Clash of the Champions X: Texas Shootout

Oh Glory Days..... time to continue my little project-o.

Match #1: Steve Williams v. The Samoan Savage

This was pretty decent for like the eight minutes or so it got. Freaking early Rikishi is great. You can most definately see the inspiration for the Umaga gimmick is in this guy. Seriously, watch the mannerisms and tell me it's not.

Anyways, I hate Williams as a babyface around this time. WAAAAY too vanilla-ish and thankfully he would team with Terry Gordy soon to crush eye-sockets and whatnot. Lots of smash mouth-ery going on here between these two. Power slams, lariats, punches and manly posturing make this an average/enjoyable affair. *3/4

Match #2: Tom Zenk & Brian Pillman v. The Mod Squad

Holy fuck someone make this match stop. The Williams match got eight minutes. Hell, this match went longer then the MAIN EVENT MATCH which was a cage match no less. Pillman are the ultimate "California Dreamin'" gooey good boy tag team, but haven't we been down this road with the Dynamic Dudes? What's with WCW around this time and their intense desire to push a babyface tag team of oiled up men wearing neon pink? And why are the guys they're facing dressed up like cops? Is there some sort of subtle joke i'm not getting here?

No seriously, this was awful. It's an extended version of the extended squash WCW up to this point, worked well. THis though, is brutally horrible stuff. Zenk would go on, as you will see in many more Clash Reviews, to be mixed and matched with like nine million partners. God I hate this stuff. 1/4*

Match #3: Mil Mascaras v. Cactus Jack

This is really short but really freaking good stuff as everyone comes away looking good. Mascaras looks smart and good, and while Cactus Jack comes off looking uber retarded, he comes off looking super-sick tough, taking a lot of big spots from Mascaras. In particular, his back plop (not drop) onto the bare concrete was pretty awful and Jim Ross and Jim Cornette's shreiking like school bitches being banged in the bano makes it all the more enjoyable. Cactus comes off like a great wild man heel, where it's obvious he's not, nor should he, overly concerned with the whole winning matches and belts thing. He just likes to fight. That and Mascaras rules.

After the match is even better as Cactus almost turns himself babyface by attacking the super crappy band that's playing the WCW theme song on the outside of the ring. The best is Jack chasing the guy playing guitar around and the guitarist hitting the whammy bar as he runs away from the wild man. Seriously though, this is pretty entertaining for five minutes. That's how you do a semi-squash. *3/4

Match #4: Falls Count Anywhere Match: Norman the Lunatic v. Kevin Sullivan

God, Vince must watch a lot of WCW from this period because I see inspiration for characters everywhere. Norman, who'd later become Bastion Booger in his WWF years, plays the loveable retard here who wrestles in scrubs. Kevin Sullivan is a stubby legged 'rat' as Norman calls him who won't leave him alone.

Great pre-match promo from Norman, whose talking about pinning Kevin Sullivan in a hot dog stand so he can mow hot dogs while punching Sullivan. Then there's a video clip of him in a zoo talking to a pig as if it's Kevin Sullivan while a girl looking on is looking at him like he's on drugs. Then Norman comes out to 'shout' with a Teddy Bear around his neck.

Here's another really fun match, this time of the comedy-type. Sullivan starts off angry and serious but then remembers he's wrestling a retard and takes the whole tough guy who likes to play magic cards down like 20 notches and starts bumping around for the big guy like a goof. They brawl into the crowd, on tables, on the steps, on the guard rail and then up the ramp.

The ending is particularly wild and silly as Kevin Sullivan retreats from Norman into the girl's bathroom. Norman doesn't want to go in and waits for all the girls to leave before pursuing Sullivan in there. About 20 seconds later Norman re-emerges from the bathroom with a toilet bowl in one hand, a roll of TP in the other, all while the referee is in tow. Norman wins. Or at least that's what we're led to believe.

They keep with the stip, make it fun but you don't feel the intensity of a typical Falls Count Anywhere match, which is A-OK for it's spot on the card. Pops the crowd in all the right ways and even though there's not.. like a whole lot to this... it's still a lot of fun. *3/4

Match #5: The Road Warriors v. The Sky Scrapers

Fuck YES. The sky scrapers and baby Undertaker look fantastically bad ass and the Road Warriors are pulling apart a car before the match so this will be a good brawl and all. Someone call the cops, the ambulance.. call em all.

This is worked kinda backwards from what they put over as being the major angle before the match, as the Sky Scrapers are looking to prove themselves as equal brawler to the Road Warriors, yadda yadda. The Scrapers are not exactly brawling early on. Instead, they're using their agility, which when Marc Calloway is on your team is a good thing, which makes them look surprisingly smart.

The Warriors on the other hand, are, um... themselves. They just wanna smash faces. The Scrapers though use that against the Warriors in a way as there's tons of goading going on throughout the match. Finally, once the Warriors gain the upper hand, they connect with a doomsday device, but the ref's knocked out. Calloway comes flying off the ropes with a big old steel chair and wild antics insue from there. Spivey and Calloway spike pile drive Animal onto a chair and leave, using their smarts as a way to prove their brawn.

For like the millionth time tonight, i'm surprised I liked this as much as I did given the time. They don't give fans the satisfaction of watching these two fight. Instead the scrapers more or less prance around as best they can, frustrate the Warriors and prove their worth as physical equals to the LOD. That's after surviving the Doomsday Device. A pretty nice way to get the young team over while not making the old team look bad. That's not to mention a nifty piece of booking not giving the fans the smash-face killing spree they wanted and teasing it for the pay per view. All around good effort. This isn't top 10 stuff and fuck me if it's top 20, but it's a solid piece of pro wrestling. **1/4

Match #6: Titles v. Masks: World Tag Team Championship: The Steiner Brothers v. DOOM

Here's the run-away match of the night. The stip is simple: If the Steiners win, Doom sheds the masks. If Doom wins, they get the belts. Nothing complicated and these two teams keep it nice and simple-stupid for all.

The story through the match is real easy to follow, which is a good thing for mind-blowing retards like myself. Doom dominates, but the masks, which are supposedly their asset, end up becoming their biggest vice, at least in terms of this match. Every time Rick or Scott touch one of their masks or try to rip it off, Doom gets thrown off their game and it allows the Steiners to put some offense together.

The whole match is built simply and the pay off is great with Reed finally losing his mask. He's humiliated and mad and goes to whine to Doom #1 (who we find out later is Ron Simmons) only to get shoved into him and rolled up for the win. So we get a glorious taste of simple irony here with the bad guys strength being used against them.

The Steiners are in this match too, btw, and Scott is especially awesome here, bumping like a crazy man and letting the two brothas put a nasty beat down on whitey. They smash his face (literally his eye is like seven shades of purple afterwards), drop him on his head and do all sorts of mean nastiness to him. In fact, Scott's ability to garner sympathy are what really carry the body of the match and allow the fans to really buy into the babyfaces.

Great tag match that while it's not exactly the Shakespeare of wrestling, it's pretty good. It's more like Dr. Seuss without the rhyming. **3/4

Match #7: Steel Cage Six Man Tag Match: The Great Muta, The Dragon Slayer & Buzz Sawyer v. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson & Ole Anderson

This really isn't much of a match rather than a big angle to end the show on.

Earlier in the night, Sting was expelled from the Four Horseman for taking a contract to face Flair for the belt at the Bash. Ole called him a bitch and they beat him down. Basically, if Sting ditches the contract, he walks away safe, if he doesn't, well then........

Anyways this match goes on and it quickly becomes an afterthought as soon as Muta and Anderson exchange some silly not so sexy stuff. Sting comes running out and that's that. Save for some pretty sick cage shots that Sawyer takes, no one really seems to give a crap that the match is gonig on and is wholely more conscerned with how Sting is going to rape Flair and take his manhood from him.

So yeah, there just isn't anything in this to really give it much more than a star and a half for some cute action in an angle. *1/2

Overall: So i've basically not rated a match at *** on this entire card and i'm ok with that. DESPITE that you squirly fuckers should be fine with it too. This really is a better show than the ratings might indicate. Most of the matches are just too short to go much higher but really, that's all ok. This is worth a pick up to see for a fun, quickie wrestling show. Doom-Steiners is really good stuff but other than that, there ain't much worth going TOO out of your way to see.

Clash of Champions On Going Top 10 (Through Clash X)

1. Ricky Steamboat v. Ric Flair, World Hvt Title, Clash VI *****
2. Ric Flair v. Terry Funk, I Quit Match, Clash IX ****1/4
3. Ricky Steamboat v. Terry Funk, Clash VII ***3/4
4. The Midnight Express v. Ric Flair & Barry Windham, Clash IV ***3/4
5. Sting v. Ric Flair, World Hvt Title, Clash I ***1/2
6. Ric Flair & Sting v. Great Muta & Dick Slater, Clash VIII ***1/2
7. Midnight Express v.The Fantastics, US Tag Titles, Clash I ***1/4
8. Sting v. Barry Windham, US Title, Clash III ***1/4
9. Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard v. Barry Windham & Lex Luger, World Tag Titles, Clash I ***
10. Lex Luger v. Tommy Rich, US Championship, Clash VIII ***

ROH-o Catch up-o

It's been nice to kind of get some of this stuff through various channels, as i've been Capt. Cheap-o this year and haven't invested too much money in ROH. While I think this year has been incredibly hit and miss for the promotion, I figured there's plenty of stuff worth going out of my way to watch and comment on for all of your viewing displeasure.

#1 Contender's Match Bryan Danielson v. Nigel McGuiness
ROH Driven Pay Per View

Wow, this is FAR AND AWAY the best ROH match i've seen in a while. What I liked-- The intensity is nine fold in this. It's a much tighter version of the matches they've had in the past with far more "I want to murder you" in it that I feel takes it to an entirely different level.

Everytime Dragon faces Nigel, he's able to figure out how to beat him, but every time he has to throw more crap at him and it all works. The mat work and everything basically builds to some great nearfall sequences in the end, between the back work, the arm work and what not. Dragon basically has to toss ALL of his super huge stuff at Nigel to keep him down: Cattle mutilation, the big back super plex, the cross face chicken wing and the KO elbows. Usually I HATE finisher whoring, but it's done in a very logical way here and each of the moves is used to punctuate work done previously in the match and makes Nigel look like he could tap or get pinned with any of them. No real wasted movement here which is something we rarely see in the indys nowadays. Again, this has the real hate their previous matches lacked and I actually enjoyed the brawling sections more than the mat sections, which is more unusual with these two. It really came off as more of a fight than a wrestling match.

What I didn't like-- the ONLY reason I can't get this to **** is because of the selling, which gets kinda goofy at points. The being COMPLETELY recovered quickly after getting raped on the part of both guys gets annoying at spots. While the limb selling and the facial expressions are good, there are parts where these two literally potato each other silly only for the other guy to counter, pop up and go into a control segment and it repeats itself a few times. Now that can be attributed to the fact that these two hate each other and it's an important match and whatnot, so on some levels it's semi-excusable but it still kinda annoys me a bit.

The other thing I didn't like is more of a general complaint about ROH in general and that is.. WHY do ROH guys have to literally massacre each other physically to get a point across? Sure, the ROHbots love the STIFF~ stuff and whatnot, but jesus the flush shots right on Nigel's face and the frequent death spots are a bit much. I don't hold it against the match or anything, but still, if these guys aren't eating out of a tube by 40 i'll be astonished.

Anyways, overall this is really a can't miss match. It's really, really good stuff and it feels good to say that, as I feel a lot of ROH stuff has been hit and miss this year. Seriously though, these two really put on a fun match here. Easily the best match i've seen worked by TWO guys in ROH all year. ***3/4

ROH World Championship
Takeshi Morishima v. Bryan Danielson
Glory by Honor V

So finally, here we go. The year seemingly has built to this one so let's hope for some goodies.

The early part of this match is absolutely fantastic. Morihimsa is especialy excellent here. For months they've tried to put Mori in the whole unstoppable big man thing and to me, this is the first match where that really plays out fantastically. Mori is very surly here, stomping on Dragon, looking all confident and big-ish. Dragon's offense is pretty good as well, as he employs a similar, time tested strategy that worked quite well in his first shot at Samoa Joe back in 04 which is relentless leg work. Mori sells it all really well, as it obviously is hurting him, but not nearly to the degree where it looks like it's going to effect his ability to win the match.

I like that fact particularly because it establishes a constant reference point for the match. Mori comes back, drops bombs, Dragon finds an opening and goes back for more leg thrashin'.

Down the finishing half, we have some excellent near falls from Dragon with Mori consistently putting him down with more bombs. The leg work though isn't really referenced like it could have been, or at least to the degree it was used, should have been. Dragon starts ripping through HIS big stuff. His attitude here is great, like the relentless stomping of Mori's head and whatnot, but it's all more or less flown through to get to the big finishing run where Mori's pulvarizes Danielson into dust.

This match seemingly gets to a point and then just gets into the paint by the numbers Morishima stuff we've seen a lot of, which isn't altogether bad, but doesn't really fit for the epic build this seemingly had going for it. This is a rare occurence in Dragon matches where he's clearly the second best guy in the ring.

Overall, this is definately good, but not worthy of the praise it's been getting all over the place. I prefer quite a few matches to it. The first half is super brilliant while the last half just doesn't quite fit for me. Good, but not great. ***