Shoot me now, please:






I shudder to think what his latest lies may be. Noooooooo!

“Brother, I was playing in my high school band, and I met Neil Armstrong, who saw our band regularly. He wasn’t sure about the space program, but I said to him, ‘Brother, you gotta do this for the United States and its morale.’ And he went to the Moon. So I like to think Hulkamania - before Hulkamania was even a thing - played its little part in making sure America won the race to the Moon…”

I saw Clash of Champions 27 from June, 1994.

This is it! This represents Hulk Hogan’s WCW debut! He doesn’t actually wrestle here, but he does make an appearance, limo, police escort and all.

The other storyline here is that Sensual Sherri (she can’t be Sensational any more since WWF has the rights to that name) is going to choose her “man” to stand by, but nobody knows who it is. Plenty of speculation, of course.

Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan on commentary, with Jesse occasionally replacing Heenan. Okerland doing the interviews.


First match is for the WCW World Tag Team Championship: Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan (c) w/ Dave Sullivan vs. The Nasty Boys.

This one, unlike their previous PPV matches, just has regular tag team championship match rules. Due to the crazy nature of their previous encounters, there are two refs for this one. The second ref (who is on the floor) played absolutely no role in this match whatsoever, so I have no idea why they bothered.

Anyway, this was a good match. Not as good as their previous PPV encounters, but another good brawl. The champs retain the belts when Cactus laid out Knobbs with the double arm DDT.


Next match is The Guardian Angel vs. Tax Slazenger. The Guardian Angel is the Boss’s (AKA Big Bossman) new gimmick after WCW changed it to avoid litigation with the WWF. This was just a quick squash to put over the new gimmick. It was fine for what it was. Prior to the match, they had a video showing him training to become a Guardian Angel.


Next match is for the WCW Television Championship: Larry Zbyszko (c) vs. Lord Steven Regal w/ Sir William.

Zbyszko had gotten the title from Regal somewhere along the line, within the past couple of weeks, I think. Regal wins when Larry had Regal in a Boston crab, but Sir William walked by and flipped them over so that Regal now had Larry in a pinning predicament, then Regal held onto the ropes for the pin. This was a good match. A mixture of brawling and mat wrestling. I think Zbyszko retired for good soon after this.


Dustin Rhodes has selected Arn Anderson as his tag team partner for the next PPV.


Next match is for the WCW United States Championship: Steve Austin (c) vs. Johnny B. Badd.

This was a pretty good match, except that the ending was stupid, confusing, and annoying. Austin pulls out some brass knuckles, clobbers Badd with them, and pins Badd for the win. Then, a second referee comes out and tells the first referee what happened. So Badd rolled up Austin and won, to take the title. Then he walks off with the belt. Or did he take the title? Apparently, though THEY NEVER EXPLAINED THIS DURING THE BROADCAST, Badd won by DQ, not by pinfall, so he did not win the title. First of all, I HATE when they have a second referee come in after the match is over and get a decision reversed. So many plot holes there. Why not do that every time then??? Second, the ref never should have counted Austin out for the Badd pinfall win. If you’re going to reverse the decision, then a Badd DQ win is the right call, which was apparently what eventually happened, though WCW, in their baffling incompetence, never explained that.


Then Hulk Hogan basically challenges Ric Flair to a match. The main event here is Flair vs. Sting in a unification match, and WCW basically gave away the ending of that match with this confrontation between Hogan and Flair. Not the first time and probably not the last time WCW gave away the ending of a big match.  They are apparently pretending that Hogan and Flair have never wrestled before.

Also, they had Hogan on the mic a few times on this show, and he said "brother" about every fifth word.  It got really, really annoying.  It's like he's a parody of himself.

The main event is the Unification Match: WCW World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair vs. WCW International World Champion Sting.

The guys come out, and we finally see who Sherri has selected. She makes her grand entrance wearing the same face paint as Sting, and goes to his corner.

The crowd seemed to be primarily behind Sting for this one. 
This was an excellent match. Not the best ever Flair-Sting match, but still very good. Flair wins when Sherri distracts Sting (she got clobbered by a Sting plancha when Sting was going after Flair but Flair pulled Sherri into the path – Shawn Michaels style) as Sherri went onto the apron to say something to Sting, and while that was happening, Flair rolled Sting up from behind for the win. It was a setup! Sherri had actually chosen Flair all along and tricked Sting! Then Flair and Sherri beat on Sting for a while until the Hulkster runs out for the save. I liked the Sherri double cross here. Anyway, with Hogan now on board, with Jimmy Hart, I might add, WCW will be changing a lot, of course. It had been getting more hardcore, but that will change.


All in all, a very good show. No bad matches. You had the Guardian Angel squash, but that was short and wasn’t really bad or anything.

Yup, that sounds like WCW all right.

That's because Ray Traylor should have come back as Big Bubba Rogers, the name he was known by, in Crockett/WCW.  Those fans knew who he was and they had footage to reinforce it.  More of that sheer stupidity of trying to copy WWF instead of emphasizing themselves as the alternative, which worked very well under Crockett.

This was a fun tape back in the day, but a little short at just 53 minutes:

If WCW had been in the space business, a probe launched towards the Moon would probably have arrived a day early - but would have landed on Mars instead…