The Furious Flashbacks – NWA Crockett Cup ‘88

Quite often I ask people who read my columns/reviews what they’d like to see more of and seeing as I’ve covered every WWE PPV, ever and every ECW PPV, ever they tend to bug me about doing more WCW. I’ve tried to ignore these cries for attention but it seems I can’t anymore. Every time I’m asked to recommend a good place to get WCW reviews from I want to say “have no fear, I’ve reviewed some WCW” but more often than not I’ve not done the show they’re after. So here’s my chance to put it right. This is the first of a LOT of old NWA/WCW shows. I have 9 tapes in front of me now, all of which have multiple PPV’s on. There are four on this first tape alone. If anything this will allow me to plug a few holes in my knowledge and my coverage. With a bit of luck it’ll allow me to gain a new enjoyment of a company I once rather liked (albeit for less than 2 years) and give it a more sentimental position in my mind. I’m sure it’ll be a fun journey for all involved and a chance for me to pick up any information you guys want to send me. Feel free.

Right, the Crockett Cup used to be quite a major tag team tournament in the old NWA. Named after Jim Crockett Sr it took place in a territory run by Jim Crockett Jr, which would eventually become WCW. Seeing as one of my friends Chris McDaniel (of McDaniel comp tapes fame) lives in Georgia he’s pretty familiar with the territory and has all this on tape. Hence him copying me a bunch of stuff so I can check it out. He informs me he has a whopping 86 PPV’s and TV specials. I’ll be taking the lot. I’m never one to do something halfway.

Hosts are Tony Schiavone and Jim Ross.

Jimmy Valiant/Mighty Wilbur v Dick Murdoch/Ivan Koloff

Mighty Wilbur draws a mighty blank with me. If anyone knows who the guy is, drop me a line. He shows a power advantage with his big redneck arms. Valiant dances and plays air guitar. Ah, there’s the template for Man Mountain Rock RIGHT THERE. Predictably Murdoch clubbers away. Koloff in but he runs into a Wilbur clothesline. Murdoch cheap shots Valiant though and a clothesline leaves Valiant counting lights at 2.25 shown. Urgh. That was ugly as sin.

Varsity Club v Steve Williams/Ron Simmons

More talent in this one. Doc lays out Rotundo with ease. That brings in Rick Steiner. Doc runs through him too and does the Three Point Stance to leave him down. He tries again but Steiner side steps and Doc flies into the buckles. Doc starts no selling and he knocks Steiner on his ass again. Simmons comes in but he gets picked off and isolated by the tag team moves. Simmons uses the Three Point Stance shoulder tackle himself on Rotundo but once again he’s picked off by a blind tag. Big brawl breaks out and Doc cleans house on his own while Kevin Sullivan attacks Simmons on the floor. Simmons stays down and gets counted out at 4.26. That match was much better but still just a clip job.

Tully Blanchard/Arn Anderson v Kendall Windham/Italian Stallion

Tag champs v job guys here. Guess who wins? They play the whole underdog card as Tully struggles to get out of a hammerlock and Arn gets armdragged by Windham. Arn goes to slam him but Windham hangs on to the arm. Stallion in and I don’t know him either but I dig the ITALY on his trunks. I suspect if he was actually Italian it’d read ITALIA but that’s why I like the ITALY aspect so much. Very Full Blooded Italians. Windham sets too early on a backdrop and Tully beats him down. Windham still gets a cheeky roll up for 2. ANDERSON SPINEBUSTER! We clip ahead to Windham making a comeback. Stallion also makes the mistake of setting early on a backdrop (jobberitis, must be catching) and gets levelled with a DDT for Arn to take the win at 3.25 shown. Another clip job. Decent from what was shown with the whole underdog card deal.

Road Warriors v Jive Tones

The who Tones? Pez “Shaska” Whatley and Tiger Conway are the jobbers. Why even bother having this one? Crowd amazingly buys into it. I miss the days of marks and the south being THAT hot that they’d buy anything. They try to double team Animal but he’s too strong for both men. Hawk in with a dropkick and a flying tackle for 2. Hawk heads up top and the diving clothesline puts Shaska out of his misery at 2.18 shown. A clip job and a squash. Bonus.

Fantastics v Larry Zbyszko/Al Perez

Tommy Rogers and Bobby Fulton are the Fantastics. They had some popularity going back in ’88. Rogers was still knocking around until the mid 90’s in ECW of all places. I now have Zbyszko in my spell checker so if that’s wrong it’ll be wrong every time he appears. Larry cheats, obviously and that allows Perez to control with his power. Rogers lands on his feet off a backdrop and dropkicks Larry. Fulton in and the Fantastics control on Larry’s arm. Perez comes in to chain with Fulton and hit a German suplex for 2. How did Perez not get huge over? Fulton tries for a dive off the ropes but clears Perez and gets knee dropped. Larry in with a shoulderbreaker for 2. Man, Larry was described as a “veteran” in 1988. Was he ever young? Perez hits a double axe handle smash and Larry is back in. Fulton rolls him up as Perez gets dropkicked out by Rogers and the Fantastics have their win at 3.25 shown. Timekeeper was informing us that 9 minutes had passed as the pin went down. That looked like a really good match but at only a third of the total length shown I can’t really rate it.

Sting/Lex Luger v Dick Murdoch/Ivan Koloff

Oh, full match this time. Magnum TA is managing the faces. JR calls this “old versus new”. Luger shows that youthful energy and throws Koloff around. He jacks him up for a powerslam and Luger was looking way powerful here. Sting comes in to a huge pop but he gets shoved into the heel corner. He fights his way out because he’s a winner. Murdoch takes his arm anyway. Sting slams Murdoch to get out. Murdoch uses the tag rope, er, chain to choke Sting. That’s just screaming “USE ME” as a foreign object. Murdoch elbows Sting in the throat a few times for kicks. Murdoch uses a chair as well for good measure. Back inside Sting shows that remarkable recovery power and STINGER SPLASH! Koloff stops the submission attempt but Luger gets him out of the ring. The fight hits the floor. Murdoch tries to slam Sting back in but the Stinger reverses into a pinning predicament at 5.11. *1/4. Meh, not much happening and it was a bit on the short side.

Midnight Express v Sheepherders

Good God, the best tag team in the NWA v the worst tag team in the NWA. My expectations for this battle are so low I take a piss and get a glass of water during the first few minutes of it. Jim Cornette does some distracting and Eaton waffles Butch with the tennis racket for the pin at 2.49. No idea if it was clipped. Either way its still a DUD.

Prince of Darkness Blindfold match – Kevin Sullivan v Jimmy Garvin

JIP as JR talks about never having seen anything like this. That’s something we’d hear a fair few times over the years. The crowd helps Garvin to find Sullivan while Rick Steiner bangs on the apron to try and lead Sullivan in the right direction. We get a lot of clipping, thankfully. I imagine we miss a lot of pointing and banging on the apron. Sullivan takes to dropping to one knee to avoid the pointing of doom but gets rolled up anyway at 2.31 shown. Well, at least they had the decency to clip most of it.

POST MATCH Steiner beats the crap out of the blind Jimmy Garvin but Ronnie Garvin makes the save. Sullivan nails him with a spiked heart punch. Precious gets dragged in as well but some wrestlers save from the back.

Bunkhouse Stampede

$500,000 cage match battle royal. Dusty Rhodes was looking for his 3rd straight Bunkhouse Stampede victory. What kind of a name for a match is that? Any use of the word Bunkhouse should be outlawed. Dusty gets tied to the ropes by Koloff before he puts the boots to him. Animal releases Da Dweem. Lots of managers around ringside who encourage their charges to “run his head into the cage”. Smart stuff. Rhodes is bleeding from the arm where he was tied to the ropes. Animal tries to throw Arn over the cage to the floor. Barbarian makes sure that doesn’t happen. Tully meanwhile has a belt round Koloff’s neck and he tries to drag him out of the door. Blood on the camera. Ew. Crowd is baying for death as Animal tosses Koloff out over the top of the cage at 4.42. He blades on the way down for extra added violence. Animal throws Tully at Arn. Animal tries to kick Warlord out of the door and he succeeds at 6.06. Animal rather stupidly falls out himself for a double elimination. Tully, Arn, Luger, Barbarian and Da Dweem left. Luger with a powerslam on Tully and he Racks him. Horsemen team up on Luger while Tully complains of a bad back. Barbarian and Rhodes are doing nothing btw. The Horsemen try to throw Luger out the door but he’s too powerful and kicks them off. They’re all at the door and end up all falling out at 10.37. That leaves Rhodes and Barbarian alone. Paul Jones hands plunder to Barbarian who waffles Rhodes with it. Barbarian spends ages trying to throw Rhodes out of the door but Da Dweem elbows him off. They try to go over the cage instead and Barbarian eats a pair of Bionic Elbows before falling to the floor and hence being eliminated at 14.19. Eesh, those last few minutes were painful. **. Decent match apart from the whole finish of having two guys who couldn’t do much being paired up. Rhodes wins his 3rd straight Bunkhouse Stampede match.

Roadwarriors v Powers of Pain

This is a Quarter Final in the Crockett Cup. The only one to be shown on here. Then it’s on to the semi-finals. Animal gets booted over but doesn’t stay down and he hits a powerslam. Hawk clotheslines Barbarian over the top rope and they all head outside for a brawl. Roadwarriors after revenge here. Hawk throws the ring steps at Barbarian and this is heading for some sort of double DQ. Randy Anderson looks somewhat scared and lets the match continue. Back inside Hawk hits a dropkick. Diving fist drop gets 2. Barbarian misses an elbow but hits a clothesline. Warlord slams Hawk and sits on him for 2. Hang on, is Hawk selling? Barbarian kicks him in the head for 2. Warlord chair shots him in the legs behind the ref’s back. Barbarian with a powerslam for 2. Warlord in with a BORE-HUG! Hawk goes low to escape a full nelson but the referee doesn’t see that. Commentators seem to miss it as well. Hawk gets caught in a BORE-HUG again. Powers of Pain miscue leaving Warlord down. Hawk clotheslines him as well before hot tagging Animal. He hits a dropkick and a powerslam. Shoulderblock but a clothesline hits Randy Anderson knocking him clean out of the ring. With no referee everyone comes in. Koloff tries to come in but gets knocked on his ass. Teddy Long comes down to make the count and the Roadwarriors win at 8.37. *3/4. Really solid for a power match. That is until…

POST MATCH Randy Anderson is back up and informs Teddy that Animal nailed him. Therefore the Roadwarriors are disqualified and the Powers of Pain win. Crowd gets dйjа vu because of the sheer number of times Dusty pulled this finish out of his fat ass.

Texas Bull rope Match – Midnight Rider v JJ Dillon

Story here – Dillon insists that the “mysterious” Midnight Rider is in fact Da Dweem. Dillon was the Four Horsemen’s manager at the time. He uses powder to the eyes and bashes Rhodes with the cowbell. Dillon goes low as well for good measure. We get more stipulations – if Dusty loses he’s unmasked and if it IS Dusty, which it is then he’s suspended for one year for trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The dastard. Rhodes bashes Dillon in the face with the cowbell. Rhodes uses the cowbell. SLOWLY. That causes Dillon to get colour. Rhodes fucks up his own flip, flop and fly by dropping the cowbell and getting the rope caught round his leg. I think that’s enough and even Dusty agrees as he pins for the win at 4.08. DUD. That was bad.

POST MATCH a second masked man is out here to go after Rhodes. Steve Williams makes the save but also takes a beat down from nobody in a mask and JJ fuckin’ Dillon, a manager. Crowd isn’t too happy. They’re not alone.

Ok, back to the Crockett Cup.

Sting/Lex Luger v Powers of Pain

They must have been ‘saving’ Roadwarriors v Sting/Luger for some other time. Seeing as Tully/Arn are bound to be in the final I think it’s rather obvious who goes over here. Maybe that’s just the smark in me and the reason why they can’t get away with booking tournaments like this anymore. Sting hits himself a crossbody for 2. Barbarian wants a test of strength, which he controls with his superior power and height until Sting monkey flips him. Barbarian gets caught in the ropes and falls out to the floor. TA looks stoned. Luger in and he runs through Barbarian before slamming him. Barbarian comes back on Sting with a HUGE fast powerslam. Sting is back up but Barbarian boots him clean out of the ring where Koloff puts the boots in. Warlord in but he misses an elbow drop. Luger gets the tag and cleans house. 10 count punches from both babyfaces. Warlord goes to slam Luger but Sting dropkicks him over and Luger is on top for the pin at 5.32. *1/2. A little too clipped up but it looked like a fun match.

Tully Blanchard/Arn Anderson v Fantastics

Audible “Horsemen” chant pre-match. Tully and Rogers run some nice counters. Double back drop from the Fantastics though and Tully bails while they grind. Arn knees Fulton in the spine to change that momentum. Fulton rolls him up but Arn blind tags in the process. Tully throws Fulton out where Arn beats the shit out of him. Fulton beats the count but Tully hammers him on the apron. Fulton recovers to hit a sunset flip for 2. Arn in but he’s in a SELLING mood. Briefly before cheap shotting Rogers with a left hand. Arn hooks on the Shades of Wilbur Snyder with additional tag team cheating. Tully pins for 2. Arn sets early on a backdrop and Fulton drives his head into the mat. Rogers gets a hot tag but it’s clearly quieter than it is with the bigger teams. Double dropkick on Tully. Double dropkick on Arn. ROCKET LAUNCHER on Arn but Tully saves at the last millisecond. TIMING! Dillon throws Arn his shoe and he waffles Rogers with it for the pin at 6.55. ***. Great match while it lasted. Crowd ate most of it up. The slight lack of popularity for the babyface team resulted in a slightly below par hot tag segment but you can live with that. That’s actually the second time I’ve done that match and it scored under 3 snowflakes last time. I guess the lack of anything special on the undercard made it that little better this time.

NWA title – Ric Flair (c) w/Barry Windham v Nikita Koloff

Crowd is giving Flair so much heat that it’s hard to hear the announcing. There’s a mostly positive but definitely mixed reaction for Koloff. Same mixed reaction for Flair but mainly negative. Windham nearly gets booed out of the building. Windham heads to the back to join the rest of the Horsemen. JR talks about Flair being the greatest world champion of all time, which is possibly a dig at Hogan and possibly just JR’s ongoing love of Ric Flair. Koloff doesn’t plan on selling much it seems so Flair hits an inverted Atomic Drop. Knee drop scores. WHOOOOO! Another knee drop misses because Flair spent too long posing. Koloff drags Flair groin first into the ring post. Koloff lifts the Figure Four but Flair gets the ropes. He stays down selling the leg trouble he’s having. Koloff starts dismantling the leg although not in the most pretty of fashions. Outside and Flair goes for the short cut, which gets his head posted. Flair begs off and bleeds. Flair tries to come back with chops and when that doesn’t work he begs off like crazy. That’s some INTENSE begging off. Flair goes to the eyes after Koloff accidentally pokes the ref in the eye. Koloff comes flying back with a clothesline off the ropes. The ref finally sorts his eye out for the 2 count. Flair gets clotheslined out of the ring. Koloff tries to suplex him back in but Flair gets out only to get levelled with the clothesline again…for 2. Flair backdrops Koloff over the ropes on purpose and that gets him a DQ at 8.52. That’s not fair to Flair! He was clotheslined over the ropes just a minute before that. **1/2. Pretty much your standard from Flair as he bumps around and lets the other guy get his offence in before the cheap win/loss.

Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard v Lex Luger/Sting

Crowd is so loud the ring announcer can’t be heard. Winners get $1,000,000 (there just isn’t that much kayfabe left that anyone would believe that these days). Luger works a choke lift on Arn and biels him ahead of a dropkick. Arn bails to allow Luger to go cold. Tully in and Luger slams him before bringing Sting in. Sting brings the power with the press slam. Everyone comes in and the babyfaces get the better of that. They go to work on the arm of Arn Anderson, which is a bit of a reversal. Luger hammerlock charges Arn into the corner but makes a bit of a hash of it. The babyfaces cheat due to Horsemen cheating in previous matches. Stinger Splash misses though and Tully gives him a shoeing on the floor. Backbreaker from Tully for 2. Arn demonstrates some fine cheating by choking Sting behind the ref’s back. Don’t cheat on the masters! ANDERSON SPINEBUSTER…for 2. Sting comes firing back but Tully prevents the hot tag. Reversed, Stinger Splash! SCORPION DEATHLOCK but Tully tags out to Arn who NAILS Sting with a DDT for 2. Sting fires away at Arn and hot tags Luger in who cleans house. ANDERSON SPINEBUSTER for 2. Magnum TA takes out Arn’s leg to allow a 2 count. Arn takes exception to such vicious babyface cheating and tries to remove his blonde ‘fro. That gets him rolled up at an energetic 11.36. ***1/2. Fun and fast paced match that really got the crowd going. But then it was the main event, so you’d probably expect that.

Overall show thoughts – C

Thumbs down. The main event is a lot of fun and the few matches that precede it are decent but in all honesty the clip show nature of the editing makes it quite irritating to watch as a commercial release. Thank Christ they don’t do these anymore. Apart from in Japan, for some ungodly reason. So I wouldn’t bother with it. There’s not really a big match worthy of the tournament nor anything else of particular interest. I enjoyed watching it and I am quite the mark for late 80’s NWA but I can’t recommend it.