The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (8.27.1988)

-Cold open: Brad Armstrong gets his ass kicked by Kevin Sullivan and Al Perez. Again.

-Originally aired August 27, 1988.

-Your hosts are Tony Schiavone, Jim Ross, & David Crockett. BREAKING! Ron Garvin is out of wrestling for four to six months due to rib injuries suffered in an out-of-the-ring confrontation with Dusty Rhodes. He’s been diagnosed with severe inflammation of stickthisshittibookingupyeranus after being asked to do a ton of clean jobs to Dusty around the horn.

RICKY MORTON & NIKITA KOLOFF vs. MAX MCGYVER & JERRY PRICE
-McGyver rams Koloff into the corner and pays for it. Morton tags in and works the arm over the top rope. Koloff keeps working the shoulder until Price tags in and gets hiptossed. Weird backhanded compliment by JR as he praises Koloff for expanding his offense instead of being a one-dimensional wrestler who just depends on the sickle and doesn’t do anything else in the ring.

-Case in point, Koloff starts tying up Price Garvin-style and Morton tags in to stomp away. One-dimensional sickle gets the three-count.

-David Crockett talks to the new team. Nikita referring to his partner as “Punky” in a heavy Russian accent is singlehandedly worth Robert Gibson walking out of the company.

-Clash of the Champions III: Fall Brawl! September 7!

RUSSIAN ASSASSIN (with Paul Jones) vs. BRETT HOLIDAY
-Waistlock takedown by Assassin, followed by a sweet dropkick. Assassin starts working the back. The fight goes to the floor as the commentators continue debating the “Paul Jones is a crappy manager” theory that they first brought up last week. He’s good at organizing sneak attacks to injure guys but SUCKS at coming up with anything close to a winning strategy for an actual match.

-Neck vice by the Assassin, and he chops Holiday down. Holiday ends up on the floor again and Jones attacks. Back in, neckbreaker by Assassin. Russian guillotine finishes.

-David Crockett talks to Paul Jones, who says that he depended on Ivan Koloff to be his general and get rid of the Road Warriors. He warns the MIA Ivan that he can redeem himself by defeating Ricky Morton, because in Jones’ estimation, Ricky Morton is the most distinctly American wrestler in the company. Ricky Morton comes out and agrees to a match and says he’s even willing to do Ivan’s specialty match, a Russian chain match. Think about the puzzle pieces they spread out with the previous match and this match and you can see where this angle is supposed to go.

-You know that monitor on the set that just always had the words “National Wrestling Alliance” on it? There’s a massive strip of duct tape holding together that part of the set this week. Even if they stayed in the studio during the upcoming year, this show was due for a facelift.

-We’re off to NWA Worldwide, where Stan Lane is working a squash match by himself when Teddy Long comes to ringside and relays a message to Jim Cornette. Cornette freaks out, tells Stan something, and they both leave ringside and run back to the locker room. The camera follows them back there, and the locker room’s been ransacked and Bobby Eaton is a bloody mess.

-Back in the studio, Jim Cornette and the Express are here. The Midnight Express aren’t like Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors…when you jump the Midnight Express, they by-god jump back. Cornette promises a sneak attack when the Horsemen aren’t expecting it. Unless of course they jump somewhere else first. Bobby Eaton shows off his bruised and bandaged face and cuts a promo for the first time in about two years, saying that when the Express is done, the Horsemen will wish they looked as good as him.

FLORIDA TITLE: RICK STEINER (Champion, with Kevin Sullivan) vs. KEITH STEINBORN
-JR points out what bullshit this match as, as Michigan native Rick Steiner is defending the Florida title in George against Keith Steinborn “from Parts Unknown.”

-Steiner drags Steinborn around by his ponytail and piledrives him. Steiner with a nice armdrag/belly-to-belly combo. Standard government-issue belly-to-belly gets the win.

AL PEREZ (with Gary Hart) vs. GARY ROYAL
-Perez snapmares Royal and applies a chinlock as Gary Hart drifts over to commentary and promises to have exciting news about a dog collar match in the near future. Forearm by Perez, and he clamps on a chinlock. Airplane spin and a gutwrench, and the spinning toehold finishes.

-David Crockett is with JJ Dillon, who says that Barry Windham is aware that Sting is chasing him, but since Windham is already a champion, his priority is “protecting his back door.” He could start by wearing regular pants instead of assless chaps, then.

ARN ANDERSON & TULLY BLANCHARD (World Tag Team Champions, with JJ Dillon) vs. BRAD HOLIDAY & LEE RAMSEY
-Hammerlock by Tully, and he kicks the leg out. Arn comes in and works Ramsey over. Tully pulls the tights to give his some hot Lee Ramsey Bare Ass. Holiday comes in and gets DDTed. Arn slaps him around, and Tully just lights into him with stomps before finishing with the slingshot suplex.

-Celebrate! Celebrate! Superstation TBS!

-Tully Blanchard says the Midnight Expess lied about that sneak attack in the dressing room. It wasn’t three-on-one. It was two-on-one. JJ wasn’t there.

BRAD ARMSTRONG vs. GARY PHELPS
-Brad works the arm over and applies a side headlock. Brad puts on a wrestling clinic and then finishes up with the Russian legsweep.

-David has words for Al Perez and “the little troll.” A sneak attack from two men is a compliment because it tells him that Brad Armstrong is a threat. Brad says something that highlights a difference between the WWF and the NWA. Whereas something a year ago wouldn’t be acknowledged in the WWF, here Brad Armstrong cuts a promo where he brings up Pak Song, Dusty’s former tag team partner in Florida who died in 1982.

-Gary Hart, Al Perez, and Kevin Sullivan are here. Dusty is a demented psychopath who attacks people with baseball bats during TV tapings, but now he’s taken it even further by putting Ron Garvin out of wrestling. Gary Hart demands a dog collar match pitting Dusty against Kevin Sullivan for vengeance.

-Dusty Rhodes is here for the rebuttal. He comin’, daddeh. Crowd is a bit more receptive to him than they were in his past few studio appearances, so he has that going for him.

STING vs. CRUEL CONNECTION #1
-#1 blinds Sting with his cape and snapmares him down. He heads to the second rope and crashes, and Sting starts hammering on him. #1 retreats to the floor to stall, but Sting follows him out there and attacks. This is actually not a typical Sting squash but more a typical NWA squash where it goes on forever. He lets #1 have some offense, throwing punches and choking out the Stinger, but Sting makes a quick comeback. Scorpion deathlock ends things.

-Sting cuts a funny whispering promo because he doesn’t want to frighten Barry Windham more than he already does.

-Lex Luger still wants to win the World Title. Still hasn’t quite got around to it somehow.

“Dr. Death” STEVE WILLIAMS vs. THE MENACE
-Williams was actually in some deep shit at this point outside the ring, getting caught in an airport with approximately ALL the drugs; cocaine, mushrooms, pot, steroids, and barbituates, and it’s surprising that he’s still on TV regularly while it was looking like he’d be in prison for over a year.

-Bow and arrow by Doc, and a belly-to-belly gets one. Dr. Death asks “Can Rotunda handle this?” and suplexes the Menace for a two-count. You know, if the Menace kicks out at two, Rotunda can probably handle it. Football tackle and the stampede finish up.

-Ric Flair is here. He made $2 million last year without a law degree or med school. In fact, he dropped out of college, and women STILL want to have sex with him! Wooooooo! That’s more money than “Mr. Mello Yello” Dusty Rhodes made last year!

GORGEOUS JIMMY GARVIN (with Precious) vs. AGENT STEELE
-Garvin armdrags Steele as JR semi-shoots on commentary, saying that Ric Flair will make Lex Luger a better wrestler than he’s ever been…because he needs to be at that level to beat Flair. Backdrop by Garvin and the brainbuster wraps it up as JR declares Jimmy and Precious “America’s Couple.” Crowd reaction for them was actually really anemic this week.

TV TITLE: MIKE ROTUNDA (Champion, with Kevin Sullivan) vs. EDDIE SWEAT
-Rotunda works the arm and applies a side headlock. Sweat goes to the floor for the mandated manager attack. Double underhook ends it with ease.

-Mike Rotunda demands that his next title match be in New York because it’s the only state that matters.

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

Hey, angles! So that was nice.