The SmarK Rant for WCW Power Hour – 01.05.91
OKAY THEN. We’ve hit the wall of Ole booking in the 1990 Power Hour shows and they’re not getting any better, so let us skip ahead to the dawn of the WCW era, with the first Power Hour of 1991, and go from there instead.
Granted the entire promotion is about get rebooted again anyway but we might as well start at the beginning of the year.
Your hosts are Jim Ross & Paul E Dangerously
Flyin Brian & The Z-Man v. Ed Brock & Joe Kazana
So Tom Zenk is now World TV champion, but he’s teaming up with Pillman randomly again. Pillman knocks Kazana off the apron and the babyfaces double-team Brock, with Zenk superkicking him and then slamming Pillman onto him for the pin at 2:55.
The Freebirds v. Tommy Angel & Rob Morgan
Oh my god I went forward an entire year and I still can’t escape the goddamn Freebirds. We’re into the Little Richard Marley era of the Birds, shortly before they dumped him and switched to DDP instead. And who would have thought THAT innocuous manager signing would go on to have such an effect on the business? Angel escapes a DDT attempt from Garvin, but Hayes beats on him in the corner. Hayes with a backdrop suplex on Morgan and Garvin comes in with some slams. Man, you’d think that these guys would be even a LITTLE bit motivated since they were about to win the World tag team titles. Hayes sings Christmas carols to Morgan while beating on him outside, and then Garvin finishes with the DDT at 4:34. Hey at least we’re not having to watch 15 minute squashes like in 1990. Small victories.
Rick Steiner v. Chuck Coats
Apparently Coats has a bad case of Tarheelia. Hopefully there’s a cream for that. Rick mauls him with a clothesline, but Coats fights back, so Rick mauls him again and then follows with a german suplex to drop Coats on his head. Rick tries to drop elbows on Coats, but misses somehow, and then takes him to the top for an overhead suplex off the top to finish at 1:44.
WRESTLING NEWS NETWORK! WITH GORDON SOLIE!
This seems like as good a place as any to point out that they’ve been hyping Clash XIV for the whole show, talking about how it’ll be held in CNN Center’s atrium with a main event of Ric Flair v. Brian Pillman, neither of which happened. We’re about to have a change of booker, IF YOU WEEEEEEL, which explains a lot of the freewheeling changes around this time, including a change of venue (from Atlanta to Gainesville), titles (Dusty changed the name of the show to “Dixie Dynamite”), and main events (Flair ended up facing Scott Steiner instead of Brian Pillman). Anyway, the big news for the week is that Sting has retained the World title against the mysterious Black Scorpion at Starrcade, and it turned out to be Ric Flair.
Terry Taylor v. Brian Carr
Taylor is still a babyface at this point. Taylor gets a drop toehold while Paul gets a funny burn on Tony Schiavone, noting that they worked together for two weeks and then Tony “sold his house and moved to Connecticut” because he couldn’t deal with Paul. Taylor works a headlock on the mat, but Carr slugs away in the corner until Taylor hammerlocks him and goes to work on the arm. Taylor was actually part of a fairly interesting four-way TV title situation with himself, Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton and Tom Zenk at this point and they were having good combinations of matches on the various shows. Taylor finshes with the five arm at 3:47. Man these shorter squashes are already much easier to watch.
Michael Wallstreet v. RICK HARDROCK
The Outrunners need to recruit this guy if he’s still around. JR goes for the low hanging fruit with a joke about opening a Café, and then Paul gives him a sarcastic exaggerated laugh to pay it off. Also Paul and JR discuss how Missy Hyatt keeps getting by security backstage, with Paul noting that she has a backstage pass but also uses other methods that they can’t discuss on TV. I’m still shocked it took that long for her to sue. Hardrock gets a hard rocking sunset flip for two, but Wallstreet hammerlocks him and takes him down for two. Wallstreet works the arm while Alexandra York takes notes on her “computer” at ringside. As if they’d ever make a portable computer thin enough to carry to the ring like that and put on the top of your lap! Why, I heard that in the future, computers will continue to get bigger and more powerful, some even taking up an entire room in the house and being able to do complex calculations like addition and subtraction! I’ve heard they might even hit 5 Mhz by the year 2000, although obviously they won’t ever have more than 256KB of RAM because no one would ever need more than that. Anyway, Wall Street Crash finishes at 3:34.
Sid Vicious v. Dave Perry
Sid literally just grabs the guy and hits a helicopter slam with no transition move, just putting the guy’s head between his legs like his name is…well, you can fill in your own punchline here. There’s lot of choices. Sid beats on the guy and chats with the camera and then powerbombs him at 2:25.
Bobby Eaton v. Ricky Morton
They fight for the lockup in the corner and Eaton TAGS Morton with a right, but Morton fires back with his own and they criss-cross into a backdrop from Ricky and into a flying headscissors. Bobby fights out of that, so Ricky takes him down again with another headscissors. Bobby takes him to the floor and clotheslines him out there to take over. Back in the ring, they fight for a suplex while Paul reminisces about getting their blood on his camera lens when he was a photographer. Hopefully that was during a wrestling match because otherwise I’d have questions. Eaton with a short-arm scissors, but Morton rolls him over for two, and then the Freebirds abruptly run in for the DQ at 6:00 before the match can go anywhere.
Well the main event wasn’t much, but I GREATLY appreciated all the shorter squashes here rather than the “three long match” format of the 1990 Power Hours under Ole. And as noted, change was coming on top of the promotion, like a bull of the woods, daddy, so this was all pretty moot anyway.