Mike Reviews Shows Considered To Be Stinkers – WCW SuperBrawl V

Happy Stinky Friday Everyone!

Back with another Stinker Review today, as well as the continuation of our journey into 1995 WCW, as we take a look at SuperBrawl V. Cage Match has this show at a miserable 3.51 out of 10, so I’m suitably wary about how bad it could be. Our Main Event is Hulk Hogan defending the WCW World Title against Vader, with The Sullivans EXPLODING on the undercard.

Still though, maybe folks are being unkind and SuperBrawl V is actually better than it’s reputation. I guess we’ll have to watch it and find out, so pour one out for me.

You can view the card for SuperBrawl V by clicking below;

WCW SuperBrawl V Card

Pics come courtesy of WWE

SuperBrawl V is emanating from Baltimore, Maryland on the 19th of February 1995

Calling the action are Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan

As usual with WCW, we have to wait nearly ten minutes for the opening bell of the first match to ring, as the announce team yaks on for a bit and then we get to see footage of Vader going on a rampage on the pre-show. Yeah, sound, can we have a wrestling match on this wrestling pay per view that we bought to watch wrestling on please?

Opening Match
“Pretty” Paul Roma Vs “Das Wunderkind” Alex Wright

Roma had been tasked with making the young German lad look good here, as WCW was continuing to try and push Wright as an up and coming star. However, Roma was very bitter at receiving such an assignment, so he instead takes the lions share of the offence and doesn’t really give Wright much of a chance to look good outside of a few moments, such as when he lets Wright do some arm drags and the like. Paul Orndorff, Roma’s tag partner at the time, heads down to ringside in order to cheer his partner on whilst Wright works an arm bar. Roma takes really slow ugly bumps for most of Wright’s offence, including a terrible looking one for a fireman’s carry at one stage.

Eventually some of the crowd starts cheering for Roma, because he’s just clattering poor Wright for fun and doing basically nothing to make the youngster look good. Roma comes off the top with a big elbow drop at one stage, and then pulls Wright up on a two count just so he can “prove” how much tougher he is than Wright because he would have won the match otherwise. Roma then takes a, frankly embarrassing, bad bump for a hip toss, which only makes Roma look like he can’t bump properly rather than making Wright look like he can’t execute the move correctly. Roma and Orndorff have a conference following that, which leads to Wright dropkicking Roma into Orndorff and getting a quick roll-up for two, with Roma of course kicking out at 3.1, because of course he does.

WINNER: ALEX WRIGHT
RATING: *

Thoughts: You can get a more detailed recap of this match, and the background to it, from reading J’s article on the subject. It was of course a staggering display of unprofessionalism from Roma, and you couldn’t help but feel sorry for Wright, as he has always come across as a pleasant affable chap whenever I’ve seen him interviewed and he was just doing what he was told to do. Roma was a solid wrestler who had been working since the 1980’s, so I can understand that he might have been bitter that his star was waning and he was now being asked to make someone from the next generation look good at his own expense. However, as Bobby Eaton showed during his match with Wright at Clash #30, going in there and doing your job doesn’t have to hurt your standing if you do it properly, especially if it’s a good competitive match. Roma could have put Wright over the right way here and not been hurt from it. Ironically, by trying to “protect” himself he came across even worse than he would have done for just being a professional and doing what was asked of him. My main takeaway from this wasn’t that Wright was an over pushed punk that got showed up, or that Paul Roma was really cool for putting the youngster in his place. No, the main takeaway I had from this was that Bobby Eaton truly was a fantastic worker, as his match with Wright was good in every way that this one wasn’t. It also showed that Wright could have good matches when his opponent was working with him as opposed to working against him, and working with your opponent in order to entertain the fans is ultimately the whole point of this thing

Mean Gene Okerlund is interviewing The Harlem Heat (Booker T and Stevie Ray and Sister Sherri backstage. Sherri looks great here, and she cuts her usual scary angry promo on The Nasty Boys. Gene then gets Booker and Stevie mixed up at one stage, which is every interviewer’s nightmare mistake, although I’m sure Gene brushed it off easily enough. This wasn’t a good promo, but the main thrust of it is that Booker promised a new finisher for The Heat when they wrestle later on.

Match Two
Bunkhouse Buck w/ Colonel Robert Parker and THE MONSTER MENG Vs “Hacksaw” James Duggan

I think was Duggan due to have a feud with Meng, so this could be a way to get us there. This one is solely a slugfest, as neither of these two are going to exchange technical holds or perform exciting high flying moves. It’s a scrappy affair, but Duggan is over with the crowd so it has that going for it at least. Buck continues to have one of the strangest physiques and looks I’ve seen on a wrestler, being lanky and both skinny and pudgy at the same time. He kind of looks a bit like Kenny Everett actually. Duggan gets the better of things in the early going, but then Buck cheats to take over and the crowd enthusiasm dies off as a result. We get another example of WCW’s inconsistent over the top rope DQ rule, as Duggan clotheslines Buck over the top and it’s not a DQ for some reason. The action is mostly just punching and kicking, which is fine when the crowd is invested and less so when they aren’t.

The match structure feels really odd as well, although it starts out normal enough with Duggan getting his shine to start, followed by the cut off as a result of Buck’s cheating, and then we head into the heat segment. At that point you expect Duggan to make the big comeback so that we can head into the home stretch and get to the finish, but instead Duggan just regains control without much in the way of fanfare and starts working some rest holds, which flattens the crowd out further because seeing the babyface just shrug off the heat segment and then apply a litany of boring holds doesn’t really make much sense. The finish is really odd as well, as Buck seemingly deliberately flings Duggan into Parker when Parker gets up on the apron, which you’d think would lead into a pin attempt for Buck with the idea being that Parker sacrificed himself for his client. However, Buck makes zero attempt to follow up on that, and Duggan just walks over and clotheslines a bemused Buck for three.

WINNER: HACKSAW DUGGAN
RATING: 1/2*

Thoughts: This was sloppy as all heck in the early going, but it had some decent energy and, up to the heat segment, it looked like it was going to be a so-so match where Duggan would take a little bit of heat before making the big snappy comeback and winning relatively easily. However, there was no big comeback really, as Duggan just got back up and put Buck in chinlock’s before it was time for the nonsensical finish. I have no idea what went wrong here, but whatever it was caused this one to be total junk

Meng attacks Duggan post-match as revenge for Duggan clattering into Parker, even though all of that was Buck’s fault.

Mean Gene is backstage with The Nasty Boys (Knobbs and Sags) and they are more focused on fighting than talking. Knobbs promises to clock Sister Sherri if she tries to get involved later on, which is an interesting comment for a babyface to make, even a more wild and instable one like a Nasty Boy. This was the usual yelling Nasty Boys promo, but it was fine for what it was.

Match Three
“The Taskmaster” Kevin Sullivan w/ The Butcher Vs Evad Sullivan

Kevin and Evad are storyline brothers, but they’ve fallen out due to Evad buddying up to Hulk Hogan, who Kevin hates. This is the blowoff match between them so they can finally get this whole family feud thing out of the way so that Evad can move onto other things and Kevin can focus on going after The Hulkster. This one has very little in the way of crowd interest, and the action isn’t that good either owing to Evad being pretty crummy as a wrestler. I will say that Evad sells better than he usually does here, and his efforts to fight from underneath aren’t entirely terrible. If this match had anything approaching good crowd reactions then it probably wouldn’t be that bad, as they do manage to make it somewhat feel like a desperate scrap between brothers who have fallen out, but without any crowd investment it’s just two balding old men throwing punches at one another. Kevin eventually throws Evad into Butcher and then gets a crappy looking tights assisted school boy roll-up for three.

WINNER: KEVIN SULLIVAN
RATING: *

Thoughts: They structured this how you would expect them to for a brawl between two storyline brothers, but sadly it was for a feud and storyline that the crowd didn’t care about, so it didn’t have the heat to lift it above the below par level of the brawling. It was probably one of Evad’s better performances since I started doing these WCW reviews, but that’s not saying much. It’s also strange that we saw the same “throw a wrestler into the second/manager” spot in back to back matches

Butcher sells his surgically repaired face following that collision with Evad, whilst Kevin doesn’t seem that bothered about his ally’s suffering. Kevin in fact walks away after a certain point, leaving Butcher selling in the aisle. I think that led to Butcher becoming The Man With No Name for a bit until he ended up as The Zodiac Man. OSW Review did a whole video on Ed Leslie’s many gimmicks and even with that it’s still difficult to keep track of all the changes and the chronology of when they happened.

Mean Gene Okerlund is interviewing Big Bubba Rogers and The Avalanche in the locker room, who are wrestling Sting and Randy Savage later on. Lanche isn’t worried about The Butcher’s face injury, because he’s more focused on squishing his opponents later. Bubba is sick of doing what the people want him to do, and now he’s going to do what he wants. This was an average promo, but it achieved what it needed to.

Match Four
WCW World Tag Team Titles
Champs: The Harlem Heat (Booker T and Stevie Ray) w/ Sister Sherri Vs The Nasty Boys (Knobbs and Sags)

The Nasty’s got a win over The Heat before Booker and Stevie won the belts (well, they HAD won them prior to that show, but it hadn’t aired on television yet) so that earned The Nasty’s a Tag Title shot here. Sags has a serious case of “job face” going on tonight during his entrance, so that kind of gives away what the finish is going to be. This is the usual Nasty Boys match from this era, in that the brawling they do is decent, and the crowd is into them as babyfaces, but the match goes about 5-10 minutes too long and starts to drag as a result. The Nasty’s were built for doing 5-10 minute brawling style matches, so when you asked them to go north of that you were always going to have issues unless they were working a really good team like The Hart Foundation or The Rockers.

The Nasty’s attack the legs of both Booker and Stevie during the babyface shine, seemingly in an effort to soften them up for a leg based tap out of some kind, because when you think of The Nasty Boys your mind immediately leaps towards their keen submission wrestling acumen. Stevie Ray doesn’t really work that well with the challengers, but Booker is his usual solid self, with Sherri getting some cheap shots in when the ref isn’t looking. Sags is The Nasty Boy that plays babyface in peril, although it takes The Heat three attempts to finally do it, as Sags doesn’t seem interested in just getting cut off and worked over. When Sags actually bothers selling, he’s decent at it and the crowd gets behind the challengers in the hopes that we will have new tag Champs before SuperBrawl is over.

Knobbs does a very good hot tag segment at least, with the crowd going NUTS when he catches The Heat with a Double DDT at one stage. Things breakdown following that, with Sherri coming in to clock Knobbs but catching her own man in the process. This seemingly leads to The Nasty Boys then winning the tag belts, but a second referee comes down to say that a Nasty threw a Heat member over the top rope at some point during the melee at the end, so we have a Dusty Finish. Annoying as a Dusty Finish almost always is; it’s especially galling when it comes from an over the top rope infraction, as WCW almost never enforces that one with any level of consistency and it just makes it all the more frustrating when they magically decide that it’s a DQ again when a match calls for it to be.

WINNERS BY DQ: HARLEM HEAT
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: Not actively awful, but it was too long and a bit sloppy in places. The finish being such a sucky bowl of suck didn’t help with things either. The Nasty Boys did NOT need to be wrestling for 17 minutes, and this match was a good example as to why, as they just didn’t have the stamina for it, nor an exciting enough collection of moves, even though they were decent in small bursts and the crowd was certainly into their act here

Sting and Randy Savage are being interviewed in the locker room by Mean Gene, whilst Bobby Heenan annoys Tony Schiavone at the commentary desk. Savage isn’t interested in talking tonight because he’s so gosh darn amped up, which Sting gives an example of by showing scars on his chest from when the two were chopping one another earlier. Sting seems genuinely upset that Savage isn’t talking, because it means that Sting has to do the promo by himself. This was wacky and quite fun.

The next WCW pay per view is Uncensored; and heaven help me I’ll probably be reviewing it if the WWE Network is still a thing or Netflix gets the archives. (I ended up getting to it in 2024 before the Network went away, so look out for it next month)

We get a video recap for the next match.

Match Five
The Blacktop Bully w/ Colonel Robert Parker Vs “The Natural” Dustin Rhodes

Bully is Barry Darsow/Demolition Smash, who entered WCW as an anti-social truck driver. Bully got imprisoned for attacking Dustin, but Parker has bailed Bully out and now Bully is a hired goon for the colonel. WCW commissioner Nick Bockwinkel demands that THE MONSTER MENG leave ringside before the match, and threatens to suspend Parker if Meng doesn’t leave, which eventually leads to Parker getting Meng to leave. I really don’t know why they were STILL doing this feud between Parker and The Rhodes’ in the February of 1995 when it had been going on for nearly a year by this point and they’d essentially had the two notable blow off’s that the feud required with the War Games match at Fall Brawl 1994 and the Arn Anderson Vs Dustin match back at Halloween Havoc 1994.

Bully has his working boots on in the early going as he’s bumping all over the place. It looks like it tires Bully out somewhat though, as he’s looking a bit bulkier here than he was during his Repo Man run. Dustin mostly alternates between working holds and bumping Bully around, and it’s decent action, if a little bit bland. Bully mostly does punches and kicks whilst yelling at Dustin and the crowd, and he’s just fine when it comes to that. It’s quite an unremarkable bout in all honesty, but it’s competently worked at least. Parker distracts Dustin at one point, which leads to Bully eventually managing to cut Dustin off and work some heat. Dustin sells that well and Parker makes sure to get some cheap shots in when he can.

Again, I have to ponder why this feud was STILL going on between Parker and Dustin by the time SuperBrawl rolled around. It was a perfectly fine feud for 6 months or so and it had a logical blow-off, why couldn’t they have moved both parties onto new feuds? Instead we’ve got Barry Darsow and Dustin Rhodes having a functional, if not especially exciting, match here that isn’t really achieving anything. Dustin eventually makes the comeback, with Parker ending up having to save the Bully by putting Bully’s foot on the ropes whilst Dustin has Bully pinned. Dustin attacks Parker for that, which the crowd does enjoy at least, and that leads to us getting the WrestleMania V Rick Rude Vs Ultimate Warrior finish, where Parker pulls out Dustin’s leg when he’s trying to suplex Bully into the ring, and that leads to Bully landing on top and Parker holding down Dustin’s leg so that Bully can get the three count.

WINNER: BLACKTOP BULLY
RATING: **1/4

Thoughts: Yeah this was fine. I don’t have a lot to say about it really. It was a mechanically sound match, but it probably was too long at 16 minutes and it might have been snappier and more entertaining if they’d shaved 5-8 minutes off of it. Bully took some good bumps in order to make Dustin look good, and Dustin’s selling was on point. It was basically just two fellers having a match, with the antics of Parker at the end ensuring that this seemingly never-ending feud will keep going

Mean Gene attempts to interview Vader backstage, but Vader is more interested in throwing things around and being scary. All of this would mean more if Hulk Hogan hadn’t already no-sold Vader’s finisher and made him look like a chump.

The commentary team yaks for a bit and then Ric Flair joins Mean Gene in the entrance way for some promo time. Flair is coy about possibly being there to help Vader, and instead says he is there for a party in Baltimore. Flair was almost face-like in the promo there, with the idea being that I think he was trying to throw people off the scent about his real reasons for being there.

Co-Main
The Avalanche and Big Bubba Rogers Vs “Macho Man” Randy Savage and The Man Called Sting

Rogers went Heel on Sting back at Clash of the Champions #30, so now the two have recruited Lanche and Savage respectively for a tag match. Keiji Muto is actually in the crowd for this one, and he’d eventually wrestle for WCW later in the year on a pay per view event. Lance and Rogers are both huge men, but they are both deceptively nimble to go with it, so there’s good energy to this one and the two babyfaces are really over with the crowd. Sting and Savage look to be really fired up by the crowd reactions and it gives their work a little extra snap to it. The babyfaces use speed and agility in the early going to put the monster Heels on the back-foot, but any considerable power moves usually end up countered. It’s a good story to tell for a match like this and it makes the most of the attributes all four wrestlers have.

Eventually Sting gets swatted out of the air by Avalanche during a Stinger Splash attempt, which leads to Sting being the babyface in peril during the heat segment. The crowd remains invested in the contest and cheers Sting on to make the comeback, with Sting even managing to body slam Lanche at one stage. In a funny spot, Rogers cheap shots Sting from the apron at one stage, which sends Sting down to the mat and head first into Lanche’s nether regions, thus meaning Rogers’ nefarious tactics actually led to him hurting his own partner. I love it when villains get immediate comeuppance for being evil, it really rams home the idea that wrestling is a morality play at heart. Eventually things break down and that leads to Sting getting a crossbody on Avalanche, with Lanche tripping over a prone Rogers when it happens, leading to Sting completing the move and getting three.

WINNERS: STING & SAVAGE
RATING: ***

Thoughts: This was good fun, as they told a solid story in the match with the smaller babyfaces having to use their wits to overcome the bigger Heels. I also liked that the Heels were ultimately punished for their cheating, as Rogers shouldn’t have even been in the ring at the end as he was the illegal man, but his being there ended up costing his team for the match as Sting might not have successfully delivered the cross body if Rogers hadn’t been there for Avalanche to trip over

Hulk Hogan does quite a rambling and boring promo with Mean Gene ahead of the match with Vader. Hilariously, Jimmy Hart says that he will be able to handle Ric Flair if The Nature Boy should get involved later on. Jimmy, with all the love in the world, you look like you’d struggle to handle a chicken, bacon and avocado sub sandwich, how on Earth are you going to stand up to a multiple time World Champ?

Main Event
WCW World Title
Champ: Hulk Hogan w/ Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart Vs Vader

Vader defeated Jim Duggan back at Starrcade to become the #1 contender, and he attacked Hogan back at Clash 30 by delivering his Powerbomb finisher. However, Hogan popped right back up from the move and essentially killed Vader off as a top guy in WCW in the process. I suppose if Vader destroys Hogan here then he can regain his momentum, but I can’t see that one working for Terry, brother. Hogan quite literally slaps Vader around to start, with Vader doing a very convincing job of shrugging it off and looking as scary as possible. Hogan does at least react with a mixture of shock and pensiveness at Vader no selling his initial flurry, which helps with rehabbing Vader as some kind of a Heel threat after the silliness at Clash 30. I don’t know why that couldn’t have been the majority the build for this one to be honest, as they could have really told a good story that Hogan was going to be in real jeopardy here, giving the young Hulkamaniacs nightmares at the thought of their hero getting creamed.

They do a good job early on of telling the story that Vader can basically take anything Hogan can throw at him and keep going. Hogan tries punches and slaps, and Vader just gets shrugs it off. Hogan tries to use wrestling holds, and Vader easily escapes them. Hogan even flings Vader over the metal railings into the front row, and it just ends up making Vader angry as he stomps back into the ring to continue the fight. Hogan manages to clothesline Vader over the top rope to the floor at one stage, but that isn’t a DQ here because they don’t want it to be. This is actually one of the better ways to do this babyface shine, as it allows Hogan to feed his ego by getting a lot of offence in the early going, but it also assists in making Vader look tough as he’s allowed to absorb it all and keep coming. Eventually Hogan makes the mistake he usually makes when wrestling scary big dudes, as he goes for a body slam and Vader falls on top because he’s too heavy, which gives us our heat segment.

Hogan sells well during the heat, which was always something he was good at, and Vader manages to tone down his usual snug offence a bit in order to appease the Champ whilst still looking like a violent scary monster. I can totally see some hating this match structure due to how much offence Hogan gets in the opening sections, as I bet some would just want to see Hogan get killed and make sporadic comebacks. That certainly worked well when Vader would wrestle a Sting or a Ric Flair, and it might have possibly led to a more interesting match here at SuperBrawl. However, Hulk Hogan in WCW was a totally different prospect when it came to ego when compared to the one that fought the likes of Andre The Giant, Earthquake and Yokozuna in the WWF, and he was going to make sure that he got his stuff in here, even if it was to the overall detriment of the match. Thus, if Hogan is going to get said stuff in, then having Vader react to it the way he has is possibly the best way to protect the challenger.

Vader hasn’t really been hurt by being on the receiving end of so many Hogan attacks, because his ability to survive it all has only enhanced his monster image. Hogan even gets desperate at one stage and clatters Vader with a chair outside of the ring, but Vader even manages to shrug of THAT and easily regains control back inside the ring until it’s time for Hogan to Hulk Up and make the comeback. The crowd is actually HOSS for Hogan’s Hulk Up, showing that they’ve done an effective job of getting the fans into the match here. Hogan finally manages to get the boot and Leg Drop, but Vader kicks out at ONE, which at least evens the score for Hogan killing off Vader’s finish at Clash 30. They even give Vader a visual pin fall, as the ref gets bumped and Vader gets the Powerbomb, with Hogan selling it properly this time. The ref being out causes a delay in the count, thus giving Vader an out for Hogan surviving, and eventually they send Flair into the ring to attack Hogan so that Vader doesn’t have to lose by pin.

WINNER BY DQ: HOGAN
RATING: ***

Thoughts: I was really worried about this one after watching Clash 30, but the SuperBrawl match actually ended up being good for the most part. The structure might not be for everyone, as it called for Hogan to get more offence than some would probably like, but Vader was totally protected here, both in the way he survived all of Hogan’s big moves and also in the way that he didn’t get pinned at the end. I personally would have had Vader win here after taking the majority of the match, in a similar way to how Undertaker defeated Hogan at Survivor Series 1991. You could have always had Flair cost Hogan the match, thus giving Hogan an out for losing and also giving a storyline reason for Flair getting re-instated, as Hogan could demand it in order to get his revenge before then finally rallying to get the World Title back from Vader.

Realistically though; Hogan wasn’t going to be doing that, so what we got instead was probably the best case scenario as Vader got to kick out of the Leg Drop of DOOM, Hogan actually sold Vader’s finisher properly this time, and the finish not only found a way to have Hogan retain without Vader having to actually lose, but it also laid the table well for both more Vader Vs Hogan matches as well also setting things up for a Ric Flair return to the ring due to his involvement at the end. The crowd got into the match and were at a fever pitch by the end, so they built it well and the fans didn’t seem too merked off by the DQ finish, as they got a good match first and the outcome made logical sense. Flair would still be bitter about Hogan ending his career, and would thus want to attack Hogan as soon as the chance presented itself, so of course he’d do it here

Flair and Vader beatdown Hogan until Randy Savage and Sting make the save.

Is It Really A Stinker?

The last two matches were good enough that I wouldn’t call SuperBrawl V a full on Stinker, but it was certainly the next level up. The undercard was mostly filled with awful to below average matches, and the crowd reactions were lacking in certain cases as well, especially in the battle between The Sullivan’s. There was definitely more lacklustre/bad than good, but there was just enough that was good that the show wasn’t entirely irredeemable. WCW does get some brownie points for doing an effective job of rehabbing Vader somewhat at least, which they desperately needed to do after the Clash 30 debacle.

Final Rating – Stinky
(Scores does on a scale of Stinker/Stinky/Odourless/Pleasant/Fragrant)

Logan has also reviewed this show as well if you’d like to read how he saw it