Cewsh Reviews – WCW Capital Combat 1990: Return of the Robocop
Welcome, cats and kittens, to yet another installment from the only wrestling review blog that broke the Masterlock, braved the Angle Invitational, and was super uncomfortable in the White Boy Challenge, Cewsh Reviews! We have a special treat for you this week as we take one of our customary rocket rides into the past as we see what was going on over in WCW in 1990. Specifically, we’ll be examining a show called WCW Capital Combat 1990, which is interesting and relevant in two ways. Firstly, when our esteemed General Manager John Laurenitus has an actual wrestling match against John Cena at Over the Limit, it will be his first match in the United States of America in 22 years. Why, since this very event, in fact. So we’ll be examining exactly what Johnny Ace was like as a performer before he went and became the biggest star in Japanese wrestling history, (Cewsh Note: Please don’t believe that.) But I said there were two reasons why this show is interesting, and perhaps you’ve puzzled out what the second one is. If you haven’t then take a look back at the title of this show because HOLY SHIT THIS IS THAT SHOW THAT HAD ROBOCOP YES.
As a matter of fact, Robocop will be joining be throughout the show to share some of his wit and wisdom as we traverse a WCW world littered with tag matches, bad hair, and familiar faces. We’ll also be bringing back the Where Did Their Careers Go From Here segment, and maybe even a few more surprises along the way.
So without any further ado, let’s do a motherfucking review!
Cewsh: Alright, let’s get started on this awesome wrestling review. Let’s just go ahead and double click on the file and…
Um, wait. I’m pretty sure this wrestling pay per view isn’t supposed to contain hardcore pornography. In fact, I’m at least 70% certain that there were no dicks on this show at all.
What’s that? Oh right. I am being informed that Johnny Ace IS on this show, so I must retract the previous sentence.
Anyway, apparently the beginning of this show that I obtained through completely legal channels has been replaced by modern day pornography for at least the first 5 seconds. This should probably bother me, and yet strangely I’m somehow not that upset. Maybe further investigation will help me understand this…
Cewsh: Okay, let’s get into this. Our opening match for the evening is one that pits the ridiculously popular Road Warriors and the surprisingly popular Norman the Lunatic, (think Fat Eugene,) against two dastardly villains and Bam Bam Bigelow, who seems to be here on loan from Japan. The back story here, if there can be said to even be one, is that the bad guys are mean bullies, and the Road Warriors are backing up the pajama clad Norman.
We’re talking about the year 1990 here. Mick Foley still had two ears, Kevin Sullivan didn’t yet have a gut that even Fat Albert would envy, and the Road Warriors were still totally awesome. You can tell this pretty clearly when the first hint of an engine revving occurs and the crowd just blows the roof off of the place just for knowing that these bad mamajamas are on their way down to ringside on the back of a couple of Harley’s piloted by suspicious looking ne’er do wells. Then Norman comes down on a vehicle of his own to a shocking huge reaction of his own.
Once the match gets started, it quickly becomes apparent that this match is going to be phoned in to the maximum extent. The Road Warriors barely seem interested, the heels seem bored, and even Mick Foley only takes about two entirely risky bumps, (including one where Hawk casually chucks the steps at him while the ref thinks about Bundt cake and looks the other way.) Norman, for his part, bumbles around like the fattest man at the Oklahoma state fair and tries not to actively fall over on anyone. He mostly succeeds.
As fate would have it, this would turn out to be the Road Warrior’s last show for WCW for some time. As such, this feels like a serious effort to use their popularity to help get Norman even more over. It certainly seems to work, as Norman comes out of this match looking pretty good, but it’s a bit of a sad statement that a match featuring one of the greatest tag teams of all time, a legend, and two future world champions is engineered to get over the fat guy who would one day make farting a character trait. Sometimes knowing how the story ends makes you better appreciate the book. This is not one of those times.
70 out of 100
Cewsh: And now, let us hear what the single greatest law enforcement cyborg of all time thought about this match.
Cewsh: Starting things off nice and crazy, eh? That’s certainly a…choice.
The Road Warriors – Decline – This was their last match in WCW before they bolted for WWE following some rather tumultuous confrontations with Jim Herd. They saw some success in WWE and in WCW upon their eventual return there, but they were never again the team that they had been in the NWA days, and their popularity waned over the years as they aged and became less intimidating. Hawk is perhaps best credited ,during his career post NWA, for making Kensuke Sasaki a mega star in Japan, when the two teamed together as the Hellraisers.
Norman the Lunatic – Steep Decline – It’s hard to say that the career of Norman really had a long way to drop in the first place, but during this period he did manage to get over with the fans for his lovable Norman character. After this was a steep drop with Bastion Booger at the bottom. The less said, the better.
Cactus Jack – Steep Incline – From losing clean to Norman the Lunatic in a match that got cut from the VHS release to being WWF World Champion inside a decade. The world is wondrously strange.
Kevin Sullivan – Steep Decline – By the time this whole thing rolled around, Sullivan was already far beyond his best days. Compared to his time in Florida, his WCW run was an embarrassment, but even with as bad as it had gotten here, the worst was yet to come.
Bam Bam Bigelow – Incline – While he had made a name for himself in the WWF before this, (even making it onto Hulk Hogan’s Survivor Series team once,) the real story for Bigelow came later as he became a major fixture of WWF shows all through the mid 90s and really made a name for himself in Japan. His biggest moment would come from wrestling in one of the best celebrity matches of all time against Lawrence Taylor in the main event of Wrestlemania.
Cewsh: Believe it or not, not all of the nonsense that Ace spouts on Raw these days is completely off base. There was a time when the Ace man was actually a reliable main event tag team performer for All Japan, which is a lot like saying that you were one of the top acts at Woodstock. No matter what else you can say about the man, you can’t take away from him the fact that he was one of the handful of wrestlers ever to walk the King’s Road, and competed in some of the great matches of all time. I’m telling you this, not only to give context to his claims on Monday Night Raw every week, but also to ease the pain for him when I tell you that this match was basically 10 minutes of the Undertaker kicking his mulleted ass all over the ring.
See, this was ALSO Johnny Ace’s last night in WCW, because some sort of mass exodus was going on courtesy of Jim Herd. And while the Road Warriors vaguely put over Norman in the last match, this match is not intended to be anything so subtle. They sent the former Dynamic Dude out to die, and die he did.
For a decent length of time, Ace tries to withstand the onslaught of His Meanness, while Mark’s manager Teddy Long roots him on from the outside, telling Mark to end Johnny’s caree…wait a second. Are you telling me that in Johnny Ace’s last match as an American wrestler, Teddy Long directed his hoss client to take Ace out of the company? Holy shit, I think we’ve just uncovered the secret back story behind Ace’s current treatment of Teddy! Long totally had it coming!
Oh man, that makes infinitely more sense now. Okay, so Teddy has his client dismantle Ace, and truth be told, Mean Mark is a damn impressive specimen to watch here. He’s strong, he’s lightning quick, and he’s intimidating, not unlike some kind of gawky, red headed Brock Lesnar. Once he got to the WWF, he would debut a reserved and methodical style that he would utilize for most of the remainder of his career, so it’s just bags of fun to see him letting loose here with all of his athleticism. And it’s even funner to listen to Jim Ross try to put him over by explaining that he has a degree in Sports Medicine and listens to “that Ozzy Ozbourn, who eats bats!.” Knowing full well that JR would go on to call so many more of Taker’s matches through the years, listening to him explain that Mark lifted a bunch of weights to get strong but that it didn’t actually make him taller, is a treat indeed.
Come for the Ace humiliation, stay for beatings. That sounds like a hearty meal to me.
75 out of 100
Cewsh: Okay, let’s try to get through this, Robocop. How about Johnny Ace, nobody likes Johnny Ace. What are your thoughts on him?
Cewsh: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what the fuck? Holy shit, man, you can’t just go around saying that about people!
Mark Callous – Steep Incline – He would go on to become one of the biggest and most respected names in the history of professional wrestling. All he had to do was become a corpse and gain magical powers. Makes you wonder why more people don’t try that.
Johnny Ace – Steep Incline – Believe it or not, not all of the nonsense that Ace spouts on Raw these days is completely off base. After leaving WCW, he went to All Japan full time and played a hand in perhaps the best run by any wrestling company in any era. He earned a name for himself as a capable tag team wrestler in incredible battles, (of which he was nearly always the weak link,) and endeared himself to Mrs. Baba. Which led directly to him becoming head booker of WCW for a cup of coffee in 2000 and then to becoming a key figure in WWE to this day.
Cewsh: If you’re one of those particularly observant readers, (we call those “the ones that can read,”), you probably noticed that the two gentlemen who are engaging in this hair vs. hair match are not wrestlers. One is a former referee turned dastardly manager, and the other is a former weightlifting champion turned mouthpiece. In neither of their everyday job descriptions does “have good matches” come into play at all. But unlikely though they may be as wrestlers, this is the endgame to a year old feud that spawned from Teddy fast counting the Road Warriors out of their one and only NWA tag title run. As a result of that, Teddy gave up being a ref and became a manager to the stars to pit people against the Warriors to keep himself safe, until finally he had to face with their manager Ellering here, for all the marbles.
Luckily they’ve spared no expense in making this an amazing spectacle, as they’ve gone out and gotten WORLD FAMOUS hair stylist Jay Tapper. And they seem very impressed with having gotten such an international hair styling sensation as the Tap Man. Unfortunately, there are people in witness protection that are easier to Google than this guy, so I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that that whole world famous thing was just JR being enthusiastic. Accompanying him is Missy Hyatt, who is trotting herself out to the ring so she can ring announce the next match and continue to justify her paycheck for one more month.
As if he just can’t wait to get on with the hair manipulation, Paul Ellering is already in the ring when Hyatt and Tapper get there, and he is sporting a mustache approximately 50 times more substantial than the hair on his head. Then out from the back comes the delightfully goofy Theodore Long, clad in boxing gloves and some darn fancy pants, and adorned with more abs than should be possible more a man his size to have.
Long starts things off by trying to knock Ellering out with his blatantly loaded boxing gloves. When this doesn’t work, Ellering steals his glove for him, and then Ellering clocks Long in the face with it to win the match and the feud. Yep, that all happened in real time just there. Then Mr. Tapper jumps into the fray with an electric razor so that he can shave Long’s head. And just to make things more absurd, the camera zooms in on Long’s head as his hat is removed, to reveal that he was balding worse than George Jefferson already, and Tapper just kind of cleaned him up around the edges.
On the list of things to do to your worst enemy, getting him a nice, professional hair cut when he was going bald already ranks up there somewhere near to “buy him an ice cream and take him to the zoo.”
As the end to a feud, this match was just downright sad. But as a 5 minute amusement, I thought it was quite fun indeed. And frankly, looking at the other two matches featuring people who were leaving after this show, only this one actually appeared to be designed to send the guy leaving off on a positive note. So here’s to thuggin and buggin, and to shaving your head before your ear hair is thicker than the rest.
Amen.
61 out of 100
Cewsh: Over to you, Robo.
Cewsh: …you are the worst fucking reviewer in the entire fucking world.
Theodore Long – Incline – While he may have never been one of the great managers of all time, he certainly managed to carve a niche for himself from here on, and would obviously go on to his greatest success as Smackdown’s perpetual general manager.
Paul Ellering – Decline – His fate is tied inexorably to that of the Road Warriors, but he was always kind of superfluous to the whole Road Warriors act anyway. So while he never did much after this, it wasn’t nearly the precipitous fall that his clients experienced.
Cewsh: Seriously now. Can we get a little uniformity here? Ole Anderson looks like their dad, Sid Vicious looks like his mom dressed him and Arn Anderson looks like he thought they were going to a Miami Vice themed party and was determined to win the costume prize.
Then, into all of this walks the man himself, Mr. Ric Flair, who cuts a promo about how he’s going to cripple Lex Luger while Ole enthusiastically molests him in the background.
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest wrestling stable of all time.
Cewsh: TOM ZENK SIGHTING.
We just can’t get enough of that guy, can we? Unfortunately, one person who had more than enough of the Z-Man is Ole Anderson, who had taken over booking duties about a week prior to this event. Upon Ole becoming in charge, Pillman and Zenk would promptly become complete and utter jobbers for years to come. And while Pillman would eventually rise above this and make it as a star, Zenk never really recovered from the vicious burial he received. And that all started here.
That’s not to say that this is just a squash match though. Far, far from it. The Midnight Express may well be the best tag team to ever lace up the boots and wear matching pants, and they rarely had anything short of an epic match if they could help it. This match, in particular, featured the stipulation that the Midnight’s manager, Jim Cornette, would have to be locked into a cage at ringside to stop him from interfering in the match and making things unfair. They didn’t bother to suspend it in mid-air, though, possibly because Cornette was now afraid of heights after the Skywalker debacle.
With that distraction removed, these four got on with having a terrificly fun little match, with the veteran Midnights trying their best to stay one step ahead of the firey and exciting youngsters. Ultimately, after enough nearfalls to suit a Gabe Sapolsky wet dream, the Midnights managed to pull out the win by outsmarting the more inexperienced rookies and run off into the night with the titles.
Make no mistake, the Midnight Express put more guys over by accident than most wrestlers ever did on purpose, and this is an example. Pillman and Zenk come out of this looking like incredibly hot prospects who just need a little seasoning to become super stars, and the Midnights come out looking like the great team that everyone knew that they were. Considering this was a throwaway midcard match against two guys the office had decided to bury, the Midnights more than rose to the occasion here, just like they almost always did.
80 out of 100
Cewsh’s Download Seal of Approval
Cewsh: Okay, Robo, what did you think of…hey, where the hell are you going?
Cewsh: Dude, you can’t just review like two matches shittily and then leave, what the hell is so important and where the shit are you…
The Midnight Express – Steep Decline – The age of southern style tag wrestling was coming to a definitive end, and the writing was already on the wall here. They would soon join the exodus of talent leaving WCW around this time, and while Bobby would always be around to be a good hand, they would never reach the heights they had, or anything approaching it, again.
Jim Cornette – Push – While his legacy as an on screen performer is thanks almost entirely to his work in the 80s, the decades to come saw him having a greater influence on the industry as a whole, booking for SMW, WWF and OVW, including being to thank for the developmental system we know today.
Brian Pillman – Incline – While he never reached the heights he seemed destined for, the 90s saw his stock rise and rise until his terribly sad death.
Tom Zenk – Steep Decline – If you’re looking to trade some convertible arbitrages, there’s no wrestler better equipped.
Cewsh: OOOOOOOH. This is where he went. That makes sense.
Guys, I don’t even know how to contain my glee at getting to watch this piece of wrestling history. If you’re at work, then take your lunch break, because it’s time for the very first ever CEWSH REVIEWS VIDEO BREAKDOWN.
Now if you can’t watch that video for yourself because you’re reading this on your phone, are at work, or are mere seconds away from dying in some kind of velociraptor incident and stopped to read our review with your final moments, allow me to walk you though these incredible events.
We begin with Jim Ross throwing to the backstage area, where for some reason Gordon Solie is standing next to a door with a lot of steam coming out of it, because I guess they have to use the most venerable announcer in wrestling history to report live at the scene of Robocop walking through a door.
Robocop is preceded by 2 normal security guards, and about 3 other guys who look like Secret Service agents. This is curious, since the guy they are conceivably protecting is GODDAMN ROBOCOP, and it’s not like Ric Flair running up behind him with a steel chair is really a cause for this much concern. The security guards demand that the camera guy stop filming, despite the fact that Robocop will be walking out in front of tv cameras in about 8 seconds.
Meanwhile, Sting walks down to the ring looking like he’s trying to forget that he’s playing second fiddle to a guy in a robot costume. Then the ring announcer starts introducing Robocop, and, since it takes about 10 minutes to get through all of the made up nicknames for him, the Four Horsemen take this opportunity to randomly jump Sting and lock him in the cage Jim Cornette was in last segment. The Horsemen mock Sting’s plight as Robocop rushes to Sting’s defense at speeds only previously encountered by potheads while driving. He actually takes so long getting to the cage, that the Horsemen just openly start watching him wandering towards them, unsure of what they’re supposed to be doing now.
Then Robocop arrives at the cage, and promptly bends the very fake bars and removes the obviously rigged door, which Sting responds to by jumping out, yelling “Hi-Yah” and accidentally Flair chopping Robocop in the chest.
Robo wisely let’s the pass. The heels, for their part, turn tale and run from the awesome force of Robocop, which is good, since in the movies he would just be casually shooting them in their faces right about now.
As a whole, this segment only lasts about 2 and a half minutes, and hardly seems worth naming this show after, (though its been bugging me why they’re calling this “Return of the Robocop” when this is his first fucking appearance.) But that depends on your point of view. Personally, hearing Jim Ross earnestly yell the words, “AND HERE COMES ROBOCOP!” completed a life goal I didn’t even know I had before today.
Whew. I need a cigarette.
Cewsh: Without stopping to so much as catch a breath after the life changing experience of Robocop, the show switches over to Tony Schiavone interviewing the Junkyard Dog. Dog is back in the NWA after leaving WWE earlier in 1990 and is calling out all the bad guys on the roster, when suddenly Jim Cornette runs up because apparently he’s mad that Dog is stealing interview time that the Midnight Express deserves. He asks the Dog where he’s been for the past few years, and without missing a beat, Dog names Jim Cornette’s mother’s address in Kentucky to vast amusement from the crowd. Then Cornette tries to attack Dog and fails miserably because he’s Jim Cornette.
The true value of managers in wrestling really is things like this. It isn’t about getting in feuds revolving around themselves, (though the best ones can,) or getting involved in matches, (though the best ones do,) but their real job is just to add sizzle to every segment they’re in and bring up the entertainment value of the show as a whole. And boy is Cornette ever good at that.
Cewsh: Have you ever seen a Rock and Roll Express match? Have you ever seen a Freebirds match? Have you ever seen a match where the Rock and Roll Express wrestle the Freebirds? If the answer to any of those questions was yes, then you should not bother with this match as it is an endless retread of all of their previous matches with none of the fire that made those matches special. If you answered no to any of those questions, then you have homework tonight and I’ll expect a detailed report from you tomorrow morning, along with a note from your mother explaining why you have such bad taste.
70 out of 100
The Rock and Roll Express – Steep Decline – See: Midnight Express
The Freebirds – Steep Decline – See: Rock and Roll Express
Cewsh: Yes, here we have one of the seemingly infinite number of guys who were saddled with that moniker over the year, and he has even less right to the claim than most, unless they’re measuring how much weight you can lift with your mustache. Mr. Doug Furnas, (who was a member of a tag team that had a short run in WWE if you’re desperately trying to remember where you’ve seen him before,) only wants to talk about how strong and manly and tough Lex Luger is, before grunting and wandering off. He’s then replaced by Sting, who way more excitedly says pretty much the exact same thing, except that he does it with rock hard nipples and crazy eyes.
Your main event babyfaces, ladies and gentlemen.
Cewsh: This is a match involving the Steiner Brothers and Ron Simmons. So the fact that people are going to be beating the fuck out of each other is something we should go ahead and put on the table right here at the beginning. These guys are crazy badasses, and look the part.
With that said, this match begins with Rick Steiner stealing Teddy Long’s doo rag to expose his newly shaven head, and running away with it while giggling. Then Scott Steiner and Ron Simmons get in the ring together, and within 5 fucking seconds have the atmosphere of the match completely changed, as these two are some tough bastards and the crowd totally knows it. They trade power moves and the crowd goes wild, until Butch Reed is tagged in, at which point the match slows to a crawl and Reed just starts no selling all of the Steiner’s offense, including a vicious lariat that Reed just forgets to fall down during. Reed finally tags Simmons in and the crowd promptly picks up along with the pace of the match. The Steiners take it to Simmons with their huge arsenal of power moves, and this match starts looking like its really starting to get cooking, when Butch Reed gets tagged in again, and proceeds to do absolutely nothing again.
Finally, as if somebody told him that he was in a wrestling match and not, say, waiting in line at the DMV, Reed explodes into to action. He throws a terrific high knee into Scott’s face and Doom sets about double teaming the littlest Steiner into oblivion. They kill Scott for minute after minute until Scott finally hits a desperation Frankensteiner and manages to tag in Rick, at which point all hell breaks loose. Everybody starts emptying out their power move toolbox, and Doom manages to wrangle Scott into position for a Hart Attack off of the second turnbuckle. But these four aren’t even close to done, until Rick tries to give Reed a belly to belly suplex off of the top rope, only for Simmons to grab him and slam him down with Reed on top, leading to a 3 count, and an improbable upset victory for Doom.
It probably doesn’t seem super weird now for a team with Ron Simmons on it to beat the Steiner Brothers, especially since Ron would be winning a World Championship in a few short years. But at the time, this was considered to be a pretty substantial upset, as Doom had been pretty hapless in repeated attempts to beat the Steiners up until now. They celebrate like crazy and bask in the moment. And they should, because this is about the last good match that Butch Reed would ever be part of.
Things started off slow here, and even to the end, Reed seemed almost totally out of place with the other three, but this was still a good time. Big tough guys beat each other up real good, and this was during the time where the Steiner Brothers were putting most other tag teams on the planet to shame. Ron Simmons looked like a future star, a new top tag team was crowned, and Teddy Long debuted the doo rag that he only stopped wearing because it didn’t look good in his GM suit. That’s productivity, folks.
77 out of 100
Ron Simmons – Steep Incline – When Ron Simmons was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2012, they didn’t spend a ton of time talking about Doom. There’s a reason for that.
Butch Reed – Steep Decline – He’s the reason.
Rick Steiner – Push – Rick Steiner would spend the decade of the 90s as being a continuously credibly upper midcarder who had about as much chance of winning the World title as his brother did of passing a drug test. He enjoyed a brief period in the 80s of flirting with becoming a true star on his own, and that’s as close as he ever got.
Scott Steiner – Steep Incline – The man was just made to be a star. And when he cut and dyed his hair and became a balloon animal, he became one of the defining personalities in WCW’s history.
Cewsh: Quick, what’s the most patient that you can recall a company ever being with a storyline? Is it Michaels/Taker? Maybe Sting/Hogan? How about Tatanka/Luger? Well if those are the examples that jump immediately to mind, then you’d better add Luger/Flair in there, because this storyline was an epic so grand it could have been booked by Homer.
From his earliest days in wrestling, Lex Luger had always seemed to have everything it would take to become one of the biggest names in the business. He had the look, he had the athleticism, and the crowds responded and he quickly shot up the ranks to earn the attention of the NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair in 1987. Luger actually became an official member of the Horsemen for a year, before a controversial loss involving J.J. Dillon resulted in him being ousted from the group violently. When Luger enlisted his friend Barry Windham to help him go to war against the Horsemen, Windham promptly betrayed Luger and filled the spot he had left in the group. Luger wound up joining forces with Sting instead and set upon a feud with Ric Flair that would run on and off all the way to 1991, with Luger trying valiantly to defeat Flair for the title, and Flair always managing to cheat his way to victory in the end as fans grew more and more rabid to see Luger win. At this point, Luger was seen as the heir to Flair’s throne by fans and the office alike, so when this match was set up, the Horsemen injured Luger’s leg to keep him away from Flair. But Sexy Lexy decided to man up and fight on anyway, and now he’s here to wrench the title away from that heinous Horseman and his heartless henchmen.
As the match begins, Lex wastes absolutely no time in blasting Flair with clotheslines and body slams as fast as he can crank them out, and then going for the pin. This surprises Flair so much that it actually almost works, but Flair kicks out, and Luger has to keep right on trying. The basic premise of this match is that Luger’s leg it hurt and he’s trying to beat Flair as quickly as he can before it starts giving out on him, while Flair attacks the leg at every opportunity. They go back and forth in a great battle, as Luger keeps firing up, and Flair keeps drawing out his energy and attacking the leg again and again. But when Luger finally appears to be overcoming everything and setting up for the victory, the Four Horsemen come striding purposely down to ringside. Now this is like the Hell in a Cell cage, where it has a ceiling and extends around the ring, so the odds of them getting in aren’t good, that being the whole point. And Sting comes racing down to start clubbing fools to return the favor from earlier. When it becomes obvious that Sting should not have attacked four men at the same time, (babyface logic,) EL GIGANTE makes his first appearance by lumbering down to ringside, shoving one guy, and then doing absolutely nothing else on the entire rest of the show other than stand around.
While all of this hubbub is going on, though, Ole Anderson has coerced the cage operator to lift the cage, which allows Barry Windham to slip in and tackle Luger, just as Luger gets Flair up into the Torture Rack to win the match and taste that title that has eluded him for so long. This causes the ref to DISQUALIFY Flair, for some reason, and the Horsemen all sneak into the cage and then lower it, and begin laying a vicious beatdown on Luger and his bad leg. By the time Sting gets the cage back up and races in to the rescue, (Gigante couldn’t be bothered,) the damage has already been done, and Luger lays in the middle of the ring, a broken mess. Flair then cuts one of the most insane promos of all time, as he rants crazily while covered in so much of his own blood that it looks like he’s covered in ashes and red paint.
And there the show ends, with the Horsemen standing tall, and the babyfaces in ruins. Hot diggity damn.
Truth be told, this is one of my favorite finishes to a match that I have ever seen. You have the dastardly heel champion who the fans are desperate to see lose, but is so smart and crafty, and the heroic and powerful babyface who wont quit and is just about to vanquish him, when the bad guys change the rules of the game and use their intelligence and unity to demolish the heroes. Luger looks like a total warrior for almost winning despite everything that was up against him, and the Horsemen look like a truly insurmountable force of true dickheads. Add onto all of that a truly emotional Jim Ross going out of his mind at how terrible the events he’s seeing are, and a white hot crowd, and you have something special that is just so rarely captured today. Patience, careful booking, and having the right talent all add up to things going just right. And it’s a beautiful thing.
92 out of 100
Cewsh’s Download Seal of Approval
Ric Flair – Decline – Obviously Flair was still Flair at this point, but a series of events would come along to ensure that Ric Flair, the wrestler, would never fully recapture who he was in the decade he owned. A rotten WWF run, a rottener few runs as booker of WCW, and the growing influence of age hurt Flair as much as anything any one person did. He would go on to become an incredible manager, authority figure and statesman, (until he went batshit insane,) but his best days were already behind him.
Lex Luger – Push – This was really the best time of Luger’s career, as his two year chase for the title made him look like the next big thing in all of wrestling. Somewhere along the way it all went wrong for him, and he never quite reached the megastar status that he had seemed destined for here. But he would go on to help define two different eras, (WWF in the mid 90s and WCW in the NWO era,) and would go down as one of the better known names of all time.
Woman – Um… – I’m not even touching this one.
Cewsh: Considering that I picked this show up as a joke because Robocop was on it, I have to admit that there were several things here that impressed me. There were several guys who stood out to me as future stars, (whether it actually came true or not,) and the main event was just so goddamned good that it makes the whole show look good for being attached to it. The reality in play here is so foreign to a fan from modern days that it may as well have taken place on the moon. It’s nice to look back, sometimes, and see how far we HAVEN’T come.
Well that’ll do it for us this time, boys and girls. We hope you enjoyed a truly excessive number of pictures of Robocop, and we look forward to bringing you other reviews based entirely around our love for, (and annoyance of,) fictional characters in the future. Coming up next week is our review of WWE’s educational drunk driving documentary Over the Limit 2012. There you will see at least one person who wrestled on this show have a match, and unfortunately it is the least talented of all of the options. But hey, on the bright side, at the very least you can look forward to all of the nicknames we will devise to describe him. The Admiral of Apathy? The Master of Meh? The Lord of Lame? The Miracle Mullet? The…
Ahem, right. So until then, remember to keep reading and always be good to one another.
ROBOCOP, GIVE ME A BEAT.
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