By Coach B

This particular episode was interesting because I vividly remember watching this at my dad’s apartment when I was 9. He always kind of tolerated my wrestling fandom, except for the time I was distraught about Earthquake squashing Hulk Hogan’s ribs a year or so later. I was in tears, trying to explain how Hulk’s ribs were “broken around his neck.”

Please don’t ask me where the hell I came up with this. I stress that I was a doorknob of a kid.

He didn’t tell me wrestling was fake. He explained to me that “the injury is literally impossible” and proceeded to draw an actual picture of how it couldn’t happen.

This edition of WrestleWar ’89 is missing two matches: Lex Luger vs. Michael P.S. Hayes and Flair vs. Steamboat, due to copyright stuff. So, if you remember the original event, forget the best match on the card and an average match. I won’t say Luger vs. Hayes is the worst match because, well, you’ll see.

The booker for this show is George Scott. Given the slapdick series of events about to transpire, it’s important to know two things:

• Who is to blame here: George Scott. 

• Dusty Rhodes was not at fault for this clusterfuck. Dusty wasn’t always  bulletproof by any means, but this one is not on him.

NWA / WCW WrestleWar ’89

0:00 - Jim Ross and Bob Caudle are on the call. Bob has made the cut two weeks in a row here. I joked about him probably not being creepy, but now it looks like I’m the creepy one. Moving on.

The Great Muta (with Gary Hart) vs. Doug Gilbert (with Eddie Gilbert)

0:52 - “Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Junkyard Dog could not be here with us at WrestleWar.”

Huh.

A quick Google search shows he missed the show and was later fired. Pretty sad. I’ve heard stories about how over he was in Louisiana, but also that he started having “personal problems.” It’s way too early in this episode to be bummed out.

This is a short match, and Muta does enough in three minutes to remind me that he was fucking awesome.

Also, I remember being scared of Gary Hart growing up and not understanding why. I eventually read his book (the PDF version is out there if you look and it’s totally worth your time) and realized my fear of Gary Hart was well-founded. He grew up on the streets of Chicago, carried a straight razor, and once used it to slice up The Missing Link in World Class wrestling.

So, despite him being deceased, I will say no unkind words about Mr. Hart out of genuine fear of his resurrection.

Muta nails a moonsault for the win. Impressive. It’s weird, when moonsaults aren’t in every match, they are exciting to see. I was tempted to look up how Muta’s green mist trick was done, but I don’t want to know the truth. Ignorance is bliss sometimes, especially after the devastating news about Vladimir “Carl” Koloff last week.

5.1/10 - Short match, but Muta does enough cool shit to justify the score.

“Hacksaw” Butch Reed vs. Ranger Ross

7:39 - Wrestling nicknames are the best. You add “Hacksaw” to a name and immediately I think, “I bet that bastard is tough.”

Or it used to be the case.

Which modern wrestler could we tag as “Hacksaw” and it would work? I’ll keep working on this one but I feel even the right female could pull this off...

8:35 - The crowd shots facing the hard camera are bizarre. Not because of how people are dressed or the haircuts.

There are no cell phones.

Did we just pay attention to shit back then? Apparently, we enjoyed an event without recording all of it through an eight-inch screen, never to be watched again.

10:49 - Butch Reed wins with a top-rope shoulder block that looks like it probably really hurt.

I wanted to write more about Ranger Ross, but then I broke down his gimmick: he was an Army Ranger, his last name was Ross, he smiled quite a bit, and he did the occasional hip wiggle.

So, yeah.

On the plus side, he’s still alive at 65 years old, which is always nice to see. You have to imagine the hip wiggle is over in the 65-plus retirement community.

Seriously though, old folks know how to get down. My grandmother over-shared some information with me years back about her male “friends” in the retirement community.

Some things you cannot unhear.

11:10 - The ring announcer for the evening is “The World’s Most Dangerous Announcer,” Gary Michael Cappetta. Another very good wrestling book: Bodyslams!: Memoirs of a Wrestling Pitchman. I wasn’t sure if it was an autobiography or biography, so I avoided it altogether.

As a high school teacher, I now do this with most names and all pronouns. Avoidance. Lots of gesturing and pointing on my part. If I point in your general direction, you better start talking.

2.4/10 - God, this sucked. Butch Reed beat Ranger Ross and no fucks were given that day.

Bullrope Match: “Captain Redneck” Dick Murdoch vs. Bob Orton (with Gary Hart)

11:24 - So much to break down in this one shot. First, Dick Murdoch is wearing the shirt AND hat for WrestleWar ’89, the event he is wrestling in. Did he forget his gear? Was it a plan to sell more merchandise?

“Well, if Captain Redneck is wearing it, I can’t afford not to buy it.”

I imagine the real reason is that Dick Murdoch did whatever he goddamn pleased and no one felt like calling him on it.

12:12 - Thank God. Bob Orton’s broken arm has finally healed.

13:26 - It was a four-minute bullrope match, and it remains unclear when it started, why it was happening, and what actual purpose it served. My best guess is that Dick Murdoch felt like wrestling and no one objected. Did Gary Hart get an extra payout for appearing more than once on the show? I would think knowing he carried that straight razor factored into the booker’s decision.

15:02 - I stand corrected. The after-match beatdown was way more entertaining than the match itself. “Hangman” Bob Orton would have absolutely worked here. I still have no idea why they were fighting.

I couldn’t let the Captain Redneck thing go. Whatever else Dick Murdoch was, he wasn’t faking it. This was a man who looked like he could hotwire a backhoe, crush an 18-pack, and fight two police horses in a row.

What a time to be alive.

4.6/10 - I initially thought this was a steamy pile of dung, but the after-match shenanigans made it okay-ish.

The Dynamic Dudes vs. The Samoan Swat Team

16:16 - “We are dudes! We wear neon! We carry skateboards! Can we ride them? Fuck off!”

16:41 - Gene Okerlund is the master of pimping 1-900 numbers, but Jim Ross has to be a close second. Followed by Miss Cleo, Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends, and other adult numbers that got my friend Brett grounded for a month in middle school. He really thought if you hung up before the first free minute was over, it wouldn’t show up on the phone bill.

He thought wrong.

20:00 - Although I write about classic wrestling, it’s impossible to ignore the Bloodline connections here. There’s Paul Heyman, who has now ascended to the Mount Rushmore of wrestling managers. For me, it’s Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette, Paul Heyman, and Gary Hart.

Then we see Fatu, later Rikishi, who spawned Jimmy and Jey Uso, as well as Solo Sikoa. Since we are covering all the bases, we also see Johnny “Ace” Laurinaitis, the infinitely lesser talented sibling to Road Warrior Animal.

It’s funny about Johnny Ace. Now he’s a pariah because of his association with Vince McMahon, but does anyone remember stories about how great a worker he was? Or how good he was in the front office? Or that he was well-liked by the boys? Maybe Johnny Ace always sucked, was a stooge, and failed upward in the wrestling business.

At least he can ride the shit out of that skateboard.

Oh wait, nope.

I am really looking for something nice to say about Ace here.

22:55 - The Dynamic Dudes win in what Jim Ross is calling an upset. The crowd popped, so we can say this about Johnny Ace: you were kind of over briefly after you drop-kicked your partner in the back for a fluke win.

3.5/10 - I mean, it was a match. The ending was decent and it was a good pop from the crowd. THIS is how bored we used to be. “Hell yes, this shit tag team won!”

Sting vs. The Iron Sheik

25:25 - Man, this was peak Sting. I was always a fan of the Stinger. Bought the pink shirt when WCW came to Kalamazoo, got made fun of at school the next day, and never wore it again. Ah, memories.

-I enjoyed Sting’s comeback in AEW, even with him in his 60s. That last run cemented a legacy that didn’t need cementing, which is usually how you end up with a sidewalk lawsuit. And by all accounts, he’s an all-time good person, which remains suspicious behavior in professional wrestling.

27:40 - Sting with a dyed black rattail behind the blond flat top. We all willingly participated in this nonsense, didn’t we? My brother and I had “stripes” shaved in our heads with rat tails during this era, so I hold Sting partially responsible. As well as Brian Bosworth and Vanilla Ice. I can feel your judgment now.

28:18 - Sting wins a nothing squash match with the Scorpion Death Lock in what Wikipedia says was two minutes and 12 seconds. Honestly, it felt much longer.

This was the era where Sheiky could barely do jobs and was sent home to do nothing until his deal expired. Then WCW forgot he was employed by them and didn’t cancel his contract on time. He got paid $100,000 for another year to do nothing because WCW sucked at paperwork. If someone is dumb enough to pay you, let them. That should really go on a T-shirt.

1.4/10 - Just utter, sad garbage. I had a student once who failed my class for the semester with a 4%. Weirdly, it was much sadder than a 0%. That story inspired this score.

The Varsity Club (Mike Rotunda & Steve “Dr. Death” Williams with Kevin Sullivan) 

vs. 

The Road Warriors (with Paul Ellering)

Special Referee: Nikita “Scott” Koloff

29:55 - Hell. Yes. The music, the spiked shoulder pads, the legitimate badassery, I am here for all of this. Everything about the Road Warriors seemed dangerous because it was. It’s not about their massive size. They had that presence of “we will fuck you up for real” and “we will poke out Dusty’s eye with one of the spikes.”

The Spike to the Eye was a major moment in my young life. Back to the Mandela Effect, I swear I saw Dusty’s eye pop out on TV. Dumb, ugly, and gullible, I was something to see.

32:20 - Okay, up until now, this hasn’t been an amazing card. It seems to be a conscious decision to pull everything entertaining into one six-minute match. Guys who don’t get their due: Mike Rotunda. I mostly knew him as Irwin R. Schyster in the WWF, another fucking atrocious gimmick. Hockey players, repo men, baseball players, teachers, dentists... I always wondered what gimmicks got turned down around there. And yet, we all watched it.

I just Googled the Mandela Effect, read a bunch of examples, and freaked myself out. Curious George didn’t have a tail. I forgot that I was saying one nice thing about Mike Rotunda. He tore his nutsack on a barbed wire fence partying with Ric Flair once.

Nope. Couldn’t do it.

36:40 - That was a wild-ass sequence of events. This sense of true chaos is where modern wrestling is lacking. No one’s music or video package hit, just a crazy brawl that started out of nowhere. The constant ringing of the bell adds to the drama of it all.

The Road Warriors won by DQ because Dan Spivey and Kevin Sullivan came down and started some shit with Nikita “Scott” Koloff. Not a great technical match, but it kind of gave me everything I wanted.

Dr. Death was a one-of-one human being athletically. Four-time All-American wrestler and All-American football player at Oklahoma. He is the best “what-if” I’ve heard: What if peak Dr. Death existed in the peak era of UFC? Bonkers.

Also, Brawl for All is an event that I have removed from my memory, and it cannot be held against the good doctor. Other things I’ve erased from my memory: Rocky V, Godfather III, the Bush Push, and the sound of my ex-mother-in-law.

Shut up, Donna.

7.0/10 - Objectively, it was an average, short match, but it satisfied everything I love about fun Road Warrior matches. Compared to the rest of this shit? This was very good. Loved the few moments of frantic action at the end.

Eddie Gilbert & Rick Steiner (with Missy Hyatt) vs. Dan Spivey & Kevin Sullivan

38:00 - Umm, what? All of this seems very weird. Spivey and Sullivan interfered in the last match and then just came right back out like that donnybrook didn’t happen. That seems odd, no?

Steiner and Gilbert as a team don’t look right at all, but that applies to almost everything on this card. Again, George Scott is to blame here. May he rest in peace. I am sure he was a nice man, just not good at his job. No judgment. Neither am I.

41:00 - Christ, Missy Hyatt was a full-on smoke show. This Week in Wrestling needs to go into the vault this week for some Missy pictures. Now all the WWE women wrestlers look like models. Back then, being skinny and blond made you an automatic star.

Actually, I think it still does.

Missy didn’t manage a damn thing and sucked on the mic, but she was late-80s hot.

Also, I make fun of Bob Caudle, but he’s very good in his role. Knowledgeable, great timing, and knows when to shut up so young Jim Ross can cook on commentary.

43:50 - There’s a world where Dan Spivey would have been a megastar, right? Massive, imposing dude with a great look. Why did they have to ring that goddamn bell? The Waylon Mercy gimmick based on Cape Fear should have been money. Go watch some of those promos. He had something going on. He had matches with Bret Hart, Razor Ramon, and other stars. After a brief run, he was done with WWF.

I still wish it was WWF. It bothers me every time I see WWE, which is often.

44:10 - Real or not, slapping Rick Steiner feels like a terrible life choice. Sometimes, you see a guy and think, “I bet he could kick some ass.” Young Rick Steiner comes across as, “Not only am I gonna kick your ass, it will involve me peeing on you.”

45:45 - Watch the next 45 seconds.

Waiting.

Pretty good, right?

It was a fun, interesting finish in a match that was otherwise neither of those things. I can only imagine this was a Kevin Sullivan finish because it wasn’t a squared circle of garbage. I am sure George Scott came up with something lame and the Taskmaster put his ass in check. I am choosing to believe this version.

5.5/10 - For what it was and meant to do, it was a fine match.

The Aftermath

But THIS was the last goddamned match.

THIS closed the show instead of AN AMERICAN MASTERPIECE OF A MATCH.

Everyone in this match is solid to great, but you could have had Flair vs. Steamboat ending the trilogy. While writing this, I had to go back and rewatch it. It’s so damn good. It’s out there and worth 31 minutes of your time.

Overall: 4.62/10

This version without Flair/Steamboat is a difficult watch. Based on actual match quality, this was pretty bad.

But watching it? It was kind of fun.