WCW Pro 11/12/1994

Written by: Matt Peddycord

WCW Pro
November 12, 1994
Atlanta, GA
Center Stage Theater

The current WCW Champs were as follows:
WCW World Champion: Hulk Hogan (7/17/1994)
WCW U.S. Champion: Jim Duggan (9/18/1994)
WCW World Tag Team Champions: Pretty Wonderful (10/23/1994)
WCW World Television Champion: Johnny B. Badd (9/18/1994)

Your hosts are Gordon Solie, Larry Zbyszko and Dusty Rhodes.

• WCW World Television Champion Johnny B. Badd vs. Doug Allen

The announcers spend the whole match hyping Badd/HTM at the Clash. Badd gives Allen a sick looking headscissors and then finishes him off with the BADD DAY (Frankensteiner off the second rope). (2:15) I can’t say enough about Badd’s improvement over the last several years.

Johnny B. Badd video profile. They show some clips of Marc Mero’s boxing days up to the day he won the TV title from Regal.

• Jean Paul Levesque vs. Brian Armstrong

Now this is interesting – Triple H vs. Road Dogg. The cliché stands true: you just never know who’s going to be a star in wrestling. You would recognize a lot of the offense from Levesque like the High Knee, but then he does a spinning heel kick which is definitely different. Levesque wins with the PEDIGREE. (3:11) Not a very deadly looking finisher like it would become later on, but it got the job done.

Clash of the Champions XXIX Report with Gene Okerlund. He runs down the card for November 16.

Hulk Hogan, Sting and Dave Sullivan vs. The Butcher, Avalanche and Kevin Sullivan with Mr. T as special referee
Dustin Rhodes vs. Vader
WCW U.S. Heavyweight Champion Jim Duggan vs. Steve Austin
WCW World Television Champion Johnny B. Badd vs. The Honky Tonk Man
The Nasty Boys vs. Harlem Heat
WCW World Tag Team Champions Pretty Wonderful vs. Stars and Stripes with the Patriot’s mask on the line

This was Alex Wright 101. You saw pretty much his entire move set in one match at this point. He can do backflips out of the corner and a gutwrench suplex. A crossbody out of the corner gets Wright the 1-2-3. (1:47) What he could do, he did well. He still needed a lot of improvement though and that would come later.

Gordon Solie meets with Dustin Rhodes. Rhodes hypes an Omni tag match on Thanksgiving night where he and his dad will meet Arn Anderson and Bunkhouse Buck. I believe that show was canceled due to lack of ticket sales. I’m not even joking around.

Interesting little sidenote: During one of Okerlund’s WCW hotline shills, he mentions something about the inside scoop on Randy Savage. He’s talking about his release from the WWF and his recent jump to WCW.

• Sgt. Craig Pittman vs. Frankie Lancaster

Pittman has that spastic mean streak and crumbled up face sort of like Mr. Hughes. He bends on the arm the whole time and then finishes with a gutwrench suplex. Huh? (3:52) He looked good working the arm. They should have just had him finish Lancaster off with the cross armbreaker.

WCW Flashback: TV Champ Lord Steven Regal vs. Larry Zbyszko from 6/1/94 Saturday Night. They show a montage of Zbyszko winning the belt from Regal in what would prove to be only for a short time. It’s a good match that’s around the ***¾ range, but there’s just not enough here for me to do a recap.

• Harlem Heat vs. Stars and Stripes

The Heat start off CLUBBERIN’ on the Patriot. Stevie Ray runs into a boot to take control. Bagwell tags and after a little bit of arm wrenching, he catches Booker T with a crossbody out of the corner for two. Sunset flip gets another two count. Small package gets a THIRD nearfall. Back to the arm. Stevie Ray pegs Bagwell as he comes off the ropes, distracting him long enough for Booker T to regroup and connect with a standing side kick. The Heat put the boots to Bagwell. Booker T delivers the Axe Kick which is not his finisher just yet. Booker T misses a dive off the top and SPINAROONIES up to his feet long before that word was even invented. Hot tag to Patriot, he dumps Booker T out and looks to finish off Stevie Ray. As he looks to charge off the ropes, Booker pulls the top rope down and Patriot flies out to the floor. Well, that will get you DQ’ed. (7:09) Just a matter of time until Harlem Heat would have the tag belts around their waists. In today’s terminology, this would be described as a Heat main event. No pun intended. *½

Before we go, the announcers hype an appearance by Hulk Hogan on Saturday Night. Plus, the main event will be Sting and Dave Sullivan taking on Avalanche and Kevin Sullivan. Gordon tells us to check it out!

Final Thoughts: This was a real bad time for WCW in every sense of the word. It’s hard to believe how this company can go from being so good 6-8 months ago to what it becomes at the end of 1994. As I’ve said before, it’s truly mind-boggling. Can you really blame Bischoff for bringing in the cream of the ECW crop? I say no, but then again I had never even watched ECW until 1998. As far as I know, we didn’t get it down here in North Carolina. There’s no real emotional attachment to the fed, so you can say I’m a little bias towards WCW on that opinion.