The SmarK Rant for AWF Warriors of Wrestling – Episode 3
Like a moth to a bag of flaming crap on the doorstep of life, I cannot help but keep returning to this.
Taped from Chicago, IL. Could this mean an alliance with CM Punk? TUNE INTO NITRO TO FIND OUT!
Your hosts are Mick Karch & Terry Taylor, and they warn us to “put on the seat belts and crash helmets”. Truer words have never been spoken.
Amazingly, we now have an OPENING THEME. WARRIORS! AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!
The Samoan Swat Team v. Konnan 2000 & Chris Adams
Holy cow, an actual competitive match. OK, so let’s unpack this one. The SST is actually Samu (fired from the WWF in 1994 and replaced by Barbarian) and Tama (Fatu’s brother, aka the Samoan Savage). Konnan 2000 is a repackaged Scott Putski, escaped from the Global Wrestling Federation, and there’s a promotion we’ll have to take a look at soon. Adams does an ugly sequence with Samu to start, as Samu has apparently eaten Yokozuna since leaving and can barely go down for a drop-down without getting winded. Konnan 2000 comes in, looking like he’s cosplaying Ultimate Warrior, which he basically was, and he does a test of strength with Tama and gets stomped down for his troubles. Over to Samu, who goads Adams into the ring to distract the ref, and the Samoans do some clobbering while Terry Taylor does the world’s worst Dusty Rhodes impression. How hard is it to mock Dusty? You talk with a lisp and say “THEY BE CLUBBERING!”. And yet he managed to screw that up. Round ends and we take a break.
Round 2 and we get our first mention of Paul Alperstein (TAKE A DRINK!) and Konnan 2000 hits Samu with a clothesline and gets him tied in the ropes. But then Adams charges like a moron and clotheslines himself on the top rope, allowing the SST to take over. Samu drops headbutts on Adams for two and gets a terrible gut wrench, dropping Adams right on his hip instead of bringing him down for a proper bump. Konnan 2000 gets the hot tag and he’s dumb enough to ram their heads together, but Samu hits Tama by mistake and Konnan 2000 finishes with a flying splash at 7:43. Apparently next week they face Nails & The Executioner as a part of a tournament, and I have questions about a convicted prisoner teaming with an executioner. Seems like some kind of conflict of interest. This was a mess and Samu could not have given less of a shit to be there. *1/2.
Meanwhile, Ken Resnick is on assignment, so a woman named “Chris E.” gets to stand there with the microphone while Adams pretends to care about a match with Nails next week.
Cowboy Bob Orton v. T. Rex
Bob has a pretty good generic ripoff of “Wanted Dead or Alive” as his entrance music now. Second mention of President Paul Alperstein (TAKE A DRINK!) and apparently Orton has been demanding a rematch with AWF champion Tito Santana. Wait, what? Did I miss a bunch of episodes where a tournament happened? So I did a quick bit of research and it seems that the episodes on the KrisPLettuce drive come from a 4-disc DVD set released years after the fact, and the tournament for the AWF title happened at the end of 1994, after episode 2, and now we’ve jumped ahead something like 6 months to somewhere around April 1995 for episode 3. Which means that I’ve managed to avoid the promised Warlord & Nails tag team match, sadly. Orton beats Rex down in the corner and we get an inset promo from the awesome team of Fidel Sierra & Ron Powers, who are managed by Sheik Adnan. That’s quite the combination. T. Rex gets some offense in the corner, but Orton puts him down with a dropkick and finishes with the piledriver at 2:40. Afterwards, Orton does an interview with Terry Taylor, desperately trying to sound like crazy era Terry Funk, and demanding a rematch with Tito Santana.
Sgt. Slaughter v. The Terrorist
I’m not sure which country the Terrorist is representing, but I’ll tell ya which one it’s NOT: AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! He’s wearing military fatigues and a camouflage mask, making sure he can’t be seen. Maybe it’s John Cena. We don’t have any proof it’s NOT. Just saying. Slaughter with a gutbuster while Taylor takes another crack at his Dusty Rhodes impression, and thankfully it’s a little better this time. The Terrorist gets a couple of cheapshots and declares “WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR USA NOW?”, and I’m sure everyone in the arena ponders their life choices as a result. However, before he can convince anyone to move to whatever country he’s representing, Slaughter finishes him with the Slaughter cannon and cobra clutch at 3:00. I’m getting that Slaughter really loves the USA.
Meanwhile, Koko B. Ware and Tony Atlas are teaming up against Fidel Sierra & Ron Powers next week as we march towards crowning tag team champions. Atlas wants to get to the end of the rainbow and get the belts that are presumably there instead of a pot of gold.
Hercules & Mr. Hughes v. The Renegades (Jeff Gaylord & The Warlord)
Wait wait, so you’ve got GayLORD and WarLORD and the best tag team name they could come up with is THE RENEGADES?!? Do I have to do everything here? Also this might be one of the most terrifyingly bad combination of awful wrestlers that they could have shat from the brain of whoever was booking this crap. Gaylord and his magnificent 90s mullet tries to overpower Hughes and gets nowhere, as he bounces off Hughes and now Taylor moves into a Hulk Hogan impression. Gaylord finally puts Hughes down with a shoulderblock, and Warlord comes in with some clubbing forearms as the round expires with essentially nothing having occurred.
Round 2 and Warlord hammers on Herc in the corner, but Herc takes him down with an armbar. Over to Hughes and he continues working on the arm, but Warlord slugs back and gets a hiptoss, which was literally Warlord standing there and Hughes taking the bump without even touching him. Over to Gaylord and he slugs it out with Hercules, but Herc dumps him on the floor while Terry switches to impressions of Macho Man and Roddy Piper, apparently suffering some kind of dissociative personality disorder while doing commentary as the round expires. So the show has that going for it at least. Well Gaylord took a bump in that round so I guess that was better?
Round 3 and Hercules chokes out Gaylord in the corner and Hughes gets two. They all brawl outside and it’s BREAKING LOOSE IN TULSA, so the ref throws out the match at 11:19. So this apparently gives the team of Greg Valentine & Tommy Rich a bye to the next round. The announcers want to know where President Paul Alperstein is (TAKE A DRINK!) while they all fight at a speed at least 1.5 times faster than the actual match. Well this was 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back again. -**.
Meanwhile, Tito Santana denies the accusations of dodging Bob Orton, claiming that he’s been busy with a schedule of defenses set by the championship committee and he’ll defend against Orton if they tell him to. What a babyface this guy is.
Well this was a show that happened, and you can’t take that away from it.