Lex Luger defeated Randy Savage in an If Luger Loses He Must Leave WCW Match
Eddie Guerrero defeated Dean Malenko
The American Males (c) vs. The Nasty Boys ended in a no contest to retain the WCW Tag Title
Ric Flair defeated Arn Anderson by DQ
Razor Ramon defeated The 1-2-3 Kid
Hunter Hearst Helmsley defeated Barry Horowitz
PG-13 (J.C. Ice & Wolfie D) defeated Al Brown & Sonny Rogers
Bret Hart defeated Jean-Pierre LaFitte
RAW
In a moment of clarity and without his raging Shawn boner, Vince decided to open the show with a recap of the Smoking Guns winning the tag titles last week, even completely skipping the HBK/Diesel celebration crashing. Nice to see the focus put on the right thing… even if that thing is Billy Gunn winning a title.
I remember this Kid/Razor angle being cool (aside from the cry baby match @ In Your House 6) and the main plot points of what played out on this show are cool. Kid shows off some impressive moves but loses. He isn’t satisfied with that loss and so continues to attack his friend. He goes on to lose three times in succession before begrudgingly admitting Razor is the better man, all the while the audience can see trouble is brewing. It’s a nice slow build to a heel turn. Where it falls apart for me is the execution.
The kid loses the initial match to a clothesline. It’s not a SurvivorSeries match where a headlock all of a sudden becomes as deadly as a sledgehammer. The second time the match ends is during a bloody commercial break so we need a replay to see the finish. The third fall however is really well done. Razor has Kid set up for the Razors Edge, but rather than deliver his finisher to his friend he opts for the small package and gets the win. The cheeky wee shite even tries a roll-up when Razor offers a handshake, but he then accepts it at the second time of asking. Trouble is afoot!
McMahon switches to plugging In Your House 4 and man he couldn’t sound any less excited about it. Diesel v Bulldog is headlining the show and ends up being the match that makes Vince flip his lid and decide Bret needs to get the belt back. Shawn Michaels v Dean Douglas, King Mabel v The Undertaker and a debuting Goldust v Marty Jannetty is advertised too. I sure hope there aren’t 4,652 marines working out four times a day in preparation for a cheap shot on Shawn…
Helmsley v Horriblewitz was a nothing match. Barry is a charisma vacuum and his mini-push that started at SummerSlam is a distant memory just five weeks later. Pre-roid monster Helmsley is my favourite gimmick of his, but he was up against it on this night.
LOVED everything about this next segment. A debuting J.C. Ice & Wolfie D in from the USWA. Lawler spends the whole match trying to put them over while also apologising for their size as if he can just sense giving up on them mid-match. More brilliance takes place when Vince abandons the match to discuss the O.J. Simpson case. Call the hotline and vote on whether he’s guilty or not! Results later in the show 😮 Talk about a reason not to flip over to Nitro! The Icing on the cake was at the bottom of the scroller it said that kids under 18 needed parent’s permission to call and vote. I wonder how many young kids were casting their vote on OJ?
Before the Jean Pierre LaFitte match, we are subjected to Doc Hendrix out in the aisle hawking a t-shirt and VHS tape. He’s pinched some wee girl out of the crowd to model it and she looks rightfully terrified. The match itself was pretty good. I’m a huge Bret Hart mark and always felt like Pierre was underrated. I genuinely liked the pirate gimmick as well.
We even got ourselves a little post-match action with Bret and ringside commentator Jerry Lawler going at it. Before the Hitman could do any real damage though, Issac Yankem appeared and DDT’d him on the mats outside to “DIESEL!” chants from the crowd. The segment ended with Vince saying that Monsoon had been in his ear announcing that there would be a cage match in the coming weeks with Hart and the dentist.
We see out the show with interviews from the competitors in the 6-man tag that will main event next weeks show. It’s always strange when you see the Undertaker take part in a group interview. Especially with Shawn mugging for the camera. Just as they go off the air they show the poll results, which is 51/49 in favour of NOT guilty. Further proof that wrestling fans aren’t the brightest.
NITRO
Every week Nitro looks bigger and better. This one looked like a WWF PPV in 95. Mongo has managed to inflict further cruelty on wee Pepe by styling him in some comedy glasses with the eyes popping out. Speaking of eyes popping out their head Ric Flair appears at the desk and screams about him and AA (Arn Anderson) tonight. They’ll be our main event.
It’s Flexy Lexy v Randy Savage to kick things off. During Luger’s intro, Bischoff tells people not to switch to Nitro and instead phone the WCW hotline and they will tell you what’s happening on the other channel 🤨 Are we to believe that Bischoff genuinely thinks people will watch Nitro and spend $3 a minute or whatever it is to simultaneously keep up with RAW rather than switch the channel? The answer is likely no and that he’s just an idiot who doesn’t think before he speaks.
For all we say about Mongo being a terrible commentator (and he is), he does often do his best to put over the talent and their athleticism. The match itself is no great shakes, which is par for the course so far with Niro. We even get a backslide tussle that goes on for about a minute, which was, eh… thrilling. For a man whose career is apparently on the line, Luger’s lack of intensity is noticeable.
After a standard-issue ref bump, Savage hits the big elbow off the top, but there is no official conscious to count. The Giant then makes his way down to the ring, chokeslams Savage and leaves. Luger, who has plausible deniability as he was down, then takes advantage with the torture rack and gets the win with the extremely rare hand dropping three times. Poor match.
Disco Inferno appears on the ramp to do a bit of a dance before Eddie Guerrero’s music hits and he runs him off. Finally, a match that bucks the trend. Malenko and Guerrero put on a clinic. Excellent chain wrestling throughout and very much a precursor to the type of displays we see now from the likes of Will Ospreay. The downsides were that almost no one in the audience cared one bit, despite the array of great moves. Also, there was a cutaway mid-match to Hulk Hogan arriving to find the Giant. This kind of thing is an indicator to fans watching on TV that what’s going on in the ring is low on the totem pole. Eddie scored the win with a pin reversal and the two shook hands afterwards while agreeing to meet again.
Hogan out for an interview with Gene. He’s sporting a neck brace and a frowny face. What follows here is a laugh-out-loud few minutes of TV. Hogan babbles about going backstage to take out the Giant (why did you come out in the first place then?). He then does a tour around ringside shaking hands, until he reaches an old lady who throws powder in his eyes, hops the barricade and starts hitting him with a cane. It’s only the Taskmaster!
Giant (with Zodiac) heads to the ring, rips Hogan’s brace off and snaps his neck. Something that would kill any mere mortal. Sullivan then gets an electric razor and begins shaving off the Hulkster’s moustache. As amazing as this sounds, it’s even better. Rather than shave left to right, or even be a complete rogue and go right to left, he decides to pop the world and take a little off each side leaving Hogan with a wee Hitler tash. The American males and the Nasty Boys attempt to make the save unsuccessfully, and the ring shaking from a chokeslam nearly results in Sullivan taking half of Hogan’s face off with the razor.
In what can only be described as a flashback to his former self, Zodiac appears with a smaller pair of scissors and threatens to cut Hogan’s hair, before abandoning the idea for absolutely no reason and just walking away. I honestly don’t know how to digest the last 10 minutes of TV. It was terrible but in a brilliant way.
The ad for the upcoming Halloween Havoc PPV is equal parts brilliant and awful. Hogan v Giant in a sumo monster truck match. An encounter that I remember well, for all the wrong reasons.
We come back to the arena and Arn Anderson has been issued a jobber entrance for the main event. Flair walks out with more purpose than usual. Or as purposeful as you can with a golden bathrobe on. They have a pretty decent 10+ minute match, while the worlds biggest Hulkamark is standing right in front of the barricade blocking about three rows behind him.
As Flair gets the figure four leglock on, Brian Pillman appears and the ref calls for the bell before he can even hit his top rope splash. Pillman and Arn deliver a really shit beatdown that appears to cause Flair zero harm before bailing to the outside and celebrating up the aisle. We cut to break and come back so that Bischoff can plug that after the shenanigans in the main event they’ll be doing it all over again next week inside a steel cage. We also have Sting v Shark to look forward to. Lovely.
-Craig 🧐