Clash of the Champions XXVII

Legacy Review

Clash of the Champions XXVII

June 23, 1994 from the North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston, SC

Commentary: Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan

This is it, folks. This is The Night Hulk Hogan Appears, and everything in WCW changed, frankly not a lot of it for the better. They were going along pretty good for the first half of '94 with Flair booking and drawing as a face champion, building several new stars (Austin, Jack, Regal, Badd) and trying out some newfangled hardcore matches in the tag division. But this is WCW, where we could never get nice things for very long, like Flair's other successful booking stint in '89 or the glorious Kip Frey led, Dangerous Alliance fueled run of early-mid '92. On the flip side, Hogan's star power gave them the big push they needed to really put WWF on the ropes over the next few years.

The show intro promotes the long needed world title unification, as well as showing footage from the massive Hogan introductory parade and press conference that was held at Disney MGM Studios in Disney World. Tony also mentions Sensuous Sherri (he starts to say Sensational then stops himself) is going to be picking "her man" tonight.

WCW World Tag Team Championship: Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan (c) (w/Dave Sullivan) def The Nasty Boys in 10:35- This is a rematch of the wild all arena brawl at Slamboree where Jack and Sullivan won the titles. Tonight is a regular tag match, but because of the chaotic nature of past matches WCW has assigned TWO referees for this match. That sadly doesn't go anywhere. Dave has a pro-Hogan shirt on, foreshadowing where he'll be going in the coming months. Jack and Sags start. Sags lays in with machine gun rapid fire open hand slaps. Jack reverses in the corner and responds with stiff shots of his own. All four guys are quickly in and the faces clear the ring. Both sides swap. Sullivan and Knobbs start stiffing each other and soon all four guys are in again. Order is restored with Sullivan fighting out of the heel corner. Jack goes up top and Sullivan slams him into both Nastys! As the Nastys recover on the floor again Tony has a very important announcement: Hogan's jet has landed! Knobbs pounds on Jack. Jack gets a boot up in the corner and hits a clothesline, then hits some huge back elbows on Sags. Sags gets a double leg takedown, the closest thing to a wrestling move in the whole match. Jack counters a backdrop and tags. A Sags pin breakup puts Sullivan in mild peril with heel double teams. Sullivan is tossed to the floor. Knobbs hits a double ax handle off the apron. Back in Sullivan dodges a Sags kneedrop and tags. Cactus Clothesline on Knobbs! Sags goes over the top to the floor. Jack leaps off the second rope but the Nastys dodge and Jack crashes into the barricade. The Nastys were already gone before he even took off, that really looked like Foley taking a bump just because he wanted to. Sags back suplexes Jack on the floor. Jack dodges a Knobbs corner dive, double clotheslines with Sags and tags out. Donnybrook! Knobbs and Sags take turns getting into it with Evad on the floor. Sags takes a crutch shot from him while Jack hits Knobbs with the double underhook DDT in the ring, getting the pin. Crazy unhinged brawl that was maybe a little too chaotic for its own good, but it also never stopped moving. This would be the end of this long feud as the tag division would be reshuffled over the coming months, with the Nasty Boys taking a back seat for a bit. **3/4

Sting joins Mean Gene and gives his famous "I'm a great white shark" promo. After that is a vignette on The Guardian Angel, the new gimmick for Ray Traylor, formerly known as The Big Boss Man or The Boss before he crossed Commissioner Nick Bockwinkel and had his identity taken away. Well really, WWF threatened to sue because he was using basically the same gimmick as he had in WWF that they had a copyright on. Traylor trained with the Angels in real life before adopting the gimmick, which would soon run into some legal trouble of its own. More on that when we get there.

 

The Guardian Angel def Tex Slazenger in 1:44- Slazenger gets a jobber entrance, never a good sign. Lockup stalemates. Slazenger punches on a rope break, then hits another punch and elbow. Angel counted those out as three "strikes", apparently a system the real Angels use when dealing with criminals. After the third strike he's allowed to let loose. So is he like Festus now, but instead of needing the bell to be activated he has to get three strikes on his opponent? Or is that from his opponent? Anyway, Angel hits a few shots and the Boss Man Slam or whatever it's going to be called now finishes it. Squashiness. 1/2*

We cut to a live shot of Hogan's limo being police motorcaded to the arena. Heenan: "Oh I already saw that on TV. Oh, it's Hogan!". That's the second OJ Simpson chase joke tonight, which had just happened about a week prior. Hogan's limo pulls into the arena and they do the big limo exit shot. Hart gets booed and Hogan's pop is pretty mild.

 

WCW World Television Championship: Lord Steven Regal (w/Sir William) def "The Living Legend" Larry Zbyszko (c) in 9:25- Jesse Ventura is in for Heenan for the next couple of matches. Zbyszko defeated Regal in a non-title match at Slamboree, then took the title on weekly TV (in a match that was already filmed before Slamboree, the magic of pretaping). Regal wears a powdered wig to the ring and teases wrestling in it before taking it off after much discussion. They tease another stallfest until Regal charges in throwing hammers, totally opposite his usual style. Nice subverting of expectations and it shows how bad Regal wants the title back. Forearm pound down by Regal in the corner. European uppercuts. They exchange slaps and jaw at each other leading into a slugfest. Zbyszko gets his spinning back kick in and takes his turn to pound Regal down in the corner. Regal gets a leg takedown but continues the high impact assault rather than going to his usual mat wrestling. Zbyszko blocks a double underhook suplex, flipping Regal over for a two count. Nice callback to Slamboree, as that's how Zbyszko won that match. Regal's figured out an escape since then. Zbyszko rolls through a suplex, piledriver and swinging neckbreaker, all for near falls. Regal stands up and tells Zbyszko to put his dukes up. He's all kinds of fired up. Both guys show a lot of caution getting back into it. Regal gets distracted by the commoners and Zbyszko hits him from behind. More Regal European uppercuts. He goes to a weardown chinlock and we get the arm drop check. Zbyszko counters into a body scissors that Regal sells the living hell out of. He headbutts out. Zbyszko grabs a bear hug into a Boston crab. Regal flips him over, grabs the top rope for illegal leverage and gets the pin, regaining the title! Zbyszko had his foot on the rope too. After commentary spent half the match saying how important the TV title is and going over its history to prove it Regal gets about a whole half second of celebration before cutting to commercial and moving on. Good match, showing the chemistry these guys had developed over the last few weeks. ***

Arn Anderson agrees to be Dustin Rhodes' partner against the Stud Stable at Bash at the Beach, as long as he can be the ass kicking, name taking no shits given Arn Anderson. Dustin agrees. No way that could possibly be a setup for anything no sir not at all.

 

WCW United States Heavyweight Championship: Johnny B Badd def "Stunning" Steve Austin (c) by DQ in 10:25- Yet another Slamboree rematch. It's like the Raw after a PPV, at least when Vince was still running things. Col. Robert Parker has let Austin fly free to concentrate on the rest of the Stud Stable, believing Austin had gotten good enough to be on his own. Very true. Unfortunately his WCW career is about to go downhill due to the backstage influence of one Hulk Hogan, eventually leading to WWF acquiring the guy that would lead their charge against Hogan-led WCW. Life works in mysterious ways sometimes. Prematch slapping and shoving leads to a good back and forth start with Austin looking more Stone Coldish than ever. They fight to the floor and Austin takes an apron shot. Badd does some arm work and Austin chops. Speed run and Badd hits a dropkick and armdrag. Austin hair pulls out. Badd dropkicks him over the top to the floor. Back in Badd hits a clothesline off the top for 2, followed by a drop toe hold and facelock. After another speed run Badd grabs an Austin kick attempt, spins him around, Austin ducks a clothesline and scurries to the corner on all fours. After a corner whip Austin gets a boot up. Classic Austin elbow and knee drops. Badd counters a knee to the gut with a roll up for 2. More Austin knees. Badd hits a dropkick and both guys are down. Inverted atomic drop and flying headscissors from Badd. DDT. Corner clothesline. He goes up top but Austin catches him. Badd blocks a superplex and drops Austin to the mat. Austin dodges the sunset flip off the top rope with Badd doing a tremendous splat on the mat. Cover for 2. During a struggle in the corner Austin pulls some international knucks out of his tights, punches Badd in the gut with them, and Paul Smackages him for 3. After the bell ref Pee Wee Anderson comes into discuss things with match ref Nick Patrick and Anderson finds the knucks. Badd rolls Austin up, Anderson counts 3, and Badd leaves with the belt while the refs continue to argue. Commentary promises to clear everything up after the break. Badd continues to get incrementally better. **1/2

Commentary does not clear anything up after the break. In fact it's not mentioned again because never mind that shit here comes Mongo Hulk Hogan. According to Cagematch and wiki it's Badd by DQ so we'll go with that. Moving on. American Made sounds so much like Real American I'm really surprised there was never a lawsuit. Hogan gets a good but not great pop when he comes out. During his promo there's some definite boos. Flair interrupts from the tron and gets more of a pop than Hogan did despite the fact he had just turned heel to start setting their feud up. Despite all that there's the palpable sense of a big showdown coming to find out once and for all who the greatest of all time is. WWF decided not to do the match, WCW is not going to miss out.

As this is thankfully the last time for this, one last very quick history lesson on the split titles. Or to quote Inigo Montoya, let me explain....no, there is too much, let me sum up. Flair left for WWF in the summer of '91 as champion and took the Big Gold Belt with him. WCW then made the globe and stars belt as a replacement. In mid '92 WCW got possession of Big Gold back from Flair, and partnered back up with the NWA so Big Gold was made the new NWA World title. After WCW split with the NWA for good in mid '93 Big Gold was made the world title organized and run by the completely fictitious "WCW International" branch. After a year of that, they're finally getting back to one world title, which has been long overdue. Commentary hypes this as the biggest WCW match of all time. Not really, but it's still a big one.

 

Unification Match: WCW World Heavyweight Champion "Nature Boy" Ric Flair def WCW International World Heavyweight Champion Sting in 17:17- Heenan's back for this one. Sherri comes out before the match starts. They've been teasing her decision of who to manage endlessly all night. She lowers her mask and she has Sting face paint on, identical to what he's wearing tonight. Commentary falls for it like a bunch of chumps. Usual Flair/Sting formula to start with Flair getting tossed out of lockups. Dueling yells and Flair struts a little. Flair tries to hair pull out of an armbar and Sting keeps kipping back up. Hammerlock exchange, Flair gets a drop toe hold, another stalemate. Sting shoves and Flair mega sells it, flying all the way across the ring. Flair rolls out to slow things down. Commentary, especially Heenan, really lays it on thick that they think Hogan's in his head. Speed run and Sting hits a couple of press slams. Flair rolls out again and Flair Flops on the floor! He gets into it with the crowd, with Heenan yelling at him to get his focus back. Heenan's going almost full Rumble '92 on commentary and it's great. Sting cranks a knucklelock and Flair gets an eye poke. A chop is no sold. Sting hip toss and clothesline. Flair's out again and takes a long walk. Back in he gets a knee to the gut and more chops are no sold. Sting wants more. Flair dodges a dropkick. He goes for the figure four but Sting small packages him for 2. Flair gets in a shoving match with the ref, causing Heenan to go ballistic and shout at him not to get DQ'd, and takes another walk. After a corner whip Flair dodges the Stinger Splash. He tosses Sting over the top to the floor and lays in some chops down there. Great reaction from a woman sitting at ringside to hearing a Flair chop up close. Kneedrops in the ring and Flair tries for a rope leverage pin. Back suplex. Sting fights off a figure four attempt. Flair hooks on a sleeper. Sting runs Flair face first into the top turnbuckle. Flair Flop 2! Sting slingshots Flair into the turnbuckle again and we get a Super Flair Flop! Sting suplex for 2. Flair Flip and apron clothesline follow up. Sting hits mounted punches, blocks a Flair inverted atomic drop and hits a clothesline. Superplex from Sting! He goes for a splash off the top but Flair dodges. Flair delayed suplex. Sting pops right back up! Another press slam. He clotheslines Flair to the floor. Flair pulls Sherri in the way and she eats a Sting plancha! I mean full on right into her. Sting checks on her and Flair kicks him in the back of the head. Sting gets a backslide for 2. He goes to check Sherri again. Flair rolls him up, grabs a handful of tights and gets the pin! Perfectly solid Flair/Sting match. The globe and stars belt was retired after this and the Big Gold Belt would once again, rightfully, be the belt of the WCW World champion the rest of the company's existence. ***1/2

After the match Flair and Sherri hug. It was a RUSE. Commentary acts shocked but amoeba on Saturn saw that coming. Flair chop blocks Sting and Sheri hits splashes off the top rope. Hogan runs out to make the save. Flair dodges the big boot. Hogan cuts off a Sherri ambush attempt. Sherri slaps him! Flair pulls her out of harm's way and they escape. After commercial Hogan wraps up the show by officially challenging Flair for the title, and says he's bringing Ted Turner himself to TV next week with a contract. In the midst of all this, Sting would fall out of the main event picture for a long while and play second fiddle at best to Hogan for the next couple of years, pretty much forgotten about. Bischoff never seemed to know what to do with Sting while Hogan was around, at least until after Hogan's heel turn and the advent of Crow Sting. Which Bischoff also screwed up in the end, but that's a story for another time.

 

OVERALL SHOW THOUGHTS: Match quality wise this continues the standard set by the last couple of PPVs. Nothing blowaway great, but nothing below decent either other than an acceptable squash match. Hogan's intro really feels like a huge deal even if the crowd reactions weren't quite what they were hoping for. To be fair (to Flair), they were in Flair country. The rest of '94 will bring a whole lot of change to WCW.

OVERALL SHOW GRADE: B+