WCW Clash of the Champions XXVIII

RATING LEVELS:

Curt Hennig – A “GOAT” show, as Perfect as possible

Watch It – A consistently good show worth watching in its entirety

Watch It…With Remote in Hand – 3 or more above-average ratings

High Risk Maneuver – Mostly filler, inessential, but 1-2 good matches

DUDleyville – Zero redeeming qualities, chore to watch

Clash of the Champions XXVIII – August 1994

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

CHAMPIONSHIP BACKGROUNDS: Hulk Hogan is the reigning WCW World Heavyweight Champion heading into tonight’s show, having defeated Ric Flair at Bash at the Beach 94’. The team of Pretty Wonderful is the WCW Tag Team Champions, Steve Austin is the reigning US Champion, and Lord Steven Regal is the recognized TV Champion.

COMMENTATORS: Tony Schiavone & Bobby Heenan

Kicking things off is tonight’s tag team championship, with Pretty Wonderful in a non-title match against a freshly-turned-babyface Nasty Boys. The Nasties control things early on, while Heenan and Schiavone take some blatant shots at the WWE on commentary. In the audience, the camera shows us our first glimpse (I think) of Barry Darsow in his WCW role of “Blacktop Bully," mocking the good guys. As the match progresses past the 5 minute mark, the crowd grows pretty quiet, obviously not too invested in the fate of Jerry Sags who plays the role of face-in-peril. The finish is cool, but it needed to come sooner to make this one worth recommending. (1.5/5)

Next up is the legendary “Kerrigan-ing” of Hulk Hogan. There is a lot about this that is comically, but what keeps it from true Wrestlecrap greatness is how drawn out and tiring of a segment it becomes. For the first few minutes, we don’t even see EMTs or trainers arrive – the kind of thing that the WWE wisely utilized for similar angles. This forces the audience to simply sit back and watch Hogan’s overdramatic selling. Bischoff’s worry, to his credit, seems real, but if you had seen the Sting/Rude angle and match from Clash of the Champions XVII, you knew where this was story was going. (2/5)

Our second match of the night is United States Champion “Stunning” Steve Austin defending his title against Ricky Steamboat. At Clash 20, I gave their match a solid score of 3.5. At the inaugural Bash at the Beach, they earned an even higher 4.5 rating from me. Between those battles, these two had wrestled in several other TV matches and tag bouts (Austin as a Hollywood Blonde and Steamboat in his underrated partnership with Shane Douglas), so the chemistry was there for them to deliver the goods. Depending on your patience for announcers talking about everything BUT whats going on in the ring, you will either love this match, find it a bit underwhelming, or have the same opinion I do – that this is a fine match, but one that starts slow, gets very competitive, and ultimately doesn’t leave as much as an impression as their match from the previous pay-per-view. Part of that might be due to the fact that Steamboat suffered a career-ending injury in the match, one that kept him on the sidelines for 15 years. (3.5/5)

An ultra-lame Honky Tonk Man video is next. I know I typically give pretty high ratings for WCW’s more harebrained and ridiculous vignettes, but this one isn’t even worth laughing at. Just stupid. (1/5)

Making up for things is a replay of an excellent Dustin Rhodes/Dusty Rhodes moment from WCW Saturday Night or some other TV show. Dusty cuts a passionate promo, not only setting up tonight’s grudge match between the Rhodes duo and the Stud Stable (Bunkhouse Buck and Terry Funk), but also putting over his son as a future World Champion. Dusty’s conviction is remarkable and the crowd’s responses show that he still had enough charisma to command the audience’s attention. (3.5/5)

This leads to…Dusty Rhodes and Dustin Rhodes vs. Terry Funk and Bunkhouse Buck. The crowd is red-hot throughout and while I’ve seen some critics dismiss this bout as just a hodge-podge of “smoke and mirror” tricks, I don’t mind the layout or what-counts-as-high spots. Dusty Rhodes isn’t “protected” either as he’s throwing elbows early on rather than just standing on the outside watching the match happen. Dustin is the workhorse, but Terry Funk and Bunkhouse Buck pull their weight too. The finish isn’t a shocker (considering what happened at TBash At The Beach), but the post-match shenanigans are much wilder than I expected. Meng, Col. Parker’s bodyguard at the time, comes out looking especially strong, a respectable feat considering just how many moving pieces are involved in this match. (3/5)

Following this bout we get an absolutely fantastic Ric Flair promo. I personally could’ve used 5 more minutes of Flair screaming, but you take what you can get on a show like this. (3.5/5)

Back in the ring, WCW Television Champion Steve Regal prepares for his non-title bout with Japanese legend, Antonio Inoki. From early on, this one is stiff and the wrestling is strategic, deliberate, and anything but flashy. At one point, Inoki locks in a rear-naked choke, the kind of move that might get a bigger pop today, but back then seems to bore the crowd. Patient wrestling fans who like to see two guys trade facelocks, headlocks, and wristlocks will love this match, but not everyone will be as riveted. The finish is anticlimactic, with Inoki locking in a lethal sleeper hold and Regal selling it arguably too much. While this match is interesting and certainly stands out compared to everything else that happened in the ring that night or almost any night in the years before or after it, uniqueness doesn’t necessarily make something outstanding or worth hunting down. (3/5) 

Main event time – Ric Flair vs. Hulk Hogan for Hogan’s WCW World Championship. Before the match starts, Flair gets some additional heat from the crowd by calling out the Hulkster, who eventually turns up, damaged leg and all. The crowd is enthralled in the proceedings, though it is hard not to notice how sloppy Flair and Hogan work here, basically just brawling all over the place, selling and no-selling eachother’s eye-rakes and chest chops as they please. When Flair isn’t overselling Hogan’s offense, which consists mostly of scratching and headbutts, he’s blatantly calling spots into the Immortal One’s ear. For the brief stretches where Flair is in control, though, the match gets much more interesting, with Flair hoisting Hogan up in an impressive vertical suplex and applying the figure four to huge reactions. While revisionists love to argue that Hogan was not beloved in WCW, the truth is, the crowds were definitely pro-Hogan at this point and the ratings and buyrates show that there was still a huge part of the wrestling-viewing audience that wanted to see the “same old shit” he’d built his legacy on in WWE. While I would’ve loved to see a more even rivalry with Flair in terms of wins and losses, I’ve enjoyed the Hogan/Flair series up to this point as Flair seemed driven to pull out the best matches he could from his arguably more limited, less athletic opponent. Unfortunately, the finish and the incredibly poor decision to have announcer Michael Buffer purposely mess up the announcement of the winner is confusing and horrendously executed (not to mention needlessly self-sabotaging in the way it degrades the fact that Flair just spent 20+ minutes showing he could hang with Hogan). A more definitive victory for Flair, even one that could be excused away by Hogan's injury, could've really helped this match. Instead, the bizarre booking and execution of the final moments is enough to knock this match down a few pegs. (3.5/5)

With an average match/segment rating of 2.72-out-of-5, Clash of the Champions XXVIII is better than it might appear on paper, but almost only because of the work of two characters you might not have expected it from. Regal/Inoki is a bit of a disappointment and Austin/Steamboat doesn't hit the same highs as their Bash at the Beach match. Instead, it is Flair who gives the performances of the night, both on the mic and in the ring, helping shape a captivating back-and-forth brawl that was en route to being one of Hogan’s best matches in years before it was derailed with a horrid, comically overbooked finish. The other MVP? Fellow old timer Dusty Rhodes, whose passion and energy ignites the crowd more than anyone else on the show not named Hulk. Completists will no doubt find moments of greatness on this show, but I wouldn’t try too hard to make time for this one. The numbers don't lie either as this is my lowest-rated WCW event since the abysmal SuperBrawl 4.  

FINAL RATING – High Risk Maneuver