Happy SuperBrawl Saturday Everyone! I hope all of your collective shirts are too tight on this momentous day!

This week we return to a WCW show I’ve been intending to watch properly for a while now in the form of SuperBrawl VI. It’s probably best known for the Kevin Sullivan Vs Brian Pillman match, but there’s also Ric Flair taking on Randy Savage and that has to be good right?

If you’d like to view the card for the event you can do so by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1617&page=2

Happy Saturday Everyone!

These ECW reviews don’t often do that well, but sod it, I enjoy them so let’s do something for me! The Main Event on this one is The Eliminators Vs Da Gangstas inside a Steel Cage, with Taz taking on Tommy Dreamer in the under card.

Happy Extreme Saturday Everyone!

Today we’ve got some more ECW action from 1996, as Rob Van Dam takes on Sabu in the Main Event whilst Chris Jericho and Scorpio go at it in the under card. Steve Williams also appears, hence the name of the show

Happy Extreme Saturday Everyone!

This is another ECW DVD that I have in my collection so I decided to give it the review treatment. We’ll probably get to Doctor Is In next month at some stage, which is a good show from memory.

The Main Event on this one is Sandman and Scorpio taking on Da Gangsta’s and The Head Hunters in a three way dance, whilst Sabu takes on Mikey Whipwreck and Raven defends the ECW Title against Damien 666 of all people in the under card. We’ve also got Taz Vs Chris Jericho, but I don’t think that one is as good as it sounds.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Let’s stick with 1996 but jump over to the WWF this week, as we look at this IYH event from July featuring Camp Cornette Vs Shawn Michaels, Ahmed Johnson and Sid in the Main Event. Ultimate Warrior was originally supposed to be on the babyface team, but he ended up getting let go for missing House Shows and Sid got inserted instead.

Elsewhere we’ve got Stone Cold Steve Austin Vs Marc Mero in a King of the Ring rematch and Mankind takes on Henry O. Godwinn, who is subbing in for Jake Roberts. These IYH shows are usually a pretty easy watch as they come in under two hours, so this should be fun enough.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Seeing as I reviewed an ECW show from June 1996 last week and I haven’t reviewed this GAB show before, I decided to review it this week as it’s a show I generally enjoy and I’m interested to see if it still holds up.

It’s also quite an historically significant one as well, as not only do The Horsemen get a new member but Kevin Nash and Scott Hall show up to set the table for Bash at the Beach and the forming of the nWo the following month.

Plus, we’ve got Benoit/Sullivan and Malenko/Mysterio to enjoy as well!

Happy Saturday Everyone!

These ECW reviews don’t normally do that well but I do enjoy watching the shows themselves most of the time, so I’ll just be indulgent for today and do something for me.

ECW had a pretty hot summer in 1996 (pun not intended), with this show, Heatwave and Doctor Is In all being highly watchable shows with good storyline advancement and the odd banger of a match thrown in for good measure. The latter category could potentially be filled by Chris Jericho taking on Anthony Durante and Rob Van Dam taking on Sabu.

We’ve also got Taz taking on Paul Varelens of the UFC in an effort to enhance his “shooter” image by taking out a real MMA guy, so there’s plenty of intrigue to go along with what will hopefully be some good wrestling.

I enjoyed doing Mind Games recently so let’s do the follow up show, featuring Mankind taking on The Undertaker in a Buried Alive match, whilst Sid and Vader collide for the #1 Contender status to the WWF Title

Como Estan Beeches!

I’ve wanted to re-watch the Shawn Michaels Vs Mankind Main Event from this show for a while, so I thought I might as well review the entire show for good measure. This was a WWF pay per view from Philly and would represent the first time that the WWF and ECW worked together, so it’s kind of a historically significant show with an absolute banger in the Main Event, which was more than most of the throwaway IYH shows could boast at least.

Bonjourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ya cheese eatin’ surrender monkeys!

Next week we’ve got a Stinker Review on the docket, but first we must close out our journey to the Summer of 1996 with a trip to our old friends from Philly. ECW was on a pretty decent hot streak at the time, although they couldn’t get on pay per view despite Paul Heyman’s many attempts. I used to have the Laserlight Digital cut of this show and I liked it so much I eventually shelled out for the RF Video version just so I could watch it with the real music left intact.

The big stories during this time period were Raven’s feud with The Sandman, which involved Raven quite literally stealing Sandman’s family from him in a super dark storyline that hit all kinds of nerves but never really had much in the way of a satisfying payoff due to Raven needing to divert course to feud with Terry Funk when 1997 came around.

Elsewhere, Taz was in the middle of his “Path of Rage”, where he’d destroy absolutely everyone on route to a big match with his nemesis Sabu. Shane Douglas was trying to connive his way to the ECW TV Title whilst also trying to avoid getting killed by the angry Pitbull’s. D-Von Dudley was trying to wrest control of The Dudley Family from his brother Big Dick.

And in the tag division Da Gangsta’s, The Eliminators, The Samoan Gangsta Party and The Bruise Brothers all hated one another and were feuding amongst themselves in various combinations, with it all building to a Four Way Dance on a future show for the tag belts themselves.

So yeah, lots going on and this show was sure to continue it. It also has genuinely one of the all-time greatest ECW matches on it, so let’s quit our jibber-jabber and watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You

The Summer of 96 reviews continue, as we look at WCW’s most memorable effort of that Summer in the form of Bash at the Beach 1996. If I were Scott I’d now make a joke that the show was so memorable because it had Joe Gomez on it, but sadly Scott has beaten me to that veritable goldmine so I’ll have to just persevere with posting obscure references to British comedy shows.

Anyway, the real reason this show is so well known is because it featured a gigantic SWERVE in the Main Event that helped turn WCW around from being in a distant second place to the WWF all the way to being the top dog in American Wrestling.

Kevin Nash and Scott Hall decided to leave the WWF and take up Eric Bischoff’s offer of some cushy WCW deals. Rather than just bring them in like they were new guys though, Bischoff instead decided that no one would buy that because Nash and Hall had been such prominent members of the WWF’s upper-card for the past couple of years.

Thus, rather than ignoring all of that WWF backstory, WCW decided to just acknowledge that these two guys were big stars in the WWF and now they’d come to WCW to try and have their run of the place. This allowed WCW to present Nash and Hall almost as an invading force, which combined with the fact they started kicking some monumental arse got them instantly over as a dangerous Heel threat.

Bash at the Beach was to be their first official in-ring match in WCW since returning, and they had an ace up their sleeve in the form of a mystery third man that they promised they would reveal at the show itself. As a result of the (frankly excellent) storytelling going on each week on Nitro, WCW had a lot of interest going into The Bash. The question was, would they deliver a mystery third man worth talking about?

Let’s watch on and find out!

Hello You!

Over the next three weeks all the reviews are going to have a theme, in that all of the events I will be reviewing will have all taken part in the summer of 1996. We’ll be journeying to the WWF, stopping off in WCW and then finishing our trip by paying a visit to ECW.

This week we’re starting off with the WWF and their King of the Ring event from June 1996. I went with KOTR over the other two pay per view events the WWF put on that summer because it’s probably the overall best of the three and we also get to see Stone Cold Steve Austin taking a step to becoming the biggest star in the entire industry, which should give us an interesting angle to view the show from if nothing else.

I’ll be watching the Silver Vision Tagged Classics version of the show over the WWE Network cut, mainly because I think the Silver Vision version doesn’t dub out “Don’t Go Messin’ Wit A Country Boy”, and if I’m going to suffer through a Godwinn’s match then I at least want to enjoy the only part of their act that I actually liked.

This show was originally supposed to be a real coming out party for Triple H, as he’d win the tournament and no doubt go on to get a sizeable push for the rest of the summer as a result. However, The Curtain Call incident at MSG put a stop to that, as Triple H was the only one of the four that Vince McMahon could actually punish for it, so poor Tri saw his reign as King snuffed out before it could even start. And thus, the wrestling world never heard of Triple H ever again…

Aside from the tournament itself, we’ve got a wacky storyline in the Main Event where Davey Boy Smith’s is challenging Shawn Michaels, Goldust is defending the IC Title against an enraged Ahmed Johnson and Mankind is having his first ever pay per view encounter with The Undertaker. So yeah, there’s a lot on the docket, so let’s stop chatting wham and watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Back with another classic ECW review, as I’ve been meaning to watch this one again for a while and now seemed like as good a time as any.

1996 was a hot year for ECW from a creative perspective, with Taz’s “Path of Rage” and Raven’s feud with The Sandman being notable highlights. Most of the year was spent trying to finally get the company on to pay per view, with things like the Mass Transit incident delaying it until 1997. The product had a good mix of brawls, character work and wrestling still though, and when I first became aware of the company in 1999 I had a lot of fun going back to hoover up some of the better shows from the companies 96 prime.

Going into this show, Raven was the ECW World Champ and was still embroiled in multiple issues with the likes of Tommy Dreamer and Shane Douglas. Dreamer had recently stolen Raven’s girlfriend Beulah away from him, so Raven had in-turn shacked up with Kimona Wanalaya, although he made it clear more than once that he was still in love with Beulah and didn’t have much time for Kimona outside of a purely physical relationship. As a result that relationship fizzled and Kimona actually ended up with Douglas, as this was before Douglas had taken on Francine as his valet.

Douglas had been kind of a tweener since coming back to ECW following a failed stint in the WWF, in that he was still as disgusting and despicable human being, but he also was feuding with guys like Raven and occasionally even helping out Dreamer from time to time, even though it was mostly for selfish reasons. It was very much “shades of grey, bro”, but in 96 that concept hadn’t been beaten into the ground yet, and because Raven was such a clear villain and Dreamer was a clear face, it worked having Douglas in the middle pulling the strings.

Elsewhere, Taz had gone heel at the end of 1995 due to the fans welcoming Sabu back to the promotion, and he was tearing through everyone in a vicious manner on route to an eventual collision with his former tag team partner. Sabu was a bit busy feuding with Rob Van Dam at the time though, so his eventual blow off with Taz would have to wait.

Going into Hostile City Showdown, the two main matches were scheduled to be Rob Van Dam facing off with Sabu and Raven defending his World Title against Douglas, with Tommy Dreamer taking on Raven’s hired thug “Bulldozer” Brian Lee in the under card. It was a pretty stacked show and there was good interest for it as a result, especially as Douglas had been teasing that he would reveal the identity of a supposed secret lover of Beulah.

Will the big matches deliver? Let’s watch on and find out!

Hello You!

Andy PG suggested this one, describing the Main Event as “the Cage Match from Heck” (I may have cleaned that up a little bit). I have actually seen this show before, but it’s been a while since I watched it and I was intrigued to give it another look.

This is showing up on a Monday instead of the usual Saturday slot as I had a G1 review to post on Saturday and Rick had one up on Sunday, so I decided to post this up on Monday so as to not over-saturate the place with too much of my stuff and to also try and not step on Rick’s toes too much. Feel free to check mine and Rick’s archives if you want to catch yourself up on the G1 action.

For those not au fait, these reviews are essentially me trying my own hand at what the fine folk at Wrestle Crap do, where I watch a show that is widely considered to be awful in a quest to see whether it deserves it’s stinky reputation or not.

This show took part in a strange little era for WCW, as Nitro had started in the autumn of 1995 but they hadn’t yet brought Kevin Nash and Scott Hall over from the WWF to give the company the big shot in the arm it needed. As a result they were still mostly doing the same old “Hulk Hogan Vs a group of cartoonish heels” routine that had been going on in some form since the 80’s.

Wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko had started making their way into the mid-card at this point, which usually meant you were likely to have a good match or two on these shows, whilst Ric Flair and Randy Savage were going for a more realistic storyline of Flair nicking Randy’s ex-wife and then spending all her alimony to get the Macho Man all good and agitated.

As a result the company had a kind of confused feel to it, with the gimmicky Hogan stuff feeling kind of out of place when contrasted with the more serious wrestling going on elsewhere on the card. This imbalance would eventually be addressed when the New World Order showed up later in the year, as it made the Main Event scene serious again and not just a parade of wacky gimmick bouts with outlandish Saturday Morning Cartoon villains trying to take down Hulkamania.

The big angle for this show was that Kevin Sullivan and his Dungeon of Doom had teamed up with Ric Flair and his Horsemen stable in an effort to finally kill off Hulkamania once and for all, leading to a ludicrous 8 on 2 Main Event where the two groups aligned to take on Hogan and Savage in a three tier cage match. Oh yes, you might want to attach a nose peg, because it’s likely that things are going to get stinky!

Hello You!

Seeing as we’re just under a week away from Wrestle Kingdom 14, I thought I’d do a recap of one of the earlier New Japan Tokyo Dome spectaculars from 1996, as I happen to own the DVD for it.

I honestly can’t recall when I bought this or even where I got it from, but I think some of the matches from this are on New Japan World if you want to check them out. It looks like a rip of the official Japanese release, so that probably means they’ll dub out a lot of the entrance themes with wacky in house music. Hey, New Japan didn’t become the biggest wrestling company in the world in the mid 90’s by spending loads of dosh you know!

The 1996 event was built around guys from the UWFi group coming in to face New Japan guys, as well as one of the big matches on the countdown to Antonio Inoki’s retirement as he took on Vader. Vader was, I think, a WWF guy at this stage, or at the very least was on his way to the WWF in time for the Royal Rumble, so this was one of those occasions where Vince McMahon decided to be accommodating for whatever reason and let him work the Dome show.

I’ll look to have reviews for both nights of 2020’s Tokyo Dome event, hopefully quite soon after they happen as both shows fall on weekends this year and it’ll be in the morning time over here in the UK, so I should have enough time to watch them baring some kind of issue.

Anyway, less wittering from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 10.28.96

Taped from Ft. Wayne, IN

Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Jerry Lawler

The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 09.30.96

Hey, thanks to James Dixon for the shout-out in Titan Shattered. I didn’t even know that was coming. Even better that it was positive and not the usual “Thanks for setting the bar really low with your own books, jerk.”

Taped from Hershey, PA

Your hosts are Jim Ross, Kevin Kelly and Jerry Lawler

The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 09.23.96

There are few times where you can point to one segment as the nadir of an entire wrestling promotion, but this one is truly the bottom of the barrel.  Watching this one, I was really worried that the WWF wasn’t going to be around for much longer.

Live from Hershey, PA

Your hosts are Kevin Kelly, Jim Ross & Jerry Lawler

Hello, Scott, while wondering how the late 90s could have gone differently and rewatching the the early months of Nitro, I found myself thinking about what happened with Marc Mero.
1) at the beginning of the year, he won a decent feud with DDP as TV champ and thing seemed to be going well for him in the mid card until he abruptly dropped the title the Luger and was gone. I recall on two deeper are Nitros where Eric Bischoff takes a shot at Mero and how he headed north or couldn’t handle it on wcw. They even blacked out his face in the old WCW Hotline ads (which I noticed in Nitro viewings since they still have the vintage WCW ads in them). Why did Mero leave wcw, or was he fired for some reason? He seemed to have it set, at least as a midcarder goes.

2) not long after, he is introduced during Wrestlemania XII (something of a marquee intro) and they even tease a feud with Triple H (presumably when he was still on the rise prior to the curtain call) which carries over to Raw. According to Foley’s book, he was signed for a high price. My question is why did WWF sign him so quickly and for so much? Did Vince see the ridiculous Johnny B Badd gimmick (which seemed to be popular due to Mero’s performance) and think ‘this guy is the kind of entertainer we need’ (despite giving him the somewhat lame Wildman gimmick)? Were there other people pushing for Mero to be signed by WWF?
Just seems like an interesting situation as Mero seems to be the first Jump (from WCW to WWF) during the Monday Night Wars era yet played mostly a footnote in the larger story, mostly by his association with Sable.

1)  The Mero-Bischoff relationship deteriorated pretty fast at the end and there was a lot of name-calling and accusations both ways, but the upshot from the WCW side was that Bischoff accused Mero of missing a bunch of mandated publicity jobs and fired him.  Mero’s side is that his contract expired and he quit after getting lowballed.  Most suspect there was some contract tampering from the WWF involved because he had a three-year deal lined up basically the moment he left.  Either way, his contract had expired at the end of his WCW run, so there was no non-compete window needed and he was able to jump right away.  There was a lot of confusion at the time because the rift came so suddenly and without warning, and got ugly really fast.  Bischoff buried him on Nitro on a regular basis afterwards, while Mero openly criticized the company for forcing him to do things that contradicted his religious beliefs.  It was a weird deal. 

2)  WWE absolutely saw big money in him, and more specifically in his wife, and he was really on track in 1997 to break through, but injuries just destroyed him.  In particular that stretch between Feb 97 where he got injured as Wildman Mero and then returned months later with a totally different look as Marvellous Marc Mero really derailed his momentum as a potential top guy.  The boxer gimmick was a good midcard dick heel one, but not one for a guy who aspired to face Steve Austin. 

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 09.16.96

As a reminder, this rant will be immediately available in the Rant Archives link on OneDrive, available now for only $20 via Paypal to [email protected]!

Hopefully there’s not too much Hogan on this show so it doesn’t have to get awkward.  God help us if he’s interacting with Booker T.

Live from Asheville, NC

Your hosts are Tony & Larry