#sting wcw edit

[stvngrr]

!slight flash warning | he’s so beautiful (shows you a man clearly in pain)

[wrathchvld]

just gonna post my edits to attract all the sting fans to my blog— 🫶🏻

[symbolicdecree]

The Many "Faces" of Sting | Magazine Edition!

Peep the last one on the right asking who's the sexiest WCW wrestler. We all know who it is... I mean, he's pointing to himself.

[blowflyfag]

WRESTLING ALL STARS: Heroes and Villains : JUNE 1996

VIEW FROM RINGSIDE

By George Napolitano 

[The Bodyguard for Hire and his snake share a moment with their #1 fan: Tekla Benson.]

We would like to welcome everyone to another edition of WRESTLING ALL STARS. Since our last issue there have been quite a few changes in the wrestling world. For starters on January 22 in Fresno, CA, during the WWF Royal Rumble, the bizarre Goldust defeated Razor Ramon to win the WWF Intercontinental title. The following day in Las Vegas, Nevada, during a live Nitro Tv broadcast, Macho Man Randy Savage defeated Ric Flair to regain the WCW heavyweight title. Also on the card, Lex Luger and Sting defeated Harlem Heat to win the WCW tag team title. 

On January 27 in Philadelphia, PA, the Sandman’s reign in ECW came to a screeching halt when he was defeated by the mysterious Raven. Needless to say, Raven had plenty of help as the “new”  Fabulous Ones (Stevie Richards and the Blue Meanie) as well as Raven’s new squeeze were at ringside to lend their support. In the Sandman's corner was his manager. Woman. After the title loss, Woman took the microphone and asked the Sandman to join her in WCW. The Sandman looked around and hesitated for a moment. Then Too Cold Scorpio joined him in the ring. Now Woman offered to take the both of them to WCW just when it looked like they were going to accept her offer, they flatly refused and said they were never going to leave ECW. 

[Woman looks to be headed for WCW. Will she take any of her ECW talent with her?]

[Woman was in Sandman’s corner when he lost the ECW belt to Raven. Are their days together over?]

[Woman asked this man, Too-Cold Scorpio, if he wanted to come with her to WCW. Been there, done that, Scorpio replied, declining.]

In Las Vegas, at the WCW Clash of the Champions, Hulk Hogan and the Macho Man had two special guests at Ringside during their tag team battle against Ric Flair and the Giant. One was Kevin Green from the AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, and the other was the former manager of the “Mega-Maniacs,” the lovely Miss Elizabeth. With Savage’s ego as big as it is you can bet that soon he will get jealous that his ex-wife, the lovely Elizabeth, is spending so much time with Hogan.

[Diesel and Lawrence Taylor at last year’s Wrestlemania press conference. It hardly feels a year has passed since LT made his spectacular WWF debut against Bam Bam Bigelow.]

The following week in Canton, OH after a Monday Night Nitro match between Ric Flair and the Hulkster, it certainly looked as if the Macho Man’s jealous rage was starting to burn! While Flair and Hogan battled toe to toe inside the ring, Jimmy Hart ran over to the other side and attacked Elizabeth. As soon as Hart grabbed Elizabeth, Arn Anderson immediately tossed his shoe into the ring toward Flair. 

Grabbing the show by the heels, Flair pounded right into Hulk Hogan’s eye! Flair then rolled Hogan over and pinned him in center ring! After the verdict was rendered, a bloodied Hogan rolled out of the ring and fell straight to the floor bleeding profusely from his eye. Elizabeth immediately ran over to try and comfort him, but as soon as she did the Macho Man pushed her away. Elizabeth didn’t know what to do, but she continued to kneel next to the fallen Hulkster. Finally Savage helped Hogan up and led him to the dressing room. Do you think that the Macho Man was jealous that Elizabeth was there to help the Hulk? 

Oooh..Yeah!

As far as the tag team title is concerned, you know that eventually Sting and Luger will have a major falling out. Luger is still very much a part of the Dungeon of Doom, while his partner, Sting, hates everyone else in that infamous group. It’s only a matter of time before their team is blown to smithereens!

[The Stinger is one-half of the WCW tag team champs, with Lex Luger. But Sting and Lex have not been seeing eye to eye as of late. How much longer can they work together as a team?]

While we are on the subject of tg teams, we must acknowledge that the awesome Road Warriors have reunited after a three-year layoff. Before Animal’s back injury caused the team to dissolve, the Legion of Doom (as they were then known) were the premier tag team in their sport. Now that they are back, the Road Warriors are determined to regain their rightful place at the top of the tag team empire. 

Razor Ramon is livid! Ramon can’t believe that he lost the Intercontinental belt to Goldust. Although Goldust had expert coaching from the sidelines from his “Director” Marlene, it was Goldust who applied the finishing touches inside the ring. NOW that Goldust has the gold Intercontinental belt strapped securely around his waist, it’s not going to be easy prying it off of him.

By winning the Royal Rumble for the second year in a row, Shawn Michaels earned the right to face the WWF champion at Wrestlemania XII in Anaheim, CA.

[Here’s a pair of partners who aren't getting along: “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan.]

At the WWF Royal Rumble, the awesome Vader really made his presence felt in a very big way, but that pales in comparison to what he did the following night on Raw. After easily finishing off his opponent, Vader continued to apply his deadly Vader Bomb from the top rope. After witnessing several Vader bombs in paid succession, interim acting president Gorilla Monsoon came to ringside to try to stop the unstoppable Vader. After failing in his attempt to stop Vader, Monsoon grabbed the microphone and said that Vader was indefinitely suspended for his actions. Hearing this, Vader flew into a rage and immediately attacked the President. Sonn Monsoon found himself on the receiving end of several Vader Bombs. Eventually Razor Ramon and Shawn Michaels ran into the ring to try and stop Vader, but by the time help arrived the damage had already been done. Within minutes Monsoon was taken by ambulance to a local hospital to have his injuries treated. With Monsoon out of commission the WWF has named “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as its new president!

[Eddy Guererro has made a smooth transition between ECW and WCW. He still maintains a lot of his AAA (Mexican) style, however.]

Former ECW champion Shane Douglas is back after a short and unsuccessful stint in the WWF. While in the WWF Douglas called himself “Dean'' Douglas and critiqued the other wrestlers’ performances in the ring. Although Douglas talked a good game, he just couldn’t produce in the WWF. Whether he will regain the form that made him a star in the WCW still remains to be seen. 

Henry Godwinn has brought his cousin Phinneas T. Godwinn to the WWF, and they are being managed by the original country boy, Hillbilly Jim. When Hillbilly Jim was going strong he had several family members with him yoo. Hillbilly’s family consisted of his Uncle Elmer, Cousin Junior and Cousin Luke. Old time fans will recall that Uncle Elmer was even married in center ring at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey. But that wasn’t the first WWF wedding. That distinction goes to Butcher Vachon who got hitched on a Saturday Night Live segment during the glory days of WWF. The other WWF wedding was the marriage of Macho Man Randy Savage and his lovely valet, Miss Elizabeth, at SummerSlam in Madison Square Garden. Today, as we know, these two are back together again, but they are no longer married–as their marriage ended in a bitter divorce. 

[Bret Hart with belt. Will the Heartbreak Kid be his Wrestlemania opponent?]There has been quite a bit of talk in the wrestling world about the controversial “Billionaire Ted” skits with the “Huckster,” “The Nacho Man” and “Scam Gene” which have been appearing on the WWF telecasts. The skits poke fun at WCW Head Ted Turner and ex-WWF stars Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Savage, and Gene Okerlund. Actually the skits are very funny, but unfortunately WCW doesn’t think so. Now WCW has threatened the WWF with legal action if they continue  to air the “Billionaire Ted” skits. The war between WCW and the WWF has really heated up, and it’s obvious that the war is only going to intensify in nature in the next couple of months. That’s all for now. See you at ringside!

[flowergirlmiwa]

i had a poll asking if yal wanted me to post my wrestling video game reviews here so heres the first one its a review of the game WCW vs nWo World Tour for the N64. TL;DR this game especially for its time pretty much fucks i mean it's just a great game even if it doesn't have a season mode. AKI made awesome wrestling games

this was written in like 2019 as a potential youtube script so if it reads like a youtube script i was writing it to be a youtube script ok ty also i just put in some pictures so it's a little less drab ok ty again

Graphically, for 1997, World Tour looks pretty good… for the most part. The crowd is a strange flat texture that doesn’t necessarily even resemble a crowd, but it does its job, and reacts accordingly with the crowd noise. The wrestlers themselves generally look good, although body proportions can be totally off at times. Everyone appears to have the same height, meaning Rey Mysterio Jr. and The Giant stand practically shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s quite strange, but besides this, each wrestler has a decent approximation of their real-life look and attire for the era. That is, with the exception of the faces. Sometimes, the faces look good enough, and sometimes they just look totally off. For example, Rick Steiner looks okay, but Scott Hall just looks strange.

There are some strange quirks like the 'back spike' which can be seen every so often, as well as things like parts of a body disappearing from view in certain camera angles. All-in-all, the models themselves are rather detailed, and the faces kind of fall into the back of your mind while you’re playing anyway. Each wrestler in the game has four attires, clearly accounting for the possibility that 4 players would all want to play as the same character. While half of the time, this amounts to alternate colors, this feature is deeper than one may expect. For example, both Hogan and Sting feature their ‘classic’ look in alternate attires. The feature clearly wasn’t just an afterthought by the development team. (2024 edit: also the alternate colors are probably relatively accurate to real world gear they've worn for all i know)

Each wrestler has a drawn picture as their menu sprite, which sometimes looks great and sometimes just looks odd. It’s quite like the in-game faces in this way.

While the action plays out, the camera angle will often change to give a better or more exciting view of the moves being performed. At first, this may seem distracting, but as the camera angle typically reverts back to the same view by the time you’re back in control of moving your character, it just serves to make the match seem that much more dynamic.

Each wrestler has a variety of moves at their disposal, which I’ll get into later, but in general, these moves look GREAT. There is a lot of very fluid animation and the sheer variety of available moves goes to show that the developers were passionate about professional wrestling. Especially for the time, the animations in general are top notch. In addition, as wrestlers take damage, they will get visibly weaker, with arms clutching at pains in the chest and head, for example. This level of detail is above and beyond what one would expect from a product of this time. There are also a variety of fighting stances, taunts, etcetera for each wrestler, and the fictional wrestlers even get plenty of totally unique animations. Each character truly feels distinct, from their movesets down to their unique animations, even though they all control the same way.

There is one arena for each promotion in the game. These are generally unremarkable, and don’t really reflect any actual arenas, but the visual variety is nice. Each arena has differences such as turnbuckle colors and the size of the crowd. The Independent Union even has a very unique Japanese-style ring. Some may be disappointed that arenas such as the one for Monday Nitro were not included, but I’m just surprised the different promotions have this many differences in their arenas, and find them to be a worthy inclusion.

In terms of entrances, there… kind of aren’t any. I say ‘kind of’ as there are match introductions which play out as a name card and a brief taunt by your wrestler. It’s bare-bones, but it’s passable. (2024 edit: this is basically a truncated version of how Japanese wrestling promotions do wrestler introductions)

Let’s talk about sound. Like the arenas, the music in the game is pretty unremarkable. Unless you play the game a lot, a definite possibility in 1997, you probably won’t remember any of the songs after turning the console off. Most of the tracks have a rock ambiance to them, but they strike me more as Japanese video game music than, say, an edgy late 90s kind of rock you may expect based on the license. There are also no wrestler themes, or WCW-related themes included in the game. Each wrestler seems to have a single sound effect associated with them which they will use pretty much every time they do anything. Most of these are simple grunts, and they’re not, say, voiced by the original wrestler, so they’ll probably fall to the back of your mind as play continues. The aforementioned crowd noise provides a good backdrop to the action. The crowd will ‘ooh’ at moves during their setup, and cheer when the move lands. If a wrestler happens to take an attack to their dick area, the crowd will react with shock. It’s easy to overlook, but the crowd noise does a good job all the same.

Let’s talk roster. This is one MAMMOTH of a roster for the time. Forty-two total wrestlers, each with their own distinct look and move set, in 1997 no less, is nothing short of impressive. There is a caveat here, however. Many WCW fans were and will be disappointed to hear that only about half of the included characters are from WCW, and for that matter, the other half are entirely fictional. This is where the “World Tour” aspect comes into play. Ostensibly, this other half of the roster is foreign wrestlers with all sorts of strange personalities. Unfortunately, this means that for many people, there won’t be much appeal in half of the roster, as they are, for the most part, inherently uninteresting compared to the WCW wrestlers. However, there is a hidden secret behind these characters. Each one is actually a stand-in for a wrestler, mostly Japanese, which wouldn’t have made it into the game otherwise as they didn’t have the license to use those likenesses outside of Japan. So, if names like TAKA Michinoku, Genichiro Tenryu, The Great Sasuke and Abdullah the Butcher interest you, they made the game in the form of these fictional characters. The full moveset for these characters are based on these wrestlers. It’s a smart way to include these move sets, although it may still disappoint fans, as the character who receive these move sets usually bear little resemblance to the wrestler they represent. It is good to have these extra characters, though, as they make the roster fuller than it would otherwise be.

Back to the WCW guys, there’s 23 of them, and most of them are worthy inclusions. You have guys like Hogan, Hall, Nash, Syxx, Macho Man, DDP, Regal, Sting, Dean Malenko, Ric Flair… if you were a WCW fan at the time, you were pretty much guaranteed to have one of your favorites make the cut. I know most people would have preferred if the entire roster were WCW guys, but by all accounts, this is still a big, impressive roster.

In terms of general presentation, I think WCW vs. nWo World Tour does its job quite well. The biggest issue here for me is a tenuous link to the WCW license. There is, for example, no Monday Nitro arena. There aren’t any WCW belts seen in the game. There’s no commentary of any kind, there’s no music from WCW, there isn’t really anything that relates the game to the WCW license other than the included talent and the logo being seen in the WCW ring. And, of course, half the roster isn’t WCW guys. It’s not a huge deal, but it does give a bit of an air of having the WCW license put on in the final stages of development, which I’m not sure was actually the case.

A big roster doesn’t mean much if the gameplay doesn’t hold up, and fortunately, World Tour delivers. It has a gameplay system I’d describe as easy to pick up but complex to master. The A button provides access to grapples, and the B button handles strikes. The C buttons handle things like running, pinning and exiting the ring, while R and L provide ways to evade or block attacks. Unusually for a Nintendo 64 game, movement is controlled by the D-pad, with taunts and special attacks mapped to the analog stick. You can do a strong version of a strike or grapple by holding down the respective button. For grapples, there are 12 total moves that can be done from a front standing position alone, by using any combination of A or B, up and down, after getting your opponent into a hold with the A button. Moves are context sensitive, you can grapple your opponent at a turnbuckle, from behind, and there’s even different moves on a grounded opponent depending on what side they’re laying on and whether you go for the head or the legs. The opponent can also be irish whipped and attacked while you’re running. There’s a lot of different ways to deal damage to your opponent, and most importantly, all of this has a great flow to it. Reversals can be done by tapping R at the right time, there’s backing away to evade grapples with L, you can use a strike to interrupt the opponent or go for a surprise strong grapple when you catch them guarding too much. In addition, when both you and your opponent go for a grapple at the same time, a test of strength occurs. I’m not sure how this feature works, but it may just be that the winner is whoever can button mash the fastest. Speaking of button mashing, both pin falls and submissions work this way as well. Submissions will occur whenever a wrestler happens to have a submission move in their moveset, so it pays to explore each wrestler’s moveset thoroughly to find out where his best submissions are. The gameplay is a bit slow paced, but it does a fantastic job of emulating an actual wrestling match. As I’ve intimated, the game features simple controls with a lot of depth built in, for those who are interested in getting skilled at the game. There’s even unique maneuvers and moves that I haven’t mentioned, as there are just so many of them for seemingly every situation. Overall, I have no hesitations in saying that based on what I’ve covered already, WCW vs. nWo World Tour was the greatest wrestling game that had been released to America at the time of its release.

We can’t talk about gameplay without bringing up the Spirit meter. This shows how well your wrestler is doing, and is another way that the game emulates wrestling fantastically. When your wrestler is doing well, his Spirit meter will rise, and when it reaches its peak, you are allowed to do special moves. There are two ways to do special moves in this game, done by strong grappling an opponent from the front or back and using the analog stick. If your wrestler is getting beat down, his spirit meter will become smaller. However, much like a real wrestling match, a comeback can be initiated by turning the tide of the match into your favor, and this will inspire the Spirit meter to rise rapidly. The Spirit meter has a surprising amount of depth to it, much like the rest of the gameplay, it isn’t a simple bar you fill up to gain super attacks. Keeping a close eye on your Spirit meter is key to success.

You can go outside the ring and attempt to find weapons given to you by the crowd, but I haven’t found a way to bring these weapons into the ring. Unlike most aspects to the game, the weapons seem to be a bit of an afterthought. You can’t get disqualified, and I haven’t observed weapon attacks to do that much more damage than, say, a regular heavy strike. Additionally, you can cause your opponent to bleed if you have ‘realism’ set to ON. How this passed on a rated K to A game is beyond me, but it’s fun to see happen. As for how this happens, I’m not quite sure. It seems to just happen at random in my experience.

Believe me when I say this, this is a finely crafted game from a gameplay perspective, and it’s still quite fun to play to this day. That especially goes for multiplayer, which was a particular highlight for many people at the time. The Nintendo 64 was equipped with 4 controller ports out of the box, and as such, four players can battle in an all-out war in the battle royal mode. This works in an elimination style, although eliminated wrestlers still stick around and can mess with other players by grappling their feet.

In terms of match types, it’s pretty basic. There’s the standard one on one, tag team matches, a two on one handicap match, and the aforementioned battle royal. That’s all there is in terms of exhibition, but even having a battle royal match in the game made for a great plus to the total package in a time when players probably weren’t expecting things like cage and table matches. Speaking on the tag team matches, they are actually quite fun in this due to your partner’s ability to interrupt the action and help out, whether it be hitting or grabbing an opponent from the ropes, opening an opportunity for their partner to make an attack, breaking up pin attempts, or just jumping into the ring to kick ass. With two players against computers, this can be quite engaging, and I’d imagine it would be even more fun against a second team of players.

There are three other exhibition modes seen on the main menu, these being the eponymous WCW vs. nWo, League, and Tournament. The tournament mode is pretty self explanatory, although there is support for a tag team tournament as well. The league plays out a Round Robin style tournament, commonly seen in Japan. I’d imagine this would take quite some time to complete if you go with the maximum of eight wrestlers and have them all controlled by people. I wonder what was the last time someone actually did that. Hmm. In these modes, matches that include only computer players can be skipped and simulated. WCW vs. nWo mode pits teams of up to 5 against one another in a gauntlet format. One wrestler stays in until they are defeated. It goes on like this until one side has won. Your reward for all of these three modes is the same basic congratulations screen. These modes don’t add a lot to the game, but they certainly don’t take away anything either.

The main single player mode and your path to unlocking this game’s 6 hidden characters is League Challenge. Each promotion in the game has a series of battles to face en route to a championship opportunity. In each promotion, finishing the Heavyweight title run will reward you with a WCW character, most notably DDP and Randy Savage. There are also Tag Team and cruiserwight paths to try out. Upon completing all of the other challenges of a type, a new challenge in a new promotion will open up, allowing you to unlock the strangest characters in the game, Joe Bruiser and BlackWidow. BlackWidow is the only female character, but she works exactly like everyone else and there aren’t any kind of restrictions against fighting or even bloodying her. She does look a bit odd, though. Joe Bruiser, on the other hand, is a boxer who has no grapples to speak of, just a lot of different punches. It’s worth unlocking Bruiser just for how unique and strange he is as an inclusion. Sadly, the hidden promotion doesn’t also unlock a new hidden arena, as the promotion just uses the WCW arena. Once you have these two, you can consider this game finished.

League Challenge is a pretty straightforward series of matches with no flavor or cutscenes. In the end, you are rewarded with a simple trophy screen and another check mark on the list. Besides the unlockable wrestlers, there isn’t much if any reward, so the tag title paths are essentially pointless. It shouldn’t take very long for most players to unlock all of the hidden characters. The game allows you to pick the difficulty of your computer controlled opponents, from Easy to Medium to Hard, which may add a little spice to this. My biggest issue with this mode is how damn long some of them can take. Some of these championships will require what feels like an endless amount of battles to win, especially the WWW challenges. It gets a bit stale simply doing matches one after the other, so it may be better to chip away at these over time rather than try to get them all done as soon as possible. And as a small note, as Wrath and Glacier are unlocked by doing the fictional promotion Heavyweight paths, they are put onto the selection screen in those promotions. I would have expected them to be put with the WCW characters, but instead they stick out put next to all these fictional wrestlers. Just a bit odd.

Although I have been pretty positive with World Tour so far, there’s a couple of gripes I have with it. For one thing, having only front and back specials means some wrestlers like Hollywood Hogan are out in the cold. His leg drop is just a regular move which requires no preamble and doesn’t do much damage. You can still finish a match by using it, but as it’s not contextualized as a special, it feels a bit odd. As well, Hogan’s actual front special is… a chokehold? Some wrestlers don’t have entirely accurate specials, either, with Nash famously doing a not-Outsider’s Edge, for example. As the moves are generally on point, seeing some guys lacking in terms of accurate specials is a bit disappointing. This also contributes to the ‘not-quite-WCW-enough’ feel that the game has. Another thing that may be an issue to some is that it is impossible to save your progress without a Memory Pak. All it does is save your settings and the League Challenges you’ve defeated, but this means if you don’t own a Memory Pak, you will have to unlock all the characters you want to use every time you turn on the game. Saving via the Memory Pak wasn’t a totally uncommon thing back in 1997, and most N64 fans will most likely have one or two laying around, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

WCW vs. nWo World Tour is a very solid game. While it may feel rather bare bones by today’s standards, it was revolutionary for the time and basically wrote the book on how 3D wrestling games should work in the future. It’s a hell of a lot better than contemporary games such as WWF War Zone, and is still a fun time today. With no creation aspects and a simple arcade mode for single player content, wrestling fans may find themselves uninterested after a while. The gameplay is the main star here, however, and with a big roster, good graphics for the time, a selection of unique arenas and the famous battle royal mode, World Tour stands up to this day as a good wrestling game, and a great starting point for the AKI/THQ wrestling game series.

+Revolutionary, skill-oriented gameplay +Large roster including not just WCW but foreign wrestlers as well under aliases, each with their own unique moveset +Stellar animation work along with solid graphics for its time +4-player Battle Royal and a variety of side modes such as tournaments give the game multiplayer replay value -Single-player League Challenge mode is no-frills arcade style, with little in the way of personality, which gets repetitive -More WCW names could have been included -Saves need to be done with a Memory Pak -Not a lot of content outside of the standard Exhibition matches -Some wrestlers don’t have their accurate finishing moves, either because of a wrong move choice, or because their finishing move doesn’t fit one of the 2 Special move types included

Fake Sting here is playing the Japanese equivalent to this game, Virtual Pro Wrestling 64

[90s00wcwwwf]

WCW/nWo The Great American Bash 1998 Pay Per View. Took place on June 14, 1998, at the Baltimore Arena in Baltimore, Maryland.

It's the 12th edition of the The Great American Bash event series.

The event had an attendance of 12,810 fans. The main event of the show was Sting vs. The Giant.

Sting faces The Giant for control of the WCW Tag Team Championship. Hollywood Hogan & Bret Hart take on “Rowdy” Roddy Piper & “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Goldberg takes on Konnan for the United States Championship. Chris Jericho faces Dean Malenko with the vacant Cruiserweight Championship up for grabs. Booker T in action and much more.

[berry-barelywrites]

Stinger

I absolutely love the last picture, just please 😩

[finndoesntwantthis]

Sting makes his entrance at Starrcade 1997

[wrestlingeditsheaven]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STING

[wcwrasslin]

[wrathchvld]

🫶🏻🫶🏻—

[daleisgreat]

Shawn Michaels: The Showstopper Unreleased

WWE has release a few Shawn Michaels DVDs over the years, but continuing on the theme of my last few wrestling-centered entries, WWE Home Video stuck with their “unreleased” brand of DVDs in 2018 with the three-disc release of Shawn Michaels: The Showstopper Unreleased (intro - I could not locate a trailer for this anywhere!). In that clip Shawn quips that the producers deserve an award for finding previously unreleased matches. I believe the criteria for this release is still similar to previous “Unreleased” collections where they may have aired on television (and thus likely in the WWE Network archives) or long discontinued VHS tapes, but this DVD will mark the first time the matches are available on disc. Also included is a new interview with Michaels that they broke up in several parts and sporadically inserted throughout the collection. The first disc is something special as it essentially is a “Best of Rockers” DVD. The first two matches are from Shawn’s rookie year in 1985 for Mid-South in quick enhancement matches for Hector & Chavo Guerrero and Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Matches serve their purpose, but it is nonetheless fascinating to see how Shawn had that already apparent potential in him way back in 1985. The remaining 11 matches on the first disc are all Rockers matches, with the first three tag matches being from their Midnight Rockers AWA days with two bouts against Doug Summers & Buddy Rose and one more with Brian Knobbs & Dennis “I’m not booked” Stamp. The two Summers & Rose matches are show-stealers that had exhilarating beginning/middle/end structures, and was fun to watch the 1980s crowd go nuts for.

The first disc is almost all AWA & WWF Rockers matches!! For the eight WWF Rockers matches, they consist of almost an all-star lineup of a golden age for WWF tag teams where they square off against the likes of Demolition, Brain Busters, Hart Foundation, Natural Disasters and Legion of Doom. The sad thing about The Rockers back then is that as charismatic and agile as they were back then, they mostly made other teams look good in their WWF run and that is the case here as they lose six of those eight WWF matches. Even worse is the two matches they win is a DQ win against the Rougeaus after Jimmy Hart’s megaphone is used, and a countout win against the Orient Express. That said, a lot of the other matches are pretty damn good, with high honors going to the Brain Busters bout, two Demolition matches and surprisingly working in a lot of good stuff against Legion of Doom. Worth pointing out is another good match against the Hart Foundation where it seems noticeable the teams missed their cue to go home because the match starts to feel there is no end in sight when out of nowhere during an abdominal stretch a bunch of wrestlers run in and an awkward impromptu brawl ensues and the match is declared a draw.

Disc two has 12 matches from Shawn’s first singles WWF run from 1992-1998. Some highlights from this are an unsurprising technical showcase with Mr. Perfect, oddly having a positive dynamic with Bret Hart to team up against the Blu Brothers in 1995 and predictable-yet-high quality formula matches during his first WWF Title run against 1-2-3 Kid and Steve Austin. Disc two has a disappointing triple tag elimination match with Shawn, Diesel and Undertaker against Psycho Sid, Tatanka and Kama filled with lots of stalling and headscratching booking for the eliminations. There is also a questionable match against Vader a month after their controversial-yet-excellent Summerslam match, where in this match Shawn takes 95% of the offense and quickly squashes Vader in three minutes. There is also a fascinating bout against Yokozuna from the summer of 1996 in Kuwait, when Yoko is nearing the end of his WWF run due to him putting on excess weight, and the match kind of expectedly plods along, until something must have clicked for Shawn to motivate Yoko into a pretty watchable match in the back half, and the two show respect afterwards which was awesome to see….until Yoko suddenly darts off to the back like he really has to go to the bathroom. The third disc consists of 10 matches from Shawn’s return run to WWE from 2002-2010. All the matches here are from RAW, so that means they follow the formula that still holds true for WWE TV main events today where it is either a cobbled together tag match, or a really good one-on-one match with interference or a hokey finish. There are a couple exceptions with worthwhile clean matches against Ric Flair during a Japan 2005 tour and against Christian in 2004 when he was building momentum with Tyson Tomko by his side. HBK’s matches against Rob Van Dam, Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho are the highlights on disc three, but all three contests have varying degrees of interference to effect the finishes, and in some cases it actually benefits the match as is the case with Angle with the story they were telling. I was delighted to see a post-RAW dark match included with Shawn teaming with Batista against Triple H and Edge. WWE is notorious for usually doing a fun untelevised promo or bonus match for the fans after the cameras go off the air with some quirky moments that would never fly in a televised match. That is the case here with Triple H doing lots of exaggerated selling and fun jawing with the crowd that absolutely ate it all up for a fun time.

Shawn didn't disappoint in his 21st century run, with matches included here that don't disappoint against Ric Flair and Kurt Angle. A couple of promos are uncovered like Shawn doing an open Q&A with the fans when Sensational Sherri was managing Michaels early in his singles run. Another amusing bonus promo is Shawn and Diesel doing a Times Square workout session to hype up their upcoming WrestleMania 11 match with the one-and-only Todd Pentigill hosting. The several interview clips inserted throughout the DVDs has Shawn hitting on certain parts on where he was at that stage in his career and reflecting on the infamous Barber Shop break-up with Marty, his 2002 return, rebooting a less edgy, more goofball version of DX in 2006 and retiring in 2010 (this was filmed before his ill-fated Saudi Arabia return match). From these series of introspections, it was fascinating to hear Shawn think back on why he was not all-in for teaming with Jose Lathario in his WWE Title run, and hearing him settling on being a family man in retirement and turning down multiple

WrestleMania return matches. There are also a few sets of interviews with NXT talent commenting on how lucky they are to have Shawn as a teacher at the WWE Performance Center. Shawn comments a few times here too on being proud of passing on his knowledge, and it is obvious he is genuine on his passion for his new role building talent in NXT. WWE has once again amassed another recommended collection of un-vaulted matches. I am digging this format following the Piper and Macho Man sets where they break up the action every few matches with a set of interviews. Wort mentioning is about a quarter of the 35 matches here have no commentary because they were either dark matches, or from arena shows WWE use to film at regionally in the 80s and 90s and never recorded commentary for and/or lost the rights for the commentary. While there are some skippable matches, the good-to-bad ratio is largely in the positive here, and the not-so-good bouts usually at least have an entertaining backstory or era they emanate from. This all adds up for Shawn Michaels: The Showstopper Unreleased being another must-have installment of the Unreleased branding. Past Wrestling Blogs Best of WCW Clash of Champions Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2 Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3 Biggest Knuckleheads Bobby The Brain Heenan Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes DDP: Positively Living Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials ECW Unreleased: Vol 1 ECW Unreleased: Vol 2 ECW Unreleased: Vol 3 Eric Bishoff: Wrestlings Most Controversial Figure Fight Owens Fight: The Kevin Owens Story For All Mankind Getting Rowdy: The Unreleased Matches of Roddy Piper Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection Hulk Hogans Unreleased Collectors Series Impact Wresting Presents: Best of Hulk Hogan Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story The Kliq Rules Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman Legends of Mid South Wrestling Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story Memphis Heat NXT: From Secret to Sensation NXT Greatest Matches Vol 1 OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History Owen: Hart of Gold Randy Savage Unreleased: The Unseen Matches of the Macho Man RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Hall: Living on a Razors Edge Shawn Michaels: My Journey Sting: Into the Light Straight Outta Dudley-ville: Legacy of the Dudley Boyz Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder Then Now Forever – The Evolution of WWEs Womens Division TLC 2017 TNA Lockdown 2005-2016 Top 50 Superstars of All Time Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season True Giants Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe War Games: WCWs Most Notorious Matches Warrior Week on WWE Network Wrestlemania III: Championship Edition Wrestlemania 28-Present The Wrestler (2008) Wrestling Road Diaries Too Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money Wrestlings Greatest Factions WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017

[blowflyfag]

Pro Wrestling Illustrated: August 1995 

in focus 

By Craig Peters

UNCENSORED? UNWATCHABLE! 

It was an unprecedented break with style in March when PWI Weekly used the space normally reserved for a cover story to print an editorial condemning the WCW Uncensored pay-per-view event. But it certainly wasn’t uncalled for. 

After all, WCW Uncensored was perhaps the worst wrestling pay-per-view event in history. 

Of course, it wouldn’t have been so bad had expectations not been so high. After all, the advance publicity for the event promised unbridled mayhem, unrivaled violence, and unsurpassed thrills.

What viewers of the event got was unparalleled boredom. 

I was one of those viewers (though, thankfully, I watched the event at a friend’s house; had I paid for WCW Uncensored, I’d be really angry!). I can honestly say that I haven’t had so much anticipatory excitement for a pay-per-view in years. 

Sadly (but to their credit), only The Nasty Boys and Harlem Heat came close to raising the kind of hell needed to rise to the occasion. For the rest of the competitors on the card, WCW Uncensored was nothing to censor, nothing special, nothing worth spending $27.95 to see.

What a disappointment! 

And more so after I learned a few bits of information. 

Like the fact that apparently there’s a TBS/Ted Turner policy of standards and practices that says there ought not to be too much violence on television. (I wonder if the people who came up with this policy watch TBS and the Turner-owned Cartoon Network, which airs tons of Tom & Jerry cartoons, among the most violent stuff on TV.) And the fact that because of this policy, viewers of WCW Uncensored were treated to camera angles that showed a wide view of the Tupelo Coliseum crowd rather than Big Van Vader trying to bash Hulk Hogan’s head in with a chair. 

[Perhaps the most ridiculous part of WCW Uncensored was when Hulk Hogan beat Big Van Vader in a strap match by dragging Ric Flair to all four corners of the ring (above). Any Sandman-Cactus Jack ECW match (opposite page) figures to be more violent than anything shown on WCW Uncensored.]

Call the event WCW Censored To The Max.

It is also because of this policy PWI has learned, that the Blacktop Bully-Dustin Rhodes match was edited down to cleanliness. Say what? That’s right, edited down. The match was not aired live; it was videotaped earlier. The match had gotten significantly bloody, and the more violent and bloody portions had been edited out of the tape. 

This in uncensored? 

Maybe somebody ought to explain to the people at TBS that wrestling is a violent sport. That is to try to legislate the violence out of it is impossible, and that to try to not broadcast the more violent aspects of it is like trying to broadcast a basketball game without showing the ball going through the net.

In a word: absurd.

And what would have happened had, say, Sting’s head gotten busted open during his match with Big Bubba Rogers? In all likelihood, it would have been like Lex Luger vs. Ric Flair in Baltimore on July 10, 1988, when an important title march was stopped on the smallest hint of blood. Anybody in the Baltimore Arena that night can vividly remember how outraged the fans were. 

Perhaps the most baffling portion of the evening was when Hulk Hogan dragged Ric Flair to all four corners of the ring to win the strap match. Unfortunately, he was wrestling Vader at the time. Shouldn’t the match have been ordered to continue? 

Stu Saks accuses me of being a convert to ECW only because the office has moved to the Philadelphia area, and ECW is convenient. Perhaps he’s right; had the office moved to a location near Pittsburgh, maybe I’d be singing the praises of Steel City Wrestling. Maybe not. But the fact of the matter remains: There is more censorable wrestling action in a typical broadcast of ECW’s weekly television show than there was in more than two hours of the WCW pay-per-view event. 

If you’re going to have a pay-per-view event that promises to be ultraviolet, don’t edit out the violence, and don’t cut away to the crowd during violent portions of the card. Above all, don't even consider having such an event in the first place if the TBS standards and practices are such that the event isn’t given a chance to succeed before the opening bell rings. 

WCW Uncensored was unwatchable… and unforgivable. 

[riotatthemovies]

Super Force (1990 TV series)

 In the year 2020 Astronaut Zach Stone returns to earth from the first mission to Mars. When he returns he finds his older brother who was a cop has been murdered after being framed by a corrupt billion dollar company that secretly runs the police force. Stone decides he will become a cop but when he finds the system is too corrupt or filled with soulless pay cheque worshiping goons he also takes up a night person as Superforce. Wearing a Robocop meets Power Rangers outfit and riding a suped up motorcycle that would make Cyclone jealous. Tech made by his friends Larry B Scott and talking computer Patrick Macnee (badly animated since they could afford to have Macnee around enough). Randomly making up new powers like his super nightstick and his electro force field. Made to air after the Superboy tv series of the time with costumes designed by the same guy that worked on the 90s Flash tv series this show covered every 90s superhero stereotype visually and contextually. Obviously suffering from budget cuts mean that some scenes jumped pretty hard as not much of the show flowed well. Random ascetic changes from dry sci fi to psychedelic 60s like super hero antics switching to Tim Burton twisted picket fences back to noir burnt out ugly future city wastelands. The issue with super hero 90s story telling is no one knew what style to keep it in , since the comic book makers all so had so many styles then the TV and film makers tried to  homage them all at once.

  Even if you never saw an episode of this before you will feel like you did as it does so many low budget 90s things that shows like Flash or even sci fis like Trancers did with future fashion choices only the 90s could design. The female police offers wear skirts so short and sports jackets with shoulder pads so big. The outfits that the star Ken Olandt wears along make him look like a cross between the Mask and the Griswalds when they go shopping in France in National Lampoons European Vacation. I wont go much on spoilers as the 2 hr pilot is online and I will link it on facebook and some of my social medias but the evil head of the corporations is an old white man being in a future wear Asian currency is in control so he is now somehow Asian as well. A sort of a Fu Manchu kinda thing. The villain is played by G Gordon Libby , yes the FBI agent from the Watergate scandal turned actor. As the series goes on the Supercop called Superforce would battle people like Lou Ferrigno , ex porn star Ginger Lynn Allen, LSD cult psychologist Timothy Leary and WCW wrestler STING.

  Expect me to rant about this on a future podcast as its this weeks timely obsession just like my obsession with Baywatch Nights recently. A future of bad style and corporate control of our police, pretty spot on except we never got to mars and our shoulder pads are not as big as Beat Arthurs... other than that this show wasn't too far off. Also the present day has let prove that some bad guys are or are not secretly robots.. oh spoiler for the pilot wwwhhoops

Here is the first 4 episodes edited together as a full length movie ripped from a 1990 vhs tape... watch if you dare to live this 90s fever dream .

[fromtheringapron]

WCW Starrcade 1990

Date: December 16, 1990.

Location: Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, MO.

Attendance: 7,200.

Commentary: Jim Ross and Paul Heyman.

Results:

1. Bobby Eaton defeated The Z Man.

2. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Round 1: The Steiner Brothers (Rick and Scott) (USA) defeated Col. DeKlerk and Sgt. Krueger (South Africa).

3. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Round 1: Konan and Rey Misterio (Mexico) defeated Chris Adams and Norman Smiley (United Kingdom). 

4. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Round 1: Mr. Saito and The Great Muta (Japan) defeated Rip Morgan and Jacko Victory (New Zealand). 

5. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Round 1: Salman Hashimikov and Victor Zangiev (Russia) defeated Danny Johnson and Troy Montour (Canada). 

6. Michael Wallstreet (with Alexandra Yorke) defeated Terry Taylor. 

7. The Skyscrapers (Sid Vicious and Danny Spivey) defeated The Big Cat and The Motor City Maniac. 

8. Tommy Rich and Ricky Morton (with Robert Gibson) defeated The Fabulous Freebirds (Michael PS Hayes and Jimmy Garvin) (with Little Richard Marley). 

9. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Semi-Final: The Steiner Brothers (Rick and Scott) (USA) defeated Konan and Rey Misterio (Mexico).

10. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Semi-Final: Mr. Saito and The Great Muta (Japan) defeated Salman Hashimikov and Victor Zangiev (Russia).

11. Texas Lariat Match for the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship: Lex Luger defeated Stan Hansen (champion) to win the title. 

12. Street Fight for the NWA World Tag Team Championship: Doom (Ron Simmons and Butch Reed) (champions) (with Theodore Long) fought Arn Anderson and Barry Windham to a no-contest. 

13. Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, Final: The Steiner Brothers (Rick and Scott) (USA) defeated Mr. Saito and The Great Muta (Japan). 

14. Steel Cage Match for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match: Sting (champion) defeated The Black Scorpion. 

My Review

The 1990 edition of Starrcade is an outright bad show. Amusingly bad, yes, but it’s still a pretty resounding failure. The cherry on the shit sundae, of course, is The Black Scorpion, one of WCW’s most infamous creative blunders. The storyline leading up to Starrcade was a lot of pulpy early ‘90s hokum⏤a mystery man, who may also be some sort of wizard, haunts world champion Sting for months with a groggy voice provided none other than Ole Anderson. It was completely ridiculous and demanded an equally ridiculous payoff.

What makes it suck so bad, however, is that not only is the reveal underwhelming, but it’s also boring. The Scorpion, first and foremost, is dressed like a masked jobber on an episode of WWF Superstars. Then it’s revealed the Scorpion is Ric Flair, the same man who Sting had already faced off with a billion times in the past two years. It’s admittedly interesting watching Flair try to completely abandon his style to play a new character, but the match itself is a by-the-numbers chore. Oh, and Dick the Bruiser is here as a terrible special guest ref who adds completely nothing. At least the Scorpion has the decency to enter the Kiel Auditorium through a spaceship that looks like your grandmother’s antique lamp.

But that’s not all, folks! We’re also treated to the Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament, featuring teams from all over the world. A noble ideal, but the talent pool is, um, underwhelming to say the least. For example, we get wrestlers billed from “South Africa” who clearly aren’t from that country. Not that it winds up mattering anyway, because the whole point is for the Americans to beat them all. The matches are also hindered by some blown finishes that really kill the mood. It’s just a series of missed opportunities that could’ve been much a cooler concept if they’d thought more outside the box than “Welp, America wins LOL!”

It should be noted this is the second out of four consecutive tournaments WCW would book for their biggest show of the year. This is firmly ensconced in the era where the booking for Starrcade started to get a little wonky, anyway. I’m not sure how much of it had to do with them trying to distance themselves from the NWA name as much as possible or what, but it took away from Starrcade’s standing as a marquee show. It says a lot about this time period for WCW⏤constantly throwing one gimmick out there after another in hopes something would eventually stick.

It’s kinda sad, because it’s clear they didn’t need to go so far out of their way to establish their own identity. So many pieces of the puzzle are present in this show, from the production to the roster. It’s when they work overtime in competing with the WWF that things falls apart, a mistake they’d go on to repeat several times over. Collision Course is a fitting tagline for Starrcade ’90, and I’m not talking about the tag tournament. The show is a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas and, like any collision, the result is a mess.

My Random Notes

Apologies for the blurry quality of the poster above. It’s practically the best version I can find right now. Cut a queen some slack in the midst of pandemic, eh? 

A few production notes: 1.) Why is the WCW logo on the entrance way always crooked? 2.) I love the blue and yellow ring apron, but the red and yellow ropes are a weird fit. 3.) We’re treated throughout the broadcast with Starrcade Stats, a cheeseball yet time-period appropriate concept giving us trading card details on each of the night’s competitors. For example, the Z-Man does a missile dropkick “if possible.”

Spot of the night goes to Col. DeKlerk who damns it all and hits one of most ill-conceived front flips of all time, which causes Rick Steiner to visibly corpse on camera.

Laugh at Team Russia all you want, but they absolutely would be at a singlet party in Provincetown during Bear Week if it were 2020.

I’m pretty supportive of having filler matches on pay-per-views, but what the hell was even the point of that Skyscrapers squash? Did they forget to book it on WCW Saturday Night and need to make up the minutes?

We get our first taste of the highly acclaimed commentary duo of JR/Paul Heyman. It’s a slightly awkward first outing. Heyman isn’t really the Heyman we’d come to know yet so he sometimes comes off as a second-rate Bobby Heenan. He tries making a joke that the Midnight Express broke up due to Yoko Ono, which is every bit as painful as it sounds.

You mean to tell me the best Canadian wrestlers they could find were Troy Montour and Danny Johnson, whom I’m not even sure are actual wrestlers?

This should go without saying, but the Fabulous Freebirds and their fetishization of the Confederate flag is, um, a huge amount of yikes in a 2020 context. I don’t know a whole lot about about the point of them having Little Richard Marley as their sidekick, but I don’t think I want to know.

As with the dawn of any new decade, the ‘80s were still alive in 1990 and you need to look no further than the Dynasty extras they put on this show as the flag-bearers, with hair almost as tall as those big ass stars on the entrance way.

This, amazingly, marks the first time I’ve seen Rey Misterio Sr. (or Rey Misteric, as he’s referred to in the Starrcade graphics). I’ve honestly never even Googled his name to see what he looks like. It does seem like his nephew has a much better handle on the high-flying maneuvers. He inexplicably launches himself over the top rope after his Round 1 match is over. I’m sure it made Col. DeKlerk proud.