WCW Clash of the Champions XII: Mountain Madness  

 

September 5, 1990 

 

The full title of this show is WCW Clash of the Champions XII – Fall Brawl ‘90: Mountain Madness but that is an insanely long title. Due to the fact that this show is SHIT, I’ve never actually seen it. Hey, maybe it’s not that bad… 

 

We’re in Asheville, North Cackalacky. Hosts are Jim Ross and Bob Caudle. The show is less than two hours long, which is the only positive thing I have to say about it. Unfortunately, Ole Anderson’s brain has concocted the “Black Scorpion” angle. In hilarious fashion the angle is all planned out for the next THREE MONTHS and they still don’t know who’s going to play the character. Keeping in mind, Black Scorpion is ON THIS SHOW. 

 

Fabulous Freebirds vs. Southern Boys 

BADSTREET, ATLANTA, GA! The Freebirds have Buddy Roberts in their corner. I legitimately didn’t know he came back. Apparently, it was one night only. BOTH teams have gear with the rebel flag on it. It’s amazing how attached some people are to a flag that existed for two years during a conflict that took place over a hundred years ago. I will never understand it. 

 

Southern Boys were a fun babyface team with lots of fire. The Freebirds yuck it up as chickenshit heels. Southern Boys do good work. I like the repeat spots with Freebirds learning from their mistakes, only to make new ones. Freebirds in charge however stinks. PS Hayes has a great left hand but that’s about it. Southern Boys need a team that can keep up with them. Look at that Midnights match (July 1990 ****½)!  

 

Bullet Bob and Buddy Roberts both end up in the ring before the finish. Thankfully, for the Southern Boys, they don’t win via Bob’s big right hand. Instead getting the duke with stereo sunset flips. **½. A really solid opener and another demonstration that the Southern Boys were a good team. 

 

Buddy Landel vs. Mike Rotunda 

Buddy has a new tattoo, and it reads “SKID ROW”. Yes, he was that into the band Skid Row, he got their band name tattooed on him. Hey, I like 18 & Life as much as the next guy but that’s going to be a tough one to explain in 30 years. He won’t have to though, because it’s fake. According to Bob Caudle, Landel is close friends with Skid Row guitarist Dave “The Snake” Sabo. It’s kinda tragic that I know who that is without having to google.  

 

Landel is clearly hungover, or something, and he botches the bump on a hip toss. Rotunda is at near “IRS” levels of boring here. Going to rest holds constantly during a FIVE-minute match. It’s a bit early for a piss break, lads. Rotunda wins it with a backslide. Jesus fucking Christ, Mike. There was nothing technically wrong with most of this, but it felt badly dated in 1990, let alone now. 

 

Video Control gives us footage of the Freebirds in Hollywood. They’re certainly not mobbed by plants for autographs. Nothing happens. They just do a little dance on a street corner and that segues straight into the phone number to buy WCW merch.  

 

Tim Horner & Brad Armstrong vs. Master Blasters 

Brad is going by “Candy Man” at the moment. The Master Blasters is one of those dumb shit ideas that happened in WCW. They are effectively replacing the Twin Towers (seeing as that gimmick has died) as the big man tag team. You probably know Kevin Nash played “Steel” but his tag partner here is “Iron”. Cory Pendarvis. He wrestled a handful of matches, and this is the only televised one.  

Nash has a reddish mohawk. Poor Horner & Brad are here to get this gimmick over. Iron is so bad he could potentially steal ‘worst wrestler’ award from Zeus. Nash is ok but his timing sucks. Iron misses a few diving headbutts so badly the crowd boo. Nash’s stuff looks like shit but at least it’s close to connecting. I’m aware this is Nash’s debut, but he doesn’t look like he’ll be able to make a career of it, based on this. 

 

The crowd don’t give a single fuck about this match. Nobody gives a shit. Double shoulderblock finishes for the Blasters. “I’m sure we’ll hear a lot from these guys in the years to come” says Caudle. Iron would be gone a few weeks later, replaced by Al Green*. Nash, a nailed-on star if you just let him be himself, went through Master Blaster Steel, Oz and Vinnie Vegas during a three-year stint in WCW before going to the fed and immediately becoming a star. 

 

*If you’re so bad you get replaced by Al Green, you should consider another career.  

 

Nasty Boys vs. Terry Taylor & Jackie Fulton 

Red Rooster has returned to the NWA and finds himself straight into ‘mid card jobber’ territory. Nasty Boys just joined WCW a few weeks beforehand. They’re green but, honestly, they’ll never get any better. The Nasties do benefit from being quite stiff. So at least they lay it in there. It looks miles better than the shit the Master Blasters were doing.  

 

Their background is Memphis, AWA and All Japan. So, for a new team, they do have a nice mix of dirty south, technically decent work and strong style. They do have an assortment of flaws. Sags manages a missed clothesline that, if it landed, would have been a back elbow to the top of the head. Knobbs looks surprisingly good and bumps around like a champ. 

 

Whatever happened to this Nasty Boys? They try really, really hard here. Knobbs hits a picture perfect powerslam and it should be the finish but instead he tags in Sags who drops an elbow for the win. Man, what was wrong with the powerslam? **¾. One of the best Nasty Boys matches I’ve ever seen. They would have better matches with the Steiners and Cactus Jack but based purely on their performance, this was decent. Clearly the office didn’t agree, and this run is real short, they’ll be in the WWF before the year is out.  

 

An irate Sid lays down a challenge to Sting for the world title. That’ll make a nice change from Sting wrestling various goobers under a hood for the next three months. 

 

Bill Irwin vs. Tommy Rich 

Speaking of goobers; Irwin was one of the guys under the Black Scorpion mask on house shows. You may also remember him for a short-lived WWF run in 1996 as “The Goon”, a gimmick originally designed for Chris Jericho because his dad played hockey. Here he’s a cowboy with a bull whip. They do about four minutes here. Most of which is Rich utilising a side headlock. Ross takes the time to repeatedly talk about Rich being the third youngest NWA champion of all time. Rich wins with a Thesz Press. He looked like a big gangly mess here. 

 

Video Control takes us to Tony Schiavone, who has Stan “The Lariat” Hansen. Big Stan is here to chew tobacco and he’s covered in it. He seems somewhat irate that he’s only ranked at #6 on the WCW Top Ten. His most high profile WCW win is over Tommy Rich on a house show, so that may account for his placement. Hansen’s efforts were focused on All Japan anyway, so who cares? Stan. Stan does. He’s hot about it and he doesn’t care who knows.  

 

LPWA Championship 

Susan Sexton (c) vs. Bambi 

The LPWA was a short-lived women’s promotion, from the mind of Tor Berg. I’m not going to call him a scumbag but generally I prefer my women’s wrestling promoters to be female. LPWA was supposed to replace GLOW in the hearts and minds of Americans but did not and concluded in 1992. Their last champion was Terri Powers. Perhaps better known as WWF diva Tori. Bambi was in AWA and the battle royal match at Superclash III. Sexton…I’ve never seen and will probably never see again. She’s Australian. 

 

JR, thrilled to be calling this, claims Bambi’s surname is “Deer”. The match is all basic counters and holds. The crowd don’t give a fuck. Bob Caudle claims the winner gets a dinner date with good ol’ JR. Just so you know how little anyone cares about women’s wrestling at this point. Bambi gets a nice cradle, in one of the best wrestling moves of the match, only for Sexton to reverse the pin to retain. This was fine but the difficulty level was very low. 

 

Steiner Brothers vs. Maximum Overdrive 

We named a tag team after a Stephen King book. They’re the “Hunter and Silencer”. Or Jeff Warner and Tim Hunt if you want actual names. They both suck. The Steiners politely put up with their sucktitude, which would not fly in future years. The Steiners were notorious for beating the shit out of jobbers. Scott is especially generous, happy to run through arm drag drills. Rick starts to get a little more pissy as the match progresses and kills Warner with the Steinerline. This felt like a complete waste of the best tag team in the world. This is the same company that pissed off the Midnight Express to the point where they quit the territory though. Par for the course. 

 

Stan Hansen vs. Tom Zenk 

Hansen split his time between NWA and All Japan for a while but was blatantly more interested in Japan. I can only assume some mark at WCW gave him stupid money for a run here. Zenk spends the entire match getting his ass kicked. Which is absolutely how it should go. I dread to think how much money Zenk was on, if we’re talking finances. Ugly lariat finishes. I’m a big Stan Hansen fan but this WCW run was not great.  

 

WCW US Championship 

Lex Luger (c) vs. Ric Flair 

For the past couple of years these two have been tearing it down for Flair’s NWA belt. Here’s how it went down: 

 

NWA Starrcade ‘88. Flair works the leg extensively allowing Luger to collapse in the Torture Rack. **** 

NWA Starrcade ‘89. In tournament action we go to a 15 minute draw. ***¼  

NWA Wrestlewar ‘90. Luger comes up short again, opting to “help” his friend Sting instead of winning. Good match, bad finish. ***½ 

NWA Capital Combat: The Return of Robocop. A cage match that finishes in a DQ. Le Sigh. ***½  

 

As you can see Luger has been royally screwed with this booking, so this is the NWA’s chance to prove he’s not a loser. Putting him in with Flair with Luger’s title on the line. It’s odd seeing Flair as a challenger and he’s far less interested in the US title than he is elevating himself to #1 in the rankings, so he gets another shot at Sting.  

 

The match is very familiar. Luger’s power against Flair’s tricks. Lex does a lot of no selling and Flair does plenty of selling to compensate for it. Lex, despite wrestling Flair all those times, still gets suckered by Flair faking an injury. “Turner, Herd, this is for you” yells Flair before chonking Lex with a chop. Flair’s raise of intensity, after the “injury”, is palpable and the crowd love it. Flair’s performance is way above everything else on the card. He’s on fire here.  

 

Bob Caudle nails it when he talks about the match’s intensity. This is what happens when you give good workers limited time to fill and they feel insulted by it and work the shit out of those 15:00. Honestly, this might be their best match together. Unfortunately, WCW are incapable of booking a finish, so Stan Hansen runs in and beats Luger up for the DQ. ***¾. Stick a proper finish on this and it’s easily four stars. Great effort and intensity from both guys, especially Flair who looked to be proving a point. 

 

WCW Championship 

Sting (c) vs. Black Scorpion 

Ole’s dumb Black Scorpion angle continues here. “Black Scorpion” promising to tell Sting who he is, if Sting wins. They still didn’t know who the Black Scorpion was. This particular version is WWF house show guy Al Perez.  

The cameraman finds a Black Scorpion fan in the crowd. Imagine! Also, imagine making this a title match? The angle would have been fine if they had a star under that mask. Like, if they signed Rick Rude and had him do it. The match has extensive choking. Both in the literal and figurative sense. Stinger Splash finishes in short order. Match sucked, obviously. 

 

Sting unmasks the Black Scorpion to discover underneath it’s actually the Red Scorpion (he’s got another mask on). Another Black Scorpion appears, and Sting is all “oh no, I thought I beat him already”. Idiot. The feud would continue until STARRCADE if you can believe that. It does, sort of, work up to this point but the match still sucks. 

 

Post Match: Sid comes out to complain about a lack of title shots and Sting blows him off with concerns about the Black Scorpion. Sid beats him up for it. I mean, you would though. That’s your Halloween Havoc main event. 

 

The 411: 

This is a pretty bad Clash of the Champions. The dumb Black Scorpion angle has killed the main event dead, so Flair-Luger had to kill and it was surprisingly good. Until the total lack of finish. They tried a lot of different stuff on the undercard and most of it was shit. Master Blasters. Maximum Overdrive. Bill Irwin. Boring Mike Rotunda. Skid Row fan Buddy Landel. Ole booking disasterclass.