The SmarK Rant for World Championship Wrestling – 07.01.89
Taped from Atlanta, GA
Your host is Jim Ross
BROUGHT TO YOU BY A&W ROOT BEER!
Last week: Eddie Gilbert and Gary Hart get into a fistfight, which goes badly for Eddie when Great Muta attacks him and blows RED MIST in his eyes. People were questioning the toxic levels of red mist last week, so as a helpful guide, here’s all the colors of the dreaded Asian mists and their effects on wrestlers:
- Green – Weakens and blinds wrestlers, and can kill with long-term exposure.
- Red – The effects can vary. Negative side-effects can include mood swings, shrunken testes, and long-term relationship with Missy Hyatt.
- Red-green – Can cause mutations, like being the son of a famous wrestler but having an unrelated name.
- Blue – Blue produces the same sort of negative effects that green produces, but only to Impact wrestlers.
- Gold – Gold mist terminates a wrestler’s WWE contract and causes them to blame Nick Khan even though Vince McMahon makes all the decisions in reality.
- Red-green-blue-gold – Has the ability to separate wrestlers into two people so they can book multiples indies and then no-show both at the same time.
- Red-gold – Temporarily strips wrestlers of their memories, usually resulting in them signing a new deal with WWE because this time they’re really going to get that push they were promised.
- White – Makes you speak with a stupid New Zealand accent, grow a goatee, and destroys all your charisma and drawing power. Obviously this is the most horrific fate a wrestler can suffer and it’s only been used once that we know of.
I hope that helps clear things up.
The Great Muta v. The Italian Stallion
Muta takes him down with a headlock, but Stallion works the arm and pounds on the back, but Muta takes him down and drops the power elbow. Stallion gets a powerslam for two and follows with a dropkick for two, and then blocks a rollup attempt and puts Muta down with a clothesline. And then Muta’s had enough of this crap and chops him in the throat and pins him at 2:00. Not sure why they gave Stallion all that offense and didn’t even have Muta do the moonsault here, unless he was hurt. 0 for 1.
Meanwhile, at 1 CNN Center, Jim Herd introduces Ric Flair at a press conference where it looks like there’s maybe 3 reporters there. Flair announces that he’s finally signing a match with Terry Funk, thankfully no longer ducking his top contender despite the biased top 10 list. Jim Herd notes that they’ve fined and reprimanded Terry Funk for the things he’s done, but he’s a former World champion and he deserves the shot. DAMN RIGHT HE DOES. As a small critique, I think what I would have done in light of Flair’s injury would be establishing an interim World title, which then could be settled by having a battle royale on NWA Main Event with the winner facing Terry Funk later that night, and then Tatsumi Fujinami could face Antonio Inoki on the next New Japan show, and the winners of those two matches could face off for the interim title at the Bash PPV and then Flair would defend against them later on. Actually that sounds kind of awesome, I think I overplayed my hand and outsnarked myself there. Dammit.
Terry Funk joins JR back at the studio, and he’s got his bags packed on the way to the airport. He doesn’t even need to train, he’s got his ticket to Baltimore and he’s off to the arena already. His daddy was a pistol, he’s a son of a gun, meaner than a scorpion, middle-aged crazy and crazy like a fox and he’s outta here. Man why didn’t they put the belt on this guy for a few months?
The Steiner Brothers join JR and Rick admits that he stole the flowers from his neighbour’s house last week, and Robin Green is just a girl who happens to be his friend. And then we go back to last week, as the Varsity Club remnants destroy the flowers.
The Steiner Brothers v. Rock Hard Rick & Mike Awesome
Yes, the greatest named jobber team in history continues their reign of terror. The Steiners quickly put them in slam position and run them together in a move that the Authors of Pain would rip off years later, but Rock Hard Rick comes back and slugs away on Rick in the corner. Rick puts Rock Hard Rick down with a Steinerline, and Scott comes in with the fallaway slam, spiking the poor bastard on his rock hard head. Meanwhile Missy gets to tend to Rick’s dog on the floor. Over to Awesome, but Scott reverses a whip and just clobbers him with a stiff clothesline, before Rick hits an overhead slam and Scott gets a belly to belly to finish at 3:00. They just WRECKED those two guys and it was tremendous. 1 for 2. Poor Rock Hard Rick doesn’t even have an entry in Cagematch so obviously he didn’t stick around the business very long. I’m assuming someone tried booking him in an 60 minute Iron Man match and he was just Rick by the end of it and never returned.
The Samoan Swat Team v. Lee Scott & Trent Knight
The SST attacks the jobbers and Knight takes a bump to the floor off a chop, and they give Scott a giant double backdrop while Paul E joins us on commentary and claims that Tommy Rich is actually from New York and thinks “Johnny Cash is a pay toilet”. JR totally no-sells that one sadly. Samu takes Scott to the top and drops him on his head with a backdrop suplex, and then Fatu finishes with the flying splash at 2:00. 2 for 3.
Tommy Rich v. Wild Bill Irwin
Irwin hits him with a knee on the ropes, but Rich gets an armdrag and works on that to take over. Irwin slams out of it, but Tommy hangs onto the arm. Irwin puts the boots to him and slugs away, then follows with a suplex for two. Rich makes a comeback and drops the fist from the middle rope, but he puts his head down and Irwin drops an elbow on him. Sideslam gets two. Rich fights back with a headbutt to the gut as they accidentally pan around to the wrong side of the ring and reveal the half-empty studio audience. Man, when you can barely fill 200 people of freebies you might as well be NXT 2.0. Thesz Press finishes at 5:00. Well this was a match. 2 for 4.
And finally…
THE SKYSCRAPERS v. Ray Lloyd & Mark Smith
Oh yes, we get the NWA debut of SID VICIOUS and he gets to squash Glacier in his debut. Sid immediately drops Lloyd with a backdrop suplex and hurls him onto the top rope. Over to Spivey, who puts Smith down with a big boot and then puts him in a surfboard for a submission at 1:00. But then that’s not enough, so they hit them both with powerbombs for good measure. They would get over real fast but this wasn’t much of a debut. 2 for 5.
Ric Flair makes a surprise appearance at the desk, promising to kick Terry Funk’s “Texas [bleep]”. Well that sounds serious. Flair points out that he took Funk’s best shot and now he’s back. Yeah after being injured for weeks and teasing retirement several times. Not the flex you think it is, Nature Boy.
GO DRINK SOME A&W CREAM SODA, BY GAWD!
That was only 35 minutes on the Network so they must have had to cut something out of it. Some historic stuff on this one, though.