Why am I watching a show featuring Hulk Hogan?
Well, we’re looking at old WCW shows. It’s bound to happen anyway… and besides, I never actually SAW this show and it’s one of my DVD recordings from when WWE Network was a channel on TV that I could record stuff off of. And so here we are… so if this pops up on the WCW Youtube channel somewhere along the way, that’s probably the best way to check this show out because otherwise… eh…
World TV Champion Lord Steven Regal defeated Johnny B. Badd to retain the title. I would categorically call this a perfectly acceptable wrestling match and expect this to be the best we’re gonna get out of this as far as THAT department is concerned. For some reason, we get a bit afterwards with Regal and Antonio Inoki, who’s a senator at this point in Japan and yet has time to do a silly bit on WCW television. Bless the man.
Vader defeated the Guardian Angel via DQ when the referee catches Angel with a nightstick on hand and that’s enough for the DQ. The Guardian Angel, for those who need to be clued in, is the former Big Bossman after a stint in WCW as THE BOSS! (Man, Is He Big), which then turned him into a Guardian Angel, which is aping an actual Guardian Angel group that existed or still exists… this wouldn’t last long, either, but that’s another story for another time. In any event, we have this match, which is two big fuckers beating the fuck out of each other until Vader is given a nightstick that Bossman steals and is caught and thus DQ’ed and my brain hurts at such a lame finish. Do they get a rematch? I must know… not really, but still…
Terry Funk and Bunkhouse Buck defeated Dustin Rhodes in a handicap match… oh wait, he had Arn Anderson as a partner. Dustin needed help with Terry and Buck, he needed a partner for this match, and the man that he asks to be his partner is ARN MOTHERFUCKING ANDERSON. He of the Four Horsemen who feuded with old man Dusty for years on end. THAT ARN ANDERSON. And so the whole match is Dustin doing all the work until he finally tags in Arn, at which point we get a shot of Meng standing menacingly before getting cut back to Dustin on the floor with Arn standing tall… presumably this was a production snafu, but I’d imagine this was WCW cutting away from the shot of ARMED ANDERSON blowing Dustin’s brains out with his hidden GLOCK. The announcers wonder how Arn could do such a thing to poor Dustin, which would make me accuse the announcers of ignorance… except one of those said announcers is TONY SCHIAVONE, who has seen his share of Dusty/Horseman wars. How he could question such Arn’s actions when he should have been questioning Dustin’s poor choice in partners… I mean, dude, you could have seen this coming. I mean, it’s okay for CODY to bring in Arn because by that point, it’s water under the bridge until CHARLOTTE decides she wants a run at one of the men’s titles… but in 1994? Please… Dustin got what he deserved for being a stupid idiot babyface and this was what began his slow descent into Black Reign territory that he avoided for a decade until he went to TNA… you can fill in the blanks on that missing decade to figure out how he avoided being Black Reign for a decade.
Hey, speaking of totally stupid things, here comes a Ric Flair promo to try and sell you on the fact that he has a snowball’s chance in hell of retaining his title over HULK HOGAN… who is having his first WCW match on this show… and it’s for the WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP… against RIC FLAIR… hey, you know what? I’m fine with that. Blowing this match, this early, means you’ve got something really special for Starrcade and you’re gonna pit Hogan against a really worthy main event challenger for that WCW title. I mean, if it isn’t gonna be RIC FLAIR, then who would you book in the main event of your biggest show of the year?
Wait, what’s that?
Who did they book for Starrcade?
They booked FUCKING BRUTUS BEEFCAKE?!
…
Where’s that gimmick that I usually pull out for shit like this?
United States Champion “Stunning” Steve Austin defeated Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat via roll-up with feet in the ropes to retain the title… Austin would eventually drop the title to Steamboat, who would end up with an injury that would end his career and force him to surrender the title at Fall Brawl, which would be given back to Austin, only for him to lose the belt to the debuting Jim Duggan in less than half a minute… and yes, that whole scenario pisses me off a little. It’s nothing against Duggan; it’s just the stupidity of the whole creative direction this company takes once a certain Orange Goblin rear its ugly head.
You want to know the really sad thing about this whole deal? This Austin/Steamboat was really fucking good. Not only was it fucking good, but it was FUCKING GREAT SHIT. Austin and Steamboat had their working boots on, they held nothing back, the action was fast-paced, and the crowd was really into it. It’s times like this where you forget that once upon a time, Steve Austin was this really great wrestler who was slick in the ring and had a great presence about him when he had a head of hair and Steamboat, even during his final matches, was still putting on as good a showing as he ever did during the prime of his career. If I had seen stuff like this as a younger fellow, I would have appreciated this stuff a little more. Better late than never is something that I’d apply to most things, but not this. This superb piece of wrestling on THIS show, knowing what was to come, made me more sad than anything because this could have been a hallmark in WCW programming… and instead, we got HULKAROOS… oh wait, that’s another year out. My bad.
Pretty Wonderful (Paul Roma and Paul Orndorff – why couldn’t you just call them “The Pauls” or something) defeated WCW Tag-Team Champions Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan to win the titles. Yeah, so Sullivan replaced Maxx Payne as a partner and he and Jack eventually won the titles from the Nasty Boys so that they could lose it here. There was also some involvement with Dave Sullivan and I only mention it here because I’ve otherwise blocked him from my mind. Now was this before after that one bit in ECW where Cactus spit on the tag titles? Anyway, this match ran about 20 minutes and it was 20 minutes too long. Boring. Plodding. Waste of time. Next.
And in the main event of this show, HULK HOGAN – in his first match with WCW – defeated WCW World Heavyweight Champion RIC FLAIR via big boot and leg drop to win the title and give Bobby Heenan a conniption fit… as belated as it may be, I feel for you, Brain. There’s some shenanigans, some attempted interference from Sherri (who was managing Ric at the time) that is countered by Mr. T (who showed up for some reason) and from there, we get the usual Hulk Hogan formula match before the eventual Hulk Hogan finish that works for him, brother. We then get an extended celebration and love in for the Hulkster, as he promises to usher WCW in to a new era.
And look, credit where it’s due. For a while, Hogan was a boost for WCW. People were interested in the product for a while… but then Flair would be gone and Hogan would be left to his own devices… and that’s when things would go sour and another big move was needed to keep WCW from falling apart… well, they’d get that big move, but not for a good while.
There was only one highlight to this Bash At The Beach show and that was the Austin/Steamboat match. Everything was either boring, forgettable, or bad. But hey, if you’re a Hulkamaniac and you want to see another Hulk Hogan moment in Hulkamania history, this is the show for you. For me, this is where things started to go to shit from a creative level, but for now, they were gonna make some money until they eventually didn’t.
dtm666 