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[1993-05-22-WCW-Saturday Night] Slamboree Control Center


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  • 1 month later...

Eric Bischoff and his SMILING FACE are here to tell us all about Slamboree. He feigns excitement over the legends appearance, but knowing what we know about Bischoff and how he views old wrestling, he probably wanted to vomit. He runs down the Slamboree card while really distracting classical music plays. Solie does a rundown of Lou Thesz's career that is tremendous. They show clips of him against Inoki from Japan with piped in crowd noise.

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  • 10 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Bischoff runs down the card. Bulldog faces Vader for the WCW Title. I don’t remember Smith making an appearance on yearbook so far. Not a bad card on paper. More Flair for the Gold though.

 

Solie does a bio on Lou Thesz and we get a clip of Lou versus Inoki in Japan. Video packages at this time just weren’t going to do guys justice with the lack of footage.

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  • 1 month later...

This comes off as very ESPN Classic SportsCentury-ish, 7 years early.

 

Solie talks up appearances by Jim Barnett, Don Owen, and Stanley Blackburn at Slamboree. A rundown of Lou Thesz's career follows--I'm quite dubious of Gordon's claim that he was wrestling's "first major celebrity." Clips follow of Thesz vs. Inoki and I think, if I heard correctly, they're actually trying to push this as just happening recently as opposed to the 1970's.

 

Bischoff is so very punch-worthy here. We don't get a list of who's actually competing in the Legends matches but we do get two separate hype jobs for Maxx Payne playing Norma Jean. The concept of this show is admirable, but I think the early-'90s wrestling environment wasn't the right place to run such a show on a national level. Nostalgia and acknowledging the past and Youtube clips and Hall of Fame ceremonies weren't around in full force and most promotions in the U.S. were concentrating on the here and now. And even if it was a good time to do it, WCW was not the promotion to pull it off effectively.

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  • 1 year later...

Bischoff runs down the card in typical Bischoff fashion. Solie joins to preview the legends portion of the show, mentioning Jim Barnett, Don Owens and Stanley Blackburn as promoters who'll be there. Highlights Thesz as a legend and all time champion. Clips of Thesz vs. Inoki. Bischoff would love to see Thesz step into the ring again. Completely legit.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

This wasn't bad at times; I'll even forgive Eric his obvious lie about wanting to see Lou Thesz wrestle again and Gordon trying to claim that the Thesz-Inoki match took place "recently". I can even understand Thesz being called wrestling's first major celebrity, since he's going to be at the Omni while Strangler Lewis and Gorgeous George aren't. But if you're going to bill this show as "A Legends' Reunion", don't the legends' matches deserve more hype than Maxx Payne playing his guitar? Most of the younger fans at the time would have still known who the guys in the six-man were; Muraco, Snuka, and Murdoch were still active, and Brunzell had just retired. The other two matches could have been explained by Gordon. But that would have been too simple for this lamebrained outfit.

 

It's almost like Bischoff was being forced for some strange reason to carry out one of Watts' leftover ideas, and wanted to do it badly so he wouldn't have to do it again. They could have at least hyped the legends matches instead of telling us about which promoters were going to appear, of all things. Who cares if Stanley Blackburn ad Don Owen are coming? Who in the audience would even remember who they were unless they were Apter-mag maniacs? As usual when WCW got handed a good idea, they managed to turn it into utter rubbish.

 

Doses anyone know why Brad Armstrong had to sub for his dad in the tag match? Was Bullet Bob selling his SMW injuries, or did Bischoff object to working with anyone from SMW after the original working agreement ended so badly?

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