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Dark Pegasus Video Review: The Best of WCW Clash of the Champions (Disc One)
April 30, 2012 | Posted by
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| The Best of WCW Clash of the Champions by J.D. Dunn Twitter.com/jddunn411 Facebook.com/jddunn411 This was a big one at the time. 45-minute time limit due to the TV limitations. Gary Juster, Patty Mullen and Sandy Scott are your judges in case it goes to a draw. JJ Dillon is suspended in a cage over the ring to ensure he doesn’t interfere. This is Sting’s first big match after turning face in late 1987 just before the dissolution of the UWF. Flair tries mind games early, but Sting just dropkicks him to the floor. Sting controls early with a lot of headlocks and bearhugs. Sting wasn’t really ready from a wrestling standpoint, but when you’re in there with Flair in 1988, all you have to do is bring the over because he’ll handle the rest. Flair pulls the tights and the hair a few times to put some heat on the side headlock. Sting misses a dropkick and lands on his head, but Flair isn’t able to capitalize. Sting press slams him and switches up to a bearhug. Flair: “Oh God! Oh God! My back!” Finally, Sting misses an elbow in the corner, allowing Flair to take over about 15 minutes in. Flair starts laying in chops and punches. Sting misses a lunge and posts himself. Sting makes a comeback and locks in the Scorpion Deathlock, but Flair scurries to the ropes. Sting falls to the floor off a missed clothesline, but he comes back with a crossbody off the top. Flair kicks out and hits a kneebreaker to take over once again. The Nature Boy dismantles the knee in between chops and cheating. We come back from commercial to Flair locking in the figure-four. Flair and referee Tommy Young play cat-and-mouse as Flair uses the ropes for leverage. Sting powers over and reverses it, though. Flair takes Sting to the apron and tries to suplex him all the way to the floor, but Tommy Young blocks it long enough for Sting to reverse it. Sting slaps on an abdominal stretch. Flair gets out of it and goes up but, guess what, he gets caught and slammed off. Now, Sting goes to work on Flair’s leg. Flair flips over the top to the floor, and he’s out on his feet. Back in, Flair begs off. Sting misses a Stinger Splash, though, and spills all the way to the floor with about four minutes left in the time limit, thus screwing over his chances as it takes him another minute to recover and get in the ring. Sting sunset flips Flair, but Flair grabs the ropes and squats down for two. Tommy Young catches him and breaks it up. The Flair Flip actually works, and Flair hits a crossbody, but Sting reverses it for two. STINGER SPLASH! Sting locks in the Scorpion Deathlock with 30 seconds left to go. Flair…just…holds out. (43:51 of 45:00 shown). Patty Mullen votes for Flair (because she wants to ride Space Mountain), Gary Juster votes for Sting, and Sandy Scott calls it a draw, ruling the entire match a draw. Then, the point of having judges is…? Sting’s best singles match to that point but not nearly on the level of the later Flair-Steamboat classics. Sting was still learning here and didn’t have quite the moveset or the ring generalship to work a match of this length. It would come with time, though. ***3/4 Much like his good buddy Sting a year later, Luger got sick of being Flair’s buttmonkey and throwing matches for the retired JJ Dillon and decided to challenge Ric Flair for the title. Of course, the Horsemen didn’t cotton to that idea either time, so Lex was tossed from the group. More on his replacement at the end of the match. Luger blitzes the Horsemen with clotheslines early. He powerslams Tully and Racks him, but JJ Dillon distracts the ref long enough for Arn to come in and chopblock the exposed Luger. Windham tags in and hits Tully with the flying clothesline for two. Tully drags Windham to the floor off a sleeper, which makes Windham break so they don’t get counted out. Back in, Tully goes up but get slammed. Dillon distracts the ref again, allowing Arn sneak in and DDT Barry. Barry plays face-in-peril. He and Blanchard collide for a double KO spot. Barry gets a gutwrench, but he can’t find his own corner. He and Arn slug it out for another double KO spot. Arn falls into the tag, though, allowing Tully to come in and hit the slingshot suplex. Finally, Barry just slugs Tully with a right and falls into the tag on Luger. Luger DESTROYS the Horsemen. Looks like he’s been holding that in for a few months. Double noggin-knocker. Tully cuts off his momentum with a sneaky knee from the outside, but Luger powerslams Arn anyway. Windham and Tully come in and slug it out. JJ holds up a chair, but Lex reverses Arn’s whip and sends Arn into the chair! ONE, TWO, THREE! New World Tag champs at 9:33. Another tremendous tag team match. This show is like a textbook on tag wrestling. Windham and Luger would hold the titles for less than a month before losing them back to the Horsemen when Barry did the truly unthinkable and double-crossed Lex to take his spot in the Horsemen. ****1/4 You’d think that Sting & Luger would get the shot here, but Luger got the title shot, so he left Sting to team with Dusty. That would actually be a great divide-and-conquer strategy if they played it up. You know, break up the team that had defeated you by offering one of them a title shot and that way you can defeat a team with less chemistry and retain the world title. Risky, but cool. Arn tosses Sting early but misses a punch and hits the post. D’oh! Back in, Sting tosses Tully from pillar to post and tags in Dusty (who had just returned from his suspension). Dusty puts Tully in the figure-four, but Dillon hops up and distracts Teddy Long while Arn cheapshots Rhodes from the floor. It’s like watching a well-orchestrated ballet – only more gay. Sting gets the hot tag and Stinger Splashes Tully. Arn breaks up the Scorpion Deathlock, allowing Tully to knee Sting to the floor. Arn adds a hot shot on the railing. Awesome! Sting blocks Arn’s pump-splash, but Tully cuts off the tag. They work in the spot where Arn blocks a suplex, and Tully comes off the top with a sunset flip. Tully tosses Sting, and Arn adds a DDT ON THE CONCRETE! If it were 1984, Sting would be out for months. It’s 1988, though, so Sting is able to fight back. Dusty gets the hot tag, and it’s pandelerium. Dusty cleans house, but Barry Windham and Ric Flair run in for the DQ at 11:00. This was just starting to get good before the DQ. Arn & Tully had Flair-like abilities to make matches watchable even if the opponents weren’t very good. In this case, they had Sting and Dusty to work with, so they could have done a **** match. Instead, it’s just a backdrop to reinforce that the Horsemen are bad people. **1/2 Jones has basically given Ivan the “win or get out” ultimatum because he feels Ivan is the weak link of the army. I believe Robert Gibson had been fired at this point. This is “touch the corners” rules, so you’d think Koloff would have a pretty easy time. He tosses Ricky around, but Ricky uses his heart and determination to keep Ivan from touching the corners. Finally, Ricky gets Ivan beat down enough to touch three corners. Jones grabs Ivan to keep Ricky from touching the final corner, but his grip slips, and Ricky is able to touch the final corner for the win at 9:45. Jones blames Ivan for the loss and berates him until Ivan has enough and knocks him down. That leads to a beatdown from Assassin #1 (The Angel of Death) and Assassin #2 (Jack Victory). This was supposed to be a reunification of Ivan and Nikita to take on the Russian Assassins, but Nikita had already left the promotion to be with his ailing wife. *1/2 Flair beat Funk at the Great American Bash, but it was too flukish for either man to be satisfied, so we get this match. In addition to the “I Quit” stipulation, the loser must retire. Well, they probably meant it at the time, especially since they’d been teasing Flair’s retirement throughout 1989. Think on that one for a bit. Flair chops Funk all the way over the top to the floor. More chops, and Flair starts choking him with both hands. Funk fights his way back and beats him over the head with the microphone. Flair tries to fight back, but Funk slaps him around. Flair grabs him by the throat and chops him all the way to the floor again! Flair sends him into the railing and delivers more chops. He tosses Gary Hart’s useless, bald head out of the way and tries to choke Funk out. Hart gets Flair’s attention, enabling Terry to jump Flair from behind. Funk verbally reminds Flair about his broken neck and offers him a chance to give it up. We see why Tommy Young is the greatest referee ever as he asks Flair and then says, with a tremor of concerned disapproval, “He won’t give it up.” Gordon gets in his famous “two words, five letters” line, summing everything up perfectly. *This* is why I love the old NWA. Funk gives Flair a piledriver on the mat and then another one out on the floor. Flair still won’t quit, so Funk takes out his aggression on a table. Flair jumps him and tosses Funk’s face right into the table and then sends Funk FLYING over the table, facefirst right into a nearby chair! CRAZY! Gary Hart gets in Flair’s way and gets knocked aside. Flair crotches Funk on the railing in a spot that hadn’t yet become a cliché. Back in, Flair splashes the leg, hobbling Funk and making him helpless. Flair alternates between chopping Funk and kicking him in the knee. Funk begs off and staggers up the aisle, but Flair runs after him and jumps on his back. NO YOU DON’T, MOTHERFUCKER! He gives Funk a kneebreaker and reverses a suplex to one on the apron. FIGURE-FOUR! Funk: “Never! Never! Oh God, never! Ughhhhhh! My leg! My leg is breaking! Yes. Yes, I quit.” (18:46) After the match, Gary Hart berates Funk for giving up and turns on him. Flair objects, but Hart’s other charge, the Great Muta, attacks Flair and punks him out. That brings out super-ultra-mega-babyface Sting to make the save for real, which led to the Flair-Sting alliance, which led to the reformation of the Four Horsemen, which led to Flair going heel again, which led to Sting winning his first World Title. Long-term, linear booking at its finest. The match, of course, is awesome and on par with the Magnum-Tully match from Starrcade. ***** This is the match Mick Foley details in his book where he rips Mil. I get the feeling that Mick doesn’t like luchadores style in general. I’m partial to Dos Caras myself, but Mil wrestles just fine. Corny apologizes for offending the Mexican people, saying everyone ought to own one or two of them. Mil dropkicks Manson to the floor where Jack trips over a chair. He blames the fans and threatens them. Jack takes over and slams Mil on the floor, but Mil squirts back in before the Truth or Consequences Elbow. Jack is so stunned that Mil is able to dropkick him off the apron to the floor. That’s a sick bump, given that Mick’s head visibly smacks the floor and bounces. He’s so disoriented that Mil is able to finish with the crossbody at 5:00. Interesting just for the inside story. Thankfully, Jack stopped doing the “Nestea Plunge” bump as a regular spot. * This is not one of their finer efforts, but it’s still decent. Ricky and Robert outwrestle the Midnights. Lane hits a back kick to Robert’s head but misses a charge and gets backdropped. Ricky busts out a huracanrana, which he’d been doing for years, but when he does it, it’s a “headscissors” and when Scott Steiner does it, it’s a “Frankensteiner.” JR talks about “Miami Vice” going off the air. No mention of “Quantum Leap,” though. The match breaks down, and they do a lot of complicated tandem maneuvers. It was probably second nature to them at this point. Cool double-rollup spot nets two for the Rock ‘n’ Rolls. They seem a bit confused after that, though. Lane yanks Ricky off the ropes, and Ricky briefly plays Ricky Morton. The match breaks down yet again, and Bobby gets knocked into the railing. The Rock ‘n’ Rolls get shoved into one another, but they recover and double dropkick Bobby. Lane yanks the referee up to prevent the count, though, and gets disqualified at 12:10. What a horrible finish. The match was actually much better than I remembered up until that. It did lack a certain cohesion, though. ***1/4 |
The 411: I'd wager most people think of this era when they think of the Clash legacy. For obvious reasons, they couldn't include Steamboat/Flair, but they could have made some much better choices than the Russian Chain Match and an early Mick Foley job. The Midnights' matches with the Fantastics and the Southern Boys spring to mind. |
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| Final Score: 8.5 [ Very Good ] legend |
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