wrestling / Video Reviews
The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (2.14.1987)
Loading...-Cold open: A SHOCKING start to this week’s show, with a clip of Dick Murdoch unexpectedly attacking Nikita Koloff after a squash match.
-Originally aired February 14, 1987.
-Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & David Crockett. Tony’s barber continues to have a sense of humor, with Tony having these weird visible “stripes” on the side of his head that have been moussed so thoroughly that the studio lights draw your attention right to the side of his head.
-Ron Garvin and Barry Windham are here, and they’re ready for the Crockett Cup.
“Boogie Woogie Man” JIMMY VALIANT vs TOMMY ANGEL
-Jimmy clearly fell asleep while tanning and somebody put SOMETHING on his back as a rib, which leads to me pausing the Network to study his back and try to figure out what the hell it was…I’m leaning toward “portable radio.”
-Valiant hiptosses Angel around and out of the ring, and the cameramen are so uninterested in this match that they don’t even bother to follow Angel to the floor. Valiant works the arm and rams Angel into the turnbuckle and works the arm. Elbow gets three. That was damn near a marathon compared to your usual Valiant squash.
-Jim Cornette officially outs Ron Garvin as Miss Atlanta Lively and says a transvestite shouldn’t be wearing a men’s title belt. He suspects Ron Garvin may also own leather clothing, so he’s going to mess up Garvin to rid society of a pervert. I actually like the continuity this gives the angle, because rather than Cornette and the Midnights assaulting the champs for the sake of being heels, they have genuine motivation stemming from something that happened a year and a half ago.
-Bob Armstrong is here, and he’s entering the Crockett Cup with his son to collect that million.
BARRY WINDHAM & RON GARVIN (US Tag Team Champions) vs RANDY BARBER & JACK JACKSON
-I have a feeling one of these jobbers didn’t get to use the name he wanted.
-Garvin locks up with Jackson and hiptosses him across the ring. Side headlock, with Garvin giving it some extra oomph by giving Jackson a noogie on his nose. He bends the crap out of Jackson’s neck to bring his face & knees together.
-Windham comes off the top with an axehandle and dropkicks Jackson. Gutwrench and an elbow follow. Jackson comes to life with some punches, but Garvin just comes in and gives him a boot to the face. Garvin is really initiating the new guy here, running his fingernails hard across his back and then pulling his tights down for a moment.
-Garvin ties up Jackson again and headbutts him. Garvin’s chops turn Jackson’s chest red. He FINALLY tags Randy Barber, and the crowd actually gives Jackson a round of applause for making the tag and surviving all that.
-Barry dropkicks Barber and suplexes him. Garvin ties up Barber a bit and wraps it up with the hands of stone.
SUPERPOWERS & DICK MURDOCH vs IVAN KOLOFF, VLADIMIR PETROV, & THE BIG RED MACHINE
-From NWA Pro Wrestling, here’s the match teased at the top of the hour. So, Jim Crockett didn’t get the wrestler he wanted to be The Big Red Machine (John Nord, allegedly) and suddenly found his mood teetering between “I don’t give a shit about this anymore” and “Well, we promised the fans a new guy was debuting.” So Crockett satisfied both of those attitudes by just throwing a red mask on a jobber and sending him out there to die. Set-up for this match was that Ivan challenged the Superpowers to a match against all three Russians, so Dusty did the logical thing and called up his ex-tag team partner since he knows Dick so well.
-Nikita demands Vladimir get in the ring. Big Red Machine attacks him from behind before that happens, so Nikita clobbers him and just hits the Russian sickle immediately to end the match in seconds.
-And suddenly, Murdoch knocks Dusty out of the ring and joins the surviving Russians for a three-on-one assault on Nikita. Dusty recovers and valiantly sacrifices himself, allowing them to beat him up instead until a ton of faces come to the ring to make the save. Baron Von Raschke in a sweater and blue jeans is a bizarre visual.
-Dick goes on a crazed ultra-patriot rant about how Nikita did nothing but talk shit about America for two straight years, and then suddenly, Magnum has his car accident and like magic, Dusty just decides he needs a tag team partner and ignores Nikita bad-mouthing the best country in the whole damn world for the past two years like it never happened. And yeah, Dick is siding with the Russian wrestlers, but you know what? At least they’re a solid, tough unit, unlike Nikita, who walked out on his FAMILY and then walked around pretending to be a good America-loving person.
-Dusty confronts Murdoch afterward, and Murdoch just beats the holy stuffing out him with the Russian chain, leaving Dusty a bloody mess. Dick looks like he’s about to do the brainbuster on Dusty, but all the faces return to the ring, rescuing Dusty from a broken neck, and rescuing Murdoch from a hernia. Fantastic angle all around!
-Tully Blanchard is here to brag about the 600 pounds that he watched the new associate Horseman lift in the gym a few days ago. They once saw Hawk lift 550 pounds, which is impressive, but it ain’t 600. They have a man stronger than the Road Warriors, and as a bonus, Tully says, he’s not ugly!
LEX LUGER (with JJ Dillon) vs KENT GLOVER
-Crockett hypes Luger as “The Complete Package,” so apparently, they weren’t quite sold on that part of the persona yet. Luger works the arm. Glover makes the ropes and tries shoulderblocks, but Luger shakes off every one of them and just takes Glover down for a side headlock. Luger hammers the back and tosses Glover out to the floor to work the back over. Big powerslam by Luger, and the torture rack gets the submission.
-Tully says he counted and saw at least 20 different wrestling moves during that match, so Luger knows more wrestling moves than the Road Warriors. JJ Dillon says he got a piece of hate mail from a fan comparing the Horsemen to the Titanic, and JJ makes the argument that the Titanic itself was a perfectly fine ship, and that the disaster could have been avoided if the ship’s crew had been doing their jobs. The Horsemen are as powerful as the Titanic, and everybody knows their job as does it well. Luger says that the Road Warriors basically coast on their reputation because they’re muscular, and now that there’s a muscleman in the Four Horsemen, the Warriors actually have to prove themselves. In fact, they aren’t even in the damn building this week, they’re at the gym trying to outmuscle Lex!
ARN ANDERSON vs ZANE SMITH
-Arn does the standard Anderson arm work and tosses Smith out to the floor, rubbing Smith’s face in the concrete so hard that he twists Zane’s body about 45 degrees while doing it. Back in the ring, Arn works the arm some more and rams the shoulder into the post. Gourdbuster ends it.
-The Kansas Jayhawks warn JCP that if they aren’t invited to the Crockett Cup, they’re crashing the party. Dutch says he’s mad about all the Publisher’s Clearinghouse envelopes he’s mailed back and hasn’t seen a single penny from, and he’s gonna make up for it at Crockett Cup.
GORGEOUS JIMMY GARVIN (with Precious) vs DAVID ISLEY
-Garvin takes Isley down with a side headlock and throws him out to the floor. Back inside, Garvin clamps on a headlock, which gives us this moment with a member of the studio audience.
REFEREE: Do you give up?
ISLEY: No!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, you should!
-Garvin slams Isley a few times for a two-count before going to a chinlock. Isley shows some fire, so Garvin shows him a right hand to the jaw, and we pause for the break. Back from the break, Garvin is just torturing him with a hold before finally ending it with the brainbuster.
-Ric Flair’s in the house. He vaguely indicates that he personally watched Lex Luger have sex (which I can completely believe) and he wants to assure the ladies that there’s plenty of go behind the show.
-Superpowers have a rebuttal, telling Flair that clothes don’t make the fan, the heart does. He says that what he has with Dusty and Magnum is a true friendship. Dusty cuts a passionate promo about how he and Dick Murdoch chose which paths they’d go on in 1976. Dusty’s path took him to three world titles, Murdoch’s path took him to Japan because he couldn’t hack it in America.
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (with Jim Cornette & Big Bubba) vs RICKY SULLIVAN & LARRY STEVENS
-Larry Stevens is still wearing his ridiculous tights with the hearts on them, so Cornette just has the time of his life ripping on the poor schlub while the Express mauls him. Sullivan tags in and walks right into a suplex by Bobby Eaton. Dennis Condrey rubs his face into the mat and throws him to the concrete with such a thump that all three people on commentary let out an “Ooooooo” on impact.
-Back in the ring, Eaton elbows Larry Stevens down and heads to the top rope. Studio lights are arranged differently this week and Eaton actually almost bangs his head on a light just by climbing up there, which Cornette calls “proof of a conspiracy.” Larry Stevens takes a turn being flung out of the ring and landing with a thump.
-Sullivan tries to work Condrey’s arm but gets sent into the rope and hits Eaton’s arm HARD. Suplex by Condrey is all it takes to put the guy out of his misery.
-Jimmy Valiant…okay, I’m gonna give the guy his due, Valiant actually genuinely cracks me up here. The segment starts with Jimmy approaching Tony and, in a normal, conversational tone, he asks Tony to spot him a hundred bucks, just to get him by until next week. Tony replies “We’re on the air,” Jimmy looks at the camera nervously, and suddenly cuts his usual goofy promo.
VLADIMIR PETROV, IVAN KOLOFF, & DICK MURDOCH vs ALAN MARTIN, RANDY MULKEY, & CHANCE MCQUADE
-Mulkey tries to be a hero by attacking Koloff as he enters the ring, but everyone shakes it off and destroyes the jobbers. Murdoch uses just every part of the commentary area as a weapon on Alan Martin, and the match never really properly starts, it’s all six men right up until Murdoch finally hits the brainbuster and the referee just declares him the legal man and counts the pin to get it over with.
-Cornette has a few words for Dusty Rhodes leading up to the big house show in Pittsburgh and the Bunkhouse Stampede finals.
BIG BUBBA ROGERS (with Jim Cornette) vs GEORGE SOUTH
-South tries a shoulderblock and Bubba doesn’t budge. Bubba just stands there and takes everything South has, not even dodging it, finally letting South crash on a dropkick. Backbreaker follows, and he boots South out to the floor. Back in, Bubbaslam gets the three-count.
-Paul Jones is here with Ravishing & Raging, and sadly, they’re not dressed for wrestling this week, so we’re deprived of the sexiest stock music on WWE Network.
KANSAS JAYHAWKS vs KEITH VINCENT & VERNON DEATON
-Tony wishes happy birthday to Audra Pierson, a fan in my hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia! I bet Audra celebrated with a Napoli’s dessert pizza!
-Jayhawks switch off as they usually do. They double team Deaton and Dutch stays in there for a while to dish it out on him with stomps and knees. The now clean-shaven Bobby Jaggers gives him an elbow. The squash keeps going, which is my main complaint about this show. It’s not the worst thing in the world but…Two hours is a lot longer than it sounds and a lot of the NWA squashes on TBS go well past their “expiration date” in terms of being interesting. Second-rope Hart Attack finally ends it.
-Jimmy Garvin has mixed emotions as he announces he’s considering retiring because there’s no competition for him in the NWA.
BOB ARMSTRONG vs THE DEMON
-Armstrong lights into the Demon with punches and forearms. Armstrong works the arm until the Demon comes to life, choking him and ramming him into the turnbuckles. Armstrong fights back, and an elbow from the second rope ends it.
