NWA Great American Bash N18 (7.16.88) review 

 

July 16, 1988 

 

We’re in Greensboro, North Carolina at the War Memorial Stadium. This isn’t to be confused with the Great American Bash PPV of 1988, which took place the week before and featured the Tower of Doom match and Flair-Luger with the bullshit blood loss finish. This is a tour show, not on PPV, headlined by War Games and some other fun stuff on the undercard. 

 

Bugsy McGraw & Tim Horner vs. Larry Zbyszko & Rip Morgan 

Bugsy, fruitcake nutbar that he is, is running for President. He’s running on the ‘no more Larry Zbyszko matches’ ticket. He has my vote. Rip does the haka to try and intimidate the faces and people just laugh at it. That’s how you deal with the All Blacks. I always thought it was weird that a little choreographed dance number was supposed to scare people. I’m more frightened of Tim Horner’s mullet. He chose to leave the house like that. That man is dangerous. He’s capable of anything.  

 

Watching Bugsy take bumps is fascinating. Something inside his head is telling him to go one direction and his body is confused by it. Choices have been made. Larry just being normal and taking normal bumps is a relief compared to everyone else. Horner catches Rip with a crossbody for the win. The crowd seem happy enough. This was fine.  

 

Ron Garvin vs. Italian Stallion 

Garvin, freshly turned, demands Stallion face him in a different ring to the one Stallion is standing in (War Games, baby).  

Garvin gets a decent reaction for a heel until he fakes an ankle injury, and the crowd HATE him for it. Dumbass Italian Stallion falls for it, gets punched in the face and loses in 0:45. Brilliant. I am now sad I didn’t get to see this version of Ron Garvin pan out. He’d be in WWF in a few months. 

 

Dick Murdoch vs. Gary Royal 

Royal is from North Carolina, so I guess that’s why he’s on the card. The crowd don’t treat him like a returning hero. Probably because he looks like an abnormally tall midget. Murdoch tries hard here but he’s just wrestling himself. We get a few crowd shots and there are a lot of empty seats. Dirty Dick takes it with a brainbuster and smugly smiles right into camera in the process. This was ok but there was only ever one winner. 

 

Rick Steiner vs. Jimmy Garvin 

Rick’s character was starting to come together here; he’s doing the barking and has “dog faced gremlin” on his tights. Kevin Sullivan comes out here to attack Precious and there’s heat on that angle. Garvin is briefly distracted but rolls Steiner up in 1:25 for the quick victory. 

 

Sheepherders vs. Rock n’ Roll Express 

RNR only just came back after a self-imposed hiatus where they quit over money. Robert Gibson would get fed up and leave again right after this, thus ending the great Rock n’ Roll Express run in the 1980s. They wouldn’t team again until 1990. Gibson going to Japan and Morton staying on here before doing a stint in Memphis in 1989.  

 

Luke calls the RNR “long haired music lovers”. Them’s fighting words, boy! I don’t think that even approaches an insult. Having shocked me with their competence against the Fantastics, the Sheepherders again deliver a solid performance here. The bumps are still comically bad and I’ve never bought into their general act, but the structure is acceptable.  

 

It helps that they give the RNR a huge shine and powder out of the ring when they’re overwhelmed. It’s a prime example of structure being able to overcome poor technicals. As we saw with Heenan vs. Warrior in those weasel suit matches. The match does suffer from a weak heat segment, with Gibson playing babyface in peril.  

At least they keep it short with Morton hot tagging his way into the action. Butch stumbles into a crossbody after a messy concluding couple of minutes, which really takes my score down. Call it *** though. Another really good Sheepherders tag where they worked around their weaknesses and made it less obvious that they couldn’t do basic stuff. This is the second match in 6 weeks from the Sheepherders that was decent. If only they could have stuck at that level! I guess you can’t work Rock n Roll Express and the Fantastics all the time. 

 

Al Perez vs. Brad Armstrong 

I’m still somewhat taken aback that Al Perez wasn’t a bigger star. Essentially because he has the look, which is the hardest part. He looks like a jacked up Seth Rollins, which is Vince McMahon’s wet dream. He was certainly enough of a looker to get the WCWA world title and they only give that belt to superhunks.  

NWA have started pushing Brad as a plucky upstart second generation babyface. One tiny problem; no one cares. This is mainly because he hasn’t beaten anyone. Perception is that while he’s talented, he’s clearly a jobber. He’s capable of taking bumps that most guys can’t, or don’t want to take. Perez hits him with a whirlybird slam in this, which looks awesome. The crowd don’t care at all though. Even when Brad catches Perez in cradles, akin to Savage-Steamboat in technique if not intensity.  

 

Perez takes some goofy bumps down the stretch including flip bumping a punch to the breadbasket and bumping clean over the top rope for a laugh. Gary Hart grabs Brad’s leg and Perez drops on top around 11:00. The match was fine, but this would have been an ideal way to boost Brad’s stock with an upset win. **½ 

 

Midnight Express & Jim Cornette vs. Fantastics 

To negate Cornette, he’s in the match as a third for the Midnights. Putting him in a straitjacket and a shark cage didn’t help the Fantastics to win, what hope do they have here? Cornette does the Fargo Strut here, which predates either Flair or Jarrett using it in a major promotion. We’re in street clothes because this is a Bunkhouse Match. Which is NWA for ‘street fight’ in 1988. I take issue with this immediately because it’s no DQ but also under tag rules. What if they don’t tag? There’s no DQ. Just jump in there. A massive logic hole, which I’ve seen time and time again. Tornado rules exist for just this purpose. 

 

After a few minutes, they get into the spirit of it, and it gets a bit more chaotic. Fulton using a chair and them brawling all over the place. Cornette is up to no good all match and it pisses Eaton off to the point where we almost get a rebellion and a Midnight’s face turn. Cornette is having a time of it out there. From the various acts of cowardice to hitting a running elbow drop on Rogers and celebrating like he’s won a world championship. It’s all so good. Cornette is doing such a good job as a heel that he’s getting pops.  

 

Rogers does a wonderful job of getting beaten up, even by Cornette. Jimmy tries to get the winning pin, Rogers kicks out and gets a hot tag. I love the logic of that, even if they don’t need to tag. Cornette misses with powder, gets double clotheslined and pinned by Fulton. This was sensationally high energy stuff all the way through. Apart from the one glaring no DQ issue, this was tremendous fun. ****. Perhaps the prime example of a manager working in a handicap tag.  

 

NWA World TV Championship 

Mike Rotunda (c) vs. Sting 

Sting is so over they could put literally any belt on him and get a huge pop. He’s already way above the TV title, which is just a prop for midcarders. Rotunda (or Rotundo as he’s called here) won the title at the start of 1988 and will lose it at the end of the year. Sting would end up with the belt anyway in the middle of 1989 while Flair is busy with Ricky Steamboat.  

The Varsity Club all go after Sting, and he beats up all three of them. Most of the match sees Sting easily throw Rotunda around before Sullivan and Steiner turn it into a numbers game. Rotunda then chinlocks the match to death. Get used to that. The rest of his career is chinlocks. I’m not kidding when I say his match against Rick Steiner at Starrcade ‘88 might be the last good singles match of his entire career. 

 

Sting is keen to use his environment here and hits a dive from one ring to the other, which is pretty cool. Especially for 1988. Scorpion Deathlock is about to be applied and Rick Steiner just jumps in for the DQ at 10:10. Sting happily bails out knowing he’s got the winner’s purse and doesn’t have to carry that belt around in his luggage. A double win. Sting was fun here, Rotunda was not. 

 

Scaffold Match 

Ivan Koloff & Russian Assassin #1 vs. Road Warriors 

Russian Assassin #1 is the masked Angel of Death from the Tower of Doom match. He’d end up hanging around for the rest of the year before heading back to Stampede.  

The Road Warriors look the least afraid of the scaffold as any team that’s ever been in one. Ivan Koloff is also certifiably insane, so this ends up being the best scaffold match, ever. They do a lot of stand up brawling, rather than hugging the floor. Ivan is taking actual bumps on it too. Russian Assassin barely moves around up there, and Ivan is all “hey, let’s throw in a dropkick”. A DROPKICK, IVAN?  

 

Anyway, he drops off and Russian Assassin #1 is left alone, kneeling, looking scared. He climbs so far down, he’s almost standing on the ropes before bumping. Road Warriors win. Hey, it stank, but they did some reasonable stuff. Credit to Ivan Koloff. An absolute crazy man.  

 

WAR GAMES 

The heels are the Four Horsemen; Ric Flair, Barry Windham, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard and JJ Dillon. No outsiders! The faces are Lex Luger, Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, Steve Williams and Paul Ellering.  

I’m not sure if either Dillon or Ellering is a good choice. Especially as Ellering’s team isn’t even in this match. Dusty vs. Arn to start. Lots of blood and swearing in that. The heels win the coin toss, like every other single War Games, and Barry jumps in to make it 2 on 1 but Dusty is happy about that and dominates both guys. Urgh, I would have had Windham beat the piss out of Dusty. They get there eventually but Doc jumps in for 2 on 2. The action is good to this point. Williams pushing the pacing when he got in there. 

 

Flair is next for the Horsemen, and he does a great job of selling for Doc too. You could, realistically, have given Steve a title shot off the back of this. It’s a much better performance from him. Flair starts to taunt Luger as the Horsemen take over and so naturally Lex is the next man in. The reactions the whole Luger segment get should have told Jim Crockett this was the next world champ. I’m incredulous they never pulled that trigger in 1988. Tully gives the Horsemen the man advantage again.  

 

Up to this point, everything has clicked. Koloff squares it up again and he tries to no sell but it’s nowhere near as impressive, or popular, as Luger. How long until the next guy is in Tony? “One, a little bit more than one”. Outstanding timekeeping. The clock in the arena tells us it’s 11:02. This show is running late. They do a bizarre thing and give Dillon and Ellering an entire ring to themselves. Dusty pops in, slaps the Figure Four on JJ and he quits. ***¾. I quite enjoyed this, although War Games in general isn’t the wonderful concept everyone seems to think it is. Not much blood here and a very flat finish though.  

 

The 411: 

NWA was definitely producing the better shows around the middle of 1988. I’d give them the year over the WWF’s product without hesitation. Although, the NWA had some gaping financial issues and Ted Turner is incoming. We only have one more Clash show before he takes charge and Jim Crockett is done. After that, it’s only a few months before Dusty is gone too. It’s a real time of change for the NWA. Their product, despite stupid gimmick matches like the scaffold, was significantly better. At this point I’ve got 15 NWA matches, for 1988, at ***+. I have two WWF matches, including zero from WrestleMania IV.