The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (10.22.1988)

-Cold open: Sting is loaded onto a stretcher and carried off by his friends.

-Originally aired October 22, 1988.

-Your hosts are Tony Schiavone, Jim Ross, & David Crockett. They focus on the most important detail of the incident involving Sting: Dusty Rhodes was NOT in the building.

-So we FINALLY go through all the details of what went down. Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors had a World Six-Man Tag Team Title defense. Dusty was contacted by the Special Olympics to do some work for them in Dallas and Dusty got a waiver from the NWA to take that night off. The Road Warriors wanted to wrestle the match without a partner, but Dusty’s waiver also plugged Sting into the match, so Sting is acting World Six-Man Tag Team Champion for one night so Sting can finally experience what actually having a damn belt feels like after shitting the bed at three straight Clashes for three different titles.

STING & ROAD WARRIORS (World Six-Man Tag Team Champions, with Paul Ellering) vs. VARSITY CLUB
-Joined in progress, and Sting has been on the apron the entire match. Paul Ellering hears the commentators expressing their confusion and storms over to tell them not to question the strategy here. Sting stays on the apron, and in fact, it’s so conspicuous at this point that the crowd doesn’t pop for a hot tag because Hawk tags Animal instead of Sting.

-Animal ends up on the floor and gets triple-teamed…but then Steiner baffles everyone by helping Animal back into the ring. Hey, he’s gotta be in the ring to get pinned, JR reasons. Varsity Club destroys the leg with every bit of chicanery in their arsenal. Meanwhile, a deafening “We want Sting!” chant goes up as they’re playing this crowd perfectly.

-Back from commercial, Rotunda has Animal in a toehold. Animal starts to crawl for a hot tag, but Steiner just steps in and drags him over to block the tag and make one of his own. Steiner kicks the leg repeatedly. Rotunda and Sullivan double-team him without letting Steiner get involved as they’re pretty subtly reinforcing that storyline in the middle of this one. Hot tag to Hawk, and that brings in all six men, including Sting because he’s just tired of waiting. The Forces of Facepaint clean house, and Sullivan and Rotunda are laid out on the floor. Sting hits the Stinger splash and locks on the scorpion deathlock, but the Road Warriors shock everyone by breaking the hold themselves and just destroying Sting with a press slam/elbow combo, and then the Doomsday device, with Sting willingly taking a really risky bump on the landing to sell having a neck injury. The entire babyface side of the roster runs in to clear the Road Warriors out of the ring, and Sting is dead.

-David Crockett is with Dusty Rhodes, and a fan screams “BEACH THAT WHALE!” right as he starts to talk. Dusty Rhodes warns the Road Warriors that betraying Sting ain’t good bidness…Okay, time out, I just realized what Dusty is wearing. He’s cutting this promo in a “Learning the Ropes” crew jacket with his name embroidered on it. Find it, put it on Ebay, I will spend ALL the money to buy that. Anywhoo, the Road Warriors are backstabbers and he warns them that Dusty Rhodes is coming for them. Dusty had been kind of adrift angle-wise the past few weeks, but with the sale to Ted Turner looking extremely likely and Tully Blanchard’s interview with the suits being a complete disaster for Dusty, he basically booked himself into a feud with the most over tag team in the company with the logic that it would protect his spot as a wrestler, if not a booker, and that Turner would at least keep him through Starrcade this way.

RON SIMMONS vs. KEITH STEINBORN
-Simmons shoves Steinborn around and headbutts him. Simmons applies a chinlock with such intensity that someone must have told him Steinborn was doing drugs. Piledriver is applied so hard that Steinborn thinks twice about doing drugs when Ron Simmons is around, and Simmons reapplies the chinlock so he can be close enough to Steinborn to check his breath for any signs of drugs. Spinebuster on Steinborn, because he’d better be used to getting busted if he keeps doing drugs when Ron Simmons is around. Powerslam by Simmons, and the flying tackle finishes. Ron Simmons’ promos the past few weeks make me think the Drug War would have turned out mighty differently if Nancy Reagan had handed out a bunch of green t-shirts with “DAMN!” printed on them instead.

RUSSIAN ASSASSINS (with Paul Jones) vs. JERRY PRICE & RIC ALLEN
-#1 chops Allen and elbows him down. Hard clothesline by #1, and #2 heads in with a choke. Price gets thrown to the floor for a beating. Assassins keep dismantling Price while JR gives a shout-out to Boomer Esiason. #1 loads the mask and puts Price away with a lethal headbutt.

-David Crockett insists that there’s no illegal weapons being used by the Russian Assassins, but then contradicts himself in magnificent fashion by saying nobody does anything about the Koloffs’ chains and he considers it a double standard.

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (World Tag Team Champions, with Jim Cornette) vs. MIKE JACKSON & TERRY JONES
-Stan Lane goes to the mat with Terry Jones, then throws him to the floor as Cornette zings all of the heels one at a time. Cornette and JR seem to be trading inside jokes about somebody while Cornette rattles off all the tour stops on the Mid-South run. Flying elbow by Bobby, and Mike Jackson finally tags in to get to work. Dropkick and a flying headscissors by Jackson, but Eaton catches him coming off the ropes and does a Boss Man slam across the knee. Jones heads back in and gets flapjacked for the win, just that easy.

-Dick Murdoch tells David Crockett that he THOUGHT the Road Warriors were his friends, but they’d better look out because now the Texas Outlaws are coming for them! He also hears rumors about Ric Flair inviting the Road Warriors to join the Four Horsemen, which is one of those things that seems great in writing but probably would have been ghastly in execution.

THE KOLOFFS vs. THE MENACES
-Nikita goes to the mat with a Menace and shoulderblocks him. Ivan heads in and rakes the back, then chokes one Menace or another for a bit. The other Menace tags in and gets sickled into next week to finish it.

-We revisit action from World Wide, where the Koloffs reunited and Ivan nearly straight-up murders Paul with a tightly-wrapped chain around the neck. Nikita threatens to break some stinkin’ necks when they finally meet in the ring.

LARRY ZBYSZKO (Western States Heritage Champion, with Gary Hart) vs. TONY SUBER
-Larry applies a hammerlock, then stalls for a little bit. Neckbreaker finishes once he tires of that.

EDDIE GILBERT vs. GARY ROYAL
-They trade arm wringers. Royal takes Eddie off his feet with a handful of hair and Gilbert simply says “Fine by me” and just flings Royal across the ring with two handfuls of hair. Hot shot gets the victory.

-Eddie Gilbert is coming for the Varsity Club, and he warns them that Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin is gonna be coming back for them! Was there some plan in place for Jimmy that completely fell through? Because they never paid this off but they talk about him incessantly.

STRAIGHT TALK WITH THE BOSS
-Magnum TA welcomes his guest, Lex Luger. This is from Worldwide and Magnum sets it up by saying “Let’s see what happened in a six-man tag match last week,” which leads to a flashback of the Road Warriors’ heel turn that we flashed back to earlier in the show. Lex Luger tells Magnum that he THOUGHT the Road Warriors were their friends, but they’d better look out because now Luger and Sting are coming for them!

-The Road Warriors are tired of carrying Dusty Rhodes and “the new guy.” They didn’t need their stinkin’ fans either, and Paul Ellering says Dusty should have been here instead of doing work for some namby-pamby charity group.

-JJ Dillon is here and says there’s obviously not a problem because Ric Flair and Barry Windham both have title belts.

TV TITLE: MIKE ROTUNDA (with Kevin Sullivan & Rick Steiner) vs. EDDIE SWEAT
-Rotunda with a waistlock takedown. At ringside, Steiner seems distracted by something and Sullivan needs to walk him into place. Sweat gets thrown to the floor and Steiner helps him back in instead of attacking. Double underhook finishes. Great stuff from the TBS studio fans, as they ignore Rotunda during his win and cheer for Steiner instead.

-Sullivan tries to tell David Crockett about a bombshell that the club is dropping real soon: They have a new member that they’ll be announcing shortly. Meanwhile, Steiner says he has a great idea, but Sullivan won’t let him talk.

6.7

The final score: review Average

The 411

A few good angles throughout the show made it interesting. Thumbs up this week.