NWA Clash of the Champions VI: Ragin’ Cajun 

 

April 2, 1989 

 

If that date looks familiar it’s because they ran against Wrestlemania, again. It didn’t do very well (4.3 vs 5.6 for Clash 1) and ended up being the last time the NWA would try to screw with Wrestlemania’s buyrate. The big headline event here, in New Orleans, is Flair vs Steamboat II*.  

 

*I’m aware this isn’t their second meeting. It isn’t even their second meeting this year, as they had a barnstorming 31-minute match to headline a Maryland house show in March, which made tape (albeit handheld) and was on an assortment of comp tapes “back in the day”. I’ve seen it before, and it is very good but perhaps not quite on the level of their tippy top contests. They worked a lot before 1989 too. Including NWA Boogie Jam ‘84 and around Mid-Atlantic in 1984 in general.  

 

As with Wrestlemania V, the card is bloated, with ten matches. Flair-Steamboat alone is an hour on a show running 2h9m. Hosts are Jim Ross and Michael PS Hayes. Ross throws to an NWA champions dinner the previous night. Guests include Lou Thesz, Gene Kiniski, Harley Race and Terry Funk. It’s odd to see Harley there, as he just left WWF but wasn’t used by Ted Turner until the following summer.  

 

Samoan Swat Team vs. Midnight Express 

This continues the Paul E vs. Jim Cornette’s Midnight Express feud. MXP have already run off the Original Midnight Express. Now Heyman has signed the Samoans to fight them. The Samoan’s are Samu and Fatu. Yes, Rikishi, very early in his career. He’s so small! Both Samoans would end up in the WWF but only Fatu would stick. Samu had already had one run there, in 1984, and stunk up the joint. 

 

Both Samoan’s are pleasingly hard-hitting. MXP merely go through the motions. Heyman uses his phone tactically in this, getting Samu to listen to someone on the other end. Presumably one of the Samoan clan. Probably his dad, Afa. There’s a lot of pissing about, like MXP doing no-tag switches so Cornette can get the crowd to cheat on their behalf. Foreshame!  

 

“This is not no show business” says Hayes, making a point of some kind. I can only assume a derogatory one about the world of ‘Sportz Entertainment’. If you can ignore his double negative. Or don’t not ignore it, if you prefer. Maybe he can see into the future where he’ll be renamed “Handsome” Dok Hendrix by the Fed.  

 

The hot tag/breakdown is a fake out, but it’s also shit as they take forever to get a noggin knocker together. Which, obviously, doesn’t work on Samoans. We rumble on for another 5:00 before Eaton gets the second hot tag. He does THE SAME THING, the bonehead. Rocket Launcher lands but Tommy spends a while getting Lane out of the ring while Eaton gets knocked out with the phone behind his back. While quite creative the finish kinda sucked. The match was also long, over 20:00, and didn’t have enough stuff to fill that. Call it circa **½  

 

Great Muta vs. Steven Casey 

JR’s pronounication of Muta has to be heard to be believed. The “Great MOOO-tar”. Muta’s first US excursion was in 1986, where he worked as the White Ninja. He then spent some time in Dallas, working for the von Erich’s, as Super Black Ninja. Muta’s current run started about a month before this and it’s a similar gimmick to the ‘ninja’ ones.  

This is arguably the best year of Casey’s career, as he was working regularly on TV. He’s more of a World Class/Global guy. Casey eats Green Mist immediately. Surely, that’s a DQ? You would think, if you had any logic upstairs, this would be a squash. It’s not. Muta does a bunch of cool shit and Casey bizarrely gets his own control segments.  

 

To be honest, I never liked Muta as a character. I appreciate his attempts to be different, but the mist is right in front of the ref, and he does a bunch of lame nerve holds. I’m also not keen on him sucking on his fingers before doing stuff. Generally, saliva spots are gross and not in a good way. Give me more spinning back kicks and house show dives! Moonsault finishes (“a blind 360” according to JR) and this was way too long for a squash.  

 

Junkyard Dog vs. Butch Reed 

Ross refers to the band as “YJD’s people”. Both these guys are finished, so naturally WCW has signed them for multiple years. JYD is only 35 years old at this point, going on 60. Reed is only 34. These guys would be NXT rookies nowadays. In 1989, they were finished. Reed would end up having a career revival in Doom whereas JYD would coast on former glories for another four years*. Both guys look horrible here, but JYD is clearly closer to the end of his career than Reed. 

 

*He actually got fired just after this, for no-showing Wrestlewar ‘89 PPV, but came back.  

 

They could build this match around their previous feud, back before JYD went to the WWF in 1984, but wrestling in the 80s (and more so in the 90s) had a thing of not referencing how old people were. The idea of going back to a feud five years ago, would make both guys seem old. While I’m typing JYD wins after Reed collided with manager Hiro Matsuda. The match sucked something fierce and if I’m Ted Turner, JYD’s departure, not long after this would have been a boon. So, naturally, he rehired him in 1990.  

 

The Network version of this show skips a few matches, including the Road Warriors losing the tag titles.   

 

NWA US Tag Team Championship 

Eddie Gilbert & Rick Steiner (c) vs. Varsity Club (Dan Spivey & Kevin Sullivan) 

Gilbert, predictably, eats heat with Missy Hyatt looking on from ringside. Gilbert was a good ideas man, but as a worker? He’s mediocre. He does have Rick as a hot tag but there’s no escaping that we could have had the Steiner Brothers here and we don’t. The feeling is that they were running short on time here as this barely makes it to four minutes including a post match beat down for Gilbert. Anyway, the champs retain, and Missy looks sad about Eddie blading.  

 

Halfway done here and there’s only one match left. Not even the Ranger Ross vs. Iron Sheik match made the cut! Devastating editing from the WWF. I’m not complaining, all shows should be shorter than they are. They could have edited this down harder than they did.  

 

Two Out of Three Falls  

NWA World Championship  

Ricky Steamboat (c) vs. Ric Flair  

The implication here is that Steamboat got lucky when he won the belt, so Flair challenged him to two out of three falls.  

Amazingly WCW spell Flair’s name wrong. Someone over at Turner who’s never seen wrestling obviously corrected it. Oh well.  

Steamboat counters by dressing his son as an actual dragon. Flair has six world titles and is going for number seven. Ross calls it five and six, which makes me wonder which title they’re not counting. Presumably the Race switch in New Zealand/back in Singapore as they claim Race is on seven titles and he’s on eight.  

Terry Funk joins commentary. Gee, I wonder if that will lead to anything? They do some great mat work and Steamboat tattoos Flair with a slap and then does it again! The intensity, blended with the technical skill, is what made these matches so special. Flair has run into plenty of people who could match his speed but rarely ones who could match speed and intensity. Steamboat is happy to force the pace too, something a lot of 80s guys just avoided. Why work hard when you can work smart? 

 

This match currently sits at #87 on Cagematch’s highest rated matches of all time. The importance of the match cannot be understated (or the series as a whole) as it was what the next generation of workers was watching. The influence of Flair-Steamboat, and other Japanese feuds that followed in the early-mid 90s, changed the way wrestlers approached the game in the late 90s, 2000s and beyond.  

 

The biggest aspect of the feud, potentially, is Flair’s sudden reliance on chops because they get a reaction. His use of chops escalated in 1989. Seeing as he didn’t do much else, in terms of offence, they became his trademark. A feeling I’ve always had about this match is that it’s the most sluggish and least accessible of their 1989 trilogy. That is until they start chopping the hell out of each other.  

 

Flair does a bang-up job of trying to force a pin by keeping Steamboat on his back for a couple of minutes. You almost never see this and the way he switches holds to get the pins is neat. Ricky nips up out of it right into a test of strength (as Flair was using knucklelocks to keep Steamboat down). That is so well done. Ricky gets a roll up to block the Figure Four, but Flair sees it coming and reverses the reversal into the pin. 1-0 Flair.  

 

Segunda Caida:  

They both do subtle switches here. Steamboat wants to hasten the pace, whereas Flair is somewhat cocky, having secured a fall. Steamboat starts to bring some psychology into proceedings, outside of that, by going after the Figure Four (Flair’s patented finishing hold) and then the back. He’s trying to immobilise Flair, much like Flair did to countless challengers. He’s playing the role of champion. 

 

Flair sees the change in momentum and takes it to the floor, where he’s useful and capable of utilising the environment. Something Steamboat, a baby blue, would never consider. So, he gets whipped into a bunch of guardrails. That’ll teach him. The match starts to get tiring after this. The idea is that Steamboat is getting tired, and Flair starts forcing him to work hard. Lots of shortcuts and bullshit. He’s cheating to get the fans to rally behind Steamboat and his comeback. In all honesty, Steamboat was never that over. He was a great, elite wrestler, but people never really cared about him. Watch a Steamboat match without someone like Flair or Savage to bounce off. 

 

The difference between Steamboat and someone like Windham, is how good Steamboat was against everybody. He just did it in an era where people didn’t care about workrate. Anyway, enough of that. Steamboat gets his double chickenwing hooked on and Flair gives up levelling the scores at 1-1.  

 

Tercera Caida: 

Steamboat continues to focus on the back, having had a lot of joy with that tactic. Both guys are well into the ‘fatigue selling’ stage of the match. Fall two was at 35 minutes in. Flair does his corner bump and Steamboat, having seen it before, nails him on the apron with a chop. A nice call back to Chicago and part one of this trilogy where Flair got away with it.  

 

Flair goes after the leg and hooks the Figure Four. Steamboat looks fucked and Terry waxes lyrical about how it’s harder to quit when quitting means losing a world title. Steamboat somewhat overdoes the fatigue selling, as he must combine it with a limp. The lack of movement allows Flair to do his corner bump. It shows that Steamboat has lost half a yard. They also establish that he can’t lift Flair without the knee giving out. This is a Chekov’s Gun for later. 

 

There’s a little bit of sloppiness slips in at this point. The swinging neckbreaker from Steamboat is loose and maybe that’s sweat? You could put it down to fatigue selling, arguably, but I think that’s a reach. They also do the stupid ‘arm drops twice’ thing on a sleeper. So, you were unconscious for two arm drops by miraculously regained consciousness while still in a choke before the third huh? I always hated that spot. There’s also some really shit selling from Steamboat where Flair kicks his bad leg and he just floats around, all ballet like, for some reason. 

 

Despite all the flaws in fall three, they do finish by beating the piss out of each other with the chops while Terry Funk puts them over for their efforts. The finish sees Flair get caught in another double chickenwing but this time Steamboat’s leg has been worked over so much he can’t hold Flair up. He collapses, both guys fall on their back, but Steamboat gets his shoulder up. It’s a really well done finish although TV should have concentrated on Steamboat’s shoulders. We can see the controversial aspect; which is Flair’s foot being under the rope but not Steamboat getting his shoulder up. It’s a production blunder not a fault of the wrestlers. The replay doesn’t help as it looks like Steamboat forgot to kick out.  

 

There are people who will try and tell you this is the greatest professional wrestling match of all time but I’m not one of them. It is better than Chicago and has a way better finish. However, there are flaws in the planning and execution of it both from the workers side and the production side. It’s not the perfect match that people claim it to be. For me, the trilogy does get progressively better so we’ll see if I still rate Wrestlewar as the best of the three when I get around to it. This ruled but I think it was too long with too much fatigue stuff. ****¾  

 

Post Match: 

Jim Ross gets an interview with Ricky Steamboat. The champ is happy with the win, and he’s now beaten Flair twice, so he says it’s time to move on. Steamboat effectively telling Flair that his era is over. JR shows him footage of Flair’s foot under the rope and Steamboat changes his tune, promising Flair another shot.  

 

The 411: 

It’s a one match show but the one match is one of the most famous and important matches of the decade. My own personal preference is for Flair-Windham from January 1987 to be considered the best Flair match, but I feel like I’m in the minority. I just prefer Windham’s selling and firing up. They also rest a lot less and went longer and harder. 4.75 from me is still a great match though and if you’ve never seen a Flair-Steamboat match the 1989 trilogy is required viewing.