By "Net.cop" Scott Keith

You know, to be honest I haven't been righteously angry about anything for a good month now, so I'm afraid the Wrants have been a bit less confrontational than one might like.

Maybe I'm losing my edge, who knows? I haven't done any serious net.busting in months, and the ones recently have been pretty half-hearted. The WWF has been getting me to mark out non-stop with the Austin thing for months now, and even WCW has sucked less than usual for the past few weeks, plus we get Nitro here in Canada starting October 22. That counts for a few brownie points, I'd say.

So if I can't bitch about the present, maybe it would be a good idea to look back at what I've been watching recently and bitch about it instead.

Preface: I watch a lot of wrestling. I currently have 55 tapes, averaging 3 shows per tape, with another 10 or 12 in the mail as we speak, and my roommate has 80+ with more coming soon, mainly those cool 10 hour tapes that they stopped making recently. Sidenote: FUCK YOU BASF!

And away we go...

- AWA Superclash III (1988, Chicago). I just got this one recently, and it's most notable for the "unification" match between Kerry Von Erich and Jerry Lawler, which ended in a screwjob and didn't actually unify anything. By the time the show aired, the AWA was a miserable joke and WCCW was up-and-coming but still not worthy of being called a World title by any means.

Interesting historical note: The WCCW and AWA were unified into one World title that night. Jerry Lawler was stripped of the AWA portion shortly after, leaving him WCCW World champion. Shortly after that, the WCCW itself changed into the USWA, then shortly after that the USWA merged with Lawler's own promotion, the CWA, forming the organization known today as the USWA. It's odd the way things work out, with the federation Lawler represented in 1988 dead a year later and Lawler himself running the remnants of the federation which lost the title match.

Okay, but that's just the main event. There were actually quite a few other notable things about the show. First of all, it was very much an interpromotional show, with the AWA, World Class (WCCW), CWA (today's USWA) and even POWW (the female wrestling promotion run by pondslime David McClane) participating.

David McClane, by the way, is regarded by wrestling fans and biologists alike to be the lowest form of life currently on Earth. If you check the charts in your Bio 101 text, you'll find him right underneath amoeba.

On this card, Jeff Jarrett and Eric Embry fought for the *light* heavyweight title, something that sounds ridiculous today given Jarrett's build and Embry's huge gut. And yes, Jarrett was boring even back then, but he jobs cleanly at least, so it's worth watching for that much.

The tag title match/women's title match featured Wendi Richter, Derrick Dukes and Ricky Rice against Pat Tananka, Paul Diamond, and Madusa Micelli. It was a special six-man with all the belts on the line, sort of. What is most notable about that match, however, is that the very young manager of the heel team went on to become one of the most popular and respected *wrestlers* today. The manager was, of course, Dallas Page.

Sgt. Slaughter fought Col. Debeers in a "boot camp match" which was completely unnotable except for the fact that Slaughter was attacked by the Iron Sheik and Adnan El-Kaissie after the match, who would go on to become his vilified teammates in the WWF only three years later.

If you don't blink during the opening six-man match, you might catch Cactus Jack on the heel side. Or maybe not.

The PPV as a whole was poorly lit, amateurishly produced, featured boring interviews and terrible matches, and while well-meaning, basically serves an example for all on how to ruin a PPV and send your federation into the toilet in five months or less. For historical value, however, it's a must for a tape collection, since it stands as the first inter-promotional PPV and as the swan song of the AWA before the dark days of Larry Zbyszko's title reign and the inevitable end.

- UWF TV (Early 1987). I also acquired a tape of nine weeks of UWF TV from Jan. 87 - Mar. 87, and it's pretty interesting to watch some of the stuff which came out of that era.

Sting, for instance. This guy must have done the fastest self-improvement course in wrestling history, because I have a tape of him and Warrior in 1985 in Memphis, and it's painful to watch them. Literally. I mean, my own intestine reached up to strangle me as a reflex action after two minutes of them lumbering around the ring, botching bodyslams. By 1987, Sting clearly had a sort of charisma about him, but he was still basically a heavy for Eddie Gilbert. And he still sucked. Maybe hanging around the Freebirds and Williams and Gilbert helped him, because by 1988 he was truly something special, although for the life of me I can't figure out how he got that way. Hell, I was around watching the UWF in 1987 and I never would have pegged Sting for a future "5 time" World champion. Of course, I still have trouble reconciling Shawn Michaels the Rocker with Shawn Michaels the World champion, so maybe I'm not a great judge of these things.

At the time, Rick Steiner was 100% different than he became in 1988 and became in 1989 with Scott Steiner. This was before the car accident (not the one caused by the Outsiders) that nearly ended the career of Steiner, and also messed up his head for a while. It is definitely an interesting thing to listen to him give a perfectly normal heel interview without any tics or odd mannerisms, and it's even odder to see him in the ring doing no suplexes or anything else we currently associate with him today. Maybe the accident was the best thing that ever happened to him, who knows?

And what happened to Terry Taylor and Chris Adams? What a great team that was, and both guys just never lived up to any of the potential they showed. We all know what happened to Taylor (cock-a-doodle-doo) and Adams got stuck in the indies, most notably putting rookie Steve Austin over in a feud with him in 1989. Kind of a shame, they were fun to watch.

How can anyone look back now and take One Man Gang seriously as a champion? I've always felt that was a huge mistake. OMG showed nothing worthy of a title reign as long as he got, and never has since.

Ted Dibiase's little black glove is one of the neat things about wrestling. Only wrestling fans are capable of accepting that a perfectly normal looking glove will magically be loaded with enough metal to knock out any opponent when put on Dibiase's hand. And I mean that in the nicest way. However, Dibiase the face was pretty silly at times. Bill Watts should have taken a page out of the WWF's book and turned the guy heel years ago. I find it amazing that someone who spent almost all his career as a face became what was basically the ultimate heel in the WWF.

- NWA Great American Bash 86/Starrcade 86. I know lots of people (including myself) have ridiculously pumped up memories of how great the NWA was, but let's face it, there was a *lot* of crap out there. Witness Bash 86 and Starrcade 86. The Bash video is excrutiating to watch at times, including such "highlights" as Pez Whatley v. Jimmy Valient, Hawk v. Ric Flair (notable only for the brilliant screwjob ending), and Flair jobbing to Dusty Rhodes. Watching Dusty Rhodes "wrestle" in his prime makes me respect his mic work all the more because Flair could barely carry his ass to a **1/2 match, if that.

Nikita Koloff used to be so cool. Seriously, if RSPW had been around in 1986, he would have been the darling of the newsgroup. Steve Austin wrapped in a Russian flag, he didn't take shit from anyone (until he turned face) and he could be carried to an excellent match. I just don't know why this guy deserved as much shit in his life as he ended up getting, with Magnum TA having his career ended in 86 and his wife dying a few years later, not to mention drug problems and a goofy haircut once it grew back again. And yet Jim Duggan continues to breathe.

Starrcade itself proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that "One show, one arena" is ALWAYS the best policy.

I hate scaffold matches. I just never got the attraction, and I still don't. Watching the Midnights and the Road Warriors crawling around the scaffold is painful enough, but seeing Jim Cornette take the best bump of the bunch and screw up his knee for the rest of his life as a result moreso. I'm glad that the stupid idea that was the scaffold match died out with the NWA.

The Rock N Roll Express were truly a team before their time. They set the pace, tone and formula for just about every tag team match since, with the more talented face taking the punishment for most of the match ("Playing Ricky Morton", as I'm fond of saying), and the weaker member taking the hot tag and cleaning house before hitting the big double-team finisher. If they were both 12 years younger today, they'd flourish in ECW. Ricky could take a chairshot with the best of them...

I'd comment on Ric Flair, but I don't like speaking poorly of the deceased.

******

Well, 10K flies when you're having fun, and I'd say that this has gone well for a column I was going nuts trying to think of a subject for two days ago.

So write and let me know: Do you prefer the outraged rants or the reflective history lessons? I'm curious...

Until Howard Stern wins the Nobel Peace Prize, I remain the net.cop...