The Furious Flashbacks – WCW Clash of the Champions 30

The Furious Flashbacks – WCW Clash of the Champions 30

Home of the famed “reviving elbow”

Have you ever gotten so drunk that you’re woken by your boss calling you and the first thing you say after answering the phone is “what fucking day is this?” And then agree to come into work then fall asleep for another 8 hours? Then get another call regarding said potential shift and deny all knowledge of answering the phone the first time? No? Just me then.

January 25th 1995. WCW enters into a new year with Hulk Hogan as their champion but now with the added push of having Randy Savage as his buddy. The main event push for Ed Leslie is over. He’s here in the main event for this show tagging with Kevin Sullivan but to all intents and purposes his inability to draw had been totally exposed and Vader was shoehorned into his position as leading heel, which wasn’t a stretch for anyone concerned. This would be the show where they officially transition from one to the other. Vader has bought tickets for ringside to watch Hogan wrestle and there’s a continuing rumour that Ric Flair wants to interject himself into this too. It seems to be all going on suddenly. For those thinking back to 1995 and figuring we’re about to head into the Monday Night Wars, you’re somewhat early. Nitro debuted in September of 1995. Meanwhile Savage is making his first major appearance at a major WCW show here. He’s still in the love cycle with Hogan and hasn’t quite gotten around to hating him yet. That would change when his promised main event push in WCW failed to materialise. He managed two short title runs at the end of ’95 and the start of ’96 but that wasn’t quite what he had in mind as it was just a rehash of his WWF feud with Ric Flair.

We’re in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hosts are Fat Tony, Bobby Heenan and Scheme Gene on interviews. They speculate about Vader & Flair’s involvement in tonight’s main event.

TV title – Arn Anderson (c) w/Colonel Parker/Meng v Johnny B. Badd

Arn won the TV title on January 8th, which would have been on WCW Saturday Night. This is his 4th title reign as TV champ. His last one being in 1991. Arn ducks during a bout of fisticuffs so Badd gives him the Mr Wrestling II kneelift. Arn beats him down and goes up top but Badd isn’t staying down and dropkicks him off to the floor. Parker interjects himself so Badd wipes out Arn & Parker with a pescado. Hot start from Badd although the crowd aren’t buying it quite so much as they probably should be. Arn walks into a few armdrags. Arn catches the boot though and slaps Badd about for his amusement but gets clocked with an Enzuigiri for 2. Badd catches his foot and they run a reverse of the same spot only with Badd ducking. Arn is once again giving everything to make the other guy look awesome. If there has ever been a more selfless wrestler than Double A, I haven’t seen them. Badd gets tossed to the floor where Parker puts the boots in. Surely Parker should distract and Meng put the boots in? Seems more logical. Arn puts it into deep freeze with a chinlock seeing as this is a 15 minute time limit match. Badd gets out with punches but runs into a knee for 2. Arn does his double sledge spot off the buckles and Badd gets his foot up but Arn sees it, grabs it, throws it out of the way and drops an elbow for 2. Nice! Digging that psychology. He always gets caught with the foot up. Badd comes rallying back though and hits a flying headscissors. The Kiss That Don’t Miss knocks Arn out to the floor. Parker dumps a jug of ice water on Arn to save him from a count out. Then Meng helps him back up and back in. Badd is busy chasing Parker and runs into a refreshed Arn who lays him out cold with the DDT at 7.37. **. I like the booking and psychology on that better than the Starrcade match but it’s still too short to mean anything.

BACKSTAGE Scheme Gene talks to the Faces of Fear. Sullivan tells us that Hogan & Savage are in trouble tonight. Yeah, sure they are. He says that the presence of Ric Flair & Vader will be off-putting for Hogan AND Sullivan made a deal with Randy Savage a long time ago. Leslie seems to think that Vader is here to stop the Faces of Fear from battering Hogan too badly to compete at Superbrawl. Sullivan’s promo is somewhat confusing and neither man seems to have any idea what they’re talking about.

PROMO VIDEO – Das Wunderkind, Alex Wright. A truly awful video package showing just how terrible WCW were at video packages. It seems to focus 75% on Wright’s style of German dancing. Another 10% is made up by the way he moonsaults into the ring during his entrance.

Bobby Eaton v Alex Wright

You need your new guy to look good, put him in with Eaton. DON’T put him in with Paul Roma. That dancing is even worse than Eric Canyon. And that seems to be Das Wunderkind’s #1 selling point. Eaton is in pre-Bluebloods directionless limbo at this point. Wright dominates the early going as Eaton seems more than willing to put the kid over. Wright works the arm for a little too long and Eaton decides enough is enough and just kicks his ass all over the ring. Wright takes him back over with a nice headscissors into an armbar again. Eaton begs off and gets some European uppercuts for his troubles. Eaton goes to a chinlock while the crowd gets all rowdy. Wright sure was over. I guess it’s because he’s a plucky young kid. Wright throws more European uppercuts and a spinning ass attack. I think that was supposed to be a heel kick. Wright goes up for the missile dropkick, which gets 2. Eaton goes into the ropes to beg off. Wright hits a crossbody for 2. He sets too early though and gets clocked with a swinging neckbreaker. Eaton goes up for the ALABAMA JAM…for 2. Wright hits a high crossbody for the win at 7.28. Talk about just throwing the finish out there. *. Blatantly a jobber match with poor Bobby Eaton just getting walked over. Heenan calls this “one of wrestlings biggest upsets” to try and sell it as something but it’s a guy who’s been jobbing for two years wrestling the hot new star who’s unbeaten.

FRONTSTAGE Scheme Gene brings out Vader for an interview. Vader is looking pimp in a dark grey suit. Harley Race isn’t here but he could well show up later suggests Vader. He wants to know who the man is. And what time it is. Well according to whattimeisit.com it’s 3.13pm Pacific, 4.13pm Mountain time, and here in jolly old England on the GMT it’s 11.13pm. Vader tells Hogan to grow eyes in the back of his head because “the man” is coming for him. Eugene Levy? What’s he going to do? Impersonate Perry Como? How’s that supposed to intimidate Hulk Hogan?

Tag titles – Harlem Heat (c) w/Sister Sherri v Stars & Stripes

Sherri is looking even hotter on this show. Especially when you consider she’s 36. Before the challengers come out here we’re joined by the Nature Boy, Ric Flair. He has two escorts this evening. Flair says hello to Vader before heading off into the crowd for a seat. Heenan runs over to suck up to him. HH won the tag titles 11 days ago according to Tony but they actually won the belts at a taping back in early December. Booker slaps Bagwell who takes it personally and beats him down. Stars & Stripes start with the double teams and dropkick Stevie Ray when he charges in. Booker takes a team hip toss for 2. Patriot brings the southpaw offence for a while. Stevie Ray is able to catch and slam Bagwell but is soon armdragged. Basically all Stevie Ray has is the odd power move. Patriot back in with Booker and Patriot hits a belly to belly. That was fucking ugly. Hesitation never ceases to make me cringe. Especially when BOTH guys do it. Bagwell ends up getting a shoeing into the heat segment. That is until he and Booker go for a crossbody at the same time. Crunch! Hot tag but the ref misses it because Sherri is on the apron. He still manages to let them all pile in for a lengthy brawl. Sherri gets back up to interfere with her shoe but Stevie Ray gets reversed into it and knocked down for 2. It would be 3 but in comes Booker to kick Bagwell in the face. He falls off the pin and Stevie Ray pulls the tights for Harlem Heat to retain at 9.20. ¾*. Did that ever go on too long. No chemistry between these two teams. Patriot looked particularly bad. Sherri took a great bump off the apron though.

BACKSTAGE Scheme Gene is with the “Monster Maniacs”, which would be Hogan & Savage. I guess “Megapowers” was copyrighted or something. Hogan seems to think they’re the underdogs because of Vader at ringside and whatnot. Hogan makes weird comments towards Jimmy Hart telling him to have eyes in the back of his head and calling him a mouse. He then goes on to say that he and Savage are the only…I have no idea because his sentence keeps on going and not ending. Follow through on your thoughts there Hulkster.

SHILL – Scheme Gene talks about February 19th and Superbrawl in Baltimore. Hogan v Vader is on top. They’re banned from being within 200 feet of each other before then. How do they enforce that exactly? It’s also about 10 feet from ringside to the ring. Is Hogan not allowed to come out and wrestle then? You’ll notice the only selling point of the PPV is Hogan-Vader.

Sting v Avalanche

Special referee is Guardian Angel because no one else could enforce this match, apparently. Not because they’re going to turn him heel. No sir. Tenta is a mere 31 years old at this point, which shows that at least some of Hogan’s cronies weren’t over the hill. Sting dropkicks him out of the ring although there was barely contact. This is pretty much it for Avalanche as well btw, as the WWF threatened a lawsuit because of similarities between Avalanche and their character Earthquake. So Tenta became “The Shark”. Meanwhile in Las Vegas Sting attempts a slam but Avalanche falls on top for 2. Tenta drops an elbow then a leg. Tenta picks Sting up and powerslams him for 2. Sting starts moving out of the way and hits a Stinger Splash. Make that two. Make that three. Four. And a slam. Crowd goes nuts. SCORPION DEATHLOCK! It looks as if Tenta is giving up so in comes another referee to ring the bell at 5.19. ½*.

POST MATCH Guardian Angel shoves impartial referee Nick Patrick over. He’s not happy about someone else taking his job. So he shoves Sting over too who promptly punches him. Angel beats Sting down thus completing his heel turn. Sting would get a right kicking but a bunch of babyfaces pile into the ring to make the save. Heenan blames the triangle match for the bad blood between Sting & Angel.

FRONTSTAGE Scheme Gene gets a quick word with Angel & Tenta. Angel isn’t happy about the officials. “That referee right there isn’t even supposed to be in the riiiiiiiiiing”. He says he’s going back to his roots re-naming himself Big Bubba Rogers. Which hasn’t been done because the Guardian Angels threatened a lawsuit or anything. How many lawsuits did WCW get threatened with anyway?

Hulk Hogan/Randy Savage w/Jimmy Hart v Kevin Sullivan/The Butcher

Vader looks unimpressed with the Hulkster. Butcher begs off clearly scared of the world champ. Savage calls Hogan over to tell him not to worry about Vader. Savage looks like a fucking mime with that crappy clown costume on. Hogan pounds Butcher until he falls over. Sullivan jumps in but Savage tags in and cleans house on everyone. Hogan comes back in to bite away at Butcher. Always with the cheating. Tony references the Faces of Fear’s huge sympathy provoking attack on Evad last week. Butcher puts the sleeper on and Hogan was knocked out by this at the last Clash of the Champions. He’s out and down. Butcher thinks he’s won because he’s a fucking idiot. So Savage jumps up on the buckles and hits the Flying Elbow to wake Hogan up. He revived him with his finisher? Even the crowd are sitting on their hands giving out a collective “whaaa?” Double big boot for Butcher but the last spot was so stupid that the crowd is totally out of this now. Savage takes a beating and Hogan has the ref so Butcher backdrops Savage over the top and avoids the DQ. Hogan is still distracting the ref while Savage gets run into the ring post. Why don’t you help out and give him a nice reviving legdrop Hulkster? That’s so stupid. I’m actually shocked by something stupid WCW have done. I really shouldn’t be should I? I guess I thought I knew all the retarded things they’d done. This one skipped by me. Savage is still taking a heat segment btw. Hogan gets so concerned that he comes around on the floor to protect him. Savage nearly gets himself counted out. Savage spends a while taking a kicking in the tree of woe. Butcher with the sleeper but Savage instinctively goes for the jawbreaker to get free. Butcher grabs his leg to prevent the hot tag but Savage kicks him off and Hogan is in. He cleans house and rakes eyes like, well, a cheat. Butcher gets slammed and Savage drops the big elbow. It doesn’t have the same reviving effect on Butcher though so Hogan legdrops him for the pin at 12.08. DUD. Absolute shit. A terrible abomination of a formula tag match from start to finish including one spot so ridiculous that no one has ever done it before or since.

POST MATCH I’m begging Vader to get in there. He does and decks Savage with ease. Hogan ends up standing off opposite him. Vader gleefully no sells everything Hogan attempts and powerbombs him. YES! He stays down for a while before popping up. Now Vader decides he’s going to sell and Savage comes in to make sure Vader can’t do anymore harm.

The 411: Totally forgettable show coming with WCW at a creative ebb. At least they seemed to be building towards something better and this show doesn’t have too much useless crap on it but everything is so utterly ‘meh’ it’s hard to care. Plus when the main event rolls around the booking gets all the more wacky. The elbow drop is bizarre to say the least. Even the most die hard wrestling fan would be hard pushed to fathom or explain that one.

Final Score:  3.0   [ Bad ]