Harlem Heat

The Man, The Myth, The Legend- The Berzerker returns to my column! In a match that doesn’t suck!

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week, we have some surprisingly hard-fought, bludgeoning midcard matches to start us off, as the Big Boss Man faces The Berzerker on WWF Prime Time, and Sgt. Craig Pittman faces Kurasawa (Manabu Nakanishi) on WCW Nitro!

Also, I have Fire & Ice vs. The State Patrol, as the undersized veterans oddly control most of the match against their huge opponents Scott Norton & Ice Train. Then it’s more of Mortis & Wrath on the WCW midcard, as they take on Harlem Heat on Saturday Night, back when Jacequelyn was their manager! Then I watch Salvatore Sincere fall into the bottom-tier heel dead zone of “teaming up with a jobber” as he ends up wrestling the now-serious Godwinns on Shotgun… and we cap things off with one of Nitro’s most infamously bad matches, as Juventud Guerrera has to face the huge, way too green JOE GOMEZ!

THE BIG BOSS MAN vs. THE BERZERKER (w/ Mr. Fuji):
(WWF Prime Time Feb 17th, 1992)
* The greatest of all un-over failed midcard heel gimmicks, The Berzerker, actually gets another featured match in mid-1992 against the Boss Man! I don’t recall too many competitive Berzerker matches during this early part of my fandom, so this is fun.

Misawa back when he was the second Tiger Mask.

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week, I have an old All Japan match featuring young AWA World Champion Curt Hennig up against Mitsuharu Misawa, back when he was the the second Tiger Mask! Both these guys were ****-***** workers in their primes, so let’s see what they had in 1988!

Then after that, it’s a bizarre pair of matches from the WWF, as the Headbangers (then a midcard heel duo) face off against Jerry Lawler and “Mr. Monday Night” Rob Van Dam, his ally from ECW in their invasion against “Extremely Crappy Wrestling” during the weird time when ECW was frequently invading RAW! And then it’s over to WCW, as Harlem Heat face The Amazing French Canadians (Jacques Rougeau & PCO) on a D-show and actually have a pretty decent match out of it!

AWA WORLD TITLE:
TIGER MASK II (Mitsuharu Misawa) vs. CURT HENNIG:
(All Japan Pro Wrestling, Jan. 8th 1988)
* Oh man! MR. PERFECT vs. MISAWA! From 1988 before Misawa’s prime, but still. Hennig was still in the AWA at this point. His red & blue robe with stars on it is… a choice. He’s babyfaced and in black & white trunks, which always looks weird because the singlet is so iconic now. Misawa in the TM garb always looks kind of odd, too. All the other dudes were small, lithe juniors and Misawa is pretty hefty. Like, he’s clearly bigger than Curt here.

Truly the most shameful waste of a main event gimmick ever.

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! I have some truly bizarre stuff for you today, starting off with the most amazing jobber match ever- the One Man Gang fighting a repackaged Ron Reis… as the SUPER GIANT NINJA! Then come see just how bad the WWF’s “Cookie Cutter Style” of the Johnny Ace Era just destroyed guys, as Roddy Piper’s lackey Sean O’Haire, once the hottest rookie in the biz, takes on Chris Benoit on SmackDown!

Then it’s one of those “WTF? That happened?” classics you get from WCW’s “New Japan Invasion”, where main eventer Masa Chono and Mr. Fuji’s former tag team partner from the ’80s slum it on the D-show against Harlem Heat. And then we have “The Narcissist” Lex Luger near the end of his WWF heel run as he faces “The Rocket” Owen Hart in a midcard quickie with a rare “he has to wear a forearm guard” gimmick, and finally… a JTTS DREAM MATCH, as Virgil takes on Paul Roma in the prelude to SummerSlam ’91!

WCW UNITED STATES TITLE:
THE ONE MAN GANG vs. THE SUPER GIANT NINJA:
(WCW Saturday Night, Jan. 20th 1996)
* Oh my god YESSSSSSSSSS!! I’ve only barely heard of the Super Giant Ninja, and I’ve never seen him before. So he’s Ron Reis in Mortal Kombat cosplay, having been already repackaged after fans sh*t all over The Yeti (probably due to him & Loch Ness DP-ing Hulk Hogan in the goofiest costumes ever). He apparently appeared as “The Yetti” once in this look, but has now changed his name again. He’s in black gear with a yellow/red Scorpion/Sub-Zero chestpiece, and a mask that covers his entire face, not even leaving his eyes. Oh, and a three-foot “ponytail” coming out of the top. The Gang is actually U.S. Champion for his weird forgotten run.

The closing moments of Mikey Whipwreck beating the Sandman for the ECW Championship on last week’s show air.

Joey Styles tells viewers that the Sandman is incensed over losing the ECW Championship and has vowed revenge.

–Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan are doing commentary and they are taped from Orlando, Florida.

–Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and Steve McMichael are in the booth and they are live from Phoenix, Arizona.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the show drew 9,000 fans, 3,000 of whom paid.

–Bischoff announces that the WCW Executive Committee decided forty-eight minutes ago that Hulk Hogan, the Giant, and Ric Flair are all on probation and if they do something wrong, they could be indefinitely suspended.

–Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan are calling the matches and they are live from Norfolk, Virginia.

–Gene Okerlund interviews Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and Sting.  The crowd gives Hogan a mixed reaction as he talks about how he has not fully embraced the dark side and is going back to his babyface persona.  He sheds his black gear, which Sting tosses into a black container that explodes.  The problem is that the fire gets to be too much, so Sting has to keep going back to the container to pour water on it or keep down the smoke.  WCW technicians are eventually forced to put it out.  Savage tells Sting that he is cool with him again as Sting acts like a star-struck teenager.  Hogan says that Savage’s arm is not actually hurt and goes into a crazy rant about a “rag sheet” that said the Giant was going to win – the rag sheet in question being a copy of Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer – and how the Internet has the “real scoops.”  The Observer copy is burned as regular fans at home have no idea what Hogan is talking about.

–Tony Schiavone and Dusty Rhodes call this evening’s action, taped from Atlanta, Georgia.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, these matches took place on October 18 and 25.

–Gene Okerlund and Tony Schiavone are doing the studio work for this show.  They recap how the WCW title was held up on Monday Nitro.

–Okerlund and Schiavone discuss the recent difficulties of Paul Orndorff.

–With no pay-per-view afterward, Main Event is back as a studio show with Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan.

–Tony Schiavone and Dusty Rhodes are in the booth and they are taped from Atlanta, Georgia.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the matches on this show were taped on October 11.

–Tony Schiavone and Dusty Rhodes are calling the action and they are taped from Atlanta, Georgia.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the matches on this show were taped on September 27, October 11, and October 25.

–Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and Steve McMichael are tasked with commentary and they are live from Huntsville, Alabama.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, 7,000 fans attended the show with only 2,100 paying for tickets.

–Gene Okerlund and Bobby Heenan are in the studio for today’s telecast.  Okerlund does his best to describe how the monster truck battle between Hulk Hogan and the Giant will play out at Halloween Havoc.

–As part of the Halloween Havoc Control Center WCW Champion Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Hart do a taped promo where they promise to do whatever it takes to defeat the Giant at Halloween Havoc.

WCW Prime for October 16 featured one new match, footage of which was non-existent.  However, house show reports indicate that the following was the result:

*The State Patrol (0-5) defeated the Gambler & Chris Kanyon in the Prime “MOOO” Match of the Week.

WCW Pro for October 21 featured Chris Cruise, Dusty Rhodes, and Larry Zbyszko on commentary.

–Tony Schiavone and Dusty Rhodes are in the booth and they are taped from Atlanta, Georgia.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the matches on this telecast were taped on September 20 and 27 at Center Stage.

–Chris Cruise, Larry Zbyszko, and Dusty Rhodes are doing commentary for today’s show.  The arena is really dark for this show and there are lots of empty seats when the camera pans near the guardrails.

WCW Prime for September 18 included a bevy of new matches, which will be recapped before we get to WCW Pro for September 23.  Chris Cruise and Dusty Rhodes did commentary for these matches.

–Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and Steve McMichael are doing commentary and they are live from Johnson City, Tennessee, better known as one of the home bases of Smoky Mountain Wrestling.  According to thehistoryofwwe.com, 3,200 fans attended the show, with 2,031 paying for their ticket.

–Gene Okerlund is backstage, where Kevin Sullivan and the Giant arrive at the arena in the back of an ambulance.  The Giant tells Hulk Hogan that he is not immortal.  They are still playing up the angle that the Giant is Andre the Giant’s son.

–Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan are in the booth and they are live from Asheville, North Carolina.