AWA Superclash IV (4.8.90) review 

 

April 8, 1990 

 

We’re in St Paul, Minnesota at the St Paul Civic Center. For those who don’t realise St Paul and Minneapolis is basically the same place. An urban conurbation. I always thought, incorrectly it seems, that this was a big event for the AWA. I thought it was televised or at the very least taped with the intention of airing it on TV. It turns out they did tape it, as *tada* here it is. However, they haven’t recorded commentary and it’s hardcam only. AWA drew circa 2000 for this show. That was the dirtsheet estimate at the time. The company is basically on its knees now and this is the sad end of AWA. I won’t be reviewing another one of their shows. Let’s see how they bow out.  

It’s bold of the AWA to eschew what are now traditional recording techniques like lights, editing, awareness of the camera and ticket sales. We start with the ring announcer telling us Junkyard Dog has torn a knee ligament and is off the show. He wrestled the week after, so I suspect this is a no-show. His place against Colonel de Beers is taken by Baron von Raschke. Ha, what? Why would you book that?  

 

Jake Milliman vs. Todd Becker 

Neither of these jamokes gets an introduction. Milliman is a somewhat chunky bearded babyface. He’s 5’6”. Becker is a Shawn Michaels clone. If Shawn Michaels didn’t know how to take an armdrag. Both guys careers peak here, unless you consider being a WWF jobber higher on the rungs. Milliman’s nickname is the “Milkman” and the only sound during the entire match is someone yelling “go Milkman”. He does, indeed, go and wins with a sunset flip. Fair play. This was crap but quite short, so we’ll give it a pass. 

 

Go Milkman! 

 

Brad Rheingans & DJ Peterson vs. Texas Hangmen 

The Hangmen are two masked men. One is “Mean” Mike Richards/Moran, an AWA goon. Amusingly his last WWF jobber outing came against Bubba the Love Sponge in 2002. I’m not making that up. The other guy is Bull Pain, a German wrestler who you may have seen in ECW or IWA Mid-South. There’s a microphone on the camera, which records a conversation with the cameraman talking about the local station (TV or radio not specified) that it had been sold. Presumably meaning AWA have nowhere to broadcast this.  

 

The jarring difference between the AWA and literally every other promotion is how boring and stuck in the past it is. The work is so painfully generic, from both sides, that it’s hard tell who the faces are. Maybe neither of them. If Brad and Deej are the faces, they’re doing a poor job of it. Brad is a gifted amateur wrestler so occasionally he’ll bust out something cool but otherwise the whole match is rest holds. 

 

Deej pulls off some cool stuff near the end like a perfect dropkick while the crowd disparage the Hangmen. “Hey, you fat tub of shit”. The Hangmen do a blind switch while Brad is complaining about something. I’m not sure what. Peterson gets rolled up and the heels win it. This was 12:00 and they had 5:00 worth of stuff at the most. MOTN so far at around *½  

 

Colonel de Beers vs. Baron von Raschke  

The Baron is almost 50 and in 1980s wrestler years, not modern ones. DeBeers, a spring chicken of 45 years, completes an entire match’s worth of people born during World War II. Traditionally von Raschke made his money working a Nazi heel gimmick, but he turned into a goofy babyface. DeBeers is now the evil South African heel, thanks to apartheid. His dislike of black people was why he was wrestling JYD. He doesn’t seem as bothered by the Baron. Strange that. 

The bumps in this are laughable. The guys just slowly fall over backwards. Baron has an obsession with stomps, which look awful. DeBeers gets trapped in the ropes and von Raschke gets into it with Adnan Al-Kassie. They do a lame brawl on the floor and von Raschke slips back in to win on count out. Imagine being slower than Baron von Raschke? This is borderline but I think we’ll go DUD here. 

 

Tully Blanchard vs. Tommy Jammer 

Imagine having a star like Tully and putting him in with Tommy Jammer? I get the idea. Jammer is supposed to learn from Blanchard, and this is a good building experience for him. Something like that. Jammer has had around 50 matches at this point. Maybe less. This is supposed to be the hot pre-intermission match you’ve been hearing about. Nobody has told Tully about it. I’m pretty sure Jammer pisses him off early on, by dragging him across the ring by his wrist. The match is focused on the arm, but he looked hot about it.  

 

Tully is cornered by Christopher Love, one of the AWA’s heel managers. He also managed Gangrel. Tully is clearly not in the mood for this match. He lets Jammer hammerlock him for AAAAAAGES. Is this the match Tully?  

Despite the match being Jammer working the arm the whole time the cameraman still manages to get distracted and give us THIS FUCKING SHOT. I can only assume Tully is hanging onto the ropes. Hammerlock. The match slowly drains away, like sand through an hourglass, the days of our lives disappearing into sunsets, never to come back. When you reach Valhalla, tell them you once wasted 15 entire minutes of your life watching Tully Blanchard vs. Tommy Jammer.  

 

Whenever Blanchard isn’t trapped in a hammerlock, he’s out on the floor taking a powder. Has he got cocaine stashed under the ring? “Let me get enough, uh, energy to take another hammerlock, kid”. It’s so sad watching Tully work this match so soon after being part of the Brainbusters. What happened man? The finish is horrible with Love grabbing Jammer’s feet on the ‘suplex back inside’ spot. At least it’s over. That’s all I care about. 15 minutes of nothing. -**½  

 

We get intermission with an announcement of Flair vs. Pillman on the next show for the NWA belt. That did similar numbers to this, which is to say, ‘not many’. The company was just dead. As is evidenced by this show, so far. 

 

Lumberjack Match  

John Nord vs. Kokina Maximus 

Kokina is Yokozuna back when he wasn’t hugely obese.  

Nord is the future Berzerker. His boots are already furry. Both these guys have tragic futures ahead of them. Nord ended up with substance abuse problems and Lou Gehrig’s disease. He’s now wheelchair bound. Kokina ended up piling on so much weight, to play a huge sumo wrestler, that he died of a heart attack aged just 34. With that misery out of the way, let’s get on with the match. 

 

The lumberjack gimmick rarely ever comes into play. Nobody on the floor seems to be paying attention to the match, which I can totally understand. It is a chore to sit through here, and I’m sat in a nice warm lounge.  

We get to here and the announcer tells us we’re 5:00 in. IS THAT ALL? Fuck me. You would think they would at least do some brawling or something here. Nope, NERVE HOLDS. That’s what they want in Minnesota. Hey, it’s working because it’s getting on my nerves!  

 

Nord is tremendously clumsy. I’ve always liked that about him. When he hits the big boot here, he immediately falls over. Andre the Giant levels of clumsyness without the acromegaly excuse. Nord hits Kokina with a briefcase, which he fiddles around with first to make sure stuff falls out of it. That’s the finish. Hahaha. Oh, god. -**. Boring and stupid. A fantastic double whammy. It is interesting to see Yokozuna when he’s relatively thin and mobile though. As they’re leaving someone yells “WWF number one!” Well, compared to this, yes.  

 

AWA World Heavyweight Championship 

Masa Saito (c) vs. Larry Zbyszko  

Saito is cornered by Riki Choshu. Why on earth wasn’t he booked? He’s in the building! I saw the show where Saito won the belt (NJPW Super Fight in Tokyo Dome). It was a decent match, to be fair to them. The special referee is Nick Bockwinkel. Let’s hope for some competence as usually special referees ruin the match. Verne Gagne is also out here, and you hear someone shout “keep up the good work, Verne”. Yeah, just keep going like this and see what happens eh?  

Bockwinkel does not allow shenanigans. He never would have cut it as a referee in the fed though because he stands in the way of the hardcam. Unlike the match in Tokyo, this one is painfully sluggish. They just go from rest hold to rest hold. It’s more in line with what I would expect from a Larry Zbyzsko match up. The crowd are just dead at this point. They’ve given up hope of something, anything, happening on the show and now they’re locked in until bedtime.  

 

This is the kind of show that’s so sad, I would be drunk off my ass by this point. DO SOMETHING! Larry hits a swinging neckbreaker that’s just tragic. Neither guy committing to the bump at all. Saito going after the Scorpion Deathlock makes sense as he’s being cornered by Choshu.  

Now he just needs to hit the Riki Lariat, and the title is his! Saito goes after the leg some more with Larry doing his ‘holding the rope’ back bump. The last couple of minutes are actually very good, which makes the preceding 14:00 all the more offensive. Back suplex gets the pin for Saito with some of the fans pointing out Larry got his shoulder up. Nick even raises the wrong guy’s hand and Saito is announced as winner. Saito was screwed. I wind it back and I’m not convinced Saito’s shoulders were down, but Larry kicked out. He’s announced as the new champion.  

 

This was boring. *¾. I’ll give it MOTN because the last couple of minutes featured the best in-ring work of the entire show. Otherwise, a hard pass. The ring announcer has to remind people not to leave as we set up a cage for the main event.  

 

Cage Match 

Destruction Crew (Mike Enos & Wayne Bloom) vs Paul Diamond & Trooper 

The referee is Bob Lurtsema, an NFL veteran who played for the Minnesota Vikings in two Superbowls (0-2). This is a way of bringing him in and he’ll be in a tag match later in the year at Twin Wars (the Flair vs Pillman show). It’s a sign of the AWA at least planning for the future, somewhat. They were still doing TV until August 1990 but, make no mistake about it, they are FINISHED here. 

 

The Trooper is the future Patriot Del Wilkes. I mean, I’m sure he’s patriotic here too but he has a different mask. Oh wait, that’s his face! I can see why he opted for a mask in the WWF. Speaking of WWF; Paul Diamond is on his way there to join the Orient Express. For those eagle-eyed viewers, he is not in any way Oriental. The WWF fix was to put him in a mask and call him “Kato”.  

 

To give you an idea of how much time 80s wrestlers spent in the gym, the NFL lineman looks tiny next to them here. And these are not jacked up guys. Enos and Bloom do a decent job of bumping around for the face duo. For the first time all night the match seems to move at a pace that isn’t glacial.  

Tully helps Del get colour by hitting him with a chair from the floor. That’s the most animated Blanchard has looked all night. The Destruction Crew look like the kind of tag team Vince McMahon would sign up immediately on seeing them. Two pretty blonde lads who know where the gym is. Of course they would end up in the fed the following year as the Beverly Brothers.  

 

They take out Lurtsema here and hit the Doomsday Device on Wilkes. Lurtsema recovers, leg drops Enos and puts Wilkes on top for the win. Haha. What a terrible finish. Easily match of the night, apart from the dodgy finish but at least that was designed to set up a trios match at the next big show. **¼  

 

Lurtsema’s leg drop is one of the worst you’ll ever see, btw. The Destruction Crew and Tully take him apart afterwards. Of course, this means war. Diamond, Enos and Bloom would all be in the WWF in a year. Wilkes got a trial but must have failed it because he wasn’t signed and instead made a living in Japan and WCW until his Patriot run in the WWF later in the decade against Bret Hart.  

 

 

We end the show with backstage interviews. You may recognise the interviewer; future WCW honcho Eric Bischoff. It’s raw footage so you can hear someone counting them in and yelling “clear” at the end. I love that we get to see this.  

Lurtsema yells at Eric about getting annoyed with rules being broken, while also admitting there are no rules in a cage match. “Would you do it again?” “YOU BET YOUR SWEET BIPPY”. Howling here.  

It gets better as Verne Gagne stops Bischoff interviewing Del Wilkes because he’s got the question wrong. TAKE TWO!  

 

The 411: 

Watching a company as it dies in front of your eyes is quite painful. A lot of this show stinks. If you clipped it up and turned it into a 45:00 show it might just about pass. Lots of these matches would benefit from judicious clippery. The main event is actually pretty good if you can ignore the NFL guy. However, there’s no escaping the stench of decay on the company. We’re done here. It’s worth watching just to see AWA in 1990 but that’s it. There’s nothing good. Only sadness.