The SmarK 24/7 Rant – Legends and Shorties
– Just some odds and ends from 24/7 before the week clicks over again. The Hall of Fame spotlight is on Nick Bockwinkel, and the shorties feature huge title upsets, so I don’t really have a connecting thread, but there’s a bunch I haven’t seen here, so what the hell.
– AWA World title: Stan Hansen v. Nick Bockwinkel. From Wrestlerock 86, one of the AWA’s many failed attempts at creating a Wrestlemania-type franchise for themselves. Hansen beats up interview Larry Nelson on his way to the ring, thus making him a big babyface in my eyes. Stan’s entire AWA title reign is justified by the promo he cut where he talks about how he has to feed his big fat wife and obnoxious kids. Hansen lays him out to start, but Nick slugs back, so Hansen catches him with a knee to the gut and hits the chinlock. Bockwinkel chokes him out on the ropes in response, but Hansen takes him down and drops an elbow for two. They trade hammerlocks on the mat and Bockwinkel fires away with some surprisingly stiff shots to the ribs, but Hansen drops him with an elbow and gets a kneedrop for two. Bockwinkel comes back with a sunset flip for two, and Larry Nelson is openly cheering for him now in a nice touch. Bockwinkel goes to an armbar and pounds on the shoulder, and they trade some nice wristlock reversals on the mat before Hansen goes back to the chinlock again. Hansen just pounds on Bockwinkel while holding the move, as they’re just throwing DOWN out there. They trade hammerlocks again and Bockwinkel gets the advantage, and he whips Hansen into the corner to set up the sleeper. Hansen gets to the ropes to force the break and they slug it out on the apron, and then back into the ring, where Hansen drops him on the top rope and gets two. They fight for the suplex and Bockwinkel wins that one, getting two. Hansen gets a backbreaker for two, but Bockwinkel backdrops him for two. Bockwinkel with a slam for two. Another one and the ref is bumped in the process. Hansen tries a rollup and Bockwinkel blocks him, then dropkicks Hansen to set up a piledriver, but even with the ref out Hansen kicks out at one. Stan dumps Bockwinkel over the top as the ref revives, so it’s a lame DQ finish at 10:12. This was quite the entertaining little match while it lasted, full of the nice pseudo-stiff shots that Hansen excelled at, although Hansen’s relationship with the AWA would sour soon after and Bockwinkel would get the title back by default. ***1/4
– The Hall of Fame show about Bockwinkel has matches that are already on the AWA DVD (Bockwinkel/Stevens v. High Flyers and Bockwinkel v. Hogan mega-screwjob) so we’ll skip over it and get to the shorties instead.
– Cruiserweight open: Chavo Guerrero v. Jimmy Wang Yang v. Shannon Moore v. Funaki v. Jamie Noble v. Hornswoggle. From Great American Bash 2007. Hornswoggle isn’t formally introduced, but runs in during the intros and hides under the ring. Moore gets a neckbreaker on Funaki, but Yang gets rid of him with a flying headscissors and then gets two on Noble. Chavo saves with a backdrop suplex on Yang, but Moore hits Chavo with a crossbody for two. Funaki gives both a high cross and dumps Chavo, then suplexes Moore. Noble powerslams Yang for two, and everyone gets tossed to leave Chavo and Yang. Chavo rolls through into a half-crab, but Funaki breaks it up with an enzuigiri. Noble and Moore slug it out, and Noble gets a northern lights suplex on Funaki before Moore breaks it up and gets two on Noble. Chavo gets the Gory Bomb on Funaki for two, but Yang saves. Yang Time on Chavo gets two, but Noble saves. Yang and Noble slug it out, and Moore rolls up Yang for two as I stop to ponder what an influence that Three Count and the Yung Dragons actually ended up having after all. Sure, Evan Karagias dropped off the face of the earth, but it’s not like anyone cares. Anyway, they do a Tower of Doom superplex spot, leaving Noble down, and Hornswoggle returns and pins him with a frog splash at 6:40 to win the belt. Short, sloppy and with a finish so bad that it actually killed the belt off for good. *1/2 The fact that they actually tried to justify the logic of Finlay’s midget mascot being legal in the match shows they put way too much thought into this.
– WWF World title: HHH v. Vince McMahon. Well you knew we’d have to sit through this one again. From Smackdown, September 1999. Chris Jericho’s introduction here is hilarious, noting that Vince was "87 years old" at the time of this match. The refs are on strike, so HHH recruits crony Shane McMahon to ref for him, then challenges Vince (because Vinnie was a babyface at this point after losing a "retirement" match via Undertaker, even long before HHH raped his daughter and created a red-hot feud between them). HHH trash-talks him until Vince attacks, but HHH beats him down and stomps away. HHH slugs him in the corner and puts him down with a kneelift, then stomps a mudhole in the corner. Rather than walking it dry, however, he opts to choke Vince down, which draws some sympathy from Shane towards his father. Vince fights back and goes low, but HHH stomps him down and puts him on the floor. Vince meets the stairs and HHH puts him on the announce table and slugs away, then puts him through it with an elbow off the railing. Back in, HHH gets a chair from Chyna (in the days before a sledgehammer was the weapon of choice) and shoves Shane out of the way to deliver the shot to Vince. Shane decides to fight back and slugs it out with HHH, but that earns him a beatdown, as HHH lays him out with the chair and Vince starts bleeding. Linda and the Stooges come out and try to fight off HHH, but that goes nowhere fast for them, which forces us to endure Linda’s acting. KICK WHAM PEDIGREE, but Steve Austin runs in and beats the crap out of HHH. KICK WHAM STUNNER and Vince McMahon is YOUR WWF World champion at 8:48. 9 years of perspective have not been any kinder to this, as it still looks incredibly stupid in retrospect and stands as probably the low point for the belt, oddly enough at the end of Vince Russo’s run as head writer. The match itself wasn’t even hardly a match, just an extended HHH beatdown with an Austin run-in, as they attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle of Rock v. Mankind with the circus of run-ins and Austin finish, but the match was as heatless as HHH was at that point. It just goes to show: No matter how badly you flop as champion on your first crack at it, if they want you to get over they’ll just keep pushing and pushing until you get over, no matter what. Call it the Randy Orton effect, I guess. *
– ECW World title: Sandman v. Mikey Whipwreck. Well you had to have this one. This is a ladder match for the belt, although not the WWF style, built up by weeks of hilarious promos with Public Enemy training Mikey to climb ladders. Steve Austin makes an appearance and cuts a promo on the ladder before the match, challenging the winner in a prescient bit about how he’s going to be the next superstar of wrestling, and then kidnapping Woman. So the match finally starts after 10 minutes of intros and promos, and Mikey attacks with the ladder and brawls with Sandman on the floor. Back in, Sandman drops him on the ladder with a spinebuster and slingshots in with a legdrop onto the ladder, nearly slipping off the apron in the process. Shocking that he’d be in less than peak form, I know. Mikey bails and Sandman tosses the ladder at him and follows him out, where he sets up the ladder on the apron and suplexes Mikey onto it. He follows with a guillotine legdrop, but Mikey comes back with a chair and a rana off the ladder. Sandman backdrops him into the front row (where the Blue Meanie sits, pre-debut) and then see-saws the ladder into him. Back in, Sandman misses a slingshot elbow and hits the ladder, allowing MIkey to ram the ladder into Sandman’s head to come back. Sandman is out, so Mikey follows with a flying splash onto the ladder and wins the ECW World title at 6:27. Honestly this was more worth it for the Austin promo than for the match. **
– And we finish with a compilation of crazy Hardcore title changes, like Gerry Brisco’s win over a sleeping Crash (complete with silent celebration), Patterson turning on him and winning the title with a bottle of champagne, Molly Holly stealing the title from Hurricane, Bobcat the Ho (complete with Lillian’s stunned announcement of "one of Godfather’s Hos" as the new champion), Trish Stratus winning the belt in her early days and then dropping it to Steven Richards, who later loses it to Terri while doing an interview before regaining it again. I was actually at that last one, but I don’t really remember it.
Kind of the bottom of the barrel for content this week, I guess.
