Clash of the Champions IX: The New York Knock Out

Clash of the Champions IX: The New York Knock Out
Troy, NY
November 15, 1989

MATCH #1: World Tag Team Championship: The Freebirds v. The Road Warriors

The circumstances surrounding this one are actually kind of funny. As it turns out, the Freebirds aren't really the champions. How does that work? Well, turns out they had jobbed the belts a few days earlier but because the match hadn't aired yet, thus this is their final match as champions.

This one is kept nice and short, the way it should be. The Warriors start potatoing the bejesus outta the Freebirds and Garvin and Hayes want absolutely nothing to do with that and start doing their fun stalling, hip swivelling and attempting to, as JR says on commentary, "cut corners" so that they can get in control of the match. Of course they eventually iscolate Animal and all kinds of aggitate Hawk who blows his stack and comes a running on in, propelling the referee across the ring and causing the DQ.

This is worked ok, but is pretty run of the mill stuff. It does it's trick and they kept it short and sweet enough. This isn't really much of anything to get wow'd about though. *1/2

Match #2: DOOM (w/ Woman) v. Eddie Gilbert and Tommy Rich

This is another one of those extended squashes, but man, Eddie Gilbert deserves a medal for this one. He performed pretty darn great. DOOM is still in their masks at this point and lookin' good. Gilbert, like mosquitos, stick and move like crazy men but eventually get caught by the big mangs and get pulvarized. It's a bad night for whitey. *1/4

Match #3: The Midnight Express v. the Dynamic Dudes

This is a decent enough match with a super great finish, as is per the usual with the MXE.

Basically Cornette is in a neutral corner for this one as he's got man crushes on both teams. You can tell the Midnights are the ones with the bigger problem here as he's been their manager for forever and then some. The Dudes just do what the Dudes do.

Despite having an exceptionally lame gimmick, Johnny Ace and Shane Douglas make an ok team and repeatedly frustrate the Midnights and consistently present a compelling case that maybe Cornette should get behind the neon pink-o's and ditch the playboys. Everytime the Midnights get something going, the Dudes cut them off and frustrate them. There isn't ever a part where the Midnights can string together a consistent enough string of offense.

Because of this, you see the gradual heel turn here which of course comes to a head with a classic Midnight Express screw job finish. Bobby Eaton goes to use a chain on Shane Douglas but Cornette jumps in the ring and takes the chain away from him and chucks it into the crowd, admonishing Bobby. He encourages Shane to give Eaton the business and as soon as Shane does, he eats a racket shot to the back of the head.

Cornette choose the DUDES over his homies? Right. Fun match with a sensational finish. **1/4

Match #4: Steve Williams v. The Super Destroyer

This is Jack Victory's 9 millionth jobber in a mask who so happends to be a heel he's played on a Clash show. Yikes this is thankfully quick and painless. Williams is too goody goody gum drops here again but thankfull is a goody goody gum drop with a big power slam. This isn't anything memorable. *

Match #5: The Steiner Brothers v. The Skyscrapers

The Steiners are the great up and coming wrestling team, the Skyscrapers are the new big boys on the block. Granted this had some cool heat through the match, it's actually pretty bad. Vicious and Spivey give away WAY too much freaking offense in the early going. Steiner popping off hurricanrannas on guys who're 6'11 is pretty shitty too. Thankfully, DOOM interfere and bring Woman's bodyguard along for the fun and start whoopin' that ass. Spivey and Vicious like playing that game too, so they join. Unfortunately for the bad guys, the Road Warriors come charging to the Steiner's aid, getting a mega-pop in the process, and we've got a wild super brawl in the middle of the ring. Bad match with a fun run in infested ending. I'll give it a star for the brawl at the end. *

PS- This was the match where Sid Vicious punctured his lung which led to the introduction of a certain clown named Marc Calloway. Wonder what ever happened to him?


Match #6: United States Championship: Lex Luger v. Brian Pillman

This is a really great and likely forgotten match. Luger's really in more of a feud with Sting at this point, but Pillman's chasing him at the same time. Luger's been billed as the next big thing and thus far, with the exception of Ric Flair, has mowed down everyone tossed in front of him. Pillman, oddly enough, has been on a hot streak of HIS own and has been dominant in his own regard. After screwing Pillman out of the win at Halloween Havoc, Luger is forced to give Brian a rematch for the belt on this show.

This is a great Luger-formula match. Luger tries to wrestle, Pillman outwrestles him. Luger does the over power em thing, and Pillman tops him again. Luger starts to think his way around things and look for Pillman to make mistakes and capitalize on them, but Pillman recovers too quickly for Luger to get anything going.

A great and late Latino who liked cheating once said: If you can't win, cheat until you win. If that doesn't work, cheat harder. Luger gets into the whole douche-ish looking for any excuse to cheat he can. Eventually, he grabs a chair and absolutely potatoes (I like that word) Pillman in the grill with it. The official is dazed and Luger gets the win. After the match Luger needlessly beats down Pillman and the Stinger comes in to make the save. Fun enough I suppose.

Another one of those formula matches where Luger's great ability to look really frustrated is amplified by Pillman's ability to play an even pluckier vanilla babyface. I'm a little torn here between which defense I like better, the Rich defense or this one, because it's a really close call. ***

Match #7: I Quit Match: Ric Flair v. Terry Funk

Well, there's been a lot said about this one and with good reason. It's really fuckin' good.

I really like this match, but to be honest, I ALWAYS wonder how it'll hold up every time I watch it and EVERY time I watch it I wonder why i'm such an idiot sometimes. I think watching Funk-Steamboat enhanced this for whatever reason as it's just that match ratcheted up two or three clicks.

Steamboat didn't have a reason to hate Funk, but as you all know, Flair sure did. This just makes for a super intense brawl that doesn't have a lot of goofy table spots, sick chair shots, etc. This is fundamentally, what any feud ending gimmick match should be and that's just overflowing with hate, energy and most importantly, closes the book. This does all of that.

Flair's chops have extra mustard on them and he's all over Funk at all times. There's never a 'down' spot in this... like literally. There's never a point where one guy is laying around rolling around on his back. The selling is superb as a lot of it is delayed selling and that's tough to pull off well without making it look like overkill (see anything Pro Wrestling NOAH related). Funk looks like he's fighting for generations of Funks and Flair's fighting for his manhood.

I miss the day when matches like an I Quit match or a Last Man Standing sorta match didn't involve six million table spots, etc. I like a high spot as much as anyone, but in the end, there's always someone whose going to be willing to do a zanier stunt than you do. There's no replacement for keeping things simple but making sure things are intense. Table spots pop the crowd because they just saw the act.. the stunt... The pain... This match is good because the spots create DRAMA. It generates sympathy for the WRESTLER.

This is considered one of the first real hardcore-type brawls in the US up to this point, but really, by today's standards, it's hardly hardcore. And that's a-ok. Hardcore ain't about tables, chairs and thumbtacs, it should be about hate and intensity. This is what those matches are out and is really everything a final blow off match should be. ****1/4

Overall: Take the final two matches off this cards and it's scary-bad, but the last two matches make things ok enough. Flair-Funk is required viewing for anyone who considers themselves a wrestling fan, but Pillman-Luger is really worth going out of your way to see too. The Dudes-Midnights is fun for what it is too, but really, the rest of this is a lot of filler crap. Some of it's hit filler crap and some is miss filler crap, but it's still all relatively meaningless in the end. C

The one thing that's fun to watch is how much Turner's production team brought to the table when he bought the organization, both good and bad. We get some super terrible gimmicks, but a much needed production overhaul. If you look at the NWA shows towards the end of 1988 and look at WWF at the same point, the difference in polish is huge. The WWF looks flat out better and is a way better overall production than the NWA. Turner though, sees the need to clean up the look and puts a lot of effort into lighting and presentation. The jump from late 88-early 90 is pretty dramatic and cool to watch unfold.


Clash of Champions On Going Top 10 (Through Clash IX)
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 ***

Dropping Out
10. The Fantastics v. Ron Simmons & Eddie Gilbert, US Tag Titles, Clash IV **3/4

Clash of Champions VIII: Fall Brawl '89

It's Fall Brawl time again. Oh joy of joys.

Match #1: The Road Warriors v. The Samoan SWAT Team

These two teams work best in short-shot quickie brawls. Anything more than 10 minutes, for either team, usually falls apart. Here's a case of a well booked, basic match capitalizing on the heat on both teams and card placement. The crowd is bat shit hot for this event and these are the first two teams out of the gate. The Warriors potato the Samoans, the Samoans potato back, the Warriors drop the whole state of Idaho on their heads and that's it. Nothing more, nothing less. *3/4

Match #2: World Tag Team Championship: The Fabulous Freebirds v. The Steiner Brothers

This is a classy little match. If people are looking to get into tag wrestling and want to know how to put on a great match with a less experienced team, grab a notebook for this one. This is essentially the first crack at the tag belts for the Steiners, who by this time, are pretty much noobs in the tag ranks.

The early part of the match is basically The Steiners running through their flashy stuff and the Freebirds sell their asses off for them. Of course, that eventually comes to a head when the more experienced Rick gets in there with Hayes. The match briefly stalls a bit before Hayes grabs the advantage and we're into the face in peril piece of the match.

Rick is awesome in this role, period. His character at the time was so loveably stupid and believable, that it was just a magnet in this type of a match up for good old babyface sympathy. Scott's offense during this period was a lot more fast paced and energetic so when the hot tag hits, it comes off really well and again, the birds do some floppin', but to the degree where it doesn't come off as overly ridiculous. They keep the sequence nice and tight, as to not over expose Scott and it gets cut off as Scotty literally stumbled into a Hayes implant DDT to end the match.

The ending is left more or less shrouded in mystery though as the question arises as to whether Woman, whose supposedly one of their valets, tripped him up or not. Either way you go, whether Scott's showing his inexperience by being prone to mistakes or that they were screwed out of the titles by a slutty bitch, you get something good. The fact that the commentators and the Steiners seem willing to allow that ambiguity works even better.

This is a nicely worked, tight match that went exactly as long as it should have and everyone comes away looking good. **3/4

Match #3: The Z-Man Tom Zenk v. The Cuban Assasin

Here's a squash I didn't really dig all that much. They seemed like they were GOING to go for something more compedetive, but shyed away from it with head locks and arm bars, which don't really fit into a squash-type match. The spots are timed awkwardly with Zenk doing little to capitalize on the initial pops and keep the momentum going strong throughout the eight-nine minutes this went. This is a pretty easy skipper match. 1/4*

Match #4: Sid Vicious v. Ranger Ross

Not much here. Vicious literally blows through his four or five signature moves, Ross tries to not get totally murdered, and they go home. Really, there ain't much to say here. 1/4*

Match#5: Brian Pillman v. Norman "The Lunatic"

Now THIS is a good squash match. Pillman is being billed as a wily, spry, thinking man's wrestler and even though Norman has no shot of winning here, his power spots are placed well and initially, Pillman really struggles to find a way to keep the big man at bay and pin his shoulders to the mat. Eventually Pillman thinks his way to a win with a nice crucifix.

I was actually surprised at how much good psychology they were able to pack into the four-five minutes they had. Norman looked surprisingly buy-able as a viable lower mid card big man here while Pillman didn't look like he was totally trampling him, and that there was more of a legit struggle for him to think his way to a win over a much bigger and very unpredictable opponent. This is what it is, but for my only giving it *3/4, this is pretty decent.

Match #6: Steve Williams v. Mike Rotundo

Of all the matches i've watched so far in the Clash set, this is probably the most dissapointing thus far. If you really put things into context, this should have been billed as a lot bigger deal than it was. Williams came into the NWA as a babyface and was more or less the corner man for Rick Steiner when he broke away from the now defunct Varsity Club. He turned on Steiner and he and Rotundo dominated the tag division for the first half of 89, winning both the US and World Tag belts. Of course Williams eventually turned again, broke the group up, and this should have been the culmination of all that. The feud was about Williams going over big, and this fell short of expectations for me in a lot of ways.

My major issue here is that Williams plays the babyface role way, way too hard. Williams is a dominating big man and should be billed as such. Rotundo is a smarmy, smart heel who thinks his cheating out and figures out how to win matches. Williams dominates, Rotundo is more of a survivor.

Here, as I just said, Williams goes for the hard babyface and simply put, gives Rotundo way, way too much offense here. Williams was always a pretty good babyface, but he's not the type of face that attracts sympathy and that's what they seemingly went for here. It improves as the match goes along, with Williams FINALLY finding ways to overwhelm Rotundo with his power, but the power stuff doesn't have the maximum impact and Williams is forced to pander to the crowd way too much here, especially down the home stretch, where by that point he shouldn't have to do that.

Rotundo is perfectly fine here pulling off some fun eye gouging and holds, but taking the two as characters into account, it's kinda all for nothing. Even the ending is kinda silly with Williams going for the stampede, but Rotundo rolling through for the pin attempt, only to have that reversed. So Williams wins, gets attacked afterwards but reacts like he doesn't really care.

As I said, the structure doesn't fit the feud and Williams having an uphill battle against anyone is sort of tough to buy. Again, this is dissaponting. A lot of people liked this, but i'm a little baffled as to why, other than the fact that it's Williams and Rotundo in a match. *3/4

Match #7: Lex Luger v. Tommy Rich

Luger, in my opinion, is an underrated worker in the ring. Some of his stuff, well most, was increibly mediocre, but during this time period he was really strong and given the right opponent could be downright awesome at times. This is one of those cases where Luger works a really smart match with a super motivated Rich and the result is a darn good US title match.

They play up Rich's temper early on and his tendancy to get overzealous at times. He goes hard at Luger initially, but the whole time, despite his being in total control, you get the sense that he's wrestling Luger's match and eventually it'll catch up to him, and as you guessed, it does.

That's not before Rich puts on a hell of a performance. Rich eventually grabs his composure and works a smart match, keeping the bigger man grounded and on the match. Luger is forced to adapt and tries his mat stuff, but that doesn't work before going to the slugging, but still, Rich doesn't take the bait and is able to still keep the upper hand. Eventually though, as said earlier, things catch up to him and the match opens up. Rich gets fired up a bit and Luger's able to snap mare his head off the ropes and sneak away with a clean win.

Rich comes off looking nothing like the slouch you'd expect him to in this match and looks plucky and game for the match, but his usual tendancies lead to his undoing and Luger's able to catch him off guard and escape with a solid win and still look strong. This is a very solid, if not flat out good match. Hell with it. It's really good. ***

Match #8: Sting & Ric Flair v. The Great Muta & Dick Slater

This is a sensational heat-filled tag main event. Flair, of course, is embroiled in a feud with Terry Funk and Gary Hart. Sting gets involved due to his dislike for the Great Muta and saved Flair from a nasty beat down at the Bash. Slater is Funk's replacement, whose supposedly injured. The whole match builds to Funk's inevitable run in.

Flair and Sting are a dream team here and look every bit the part, dominating the early going. Flair looks exceptionally sharp with his offense and he and Sting seem to have everything in hand in the early going. Muta though, is the real stud here and works both Sting and Flair well and comes off as an uber credible threat to both.

Slater brings his wild Slater-like stuff here with the stoogie bumping. This is run of the mill tag stuff until about eight minutes in where it breaks down into a total brawl, with Muta and Slater eventually getting the better and taking the opportunity to lay a nasty beat down on Sting.

This is a huge elevational piece of the match as Sting comes off looking super-resilient, surviving a lot of Muta's best stuff AND a Gary Hart coin shot. Muta eventually has had enough so Slater comes in all wild goes nuts on Sting but a little too nuts and we lead into the hot tag.

The match totally breaks down in a good way as all four men go at it and we've basically got a melee, Sting and Flair are hitting multiple revenge spots and eventually we get the ref bump and Funk comes rumbling down to the ring and sticks a bag on Flair's head and we get the imfamous plastic bag angle to end the match, as the heels walk away with a clear upper hand, totally outsmarting the babyfaces.

While this doesn't have a lot of traditional tag structure stuff, they manage to work enough of it in to keep it a real, legit tag match while mixing enough wild crap to build heat and pop the crowd. The ending angle is one of the all time great ones.

I really like this and it's a ton of fun on a lot of levels, all building towards a big moment. In the end, it comes off as much like a supurbly built angle as it does a well worked match, and that's not something that comes easily. See this one. ***1/2

OVERALL: This is a pretty a-typicial Clash show. You get a hot main event, some total garbage, a let down and a surprisingly good match. The last two matches are worth going out of your way to see and the tag title match is as text book experienced heels beat inexperienced babyfaces as you get. This isn't the most memorable Clash card i've seen, but it's pretty well rounded. B- sounds good.

Clash of Champions On Going Top 10 (Through Clash VIII)
1. Ricky Steamboat v. Ric Flair, World Hvt Title, Clash VI *****
2. Ricky Steamboat v. Terry Funk, Clash VII ***3/4,
3. The Midnight Express v. Ric Flair & Barry Windham, Clash IV ***3/4
4. Sting v. Ric Flair, World Hvt Title, Clash I ***1/2
5. Ric Flair & Sting v. Great Muta & Dick Slater, Clash VIII ***1/2
6. Midnight Express v.The Fantastics, US Tag Titles, Clash I ***1/4
7. Sting v. Barry Windham, US Title, Clash III ***1/47
8. Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard v. Barry Windham & Lex Luger, World Tag Titles, Clash I ***
9. Lex Luger v. Tommy Rich, US Championship, Clash VIII ***
10. The Fantastics v. Ron Simmons & Eddie Gilbert, US Tag Titles, Clash IV **3/4

Dropping Out
9. Road Warriors v. The Varsity Club, World Tag Titles, Clash VI **3/4
10.The Fantastics v. The Sheepherders **1/2, Clash II