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The Undercard
The show opened with a six man tag featuring UWF talent, as Sting, Michael Hayes, and Jimmy Garvin took on Larry Zbyszko, Eddie Gilbert, and Rick Steiner. Hayes and Garvin would go on to form a version of the Freebirds later on, but were not regular partners just yet. Sting, Hayes, and Garvin were working babyface here. The most notable thing about this match is how crazy over Sting was even this early into his NWA run, the guy was full of energy and had this ability to just totally light up the crowd, and it’s a shame to sit here today and watch all the potential and enthusiasm he had and think that, despite being successful in many ways, his career never quite went where a lot of people expected it to. Rick Steiner, in the meantime, looked like a monster here, and this was before he started wearing the headgear and became the loveable buffoon we all came to know and love, but he was still big and strong and was stiffing the hell out of people as usual. The match ended up going to a 15 minute time limit draw, but you could see that Sting was obviously the star of this match and was destined to go on to big things, despite the UWF stigma.
Speaking of the UWF stigma, the second match on the show saw UWF Champion Steve Williams defend against Barry Windham. So Williams goes from main eventing UWF shows to working second match on an NWA PPV. Such is wrestling politics. Windham was the Western States Heritage Champion at this point, a title which was not on the line here, and would become little more than a punchline in time. You could certainly see the Watts influence in this match, as there was a lot of mat wrestling to go around. The match was fairly even until they did a spot where Williams leapfrogged Windham, but Windham accidentally headbutted Williams in the groin as he ran underneath him, but rather than take advantage of the injury and go for the kill, Windham took the sportsman’s route and allowed Williams a moment to recover himself. A moment later, however, Williams ducked a crossbody attempt and Windham hung himself up in the ropes and tumbled to the outside. Unlike Windham, Williams wasn’t about to give Windham a chance to recover and hit a rolling cradle right away for the win.
This was a great finish to the match and it was very intelligently played off of years later when Windham and Dustin Rhodes were defending the Unified World Tag Team Title against Shane Douglas and Ricky Steamboat because the same exact scenario played out, this time with Dustin headbutting Steamboat in the nuts, and Windham was yelling at Rhodes to take advantage of the injury, but Dustin hesitated like Windham had in this match, and Steamboat and Douglas came back to win the match. This attention to history and detail is totally lost in today’s wrestling business, and it’s a real shame that nobody makes an effort to play off of history the way they did with stuff like this.
Up next was a scaffold match pitting the Midnight Express against the Rock N Roll Express. Scaffold matches are notoriously boring because there’s not much you can do on top of a scaffold without killing yourself in the process or accidentally blowing the finish of the match by falling off the scaffold before you’re supposed to. This match featured the Lane/Eaton combination of the Midnight Express, for those keeping score, and they had Cornette and Big Bubba Rogers in their corner. The Midnights were the US Tag Team Champions at this point, but the title was not on the line, making this the second title of the evening not put on the line. I wish there were something interesting to tell you about this match, but there really isn’t much to say because all four men were trying to be as entertaining as possible without killing themselves up there. The Midnights ended up taking the tumble, giving the RNRs the win, and Cornette sent Bubba up onto the scaffold after Morton and Gibson (smartly not venturing up there himself this year), but Ricky punched him in the nuts and ran. At least Cornette didn’t get his knee blown out this year, but he probably mentioned his reluctance to go up top this year after his fiasco in 1986.
The following match saw UWF TV Champion Terry Taylor take on NWA TV Champion Nikita Koloff to unify the titles and was the next step in the total burial of the UWF and anyone peripherally involved with it. Jim Ross mentioned during the WCW InVasion that the WWF vs WCW angle wouldn’t turn out like the UWF purchase, meaning that all the talent, titles, and angles from the purchased company wouldn’t be completely, totally, and utterly buried to prove the superiority of the purchasing company. Ross’s way would have been a very intelligent way to have handled things, as people are more interested in the outcome when the two sides are even enough that you don’t have a clear idea of what’s going to happen, and I’ve often wondered what a company completely booked by Jim Ross would have looked like, and I think I would have liked it a lot. Unfortunately, the WCW purchase turned out a lot like the UWF purchase, which is to say that WCW (like the UWF) was totally buried and the name itself was phased out before too long. Again, such is wrestling politics. As for this match, Taylor (the UWF guy) wasn’t able to do anything with Nikita until Nikita hurt himself on a charge into the corner, and Taylor pounced like a shark on the shoulder, then the leg, and had Eddie Gilbert in his corner, liberally interfering the entire time, but none of it was enough because finally, Gilbert interfered one time too many and Nikita went after him, but when Taylor took the opportunity to try and attack Nikita from behind, Nikita moved and Taylor nailed Gilbert, allowing Nikita to hit the Russian Sickle to pick up the win and unify the two TV Titles.
The UWF guys were fortunately spared any more embarrassment, as it was all NWA from here on out, as we moved on to NWA World Tag Team Champions Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard defending against the Road Warriors. Arn & Tully actually weren’t much more effective against the Road Warriors that Terry Taylor was in his match, but they knew how to play dirty better, and Arn clipped Hawk’s knee from behind as Hawk was pressing Tully over his head to take the advantage. The Horsemen went to work on Hawk’s knee for several minutes before Hawk made the hot tag and Animal came in to clean house. The ref got bumped, after which Animal tossed Arn over the top rope, and anyone who’s seen an NWA Dusty Finish knows where this is going. The Roadies hit the Doomsday Device and a second ref counted the fall and awarded the win to the Warriors, but the first ref came in the ring and overturned the decision because he saw Arn go over the top, so the Horsemen pick up the DQ win.
A quick word on the Road Warriors for people who were too young to see them during their prime: the Road Warriors were a lot like Goldberg or the Ultimate Warrior in that they would come out and just annihilate their opponents in a minute or two, but unlike Warrior or Goldberg, the Road Warriors could actually work and could hold up their end of the bargain when they had to go 15-20 minutes. Guys like them prove that there’s a difference between big, strong workers and talentless muscleheads like Gene Snitsky or Luther Reings.
The semi-main event saw Dusty Rhodes challenge Lex Luger for the United States Title in a cage match, with the stipulation being that if Dusty lost, he would not wrestle in the NWA for 90 days. In order to prepare for this match, Dusty sought out the help of Johnny Weaver, who taught him the Weaverlock (aka the sleeperhold) to aid him in his battle against Luger. Why a seasoned veteran like Dusty would need somebody to teach him the finer points of one of the simplest holds in wrestling is beyond me, but he was booking at the time so I guess it made sense to him. Anyway, Dusty started working over Luger’s arm, and the announcers were putting over that Dusty was doing that so that Luger couldn’t get him in the torture rack, which is an interesting mental image if there ever was one, but much to my surprise Luger actually did go for it, and though he failed, he did get Rhodes up for a backbreaker later on, which is no small feat in and of itself.
There are two schools of thought on Lex Luger in the late 80s, and one says that he was a good worker at that point who worked hard and regularly had good to great matches. The other says that when you almost exclusively have a guy working with Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham, Sting, Arn Anderson, and Tully Blanchard, FDR’s rotting corpse could have had MOTYCs every week. Guess which side of that argument I fall on. Anyway, Dusty did end up catching Luger in the Weaverlock, but it wasn’t enough to put Luger away, so JJ Dillon knocked out Johnny Weaver, who was put in charge of the key to the cage, but couldn’t get the door unlocked, so he threw a chair over the top of the cage to Luger, and after Luger spends about 20 minutes slowly bending over and trying to pick the chair up, Dusty comes over and DDTs him on the chair for the win, without the Weaverlock even playing into the finish of the match. I believe this may have been Luger’s first loss in the NWA, though I may be wrong about that.
The Main Event
All this leads to our main event and second cage match of the evening, as NWA World Champion Ronnie Garvin, two years removed from crossdressing at Starrcade 85, defended the World Title against former champion Ric Flair. A lot has been said about Garvin’s World Title run, yet nobody seems to know for sure the reasoning behind it. It’s not like he was so massively over that they had to put the title on him or anything, it just seems like it sounded like a good idea at the time. The most common theory going around seems to be that they wanted someone to beat Flair for the title and then drop it back to him at Starrcade just for the sake of building interest and Garvin was the lucky winner, with other rumors going around about nobody else wanting to be a lame duck champion, though I don’t know if anyone would realistically turn down a run with the World Title, however short. What I might believe are the other rumors that nobody would then agree to do a job to the lame duck champion, which would explain why Garvin didn’t wrestle in the two months or so between his title win and this match. The storyline reason for his inactivity was that he was in intensive training for his match against Flair, which sounded stupid since he had already beaten him and all.
I don’t think anyone seriously expected Garvin to retain the title here, and consequently not much in this match got any kind of reaction from the crowd unless it looked like Flair was about to put him away. Garvin finally got a reaction when he hit the sunset flip off the top on Flair since that was the move he won the title with, but this time Flair countered the move by grabbing for the ropes. A moment later it was curtains for Garvin, as he came off the ropes for something, but Flair scooped him up and slammed him headfirst into the cage and knocked him out cold, covering him for the win and World Title #5, much to the delight of the crowd, who totally went nuts when Flair got the win.
Final Analysis
I have to say that for the poor souls who missed this show because their cable company decided to carry Survivor Series instead…well, they didn’t miss much. This show didn’t have the worst wrestling of all time by any means, but the booking was so off the hook it made you wonder if they just decided to go nuts since they figured nobody was watching. From the burial of the UWF talent, to having a second scaffold match after the previous year’s fiasco, to even putting the NWA Title on Ron Garvin in the first place, this whole show smacked of somebody sucking down a couple bottles of Robitussin, booking the biggest show of the year, then coming down and going “Wait, I booked WHAT???†Recommendation to avoid unless you need to see every one of Ric Flair’s World Title wins or are just a mark for laughably bad shows.
Thanks for sitting through this one with me, I appreciate knowing that you all share my pain. You can share more of it by writing to me at stupwinsider@yahoo.com and tell me your thoughts on the show, my voice, your personal problems, or anything else that comes to mind. Alternately, you can find me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider, where I archive all my PWInsider articles and also chime in with blogs about the current events in wrestling whenever the spirit moves me. Thanks again and see you all soon!
