warriors
Lex Luger doesn’t even want to get into the ring and has to be talked into it by Sting. Even so, he still stalls a ton and backpedals to the entrance. When things finally get started, Hawk works over Sting. For all of the build they hype about the Warriors wanting to just hurt Luger, they surprisingly don’t do much abuse when he comes in at first. Sting gets tagged and tries a top rope splash but Animal gets his knees up. Both guys make the tag and Hawk takes out Luger with a shoulder block. They do some uninspired stuff and both guys tag back out. While Sting gets worked over, Luger just comes in and attacks. Schiavone calls this one of the most physical tag matches he’s ever seen, but it honestly isn’t. Despite featuring four top guys, the crowd is sitting on their hands. The fight spills outside and they brawl until a double countout.

Match ends in a double countout at 13:56
For a match with some big names, the crowd didn’t care for any of this. They tried to hype and bill it as a big fight but they worked a mostly basic match that ended up with next to no heat. You know things are bad when the crowd can’t get into a match involving Sting. Most of this match made no sense and was boring. ¼*

The music for the lowering of the Steel Cage is so bad, it’s comical. They run an ad for Uncensored the next month, which was a pretty dire event.

WCW World Heavyweight Championship Steel Cage Match
“Macho Man” Randy Savage (c) w/ Miss Elizabeth vs. Ric Flair w/ Woman
Before the match starts, Ric Flair tries to convince Elizabeth to come kiss a real man, but she declines. It’s been about four years since WrestleMania 8 and he still wants some of her. Unlike the previous tag match, Macho Man clearly shows that he hates Ric Flair. Just minutes in and Flair lays out the official. I don’t really get that since there’s no DQ anyway. It does lead to the official missing a near fall and then he gets up quicker than I’ve ever seen a referee get up. Flair lights him up with chops as Schiavone calls him the hardest hitter in wrestling. Flair applies the figure four but Savage survives and applies his own. Flair survives this time and Savage goes all the way up to the top of the cage. He leaps off with a double axe handle but Flair catches him with a rib shot. Using that, Flair takes control and locks in another figure four. Savage reaches the ropes but there’s no reason for Flair to break it thanks to the no DQ rule. Then, the referee pulls Flair off by his hair. But it’s no DQ. Anyway, Savage now goes after Flair and, because it’s a Flair match, he’s busted open. He stops Savage with an inverted atomic drop and then Flair flops. There is a weird faux finish where the bell even rings. Savage exposes Flair’s ass while he tries to escape twice, giving us a full moon. Woman tries to throw powder at Savage but misses. Then Elizabeth hands Flair her shoe, which he uses to knock out Savage and win the belt.

Winner and New WCW World Heavyweight Champion: Ric Flair in 18:52
Not on the level of some of their other great matches (WrestleMania 8 and the one from Nitro a few weeks earlier spring to mind) but still a really good match. It came off as a personal feud though it slowed at times. The dirty finish was expected and not as bad as future WCW finishes. ***½

Miss Elizabeth celebrates the win and Hulk Hogan runs down with a chair. He chases Ric Flair, Elizabeth, Woman and Arn Anderson away. He helps Savage to the back like he doesn’t have a match starting right now. He has to cut a promo with Mean Gene before he goes back out.

Steel Cage Match
The Giant w/ Jimmy Hart vs. Hulk Hogan
Hulk Hogan and his messed up eye instantly attacks the Giant. A few fans can be heard chanting “Hogan sucks”. Giant turns things around and starts to pound on Hogan, going after the eye. None of this is particularly interesting though and instead is just standard Hogan vs. big man stuff. Giant nearly escapes but Hogan stops him. Commentary mentions that if the Giant wants to destroy Hogan, why leave at this point. I honestly agree though Heenan combats it by saying Giant should win and then bring the Dungeon of Doom into the cage to pick apart Hogan. After Giant just beats up Hogan non-stop, Hogan literally just gets up and the Giant is scared. Hogan starts to throw him around into the cage. Hogan hits THREE leg drops and Schiavone says Giant isn’t getting up. He sits up like he’s the Undertaker or something. Giant meets Hogan atop the cage only for Hogan to just knock him off and climb out for the win.

Winner: Hulk Hogan in 10:54
Typical Hulk Hogan stuff. He fights a monster, gets his ass kicked, rallies and ends up winning in dominating fashion. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s the same stuff people had been seeing for a long time and they were growing very tired of it. This match sucked. ¾*

The Taskmaster hits Hulk Hogan with a chair but he no sells it. Hogan takes Taskmaster into the ring and hit him with the chair. The entire Dungeon of Doom shows up and Hogan just hits each and every single one of them with weak looking chair shots. We’re talking One Man Gang, Meng, Hugh Morris, Giant, Taskmaster, Zodiac, Shark, Barbarian and that might not be them all. Hogan just kicks all of their asses. Giant leaves and out comes Taskmaster’s newest guy, Loch Ness. He walks out and Dungeon of Doom hold him back because Hogan made them all retreat. Good lord, that is atrocious.

4.5

The final score: review Poor

The 411

A show filled with ups and downs. There are good matches like the opener, TV Title and WCW Title matches, but there were some really bad things. The main event, second Tag Title match and US Title were all pretty terrible. The bad just outweighs the good here, causing this show to not really score too high.