Old-School Show Review: WCW Uncensored '96

Me and a few friends (one of them being commenter Sean) set out to watch some old wreslting tapes tonight. Out of the bunch, I picked out WCW Uncensored '96 from Tupelo, MS, which was one of the last WCW shows before the nWo really began. The match-listing on the back looked appealing because there was an Eddie Guerrero match, a match between Lord Steven Regal and the Belfast Bruiser (whom I correctly assumed was Finlay) and a Chicago street fight between the Road Warriors and Sting and Booker T. Plus the main event sounded like it could have been fun. The MegaPowers in a weird sort of Doomsday Gauntlet thing against a list of guys that included Kevin Sullivan, Arn Anderson and Ric Flair. Could have been good.

Yeah, it wasn't any good. I was wrong.

First problem was the announce booth. The three-man booth is very hard to pull off well. WCW was a big proponent of the three-man booth for most of the time when it was on top, and it's no surprise that even when it was beating the WWF in the ratings and in critical praise, the broadcasting still paled to whatever booth the WWF had, as long as that booth didn't contain Kevin Kelly, Michael Cole or Jonathan Coachman. Of course, when two-thirds of your booth sucks and shouldn't be announcing anyway, and the other guy is a HoFer clearly phoning it in, it's a recipe for disaster.

The three men I'm referring to are Dusty Rhodes, Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan. Heenan is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, heel color commentator of all-time, but you'd never know it if you just watched him in WCW. It's clear that he's forcing lines all the time, and when he's doing his schtick, it's either no-sold or Schiavone painfully tries to channel Gorilla Monsoon and half-heartedly say "just stop it." Rhodes is so mushmouthed that I swear that if you stuffed his mouth full of cotton balls, it'd sound perfectly clear. He's entertaining as hell to watch if just to make fun of him, but from a technical standpoint, not only can't you understand him, what you can understand is so inane and banal.

Then there's Schiavone, who could very well be the worst PBP man ever. He's not as bad here, since most of what submarined him in the later years was the constant proclaming that "such and such an event is the greatest thing in the history of our sport" and talking over cruiserweight matches and other "non-essential" matches with talk about what happened with the nWo or how great the main event was going to be for that Nitro or PPV. Still, he doesn't have an ear for direction or flow of a match, and he often miscalls moves. It's awful.

Now, onto the matches themselves, the first one was Konnan, dressed in what I can only describe were his old Max Moon tights put through a paper shredder, taking on a new-to-America Eddie Guerrero. I was really looking forward to this match, and it was okay, but both guys were really not crisp in their spots. There were some cool moves and back and forths, and I really appreciate that they were working with the back-and-forth submissions and counters, but a lot of them were slightly botched enough that you could see that they were off a half-step at least. One of the bright spots in the match was Konnan giving Eddie the Black Tiger Bomb, or a sitout Razor's Edge for those who've never seen Eddie do one. The announcers kinda just shrugged this off as just another powerbomb. To the untrained ear, it would have been okay, but if Matt Striker were calling this match, he definitely would have noted that Konnan was taking a page out of Eddie Guerrero's playbook. That's what separates a good announcer from an average or bad one. They don't just call moves or half-heartedly sell a story. They actually give you insight.

Anyway, Konnan won after a confusing finish where there was a hurricanrana attempt that ended in Eddie selling a lowblow that Konnan could only have pulled off with his head. It was a very disappointing finish to a disappointing match, given who was in it. I don't care what anyone says, before Konnan became immobile, he was a decent-at-worst wrestler.

Next up, it was Lord Steven Regal in his full blueblood Englishman glory taking on a very different looking Fit Finlay, billed as the "Belfast Bruiser." I swear, Finlay had one of the most hideous wrestling haircuts ever. It was a hyper-mullet. Anyway, the match was a very fun brawl, a potato fest between two of the edgiest workers in the company, two of the most misused workers in the company. It's amazing how both Regal and Finlay were in WCW for the length of time they were and never once sniffed as much exposure that they've gotten from the WWE in this past decade alone. Of course, they had to go and ruin the best match on the card with a run-in finish from Dave Taylor and "Robert Eaton". Amazing how they tried to reinvent one-half of the Midnight Express into a blue-blood heel. Fuck if wrestling promoters aren't stupid sometimes.

The next three matches were nondescript in their sucktitude, so we fast-fowarded through them. The lowlights included early DDP's frizz-fro hair cut, Ed Leslie's nightmare-inducing tights and The Giant finishing off some fat guy with the big boot and a legdrop.

We got into the last two matches, both of which were clusterfucks with annoying camera angles. The first one was a big disappointment given who was in it. One would expect Sting, Booker T and the Road Warriors to have a fun "Chicago Street Fight" styled brawl, but instead, it was boring, plodding and at the end, too overbooked. (and at least the WWF had the common decency to have their Road Warrior Chicago Street Fight, y'know, IN CHICAGO and not Tupleo) The action barely moved out of the ring area, and the split-screen featuring action in two different areas was hard to follow and annoying.

The main event was worse. First, the structure itself was a monstrosity of idiocy that was set up AWAY from the main ring and AWAY from the lines of sight of most people in the crowd. It's hard enough to see through a chain-link fence sitting in the mezzanine section when it's right in front of you. Imagine that when you have to turn your head towards the entrance and squint just to see the outline of Hogan's yellow boot.

They spent a good five minutes explaining how Savage and Hogan were going to have to pin or make the guys in the one cage submit before they could move onto the next one, and then during the match, Heenan said that there were no trap doors. So what happens in the first cage? Hogan and Savage escape through trap door. The guys in the first cage, Ric Flair and Arn Anderson, are supposedly eliminated then... except both of them come back and figure into the finish of the match. Then you have Hogan and Sullivan both leaving the cage, and the announcers not knowing whether that meant both of them had won, or lost or whatever. A good portion of the match happened OUTSIDE of the structure and even into the main ring. The final two competitors in the match, Tiny "Z Gangster" Lister and some fat guy called Ultimate Solution, didn't even come out until the match was almost over. Hogan and Savage countered being outnumbered 5-2 in the final cage by using powder and frying pans that Leslie brought to the cage for them. Not that there'd be anything wrong with using weapons but... frying pans? Hogan also busted out like a million eye-rakes. I thought he was the face here?

And to top things off, Lex Luger puts on a loaded glove to knock out Savage, who's being held by Flair. Luger winds up and swings. Savage ducks and Luger stops short of Flair. He then goes "fuck it" and nails Flair in the face. Then, Hogan and Savage both go to leave the cage to win the match, y'know, the cage that they didn't get into after brawling around OUTSIDE OF IT for a good 20 minutes, until Savage remembers, "Oh shit, I think I was supposed to pin somebody". So he scurries back into the ring to pin Flair, who by the account of the announcers had already been eliminated, and win the match while everyone else in the cage looked on like slack-jawed yokels.

I don't know why we even watched it as long as we did given how bad it was. I guess it was like watching a trainwreck.

One thing was clear though. WCW clearly needed a swift kick in the ass at this point to get back on track. Luckily for them, they were about a month or two away from getting Scott Hall and Kevin Nash on their television programming to change the American wrestling landscape forever. Although they would eventually fuck that up too due to the same bad booking and egos running wild, it worked as a quick fix that had a lot of staying power for them. Still, it was no excuse for putting on a lousy PPV like that. If I had bought that, I would have written a letter to Ted Turner himself asking for a refund.

I mean, when you get a bad match out of Eddie Guerrero against a quality opponent... you know it's time to regroup.