You are here: Home>Tape Reviews>Great American Bash>Bash 1987
Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives! |
|
|
- Scott Keith
- This is not one show per se, but rather a 2 hour compilation of the highlights of the Bash 87 tour. - Opening match: WarGames. Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, Lex Luger & JJ Dillon v. Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, Hawk, Animal & Paul Ellering. This is it -- the first WarGames, ever. The story: Everyone hates each others' guts. That's all you need to know. Big Dust and AA start out. Lots of situations where a pinfall would usually happen to stress that there are no pinfalls. AA is bleeding two minutes in, just like everyone else in this match. An 11 year tradition begins here, as the heels win the first ever coin toss. Tully is next and Dusty elbows them both before they inevitably destroy Dusty. The overriding storyline of the match: When it's even odds, the faces are in command, but when the heels have one man up, the faces have no chance. Animal comes in to make the save and slingshots Tully into the cage THREE TIMES. No release. Wild stuff. Flair is in next (whoo!) and Animal is bleeding 10 seconds later. You like blood? This is the match for you. Incredibly hot crowd, they must've been distributing speed in the hot dog vendors or something. Koloff is in and just obliterates everyone. Luger is in and goes right after Koloff, and Flair helps out by giving the most blatant ballshot you'll ever see. Then Flair and Tully give Koloff *two* spike piledrivers in a row. Brutal. Even the bad wrestlers look good because they can punch and kick away and it's totally in context. Dillon is in last for the heels and not surprisingly doesn't turn the tide much. Ellering comes in, wearing the spiked gauntlet from one of the Warriors, and starts jamming it into Dillon's eye. Then the Warriors corner Dillon 2-on-1 and just absolutely murder him for about three minutes until he finally surrenders to the end the whole thing. A bloody, brutal classic. ***** - Rick Steiner v. Barry Windham. This was when Steiner was still an Eddie Gilbert crony in the UWF. Standard babyface Barry match with a weird ending -- Steiner suplexes Windham off the apron and rolls on top, but Windham kinda pushes Steiner over and cradles him for the pin. It just looked awkward for some reason. ** - US title match: Nikita Koloff v. Lex Luger, No-DQ cage match. We join this about 25 minutes in. Luger was Das Wunderkind back in 87, having just ousted Ole Anderson from the Horsemen. Koloff had been US champion forever, beating Magnum TA the year before. Koloff has a neck brace after WarGames. Luger works the neck constantly. It's pretty sad when rookie Luger displays more skill and psychology than Wolfpac Luger. Koloff whipped to the corner and sickles Luger on the way out, but Earl Hebner gets KO'd during the move. Dillon tosses in a chair and Luger smacks Koloff on the back of the head, then picks him up into the torture rack. Koloff is unconscious so the ref just declares Luger the winner and new US champion for the first time. **1/2 from what I saw. More...
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||