wrestling / Video Reviews

The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (1.3.1987)

April 22, 2017 | Posted by Adam Nedeff
NWA World Championship Wrestling
6.2
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The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (1.3.1987)  

Note for the readers: I typed this one up, then typed up the January 10th episode, then forgot to upload this one first. My bad.

-Cold open: the closing moments of the time limit draw from last week. Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express unleash havoc on Garvin & Windham.

-Originally aired January 3, 1987.

-Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & David Crockett. They promise the debut of “The Big Red Machine” this week…

-The Rock & Roll Express complains about the new World Tag Team Champs calling themselves “R&R” because there’s only one letter R tag team in wrestling today. They should have revived this feud 12 years later and had everyone team up with Big T and Booker T to settle it once and for all.

BRAD ARMSTRONG vs KENT GLOVER
-Brad takes Kent Glover down with a shoulderblock and a dropkick. Side headlock leads to chain wrestling, as Glover turns the hold into a top wristlock and they trade off on it. Armstrong gets him back on the mat for the side headlock. David Crockett is ALREADY hyping the Crockett Cup, a full three months out.

-Snapmares in rapid succession by Brad, and Glover is doing everything he can to fight the side headlock. Brad drops a series of knees. Glover turns it into a fistfight and dodges a corner charge, looking like he might get a miracle this week. He goes for a slam, but Armstrong lands on his feet and immediately falls backward for a Russian legsweep, a pretty sweet way of hitting that move out of nowhere, and that’s it.

-Jim Cornette is here with Big Bubba. Bubba is wearing an extremely stylish new suit as a result of all the money collected in the Bunkhouse Stampedes. The Midnights have more scaffold matches lined up this month, and he promises that after walking around on a bad leg for a month, he’s going to make sure that the Road Warriors and Paul Ellering all walk on two bad legs.

ROCK & ROLL EXPRESS vs ALAN MARTIN & ZANE SMITH
-Hoot starts off with Alan Martin and gets him down to the mat. Ricky Morton works the hamstrings as Tony declares that the bad arm is fully recovered. Zane Smith gets caught in a front facelock and then runs right into the double dropkick for three.

-Ron Garvin & Barry Windham are here. Windham reveals that he’s received an offer from Jim Cornette, he said “no,” and he thinks that was the reason for the post-match assault last week.

-JJ Dillon and Tully Blanchard are here. JJ flashes $10,000 in cash that he has in his coat pocket and says Tim Horner can have it if he wins the TV Title this week.

RON GARVIN vs THE WHITE KNIGHT
-White Knight is a black guy with the most slapped together ring gear of 1987 so far, a white mask, leopard-print long tights with his red underwear sticking out of the top. Garvin ties him up in a cradle suplex, not as a pinning combo, but just to stretch him all to hell. White Knight tries a top wristlock, and Garvin does a really funny lazy-looking counter, just kicking the guy’s ankle and making him lose his balance. Hands of stone knocks out The White Knight for the pin. They should have given The White Knight a valet and have his gimmick be that he’d be quick to come to her defense any time she got into a message board argument. He could even sew a fedora onto his mask for maximum effect.

-Tony is with Dick Murdoch. He’s looking forward to his big homecoming in the NWA card in Amarillo.

BARRY WINDHAM vs RANDY BARBER
-Barber tries a side headlock. Barry suplexes out and applies the side headlock himself. Flying lariat gets three.

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (with Jim Cornette & Big Bubba) vs GEORGE SOUTH & MIKE JACKSON
-Bobby Eaton locks up with South. South hiptosses him and throws some dropkicks. He applies a wristlock, but Eaton escapes by making the tag. Jackson tags in, too and the jobbers make quick tags to keep Condrey from getting an edge on either of them. South gets mowed down by a double-team move. Jackson tags in and unleashes a flurry of offense on Eaton severe enough that Cornette walks away from the commentary table to actually do some managing.

-Eaton tosses Jackson onto the concrete, but Jackson is able to make a hot tag, I guess, to George South. South gets drop-toeheld onto the bottom rope to stop his onslaught. Jackson comes back in, and Cornette complains he isn’t able to manage his team adequately because the light hitting Jackson’s bald spot is blinding him.

-South tags in and gets booted down. Flying knee by Eaton.

-Ric Flair comes out and compares himself to Johnny Carson because of all the cheering he hears any time he walks through a curtain…Except Flair doesn’t have a guy with a cue card telling the audience to cheer. They just do that because they know how damn great the Nature Boy is. Tony asks Flair if he’ll ever defend the belt on television in 1987, and Flair leaves without acknowledging the question.

-Ole & Arn are here. Ole has a list of people he wants a piece of in 1987, warning Dusty, Nikita, “The Big Fat Cowboy,” and others that they’re all “on the list.” Wow, The List of Anderson. Jericho has a clipboard, Ole would probably have to carry a filing cabinet under one arm. Arn declares that he’s ready to be the champion. He’s tired of sitting in the dressing room with all the Horsemen. Flair opens his duffel bag and there’s a belt. Tully opens his bag, and there’s a belt. Arn opens his bag, and all he has is tights and boots.

TV TITLE + $10,000: TULLY BLANCHARD (Champion, with JJ Dillon) vs TIM HORNER
-Tully is so arrogant about this challenge that’s actually agreed to tack an extra five minutes onto the time limit to make it more interesting. Barry Windham joins commentary while Horner works the arm and takes Tully down to the mat. Tully makes the ropes, and Horner just drags him by the arm back to the middle of the ring and goes to town on the arm. Great visual at ringside, as JJ had the $10,000 out while Horner was working the arm, but when Tully finally makes it to the ropes and the referee forces the break, JJ breathes a sigh of relief and calmly puts the money back in his pocket.

-Horner with an elbow to the jaw for two. He stays on the arm as we pause for a break.

-We begin hour #2 with Horner pretzeling Blanchard. JJ finally goes over to complain about Windham being at ringside for no reason. This match has been 100% Horner, and that continues as Tully tries to elbow him in the face, but Horner just jerks the elbow down and makes it a hammerlock. Windham mentions his chat with Horner in the locker room and summarizes: Horner doesn’t like thinking about money all the time, so if he wins, he’ll just stick the $10,000 in a money market account so he can just forget about it and focus on defending the title. “I don’t like thinking about money” would sort of turn into this company’s mantra during the upcoming year.

-Tully finally comes to life with a slug to the gut. He applies a figure four so hastily that he just falls into the ropes and focuses on hurting Horner’s leg illegally instead of trying to get the win. So with that goal achieved by the illegal figure four, Tully has a body part to focus on and he goes to work on the leg. Horner fights dirty tactics with dirty tactics, just hammering Tully with punch after punch for a two-count. Natural bridge nearly finishes, but Horner’s lost track of where he is in the ring and accidentally lands in the ropes, so the referee can’t count the pin for him.

-JJ runs over to the commentary table to demand some positive words on commentary about the champ’s durability. Meanwhile, Tully runs right into a dropkick for two. Tully tries to run out for the count-out. Horner stops him, giving us a flash of Tully’s bare ass that was neither expected nor desired. Tully tries for the slingshot suplex, but Horner blocks it and hits a suplex of his own for two. Both men bounce off the ropes and collide.

-Horner recovers first and heads to the second rope. Horner connects with a bodypress, but Tully rolls through and hooks the tights for added leverage to get the three-count. BUT WAIT! Barry Windham tattles on Tully and demands the match be restarted. That request falls on deaf ears and Tully just sends Horner out to the concrete, so Barry decides to kick Tully’s ass himself.

-That brings out the rest of the Horsemen, and Scrappy McGowen takes the best ref bump ever to get himself out of the ring while Windham gets his ass kicked by Four men, with JJ supervising. Windham is out cold.

-The Horsemen cut a promo celebrating what they did, with Ole noticeably standing at a distance from the rest of the group.

RAVISHING & RAGING (World Tag Team Champions, with Paul Jones) vs. ALAN WEST & EDDIE ROBERTS
-Champs clear the ring before the bell. Rude dishing out offense with his robe on is a weird visual. Burrito off the second rope, and the Rude Awakening finishes in seconds.

-Paul Jones has some words with Tony Schiavone. Mildly irritating thing: Paul Jones can’t even do “I lost a hair vs. hair match” correctly, as his hair is pretty clearly growing back under his hat and he hasn’t been doing any hilarious “hat falling off” spots or wearing a ridiculous wig. The wrestling world has a SLIGHTLY different set of rules, and one rule is “hair takes months and months and months to grow back after being sheared.”

-Tony is with Ivan Koloff, who introduces “The Big Red Machine.” THAT’S GOTTA BE…THAT’S GOTTA BE VLADIMIR PETROV!

VLADIMIR PETROV vs BILL TABB & THE MULKEY BROTHERS
-Petrov connects with an uppercut on Tabb and shoves away both Mulkeys before Tabb makes it back to his feet. Russian hammer finishes.

-After the match, Tony continues referring to him as “The Big Red Machine” even though Vladmir is dressed all in black. Ivan says that Nikita is going to have horrible flashbacks of all the times Vladimir kicked his ass during training as a teenager, and issues an open challenge to Nikita to come to the ring and face him.

“Captain Redneck” DICK MURDOCH vs HENRY RUTLEY
-Murdoch just rolls around on the mat with Rutley a few times and armdrags him. Rutley throws punches, Murdoch just shakes it off and slams him. He boots Rutley out to the floor. Back in, the brainbuster finishes.

-Nikita Koloff, wearing a Nikia Koloff t-shirt that looks like a fan just drew a cartoon of him right on the shirt, calls out the Four Horsemen and Paul Jones’ men in 1987.

OLE & ARN ANDERSON vs LARRY STEPHEN & DAVID ISLEY
-Ole takes initiative and starts the match while Arn isn’t even looking in the ring and focuses on jawing with Nikita. Ole takes the edge early. Arn tags in and does some mat work on Stephen. Arn works the arm of Isley, and in comes Ole to twist the wrist a bit. “We want Barry” chant as Arn chokes and tears away at Isley’s face. Spinebuster gets an easy three.

NIKITA KOLOFF (US Champion) vs CHANCE MCQUADE
-What kind of jobber name is that? Was he the buddy on a 70s cop show? Nikita hits the sickle in the seconds.

-The Road Warriors and Paul Ellering are here with the Six-Man Tag Team Championship trophy that somebody finally dug out of the attic for this promo. They’re ready to kick some Midnight Express ass all over the country in the scaffold matches.

ROAD WARRIORS (with Paul Ellering) vs DAVE SPEARMAN & CLEMENT FIELDS
-And of course, this takes less time than the promo.

-There’s five minutes left in the show, so what the hell, let’s watch the entire Vladimir Petrov segment again.

6.2
The final score: review Average
The 411
The TV Title match was a nice treat, the rest was just there.
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