Darth Pipes

You know what's creepy? The guys who were out there paying tribute to Pillman. Owen Hart, Rick Rude, Hawk, Davey Boy Smith...all of those guys are gone.

That was classic. Along with the last show of 1985 (featuring Flair/Garvin and Magnum/Ole) this was my favorite NWA show to great. Doing it "live" from the Bash tour and in front of such a raucous crowd was awesome. Several of the squashes were competative, Garvin cheating at the end was cool, Wahoo vs Tully was a terrific brawl (those chops of Wahoo were brutal) and the whole Warriors/Midnight deal was awesome. Add to that Cornette back on commentary and you truly has a great show. Only a few complaints... -Good God, did we really need a Tenzhi (or whatever his name was) squash match that went six minutes? It felt like an eternity. It was awful. With guys like that, you keep the squashs to two minutes of less. Like with the Warlord. -F'ing main event. The bunkhouse match was awesome but cut out way too early. Bah!

What was the feature on Simmons? About his football career?

And then months later, Garvin and Regal were both in the NWA.

I understand motivation but Mike Von Erich was in no shape to be in front of a camera, let alone in a ring. Fritz's only concern should have been the recovery of his son. But all Fritz cared about was the business.

They show the angle on shorties were the Horsemen attack Dusty in the parking lot (with horrible camera work) and the ensuing angle that led to Nikita becomign a face. Great stuff.

They showed footage of a clearly brain-damaged Mike Von Erich on both the WCCW DVDs. It was clear he wasn't the same but don't tell that to Fritz. You see him there saying that his son is going to be back in the ring and be a world champion again soon. What a ****ing scumbag. Being a wrestling promoter to him was more important than being a father.

Harley and Tito had a really good match at MSG around this time.

I was in my first year of college in 1998 when I started seeing people wearing NWO shirts and I was stunned. When I was in elementary school, wrestling was huge. It still had a following with some people by the time I got into Jr. High but wrestling was something you DID NOT talk about with the majority of the students. Then when I hit college, it's big again.

I just finished watching the Flair/Steamboat match and God, was it great. Much better than their Spring Stampede match. Fast-paced, back-and-forth action with a constant series of reversels. What was great was that Flair didn't need to carry Steamboat so the two of them could just pound the hell out of each other. The only downside was they were clearly out of gas by the end of the match and the finish came out of nowhere. The finsh wasn't big enough. Otherwise, another classic. Heenan's got some good lines during the match too. BTW, Rick Rude wrestled. Won after he pinned the guy with his crotch in his face. It was mentioned he was going to defend the International title against Vader but as I recall, he never made it. He was stripped of the title and I think he suffered his neck injury around that time. Does anyone remember?

Flair's deranged, obsessed promo in September 1987 (I think that's the date range) is a good one. It's definitely a strange site to see Flair during this era without the title. But the promos don't suffer, that's for sure.

Off-topic but my favorite use of offensive language had to be when Dustin Rhodes came out and burned his Goldust costume. He said that Vince McMahon destroyed his career and wanted to know why. This leads a fan to start yelling. "Because you're a faggot, Rhodes. You're a faggot, Rhodes. FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!" Rhodes just stopped the interview for a few seconds and stared into the crowd. Absolutely classic and something I'm sure 24/7 will stupidly censor when the time is up.

Shorties update. I highly recommend the one with the video face-off between Ric Flair and Fritz Von Erich. Both of them are top notch here in their "debate." The caption of Flair they use for the selection is pretty damn funny too. Some more Mid-Atlantic interviews, including one with Steamboat. I'm very much looking forward to the WCW Saturday Night match between Flair/Steamboat. Haven't seen that since it originally aired. They would wrestle each other a few more times on the house circuit (I believe Steamboat won the last ever match) but this would be their last televised bout. TNT looks good too, with Savage meeting a shrink I think. That should be funny.

I'm still wondering why they took the titles off The Steiners and why the Steiners never even got a rematch. Did they know the Steiners weren't going to re-sign or something?

I'm not sure about Graham. But he was definitely in no shape to wrestle at that point. Monsoon acknowledged that Patera was a former IC Champ. Ventura tells Bruno that he remembers him strangling Superstar Graham with his shirt.

Good point. It's funny how things can develop from the past.

Thought the Flair/Gordy match was good (Sunshine really smacked Flair hard) and it was interesting to see early Shawn Michaels or "Sean Michael."

What was with his heavy breathing too, like he was sucking air. Probably got into Piper's stash of cocaine. Heenan took a few funny shots at McGuirk, saying "You're talking about dogs. You should know about that." Also another funny Heenan line is his explanation as to why Jim Neihart submitted. "The referee asked him if it hurt and he said yes. Then he rung the bell." That was a favorite of the Brain's. We get to see the Stand Back music video too.

Yeah, Cornette's good with the mic they should have made him at least a semi-regular at the broadcast both. "Jim, a lot of cards and letters are sent to this studio." "I don't care." He also drops a shoot comment on Sam Houston, calling him "the human broomstick."

Yeah, Sid doesn't really come across as the bad guy when you think about it. A few weeks later, they did a big press conference to determine the number one contender for Flair's title at Wrestlemania. Hogan got the nod and Sid was pissed. Rightly so, since he was was the runner-up at the Royal Rumble and lost his chance to win the title because of Hogan being a crybaby and basically cheating. He apologized, they teamed up, then he abandoned Hogan. Hogan deserved it.

Cornette doing commentary really livened up the show. He had some great lines. Can't remember some of them at the moment. Baby Doll looked pretty good on this show.

X-Factor...thank you for reminding me of them. Kurt Angle tried to have a faction with him, Jindrak, and some other guy that didn't do too well. Team Angle was a very cool faction though. They were like The Varsity Club, which was a great faction. Like I said, I think JR would be involved in that angle now.

I still wonder what the original plan with that was. Given the way the WWF reacted to it, they clearly didn't want Sid (who was very popular with the fans around this time) to get the cheers, thus altering the RR footage. At the same time though, Sid totally acknowledged that the fans were cheering him and so did Hogan. At the end, Sid keeps pointing to the Hogan sign that says "Hulk Who?"

Fair points. Having a heel champion was the way to go in the NWA (and it made for great TV) but I often wondered how the NWA would have done if they let one of the popular faces be champ. Now it all fairness, Magnum TA was supposed to be that guy but we know what happened. Having a heel (Flair) champion for so long and not seeing popular performers win the might not have been the best business strategy. I mean, if business was so great with the Horsemen, why was Crockett forced to sell the company? There was a lot of political games that went on in JCP, especially between Dusty and Flair. Flair hated Luger and that's why he never dropped the title to him. Rhodes wanted Rick Steiner to take over the Starrcade 88 main event spot and squash Flair in five minutes to win the belt. Not surprisingly, Flair fought this and the power struggle left Rhodes out of the company. I would say though that the Horsemen did make the faces look better than the NWO. But in the end, as you pointed out, the faces could never get the titles away from the faces. I mean, did it help Ron Garvin that after he couldn't get the World title away from Flair in 86, that he couldn't get the TV title away from Arn afterwards? In fairness, Dusty's booking (nonstop Dusty finishes) and overspending helped to drive Crockett into the ground financially. Also, Crockett never should have tried to compete with Vince on a national level. Although I think the NWA had much better wrestling and storylines.

I think there's a lot of bitterness there on Flair's part. While his criticism's of the NWO are quite valid, the fact of the matter was that the NWO revitalized the entire industry and ushered in a lot of success and money in the business. The Horsemen weren't able to top the WWF but the NWO were. Before the NWO, Nitro was running neck-and-neck with Raw. After the NWO, Nitro dominated Raw for almost two years in the ratings. Flair was on the shelf during a lot of that time. The NWO was great for WCW and then it was bad for WCW. But it also is the reason the WWE is a billion-dollar global company and why they bought up all these tape libraries so he can release a DVD. I think Vince could have done a lot with the Horsemen but at the same time, the WWF wasn't the kind of company that catered to heels and Flair's racier interviews weren't exactly family-friendly. Even some of the roundtable panel seemed to dispute Flair on the "Vince money" comment. Interesting bit...Foley makes reference to the two WCCW DVDs, including the independently released one.