The Sixer: WrestleMania in WCW
It’s WrestleMania Season! But here’s the thing: WrestleMania itself as a concept is overblown and boring to me now. I don’t mean that in a “cool” way or a way I even like. Used to be basically my most-anticipated day of the year. But two days? And as overly gaudy as it has all become? It’s just not my taste, personally, and also, I’ve watched the old Manias a thousand times at this point.
But then I had an idea, because I wanted to watch some WCW. What about matches that happened in WrestleMania, but happening later or earlier in WCW? So that’s why we’re talking about a 1997 Curt Hennig vs Lex Luger match today.
In this set:
Randy Savage vs Ric Flair (Great American Bash ‘95)
Lex Luger vs Curt Hennig (Nitro, 11-3-97)
Eddie Guerrero vs Rey Mysterio Jr (World War 3 ‘97)
Bret Hart vs Roddy Piper (Nitro, 2-8-99)
Hulk Hogan vs Sid Vicious (Nitro, 7-19-99)
Scott Hall vs Jeff Jarrett (Thunder, 2-9-00)
Ric Flair vs Randy Savage
WCW The Great American Bash
June 18, 1995 - Dayton, OH
WrestleMania Moment: Flair defended the WWF title against Savage at 1992’s WrestleMania VIII, rather than doing the logical Flair vs Hogan match after Flair won the belt with his legendary performance in the ‘92 Royal Rumble. Savage politicked his way into a second WWF title reign, which never really took off, and he dropped the belt back to Flair in the fall, so that Flair could drop it to Bret Hart and a panicking Vince McMahon could pretend he was going to seriously commit to a new era in the WWF, before going back to Hogan at WrestleMania IX, which was an even bigger flop than Savage in ‘92.
Generally if not unanimously regarded as their best WCW match, I think you can argue it’s the best match they ever had, period. Or at least that’s my feeling by memory entering this fresh re-watch. These two had been actually carrying the company week-to-week while Hogan fiddle fucked around on his very limited dates contract. But if you’re going to combine “workhorse” with “star power,” you can do a lot worse than having Savage and Flair on board, too.
The current feud is built around Flair hounding Randy for months, which led to Savage and Hogan petitioning WCW to let Flair get around the retirement stipulation from a ‘94 loss to Hogan, because Randy wanted him so goddamn bad, he just had to get his hands on this fella, and at Slamboree in May, Flair even decked and applied the figure four to Savage’s dad, Angelo Poffo.