WCW Saturday Night 10/28/1995

Written by: Tom Hopkins

Tony and Dusty are here and they are pumped because it is Halloween Havoc weekend!

–Mr. Wonderful vs. Todd Morton–
Last week Mr. Wonderful broke his mirror and he thought this would lead to 7-years bad luck. He comes out tonight looking very somber. I think smart booking would have Wonderful go down here to enforce the bad-luck stuff. Morton controls early and dropkicks Wonderful to the outside. Morton continues dominating once inside the ring. This goes on for a minute or two before he hits a piledriver to end this at 3:29. That piledriver was the only offense Wonderful got, by the way.

We go back to Nitro and as the announce team is talking we have a Dungeons of Doom promo hyping the debut of the Yeti. Hogan isn’t scared of anything. Later on that night the Yeti burst out of its iceberg as the show went off the air.

–Eddie Guerrero vs. Joey Maggs–
Eddie and the jobber share a handshake prior to the match which may indicate we won’t be seeing any lying, cheating or stealing. Jumping Joey Magg misses a standing senton. Eddie responds with a slingshot somersault splash from the apron. Maggs does an interesting Boston Crab where both legs are under one arm but Eddie makes the ropes. Eddie comes back with a brainbuster and the Frog-Splash ends this at 2:03. Schiavone called that move a Jack-knife which I thought was interesting. There was also a shot of Teddy Long watching the match.

Flair and Sting cut a promo to hype their match against the State Patrol tonight.

–Mr. JL vs. Barry Houston–
Mr. JL is none other than Jerry Lynn. He’s making his WCW Saturday Night debut here as a masked cruiserweight. Houston hits the first high-spot of the match with a springboard splash off the second rope. Houston goes up high again but he’s dropkicked to the outside. JL tries a body-press from the top but the move only glances him. Houston hits a Northern Lights suplex for two. He tries for a second one but JL knees out of it and a sit-down powerbomb ends this at 4:00. I know it was a jobber match but JL missed a big spot and he looked really unspectacular here.

We look at the “major match-up” from last week: Duggan vs. Wallstreet. Bubba interfered and caused Wallstreet to win.

–VK Wallstreet vs. Chuck Williams–
Wallstreet is crossbodied by Williams early but that looks like all he’s gonna get in terms of offense. Wallstreet was going to go for a Samoan Drop but he actually drops Williams. So he picks him up and hits the move to end this at 2:25. That was a really awkward ending. DUD.

–Harlem Heat (w/Sherri) vs. American Males(c) for the WCW Tag Team Titles–
Harlem Heat gets a decent face pop here. The American Males get a decent reaction, too, though I have no idea why. Dusty says that he and Schiavone will come on next week in the cut-up shorts that the Males are wearing right now. Man, Dusty was certainly entertaining because you just had no idea what the hell he was saying. The Males start off hot with a double dropkick to Stevie and a double hiptoss to Booker T. Booker and Bagwell are in now and this foreshadowed the dog of a match they put on at Raw that single-handedly destroyed WCW in the WWE. Stevie boots Riggs from behind and the Heat go to work on Riggs. Booker connects with a nice bicycle kick but misses an elbow from the second rope. Riggs can’t make the tag but he escapes through Stevie’s legs and makes the hot tag to Bagwell. He cleans house and hits a bridge suplex on Stevie. Booker breaks the pinfall and that draws in Riggs. The ref ushers Riggs out of the ring as Bagwell tries an O’Connor’s roll. Sherri scratches his eyes and Booker nails him with a Harlem Side-kick. Stevie covers and the Heat win their fourth tag team titles at 6:06. This was a surprisingly energetic TV match between the two teams. Riggs did his job in being the face in peril and the lack of Bagwell is always a plus. **1/4.

Okerlund talks to Harlem Heat afterwards the Heat will take on all comers, SUCKAAAAAS!!!

–Road Warrior Hawk vs. Bobby Starr–
The jobber attacks from behind and Hawk just shrugs it off. He literally turned around and just stared him down like, WTF are you doing? Starr is hopelessly overmatched and Hawk shows off his power offense, like chinlocks. Hawk finally ends this with a top-rope clothesline at 2:15. This was 75 seconds too long.

–Renegade (w/Jimmy Hart) vs. Jobber–
The jobber attacks from behind and I guess the jobber’s union told them they must attack from behind to start. Renegade ends this with a top rope splash at 0:45.

I should point out we’re 40-minutes in and we’ve had 7 matches.

Macho Man comes out to talk to Okerlund. I have no idea what he was trying to say so let’s just check out the Nitro highlight video. We saw some of the bigger angles before but this really takes us through the matches and other angles. Schiavone tells us some of the upcoming matches, too. We have Norton vs. Shark and Disco Inferno vs. Sabu.

–State Patrol vs. Ric Flair & Sting–
Wow, Sting and Flair tagging together. That pretty makes this a recommendation just by itself. I still don’t know (or care) who is in State Patrol so I will refer to them as State and Patrol until Schiavone corrects me. Sting and State start off and Sting controls with arm-bars. Flair comes in and he continues on the arm. Okay, State is Lt. James Earl. Flair is caught in the State Patrol corner and Patrol is tagged in. Is that Crash Holly? Buddy Lee is the other one – that is good to know. Lee hits an elbow from the second rope on Sting and covers for two. Sting puts the Scorpion Deathlock on Lee (even though I don’t think he was the legal man) but whatever, he quits and this is over at 4:11. The concept of these two working together looked a LOT better on paper. Then again they were wrestling jobbers so what could you expect.

Sting and Flair talk to Mean Gene afterwards. Flair talks about his retirement match last year (and how he was retired for 6 months!) but now he’s ready to walk the aisle with Sting and take on Pillman and his nemesis, Arn Anderson.

–Shark (w/Taskmaster) vs. Lex Luger–
Schiavone mentions a rumor that Luger is in cahoots with the Dungeon of Doom. We get early power stuff to start with both shrugging off shoulderblocks. Shark misses an avalanche in the corner and Luger school-boys him for two. Shark takes a powder and Taskmaster ignores him. Luger clotheslines Shark but can’t get him off his feet. Luger tries a suplex and it actually hits. Okay, that was impressive. Luger tries a bodyslam but his back is aching from that suplex and Shark falls on top of him for two. Shark works the back and he gets a couple of near-falls. Shark misses another charge in the corner and a third miss finds the boot of Luger. Luger finally gets Shark down on his back after a forearm to the head. Luger is dumped to the outside right to the feet of Taskmaster. TM tells him to get to his feet as the conspiracy theories continue. Shark can’t believe TM wouldn’t attack Luger. Luger gets back in the ring and he and Shark engage in a slugfest. Meng runs out and kicks Shark in the back of the head! Luger covers and gets the pinfall at 8:40. Another surprisingly decent match. It had good psychology (working Luger’s back) as well as an ending that advances the storyline. It was slow and plodding but I could get into the psychology of it. **.

Okerlund talks to Luger and he mentions something about the NHL Playoffs. I guess because it’s not a standard tournament bracket but rather the top seed against the bottom seed every round. Luger talks about dispatching Shark and taking on Savage tomorrow night at Halloween Havoc.

We have a weird Hogan promo as he calls out Sullivan and the Giant. There’s a weird segment where Hogan says God as my witness but God is taken out and Detroit is put in its place. That was really weird. Was that from the original WCW show or the editing of Classics? So it literally sounded like, now, with Detroit as my witness. It just didn’t make any sense. Whatever. That crazed promo ended our show.

–The Bottom Line–
Last week we had 11 matches and this week we cut down to 9 matches. What a rip-off!! Actually, you get two decent matches with the Tag Title change and a good Shark/Luger match. Plus you get Flair and Sting teaming up which is always a nice treat. This was a hard-sell for Halloween Havoc and you have to sit through a bunch of jobber matches but the three good matches makes up for it.