The SmarK Rant for World Championship Wrestling–01.24.87

The SmarK Rant for World Championship Wrestling – 01.24.87

We are TEASED with the ring introductions for the famous Windham-Flair match from World Wide Wrestling before cutting to the actual show this week.

Your host is Tony Schiavone, flying solo this week.

And what would an episode of 1987 WCW be without Vladimir Petrov to open the show? He now has an umlaut over the “e” in his name, for reasons not adequately explored. Is that even a thing in Russian? Anyway, Uncle Ivan rants at the Superpowers.

Jimmy Valiant v. Randy Barber

The front row is filled with rowdy young Boy Scouts, so this should be a fun show. Boogie finishes Barber with an elbow in a brisk 4 seconds.

Tim Horner gets promo time. Just accept it. Jimmy Valiant zooms in and takes over the promo, going off about National Grandpa’s Day while Horner tries not to crack up.

Brad Armstrong is here to talk about how the Four Horsemen are attacking guys everywhere, including himself for the first time. However, the Armstrongs are like a fine watch: They take a licking and keep on ticking. Yeah, he would think a Timex is a fine watch. So we go back to WCW Pro, as Ric Flair interrupts Brad’s promo time and tries to brush him off, then just has the Horsemen beat the crap out of him when a verbal warning doesn’t work.

Dick Murdoch & Baron Von Raschke v. Brody Chase & Larry Stevens

Baron and Murdoch is quite the teaming. Baron gets a sloppy backdrop on Chase and works the arm of Stevens, and Murdoch finishes him with the brainbuster at 1:20.

Tully Blanchard v. Zane Smith

Tully offers a handshake and then slaps him in the face to gain control, offering him up to JJ for a few free shots before slugging him down again. Slingshot suplex finishes at 0:45.

Barry Windham is here to introduce the tape of his match with Flair from Worldwide Wrestling, which is joined 25:00 in and is available in full on the WWE Network should your life be so sad and empty that you’ve never seen it before. It ran the entire length of an episode of Worldwide and ended in a 45:00 draw, getting ***** from Meltzer. We pick it up as Flair drops a knee and chops away, and then elbows him right out of the ring. Back in with a suplex, but Windham counters and slugs him down. That gets two. They slug it out again and Windham grabs the headlock, but Flair shrewdly gets the backdrop suplex out of it and slaps on the figure-four, positioning himself between Windham and the ropes. Which means he can use them, of course. Young catches him and breaks the hold.

Flair goes back after him with a kneecrusher and back to the figure-four, but Windham reverses for two. They fight in the corner, but Flair tosses him again, so Windham gets pissed and sunset flips in for two. Flair grabs the sleeper, but Windham slips out and kicks Flair in the face, then follows with a lariat from the second rope for two. Windham slams him and goes for a splash, but hits the knees. Since when did Windham ever use a splash? They fight over a suplex and Windham gets it, but can’t make the cover. He opts to go up instead, but misses a flying elbow, and Flair goes for the knee, and misses THAT. Windham decides to go for the knee now and then slugs him out to the floor, which is actually to Flair’s advantage because it’s a timeout. Windham follows and pounds on the leg outside, and back in Windham gets his own figure-four and slugs Flair down for two. Flair makes the ropes, but Young kicks him off because you have to be IN the ropes, not REACHING for them. He makes them properly, however, and Windham breaks the hold, but stays on him. Good man. Flair goes to the knee, however, and they slug it out, but Flair goes down. Another break as Flair gets another kneecrusher and we return with them slugging it out again. Flair’s hiptoss is blocked with an abdominal stretch, but Flair finishes the hiptoss and Young is bumped. Windham goes up with the missile dropkick (and that was state of the art offense in 1987), which gets two.

Windham grabs a sleeper, but Flair escapes with a backdrop suplex and comes in via the top rope with a high cross, but Windham rolls through for two. Flair overpowers him and Windham gets another sleeper. Rollup gets two. Flair goes back to the knee and Windham slugs away in the corner and gets two. They slug it out again and Windham explodes out of the corner with a lariat and gets a delayed vertical suplex and a kneedrop for two. One minute left. Flair tries a hiptoss and Windham reverses to a backslide for two. Flair goes up and gets slammed off with 30 seconds left. Powerslam gets two. Another lariat gets two as time expires. This was a fantastic piece of business and really took Flair out of his comfort zone where he’d wrestle the same match against mix-and-match power guys.

The Four Horsemen want to stress that they’re an elite group and they’re not planning to expand at this point.

Lex Luger v. Randy Mulkey

Tony notes that he’s “the complete package”. Getting close. Mulkey tries a headlock and gets tossed around and beat up for his troubles, and the powerslam and HUMAN TORTURE RACK finish at 1:33. JJ is intrigued by this dominant performance.

Lex Luger reminds us that he wants to be a Horseman, but Barry Windham comes out to again tell him what a mistake he’s making. Lex thinks he’s making a mistake by making car payments and wearing blue jeans instead of living the high life.

The Road Warriors are sick of people with big mouths getting all up in their faces without being able to back it up. Everyone else is a bunch of slugs, from Slug City. Tony gives Paul Ellering a commemorative edition of the Starrcade VHS tape. What the hell is a “VHS”?

Brad Armstrong v. Gary Royal

Brad works the arm and gets a bodypress for two, then goes to a headlock and gets a dropkick and a snapmare for two. Headlock, armbar, headlock, armbar. Royal takes over with a slam for two and goes to his own armbar, but Brad hits the legsweep for the pin out of nowhere at 4:51. Really? Tully gets 30 seconds and they give Brad FIVE MINUTES?!

The Rock N Roll Express introduce country singer David Allen Coe, who literally has grey hair down past his ass.

Nikita Koloff is tired of the Four Horsemen and their bullshit. However, first up the Superpowers are going to deal with the evil Russians in the Omni on Feb 1.

The Rock N Roll Express v. Eddie Roberts & David Isley

The RNR take turns slamming Roberts and Robert works the leg of Isley, then the double dropkick finishes at 4:00.

Bill Dundee & Jimmy Garvin let us know that the Barbarian is on the way back to the NWA, and also Bill’s now the Central States Champion. They seem like they’d actually be a pretty hilarious heel tag team.

Ravishing Rick Rude & Manny Fernandez v. Tommy Angel & Chance McQuade

OK, Chance McQuade is actually a hell of a wrestling name. He could be an undercover cop who angers his commanding officer but still gets results. Manny wrestles Chance to the mat with a double chickenwing and kind of tortures him there, and Rude comes in and works the arm some more. I was intrigued enough by young Chance that I looked him up, but there’s basically zero information on him, so obviously he didn’t progress past TV jobber. Tommy Angel comes in and the Bull backdrops him and drops knees on his ribs, and Rude comes in with the Rude Awakening DDT to finish at 3:39.

Manny Fernandez continues valiantly trying to get his 17 different catchphrases and nicknames over. It doesn’t work.

Vladimir Petrov v. Alan Martin

Sickle and suplex set up the Russian Hammer to finish at 0:30.

The Midnight Express & Big Bubba v. Denny Brown, Bill Mulkey & George South

Cornette gets the line of the night as he points out to Tony that there’s a lot of Boy Scouts in the audience, so perhaps they could teach Tony how to tie a knot and hang himself. SICK BURN. Also, Tony’s got ugly kids, the whole bit. Also, fun fact: The Midnights are actually the US tag team champions. Anyway, stuff happens here, it doesn’t really matter, and Bubba wins with a godawful terrifying thing that looked like a piledriver but ended up as a sitout powerbomb and nearly killed the poor bastard who had to take it.

Arn Anderson v. Bill Tabb

Arn works the arm and finishes with the spinebuster at 1:00.

Lex Luger wraps things up and declares once again that he’ll be a Horseman. And we’re out for another week!