The SmarK Rant for Superstars on the Superstation–02.07.86

The SmarK Rant for Superstars on the Superstation – 02.07.86

So the latest addition to the Hidden Gems catalog is a doozy: The 1986 TBS show that was a prototype for Clash of the Champions! The gimmick was that fans were voting on a variety of dream matches, and they just crammed them all into a two hour show.

Taped from Atlanta, I’m assuming, although it’s never mentioned.

Your hosts are David Crockett & Tony Schiavone

NWA World tag team titles: The Rock N Roll Express v. The Midnight Express

Kicking it off with a bang! I for one am sick of the RNR ducking the Midnights and now they finally get their shot. This will probably blow your mind given my well documented tastes in wrestling and personal history, but I have never had the opportunity to see this particular match before. The MX attacks to start and tosses Robert, then slingshots him back in the ring and puts the boots to him. They try the same thing to Ricky, but he slingshots THEM to the floor in a great spot and the RNR clean house in the ring with a meeting of the minds via atomic drop. The Midnights bail for advice from Jim Cornette. That advice? “If you’re gonna do weird stuff with a banana, for the love of god make sure there’s no cameras around.” And I bet you thought I’d go for the racist angle. Back in the ring, the champs double-team Bobby, but he tosses Ricky to the floor again, and then charges and gets backdropped onto the concrete. These poor guys could use some pretty blue mats out there tonight. Back in the ring, Ricky fights off Condrey and they take him back to the face corner and go to work on the leg. OK, I don’t know what the deal with the master tape is here, but it’s skipping frames like a PC game with a bad graphics card, running at what looks like 20 FPS instead of 30. Hopefully it’s a temporary glitch. Ricky takes Dennis down and ties up the leg, but Condrey escapes…and then hits a knee into Ricky’s gut, which injures himself. D’OH! Robert goes back to the knee again and Ricky comes off the top with a knee onto Condrey’s knee, and Dennis finally scrambles away and brings Eaton back in. Eaton slugs away in the corner, but walks into a suplex from Ricky, and the RNR double-team him in their corner as well. And then Robert takes a slingshot into a Condrey headbutt on the apron, and we take a break.

However, the “break” in reality was just a cut in the taped match, so we come back in exactly the same place as we left. Tremendous! The MX continues to work on Robert and Bobby goes up with the Alabama Jam, which gets two. Dennis tries an abdominal stretch, but Robert escapes with a hiptoss for two. And then Bobby goes up with a flying kneedrop and David Crockett has a damn heart attack. Condrey with a short clothesline for two. They’re putting the BEATS on Robert here, and it’s tremendous. Ricky gets flustered and comes in, but that just allows the MX to use Cornette’s belt and smack Robert around with it. Bobby with the chinlock to finally slow it down a bit 12:00 in, and they cheat and switch off on that for a bit. This makes Ricky even madder, and that allows Bobby to come in with a flying elbow onto Robert’s throat and Condrey gets two off that. Back to the chinlock and Robert fights out, but he goes to the wrong corner because he’s a googly-eyed freak. Sorry, I’m getting all caught up in the match here. They hold him in the corner and Eaton gets a neckbreaker for two and maintains chinlock control, but Robert fights back with a sunset flip on Eaton for two. Condrey gets another cheapshot and keeps him in the corner, and follows with a backbreaker to set up the ROCKET LAUNCHER, but it misses and it’s HOT FUCKING TAG Ricky Morton. Crossbody for Eaton gets two and it’s BREAKING LOOSE IN TULSA, but the ref is wiped out on the double dropkick. Ricky goes after Cornette and David is losing his mind, but Condrey waffles Ricky with the tennis racket and Eaton lands on top for the pin and their one and only NWA World tag team titles at 17:28! These guys put me in my happy place and I could watch this stuff all day, even though they’d had a million matches together. But they keep finding new ways to keep it fresh! ****1/4 Ricky taking the racket shot is a thing of beauty.

Hopefully we also get the Philly rematch where they switched the titles back someday.

The Road Warriors v. The Russians

Crazy that this show was on free TV in 1986. Holy shit I wish I got TBS at the time. Nikita pounds on Animal in the corner and gets nothing, then charges and lands in a bearhug. Animal with a slam, but he misses a legdrop and then no-sells his own missed move. Hawk comes in and also no-sells, but Ivan dodges a charge and slows him down a bit. But then Hawk goes right back with a shoulderbreaker and big boot, and follows with a press slam for two. Animal comes in and drops an elbow on Ivan for two as the Baron heads down to ringside. Meanwhile, Hawk bumps into Nikita on the apron and the Russians go to work in the corner. Ivan chokes Hawk out with a chain and drops a leg for two, as Hawk still won’t really sell. Christ, it’s like wrestling the AI characters from WWF No Mercy 64. More choking in the commie corner, but Hawk comes back with a shoulder tackle and Baron comes in and drops an elbow for Hawk for two. Everyone’s brawling as this goes nowhere, but Nikita trips up Hawk and Baron just comes in for the DQ at 6:56. Well that was a steep drop in quality after the opener, especially Nikita. DUD The Russian/German coalition goes after Ellering, but he makes his own comeback and then the Warriors finish the job for him and chase the heels off. Somewhere in here, Ivan is bleeding, because Dusty.

Magnum TA, acting as host of the show, chats with someone who could be Ricky Bobby for all I know or care, dressed like Disco Inferno’s proposed TNA gimmick where he would be plastered with sponsors and then lose them on a weekly basis as a running gag. Hold on, can I pack any more references into that sentence…don’t think so.

Carrying on, we haven’t talked or thought about or paid tribute to the genius of Dusty Rhodes yet on this show, so Magnum decides to remedy this by talking about how Dusty is his mentor and best friend, and then throws it to a clip of Dusty apparently making a movie with Willie Nelson or hanging out at a movie set or whatever. The movie is a remake of “Stagecoach”, with Willie, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash, which sounds awesome but apparently was not. I bet there was some drugs being used on the set, though! Just a hunch. I literally have no idea what purpose Dusty was supposed to be serving there, but I’ve learned not to question. The answer might lie in a question asked to Willie about Dusty doing walk-ons during Willie’s concerts, where Willie just notes that you can’t really stop Dusty from walking onto your concert if he wants to be there. That might have been his subtle way of hinting that Dusty wasn’t really welcome on the set and just kind of showed up there with a camera crew and Tony Schiavone ready to conduct an interview.

National heavyweight title: Dusty Rhodes v. Tully Blanchard

Damn, we get this blowoff, too? Baby Doll had just turned on Tully and joined with Big Dust, perhaps because he promised to keep her in fur coats and hairspray. We take a break off the lockup and this time they actually insert the World Championship Wrestling commercial bumper. Back with Dusty working the knee in Dusty fashion, namely laying on the knee and occasionally bending it upwards. Dusty wraps the knee around the post while Tony talks about how Flair and his buddies are calling themselves “The Four Horsemen”. Yeah, that’ll put butts in seats. Dusty goes up and lands on his bad foot, which might I remind you is not reinforced by his special cowboy boot tonight due to orders of that fascist Bob Geigel, and Tully goes to work on the leg. This is ideal for Dusty, who can utilize his prime skillset of laying on the mat and selling, while no doubt planning the next few weeks of TV at the same time he’s naming PPV shows and working on some lyrics for Willie Nelson. Tully with the figure-four, which Dusty reverses, and he hits a belly to belly for what would what no doubt be the finish, but JJ takes the ref. Dusty goes after him and lands on the floor, but Baby Doll helps him back in and Dusty makes the comeback. Suplex gets an apparent pin, but JJ puts the foot on the rope and the match must continue. What human being could have kicked out of a suplex? Tully slugs away as the time is running out, like Dusty running to the buffet before they run out of fried chicken and close the doors, and Rhodes makes the comeback. Some sort of axehandle thing gets two. Dusty slugs away in the corner as they leisurely stumble towards the obvious finish, and JJ trips Dusty to put Tully on top for two. Dusty goes after JJ and comes up with a new gimmick for that Ray Traylor guy on the way out of the ring, and then back in for a Boston crab on Tully as time expires at 20:00. JJ and Tully steal the belt from Dusty, which is fine because he didn’t actually win it in the ring anyway, and we are left to wait anxiously for the rematches around the house show circuit. This was every Dusty-Tully match you’ve ever seen in your life. *1/2

Magnum TA chats with Jim Crockett Jr., who is here to introduce a tag team tournament called the Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup. So we cut to Joel Watts, who talks with the VP of the New Orleans Superdome as they bid to host the event. BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH DUSTY?

NWA World title: Ric Flair v. Ron Garvin

This is TV time remaining, which isn’t much. Oddly enough, at this point Garvin WOULD have been a fine contender to actually win the belt, as opposed to just a year later when he got it and sunk the territory. Ron immediately comes in throwing leather and Flair runs away to think it over. Back in, Garvin grabs a headlock, so Flair throws the chops at him and Garvin fires right back to trigger a Flair Flop. Garvin just wears him out with more chops and it hurts watching it, and that gets two. Flair goes back to his own chops and Garvin just beats the stuffing out of him in the corner, then chokes him out and plays “Got your nose” in much meaner fashion than most people would do with their children. Man, if anyone could have turned Slaughter’s atomic noogie into a deadly finisher, it was Garvin. More chops and he backdrops Flair out of the corner and calmly stomps Flair’s hand on the mat. Solid plan. Flair tries to throw forearms, so Garvin just nails him again and Flair tumbles to the floor on the sell. Back in, Garvin keeps whacking at the chest and goes to work on the arm now, but Flair escapes with more chops. This finally slows Garvin down, and Flair tosses him, so Ron comes back in and now he’s pissed. More chops in the corner and Flair ragdolls over the top rope. Where the hell was THIS Ron Garvin when it came time to win the damn title? Back in, Garvin with the sleeper, but Flair escapes with the backdrop suplex and double stomps the gut to take over. Suplex gets two. Kneedrop gets two. Flair tries to choke out Garvin for some stupid reason, and Ron sits up like the Undertaker and just repeatedly punches him in the face for two. They trade more chops and you know how that goes for Flair, and Garvin gets two. Ronnie switches it up and beats on him with headbutts in the corner, then adds a suplex for two. They do a pinfall reversal sequence and Garvin gets the backslide for two and follows with a crossbody for two. Back to the corner for more chops as Garvin just beats on the poor guy mercilessly, and it’s a Flair Flip into a double axehandle, but Ron catches him with a small package coming down for two. Flair chops him down for two. He stops to yell at Tommy Young and Garvin gets a rollup, but Young is bumped during Flair’s argument and can’t count. Hands of Stone, no ref. Garvin retrieves the ref, but Flair knees him in the back and puts his feet on the ropes for the pin to retain at 14:42 as we run out of time. Fuck yeah this match ruled. ****

Dammit, my life was worse off for never getting the chance to see this until now. God bless the WWE Network for finally filling in that gap in my life. This was pretty awesome, especially for a TV show in 1986.