WCW Uncensored 1995 Review

Welcome to a special DF1 exclusive, as I finally type in a rant that was done a couple of weeks ago. The wonders of switching to a morning shift after years of nights stacking the 2x4's in PaDugganFan1's lumber yard...

It doesn't amaze me that people always request this show as though my opinion of it was somehow a big secret. (Of course it was THE GREATEST PPV IN THE HISTORY OF OUR SPORT!) Well, I’m armed with a bag of Doritos and a box of brownies (are they filled with Ex-Lax ??? We'll find out later on !!) which were supposed to be for the Powers That Be, so we bite the bullet and get started...

Just to show you what we’re dealing with here, the following disclaimer is played before the show:

"The program you are about to see is a first in World Championship Wrestling. The following pay-per-view event, Uncensored, has been established due to the many grudges and differences which have developed between wrestlers over the past few months. With this in mind, the WCW Board of Governors has the following statement: Every match at Uncensored will occur without the sanction of the WCW board. The following matches have been agreed upon by all involved and will be held solely to settle any personal disputes. Get ready for a professional wrestling event like none other .... it’s now time for WCW ... Unauthorized, Unsanctioned and UNCENSORED."

WOW !! Now THIS is a way to start the event that was the precursor to HARDcore wrestling of the late 90's.

- Live from Tupelo, Misssisiiippiiisssssiiippipiipi (the HARDcore capital of the world AND the GREATEST LITTLE TOWN OF THE SOUTH)

- Your hosts are Tuff Tony The Tiger & Bobby The Bum.

- Opening match: Dustin Rhodes v. Blacktop Bully. Oh yeah, this is a KING OF THE ROAD match, which means that rather than take place in the ring, the match occurs in the back of a moving truck. Yes, kids, someone actually got money to think of this brilliant idea. And they sure got their moneys worth folks ! The truck is being followed by another truck carrying several cameras, as well as a Turner helicopter with yet another camera angle. Did the fact that EVERYONE LOVED BLACKTOP BULLY completely elude the Netcop when he thought of insulting this? Voodoo magic seems to be the only explanation I can think of. Maybe Papa Shango could put a curse on him and make black stuff come out of his KKKanadian keyboard! Harharharhar! By the way, was the camera on the helicopter that was used in the match the same one that cought the nWo mugging of Ric Flab back in February/March of 1999 ?

Anyway, the idea, such as it is, is that you have to go from one side of the truck to the other and blow a horn. The truck is lined with hay, which is used as a LETHAL WEAPON at various points. Nonstop action for the first five minutes, and the most amazing thing happens: Look, now it’s day! Look, now it’s night! Look, now it’s day again! Dustin’s shirt disappears, then re-appears again, then disappears again. I suspect this has something to do with the time Rick Rude appeared on Raw and Nitro on the same night. After some fierce HARDcore action, they battle up top and Dustin falls off, allowing Bully to pull the horn for the win at 13:06. That must have been THRILLING for the live crowd. *****

- Martial arts match: Meng v. Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Sonny Onoo, that foreign menace, is the special referee. Being the goodwill ambassador for the good ol' USA that he is, Hacksaw bows and THE MONSTER MENG cheapshots him. Since he has to cheat to get the best of DA MAN, Hacksaw takes off his boot and uses it as a weapon, and then Hacksaw dazzles Meng with his knowledge of the martial art Chin-locky-socky. He would have won with the THREE POINT STANCE, but because that Japanese menace Onoo was against Hacksaw, Meng cheats to win. Hacksaw would have got revenge, but he was soon occupied with that gruesome twesome of Big Bubba No Trouba and VK WallMart. But Hacksaw sure showed the world what it is like to be a MARTIAL ARTS MASTER !!! Watch out Kwang !!!

- Arn Anderson promo. He whines a lot as usual.

- Boxer v. Wrestler match: Johnny B. Badd v. Arn Anderson. Win is by pinfall, submission or knockout. Round one: Johnny stays back and jabs a lot. Arn is overwhelmed because he is a wussy. Round two: Arn goes for the takedown, but gets jaw-jacked. He gets a quick takedown, but like most of his career, he ends up on his back again for another 8-count. Down again, another standing 8. Double Ancient cheats as usual, and he jumps Badd during the rest period and DDTs him, and dumps him over the top to begin Round three. Fortunately, ROC FINNEGAN~!, the manager of champions, has enough and jumps on his back. Round four: Arn threatens Roc, so he puts the water bucket over Arn’s head, and Johnny KO’s Glass Joe Anderson at 0:33 of the fourth round. Boy is that Johnny a BADDDDDDD wildman !!!! BTW, does anyone have the classic 10 round match between Roc Finnegan and Gabby Jay from 1955?

- Randy Savage v. Avalanche. As always tonight, this is a NO-DISQUALIFICATION MATCH, something stated by Tony before the match. Avalanche slowly dominates as they brawl outside. He would get better when he realized he wasn't a fish, or an avalanche but a 500 pound MAN (also his KEWL half haircut was the focal point of his determination to stop Big Bubba No Trouba). Savage makes the inevitable comeback with the usual, but gets squished trying a sunset flip. Big fat splash misses and Savage comes back again...and gets attacked by a woman who jumps out of the audience. She’s looks like someone's grandmother, and in fact bears a striking resemblance to Ric Flair. Oh wait, it is Ric Flair! Harharharhar! Savage is, logically, awarded the DQ at 11:46. IN A NO-DQ MATCH. But I guess that was because the ref was also sickened by Ric Flab in a dress. What a sick, embarrasing thing to do, unlike Mae Young showing her puppies (I hope that happens again tomorrow at WM2000)

- Sting v. Big Bubber. Bubber was the Guardian Angel, but because he was DEPLORABLE, he became Big Bubba again. Sting manhandles Bubba to start, slamming him easily and countering all of his offense. He eventually leapfrogs Bubba, buggering his knee on the landing. Bubba works the knee. Sting is pretty much dead. Tony starts reeling off a canonical list of Sting’s knee injuries, complete with dates, times, opponents, doctors visited, and approximate area of the knee injured. And now he can’t even remember that Lane used to be the cruiserweight champion, because he was never champ, unlike Lenny (whatever happened to him anyway?) Sting makes the comeback, limping the whole time. Press slam and sleeper, broken with a tie-assisted jawbreaker. Sting pulls out a vicious released german suplex (Bubba takes it LIKE A MAN, even though it's a FOREIGN move) and the flying splash for two. The knee is still gimpy, and Bubba clips him. Blind charge misses and Sting goes for a slam, but the knee collapses and Bubba gets the CLEAN pin at 13:39. Fortunately, ol' Hacksaw would come in to pick up the ball against Bubber, which led to that ***** taped fist match at World War 3.

- Texas Tornado match: Harlem Heat v. The Nasty Boys. The Heat attacks from the crowd. Punching and kicking to start. Booker gets jumped outside and the Nasties take time out to give Sherri a Pitstop. Garbage gets involved. And up the aisle we go. They find a conveniently placed concession stand, about 200 feet away from any fans, and "brawl". If I saw tough customers like Knobbs and Sags, and the HIGH-FLYING Stevie Ray coming by, I wouldn't go near it too. To quote good ol'OK 'COTTON CANDY! COTTON CANDY! COTTON CANDY!' They all slip and slide on refreshments and take bumps that Stick Foley wishes he could take. The whole thing is a tribute to the original Tupelo concession stand brawl from the 70s, which of course NO ONE in the crowd probably even remembers. But I do, it was when Hacksaw's cousin from Brooklyn, Roy "Disco" Duggan, took on the Bell Bottom Brawler in a HARDcore classic. Scary Sherri joins in freely, and she’s still in her "resurgent hottie" period, though still not quite as hot as Bertha Faye, who was taking the WWF by storm at the time. The entire concession stand is levelled, and a pinfall apparently takes place, but the crack WCW camera crew was elsewhere. Probably because there was so much action it was impossible to keep up. Replay shows Knobbs pinning Booker T at 8:50. The match was quite possibly one of the best brawls ever and I believe that Hick Foley learned a lot from the Nasty Boyz. *****

- Strap match: Hulk Hogan v. the man "they" call Vader. But is it a YAPPAPI strap match? Oh, yeah, almost forgot: Hogan debuts his "ultimate surprise" here: The MIGHTY RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRenegade! I feel my IQ rising by the second, and since Warrior Wisdom does that for me, that proves that the Renegade was the ULLLLLLLLLLLLLTIMATE WOYAH! Hogan chokes and bites Vader to start, obviously going beneath his usual technical repitoire to handle the cheating of Vader (which caused him to steal the US title from Hacksaw). He whips Vader, and Flair. Ric Flab runs away from Renegade like an idiot. There’s no ref, because it’s UNCENSORED, BOYYYYYYYYYYYYE! Vader takes over and hits the Vader bomb. Renegade yells a lot. They brawl outside, and Hogan delivers some of the hardest chair shots ever. The camera goes wide for all of them, obviously because the POWER of Hulkamania is too much for them to handle. Back in the ring, and Hogan comes back as it becomes rapidly apparent that Vader no longer has any interest in the match, since he knows he will LOSE. Hogan drags Vader around to three corners outside. Back in, Vader gets a chokeslam. Hogan HULKS UP after a wussy vertical suplex and does the usual. He gets three turnbuckles, but yet ANOTHER masked man attacks Renegade, allowing Flab & Vader to double-team Hogan. Vader misses a splash, so Flair shatters the BALSA WOOD CHAIR OF DEATH over Hogan. Hogan hulks up, ties the strap on Flair, and drags HIM to all four corners for the win at 18:21. And so begins a great tradition of Ric Flab losing to the Hulkster at Uncensored! *****

As it turned out, the masked man is unmasked to be Randy Savage, and he helps out Hogan and Renegade, as Arn Anderson (also dressed as a masked man) hobbles out of the dressing room to reveal that Hogan’s team has outsmarted Flair’s team ... AGAIN

The ULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLTIMATE Line :

The show is brutally good, and it’s brutally good in a Vince Russoish sort of way, rather than WCW’s usual brutally exciting sort of good, which means it must be awesome. (I can't wait for the debut of the new and improved POWERS THAT BE)

Five Hacksaw thumbs up (with eyes crossed and tongue out)

Oh yeah. Yes, they WERE filled with Ex-Lax !!

DF1
(Who wants to see Brian Knobbs and Stevie Ray in another Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl)