Posted January 9, 201114 yr comment_5461745 9/28 Mark Starr vs. Big Bubba* Konnan vs. Super Calo 10/5 High Voltage vs. Amazing French Canadians Konnan vs. Chris Jericho Man, TWO Konnan main event matches? Good grief. Mark Starr/Bubba was real fun. Bubba was pretty fat here, and he was came out wearing a duster like Bunkhouse Buck. Bubba moved real quickly in this match, and I didn't realize he was this agile in late '96. His punches looked really awesome and original. Uppercuts from the knees, superman punches to a downed opponent, right cross in the corner, just a bunch of punching positions you don't normally see in wrestling. He also took a big and crazy fast bump through the ropes to the floor. Short match, but fun. Konnan/Calo was just weird. It started off with some cool arm drags, then Konnan went for what looked like a Regal Stretch, and Calo made the ropes. The ref started counting, then backed Konnan off.....and just raised his arm while the bell rang. What? This went like 30 seconds, and didn't actually seem to end. Calo made the ropes....and then Konnan just kinda won. HV vs. Canadians was fine while it lasted but would have been better if the camera didn't miss two big spots (the worse was Rage doing his springboard somersault, and Pierre powerbombing him out of the air, but the camera awkwardly zoomed in at the worst time so you only saw Pierre's face close-up during that whole spot). Kaos took a brutal hotshot out of a flapjack that looked like it whipped his neck real bad. Pierre took a huge bump over the top to the floor and really threw himself into the guardrail. I think these teams have a good match in them, something just seems to be missing. Konnan/Jericho never really clicked, and the ending was clunky (Jericho goes for the Lionsault while Hart slid the US title in to Konnan, who doesn't really grab it in time to hit Jericho). Konnan kept bumping way early on all of Jericho's kicks making them look like garbage. Konnan may legit be the worst in the company.
January 9, 201114 yr Author comment_5461747 2/4 VK Wallstreet vs. Rick Garcia Konnan vs. One Man Gang 2/11 Bunkhouse Buck/Dick Slater vs. Road Warriors Hugh Morrus vs. Chris Kanyon Big Bubba/VK Wallstreet vs. Craig Pittman/Joey Maggs Jim Duggan vs. LOCH NESS!!** OK, I am not randomly picking shows very well today. Wallstreet/Garcia starts out pretty fun with the fans chanting Walmart and Garcia being a bland jobber with a supremely dorky haircut. VK keeps cutting off Garcia's babyface offense and the crowd is getting into it...then VK locks on a chinlock for over a minute, then picks him up and kits a samoan drop for the win. lame. Konnan vs. OMG was Konnan's US title win that may be one of the more buried title wins in wrestling. Who changes a belt on your Saturday 9 A.M. show? Shockingly, Konnan locks horrible. Gang was awesome here, taking a massive bump through the ropes to the floor from a crossbody, and bumping nice on some armdrags. Match was about 4 minutes and Konnan looked horrible for most of it. Man the Road Warriors looked lousy in their match. Animal embarrassingly couldn't get Buck up for the Doomsday Device at first, while Schiavone was proclaiming Animal's back problems were no more, as the crowd chanted "L.O.D." the whole time. Hugh Morrus did not look good in his match, almost landing headfirst on the No Laughing Matter. The tag was shaping up to be real fun until it ended prematurely. Maggs was firing back with shockingly good punches and Bubba was really good, but then he just nailed the Bossman Slam out of nowhere. Pittman didn't even tag in. But who gives a shit that the rest of the show was garbage, because this was the debut of LOCH NESS!!!! Duggan is in the ring, and Loch Ness just just squashes him with an elbow drop and Sullivan is in the ref calls for the bell. Tons of awesome jobbers run out and they all get elbow dropped! Buddy Lee Parker gets elbow dropped! Mark Starr gets elbow dropped! Ricky Santana AND Fidel Sierra get elbow dropped! Loch Ness is 50 fucking years old here and gets up slower with every one but they all looked awesome and then he yelled into the camera a bunch and showcased his Shane MacGowan-esque teeth and it fucking ruled!!!
June 13, 201114 yr Author comment_5473231 6/9/96 Kevin Sullivan vs. The Mighty Yankee Kurasawa vs. El Gato 6/16/96 Rocco Rock vs. Jerry Sags Jim Powers vs. VK Wallstreet Jim Duggan vs. Disco Inferno OK, so Main Event appears to be the worst of all the WCW syndicated programming, at least based on the stuff I've randomly selected so far. Yankee was some guy in a mask (I think maybe Tony Anthony or Len Denton). I really hate Sullivan squashes, as he doesn't really work that stiff, and most of his offense looks kinda garbage. His finisher double foot stomp to the tummy always looks silly, and all this stuff that should look cool like big winging punches and stomps to the face always look weak. Anthony (?) took a nice bump into the steps, but this was a "classic" Sullivan 2 minute squash with slow work and no offense from his opponent. I'm pretty sure Gato was Pat Tanaka and he looked pretty blah in this match. Kurasawa (Manabu Nakanishi) was actually way better here than I remember '96 Nakanishi being. He throws some cool leg kicks and some nice overhead belly-to-belly suplexes. He really worked a UWFi style that I didn't remember him working. Gato worked as the worst possible Tiger Mask here. He's wearing a Tiger Mask mask, and wearing these absurd tiger striped overalls and hitting all these awful crossbody forearm blocks that look like the lightest offense possible. He wins with one of them and it's lame. Rock vs. Jerry Sags is an odd singles match. Both guys alternate working face and heel over a 2 minute period. Rock comes out waving his arms embarrassingly like he would do, then gets on the mic and tells Knobbs to head to the back and take a seat "like all these fat chumps in the crowd". Crowd boos, then Knobbs gets on the mic and says "Sags is going to beat you worse than we'd beat any of these fat losers in the crowd!" At this point the crowd has just been insulted by both guys in the span of 20 seconds. They are confused. Match goes about 90 seconds, Sags throws a nice clothesline, Grunge sneaks out from under the ring and interferes to give Rock the win. Wow, how good does Powers vs. Wallstreet sound? Wallstreet is basically Charlie Haas with a little more size. Powers is juiced to the gills and can't do much. Wallstreet locks on a chinlock in a sub-3 minute match. This wasn't that good. Duggan vs. Disco was exactly what you'd expect from a 1996 D-show level Duggan match: Short, lots of stalls for USA chants, not exactly high on workrate. I think I may hate WCW Main Event.
June 29, 201114 yr Author comment_5475488 1/7 Hugh Morrus vs. Dino Casanova Disco Inferno vs. Alex Wright* 1/14 Craig Pittman vs. Frankie Lancaster Chris Benoit/Brian Pillman vs. Harlem Heat Pretty amusing ass kicking from Morrus, big front slam, short shots the moonsault and buries his knees right in Casanova's chest. Ouch. Disco/Wright was fun. Wright looked really green but Disco was on fire here, throwing all these great punch varities: To the body, in a headlock, haymakers, etc. Disco was pretty perfect in the WCW mid card role. Maybe the most appropriate mid card guy ever/ Pittman could work a fun squash but what's funny is all his arm offense looks way better than his actual finisher. Wrenches the arm nasty, headbutts the arm, snaps the wrist over his knee...but then his code red arm bar is just lame. Horseman vs. Heat was amusing but only goes a little under 3 minutes. Benoit only gets two moves of offense, and the moves are a giant German suplex and a giant dragon suplex. Sherri comes out and wants some of Fuller's business, and then Fuller interferes and the match is over. Shame. All four guys seemed really motivated to have a good match, but maybe that's because they knew it was only going 3 minutes.
July 27, 201114 yr Author comment_5478042 7/14 Ruckus vs. Joe Gomez Konnan vs. Alex Wright 7/21 VK Wallstreet vs. Jim Powers Bobby Eaton/Dave Taylor vs. Jim Duggan/Craig Pittman* Ruckus is Robbie Rage, and they even bill him as being part of High Voltage. Never knew he went under a different name. Gomez is not very good, but he's not very good in a really entertaining way. Rage has a waistlock and does a takedown, Gomez tries to get his hands out to block his face, somehow goes forehead first into the mat. Rage does a REALLY cool armbar/headscissors takedown (that somebody today should steal), Gomez takes the bump right onto the top of his head. Match goes 90 seconds, Ruckus takes the whole match until Gomez wins with a sunset flip. Forgettable, but Rage always breaks out moves I don't expect from him. Man, was Konnan on every single fucking episode of Main Event in '96? This was a real odd one, and I'll be honest...I was really getting into it, until Konnan. Starting to get into it, match was building nicely, and then Konnan. The match starts with 14 minutes left in the show and I am filled with dread at the prospect of a long Konnan match, but also excited to see what Wright could do. Well, the first 3 minutes are all on the mat and while Konnan doesn't look great, he doesn't look bad at all. Wright bends himself into some painful looking holds, pulls out some nice reversals, twists Konnan around by the wrist, neither guy gets an advantage, some cool stuff. Then they stand up, and Konna rolls him up for the win, immediately. What. The. Fuck. But to add to that, Wright was not only under the ropes, but had both arms wrapped around the bottom rope. So Wright is looking to get the count broken, but the ref just counts three. This is literally the 2nd time a '96 Konnan match on Main Event has ended this same way, that I've seen. It's as if only Konnan and the ref know when the match is finishing, and it makes everybody look bad. Wright was in the ropes, HOLDING the ropes, looking right at the ref, and the ref just slowly counts three. I always had a soft spot for Wallstreet, as I thought he looked like Will Clark when I was a kid. He actually looked really good here, but good lord was Jim Powers not very good at pro wrestling. Wallstreet had a couple nice clotheslines, and GREAT short elbowdrop (boy but he really shoehorns that abdominal stretch while holding the ropes into every match, huh? What's great is the camera pans to the crowd during the payoff of the ref finally catching him cheating, so Powers doesn't even get his comeuppance shown) and the Stock Market Crash is a great name for his Samoan drop finisher. Blue Bloods vs. Duggan/Pittman was short but very fun. Not tons of offense aside from punches, but Eaton can obviously punch, Taylor can throw some blows, Duggan can throw alternately great and horrendous punches, but it was Pittman's punhces that were the star here. The had the look of someone who didn't actually know how to throw any kind of punch, worked or real, so was just kind of moving his fist towards Eaton's face...but they looked brutal! Not sure how much of it was Eatong putting them over big, but it looked like he was not so much selling them as he was trying to get out of the way of them. Duggan gets the win with a nice taped fist punch.
